Written by one of his colleagues at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., the Phylogenetic Analysis and Simulation Software was a method of predicting how evolutionary trees were joined through their mitochondrial chromosomes and how these DNA connections might be affected by changes in environment. Back in 1987 Berkeley biochemists had announced to the scientific world how their studies of DNA had revealed that all human beings shared common ancestry with a single African female who had lived some two hundred thousand years ago — the so-called Mitochondrial Eve. But Lincoln Warner had come to suspect that humans were once possessed of more than one kind of DNA and that there was little real evidence for the assumption that Eve must have been an African. He was even sceptical as to one of the most fundamental of anthropological tenets: that the human species had possessed one single origin. Evolution, it was always argued, did not work any other way: New species would only become established through unique speciation events. Lincoln Warner was not so sure, and the more he toyed with the large number of theoretical evolutionary possibilities made available through the PASS program, the more he supported the concept of multiregional evolution.
One environmental possibility posed by the PASS program was the so-called holocaust mutation scenario: Would a flow of new harmful mutations resulting from some sort of nuclear catastrophe damage the basic genetic structure of the human species forever? Warner hoped that neither he nor his friend in Washington would ever find out.
Catching sight of his own reflection in the empty black screen of his desktop computer, he shook his head sadly. The beard he had grown in the month he had been in the Sanctuary was, he decided, not working. It may have helped to keep his face warm outside, but it itched terribly. It would have to go.
Warner glanced at his wristwatch and saw that it was time to call the search parties. As the only member of the team remaining at ABC, it was his job to keep an eye on the weather station and make sure that everyone was kept up to date with his readings.
He pulled on his expensive fur-lined parka and went outside to where the anemometer was whirling in the almost continual wind like the blades of a tiny helicopter. He pressed a few keys on the weatherproof keyboard and noted down the readings displayed digitally on the cigarette pack-sized display screen. It looked as though the high pressure that had brought a blue sky to the Himalayas would continue for a while, and for once he would have good news to report.
Warner went back inside the clamshell and, shrugging off his jacket, sat down in front of the communications control centre that Boyd and Jack had rigged up in one corner.
Oblivious to the effect his routine radio call would produce up on Machhapuchhare, Warner picked up the handset.
‘ABC calling Hurké Gurung. ABC calling Hurké Gurung. Are you receiving me? Over?’
The sound of Hurké’s radio shattered the frozen silence of the glacier like a hammer against a pane of glass, scaring the two yetis and compelling them instinctively to adopt their most defensive behaviour. Teeth bared and with deafening screams, they charged their way down what remained of the slope, on two feet, straight to the sirdar who, believing his last moments had come and that he was about to be torn to pieces, made a namaste with his hands, bowed his head, and sank slowly to his knees.
This submissive pose saved the sirdar’s life.
The bigger of the two yetis, whose red hair was almost silver-coloured on his back, braked to a halt just over half a metre short of the kneeling figure of the Sherpa.
Hurké felt something torn from his jacket, and with eyes closed, he braced himself for a blow from an enormously powerful arm. But when, after several minutes, the two yetis stopped screaming and he found himself still unscathed, he felt able to risk opening first one eye and then the other.
Both creatures were crouched in front of him on all fours, like two enormous football players, the hair on each of their pointed head-crests fully erect, and their large yellow teeth fully exposed for maximum aggression. His eye met the enraged red iris of the smaller yeti, and the creature roared its disapproval.
Once again, the sirdar closed his eyes and whispered a short prayer as he realized that in his terror of the yeti, he had soiled himself.
Gradually he became aware of the smell produced by the results of his own reflexive action. But it was nothing compared to the strong smell of the yetis. As soon as they had charged him, he had become aware of an overpoweringly pungent stink polluting the fresh mountain air, like the smell produced in a place where there were a great many cats. It was so strong he almost gagged, and the sirdar wondered if this was not some kind of fear odour that had been secreted by the frightened yetis. He was certain that their fear was nothing compared to his own.
For a moment the smell seemed to grow more intense, and opening one eye a fraction again, he saw that the creature was now dropping dung. Horror turned to disgust as the yeti reached under its backside, caught the coil of dung before it hit the snow, and consumed this fecal matter as if it had been the tastiest of morsels.
Hurké’s gagging revulsion became a cough and the sound was enough to set the two yetis screaming hysterically in his face once more, only this time so close that he felt the heat of their breath and the sting of their spittle on his pale cheeks. But still they did not hit or bite him, and gradually the sirdar began to think that they only meant to intimidate him. For the next thirty minutes the sirdar’s slightest movement resulted in another bout of roaring to keep him cowed until the two creatures were absolutely sure that he posed no threat to them.
It was the longest thirty minutes of Hurké Gurung’s life.
When at last the two yetis returned back up the slope of the mountain, toward the Rognon from where they had come, the sirdar offered up a prayer of thanks to the Lord Shiva for his deliverance.
He was still kneeling in prayer when Jack and the others found him.
Fifteen
‘Talk of mysteries! Think of our life in nature — daily to be shown matter, to come into contact with it — rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! the solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? Where are we?’
Jack lit a cigarette and inserted it between the sirdar’s bluish trembling lips. Inspecting the mangled radio that the yeti had torn from Hurké’s storm-proof jacket, he said, ‘Looks like this fella’s got a hell of a handshake. I’d say you had a pretty lucky escape, Hurké.’
The sirdar nodded silently, his face displaying a vexed and quizzical expression, his brow furrowed almost apologetically. Jack was shocked to see that there were tears welling up in his friend’s eyes. He wondered if these were tears of gratitude at having come through the experience he had just described to them or if they were tears for the men who had died in the ice field.
Hurké Gurung sucked noisily at the cigarette and for a moment let the puff drift around his open mouth like gun smoke before trying to force a smile past his chattering teeth.
‘You’ve had a bad shock,’ Jameson told him. ‘You ought to go back to ABC.’
‘There are five men dead,’ said Jack. ‘Perhaps we should all go back to ABC.’
‘Like hell we should,’ said Swift, pointing up the slope of the Rognon and to the forbidden holy mountain behind it. ‘Look at those tracks. We might never get a better trail than that. Come on. Jack, this time we know it’s the real thing.’