‘Now all of this is happening at about eight thousand eight hundred metres, which is well into the death zone of air too thin for the human body to survive on. Both men were on supplementary oxygen, but don’t think that’s anything like using a pressure suit. Oxygen will give you a boost, yes, but you’re still at very low atmospheric pressure: just breathing, let alone climbing, is hard work. The cold too is appalling, and worse if you aren’t keeping warm with exercise. So it was a dangerous thing for Tsering to do, to just sit and wait like that. There’s every chance indeed that his oxygen mask was malfunctioning, which would explain his exhaustion, and make his sitting there all the more deadly. But it was the choice he made.
‘Richman pressed on alone and reached the summit in the early afternoon. He took over a dozen photos of himself there—by his own account he was on the summit for almost an hour—and no one has ever disputed that he actually made it. On the descent, he found Tsering exactly where he had left him—about two hours had passed by then—and together the two of them now set about descending the Step. It should have been easy enough, as they had fixed ropes on the way up.
‘But something went wrong, and Tsering fell, and fell badly. The Step is only about ten metres high, but that’s enough. Maybe he had stiffened up while sitting there in the ice for so long, maybe he was just too oxygen-deprived. Anyway, by the time Richman got down to him, it was obvious that Tsering’s injuries were fatal in the circumstances, for one of his legs was badly broken, and he was coughing up blood, unable even to sit up, let alone get to his feet.
‘Understand, there was nothing Richman could do to help him, no way to get him down the mountain to medical aid. At that altitude, there is no possibility of a climber having the strength, when so oxygen-deprived himself, to carry another human being. Tsering died within the hour. Even so, Richman remained with him, despite night coming on and a freezing gale arising, until around midnight, when he finally continued his descent.
‘He was out of oxygen himself by then, and in the darkness and the storm he barely made it down to the South Col and to his team-mates, who had been waiting anxiously. It was immediately obvious to them that he was in no fit state to descend the rest of the mountain alone—it would take both of them to help him to Base Camp, still three thousand metres further below. And so, giving up their own summit attempt, they struck camp and began to lead Richman down, finally reaching Base Camp successfully some twenty-six hours later. As for Tsering, they had no choice but to leave him where he fell.
‘Richman recovered eventually with no permanent ill-effects, and at first no one blamed him for Tsering’s death. Yes, maybe they should have turned back when the Sherpa first collapsed, but after all, he insisted that Richman go on, and accidents can happen at any time, especially so high up. More to the point, climbers are often loath to judge another climber’s action when they weren’t there themselves to judge the conditions and situation.
‘But in fact there was another party on the mountain that day, a Spanish team, who were also taking the southern route, and who, in a team of four climbers, arrived at the South Col at the same moment that Richman and his two companions were departing, and who spoke with them briefly.
‘Communication was limited between the two groups, due to language differences, but the Spanish at least understood that Richman had successfully summitted, and also that a dead body awaited them further up. The next morning the Spanish climbers set out for their own attempt, and got as far as the Step before deteriorating weather forced them back—for good, as it turned out. But they spent an hour at the Step, and two of the party climbed to the top of the cliff and inspected the ridge beyond, and what they found, and later reported, was perturbing.
‘Tsering’s body was there all right, at the bottom of the Step, just as Richman had said. But it did not seem to the Spanish that he had died quickly. His only obvious injury was the broken leg, and that had been splinted roughly—apparently by Tsering himself, to judge by the knots. He was found sitting up, and around him, neatly arranged, were his spent oxygen bottles and even some food wrappings, stuffed into a crevice. And at the top of the Step, meanwhile, the Spanish climbers found only one dimly visible set of tracks leading away to the summit, and then back again, with no sign that Tsering had ever stood there, let alone sat down and waited.
‘None of this came out immediately, and when it did, it was only in a Spanish climbing magazine of limited circulation. It was a few months more before it was noticed in the wider climbing world. But there was no doubting its significance, for the implication of the Spanish account was pretty bad, in respect to Richman’s own version.
