The other two Black Summits, being higher and more prominent, had by 1984 already attracted climbers and been defeated. Black Summit Three was the last that was virgin. So it was that Yuko’s team, looking for an untrodden feature on the Wheel that was within their range (given that their expedition was small in scale and lacking any kind of high-altitude suits—although they did plan to use oxygen above eight thousand metres) set their sights on the otherwise unremarkable spire.
Their route was a traditional one in its early stages, tracking up the fixed lines and ladders of the West Face to the Plateau at five thousand metres, where they established a base camp. From there they angled south, following Richman’s route for a time, but then cutting away much further southwards across rarely climbed territory. They founded Camp One at six thousand metres, and then Camp Two at seven thousand metres, by then directly beneath their target, though still more than two kilometres short of it in altitude.
Now the most difficult climbing began for Yuko and his seven companions, in high, thin air. They did not ascend directly upwards, however, where the face was particularly sheer. Rather, they traversed still further south across a series of cracks and ledges, aiming for the lower end of a chimney (a groove a few metres wide and deep, cut into the face) that runs back northwards at a steep angle for many hundreds of metres, all the way to the ridge-top, not far from the base of Black Summit Three.
It was a long way around, to be sure, but the chimney offered by far the safest final approach to the ridge, so much more sheltered and secure compared to the open face. The chimney’s lower end, however, was to be strictly avoided, for it debouched into the terrifying abyss of the South Couloir.
This feature, the third of the Wheel’s three great couloirs, is a huge vertical gash cut into the West Face about twelve kilometres south of the central line. It is three hundred metres across, delves the same distance back into the face, and it drops, sheer-sided and dreadful, from the top of the ridge to halfway down to sea level, four thousand metres in all.
Like the other great couloirs, it has never been climbed or even attempted. Indeed, Yuko’s party would be treading closer to it than anyone had before at that point in time. Wisely, however, they did not intend to actually stray onto its deadly precipices.
Fate planned differently, alas.
Six weeks into the expedition, Yuko and his climbing companion Kasuya Noguchi, ten years Yuko’s senior, reached the base of the chimney at just over eight thousand metres, some one hundred metres to the north of where it opened into the couloir. Here, they intended to drop supplies to establish Camp Three before descending. In days following, other pairs would finish establishing the camp, then the team could turn north and begin to climb up the fifty-degree sloped groove towards Black Summit Three.
But even as Yuko and his partner began to unload their packs, one of the Wheel’s notorious clear-air storms struck the West Face.
Now, during the Richman expedition, Doppler wind radar had been installed on Observatory Mount to monitor the Wheel and warn of any descending jet-stream gales. But that facility had been unmanned since Richman’s departure (it would not be permanently operated until 1990) and so there was no warning for the Japanese climbers.
In mere minutes, conditions at eight thousand metres went from calm and clear to a hurricane gale shrieking down the face, kicking up a blizzard of spindrift snow and reducing visibility to zero.
The pitch the two climbers had just ascended was sheer and difficult, and even though they had left fixed lines as they came, they knew it would be impossible to descend so exposed a route in such conditions, so they decided to bivouac and ride the storm out. They had a small tent and supplies for several days, carried for just such a situation, and the overhang of the chimney offered shelter from the gale and from any associated avalanche.
Thus they bedded down with some confidence, despite the fury of the wind screaming just beyond their little eyrie. They were also in contact, via radio, with their fellows further down the mountain, the closest of whom were two climbers at Camp Two, a thousand metres below, while the other four were spread between Camp One and Base Camp. While concerned, no one in the team saw any reason to panic. The Wheel’s clear-air storms were terrible, but they seldom lasted more than a day or so.
Unfortunately, this time the wind did not let up for five days straight. Worse, it combined with a front of moist air that came sweeping in from the west on the third day, resulting in heavy snow and hail. Avalanches soon forced the climbers at the lower camps to withdraw to the safety of Base Camp, but retreat remained impossible for Yuko and Noguchi, trapped by the exposed face below them.
