Dan Simmons - The Abominable - A Novel

Seal of the Prime Minister

The Deacon has nothing to say. His expression is as blank as I’ve ever seen it, even blanker than on the day nine months earlier atop the Matterhorn when we learned of Mallory’s and Irvine’s deaths.

Reggie—I take the liberty of thinking of her with that name almost immediately—rolls up both the prime minister’s document and the large map, hands them to Pasang, and says, “I’ve told the valets to have your clothes packed. We should leave now for the plantation so that we can have the rest of the day to discuss your proposed route, the climbing details, food for the trip, plans for our dealings with the Tibetan jongpens, and all the rest. Then tomorrow morning you shall choose your personal Sherpas and your ponies. I have enough good men waiting that we should be able to choose the sixty or so porters we need by teatime tomorrow, and they’ll have the gear loaded on pack animals before nightfall.”

She stands and strides out of the room, Pasang—Dr. Pasang, I remind myself—keeping a step behind her and not falling farther behind only because of his liquid, giant strides. After a moment, J.C. and I stand, stare at each other a second, manage not to grin outright in front of the silent Deacon, and go up to supervise the final packing of our luggage.

Eventually the Deacon follows us up the stairs.

Chapter 11

The monks have turned into quite the performing troupe, some dancing while others play drums and blow on thigh-bone trumpets. It’s been very popular with English cinema-going audiences.

T he maps are spread out all over the long reading table in the library at Reggie’s main plantation house. I’ve seen few libraries this extensive, either in the homes of rich Boston friends or in England. Even Lady Bromley’s library did not extend to so many multiple levels, mezzanines, iron circular staircases rising toward broad skylights, or movable ladders. The reading table is probably fourteen feet long and flanked by globes of the earth—one showing ancient geography, one showing quite current—that must be six feet across. We stand around one end of the table as more colored maps are set under and beside the map of our proposed route Reggie showed us in the hotel.

We traveled up to the plantation that morning in style. At least Reggie and two of us traveled in style. Three trucks, the lead one driven by Dr. Pasang, hauled our food and gear up into the hills, but J.C. and I rode with Reggie in the plush compartment of a 1920 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost. The chauffeur’s front seat was open to the elements—and it had started to rain—but Jean-Claude was comfortable on the thick cushions of the rear seat next to Reggie under the black top, not crowding her, while I sat opposite J.C. on a little jump seat that was no more than a leather-wrapped panel that folded down from the firewall separating us from the driver’s front seat. Every time we hit a deep pothole or serious bump—and the dirt road was all potholes and bumps—I’d fly up in the air off my little springboard, my bare head contacting the hard canvas of the roof, and come crashing down again. My long legs were all but intertwined with J.C.’s shorter ones, and I kept apologizing after every bounce.

The Deacon had chosen to sit up front, to the left of the chauffeur—a silent, short Indian man named Edward, so short that I wondered how he could see over the Silver Ghost’s endless hood. It was called the“Silver Ghost” but it was more a pale cream color than silver, except for the gleaming radiator, headlight mounts, five chrome stripes running down from the radiator to the equally gleaming bumper, windshield frame, and a few other shiny odds and ends, including the gleaming chrome spokes of the enclosed spare tires riding forward of the front doors on the low parts of the fenders.

The sliding panel that allowed Reggie to talk to the chauffeur opened only on the right side, the driver’s side. Between the roar of the engine and the roar of the sudden downpour on the thick roof, any of us would have had to shout for the Deacon to hear us. The glass on the panel behind the Deacon was frosted and etched with the same Bromley crest of a gryphon holding a jousting pike that I’d seen on the flag flying at Lady Bromley’s estate in Lincolnshire.

“How large is your plantation, Lady…Reggie?” asked Jean-Claude over the drumbeat of the sudden squall.

“This primary plantation, closer to Darjeeling, is around twenty-six thousand acres,” said Reggie. “We have a larger and higher plantation to the northwest, but the small train from Darjeeling doesn’t run to its fields the way it does here at the main plantation, so it costs more to get the tea leaves to market.”

More than fifty thousand acres, I’d thought. That’s a hell of a lot of tea. Then I remembered how Brits both in England and here in India drank the stuff morning, noon, and night, not to mention the hundreds of millions of Indian people who’d taken up the habit.

The steep hills were terraced here and there and green with rows of plants grown about as far apart as in a good vineyard, but much shorter. I caught glimpses of men and women in wet cotton saris and shirts working along the endless green rows that followed the curves of the hills like curving parallel lines on a topographic map. The shades of green were almost overwhelming.

After about twenty minutes, we turned off the steep dirt-rut road onto a long, rising lane of white gravel. I’m not sure what I expected at the end of that long driveway—perhaps another stone estate like Lady Bromley’s in Lincolnshire—but while Reggie’s home was appropriately large and surrounded by stables and other well-constructed outbuildings, it was more in keeping with the colors and style of a large Victorian-era farmhouse. The trucks followed us to the broad driveway but turned off toward the stables and garage before the Silver Ghost reached a wide gravel circle in front of the house, its center and fringes green with wet tropical plantings of all sorts. We stopped, and Edward rushed to open the door on Reggie’s side.

To this day, that remains my only ride in anyone’s Rolls-Royce.

The tropical darkness has fallen, we’ve eaten an excellent meal of veal along a dining room table even longer than the fourteen-foot reading table where we’d left the maps, and by the time all four of us—five if one counts the tall, silent form of Dr. Pasang—retire to that same library with brandy for everyone and cigars for J.C. and me, the Deacon is puffing away on his pipe and obviously still silently attempting to come up with some argument or reasons why Reggie cannot accompany us when we leave in 36 hours or so. Rather than gather around the map table again, we’re sitting at the hearth of a giant fireplace where the servants have lit a fire. It’s chilly above 8,000 feet here at the plantation.

“It’s simply out of the question, taking a woman on to Everest,” the Deacon is saying.

Reggie looks up from rocking the brandy in her snifter. “There is no question involved, Mr. Deacon. I am going. You need my money and you need my Sherpas and my ponies and my saddles and Pasang’s medical skills and my permission from the Tibetan prime minister—and you would need me to gain access to Tibet this year even if there weren’t the crisis of the lice and the dancing lamas.”

The Deacon shows a sour expression. At least she’s no longer calling him “Dickie,” I think.

“Crisis of the lice and dancing lamas?” inquires Jean-Claude between sips and puffs.

I’ve almost forgotten that J.C. hadn’t spent the autumn and winter in London as the Deacon and I had. I look to the Deacon to explain, but he shrugs and gestures for me to speak.