‘Yes, Richman had certainly summitted. But had Tsering really climbed the Step safely and only fallen on the return? Or had the Sherpa fallen on the way up the Step, and then had Richman, instead of returning immediately to the South Col to fetch the other two climbers—the three of them together might have got Tsering down—stubbornly pressed on to the summit, and only returned to the injured man some hours later, to find that by then Tsering was too insensible to move? If so, then the question of blame was a much acuter one; to abandon an injured man who might well be saved, purely for your own glory? That is not good mountaineering.
‘There were mutterings about it all in the climbing community, and even a few hints dropped in the press—but the problem was that by then Richman had inherited his father’s fortune, and was now fabulously rich and putting together the expedition against the Wheel, hiring climbers and specialists by the dozen. No one in the mountaineering world could dare offend him, not if they wanted to be part of it. Not a single Spanish climber, for instance, was ever hired on the project. No one else wanted to be blacklisted, or sued for that matter. And so the affair got slipped under the rug.
‘And after all, who knows? It all may have happened much as Richman claimed. The observations the Spanish made were hardly proof. The tracks above the Step could have been altered by wind and weather, making it look like only one set, rather than two; the rest of it, the splints on Tsering’s leg, the eaten food, might have been Richman’s doing.
‘No one could ever be certain. But it was never forgotten. And it didn’t pass unnoticed, when the Wheel was beaten, that again only Richman actually made it to the top.’
Rita was staring. Clara had given this whole long account without pause or change in emotion, without even looking away from the depiction of Richman and his Seven Summits. But there was no doubting her attitude to the tale.
Rita said, ‘You think it’s true, don’t you, the Spanish version.’
The major-domo glanced up at last. ‘I didn’t when I first came into Richman’s employ. Why would I? The man was a hero of mine, and the job offer came at a very low time for me, after my surgery. I was grateful, and excited too. Oh, he had a tough reputation. I’d talked with plenty of older climbers who had worked with him. His temper was famous, and he was obsessed with his public image. But as I said, ego is hardly rare in that world. What I couldn’t believe was that a man like Richman would ever directly lie about the death of a climbing partner—a partner whose life he might have been able to save.’
‘And now?’
‘Now I’m not so sure. I’ve seen enough, working for him … well, to make me wonder.’
‘Like?’
Clara’s gaze was almost sad. ‘Don’t mistake me. I don’t intend to suggest that he is in some way monstrous. Yes, as do all businessmen of his level, he sometimes acts with great ruthlessness, even brutality in a commercial sense, and he can be very selective with the truth when it suits his purpose. I accept that. I expected it when I started this job. I am not so naïve. That the powerful and the rich lie and cheat to stay rich and powerful is hardly a surprise.
‘What I did not expect was that beyond the lies and the cheating can sometimes be not mere rationalisation or expedience, but … well, call it delusional belief. A place where the lies and the cheating in fact become, to the beholder, the truth. Wher
e manipulation of others, contempt for others, becomes in itself a virtue.’
‘It sounds like you mean he’s clinically sociopathic or something.’
‘Do I? Perhaps. I’m no psychologist. I only say all this as … well, an apology of sorts. I convinced you to come here, on Richman’s insistence, as his loyal employee. But in fact, at the time I met you, I had already decided to leave his service. I’ll be going very soon, within a month or two, after his big party. I have not told him yet, but I am decided nonetheless. And as one whose loyalty is no longer absolute, I say to you: be cautious of him. He has not been at all honest in his reasons for bringing you here.’
Rita had come to this conclusion herself, but it was still a shock to hear it stated so baldly. ‘What does he really want then, for heaven’s sake?’
‘He has concerns about this Observatory, about its construction, and about many incidents that have occurred here, and he thinks that you can advise him and Kushal and Madelaine how to fix it.’
