attempt six years ago, theirs was the fourth expedition to make camp on top of the
rubble.
Low-slung and mean, the camp had the lean, breathless look of a battlefield
headquarters. In effect, ABC robbed Base Camp of its function. From here on most of
the assault would be supplied and coordinated from ABC. Earlier expeditions had piled
rocks into semicircular walls to cut the wind, and the faster moving Sherpas had
erected tents in steps among the rubble, one above the other. Someone – probably
Nima, trying to make them feel comfortable – had attached one of their twelve-inch
American flags for the summit to a bamboo wand and wedged it among the rock.
Bright blue and yellow tarps covered a small stockpile of food and equipment, and
yaks and herders were wandering around.
The closer Abe got, the uglier the camp appeared. It seemed to squat in the
shadows beneath the rearing prow of white and black stone. Above ABC the mountain
didn't get just steep, it got vertical. This close, Abe couldn't see the top of the stone
wall and all of the mountain's other features vanished. He knew the wall was just one
more piece of the puzzle, though from here the Kore Wall seemed to stretch all the
way to the sky. Had he been the first to arrive here – had he been Daniel ten years
ago – he would have pronounced the route inconceivable and turned around.
Nima and Sonam were laboring among the rock, heaving chunks atop new walls,
building new spaces for more tents. Sonam nudged his sirdar, or boss, and pointed at
Abe, and Nima descended goatlike from the rubble to greet him.
'Oh, hello, sir.' Except for his bright Gore-Tex climbing uniform, Nima might have
been one of the yakherders. His cheekbones stood like fists, and his short city-cut had
grown wild and the black hair was below his ears.
'You are coming onto the mountain now,' Nima said. He was smiling.
'Yes, here I am,' Abe acknowledged. He was feeling nauseous and hitched his pack
higher on his shoulders, mostly for effect. He wanted to sit down. No, that wasn't true,
he wanted to lie down.
Nima wanted to talk. 'The mountain is very strong.'
'Yes, very impressive.'
Nima finally got around to his question. 'This yakherder in Base is all better now?'
Abe had forgotten all about the Tibetan boy. For a brief few days, he'd even
forgotten he was the team's archangel and had thought of himself as simply one of the
climbers. To an extent that Abe could not help but appreciate – for it let him be
something other than a doctor – they had begun replacing science with superstition.
Some had taken to refusing all medicine, relying instead on their crystals and vitamins
and herbs. Others had become alchemists, mixing cocktails of Halcion for sleep with
Diamox for respiration with codeine for coughing and aspirin for thinning their blood.
And J.J., of course, had his steroids. There was no thwarting them, so Abe didn't try.
There was no escaping duty, though.
'Nothing's changed, Nima. I checked him before I left Base Camp.' He didn't want to
raise any false hopes by explaining the subtle improvements. And besides, his nausea
was crawling up.
'But medicine, sir.'
Abe belched and swallowed. He wanted to be irritated, but that required too much
vigor. He had mounted to almost 22,000 feet on the mountain of his dreams, and his
only welcome was to be pestered about an epileptic yakkie in a coma? 'I did what I
could,' he said.
'Yes, sir,' Nima said.
Next to one of the empty tents, Abe backed against a rock and nestled down his
pack with a bovine groan. He unharnessed himself from the shoulder straps and
waistband and slumped forward, breathing deeply. One of the other Sherpas brought
over a cup of tea and just the fumes helped restore him. He drank and felt better. ABC
was a bleak place made all the bleaker because it lay in the very palm of the
mountain. Night was coming on and alpenglow had turned Everest into a vast crimson
spike. Its plume of red snow reached out for the plunging sun. Abe noticed that
everyone else seemed to be ignoring the mountain with a business-as-usual
nonchalance. He was alone in relishing the spectacle.
Everest didn't just overshadow ABC, it towered above. It utterly dominated the
land. Time and space had frozen tight here. The earth had stopped. As in Ptolemy's
scheme, the sun seemed to orbit this point. Here was the center.
From the outset Abe had imagined that this expedition was going to be a great
collective memory, one that he and his comrades would each harken back to in their
old age. Forever after, it would warm them on cold days, strengthen them, give them
an epic poetry to tell their grandchildren. Back in Boulder, Abe had lain awake beside
Jamie at night and stared up through the skylight, telling himself stories about how he
was going to climb a great mountain. But now, faced with actually ascending into this
pure light, his only thought was 'how absurd.'
'Doc?' Kelly was standing beside him, hunched beneath her big blue pack. For the
first time, Abe noticed a monarch butterfly she had embroidered onto the side pocket,
an iridescent creature that would have died within minutes up here. He wondered
what the yakherders thought of it, if they even associated it with reality.
'Is that your tent, Doc?'
Abe looked around at the other tents, already filling with people. 'Yeah, I guess,' he
said.
'You got a bunkie?'
