Dan Simmons - The Abominable - A Novel

J.C. nods and sips his coffee. “He came back about midnight, shortly before the heavy snow and higher winds started up. His face mask was covered with ice, and, according to Tenzing Bothia, Ree-shard was very hungry.”

“So am I,” I say as I finish the coffee. The nausea and headache are still there, but I’m convinced that I’ll feel better if I eat something. “I’ll finish dressing, and what do you say we see if we can make it over to the Big Tent for breakfast?”

It was April 18 during our trek in to Everest when the bandits struck.

We were more than halfway through our five-week trek. We had spent two nights camping near the larger Tibetan town of Tinki Dzong and had just decided not to divert down the Yaru Chu Valley on the chance of getting a glimpse of Everest—the weather was terrible, constant clouds, sleet, snow, and wind. We were on the main trade route trail approaching the 16,900-foot pass of Tinki La, when suddenly horsemen clattered downhill and surrounded our group, herding the Sherpas and trailing mules up to the front with us.

There were about sixty men on horseback, all wearing elaborate leather, wild furs, and long-flapped hats. Their faces and eyes and skin color were more Asian-looking than the villagers we’d seen during our two and a half weeks in Tibet. Most of these bandits wore mustaches or wispy beards, and the leader was a big man, barrel-chested, ham-fisted, with cheeks as hairy as his hat. They all carried rifles, ranging from what looked to be muskets from the last century to ancient Indian Army breechloaders to modern Enfields from the Great War. I knew that Reggie and Pasang had each brought a rifle in a scabbard—for hunting—and I’d accidentally glimpsed the Deacon packing what must have been his Webley service revolver in his rucksack in Liverpool, but none of these three made any move to go for their weapons as the bandits galloped, trampled, and swooped around us, herding us together like sheep.

Many of our Sherpas—especially the non-Tigers—looked frightened. Pasang looked disdainful. The mules made an uproar at this interruption of their daily routine and then quieted. My little white Tibetan pony tried to bolt, but I planted my feet, grabbed its saddle, and half-lifted it off the ground until it calmed down.

The bandits’ larger Mongolian ponies were shaggy, but their manes and tails were elaborately braided, and they were closer in size to a real European horse than to our ridiculous ponies.

When the red dust settled, we were surrounded in two groups: the majority of the bandits encircling the Sherpa porters and ponies, and the leader with about a dozen armed men surrounding Reggie, the Deacon, J.C., Pasang, and me. The many rifles weren’t exactly pointed at us, but they weren’t pointed away from us either. All I could think of as I looked at these men was that we’d somehow traveled centuries into the past and come across Genghis Khan and part of his Horde.

Reggie stepped forward and began talking to the leader in rapid Tibetan—or some dialect of Tibetan. It didn’t sound quite like the Tibetan she’d used when talking to the djongpen headmen and villagers in Yatung, Phari, Kampa Dzong, and the many smaller villages we’d passed, bargained with for food, or camped near.

The bandit leader showed strong white teeth and said something that made his fellow bandits laugh. Reggie laughed with them, so I had to assume the comment wasn’t at her expense. (At J.C.’s, the Deacon’s, and mine, perhaps.) I didn’t care as long as the bandits didn’t shoot us—but even as I cravenly thought those words, I realized that when these bandits carried away our mules with all our gear and oxygen tanks and tents and food and Reggie’s and Lady Bromley’s money, our expedition would be over for good.

The bandit leader barked something, still grinning like a madman, and Reggie translated: “Khan says that it’s a bad year to go to Cho-mo-lung-ma. All the demons are awake and angry, he says.”

“Khan?” I repeated stupidly. Perhaps we had gone through some sort of hole in time. For whatever reason, it didn’t seem that odd to have Genghis Khan’s Mongol hordes descending upon us.

“Jimmy Khan,” said Reggie. She said something to the oddly named leader, turned, went back to the mule that Pasang always kept tethered right behind her white pony, and returned with two small packing boxes. After bowing slightly and saying something with a smile, she offered the first box to Khan.

He took a curved blade not much shorter than a full scimitar from his leather belt and pried the box open. Inside, cradled in straw, was another, smaller box, this one made of polished mahogany. Khan tossed aside the packing crate, and several of his men—all smelling to high heaven of horses, human sweat, smoke, dung, and horse sweat—crowded their mounts closer so that they could see.

Khan sheathed his knife and pulled two chrome-plated, ivory-handled American western-type revolvers from the mahogany box. Boxes of cartridges were inlaid in red velvet. The other bandits gave up a collective “Ahhhhhrrrhhh” —half admiration, half anger or jealousy, it sounded like—and Khan snarled something at them. They fell silent. The other group of bandits surrounding our clumped-together Sherpas were watching carefully.

Reggie said something in this Tibetan dialect and offered Khan the second, larger box. Again he ripped open the carton and this time he held up a box and shouted at his men.

In the crate were stacked box after box of the distinctive Rowntree’s English chocolate samplers. Khan started tossing the boxes to his men. Suddenly the majority of the bandits shouted and fired off their rifles, and our Sherpas had to hold on to the ponies and mules for dear life. I lifted my panicked pony’s front hooves off the ground again.

Khan opened the first box, lifted an oval chocolate delicately out of its paper wrapper—his filthy fingers almost the color of the chocolate—and daintily tasted it.

“Chocolate over almond,” he said in English. “Very very good.”

“I hope you will all enjoy them,” said Reggie, also speaking English now.

“Be careful of the demons and yeti, ” said Jimmy Khan. He fired his rifle, spurred his shaggy horse, and the Mongol Horde disappeared in a red dust cloud back toward the northeast whence they’d come.

“Old friend?” asked the Deacon as we managed to re-form our long line and begin the trek toward the Tinki La again.

“Sometimes business associate,” said Reggie. Her face was red with the dust that had been kicked up by the horses. I realized that we were all dust-covered and that the layer of dust on us was quickly turning to red mud in the freezing drizzle.

“ Jimmy Khan?” I heard myself asking. “How on earth did he end up with that first name?”

“He was named after his father,” Reggie said and tugged at her stubborn pony’s reins to lead it up the first steep part of the trail toward the 16,900-foot-high pass called Tinki La.

For the first three days we’re pinned down at Base Camp. The Deacon is going nuts. I’m going nuts in my own way—worried to death that the altitude keeps giving me headaches, causing me to vomit at least once a day, stealing my appetite, and keeping me awake at night. Even rolling over—on the rocks under the tent floor, each one of which my body has memorized by the second night—sends me gasping up out of my light doze, laboring to breathe. It’s ridiculous. Base Camp is at a mere 16,500 feet of altitude. The real climbing doesn’t begin until we’re above the North Col, almost half again as high as this low base. Sixteen thousand five hundred feet isn’t that much higher than the alpine summits I’ve frolicked on in the past year, I keep telling myself. Why the trouble here and not there?