Rita was gazing in disbelief. ‘You mean, he thinks there are’—oh, just say the word, damn it, say it aloud for the first time in years—‘presences here? But he can’t believe that. I don’t even believe it anymore.’ But ah, even as she said it, she felt again the throb against her forehead, the nagging toothache on the edge of her senses of something that was building—something malign, and it came, even here in his crypt, surrounded by rock, she could not be mistaken, it came from the great face of the Wheel.
The major-domo looked away. ‘He does not confide in me totally, so what he believes in his heart I cannot say. But I thought in fairness you should be warned. Sometime, quite soon I would imagine, now that you’ve had a few days to get to know the Observatory, he will broach the subject. At least now you can prepare for that moment.’
A sudden realisation came to Rita: she did not know where in the Observatory the major-domo lived. Clara had never mentioned it. Certainly she had no apartment in Rita’s guest wing. So, where? Was she housed in the other guest wing, perhaps? Or—as personal aide to Richman—did she have a room up in the Cottage? She would need to be near him, true. But was it only as his personal aide? He does not confide in me totally. What he believes in his heart I cannot say. There was something deeper about the way those words had been spoken.
Rita found herself blurting out the question before thinking. ‘Are you sleeping with him?’
Clara’s glance was sidelong and somehow amused. ‘Sleeping with him? Are we so clichéd, you mean, the boss and his secretary? Well, it’s none of your business, of course, but no, I’m not. Our relationship is close, yes, but it has always been a professional one. It’s really not sex that a man like Mr Richman is looking for in his employees. Other things are much more important. Like loyalty, as I just mentioned.’
‘Sorry,’ Rita stumbled. ‘I don’t know why I asked that.’
‘Oh, you’re not so far off. Staff such as myself and Kennedy are, in some ways, more intimate with Mr Richman than even any of his wives or mistresses. We certainly spend more time with him. Most days I’m the first face he sees of a morning, and the last face of a night.’
A powerful image struck Rita, of evening time in Richman’s bedchamber, after Kennedy had made his final security sweep; of the billionaire in his walk-in-wardrobe, undressing for the day and changing into his silk pyjamas, calling out his last orders and dictations to Clara, waiting modestly out of view in the suite’s doorway. And then of Richman falling heedlessly into his vast king-sized bed, while Clara slipped away to her own more simple, monastic quarters.
‘But it’s of no matter,’ said the major-domo brightly, shrugging the topic aside. ‘I truly didn’t mean to alarm you with all this talk—I just did not think you deserved to be taken off guard.’ She glanced around the underground chamber. ‘In the meantime, I’m happy to show you around the rest of the exhibits, if you’re interested—it’s a fine collection of memorabilia, and not just of Richman’s own achievements.’
Rita gazed around at the cabinets and displays, noting all manner of paraphernalia displayed there, coils of rope and battered backpacks and heavy jackets and down suits, and axes and pegs and boots with spiked attachments, and camp stoves and ration tins and snow goggles … and no doubt each piece had some significance and importance. But no, somehow, she was no longer interested.
In truth, her hangover was back in full force; no, not the hangover, the other thing, the uneasy gnawing in her stomach, the building tension that had no release. ‘Actually,’ she said, apologetically, ‘what I could really use is a cup of tea.’
Clara was immediately attentive. ‘Aren’t you well? We’ll go up to the Conservatory, and I’ll order up a pot. We can come back here any time.’
What Rita wanted was to go back to bed. But then she thought maybe the major-domo was right, maybe the open vistas of the Conservatory, the view out over the sea, would help clear her mind. Maybe she would even venture out onto the Terrace for a breath of fresh freezing air. The Wheel would be there too, of course, but perhaps it was better even to face that head-on than to hide away within the rock.
As for the question of presences and of what Richman really wanted with her, well, she wouldn’t be seeing the billionaire until tonight at the earliest, so that matter could be put aside too.
