mess tent. They were all there, a few hard at work rewiring the stubborn
walkie-talkie sets, most just swapping lies and snacking on popcorn and generally
taking it easy. From out of nowhere, Gus burst in upon them with her pack on, the
waistband still clipped.
They barely had time to recognize the windblown creature before she had delivered
her message. 'He's done it,' she rasped. Corroded with bronchitis and strep, her voice
cracked through them like distant thunder. The words came out more animal than
human and Abe wasn't sure he'd understood her.
A length of parachute cord bound her red hair and she had a filthy cap over that.
The smear of zinc oxide across her cheeks and nose was flecked with old food and
older scabs. What made Gus most alien, though, was not the filth but her wildness.
Something close to dementia burned in her green eyes – Abe recognized it as his own
– and she looked menacing, a berserker fresh from the glory fields.
Robby was the first to recover from her entrance. 'Sit down, Gus,' he said.
Kelly was next. 'Gus? Are you okay?'
Gus continued standing there with her craziness, weaving in place, drunk on the rich
oxygen. She stared at them.
'Where's Daniel at?' Stump asked with a most casual interest. He had a Phillips-head
in one hand and a welding gun in the other and amateur electronics on his mind.
Having found the glitch, he had sworn to get their walkie-talkies up and running by
tomorrow morning.
Gus stared at them, mute.
It suddenly hit Abe that Daniel might have fallen. Had he done it, then, sailed a day
too far? But Abe was just guessing, and no one else seemed concerned.
'How about some herbal spice tea?' Kelly asked her. 'It's great, sweet without sugar.
Real cinnamony.'
Abe goggled at Kelly's banality. Here was this ferocious woman with ropes of snot
splayed across her face like a horse whipped too far. Then he realized the banality was
Kelly's very point. Down here at Base, the status quo had its own rhythm and
coziness, and before things got too incendiary, they were banking Gus's fire, and their
own, too.
Gus would have none of their pacifism, though. She stood at the head of their table.
'Daniel broke through.'
'I knew it.' Heads turned. It was Thomas, the blood drained out from his cheeks.
'Are you saying Corder topped out?'
Gus heard his hostility, and chose to let him dangle. 'I'm saying he found a way out
of the Shoot. He placed Five. We're home free.'
'Gus, would you take a chair, please,' Robby said. 'Sit down before you fall down and
tell it in plain English.'
She sat. She told them. While she stayed in the cave, Daniel had soloed out of the
Shoot's lethal tube of rock-fall. He had discovered a sprawling snow plateau at the
base of the so-called Yellow Band – a thick sandwich of sulphur-colored limestone that
girdled the mountain at 27,500 feet. Blazing his path with nine-mil rope, he'd spent an
extra day humping a load of Kiwi gear up to the plateau and pitched their next camp.
Then he had descended to ABC. A dozen questions swarmed to Abe's mind. Before he
could ask even one, the others started interrogating Gus.
'So?' Thomas demanded. 'Did he solo to the top?'
Gus ignored him.
'Five's not much,' Gus said through the steam of her tea, 'but we don't need much.
There's wind up there, but no more rockfall. Daniel told me to tell you, from Five to
the top it's a cruise.'
'A cruise?' snorted Thomas. J.J. scowled at him. Thomas scowled back. On this
north side, the hard yellow rock lay in tiles canted downward at a 30-degree pitch,
with successive layers overlapping one another. The Yellow Band wasn't particularly
dangerous or technical, but neither was it going to be a cruise. Thomas was probably
right. The climb wasn't over yet.
Gus rolled right over Thomas's fatalism. For one thing he hadn't earned it; and for
another his cynical tone cloyed. 'Daniel says, Five's close enough, you can see the top.'
'Yeah? Well I can go outside and see the top from down here too,' Thomas said.
'That doesn't mean we're close.'
Gus had the punchline ready. 'Yeah, but you can't see the tripod. Not from down
here.'
It took them a minute to gather the significance of that. Then a light went on in
Robby's eyes. 'Daniel saw the tripod?' he breathed.
'Fantastic,' Stump said.
Thomas looked slapped silly. Speechless, he blinked rapidly.
The news galvanized them like a shot of crude voltage. In 1972 a Chinese expedition
had climbed via the easier North Col route and erected a five-foot-high metal survey
tripod on the very summit. Ever since, it had become a feature as natural as the
fossils and space shuttle vistas that awaited summiteers.
'I've never seen him so certain,' Gus added. And that in itself – Daniel's confidence –
spurred them even more than the other news, the camp, the Yellow Band, the tripod.
They were close all right.
'And Corder? Is he coming soon?' Jorgens guessed. His beard was more salt and
pepper now, his motions slower. He looked older and used up. But with this news, he
perked up. This was good news, very good, tantamount to victory.
'I parked his butt at ABC,' Gus said. 'He's in no shape for a bunch of round-trips to
Base.' They understood. Everyone had seen the way Daniel limped around on the
flats, and had heard the crepitation of bone on bone. It was harder on him to descend
an easy trail than to climb a sheer face. Climbing, he could at least compensate with
his arms for the kneecaps and cartilage of host of orthopods had cut out.
'One thing else,' Gus related. They fell silent. 'He made a promise. He said he'll wait
for us.'
She said it to remind them. Daniel could just as easily have continued on the last
thousand feet to the tripod alone. Instead he had roped down to join hands with his
teammates and take the Kore in a classic finish. Abe knew it was a gamble, Daniel
turning his back on a solo flash that must have seemed a sure thing. But apparently it
wasn't as much a gamble as lone wolfing through the rest of his life. Even now, several
days later, Gus looked relieved by his decision. She really thought she could save him,
Abe thought. Bravo, Gus.
The elated climbers bubbled out of the mess tent and into the sunshine, leaving Gus
in the dark with her mug of tea. Abe lagged behind. Unfinished business.
'How's he doing?' Abe asked her. She was changed. At least she would look him in
the eye now.
'He's whipped,' she said. 'He's in pain. His hands are like meat. His ribs are bad,
busted I think. And he stayed high too long. You know, the thousand-mile stare, all
that.' A sternness flickered across her face. 'But the nightmare's almost over. We're
going to nail this bastard. And then he's free.' She spoke it like a credo. She nodded to
herself and Abe nodded, too. To control the mountain was to control the entire
pyramid of obsessions that had led to it. None of them yearned for that power more
than Daniel.
'Is he taking care of his hands?' Doctors were supposed to ask questions like that.
'Of course.'
'How about you, how are the lungs holding up?' She had once developed double
pneumonia deep in the Karakoram range in Pakistan, and it was again a doctor's kind
of question. In truth, he was stalling. He wanted to know if there was any room to