Was this the beginning of what Thomas had warned him against? Abe hesitated, less
out of loyalty to Jamie than disappointment. Kelly obviously thought him safe to share
quarters with, and part of him didn't want to seem too safe to her. Even with her hair
greasy and eyes bloodshot from the sunscreen and sweat and her lips blistered, the
sight of Kelly took his breath away. It invaded what was left of his dwindling
memories of Jamie. It was difficult enough to remember what Jamie looked like
without waking to this other woman, this strange, harrowed beauty. But the truth
was, he did want to wake to her.
'It's just me,' he said.
'What would you think if we hooked up?' she asked. 'I think we're the last two not
paired off. And this is the last of the tents.' She seemed to think he might say no.
'I'd like that,' Abe said.
He reined it all in – the libido, the fantasies, the disbelief at his good fortune. In
itself, the prospect of a tentmate cheered him. He had grown tired of being alone at
Base, even with the traffic of visitors in and out of his tent. Kelly would be good
company, he sensed, and she could teach him things about the mountain. If things
worked out, they might even team up for some climbing and carrying. Abe had
noticed most of the climbers already matched up, and it was starting to look like he
and Kelly were the ugly ducklings. Thomas was looking at them from an uphill tent,
but when Abe stared back, he ducked away.
Quickly, because it was turning cold now, they set up house together. Kelly crawled
inside first. One at a time, Abe handed her the basics, staying outside while she laid
out their pads and sleeping bags, then hung a small propane cookstove by wires from
the ceiling.
Elsewhere, other climbers were going through the same ritual, bracing for
night. One by one, they climbed into their tents and zipped up.
While Kelly worked in the tent, Abe watched Sonam, a Sherpa with gap teeth and
the slow gait of a sumo wrestler, chop pieces of ice from the bare glacier with his ice
axe. Like some burly Yankee peddler, he loaded the pieces into a burlap sack and
carried the ice around from tent to tent, leaving a pile of chips for each to use.
As Sonam approached, Abe could hear him mumbling prayers under his breath. He
dumped some chips by Abe and Kelly's door and looked up and said, 'Docta sob, docta
sob.'
'Thank you,' the doctor sahib said.
'Oh ho,' Sonam droned on, and returned to his prayers and ice delivery.
Abe was the last to get out of the wind. He took one last look at the mountain
overhead, then scooted into the doorway, feet last. He removed his shoes and clapped
off the limestone gravel and zipped the door shut. He was alone with one of the most
beautiful women on earth, but suddenly it didn't matter. There were more important
things than desire. Warmth and food and plain company easily outweighed other
inspirations.
Kelly had already fired up their little hanging cookstove and started a potful of ice
melting for hot chocolate. Until the team's second mess tent arrived with the next yak
train, the only communal meals the group was likely to share would be outside on
sunny days. For the time being, each pair of climbers cooked for itself. Over the next
two hours, Abe and Kelly took turns melting ice chips and cooking noodle soup or hot
drinks and melting more ice. It was vital that they drink two gallons or more per day.
Abe had quickly learned to read his urine, a literacy peculiar to high altitude
mountaineering. The darker the urine, the worse your dehydration, and at these
heights dehydration was a homicidal maniac. One's bodily fluids vanished into thin air,
expired and sweated away at dangerous rates.
It grew dark and cold, but they kept the flame at work under pot after pot of ice
melt. It gave them something to do while they talked. Abe learned a little about
Kelly's life in Spokane, that she was a biology teacher at a rural high school, that her
sisters all had babies, that she had been the youngest, and that her mother had long
ago despaired of her climbing adventures.
'It surprised me that you teach,' Abe said. 'They told me you were a model.' He was
thinking specifically of the hundreds of thousands of dollars in endorsement money
she'd brought in to the expedition.
'No way.' Kelly laughed self-consciously. 'It's one thing to hang clothes on a beat-up
blonde in the outdoors. As long as you keep the camera at a distance, I'm okay. But for
studio work, you have to be gorgeous. No wrinkles. No scars. No way. Not me.'
'But you must get a percentage of the endorsement money,' Abe said.
'Of course not,' Kelly said. 'I'm a climber, not a model.' She wasn't just shocked. She
was angry.
Abe saw he'd touched a nerve. 'I didn't mean to pry,' he said, and made himself busy
with the stove.
Kelly was frowning, figuring something out. 'It's okay,' she said. 'I just can't fight
everybody all of the time.'
'I don't know what that means.'
'This Barbie-doll crap. People act like I don't have any credentials. Like I'm here for
the photo ops but not for the climb.'
Abe didn't deny it. It was true. He'd heard the others talking. Until now it hadn't
occurred to him that Kelly might object to her role. 'Actually that sounds familiar,' he
said. 'They brought me along to doctor. But I came to climb, too. And I'm having my
doubts whether they'll ever let me.'
Kelly weighed his sincerity and was satisfied. 'That's what I mean,' she said. 'I know
I'm not the greatest climber in the world. I'm not a Daniel, say. But then no one else is
Daniel either. We all brought our weaknesses here.'
