Li considered this opening. 'Yes,' he finally declared. 'You must treat the prisoner. It
is your responsibility. Your duty. You are our doctor.'
They laid the boy in a sleeping bag beside Gus's red and yellow chamber. He
balanced the benefits of rotating his patients in the Gamow bag. But Gus seemed to be
stabilized inside the pressurized atmosphere, and the monk was unlikely to recover
anyway.
The Chinese soldiers set up camp in the stone Tomb a hundred yards from the rest
of the tent city. Li had several of the Sherpas move his tent up onto the hillside beside
the hut. Both camps dug in. It suddenly seemed likely they would be trapped here
until the end of the monsoon in late August or September. Stump and Thomas
butchered the dead yak and hung the meat in a tent. Some of the others took an
inventory of their remaining supplies. There was enough food to last until August.
Kerosene for the stoves would run out by July.
A day passed with little change. A distinct boundary sprang up between the
Western and Chinese camps. Only Krishna crossed it, to deliver hot meals up the little
hill to the soldiers and liaison officer.
That night Abe was lying curled and shivering on the frozen earth, breathing his
own hot animal breath inside his sleeping bag. He couldn't sleep without drugging
himself, and that wasn't an option, not with two unconscious patients bracketing him
like bookends.
'Abe,' he heard. Abe flipped on his headlamp and Daniel's gaunt face hung in the
glare. It gave him a start.
others had been remarking on Daniel's crash ever since the descent. The amputation
seemed to have broken him altogether. They said he slept in some rocks by day. At
night you could hear him stalking through the camp, plodding through the snow,
ceaseless.
'Aren't you cold, Daniel?'
Frost was guttering from Daniel's filthy beard and he was trembling. But he denied
the cold.
'Will she be okay?' Daniel asked.
'Her pulse is stronger. The wound seems clean. I've got her jacked full of every
antibiotic we have. We nailed the gangrene cold. There's no reason she can't recover,
Daniel.' He paused. 'Now there's an extra bag in the corner. Why don't you bring it
over and get warm and sleep. You can sleep beside her.'
'What about him?' Daniel was staring at the Tibetan boy.
'I don't know.'
Daniel knelt beside the still body and pulled the corners of the sleeping bag back to
see the boy's face. 'He deserves better than this,' Daniel said. 'He deserved better
from us.'
Certainly the boy had deserved better from them. In a sense they had been the final
guardians of his passage from Tibet, and they had failed him. Abe no longer blamed
Gus alone. The others did. Daniel had told Kelly about what she had done. At his
request, Kelly had told the others. He wanted them to know why she'd done it. He
wanted them to blame him, not her. But even blaming her was beside the point.
For the boy had been in danger since the moment he appeared in their camp. He
had come to them bleeding and in rags, and they had done nothing but give him a
clean expedition T-shirt and a baseball cap and stick Band-Aids on his torture
wounds. That and their silence was supposed to have screened this frail, lone, child
from the Chinese wind. What had they been thinking?
'You're right,' Abe said. 'He deserved better. But the truth is, I just don't think it's
going to get any better for him.'
'I've been thinking,' Daniel said.
'You should rest,' Abe said, trying to head him off.
'We owe him,' Daniel declared. 'We do. And there's nothing more I can do to help
Gus. You'll watch over her. I know you will.'
Abe listened to the tent poles creaking under the weight of the wind.
'He can't stay here,' Daniel said. 'They'll kill him.'
'Forget it,' Abe said.
'Three days, maybe five,' Daniel continued. 'From here it's a day to the Chengri La. I
know the way. We can meet you guys in Kathmandu.'
'No,' Abe said.
'No one gets hurt. And we save the day.'
'I'm needed here.'
'You're not invited.' Daniel smiled. His teeth glittered white in the crack within his
beard. 'It's my deal.'
'They would punish us,' Abe said. 'Gus would suffer.'
'No.' Daniel didn't really have to deny it. Abe didn't believe the Chinese would punish
an injured Westerner, either. The only punishment would be immediate expulsion,
and at this juncture that was no punishment at all.
'Do what you want,' Abe said. 'But do it without him. It's not his deal either.' It was
obvious what Daniel was after, but transcendence was no longer an option, if it ever
had been. He placed one hand upon the Tibetan boy's chest. He could feel the
respiration, the terrible struggle in these bones.
'They'll kill him,' Daniel repeated.
'And so would you. He's had enough pain for one lifetime.'
And so have you, Abe thought, watching Daniel's face.
Then Daniel did something remarkable. He winked. It wasn't conspiratorial. It
wasn't defiant. He just winked. Then he stood up in stages, carefully, slowly, his knee
joints cracking.
'Try to get some sleep, Abe,' he counseled. 'You look like shit.'
Abe said, 'I didn't want it this way, you know.'
'Want?' Daniel said, backing towards the door. The tent flap dropped shut behind
him.
The sun cooked camp through another day, rendering the snow in camp to a mere ten
inches or so. Gus developed a fever. It alarmed Abe. His medical ignorance left him
virtually helpless before her. A fever was like an avalanche, something to be waited
out. He waited. The fever abated.
Over dinner, the group discussed sending a small party of climbers on foot over the
Pang La. If they could climb a vertical wall to five and a half miles high, surely they
could surmount a road pass. They could try to arrange for a helicopter to pick up Gus.
At the very least there would be four fewer mouths to feed.
Wasting no time, Stump and Carlos and J.J. and Thomas set off first thing next
morning. Those staying behind said good-bye and wished them well. Breakfast was a
glum affair.
'I wonder if we'll ever see them again,' Robby said. They got their answer sooner
than later. Shortly before sunset, J.J. was back, alone and out of breath.
'The trucks are coming,' he joyfully trumpeted. 'We saw them through the
binoculars, five big trucks. They'll get here in the morning.'