‘The Conservatory would be nice,’ she said, and together they made for the stairs.
9
THE STORMS OF THE WHEEL
Excerpt from Reaching for the Hand of God,
by John Soliola, 2007
Nowhere on Earth has more deadly weather than the Wheel. Temperatures on the mountain can go as low as minus seventy degrees Celsius, and the gale winds that on occasion descend from the high slopes are the strongest that have ever been measured. Worse, the volatility of conditions—the swiftness and unpredictability with which calm blue skies can transform to a raging tempest—is unparalleled anywhere else on the globe, so much so that weather forecasts are all but useless.
Disaster can strike at any time.
The reasons for this are manifold. For a start, the Wheel sits alone, thousands of kilometres from any other landmass, halfway between Tasmania and Antarctica, in the midst of the Southern Ocean, which is itself the most cold and exposed and windblown stretch of sea anywhere in the world. Gales and swells circle the globe there without interruption, and winters are long and dark and brutal. Even a normal-sized mountain located where the Wheel is would be wild, bleak and frigid place.
But of course the Wheel dwarfs all normal mountains. At twenty-five thousand metres, it rears clean through the troposphere and penetrates fully thirteen kilometres into the stratosphere, a part of the atmosphere that is entirely alien to the realm in which humanity exists. But just as important as the Wheel’s height is its orientation. The great wall formed by the mountain stretches roughly north to south, which means that it forms a barrier lying athwart the prevailing east-west winds that blow in that part of the world. And this is where the trouble, as far as the weather is concerned, really starts.
Usually, when a mass of moving air encounters a mountain or a mountain range, it can simply rise over the obstruction and carry on with its journey. However, there is a limit to how high any air mass can rise, and that limit is called the tropopause, which is both the border and the barrier between the troposphere and the stratosphere.
We won’t delve too deep into the complicated field of atmospheric mechanics here, but put simply, the tropopause is a permanent temperature inversion that places a lid on all the air below it. The height of this inversion varies as you move from the equator to the poles—it can be as high as fifteen kilometres, or as low as eight. But at the latitude of the Wheel it sits at about twelve thousand metres.
This means that when eastward-flowing winds strike the Wheel, they cannot simply rise and flow over the mountain as they would elsewhere in the world, for when they attempt to do so, they are blocked by the tropopause. Instead, the winds must wrench themselves to
the north or to the south to go around the mountain, or they must flow down the mountain and reverse themselves to blow westwards, causing all manner of turbulence and tumult.
This situation becomes critical when it involves jet streams. Jet streams are bands of high-level, eternally blowing winds that together form a great system that redistributes heat and moisture throughout Earth’s atmosphere. They are extremely powerful, raging at speeds of up to three hundred kilometres per hour. There are many known and named streams, and at the latitude of the Wheel, the stream in question is called the Polar Jet.
The Polar Jet blows endlessly west to east around the Antarctic Circle at an altitude varying between nine and eleven kilometres. For much of the time this stream flows safely to the south of the Wheel, but all jet streams meander in their course through the seasons, and it happens that every now and then the Polar Jet bends to the north and so encounters the obstacle of the great mountain.
Now, in most parts of the world, with the exception of the highest peaks of the Himalayas, jet streams sail above all land features and are at most slightly diverted by even the biggest mountain ranges over which they cross. But at the Wheel, the jet stream slams head-on into a solid wall.
Hence, the stream must divert in some direction. Sometimes the stream will bend upwards, and indeed, though it can cannot climb over the Wheel, it will rise with such force that it briefly breaches even the tropopause and ascends several thousand metres beyond the barrier, reaching as high as eighteen kilometres before dying out. These rising winds can also carry moisture into the otherwise barren stratosphere, where it precipitates, which explains how the Wheel boasts a permanent snow cover at otherwise improbable altitudes, all the way up to seventeen thousand metres.
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