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Kelly was next. 'Gus? Are you okay?'
Gus continued standing there with her craziness, weaving in place, drunk on
the rich oxygen. She stared at them.
'Where's Daniel at?' Stump asked with a most casual interest. He had a
Phillips-head in one hand and a welding gun in the other and
amateur electronics on his mind.
Having found the glitch, he had sworn to get their walkie-talkies up and
running by tomorrow morning.
Gus stared at them, mute.
It suddenly hit Abe that Daniel might have fallen. Had he done it, then,
sailed a day too far? But Abe was just guessing, and no one else seemed
concerned.
'How about some herbal spice tea?' Kelly asked her. 'It's great, sweet without
sugar.
Real cinnamony.'
Abe goggled at Kelly's banality. Here was this ferocious woman with ropes of
snot splayed across her face like a horse whipped too far. Then he realized
the banality was
Kelly's very point. Down here at Base, the status quo had its own
rhythm and coziness, and before things got too incendiary, they were banking
Gus's fire, and their own, too.
Gus would have none of their pacifism, though. She stood at the head of their
table.
'Daniel broke through.'
'I knew it.' Heads turned. It was Thomas, the blood drained out from his
cheeks.
'Are you saying Corder topped out?'
Gus heard his hostility, and chose to let him dangle. 'I'm saying he found a
way out of the Shoot. He placed Five. We're home free.'
'Gus, would you take a chair, please,' Robby said. 'Sit down before you fall
down and tell it in plain English.'
She sat. She told them. While she stayed in the cave, Daniel had soloed out of
the
Shoot's lethal tube of rock-fall. He had discovered a sprawling snow
plateau at the base of the so-called Yellow Band a thick sandwich of
sulphur-colored limestone that girdled the mountain at 27,500 feet. Blazing
his path with nine-mil rope, he'd spent an extra day humping a load of Kiwi
gear up to the plateau and pitched their next camp.
Then he had descended to ABC. A dozen questions swarmed to Abe's mind. Before
he could ask even one, the others started interrogating Gus.
'So?' Thomas demanded. 'Did he solo to the top?'
Gus ignored him.
'Five's not much,' Gus said through the steam of her tea, 'but we don't need
much.
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There's wind up there, but no more rockfall. Daniel told me to tell you, from
Five to the top it's a cruise.'
'A cruise?' snorted Thomas. J.J. scowled at him. Thomas scowled
back. On this north side, the hard yellow rock lay in tiles canted downward
at a 30-degree pitch, with successive layers overlapping one another. The
Yellow Band wasn't particularly dangerous or technical, but neither was it
going to be a cruise. Thomas was probably right. The climb wasn't over yet.
Gus rolled right over Thomas's fatalism. For one thing he hadn't earned it;
and for another his cynical tone cloyed. 'Daniel says, Five's close enough,
you can see the top.'
'Yeah? Well I can go outside and see the top from down here too,'
Thomas said.
'That doesn't mean we're close.'
Gus had the punchline ready. 'Yeah, but you can't see the tripod. Not from
down here.'
It took them a minute to gather the significance of that. Then a light
went on in
Robby's eyes. 'Daniel saw the tripod?' he breathed.
'Fantastic,' Stump said.
Thomas looked slapped silly. Speechless, he blinked rapidly.
The news galvanized them like a shot of crude voltage. In 1972 a Chinese
expedition had climbed via the easier North Col route and erected a
five-foot-high metal survey tripod on the very summit. Ever since, it
had become a feature as natural as the fossils and space shuttle vistas
that awaited summiteers.
'I've never seen him so certain,' Gus added. And that in itself Daniel's
confidence
spurred them even more than the other news, the camp, the Yellow Band, the
tripod.
They were close all right.
'And Corder? Is he coming soon?' Jorgens guessed. His beard was more
salt and pepper now, his motions slower. He looked older and used up. But
with this news, he perked up. This was good news, very good, tantamount to
victory.
'I parked his butt at ABC,' Gus said. 'He's in no shape for a bunch of
round-trips to
Base.' They understood. Everyone had seen the way Daniel limped
around on the flats, and had heard the crepitation of bone on bone. It was
harder on him to descend an easy trail than to climb a sheer face. Climbing,
he could at least compensate with his arms for the kneecaps and cartilage of
host of orthopods had cut out.
'One thing else,' Gus related. They fell silent. 'He made a promise. He said
he'll wait for us.'
She said it to remind them. Daniel could just as easily have continued on the
last thousand feet to the tripod alone. Instead he had roped down to join
hands with his teammates and take the Kore in a classic finish. Abe knew it
was a gamble, Daniel turning his back on a solo flash that must have seemed
a sure thing. But apparently it wasn't as much a gamble as lone wolfing
through the rest of his life. Even now, several days later, Gus looked
relieved by his decision. She really thought she could save him, Abe thought.
Bravo, Gus.
The elated climbers bubbled out of the mess tent and into the sunshine,
leaving Gus in the dark with her mug of tea. Abe lagged behind. Unfinished
business.
'How's he doing?' Abe asked her. She was changed. At least she would look him
in the eye now.
'He's whipped,' she said. 'He's in pain. His hands are like meat. His
ribs are bad, busted I think. And he stayed high too long. You know, the
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thousand-mile stare, all that.' A sternness flickered across her face. 'But
the nightmare's almost over. We're going to nail this bastard. And then he's
free.' She spoke it like a credo. She nodded to herself and Abe nodded,
too. To control the mountain was to control the entire pyramid of
obsessions that had led to it. None of them yearned for that power more than
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