They had no oxygen with them, as it had not been planned to begin using the gas until the next pitch further up the chimney. At eight thousand metres, the human body, lacking any breathing assistance, cannot sleep or digest food. It is, in effect, slowly dying. Such conditions can be endured for short periods, which is what enables climbers without gas to make brief forays up as high as nine thousand metres and beyond. But after five days in their tent, sleepless, oxygen-deprived and malnourished, the two climbers were now entering desperate straits.
At last, on the sixth day, the wind relented, though the region of the chimney remained lost in snow and cloud. Yuko and Noguchi emerged from their cocoon to find that the fixed line by which they had intended to descend had vanished completely, stripped away by either wind or avalanche. They had no other ropes left. So it was that, severely weakened, and already suffering from early stages of frostbite on their hands and feet, the two climbers were now faced with an unsecured descent on a sheer face.
It was a deadly danger, but they had little choice. They doubted they could survive another night at eight thousand metres, nor could they hope for anyone to come up and rescue them. With the snow falling unabated, the lower approaches were still being swept with avalanches, and none of the climbers at Base Camp could yet risk ascending.
They began the descent, but only a hundred metres down the face they reached an impasse, a bulge that they had barely managed to pass on the way up, and which, in their degraded state, they could not now cross. In a last attempt to swing himself around the obstruction, the older climber, Noguchi, fell—and by outrageous fortune, saved his life. For despite a plummet of some fifty metres, he landed in soft fresh snow on a ledge at the foot of the pitch. Though knocked insensible for several hours, when he came to he found he had suffered no worse than severe bruising, and could continue his descent.
Higher up, Yuko, after calling down to his friend for some time and hearing no response, feared the worst: Noguchi must be dead. Yuko decided, in his grief, that the face was un-descendible. He spent the last of his strength returning to the chimney, and to the tent he and Noguchi had left behind.
There he spent a sixth night alone, increasingly ill and delirious, and quite unaware that below, Noguchi had regained consciousness and was staggering his way down through snow and constant avalanches to Camp Two. As Yuko had the pair’s only walkie-talkie, there was no way for Noguchi to let anyone know he was alive.
The seventh day dawned windless and snowless and bitterly freezing, decreasing the risk of avalanche at last. The other four climbers of the team finally set out from Base Camp, and by midday had reached Noguchi at Camp Two. He was all but comatose, but they were able to give him oxygen and hot soup, reviving him enough that two of the climbers could begin to escort him further down. The other two then began the ascent towards the chimney, a kilometre above still, in search of Yuko.
They did not yet know if he was still alive. He had made no radio contact since the night before, and though the two rescuers were in clear air as they passed seven thousand five hundred metres, just above them a dense layer of cloud hung motionless right across the West Face, hiding anything that might be happening at eight thousand metres and within the chimney. Still, it was imperative that they at least try to reach him.
Finally, however, their radio crackled int
o life with a faint voice. It was Yuko. His diction was slurred, like a man heavily drunk, but he could be understood. ‘Base Camp, Base Camp,’ he said. ‘Yuko here. We will try again to descend. Noguchi says he has found a new way, if we go down the chimney.’
The two rescuers stared at each other. Noguchi? How bizarre! It seemed that the climber above was hallucinating that his partner was still with him. ‘No,’ replied one of them urgently. ‘Noguchi is already down. He is safe. Stay where you are, Yuko. We are coming for you, with oxygen.’
There was silence for a time, then Yuko came back, his voice stronger now and more certain. ‘What are you talking about? Noguchi is right here with me. He has reconnoitred a path down the chimney, to the south, and says it is quite easy. I only have to follow him, and we can get down.’ Now the two rescuers were alarmed. A route southward down the chimney would only lead to the open mouth of the South Couloir, and a sheer drop of nearly four thousand metres.
‘No, no!’ they responded even more urgently. ‘Do not go down the chimney. Noguchi is not with you. You are imagining it. Stay where you are; we will be with you with oxygen by nightfall.’
Now the climber above grew angry. Of course Noguchi was with him, he insisted, why were they trying to trick him into believing otherwise?
‘Put him on the radio then!’ one of the rescuers demanded, hoping to demonstrate to Yuko that he was alone. ‘Let us talk to him.’
But Yuko only said, ‘I can’t. He has gone ahead down the chimney. He is calling to me now. I must hurry up and follow him.’
