The swami spoke again to Hurké Gurung.
‘Swami asking why we want find yeti, again please.’
‘Tell him that we mean the yeti no harm,’ said Swift. ‘We just want a chance to study it.’
‘Then why bring this gun please?’ said Gurung, translating the swami’s reply.
Holding it by the fabric tail piece, Jameson took the Cap-Chur syringe out of his pocket and, breaking the gun in half, demonstrated how it slid into the barrel. Then, removing it once more, he explained in fluent Nepali that his rifle only contained a small amount of sleeping draught, sufficient to immobilize the creature for an hour or less.
The swami closed his eyes for a moment and muttered something under his breath. When he spoke again, it was in English.
‘To understand the intelligence of a yeti,’ he said in a thin, reedy little voice, ‘you must be twice as clever as he is. And this is a very clever being. How else would he have avoided capture and study for so long? Are you twice as intelligent, or merely twice as arrogant?’
Swift and Jameson exchanged a look of surprise.
‘You speak English,’ Swift said.
‘Since I am speaking it already, you cannot mean me to treat that remark as a question. And as a remark it is of course redundant. Why should you be surprised? Under our constitution, which is the lengthiest written constitution in the world, English is one of India’s official languages. With no definite date set for its abandonment. Before becoming as you see me now, I was a lawyer.’
‘Just like Gandhi,’ murmured Jameson.
‘In that and in that alone,’ returned the swami. ‘So what is it about the yeti that you hope to learn?’
‘We hope that by learning about the yeti, we may learn more about ourselves,’ said Swift.
The swami sighed wearily.
‘He who has understanding is careful and ever pure, reaches the end of the journey from which he never returns. But it is natural to search as you do. From where do we come? By what power do we live? Where do we find rest? Beyond senses are their objects and beyond these is the mind and beyond that is pure reason. To know the answers to these questions however is not always a source of much comfort and satisfaction, for beyond reason is the spirit in Man.
‘Science shifts man away from the centre of the universe. Is it not so? Shifts him so far away that he feels small and insignificant. There is a truth, yes? But not a very satisfactory one. Strive for the highest and be in the light, but the path is as narrow as the edge of a razor and difficult to tread. We are all of us fascinated by physical ties of ancestry. Is it not so? In the West people try to find that which was lost through their family trees. But why is so much forgotten? Why is it difficult? Why are there so few of us who can follow our lines of descent? Perhaps it was not meant to be. Perhaps it is better after all to live in ignorance of such things.’
‘I can’t believe that it’s good to live in ignorance of anything,’ said Swift.
‘Once,’ said the swami, ‘there was a man who tried to search out his ancestors. Along the way he discovered that the woman who was his mother was in fact his aunt, and that the woman he had always known as his aunt was in fact his mother. Having found much more than he had bargained for, the man became very angry with both women and sent them away. Now he has neither a mother nor an aunt. Shake the branches of a complacent-looking tree, if you wish. Fruit may indeed fall into your lap. You may even be nourished by it. But do not be surprised if the branch breaks off in your hand.’ The swami giggled. ‘The tree of life has many such surprises. Your words and your minds go to Him, but they reach Him not and return. Know the thinker, not the thought.’
So saying, the swami stood up, collected his robe and gathered it around his bony shoulders, picked up his staff, and set off once again, leaving behind the now mockingly familiar prints of his bare feet in the snow.
‘What an extraordinary man,’ said Swift as they watched the swami go.
‘Yes, he is rather impressive,’ said Jameson.
‘Oh yes, sahib. A most holy and religious man.’
Swift grunted. ‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘Oh? What did you mean?’
‘The universe is exactly the way it should be if there is no supernatural design, no purpose, just complete indifference. To me it seems quite extraordinary that we should try and equip it with any meaning other than a purely scientific one.’
‘Swift, you’re much too elemental,’ chuckled Jameson. ‘If the gods do intervene, it’s because we need to believe we’re more than just a few atoms. It’s what distinguishes human nature from the rest of nature.’
Disappointed that the tracks had led them to nothing. Swift shrugged, hardly caring to argue with him.
‘Come on,’ she sighed. ‘We’d better get back to camp.’
Thirteen
‘The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.’
Three weeks went by, and with no sightings of the yeti or its tracks, the high spirits that had characterized the first full day on the glacier began slowly to evaporate. As the expedition team learned to appreciate the enormous size of the Sanctuary and became aware of its many hazards, not the least being the extreme weather, the scale of their task began to dawn on them. Swift did her best to remain optimistic, but as the third week gave way to the fourth, even she started to have misgivings that they might never find her living fossil, Esau. So it was to revive her own confidence as much as anyone else’s that she told the sirdar to announce to all the Sherpas that she would pay a bonus of fifty U.S. dollars to the man who discovered a genuine yeti track. Efforts among the Sherpas were redoubled but proved useless, and with each succeeding day the expedition grew more and more demoralized.
Jack had come to believe that the expedition was attempting to cover too much ground and decided to establish another camp, on the slopes of Machhapuchhare, at a site he selected through his binoculars and named Advance Camp One. While Jutta and Cody were to go with Ang Tsering and make a reconnaissance in a valley close to Annapurna III that they had yet to explore. Jack would lead Swift, Mac, and Jameson up the lower slopes of Machhapuchhare, to establish a camp where they might stay for some days at a time. Warner would stay back at ABC, while Boyd was to be left to look for core samples on his own.
‘We’ll need a camp that’s higher up,’ Jack announced with a nod in the direction of the now familiar Fish Tail. ‘Chances are we’ll be doing much of our searching up that way. The place I have in mind is the little island of rock you can see farther down the glacier on the lower slopes of Machhapuchhare. It’s what we mountaineers call a Rognon. In this snow, it’s going to be heavy going, to say nothing of the higher altitude. The extra six hundred metres are going to seem like ten.’
‘I thought you said we were acclimatized already,’ objected Swift.
Jack laughed. ‘To just over four thousand metres, yes. Not to nearly five thousand. But this is what it’s all about, folks. No sooner have you got used to one altitude than you go higher and start the whole lousy process all over again.’
He pointed after the four Sherpas, led by Hurké Gurung, who were already making steady progress down the glacier in the knee-deep snow, despite the loads they carried on their backs. To Swift they looked like tiny flies crawling over a newly iced cake.
‘Come on,’ said Jack. ‘The sooner we get going, the sooner we can come back again.’
The morning was fine but Jack’s party made slow work of following the Sherpas, who were soon out of sight in an ice field. They had marked the route with bamboo flagpoles and the party had no problem trailing them. By the time they reached a series of jagged-looking ice towers, however. Swift and Jameson were feeling the effects of altitude and had been forced to take some of the acetazolamide tablets that Jutta Henze had provided. These dehydrated the user by making him, or her, want to urinate, and Swift was subjected to the uncomfortable experience of squatting to pee underneath icicles that hung from one of the ice towers like the enormous fangs of some prehistoric monster.