Jack called out to her from behind another serac.
‘You can sure pick a spot, I’ll say that for you. Swift. One of those toothpicks falls, you’re the sharp end of Dracula, honey.’
Swift finished quickly and joined the others at the beginning of a corridor that the sirdar had marked to lead them through the seracs. A little way behind them, where Jack was standing, she could see the yawning black hole of an enormous crevasse, and she began to realize just how hazardous the area really was. Surrounded by a maze of precarious-looking ice towers, thorn-sharp icicles, and hidden chasms. Swift thought the place looked almost as if it had been created by some vindictive snow queen to impede their progress.
It had been a difficult year for Sherpas and porters. Because of the Indo-Pakistan war, few visitors were flying to Delhi from the West, and with few direct flights to Khatmandu, tourism in Nepal had all but collapsed. Money was short. Things were as bad as Hurké Gurung could remember in all the time he had been guiding climbing expeditions in the Himalayas.
He had thought that the presence of the scientific expedition to the Annapurna Sanctuary and, more important, their plentiful supply of U.S. dollars would have made those Nepalese lucky enough to find work grateful to their employers and hence more pliable. Instead the sirdar discovered that it had produced exactly the opposite effect, with every man determined to screw every last cent and perk from the Americans. Several times he had found himself embarrassed by the apparently churlish demands of his fellow countrymen — demands that he was obliged, reluctantly, to put to Jack sahib: more cigarettes, more sweatshirts, more woollen pullovers, more Dachstein mitts, more fleece jackets, more woollen hats, and better footwear — in short, more of everything that could later be sold for hard currency. Hurké was very aware of how desperate the plight of his people had become, for they depended on tourist dollars to give them a small improvement in their otherwise subsistence-level living standard. He knew how rich all Westerners were in comparison. But he felt compromised, remembering the friendship and admiration he had for the man who had once saved his life. It was difficult to make extra demands of such a man, especially when the truth was that the rest of the Sherpas were acutely nervous of the object of their expedition and potentially unreliable.
When it was a matter of plodding through deep snow at altitudes of over seven and a half thousand metres while carrying loads of three and half kilogrammes or more, the sirdar believed that his men lacked for nothing in courage and strength. But yetis were a different story. Just the sound of a yeti — the loud whistling noise like the plaintive call of a big bird of prey — was enough to put them in fear for their lives.
As one of the bravest and toughest of Sherpas, the so-called Tigers, Hurké Gurung was not himself afraid. And on the rare occasions when he did feel fear of something — usually a storm or a route up a mountain — he did not show it. That was what being a sirdar meant.
Mac had climbed onto a bank of snow and was looking through binoculars toward the lower slopes of Machhapuchhare on the other side of the forest of ice.
‘No sign of them yet.’
Jack got on the radio.
‘Hurké, this is Jack. Come in please, over?’
There was a brief pause, and then they all heard the calm voice of the sirdar.
‘Receiving you loud and clear. Jack sahib.’
‘How’s the route through the glacier coming?’
‘We are through, sahib. It’s not very straight. But no other way could be found. Maybe you will see better way. But I think it is not as bad as the ice fall near Everest.’
‘Well, that’s good to know.’
Jack released the talk button on the radio.
‘Friend of mine was killed on that ice fall,’ he said, and spat into the crevasse.
‘Now he tells us,’ said Jameson. Raising his eyebrows, he added, ‘Still, this does look like the kind of place you’d expect to see a yeti.’
‘A yeti’s probably got too much sense to hang around in a place like this,’ said Mac.
‘Mac’s right,’ agreed Jack. ‘Time we were moving. This place gives me the creeps.’
Mac stayed where he was on the bank of snow, still looking through the binoculars.
‘Come on, Mac.’
‘Just a minute,’ he growled irritably. He lowered the binoculars and, frowning, stared across the ice barrier toward Machhapuchhare’s lower slopes. ‘Probably nothing.’
‘What is it?’ said Swift.
Mac raised the binoculars again. ‘Shouldn’t they be just about to start up the mountain, toward the Rognon?’
Jack was climbing up on the snowbank beside the Scotsman. ‘Yes, they should.’
‘Then what are those?’
Mac handed him the binoculars and pointed. ‘Just below the crest of the Rognon,’ he said quietly. ‘Around two hundred metres above the ice fall. See them?’
Jack followed the line of Mac’s arm and was just able to pick out two tiny black dots standing motionless on the approach slope of the holy mountain.
‘They’ve stopped now,’ said Mac. ‘But I’ll swear they were moving until a moment ago.’
‘I’ve got them,’ said Jack. ‘Are you sure? They look like a couple of rocks tome.’
‘ ’Course I’m bloody sure.’
‘Wait a minute. You’re right. They are moving.’ He twisted the focus bezel, trying to improve the clarity of his view. ‘It can’t be the Sherpas. Even the sirdar’s not that quick.’
‘The Sherpas are going up,’ said Mac. Throwing down his glove, he began to quickly fit a long zoom lens onto the body of his camera. ‘Those two look like they’re coming down.’
Swift tore a monocular out of her rucksack and, taking Jack’s outstretched hand, climbed up onto the snowbank beside him. She pointed it toward the Rognon.
‘Yes, I see them,’ she said excitedly.
Her heart gave a leap as one of the two tiny figures started to move quickly downhill, springing from one leg to the other through deep snow.
‘Christ,’ breathed Jack. ‘Look at that thing move.’
Mac tried to focus his long lens on the distant slope.
Jameson called the sirdar on his own radio.
‘Hurké? This is Jameson.’
‘Go ahead, Jameson sahib.’
‘We’re looking through the field glasses at the slope immediately above you. There appear to be two figures coming down toward you from the upper slopes of Machhapuchhare.’
‘I not see anything, Jameson sahib. But the sun is in my eyes.’
‘Whatever it is looks bloody powerful,’ said Mac, holding down the shutter button. The power-wind on his camera sounded like a tiny robot in perpetual motion.
‘Mac, there’s no whatever about it,’ Swift insisted. ‘They just have to be yetis.’
‘Yes!’ yelled Mac. His triumph echoed around the seracs, drowning out what Jameson was saying to the sirdar. Mac snatched out the roll of film and fumbled another one into the camera body. ‘Christ, I hope these bloody pictures enlarge all right.’
‘Say again please?’ said the sirdar.
Jameson repeated himself in Nepali.
‘Haami her-chhaii did ivataa yeti, timiharu ukaado maathi,’ he said.