'Gus talked,' Daniel said. 'On the way down, she talked.'
'That's good,' Abe said.
'No.' Daniel touched her forehead. 'It's not so good.'
Daniel had checked out. He was delirious. Abe found himself resenting that. He had
counted on Daniel, they all had. They had hitchhiked on his composure and talents
and depended on him to be sane and wily and dominant. Abe felt betrayed by this
new frailty. He had counted on Daniel to defend them from this awful catastrophe
with plans and reassurance and energy. But this shipwrecked creature kneeling in
Abe's light was too lost to find his own way, much less lead others through to safety.
'Tomorrow will be hard,' Abe said. 'You should rest.' They had several thousand feet
to drop, plus the glacier to cross. The snowfall would have wiped out their marker
flags at the crevasses, and the earthquake might have opened new ones. They would
have to rig a sled and drag Gus, and Kelly would have to be led by the hand.
'Gus said this happened because of her,' Daniel went on. 'But I don't know. What do
you think?'
Abe knew better than to talk to delirium. Hadn't they both heard that kind of final
confession before? Abe went ahead and talked, though. If he could find just a spark of
lucidness in Daniel, maybe he could fan it to sanity. Otherwise Abe was going to have
three invalids to shepherd in the morning, and that was more than he could bear.
'Of course it's not Gus's fault,' Abe said. 'There was an earthquake.'
'I told her that. An act of God. She said, no, we should blame her.'
'She's out of her head.'
'In a way she's right, you know.'
'That's crazy. You're giving Gus credit for an earthquake?'
'No.' Daniel swung his eyes up in the yellow light. 'For our presence.'
'And you listened to that?'
'We weren't supposed to go up this last time, remember?' Daniel said.
'Each of us chose,' Abe pointed out. 'It was my choice.'
'But it wasn't your choice,' Daniel said.
'No one forced me.'
'No. But someone allowed you.'
'I'm tired, Daniel. Say it straight.'
'Li said we couldn't climb. Then he said we could. I wasn't there. But you were.'
'Ah, that.' Abe had pushed it from his mind.
'It's my fault, really.' Daniel lost him once again. Abe waited. 'She gave me the
mountain. That makes it my fault.'
Abe shook his head. Daniel had cracked after all. 'Daniel,' he said, 'that's nuts.
Nobody gave you the mountain.'
'Not the mountain,' Daniel conceded, 'but the way, you know?'
'Daniel, I'm tired.'
Daniel leaned toward Abe and the light gouged his face with shadows. 'Abe,' he said.
'She told me. It wasn't Jorgens, Abe.'
Abe closed his eyes. He felt stabbed. If not Jorgens, then... He turned his head one
way, then the other, but there was no way not to hear.
'It was Gus. She told me. She traded the kid.'
'No,' Abe said. But he knew it was true. It should have been Jorgens. But it had been
Gus. She had sacrificed a child to this mountain. Worse, she had done it for love.
'She thought we could finish the mountain and still have time to descend and save
him,' Daniel said.
Abe stared at the mangled, suffering woman. He was dumbfounded. How could she
have thought such a thing?
'She was wrong,' Daniel said.
Abe was quick with it. 'Yes,' he said.
'I've lived with this for two days and nights now.' Daniel was mournful. What an
awful truth to carry, Abe thought, and through such destruction. And here Gus lay
near death and the monk was gone and all for nothing. At least they had not climbed
the mountain. That would have been obscene.
'Do one thing for me,' Daniel said. 'It's the only thing I'll ever ask from you.'
'What is it?'
'Don't hate her.'
There hadn't been time for Abe to think of that yet. But now that Daniel had
mentioned it, of course he would hate her. If they made it through this – if Gus didn't
die and the crevasses permitted passage and the Chinese ever let them leave – of
course he would hate her.
'I don't know, Daniel.'
'Please,' said Daniel. 'She did it for me. Now it's mine to deal with.'
That night they curled against one another and lay against Gus to keep her warm.
Snowflakes settled through the lips of the bergschrund and lighted down on them as
gently as dust at the bottom of the sea. The glacier creaked like a huge armada of
empty ships.
Gus survived the night. In the morning, they hauled her up from the glacial pit and
started off for ABC. Abe kept expecting someone to see them from camp and come up
to guide them across the dangerous plains. No one came. At the end of the day they
learned why.
The storm quit around three in the afternoon. They entered ABC at five. The camp
was absolutely deserted except for a surprised yakherder. He was an old man who
had brought three yaks up to plunder what remained.
'Help us,' Abe rasped to the man in English. But the herder refused to come any
closer.
'He thinks we're ghosts,' said Daniel. 'They think we died.'
Sunset brought the last avalanche, the largest yet. A bolt of roseate light had just
lanced through the cloud cover when they heard the mountain crack high overhead.
The slide started all the way up at the Yellow Band and it took fully three minutes for
the mushrooming whiteness to devour the north wall.
ABC was a mile away from the base, but the aftershock still shook the climbers and
the spindrift stung Abe's face. When the avalanche hit the Kore's base, its rubble
fanned long and wide. The apron of debris barreled closer and closer to camp. The
yaks snorted and tore away from the horrified herder and he ran after them.
Abe didn't move, though. He didn't flinch. He was too tired, but also he knew it
would be futile to dodge. He had learned that much here.
For the rest of his life, Abe would be glad he stood and watched, because a rainbow
sprang up in the white powder. Its colors were almost not colors, they were so close to
white themselves.
Then the slide came to a halt and the rainbow settled back to earth and there was
silence.
12
It took five days for Abe and his rabble to plow their way through the sea of snow
from ABC to Base Camp. Somewhere in the middle of that tempest of piled drifts and
missed turns and sudden storms, one of the yaks died.
They were a sorry sight. Blind and seasick, Kelly rode one of the yaks. Comatose, or
nearly so, Gus had to be carried by hand on a litter made of tent poles. Even the old
yakherder had to be taken care of. Along with his goiter and some species of lung
disease he had senile dementia. He was more lost than they were.
As for Daniel, he was in ruins. He performed the tasks Abe gave him. Otherwise he
seemed puzzled and uncertain. He never strayed out of eye contact with Gus's body,
and at night he guarded over her.
Abe did not sleep during their entire exodus. Without warning the earth would start
trembling, and even when it wasn't, he imagined it was. At night Kelly had him hold
her tight, though in truth it was he who needed the holding. While she dreamed of
demons stirring deep inside the earth, Abe stared up at the iron-cold stars, wide
awake.
He was changed. They all were. What they suffered was worse than defeat. They
had been believers – richly pagan in their devotion to the mountain – but the