keep your voice down.'
'Li said he'll recommend us for a permit. For the very next season, whenever
martial law gets lifted, whenever the mountain opens up again,' Jorgens said. 'He said
this is unfortunate.'
'So, carrot and stick.' Gus spat. Her disgust washed over them, more than enough
for them all. 'Go along, get along. Shit.'
But Stump considered the proposition. 'It just could work, though. Next season, if it
really was next season? The minute we leave the yakkies will plunder our stores here
and at ABC. But they won't go onto the mountain itself. And at least some of our
camps will survive the monsoon. We'd have a leg up, stock in place. It might just
work.'
'Yeah,' said Robby. 'A definite advantage.'
'Two, three months,' Carlos thought out aloud. 'Not so bad.'
'Like a sequel climb,' Robby added. 'I like it.'
It was Abe who popped their bubble. 'Count me out,' he said. 'I can't come back next
season. Med school starts in September.' He wasn't sure why he shared this nugget of
information. It presumed that he'd even be invited to return, and he'd barely been
invited along on this one.
Nevertheless, it reminded the rest of them of the realities. They had girlfriends and
wives, children and jobs. There were mortgages to pay, commitments that couldn't be
broken. From many dinners and small moments and shared days and nights together,
they remembered that Thomas was getting married in October and J.J.'s little girl
was starting first grade, Gus was lined up for an all-woman's expedition to the
Caucasus and Kelly was moving to Boise for a new teaching job.
The fantasy of a return to this climb – with these climbers in this perfect weather
upon this route – fell to pieces. The instant they left Everest they were going to
disperse into tales that would have nothing to do with their comrades'. Their joined
dream, such as it was, could never be recaptured.
They spent another half hour trying out other solutions to this sudden collapse of
their expedition, but the facts only weighed heavier. The Hill had won.
Then Kelly raised one final bittersweet thought. 'If only Daniel had gone the little bit
further,' she said. It was true. When even one climber reached the top, the entire
expedition did. But none had and time was out. In the end, Daniel's noble gesture of
waiting for them had disserved them all.
'So close,' Thomas said.
'And the radios,' Stump said. 'Just when I finally fixed the bastards.'
Abe had his back turned to Everest. When he turned to look at their lost prize, the
mountain attacked with a wave of raw white light. Unprepared, Abe gasped and
bowed his head, clawing for the sunglasses in his pocket. Ordinarily the sight would
have provoked a nod of admiration, but not this morning.
Even with the glasses covering his eyes, the mountain was too bright to look at for
more than a few seconds. All definition was gone, washed away by the pure
illumination. No lines or shadows, no stone or ice, no ridges or cols. Even the summit
pyramid was illegible in the midst of all that radiance. The mountain simply fused into
sunlight and sky, hiding itself in infinity. It made their ambitions seem fruitless and
tiny.
Gus asked Jorgens to talk with Li again. It was hard for her to ask, because she
didn't like or trust Jorgens. But the mountain was a higher priority worth more than
her pride and she spoke the words. 'One more try, Jorgens, please.'
Jorgens didn't make her grovel. 'It won't work,' he said, 'but if that's what you want,
okay. I'll try.'
He was back from the mess tent within ten minutes. 'It's written in stone. Li said his
orders come directly from the Public Security Bureau in Lhasa. The army is out of its
cage. He wishes to ensure our safety.'
'You can't get any safer than our dead end,' Carlos pointed out, but of course that
wasn't Li's consideration anyway.
'One other thing, people,' Jorgens said. 'I want you to steer clear of our military
guests. No contact whatsoever. Is that understood?'
'Screw,' said J.J.
'I'm not asking, J.J. I'm ordering. Things are already bad enough without hard
words or more tension. Got it?'
J.J. didn't answer.
Jorgens put it bluntly. 'They've got guns.'
They spent the rest of the day cursing the Chinese and Tibet and the mountain,
finally dropping into an exhausted silence as alpenglow lit Everest orange. As
everywhere else in the world, bad news traveled quickly through the Rongbuk Valley.
Before nightfall, a tiny contingent of herders showed up driving seven yaks. They
were eager for work, and also eager to get a preview of the booty getting left behind.
At dinner that night, Carlos got the climbers drunk. He had stocked the expedition
pantry with enough Star beer for one big blow, and this was it. 'With victory in clear
sight,' he raised his toast, 'here's to blind defeat.'
It was not a happy drunk, but neither was it an ugly one. Someone pointed out that
at least they hadn't lost anyone on the climb. They hadn't lost so much as a toe or
finger. They were quitting the mountain in one piece, and that was always something
to be grateful for.
Finally Jorgens spoke. 'Somebody needs to go tell Daniel and bring him down.'
'I'll go,' J.J. volunteered. He had pulled out pictures of his daughter and had tears in
his eyes.
'Damned if I'm staying down here,' Stump said. 'I don't think I could put in five days
without hitting one of Li's soldier boys.'
'I've got cameras and film up there,' Robby remembered. 'And all my ice gear and
double boots. I can make two, three round-trips down with full loads in the time we've
got.'
In that way, the whole group decided to go up to ABC. Their spirits lifted by ounces.
En masse they would break the bad news to Daniel and strip the camp of their most
valuable gear. Above all they would get to pay their respects to the enemy. Stump
wanted to finish a water-color of the North Face. Thomas declared a great urge to piss
on the mountain once and for all. Carlos said he'd be happy just to sleep with the
Mother Goddess one final night. Few if any of them were ever going to return to the
Kore Wall. Abe could hear it in their voices.
Abe slept poorly that night. At daybreak he walked down to the water skull and sat
there to clear his mind. Overhead, Everest was floating in a scoop of soft dawn light.
With her manelike summit massif and outstretched ridges, the Hill had the aspect of a
sphinx splashed with rainbows this morning.
They had come close to cracking her riddle, Daniel closest of all. Abe felt the
closeness of it as a weight in his skull. He felt the frustration of having a perfect
summarizing word on the tip of his tongue and knowing it was forever beyond his
articulation. For the rest of his life he would have to carry around this freighted
silence.
