“Is it customary to pay them before they do the work?” I asked.
“Oh, heavens no,” Trent replied. “This money goes to the family in the event we never return. The men get their pay when we get back.”
“Swell,” I said. It hadn’t occurred to me that we might actually die on this journey. I was growing close to Tia through our work together and didn’t want that to end. For the first time in longer than I could remember, I had something to lose. Something that not only made me want to live, but made my life worthwhile. What was I doing risking that?
CHAPTER 8
The following morning I awoke at first light and joined Trent and Ed for breakfast, which consisted of eggs, tea and a hot gruel mixed with goat milk. It wasn’t bad. After we ate we packed our backpacks and said our good byes to our gracious host.
I pulled my iPhone out of my back pack and started my GPS log. We were at 17 degrees, 53 minutes and 30 seconds North Latitude, 78 degrees, 5 minutes and 28 seconds East Longitude. I turned the iPhone off and stowed it in the back pack. There was no place to recharge the battery out here, so I had to be very sparing with its use. It had to last the whole journey.
The six Sherpas Trent hired had all of the equipment and supplies lined up outside the guest house. They picked everything up and headed over the bridge on the north side of the village. The lush green grass of the valley soon gave way to rocks and moss as we gradually started our climb up into the Himalayas. All I had was the twenty pound back pack, but even that seemed like a huge load to carry. The air was thin at this altitude and I was quickly short of breath.
“Breathe deeply, my boy,” Trent said. “You’ll gradually adjust to the thinner air over the next few days.”
“Sure,” I replied, still feeling dizzy and weak.
The Sherpas were carrying three to four times the weight I had and were showing no signs of being tired at all. I was beginning to wonder what I had gotten myself into. This journey sounded like a wonderful thing back at John’s cabin. Now I wasn’t so sure. My thoughts drifted back to Tia and the robot’s head and I wondered how things were going there. As I looked around at the valley and the mountains, my imagination began filling in what we had learned from the robot’s head. 65,000 years ago there had been highways and cities where now only wilderness remained. As rugged as the terrain was, trade routes and roads had brought spices and books from the Rama capital city, somewhere in this area, down to the Mediterranean valley and beyond. Exotic fruits and tapestries were carried in the other direction to grace the palace of Rama in its splendor and power. Yet after the meteor storm and the intervening thousands of years, no sign of any of the Rama Empire remained. The only possible remnant resided in a secret cave high up in the Himalayan mountains, holding the only hope we had of finalizing the date for the meteor storm and saving at least some of humanity from the cataclysm bearing down on us from outer space.
We stopped around noon and broke for lunch. We dined on flat bread with some butter and an unidentified meat jerky and cold tea. It wasn’t much, but it tasted wonderful. The dizziness and weakness I was experiencing let up as we ate, but as soon as we started walking it all returned again.
We stopped late in the day and the Sherpas erected the tents and started a fire to cook dinner. Trent, Ed and I sat in front of the fire warming ourselves.
Trent leaned over to me and bumped my shoulder. “You did good today,” he said. “Tomorrow will be better, you’ll see.”
“I can hardly wait,” I replied.
Trent chuckled and Ed smiled. Ed seemed to be taking all of this in stride and hadn’t said a word all day. Ed was about 6’ 2” and around 240 pounds, all muscle. He kept his light brown hair short in a military crew cut, which accented his blue eyes and square jaw line.
“Ed, you ever been to Tibet before?” I asked.
“Nope,” he replied. “I’ve been up this high in Columbia and Bolivia before, but that was a lot warmer than it is here.”
“In the service or working for John?” I asked.
Ed just smiled and stared back at me.
“There are some things you are better off not knowing,” Trent said as he glanced over at Ed. Ed glanced over at Trent and then back to me.
“I get it,” I replied, and that was that.
Dinner was spiced lentils mixed with some of the mystery meat jerky over rice and some hot tea. The Sherpas sang for a while and played a string instrument similar to a mandolin. Trent stared up into the night sky watching the stars drift slowly by. There was no moon, so the sky was an absolute black with billions of sparkling stars.
“Is that the Milky Way I’ve heard about?” I asked. “I’ve always lived in the city. I’ve never seen the stars like this.”
“Indeed,” Trent replied. “Our own galaxy, edge-on view. Over there,” he pointed, “you see that group of stars in the shape of a tea pot?”
“Yeah.”
“The constellation Sagittarius,” he said. “Beyond that is the galactic center, a huge, pulsating Black Hole surrounded by billions of stars. Everything rotates around the Black Hole, counter clock-wise viewed from the north rotational pole. The combination of the pulsing and the rotation form the spiral arms of our galaxy.”
“And where are we in all of this?” I asked.
“We, my dear boy, are but a tiny outpost near the outer edge of the galaxy,” Trent said. “I often wonder how many space-faring civilizations are out there.”
People from Earth used to be one of them, I thought. “You think other worlds have people or other strange creatures on them?”
Trent looked over at me. “Of that I am certain,” he replied. “Our ancient history is filled with descriptions of aliens and other-worldly visitations. Of course most scholars depict these things as myth or imagined angels or demons, but they are real nonetheless.”
I noticed Ed was watching us closely. “And what do you think of the planet Mars?” I asked.
Trent looked at me with a curious expression on his face. “I’ve seen a lot of very strange data about certain structures there,” he replied. “Am I missing something?”
“There’s a lot more there than we’ve been told,” I said. “I happen to know for a fact that there is life on Mars.”
“You mean actual bacteria, live bacteria?” Trent said.
“You need to think bigger than bacteria,” I said. “A lot bigger.”
Trent sat there with his mouth hanging open. Ed’s eyes widened significantly.
The quiet of the night was shattered by an ungodly screeching howl, followed by a similar sound from the other side of the valley. It sounded like a mixture of something human and animal combined. The hair on the back of my neck stood straight out. The lead Sherpa hurried over to Trent, said something in his native language, and left immediately.
“There are Yeti in the area,” Trent said. “We need to build the campfire up and double the guards around the camp. I’m afraid this conversation is going to have to wait for another day.” Trent and Ed got up.
“Those things are real?” I asked. “What can I do?”
“Try to get some sleep,” Trent said. “It’s going to be a long night.”
The screeching howls continued through the night, moving from place to place. Sleep didn’t come for many hours, but I finally fell into a state of unconsciousness.
The Sherpas had breakfast ready as I crawled out of my tent the next morning: more of the same gruel and jerky with some strong hot tea. It was actually a good start to the long day that lay before us. After I ate, I crawled back into my tent and recorded our position in my GPS log.