it, the timing she used, even the fact that she said it at all, was meant to sandbag him.
Of course they hadn't brought such a thing.
Abe groped for a reply. 'You're late?' he finally asked.
'Three, four weeks.' She was right to shrug. Everyone's rhythms were out of sync up
here.
'What about other symptoms?'
'Besides nausea and loss of appetite and exhaustion? Last time I looked, everyone
had those.' Right again.
And yet there was the possibility. Abe pursued it. 'Gus, if it's true, and if you want
this baby...'
She held up a hand. 'One, if it's true, I don't know if I want it. And two, either way, I
don't need a lecture. You've already said your mouthful.'
'But, Gus.' He had a duty to warn her about the solar radiation, the bad food, the
raised blood pressures, and all the myriad dangers of high altitude. He stopped
himself. She'd had weeks to think it all through.
'Does Daniel know?'
'Nope. And it's not yours to say.'
'Of course not.' Another secret to hold. 'But don't you think...'
'Tell him? Tell him what, Abe? There's a chance I might be carrying his child? You
know what he'd do? He'd sack the climb, just on the very chance. And then what if it
weren't true?'
'But what if it is?'
Now she handed it back to him. 'I thought you said love has nothing to do with it.'
'I didn't mean that.'
She quit bantering. 'We'll never be this close again,' she said. 'We can make it.'
But on the eve of launching their final assault – on the very afternoon before they
were going to trek back to ABC and inhabit the mountain all over again – a Land
Cruiser arrived to kill the Ultimate Summit. It came roaring toward them like a small
dinosaur, smoking out plumes of white dust, and at first Abe had trouble integrating
the return of the twentieth century.
For nearly a hundred days now they had lived like the native denizens of this
strange, lost nation called Tibet. They had lapsed into a pack of trolls, mountain beings
who were ugly and twisted and hunchbacked beneath the sun. All their great works of
music and literature had been shucked as incomprehensible. These days, instead of
Proust and Milton, they applied themselves to Conan the Barbarian comic books,
scrupulously reading and rereading key balloons. It could take a full evening to
complete one issue.
The climbers gathered as if the white Land Cruiser were a spaceship landing and
watched three PLA soldiers dismount. The soldiers were marvelously clean, their hair
cut, cheeks shaved, their pea-green uniforms unscathed by the weather or rockfall.
None of them limped. The flesh on their faces was unblemished by the sun. Their
rifles glinted in the light.
The oldest of the three, an officer, was perhaps Abe's age. The other two appeared
to be in their late teens, and they couldn't pry their eyes away from the climbers. Abe
wanted to believe their shock held some measure of homage or at least mutual
respect, but all he saw in their look was a curious disdain.
Li came crisply dressed from his tent as if this visit were no surprise and their
timing was precise. The homesickness was gone from his face. He had spring in his
step. Still he was not prepared for what the officer told him in Mandarin, even less so
for what he next read in a dispatch that was handed to him. He was visibly shaken
and took another minute to read the dispatch again and ask the officer many
questions.
The climbers kept their distance, even after Li spoke to them. 'Mister Jorgens,' he
called.
'Hey, Lee,' J.J. bellowed. 'Those guys bring any mail for us?'
'Not bloody likely,' Carlos muttered.
'Mister Jorgens,' Li somberly repeated.
Jorgens detached himself from the climbers and walked over to Li and the soldiers.
The conversation was one-sided, with Li doing all the talking. The climbers couldn't
hear a word, but instinct told them something was off and wrong.
Jorgens leaned in to glean the softly spoken words. Li repeated himself. Jorgens
swayed back.
'Not good, not good,' Stump muttered.
Li turned his back on Jorgens then and led off toward the mess tent with the
soldiers in tow. Jorgens didn't move. As a group, the climbers surrounded him by the
Land Cruiser.
'Five days,' Jorgens said. He looked pasty and ill. 'We have five days.'
The climbers glanced at each other, mystified. Finally Robby spoke. '
Captain.'
'They pulled the plug on us. In five days a convoy of trucks will arrive. We have to
leave.'
'Five days?' J.J. wailed. 'We can't finish in five days. We can't even occupy our high
camps in five days.'
Jorgens was squinting. 'No more climbing,' he breathed. 'We have to pack up and be
ready to go. We're done.'
The news stupefied them.
'But we have permission. We paid. It's ours.' Carlos tripped out his argument.
'They pulled the plug on us,' Jorgens said.
'I've never heard of such a thing...' Stump started. But they were too stunned to be
angry. They were scrambling just to understand the implications.
'Five days?' Thomas said. 'Even with yaks here right now, we couldn't start to strip
the mountain. We'll lose everything. From ABC to Five, we'll lose it all.'
Jorgens nodded slowly. 'Yes.'
'But they can't do that.'
'We have five days,' Jorgens said. 'They want us to load the trucks and leave the
same day. These soldiers will escort us to the Nepal border.'
'What the fuck happened?' It was Gus, quiet, furious. Now they started finding their
anger, too.
'What did I say,' J.J. railed. 'You can't trust gooks.'
'There's been trouble in Lhasa,' Jorgens said. 'A Tibetan riot. A Chinese police
station was burned. Several Chinese stores were destroyed. The army opened fire.
That means bloodshed. They've declared martial law.'
'These fucking Tibetans, man,' J.J. shouted. 'Now we're fucked.'
'Say we stay. We climb,' Gus said. 'We make our way across the border when we're
done. Li can go home right now.' It was farfetched.
'The country's under martial law,' Jorgens said. 'They want all tourists out.'
'But we're climbers.' J.J. beat at his chest. 'We're climbers.'
Robby took care of that one. 'We're tourists, J.J. That's exactly what we are. And
