die and the crevasses permitted passage and the Chinese ever let them leave – of
course he would hate her.
'I don't know, Daniel.'
'Please,' said Daniel. 'She did it for me. Now it's mine to deal with.'
That night they curled against one another and lay against Gus to keep her warm.
Snowflakes settled through the lips of the bergschrund and lighted down on them as
gently as dust at the bottom of the sea. The glacier creaked like a huge armada of
empty ships.
Gus survived the night. In the morning, they hauled her up from the glacial pit and
started off for ABC. Abe kept expecting someone to see them from camp and come up
to guide them across the dangerous plains. No one came. At the end of the day they
learned why.
The storm quit around three in the afternoon. They entered ABC at five. The camp
was absolutely deserted except for a surprised yakherder. He was an old man who
had brought three yaks up to plunder what remained.
'Help us,' Abe rasped to the man in English. But the herder refused to come any
closer.
'He thinks we're ghosts,' said Daniel. 'They think we died.'
Sunset brought the last avalanche, the largest yet. A bolt of roseate light had just
lanced through the cloud cover when they heard the mountain crack high overhead.
The slide started all the way up at the Yellow Band and it took fully three minutes for
the mushrooming whiteness to devour the north wall.
ABC was a mile away from the base, but the aftershock still shook the climbers and
the spindrift stung Abe's face. When the avalanche hit the Kore's base, its rubble
fanned long and wide. The apron of debris barreled closer and closer to camp. The
yaks snorted and tore away from the horrified herder and he ran after them.
Abe didn't move, though. He didn't flinch. He was too tired, but also he knew it
would be futile to dodge. He had learned that much here.
For the rest of his life, Abe would be glad he stood and watched, because a rainbow
sprang up in the white powder. Its colors were almost not colors, they were so close to
white themselves.
Then the slide came to a halt and the rainbow settled back to earth and there was
silence.
12
It took five days for Abe and his rabble to plow their way through the sea of snow
from ABC to Base Camp. Somewhere in the middle of that tempest of piled drifts and
missed turns and sudden storms, one of the yaks died.
They were a sorry sight. Blind and seasick, Kelly rode one of the yaks. Comatose, or
nearly so, Gus had to be carried by hand on a litter made of tent poles. Even the old
yakherder had to be taken care of. Along with his goiter and some species of lung
disease he had senile dementia. He was more lost than they were.
As for Daniel, he was in ruins. He performed the tasks Abe gave him. Otherwise he
seemed puzzled and uncertain. He never strayed out of eye contact with Gus's body,
and at night he guarded over her.
Abe did not sleep during their entire exodus. Without warning the earth would start
trembling, and even when it wasn't, he imagined it was. At night Kelly had him hold
her tight, though in truth it was he who needed the holding. While she dreamed of
demons stirring deep inside the earth, Abe stared up at the iron-cold stars, wide
awake.
He was changed. They all were. What they suffered was worse than defeat. They
had been believers – richly pagan in their devotion to the mountain – but the
earthquakes had exposed their foolishness. They had lost their faith. Abe could see his
despair in the others.
On the fifth morning, Abe went ahead for help. The snows had gotten deeper and
bogged them down. Weak and slow, he feared the group wouldn't last another night
out.
Alone, he ripped a path through the frozen desert.
After many hours, Base came into view on the flat valley floor. The camp may as
well have been avalanched, for the blizzards had buried it under five feet of snow.
Fully half the tents had collapsed. Those remaining were connected by a network of
deep trenches.
Abe found the other climbers gathered for dinner in the big khaki mess tent. It was
dark and cold inside. A kerosene lantern hung from the bamboo roof support, though
it leaked less light than inky black smoke.
Abe took a minute to adjust to the dim light. The smell of food dazed him. They
didn't see him at first.
'Abe?' someone asked. 'Is that you?' The voice became a face. Stump had survived
the descent.
It looked like a bomb shelter in there. Part of one wall was lined with the remains of
their gear and food. At one time the expedition pantry had lacked for nothing. Now
they were ransacking the last of their stock.
Abe searched around for others. Through J.J.'s parka, he saw white tape binding his
rib cage. Thomas was slumped over the table behind a curtain of derelict hair, eyes
bloodshot. Robby lay propped in one corner with huge frostbite blisters bubbling
across his fingers. An ancient man leaned forward from the shadows. It was Jorgens,
emaciated. In the space of a week, he had aged a quarter-century.
'Impossible,' Jorgens protested. He was stunned the way men are upon learning
they've forsaken a companion.
'We called and we called,' he stammered. 'But the radio was dead. We waited for
you. We watched the Hill. But you were lost.'
'No one could have lived through those avalanches,' Thomas added. 'We got mangled
ourselves. And the snow was getting deeper. We had imperatives...'
None of them moved. Abe scarcely listened to them. He felt disembodied. The
climbers seemed less real than hallucinations.
'Are you the only one?' Stump asked.
Abe shook his head. The ice in his beard rattled like beads.
Thomas posed a different type of question. 'You made it down. But did you make it
up? Did you guys top out?'
Stump frowned at Thomas. The question of victory sounded mercenary. All the
same, Stump didn't tell Thomas to shut up. Like the others, he waited for Abe's
answer.
Abe looked from one pair of eyes to the next. His answer was obviously of great
importance to them, but he was suddenly unsure what the answer really was. For
some reason the summit tripod loomed large in his memory. It seemed close enough
to put his hands on, to tie his red
throat, but it was gone. He wondered where it could have disappeared to.
Abe tried putting it into words. At last someone led him to a chair. It was Krishna.
He placed a cup of hot tea on the table before him.
