Philip Kerr - Esau

The others slapped the ground with clear delight and whooped and roared their admiration of the yeti that Jack assumed was the real Number One, for even Bossman seemed subdued when Number One was on the scene.

Number One howled, made a snatching sign with its long, ramrod fingers, as if plucking the head of a flower, and then put the fingers to his mouth, repeating the action several times as if it contained a meaning, and eliciting from the rest of the group many grunts of approval.

Other yetis signed back. It looked like sign language.

Jack did not know much about linguistics beyond what he had seen on PBS, or read in the New Yorker . He was aware that some chimpanzees, Washoe for one, had been taught a rudimentary form of communication. He was also aware that there was considerable debate as to whether or not such communication implied thought and/or emotions. But this looked like something much more tangible. A sign language that they themselves had originated and not one taught by humans. Or was this just another hallucination? If so it was a very general one, for the impression he had was of all the yetis communicating with each other and with some dexterity too.

Something squeaked.

Not the baby yeti as he had first thought, but a smaller creature, about a half a metre long, covered with thick fur and with a distinctive squat build. It was a Himalayan marmot. One of the pendulously-breasted yeti females was holding the creature in her hand.

An absurd idea that this might be some kind of pet was immediately rejected when the female took the squeaking marmot by the leg and, wielding it like a slingshot, banged it hard against the side of a tree, killing it instantly. For a moment she seemed to examine the marmot’s stomach fur until Jack saw the blood on her strong fingers and realized that she had disemboweled it and was now eating the innards. Her meal over, the female yeti flung away the gutted furry carcass as if it had been an empty candy wrapper.

A vague memory of the eviscerated marmot they had seen on top of the Rognon, and of an article in National Geographic devoted to a group of meat-eating chimpanzees, was quickly replaced by a sense of dread as to the meaning of the yeti sign language.

Dread turned to horror as Number One ripped the control panel off the front of Jack’s SCE suit and started to chew at it experimentally.

The yetis were carnivores.

They were planning to eat him. And to eat him alive.

As soon as Hurké Gurung was in the crevasse, the team, with the exception of Jameson and the Sherpas, prepared to start back for Camp One.

The sky was gunmetal grey and full of snow, and the wind was already blowing fiercely.

‘Where are you going?’ Swift asked Jameson as he mounted the ladder that led up the wall next to the crevasse.

‘Won’t be long. Something I want to do first with the men. You carry on.’

Swift eyed the spade-shaped alloy plates dangling from the fistful of wires he was holding.

‘What are those? What are you up to. Miles?’ she asked suspiciously.

Grinning maniacally, the Zimbabwean started to climb the aluminium ladder.

‘Ask no questions,’ he said from the top of the wall. ‘I hope all will become clear in due course. Trust me.’

Tsering and some of the other Sherpas were already working under a floodlight in the jumble of ice and snow that led down to the black hole now containing their sirdar. Out of the shelter of the corridor, the wind was stronger and Jameson had to shout to make himself heard.

‘Did you put those ice screws in, like I showed you?’ he asked Tsering. ‘At twenty-foot intervals?’

‘Yes, sahib.’

‘The lugs should lie flush with the surface,’ he said, bending over to inspect one. ‘That looks good.’ Experimentally he slipped the point of his ice axe into the lug and turned it.

‘They’re all tight,’ Tsering said wearily. He still had no idea what the janaawar daaktar had in mind.

‘Good, good.’

Jameson pointed to a large canvas bag that the Sherpas had carried up from ABC.

‘Now then, inside the bag is a net. We’re going to secure it inside the crevasse.’

‘Will the yeti not tear it?’ asked Tsering. ‘The sirdar said the yeti was very strong.’

‘Not this net. It’s a cargo net. Same sort as they use to lift things out of the holds of ships. I last used this net to trap a wild musk ox. And believe me, if it was strong enough for a musk ox, I think it should be strong enough for a yeti. We’ll secure one side of the net to the lugs and the other to the dead man anchors I need to place on the other side.’

‘Yes, sahib. We have roped some ladders together as you asked, but—’

‘Then I’d better rope up.’

Jameson was already tying a rope around his own waist.

‘—but in this wind it is dangerous, sahib. Perhaps it would be better to wait until morning.’

‘And miss a night’s hunting? Nonsense.’

He waited until Tsering had tied the other end to one of the ice screws and around himself, and then jerked his head down the slope.

‘Come on. I want this all fixed before it gets dark.’

They walked farther along the edge of the crevasse, toward the several sections of aluminium ladders that now spanned it in a rickety-looking banana-shaped drawbridge. Jameson stood for a moment and then pronounced it a fine piece of engineering, although it was hardly level: The slope on the other side of the crevasse meant that the bridge had a camber that tilted sickeningly to one side.

‘Good work, men,’ said Jameson. ‘Okay, take up the rope.’

Tsering and the others collected the rope and watched as the white Zimbabwean placed one foot on the first rung of the ladder, making sure that it slotted comfortably between the points of his crampons. Each was glad he would not be asked to cross the bridge. Rope or no rope, there was no doubting Jameson’s courage.

Adrenaline racing through his legs, Jameson moved on with the steadiness and utter concentration of a high-wire walker. He had no idea how deep the chasm below him was and felt just as glad he couldn’t really see into it. Sometimes it was better to live in ignorance. His footsteps faltered only once and that was when he reached the middle, where the two ladders had been tied end to end with knots of rope that were Gordian in their size and complexity. As he lifted his foot over one of these, the ladder wobbled alarmingly and then sagged under his weight. For a brief moment Jameson had a vision of himself standing between the two separating halves of the makeshift bridge, like a man who finds himself on a splitting floe of ice, but he just as soon regained his nerve and carried on, reaching the other side with a loud exclamation of relief.

Straight away he sat about placing the dead man anchors, embedding each spade-shaped plate in the snow in such a way that its entire surface could resist movement when a load was applied to the wires: Pulling on the wires had the effect of bedding the anchors farther into the snow. When Jameson was satisfied that these were secure, he hauled the cargo net over the crevasse. Next, he tied the rope to the anchors and then to a series of screw-gate karabiners attached to the net. Last, he adjusted the height of the net so that it lay just below the lip of the crevasse, immediately above the hidden shelf onto which the yetis were apt to jump.

‘Do you see?’ Jameson shouted redundantly. ‘When a yeti jumps onto the ledge, we’ll have him.’