pack. He shifted the load and cocked his head sideways and indeed, Gus had become
Daniel. Somehow, in the hours since dawn, Daniel had moved from last to first on the
line of ropes. Abe was startled to the extent his apathy allowed. He hadn't noticed the
changing. He couldn't remember passing Gus on the ropes nor Daniel passing him.
One thing was certain, Daniel no longer looked sick. His pack full and his power was
obvious in the way he dominated the ice.
Abe looked off to the right where Daniel was pointing. He blinked. He blinked again.
There was paradise out there. They had climbed so high they could look right
around the mountain and into Nepal.
Off in that far distance lay a land of kaleidoscopic peaks. They poked their summits
up among a white lather of clouds like a chain of bony, carved islands. Even as Abe
watched, wind vacuumed the clouds out from the distant valleys, exposing a
topography of light and dark hollows. The sunlight twisted in strange patterns. A
razor-sharp feather of snow, at least three thousand feet in length, appeared as a
streak of glycerine quick-silver, a divine flourish.
Abe lowered his head to break the spell. He looked at the glacier between his
crampon teeth. It was gleaming like a slick reptile down there, vast, coiled dragon's
vertebrae. He looked back to the south, enchanted, drawn by the promise.
For months now, he had spent his gaze – his belief – upon Everest alone. But here,
this morning with half the Himalayan range unfolded before him, Abe faltered. It
hadn't occurred to him that they might see Nepal before reaching the very summit,
and he hadn't really expected to reach the summit. This unexpected view brought to
mind all that the south represented to him: a diminution of the mountains, a
relinquishing of all that was sharp and vertical and lifeless, a backing away from the
Hill. Out there, he knew, the mountains gave way to foothills and the foothills of Nepal
gave way to India, and India was his doorway. Through her riot of colors and smells
and tangled human energy, he had come here. Through Nepal, then India, he would
return.
As Abe stood sweating in his black windsuit and glittering crampons with taped
jumar handles in each fist and his mouth wide – dumb as an ape and sucking at what
little was left of the atmosphere – he could almost see home. For an instant even, he
could almost see Jamie, and it was almost enough to remember that she was
completely forgotten. Under his helmet, Abe's forehead wrinkled with the nearness of
a memory. Behind his goggles, his eyes gained a glimmer, and he blinked.
It was then, when he was most vulnerable, that the mountain commenced fire.
Abe took the day's first hit.
He wasn't listening, so he wasn't ready. There wasn't even time to flinch. One
moment he was still, feet splayed on the side points of his crampons, swimming
against his riptide of amnesia. The next moment he was hanging limp upon the rope,
harness tight, staring straight into the Egypt eye of the sun. His goggles were askew
on his face. His ears were ringing. His pack straps were creaking, and it came to him
that he was nearly upside down and the pack was dragging the very breath from him.
Just as suddenly, he felt a pair of strong hands hoisting him away from suffocation.
The hands would be Daniel, Abe registered. He felt himself hauled upright and shoved
face first against the slope. Abe was at a loss. First gravity had him, then Daniel did.
He was caught between forces. He tried to fathom what was going on.
'Rock!' Daniel bellowed down the ropes. Far below, someone passed the word, a tiny
voice peeping into the depths. 'Rock. Rock.'
'A rock?' Abe mumbled. He kicked weakly at the ice, finally getting the front points
of his crampons into the ice. Standing up gave him at least a measure of self-control,
more so than just lying helpless and suspended on the rope. He pressed his fingers
under the left edge of his helmet and held them in front of his eyes. It was a
paramedic's habit, not to trust your touch alone. He looked at the wetness on his
fingertip, but the sun had seared his vision and he couldn't see if it was sweat or blood.
Quite certain he was thinking clearly, Abe tasted for blood, but all he got was the filth
off his gloves.
'Rock, ice,' Daniel muttered, fussing with Abe's pack, straightening his goggles, 'at
terminal velocity, it's all the same.' Daniel stank the way they all stank. It verged on
the smell of oiled leather, and Abe breathed it in with relief. He was alive. Whatever
had happened, he was still part of the dream.
The ringing subsided. Abe's vision flooded back in. Daniel was crouched against the
wall beside him, one hand holding Abe firmly by the scruff of his pack. He was peering
upward for more debris. Abe shook the messiness from his head but it was impossible
to tell if he was dazed by the hit against his helmet or by the altitude or just the
adrenaline surge. He drew a string of quick breaths and kicked his crampon points in
and put his weight back onto his feet.
'I'm okay,' he said.
The upper mountain unleashed a second barrage. This time Abe heard the warning
sound, a hybrid whistling and buzzing. Abe gasped, horrified to be caught in the open
like this.
The rocks – or ice or both – skipped hard against a blunt gray spur overhead, and
Abe could hear rocks ricocheting all around with a desolate, predatory humming like
hornets make.
'Jeezis.' Abe squeezed the oath between gritted teeth. He shut his eyes and dug his
head fast against the ice and the plastic clacked on the ice wall. 'Jeez,' he said again.
The rockfall snicked and screamed on every side. Each flashing bit of debris was
hunting along its fall line to gouge them, to break and skin them. Abe knew what
contact looked like. He'd seen people opened up by rocks. He'd seen skulls emptied.
Once his rescue team had found a climber with a fist of quartz inside his abdominal
cavity, no viscera, just that transparent crystal lodged between the pelvic wings.
Something exploded beside him. Abe was showered with slivers of glass. The glass
became ice. It melted on his burning face.
Harm's way, Abe thought. There were so many prayers to dodge it, so many words
to dread it. And here he was courting his own mutilation, a hero with fouled pants.
Yes, he realized. That warm mud in his crotch was his own shit.
Then it was past, at least for the moment. Abe blew air through his nostrils and
unwrapped his grip from the rope. But he still lay flat against the wall, afraid to move,
afraid to look down but more afraid to look up. He'd seen that, too, a climber with
shards of his crushed glacier glasses jutting from one socket.
Daniel was moving, though, blithe to the dangers, craning backward to scan the
upper mountain and survey their people down the Shoot. Abe peeked. A hundred feet
down the ropes, Gus was spidering upward once again, and beneath her another
hundred feet J.J. was on one knee.
Daniel exposed his Kmart wristwatch. 'Clockwork,' he grinned. 'Eleven oh-five. The
daily wake-up call.'
Abe grinned back. He grinned wide. 'Good clean fun,' he said. He wiped the ice melt
off his goggles and rapped a knuckle against his helmet. But for all his bluff pluck, he
still lay fast against the wall. Behind his hell-bent grin Abe could feel his sphincter