John D. MacDonald
Shenadun
He had hammered the piton into a crack in the unthinkably aged rock. By rights the last hundred feet of the ascent should have been gentle, easy. Here on the roof of the world, on the white shining summit of Shenadun, the bitter wind hammered at him, screamed shrill warnings in his ears. There should have been a gentle slope.
He wanted to weep. It was unthinkable that he, Gowan Mitchell, should weep in frustration — and at a stubborn mountain.
As, buffeted by the wind, he threaded the rope through the eye of the piton, he thought of other tears and other mountains. Peaks in the Swiss Alps, the Canadian Rockies. But those had been tears of joy, tears to express the deep, throbbing emotion that had always filled him when he stood, alone and free on the top of a mountain. The first hill, for it was but a hill, he had climbed had been in Scotland when he was twelve, twenty-seven years ago. That had been the beginning of the disease.
But this mountain, a sister of Everest, had been incredibly difficult. It had defeated him last year, sent him home beaten, his tail between his legs, his broken shoulder in a cast.
Shenadun! Stranger than Everest, stronger in the superstition of those who lived in the tropical valleys and watched the high bitter shoulders of the Himalayas!
Fortunate for Gowan Mitchell that he had inherited the money that made it possible for him to spend his life conquering the high places of the world.
He paused after having drawn some of the rope through the eyelet of the piton, reached a numb hand to the snap on his shoulder, unhooked the flexible tube and gave himself a careful measure of oxygen, being careful not to take too much. Too much would have made him giddy, would have made the careful handholds and footholds less secure. He inhaled just enough for life and strength, and to combat the numbing weakness of the almost incredible altitude of Shenadun.
This mountain climbing feat was costing him ten thousand pounds. It would make a small hole in the estate but not too large a hole. He would have enough left for future attempts, but there would be no future efforts on a scale such as this one. After Shenadun was conquered he would be content with less difficult peaks. After all, he thought, I am thirty-nine. The conquest of Shenadun will give me immortality among those who climb.
But he knew that he would continue to climb until at last he died. There could be nothing for him in the cities of men. His mind and his heart would always be fixed on the high places. The cities of men were drab small places, overrun with life. For him there could be only the clean cruel wind of the ceiling of the world, the aching slow progress up a chimney of rock, the clink of an ice axe, the thunder of the avalanche.
It was good luck to have found the bare rock where pitons could be planted. He thought of the man who clung, patient and brave, thirty feet below him and he smiled. He would have a witness when he reached the summit. The spearhead of the enormous effort expressed by the eight camps stretched out down the flank of the mountain, a day’s hard climb apart, where even now chilled numb hands held binoculars to eager eyes and men with white rime on their ragged beards looked aloft and cursed the storm that cut off all vision.
Mitchell’s climbing partner for the final attack was Joseph Carmon. Carmon was brave, strong, agile and selfless. Gowan Mitchell knew that he couldn’t have a better partner for the last assault on the virgin peak, and it was essential to his plans that Joseph Carmon must be along. Had it been a gentle slope at the summit, Mitchell would have climbed it alone.
He looked down, saw the red, windbeaten face of Carmon. He tightened the rope through the piton, gave the arm signal to Carmon to climb up to him. He took a turn around the shank of the piton, and pulled in the slack carefully as the man below him, slow and cautious, facing the rock wall, came up like some strange bearlike animal.
That ascent would have been impossible without assistance from Joseph Carmon, the American. As it was, he would have to share the glory with Carmon, and yet he would be the first human to stand on the peak.
His thoughts snapped back to instant attention as Carmon slipped, and the rope tightened. Mitchell took another turn around the shank of the piton. There, it was firm! The wind clawed at Carmon, swinging him out away from the rock wall. Carmon swung in against the wall, hit heavily, scrabbled for a handhold.
At that moment a free end of the rope was flung up — and Joseph Carmon was gone. Completely gone, as though he had never existed. The flurry of ice below cut off Gowan Mitchell’s view. He shut his eyes for a moment. The body of Carmon would fall free for a hundred feet, hit the incredibly steep ice and slide down and down, at last going over the brink that would mean a free fall to the glacier two thousand feet below.
He had a sudden feeling of sickness. Now he would be the only man to reach the summit of Shenadun.
In a matter of moments he was standing on the piton, reaching above for handholds. He found a crack in the rock, wide enough for his gloved fingers as he reached for another foothold. Getting the handhold, he carefully and cautiously raised himself higher, allowing for the blind fury of the wind. And now the rock wall was gone, and his fingers were touching the firm sheen of ice. He got the ice ax free, drove it in deeply and, clinging to the haft, pulled himself up over the brink into the full grasp of the wind. He stood at last on the summit of Shenadun!
For all he could see of the world below, he might have been standing on a small knoll in the middle of an endless plain.
The summit was shaped like a vast hassock, cylindrical, with a faintly rounded top. The rock wall up which he had just come was duplicated, he knew, on all sides of the gently sloping central portion of the hassock. Filled with fierce exaltation, he lowered his head against the blast and fought his way to the exact center of the round dome. It wasn’t a long walk. The summit must have been two hundred yards across, and from the edge of the cliff to the center of the summit meant a rise of only ten or twelve feet. He walked on the shale ice of ages past.
He knelt and, with numb hands, took out the jointed aluminum flagstaff, fitted it together and planted it in the hole he dug with the point of his ice ax. The flag of his country whipped in the wind. At the base of the shaft he buried the little metal container that had been prepared — his name and the date, and the name of Joseph Carmon.
All around him was a white and blowing wildness. It was time to return. He must hurry down.
He stopped dead in his tracks, leaning against the wind that sought to tear him from the summit and fling him out into space.
He wondered stupidly why he hadn’t thought of it before. There could be no descent without Joseph Carmon. They might send rescuers tomorrow, but by tomorrow he would be frozen, as dead and as rigid as the eternal ice.
So this was the end of it all. This was the end of the high, wild, hard life. Here against the sky that would soon turn to night. He shivered, took another measured amount of the oxygen. Not a scrap of food. No small gasoline stove. Those items had been left behind for the sake of speed during the final dash to the summit.
Out of his long experience he knew that there would be no use trying to return the way he had come. There were pitches that could only be negotiated by two men, working with perfect coordination. For a man alone they were impossible.
It was a choice of ways to die. He could fall through the thin frigid air to shatter against the shoulders of the mountain, or remain on the summit. It would be a high wild grave.
Abruptly the wind stopped. Above him the sky was a clear gray. He walked weakly to the edge and looked down. He could not see the camps, of course. He stood and waved his arms. They would see him. They would know that he had done it. Soberly he turned and walked back, slumped on the ice near the aluminum shaft. His mind was made up. It was an end to adventure. It would be an easy death, bringing a bit of fear, maybe — fear of the unknown. Then as he began to freeze, his blood would slow and he would become comfortably and deliciously warm. He would flatten his cheek against the ice and find eternal rest against the changeless sky.