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longer blamed
Gus alone. The others did. Daniel had told Kelly about what she had
done. At his request, Kelly had told the others. He wanted them to know why
she'd done it. He wanted them to blame him, not her. But even blaming her was
beside the point.
For the boy had been in danger since the moment he appeared in their camp. He
had come to them bleeding and in rags, and they had done nothing but give
him a clean expedition T-shirt and a baseball cap and stick
Band-Aids on his torture wounds. That and their silence was supposed to
have screened this frail, lone, child from the Chinese wind. What had they
been thinking?
'You're right,' Abe said. 'He deserved better. But the truth is, I just don't
think it's going to get any better for him.'
'I've been thinking,' Daniel said.
'You should rest,' Abe said, trying to head him off.
'We owe him,' Daniel declared. 'We do. And there's nothing more I can do to
help
Gus. You'll watch over her. I know you will.'
Abe listened to the tent poles creaking under the weight of the wind.
'He can't stay here,' Daniel said. 'They'll kill him.'
'Forget it,' Abe said.
'Three days, maybe five,' Daniel continued. 'From here it's a day to the
Chengri La. I
know the way. We can meet you guys in Kathmandu.'
'No,' Abe said.
'No one gets hurt. And we save the day.'
'I'm needed here.'
'You're not invited.' Daniel smiled. His teeth glittered white in the crack
within his beard. 'It's my deal.'
'They would punish us,' Abe said. 'Gus would suffer.'
'No.' Daniel didn't really have to deny it. Abe didn't believe the Chinese
would punish an injured Westerner, either. The only punishment would be
immediate expulsion, and at this juncture that was no punishment at all.
'Do what you want,' Abe said. 'But do it without him. It's not his deal
either.' It was obvious what Daniel was after, but transcendence was no longer
an option, if it ever had been. He placed one hand upon the Tibetan
boy's chest. He could feel the respiration, the terrible struggle in
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these bones.
'They'll kill him,' Daniel repeated.
'And so would you. He's had enough pain for one lifetime.'
And so have you, Abe thought, watching Daniel's face.
Then Daniel did something remarkable. He winked. It wasn't
conspiratorial. It wasn't defiant. He just winked. Then he stood up in
stages, carefully, slowly, his knee joints cracking.
'Try to get some sleep, Abe,' he counseled. 'You look like shit.'
Abe said, 'I didn't want it this way, you know.'
'Want?' Daniel said, backing towards the door. The tent flap dropped shut
behind him.
The sun cooked camp through another day, rendering the snow in camp to a mere
ten inches or so. Gus developed a fever. It alarmed Abe. His medical ignorance
left him virtually helpless before her. A fever was like an avalanche,
something to be waited out. He waited. The fever abated.
Over dinner, the group discussed sending a small party of climbers on foot
over the
Pang La. If they could climb a vertical wall to five and a half miles high,
surely they could surmount a road pass. They could try to arrange for a
helicopter to pick up Gus.
At the very least there would be four fewer mouths to feed.
Wasting no time, Stump and Carlos and J.J. and Thomas set off first
thing next morning. Those staying behind said good-bye and wished them well.
Breakfast was a glum affair.
'I wonder if we'll ever see them again,' Robby said. They got their answer
sooner than later. Shortly before sunset, J.J. was back, alone and out of
breath.
'The trucks are coming,' he joyfully trumpeted. 'We saw them through
the binoculars, five big trucks. They'll get here in the morning.'
That was good news for everyone but the Tibetan boy. It meant the pass was
open.
They were saved from a summer beneath Everest. They could all get on with
their lives. They could get on with their forgetting.
The Tibetan boy's breathing grew labored at midnight. Despite a continuous
flow of oxygen and a drip feed of glucose, he died at two. It was a
soft passage. Abe was catnapping. He was dreaming of horses. When he
searched for a pulse, the boy's carotid was silent. Abe listened through
his stethoscope, but the heart was still. Abe's light and motion woke Daniel,
who had chosen at last to sleep beside Gus's plastic chamber. 'The
boy's gone,' Abe told him.
'All he wanted was to get over the mountain,' Daniel said.
'We did what we could do.'
'You know that's not so,' Daniel said.
'It's done now.'
'I keep thinking, what if we'd just got him over the mountain?'
'Daniel, it was too late.'
'I mean before it got too late. I mean instead of working the summit. We could
have got this one poor bastard out of hell. We could have, you know.'
Abe covered the boy's face. 'He got close. As close as we did.'
With Daniel's help, Abe carried the boy outside. The stars were glittering, no
clouds.
The North Face of Everest was milky with the quarter moon's light.
They set the
body in a small, tattered equipment tent, and gave it a moment's vigil.
'We can bury him in the morning,' Abe said.
'There won't be any burial,' Daniel said.
'But we can't just leave him.'
'He won't be left, don't worry. He's a reactionary and traitor,
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remember? The
Chinese still have uses for him. They still need to complete their
records. They'll photograph him. Then they'll sell him back to his family, if
he has one.'
'No,' Abe said. 'We'll bury him.'
The world rushed in at dawn. Abe opened his eyes to the distant sound of
engines. It was six o'clock. Daniel was already gone. Abe paused to check on
Gus before charging outside to confirm their rescue.
At the north throat of the valley, five military trucks were crawling out
onto the floor. Slowly they lurched across the ice and frozen mud. The
climbers crawled from their tents. They waved and shouted hysterically like
castaways upon a sinking raft. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
