Dan Simmons - The Abominable - A Novel

I’ve learned by now that La in Tibetan means “pass.” Pang La is the 17,000-foot pass south of Shekar Dzong: the last such high pass before one approaches the Rongbuk Monastery, the Rongbuk Glacier, and Mount Everest. Most expeditions take four days or more trekking from Shekar Dzong to Everest Base Camp at the opening of the Rongbuk Glacier valley…then many more days finding a way up the glacier and onto the North Col.

“We can buy extra food from villagers on the way in,” insists the Deacon.

Reggie laughs. “The average Tibetan villager will sell you his last chicken even if it means his own family will go hungry,” she says, showing her very white teeth. “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? And once you’re past Rongbuk, don’t plan to survive on what the party may shoot. Except for a few rare burrhel —mountain sheep—and even more rare yeti, there’s nothing up there. You’d spend your days hunting rather than climbing…and still likely starve.”

The Deacon ignores the yeti comment. “I’ve been there, please remember, Lady Bromley-Montfort. I’ve spent many more weeks exploring the north side of the Everest approaches than you could have.”

“You only spent so much time there in ’twenty-one because you and Mallory could not find the obvious way in via the East Rongbuk Glacier, Mr. Deacon.”

The Deacon’s face darkens.

“Listen,” says Reggie, turning to J.C. and me as well as toward the Deacon, “I am not suggesting that we provision ourselves the way Bruce, Norton, and Mallory did…Good Lord, I watched them leave Darjeeling. Seventy Sherpa porters—a hundred and forty porters by the time they added Tibetans across the border—and more than three hundred pack animals, carrying not just oxygen and tents and necessary supplies, but scores of cans of foie gras and smoked sausages and beef tongue.”

“Appetite wanes with altitude,” says the Deacon. “You need foods that stimulate the appetite.”

“Oh yes, I know.” Reggie smiles. “I lost more than thirty pounds on the North Col last August, you may remember my telling you. Above twenty-three thousand feet, the very idea of food becomes repugnant. And one does not have the energy to prepare it. That is why I’ve added the supplemental canned goods, simple staples, bags of noodles and rice that will warm up in the boiled water, in case we’re pinned down by weather.”

The Deacon looks at J.C. and me as if we should jump in to support him in this argument. We smile at him and wait.

“Instead of three hundred pack animals,” continues Reggie, “we’ll travel with only forty and buy replacements along the way if need be. Instead of seventy Sherpa porters, we’ll use only thirty. Instead of hiring another hundred and fifty porters in Shekar Dzong, I’ve arranged for us to trade the mules there for yaks and to continue with just our thirty Sherpas as porters. But we must have enough food. The search for Cousin Percy may take weeks. We simply can’t return without finding him because we’ve run out of food. ”

The Deacon sighs. He can’t tell her the real reason that he, Jean-Claude, and I have signed up for this expedition. A wait for good weather and then an alpine dash for the summit and then…home.

Reggie looks at each of us in turn. “I know your real reason for coming on this expedition, gentlemen,” she says as if reading our guilty minds. “I know that you hope to climb Everest, that you’re using my aunt’s money and the excuse of searching for Percival’s remains only as a way to get yourselves onto the mountain and, with luck, to the summit.”

None of us replies. And none of us can meet her cool gaze.

“It doesn’t matter,” continues Reggie. “It’s more important to me to find Percival’s body than it is to you—perhaps for reasons you don’t yet understand—but I also want to climb Mount Everest.”

We all do look up at that. A woman on the summit of Everest? Ridiculous. Yet none of us speaks.

“It’s nine p.m.,” says Reggie as clocks throughout the great plantation house chime at the same second. “We should all get to bed. We’ll be leaving at dawn.”

J.C. and I rise with Reggie, but Deacon remains seated. “Not until we settle this issue of who is in command of the expedition, Lady Bromley-Montfort. An expedition can not have two leaders. It simply won’t work.”

Reggie smiles at him. “It worked well enough last year when General Bruce grew ill with malaria, Mr. Deacon. Colonel Teddy Norton—who probably knew he would not end up on the summit team—took overall command of the expedition, while Mr. Mallory was in charge of the climbing plans and sorting out who would make the summit bid. Naturally that turned out to be himself and his healthy if inexperienced assistant Sandy Irvine…a nice boy. I enjoyed having him as a guest in my home. Now I suggest we use the same system. I shall be in charge of the expedition per se; you shall be climbing master on the mountain, answerable in terms of climbing decisions only to any sound suggestions I might have in the search for Cousin Percy’s remains.”

I can see the Deacon struggling to find the proper words to rebut this suggestion once and for all. But he is too slow.

Pasang… Dr. Pasang…pulls Reggie’s chair out of her way.

“Good night, gentlemen,” she says softly. “We leave for Mount Everest at dawn.”

Part II

THE MOUNTAIN

Saturday, April 25, 1925

Everest is still 40 miles away but already it dominates not only the skyline of white-shrouded Himalayan high peaks but the sky itself. I suspect that the Deacon has brought a British flag to plant at the summit, but I see now that the mountain already bears its own pennant—a mist of white cloud and spindrift roiling in the west-to-east wind for 20 miles or more, from right to left, a white plume swirling above all the lesser summits to the east of Everest’s snow massif.

“Mon Dieu,” whispers Jean-Claude.

The five of us, counting Pasang, have trekked ahead of the porter-Sherpas and yaks and climbed a low hill to the east of the pass, and while Pasang stands a few yards behind us and below the high point of the pass, holding the reins of J.C.’s little white pony, which is spooked by the winds here on Pang La—the last pass before Rongbuk and Everest—the four of us have to lie on the boulder-strewn ground or be blown away.

We lie unceremoniously on our right sides, like Romans on their couches at a feast, the Deacon furthest from me, propping himself on his right elbow as he attempts to hold his military binoculars steady with his left hand; then there is Reggie, who is lying prone, her boot soles looking like inverted exclamation marks, using both hands to prop a naval-type telescope against a low boulder in front of her; then Jean-Claude, sitting more upright than the rest of us and squinting southward through his snow goggles; finally me, reclining on my right elbow and somewhat behind the other three.

We’re all wearing wide-brimmed hats against the Tibetan sunlight, ferocious at this altitude—burning and peeling has been my bane the last weeks, as evidently it had been Sandy Irvine’s—and while the three of us men have simply jammed the hats as far down on our heads as we can in order to outwit the wind, Reggie is wearing a strange fedora—broad-brimmed on the left, front, and back, buttoned up on the right, which has an adjustable strap that goes under her chin and holds the hat tight. She said she had picked it up during a visit to Australia years ago.