of the members should know what's going on. But Li can't find out.'
'Everyone?'
'Everyone. Informed consent. If they don't know, they might say something by
accident. And besides, we're all part of it now, and the others have a right to know.'
'Even Jorgens?' Abe asked. 'He'll kick if he knows we're part of some underground
railroad.'
'He doesn't have to like it,' Daniel decided. 'He's part of us, though. We owe him the
truth.'
'Okay then,' Abe said. 'Tell them.'
'And all you have to do is fix him. He's got to get his strength up or he'll never make
it over the pass. If he can't make it over the pass, things will go badly. In these parts,
Tibetan families have to buy the bodies back from the Chinese. Going rate is five
yuan, the price of a bullet. And I don't think this poor guy's got a family to bury him.'
'I'll do what I can.'
Daniel placed one hand on Abe's shoulder. 'Do your best, Abe. Save the ones you can
save. I learned that from you.'
But before Abe could add to it, Daniel had lurched out through the dome entrance to
go and instruct the others.
Abe suddenly found himself wishing that the boy were unconscious again.
Unconscious he had been mute, and mute he had been merely the canvas on which
these bruises and cuts and burns had been painted. But the boy was conscious now
and his story was no longer a fiction. Abe set himself to changing what dressings had
not fallen off and to cleaning the monk's sores and lacerations.
Next morning they had their puja.
The Sherpas made little towers of flour paste and put Oreo cookies and hard candy
on a platter and brought out a few precious bottles of Star beer packed in from
Kathmandu. They started a fire with cedar branches and pine needles that had come
from nowhere within a hundred miles. The sweet white smoke lay over ABC as a
center post was erected. From this post, four fifty-foot-long streamers of prayer flags
were stretched out and anchored in four different directions.
The flags were thin cotton, each dyed a different color and printed with prayers in
square Tibetan script. Despite her irreverence about tulkas yesterday, even Gus
looked pleased and comforted to see the prayer flags get unfurled. While Abe
watched, Kelly stood beside him and explained things. She held one of the cotton
squares still and showed him a crude horse block-printed among the fresh script.
'They call that a lung ta. A wind horse. Every time the wind flaps a flag, the horse
carries a prayer to heaven,' she told Abe. 'They'll keep us safe and sound. All of us.'
The Tibetan boy sat on a small carpet by the center post with white smoke wafting
through the prayer flags overhead. One of the younger Sherpas, Ang Rita, was a lama
initiate back in his home in the Solu Khumbu. He'd either smuggled in the carpet and
the prayer flags for his own use, or else bought them from a yakherder. Kelly didn't
know which.
The tulku chanted and murmured while he turned the narrow pages of an old book.
The puja had the gravity of a mass but the air of a carnival. Through the entire two
hours, the Sherpas and climbers came and went, talking loudly and laughing and
taking pictures.
The ceremony had become more than a puja, Abe knew. It was a binding together.
When Daniel had laid out the monk's sorry tale last night, the climbers had reacted
with Abe's same disbelief, then personalized it. Kelly had teared up. Jorgens had
objected to jeopardizing 'his' climb by harboring a fugitive. Carlos had ranted about
the Chinese overlords. In the end they had agreed with Daniel, though. Silence gained
them everything. The little tulku would have time to heal and finish his escape. The
climbers could climb. And Li would be spared doing his duty.
Carlos originally explained to them that their puja would address Tara, a goddess
associated with compassion. As it developed, the tulku chose a different god for his
ritual, Mahakala. Carlos passed around a small book on Tibetan culture, and Abe saw
the picture of Mahakala. He was intrigued by the monk's selection.
Black and ferocious, the god was a demonic creature with six arms and a rosary of
human skulls. He held numerous weapons and his head was surrounded with a halo of
flames. He was drinking brains from a skull. Abe tried to square the image with his
frail patient. Carlos said it made perfect sense.
'Mahakala – Gompo, to lay Tibetans – he's the Great Black Lord of Enlightenment,'
Carlos said. 'He's a killer, but also a protector. He defends us against selfishness and
slaughters the demons of ignorance. On the Tibetan hit parade of deities, this guy
scores in the top three. He's the perfect symbol of killing the self to achieve
knowledge. Rebirth out of destruction, all that good stuff. With this dude watching
over us, we're double safe, man. It's a good choice. Excellent.'
Nima and Sonam distributed puja strings, blessed pieces of red twine that were tied
loosely around people's wrists or throats. 'You keep it on until it rots off,' Kelly
explained.
'What about Li?' Abe asked. 'What if he sees these strings?'
'We'll just say the truth, that these are our lucky charms. Maybe I'll give him one,
too.'
Abe didn't get a string until the very end.
Closing the long, wooden covers of an old prayer book, the tulku got up on unsteady
legs and came over and tied a red string around Abe's throat himself.
Abe didn't know the Tibetan word for thank you, and so he determined to give a
present in return. All he could think of was a second stethoscope from his medical kit.
But by the time Abe returned from his tent with the stethoscope, the monk was gone.
'Where did he go?' Abe asked Nima.
'I don't know, sir.'
They looked for the boy, but he had disappeared.
The prayer flags stayed up, flapping prayers into the blue sky. And the puja strings
turned dark red from their sweat. Abe figured that he would never see the monk
again. He had vanished outward into that idea called Tibet. He wanted for the monk to
be more than just a voice and this puja string. But that's all that was left.
6
The siege tightened through May.
Camps One and Two had fallen easily, as if the mountain didn't want them anyway.
They took Three in a snowstorm up a long gully filled with slag and junk ice; nothing
difficult, but it took some fight. Four was next, but first they had to pacify a wild mean
narrows dubbed the Shoot, short for the Shooting Gallery. Rocks and loose ice
bombed the Shoot at all hours. No one had gotten hurt yet, but people knew that even
puja strings and prayer flags couldn't hold down the odds for long.
Near the end of April – he'd lost all track of the actual date – Abe headed up the
line, this time humping forty pounds of rope, fuel, two sleeping bags, and five "hill
rats" or two-man-day packets of high altitude rations that were fast-cooking and easy
on the GI tract. The food, gas, and bags were for Three, the rope was for their
continuing drive on Four.
The camps were spaced a day apart from each other. Abe felt strong and could have