Dan Simmons - The Abominable - A Novel

“The next morning was when we made our summit bid,” said Finch. “The three of us left the tent at six thirty a.m. and started climbing strongly. The oxygen sets had not only saved us from freezing to death in the night but restored our resolve to try to reach the summit—or at least the North East Ridge—the next day. And remember that this was after a record-setting forty-eight hours at an unprecedented altitude, and with almost no food or adequate water. The wind had blown so hard that for most of the time we could not even scoop a pan of snow from outside or light the stove. But the oxygen allowed us to climb toward the ridge that day anyway. At the ascent rate I mentioned earlier, we had climbed to twenty-five thousand five hundred feet, using bottled oxygen for many hours at a climbing rate of six hundred and sixty-six feet per hour, as compared to Mallory and Somervell’s three hundred sixty-three feet per hour. Almost twice their rate of ascent, gentlemen.”

“All right,” I said to both the Deacon and Finch. “That makes sense even to me. We climb with oxygen packs. How do they work, Mr. Finch?”

Finch started to explain the equipment to Jean-Claude and me, speaking mostly to me, but then he paused. “Mr. Perry, you are the tinkerer-mechanic for this expedition, are you not?”

“Not me!” I said, almost alarmed. “I can barely change sparkplugs. Jean-Claude’s our technical person.”

Finch blinked. “That was stupid of me. Perhaps, Mr. Perry, I assumed you were the technical boffin because you so closely resemble Sandy Irvine, who did all the technical work for Mallory’s expedition last year, even rebuilding this oxygen apparatus. You are the same age, I believe. Twenty-two? Same height. Same weight. Same confident look. Same athletic college rower’s build. Same blond hair. Same smile.” He turned to J.C. “Pardonnez-moi, monsieur. J’aurais bien vu que vous êtes l’ingénieur du groupe.”

“Merci,” said Jean-Claude with a nod. “But I fear that I am a mere tinkerer, Mr. Finch. Not a brilliant young engineer as Monsieur Irvine showed himself to be. My father was a blacksmith much of his life and then opened a small steel fabrication company before the War. During the War, the company grew quickly and mon père began working on much more complicated metal fabrication for the army. I used to watch…and help sometimes…but I am no engineer.”

“I imagine you will be for this group,” Finch said and propped up the heavy oxygen rig.

He paused before beginning what I assumed would be a lecture on the equipment.

“I know that Richard understands this,” Finch said. “But do both of you know the difference in the actual amount of oxygen and air between sea level and, say, twenty-eight thousand feet?”

Again I felt like a schoolboy caught unawares by a surprise quiz. Desperately, I tried to remember the amount of O 2at sea level—no number came to mind—and even more desperately tried to find an equation that would give me the smaller number at 28,000 feet. Divide by 28, perhaps? But divide what? “There’s almost exactly the same amount of air and oxygen at twenty-eight thousand feet as there is at sea level,” Jean-Claude said confidently.

What? My French friend obviously had lost his mind.

“Very good,” said Finch. He managed to avoid the pedant’s annoying whining sing-song and spoke normally. “But if the oxygen is roughly the same at both altitudes, then why,” he paused dramatically, “do you run easily along the beach for a mile at sea level but have to stop to pant and gasp like a fish after two steps at twenty-eight thousand feet?”

“Air pressure,” said Jean-Claude.

Finch nodded. “Scientifically, we know almost nothing about high-altitude physiology, and most of what we do know has come from a few studies by the British Air Ministry in the last few years—aeroplanes have been able to climb above ten thousand feet for only a very short time, obviously—and from tests in the nineteen twenty-one through ’twenty-four Everest expeditions. But we know that it’s the lack of pressure at altitudes above twenty thousand feet that kills us—literally kills our brain cells, literally kills our organs and metabolism, literally kills our ability to think rationally—and, as Monsieur Clairoux says, it is because that lack of pressure makes it harder to breathe, to pull the oxygen into our lungs, and harder for oxygen to be pushed into the lungs’ little capillaries and vessels to restore the red blood cells.”

He held the heavy oxygen pack higher. “The oxygen in these bottles—what the Sherpas quaintly called ‘English air’ during our ’twenty-two expedition—is pressurized to an altitude of fifteen thousand feet. No breathing problems there for a fit alpinist.”

I remembered that the summit of the Matterhorn we’d climbed the previous June was around 14,690 feet. Indeed, I hadn’t felt any problems breathing there. The air had felt a bit thinner and much colder in my lungs, but also rich enough to fuel any physical exertion the climb required.

Finch moved the heavy-looking pack of oxygen tanks in front of him. “This was pretty much the design that the Air Ministry gave us along the lines of the designs that a Professor Dreyer gave them. Notice that the frame is a strong steel Bergen pack frame, and it holds four steel bottles of oxygen, each bottle of air at that fifteen-thousand-foot pressure I mentioned. Then there was this mass of tubes, some regulator valves—all that gabble went over the shoulder and down to the climber’s chest, where he could fiddle with it at the risk of losing all O-two feed—and, to top it off, no fewer than three different types of face masks, counting my own modification.”

Finch shrugged into the straps of the four-tank rig. Tubes and valves and…things…hung in front of him like an uncut umbilical cord. “Each full bottle of oxygen weighs five and three-quarters pounds,” he said. “Would you prefer the data in English pounds, Monsieur Clairoux, or should I speak in kilograms?”

“Pounds would be completely understandable,” Jean-Claude assured him. “And please call me by my Christian name.”

“Oui, très bien,” said Finch. “Well, I’ve come to think in metric, so just for the record, each tank weighs a little more than two point six kilograms. The whole rig then weighs just a bit more than fourteen and a half kilograms…thirty-two pounds to you, Mr. Perry.”

“Jake,” I said.

“Oui, très bien,” he said again. “Here, Jake…Richard knows the weight of this version of the oxygen apparatus all too well. Why don’t you try it on and then give it to Jean-Claude.”

I took the Bergen frame and oxygen tanks from Finch, slipped into the thick straps, and shrugged it on. I didn’t know what to do with the regulator stuff, tubes, and mask, so I let all that dangle in front of me.

“Not too heavy,” I said. “I’ve carried almost twice this weight up serious mountains.”

“Yes,” said Finch, smiling, “but remember, you still have to carry a rucksack or some sort of canvas carrying bag as well as the oxygen bottles and Bergen frame. Food, your clothing, extra climbing gear, tents for the high camps…how much does your regular three-man tent weigh, Jake?”

“Sixty pounds.”

Finch’s smile was starting to look smug to me. “Pretty soon, with these ’twenty-two-style tanks, you’re off balance backwards, and just imagine climbing a rock face with all of those valves, regulators, and tubes hanging in front of your chest! With this rig, you’re exhausted in ten paces above nineteen thousand feet.”

Jean-Claude was running his hands over the oxygen canisters, flow tubes, and regulator doohickeys, as if he’d fathom more of the rig’s purpose just through feel. I stepped back to give him more room.