Dan Simmons - The Abominable - A Novel

The Deacon, Jean-Claude, and I exchange glances in the firelight. I am sure my thoughts are being echoed. This woman and that tall Sherpa climbed to above 25,000 feet on Everest at the height of the monsoon season? Spent eight consecutive days above 23,000 feet? Almost no one in the three previous Everest expedition spent so much time so high.

“Where did you learn to climb?” the Deacon asks. The brandy seems to be affecting him, which is something I’ve never seen before. Perhaps it’s the altitude here.

Reggie gestures with her empty glass, Pasang nods toward the darkness, and a servant moves into the light to refill all of our brandy snifters.

“I’ve climbed in the Alps since I was a girl,” she says simply. “I’ve climbed with Cousin Percy, with guides, and solo. My trips back to Europe from India were more often to the Alps than to England. And I’ve climbed here.”

“Do you remember the names of your alpine guides?” asks Jean-Claude. There is no sound of challenge in his voice, only curiosity.

Reggie gives the names of five older Chamonix Guides so famous that even I know them well. Lady Bromley had named three of those guides as having climbed with her son Percival in years past. Once again, as he’d done when Lady Bromley had given three of these five names, Jean-Claude whistles softly.

“What summits did you do solo?” asks the Deacon. His tone has changed.

Reggie shrugs slightly. “Pevous, the Ailefroides, the Meiji, the north face of the Grandes Jorasses, the north east face of Piz Badille, the north face of the Drus, then Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn. And some peaks around here—only one eight-thousand-meter summit.”

“Alone,” says the Deacon. His expression is strange.

Reggie shrugs again. “Believe it or don’t, it makes no difference to me, Mr. Deacon. What you need to understand is that when my aunt, Lady Bromley, wrote me last autumn asking me to seek permission for access to Chomolungma, for your expedition to—and I quote—‘find Percival,’ I had already been to Lhasa to receive permission from the Dalai Lama and the prime minister…for another attempt this spring. My own second attempt—with Pasang and more Sherpas this time.”

“But the permission refers to ‘other Sahibs,’” says the Deacon.

“I expected to find some on my own, Mr. Deacon. Indeed, I had contacted them and invited them to join me on the recovery expedition this spring. I would have paid them, of course. But when Aunt Elizabeth sent me your names, I did some research and found you…adequate. Plus, you had been a friend of my cousin Charles and you’d met Percy. I thought it best to give you a chance.”

I suddenly realize that the tables have been turned, that we are now supplicants to her for this trip, not the other way around. I can see in the Deacon’s somewhat glassy gaze that he has accepted that fact as well.

“How is your cousin Charles?” he asks, as much to change the subject, it seems, as to receive an answer.

“I received a cable from Aunt Elizabeth only a week ago,” says Reggie. “Charles finally died from the progressive lung failure while you were in transit to Calcutta.”

All three of us express our condolences. The Deacon seems especially disturbed by the news. There follows a long silence broken only by the crackling of the log fire.

J.C. and I finish our cigars and I follow his example of tossing the cigar butt into the fire. We set empty glasses on tables.

“We have to make some changes to the route and your plans for provisions,” says Reggie, “but we can do that in the afternoon, after you’ve chosen your Sherpas and ponies. The Sherpas will be here at first light—they’re camping less than a mile from here tonight—and I want to be outside to greet them. I’ll have Pasang knock you up in case anyone sleeps late. Good night, gentlemen.”

We rise as Reggie stands and leaves the circle of firelight. A few minutes later, still silent, we follow one of the male servants to our rooms on the second floor. I notice that the Deacon seems to be having trouble lifting his feet as we climb the wide, winding stairway.

Chapter 12

But how do you keep a chicken carcass fresh over weeks if the snows hit you at Camp Three below the North Col, Mr. Deacon? Do you plan to carry ice with you? An electric refrigeration unit?

We awake early at Reggie’s estate. The plantation house has a neatly manicured backyard as trim and broad and long as a cricket field. Above and below the house, morning fogs seem to be rising like respiration from the green rows of tea plantings, and suddenly I can see silhouettes of men moving between and then out of those rows, onto the yard, as if the fog had congealed itself into human forms. I count thirty figures as the sun brightens and the fog begins to dissipate. Beyond the plantation hills rise the distant white peaks of the Himalayas so brilliant with the dawn’s sunlight that I have to squint toward them, and yet still their white glare makes my eyes water.

“Too many men,” says the Deacon. “I’d planned on only a dozen or so Sherpa coolies.”

“Just ‘Sherpas,’ not ‘coolies,’” says Reggie. “‘Sherpa’ means ‘people from the east.’ They came over the nineteen-thousand-foot Nangpa La generations ago. They’ve fought a thousand years for their land and independence. And never have they been anyone’s ‘coolies.’”

“Still too many,” says the Deacon as the ragged forms of men solidify more fully and move across the grassy expanse toward us.

Reggie shakes her head. “I’ll explain later why we need at least thirty. For now I’ll introduce all of them and pull aside the dozen or so that I think will make excellent high-climbers. ‘Tigers,’ your General Bruce and Colonel Norton liked to call them. Most of the chosen speak English. I’ll let the three of you interview them and choose whomever you want as your two co-climbers.”

“You know all their names?” I ask.

Reggie nods. “Of course. I also know their parents and wives and families.”

“And these Sherpas all live near Darjeeling?” asks Jean-Claude. “Near your plantation?”

“No,” says Reggie. “These men are the best of the best. Some live in the Solu Khumbu region of Nepal, near the southern approaches to Mount Everest. Others come from the Nepali district of Helambu or the Arun Valley or Rowaling. Still others from Kathmandu. Only about a fourth of these climbers live within four days’ walk of Darjeeling.”

“Previous expeditions have always chosen a few Darjeeling Sherpas and then added more porters from the Tibetan villages along the way,” says the Deacon.

“Yes,” says Reggie and smacks her leather riding crop against her gloved palm. She had come in from her morning ride as the three of us were gathering in the huge kitchen for coffee just before sunrise. “That’s why the first three English expeditions had some good Sherpa climbers but many porters not at all fit for climbing. Tibetans are wonderful people, proud and courageous, but when pressed into duty as porters, as you probably remember from your two expeditions here, Mr. Deacon, they tend to act rather like unionized Englishmen and go on strike for better wages, more food, fewer carrying hours…and always at the worst time. Sherpas don’t do that. If they sign on to help, they help until they die.”

The Deacon grunts, but I notice that he doesn’t argue the point.

Pasang has put the thirty Sherpas in a rough line, and one by one they come forward, bow to Lady Bromley-Montfort, and are then introduced to us by Reggie herself. As the strange names wash over me, I wonder how she can tell the little brown men apart, but then I realize my own American astigmatism: this Sherpa is heavier than the others, this one has a full dark beard, that one a few wispy whiskers, this one is clean-shaven but with brows grown together into a single black line above his eyes. This man has missing front teeth, the man after him a dazzlingly brilliant white smile. Some are burly, some thin. Some are dressed in fine cotton, others in little more than rags. A few wear Western-style hiking boots; far more are in sandals; some are barefooted.