Now seemed the time for Abe to sketch some of his own past, and as an act of faith –
to whom he couldn't say – he mentioned Jamie.
'I didn't know her name,' Kelly said. 'But I knew you were married. Jorgens told me.'
Abe was quick to deny it. He had indeed said that to Jorgens, but only to gain some
sort of advantage that was lost to him just now. 'But I'm not,' he told Kelly. 'Not really.'
Kelly looked at him. 'Right,' she said. She'd heard that one before.
Abe started to elaborate. Kelly cut him off.
'I've been here before, you know. At the foot of the Hill with three months to go. A
woman in a tent with a man I've never met. And every time before I've thought, this
time it's going to happen. But every time it's been a bust.'
She was talking about Thomas, Abe realized. Thomas or others. Or perhaps she
meant only the summit.
Abe decided he was better off talking about her dreams of the summit than of
Thomas. 'How high have you gotten?' he asked.
'To the South Col,' she answered. Besides designating the easy route on Everest
Nepal-side, the South Col was also a feature, a broad dip in the ridge between Everest
and another of its satellite peaks, Lhotse. Situated at over 26,000 feet, the col
provided a virtual meadow for climbers to camp in before making their final leap
upward.
'So close,' Abe said. 'Was there a storm?' That was mountaineering diplomacy
talking. One put questions about failure delicately, and storms were a favorite
'No,' Kelly said. 'I don't know what you've been told. But there was no storm.'
Abe didn't press.
'This might sound bizarre,' she said, 'but I once thought love might have something
to do with it.' And still she didn't say Thomas's name. 'I was wrong. Wrong up here
anyway. Up here it only breeds distraction. It gets in the way.' She glanced at Abe,
and he saw the plea in her eyes. 'That's not what love should be,' she finished softly.
Abe studied the callouses on his open palms. There was little left to add. As
unsettling as he found her candor, he was also grateful for it. Everything was in the
open now. At least they wouldn't be wasting their time or their dignity or their hearts
on a distraction.
'I didn't mean to go on,' she apologized. But of course she'd meant to. She was
hunting for a partner, not a sackmate. This was a test.
Abe tried to think of the right reply, trusting her confusion more than Thomas's
bitterness. And he wanted to climb with her.
'You're right,' he said. 'That does sound bizarre. Love. It's not a word I ever thought
to hear at twenty-one thousand feet on Everest. Not with so much mountain ahead of
us.'
He let it go at that, and so did she. In their silence, Abe could hear snatches of
conversation as climbers familiarized themselves with one another.
'You know, I've looked at the photo a hundred times,' Kelly said. On to a new topic.
'But now we're here and I still can't figure out the line.' No one else had admitted as
much, though Abe had suspected he wasn't alone in feeling intimidated by this great
unknown. It was good to hear that underneath the cocky self-assurance they all
affected, at least one other climber had some fears, too.
'I thought it was me,' Abe said. 'I thought I
was getting stupid.' He said it by way of
trade, his anxiety for hers.
'Then we're all getting stupid together,' Kelly said. 'I mean, you tell me...' and she
suddenly flipped onto her stomach and rummaged through a stuff sack. She extracted
a stubby pencil, a spiral notebook, and one of their Ultimate Summit postcards with a
color picture of the North Face. 'Look at this,' she said, and stabbed her pencil at the
photo. 'What's up here? And how do you get past this?'
For the next two hours they lay side by side like newlyweds talking about the future
and making plans. Zipped chastely into their separate sleeping bags, they kept their
hips and shoulders pressed together, hungry for the extra warmth. They talked on
and on, Abe with his headlamp lit, Kelly pumping out pictures and maps with her
pencil. To an extent it worked. Even between the two of them, they couldn't decide
how Daniel had deciphered this route. But at least they managed to reduce the
monster towering above them to a paper cartoon, something both could manage in
their minds.
'What are our chances then?' Abe asked her.
'Are you kidding?' Kelly nudged him with her hip and her teeth flashed in their ball
of light. 'You don't have that one figured out yet, Doc?'
Abe snapped off the headlamp and closed his eyes. Kelly's bravado comforted him
more than he cared to admit. Maybe the Hill wasn't such an alien place after all. It had
been conquered before. It could be conquered again.
But around midnight, the moon burned a hole in Abe's sleep and his eyes came wide
open. He lay still and listened to the night.
He heard a woman breathing softly beside him, her warm back against his, and he
liked that it was Kelly there. In a nearby tent someone was hacking away with a dry
cough. A stiff breeze was beating their camp, but, oddly, he could even hear people
rustling in their sleeping bags fifty feet away. It still amazed Abe how acoustically
transparent tents could be, like tonight with every tent a bubble of sound connected
to all its neighbors. Even in a high wind, Abe had discovered he could hear his
neighbors whispering. They may as well have been a tribe of Neanderthals piled one
against another in a cave.
But what Abe was really listening for was not human at all. And now he heard it