sight,' he raised his toast, 'here's to blind defeat.'
It was not a happy drunk, but neither was it an ugly one. Someone pointed out that
at least they hadn't lost anyone on the climb. They hadn't lost so much as a toe or
finger. They were quitting the mountain in one piece, and that was always something
to be grateful for.
Finally Jorgens spoke. 'Somebody needs to go tell Daniel and bring him down.'
'I'll go,' J.J. volunteered. He had pulled out pictures of his daughter and had tears in
his eyes.
'Damned if I'm staying down here,' Stump said. 'I don't think I could put in five days
without hitting one of Li's soldier boys.'
'I've got cameras and film up there,' Robby remembered. 'And all my ice gear and
double boots. I can make two, three round-trips down with full loads in the time we've
got.'
In that way, the whole group decided to go up to ABC. Their spirits lifted by ounces.
En masse they would break the bad news to Daniel and strip the camp of their most
valuable gear. Above all they would get to pay their respects to the enemy. Stump
wanted to finish a water-color of the North Face. Thomas declared a great urge to piss
on the mountain once and for all. Carlos said he'd be happy just to sleep with the
Mother Goddess one final night. Few if any of them were ever going to return to the
Kore Wall. Abe could hear it in their voices.
Abe slept poorly that night. At daybreak he walked down to the water skull and sat
there to clear his mind. Overhead, Everest was floating in a scoop of soft dawn light.
With her manelike summit massif and outstretched ridges, the Hill had the aspect of a
sphinx splashed with rainbows this morning.
They had come close to cracking her riddle, Daniel closest of all. Abe felt the
closeness of it as a weight in his skull. He felt the frustration of having a perfect
summarizing word on the tip of his tongue and knowing it was forever beyond his
articulation. For the rest of his life he would have to carry around this freighted
silence.
He was thinking these thoughts and generally feeling sorry for himself when the
sound of a dislodged pebble interrupted him. An image – half man, half animal – took
shape in the glacier pond. Abe glanced up at the rim. Standing there, if a sideways
stoop upon ancient ski poles could be called standing, was the monk in old yak skins
and Daniel's black and orange baseball cap.
Abe's mouth came open. The two of them observed each other until Abe began to
wonder if this wasn't another one of his hallucinations. Then the monk teetered
between the ski poles as if he were fixed atop stilts and more pebbles pattered down
off the rim.
Abe didn't need Nima's translation to know he'd come to say good-bye. It was going
to be a two-way adios, Abe realized. Good-bye to the expedition. Good-bye to the
monk. The boy needed full-scale hospitalization. Yet four days from now he wouldn't
have even Abe's quackery for a stopgap. Abe let his breath out slowly. That was the
cold fact. This holy man was going to die.
The boy was in such bad condition that Abe wondered if he might have been hiding
near Base Camp the whole time. That or one of the yakherders had brought him in
overnight. One thing was certain, even if tulkus could fly, this one was anchored to the
few inches of soil he currently occupied. As if to confirm Abe's pessimism, the boy
sank his rump down upon a stone and stiffly lowered himself backward to rest. He
was too weak to take his hands from the ski pole straps, so the poles lay attached to
him, pitched askew.
'Tashi-dili,' Abe said, approaching. Nima had taught him that much. The monk
didn't return his greeting except to smile crookedly. He was wan and his eyes had a
dull luster. Closer up, Abe saw saliva stringing loose from his mouth. Abe didn't need
to open the boy's clothing to know the infection was back. He could smell the yellow
and orange fluid staining what had once been a clean white expedition T-shirt.
Abe squatted and palmed the boy's forehead. There was fever, though not so bad as
to account for this delirium and weakness. No, with this drooling, Abe's suspicion grew
that the boy had suffered a closed head injury. Between that and his wounds and
whatever damage lay beneath the abdominal bruises, the monk was in deep waters.
'What am I going to do with you?' Abe asked him in English.
The boy's eyes rounded onto him and he smiled at Abe.
'What are you going to do with him,' another voice asked. It was Gus over by the
water skull. She had materialized as softly as the monk.
'Start over again,' Abe said. 'Patch him. Drug him. Pray.'
Gus seemed frightened by the monk's presence in camp. 'Why did he have to come
back,' she demanded.
'I don't know. But he did. Now we have to get him squirreled away. It's going to take
me a few hours to clean him up and he can't be out in the open like this.'
'He shouldn't have come back,' Gus grumbled.
'It's okay,' Abe reassured her. 'The Chinese will never know about him. And in four
days we'll all be gone, us and the Chinese, and he can have the whole valley to himself.'
Once again they occupied the hut made of memorial stones, the Tomb with its
ceiling of cannibalized tentage. The boy lapsed deeper into inertia and finally a twilight
delirium that was close to the coma in which Abe had first found him. The word
passed among the climbers that the monk had returned, and they conspired to keep
his presence a secret. Lest the soldiers see people going in and out of the Tomb,
everyone stayed away except for Krishna, who brought Abe and his patient food and
drink. Abe slept in the hut that night, lying on the bare ground. The monk slept on
Abe's air pad.
And then something strange happened. With three days to go before their forced
departure from the mountain, Li came into the mess tent while the climbers were at
breakfast to make an announcement.
'Now what?' Robby grumbled.
'I have decided,' Li said. 'You may have ten more days to climb the mountain. After
that, I must obey my orders.'
When no one replied, Li expanded. 'There are things in life that require finishing.
You have taken many courageous risks. Now it is my turn to take a risk also.'
And still no one spoke, although Abe could see agitation blazing on every face. If Li
was waiting for them to thank him, he was out of luck. So far as the climbers were
concerned, the mountain had never been his to withhold. And this bizarre reversal
only reminded them of a power they could not ignore. It didn't seem possible, but Li's
generosity had made him even more unpopular.
'But why?' J.J. demanded.
'J.J.,' Thomas warned him off. They had just been granted a stay of execution, and
as rankling as the principle was, the fact of it gave them a second life.
'Even in difficult times, it is wrong to punish the innocent,' Li told them.
After Li had left, the climbers tried to fathom his sudden altruism. When Robby
tried to credit Jorgens's last-ditch request, Jorgens rebuffed him. 'It wasn't anything I
said. Li didn't look at me once the whole time I was talking.'
'What then?' Stump wondered.
'Does it matter?' Thomas asked. 'Now we got no one else to blame. That's as clean as
it gets in life.'
They left within the hour. With his sprained ankle taped and iced with a bag of