Silence followed. The rescuers peered up in frustration, but the cloud above remained impenetrable. What was happening up there? Was Yuko actually following his illusory comrade down the chimney? Was he even now drawing near to the place where the groove debouched without warning into the gulf of the couloir? Would the confused climber see the danger in the fog before it was too late?
Time and again as they scrambled upwards, the rescuers shouted warnings into the radio, but it was another hour, just as they were nearing the cloud level themselves, before they received a reply.
‘It’s all right now.’ Yuko’s voice, though only a whisper, came through clearly, for after all, the range was now only a few hundred metres. ‘We’re nearly down. Just a few more yards, and I’ll be clear of the chimney.’
The two rescuers looked at each other aghast. Clear of the chimney? That meant he would be stepping blindly into the plunging emptiness of the couloir, and to his certain death.
‘No!’ they screamed, into the open air now, hoping that their shouts would reach Yuko more emphatically than over the radio.
And then the walkie-talkie crackled again, but this time the voice that came on was Kasuya Noguchi himself. He had by now, with his two helpers, descended to Camp One. He and the others had been listening to the radio conversations of the higher climbers, and Noguchi had recovered enough to try to help his former partner. ‘Keizo! Listen, it’s me, Kasuya! You’re alone up there. I am not with you. You must stop and wait for the others!’
A wrenching silence.
Then, from the lone climber, ‘Kasuya? No. That can’t be you.’ The voice was awful to hear—exhausted, haunted, but still doggedly sure of itself. ‘I can see you. You’re just there, ten yards beyond the end of the chimney. You’re beckoning to me.’
The words chilled the listeners with horror. There was nothing for anyone to stand on ten yards beyond the end of the chimney. There was only the open air, and the long, long fall.
‘I’m coming to you now,’ said Yuko.
There followed a clunk as the walkie-talkie was dropped to the ground. Somehow, the channel remained open and sending. The listeners heard the sound of shuffling steps growing distant. Then, barely audible, came Yuko’s voice.
‘Kasuya? Why won’t you look at me?’ Another scrabbling step, and the sound of small stones bouncing off into infinity. ‘Why won’t you—’
There was a frozen pause. Then came three short, ragged cries. Cries filled with—what? Terror? The sudden return to sanity, there on the brink of the precipice, and already overbalanced? Did the ghost figure finally turn and show its face?
No one will ever know.
The two rescuers nearest the couloir glimpsed a blur of a figure dropping away within its appalling depths, spinning madly, arms and legs flailing. But even so, they continued their ascent to the chimney, to be sure that it was empty.
As it was.
The malefic Third Man of the Wheel had come, done his work, and vanished once more.
4
WAITING
Rita woke slowly to the growl of something like thunder, a subterranean throatish sound, as if some vast beast was shifting its bulk and breathing low as it hunted in the mist and darkness.
Mist and darkness. She opened her eyes to a dim featureless space, bewildered a moment as to where and when she was. Then she remembered: she had drawn the curtains the night before as she went to bed, wanting to shut out the night and the great shadow of the Wheel against the stars.
The rumble came again, an afterthought trembling, and the notion rose in her, listening as she lay, that it was the Wheel that was the hunting beast, the mountain that was growling in its throat, a menace even from ten kilometres away.
She blinked, the dream state fading to rationality. Aftershock. It must be an aftershock, a settling after yesterday’s earthquake. And that was bad enough, without thinking of beasts …
She rose and pulled back the curtains—and saw that one part of her dream at least had been prophetic. Overnight, fog had come.
And it was a heavy one. The wall of mist through the glass was not the bright grey of a light morning fog that would burn off with the sun, but rather the brooding jet slate of the underside of thunderstorms. She could barely see the furthest side of her balcony, and beyond that, nothing. Nor was this pre-dawn gloom. A glance to her watch on the bedside table confirmed that it was almost nine a.m. The sun was long up, but the Observatory was shadowed in deep, deep cloud.
And wrapped also in cold. The weather panel reported that the temperature outside was a brutal minus nineteen degrees Celsius. Thank the lord the heating in the Observatory was still working. They were quite safe and secure. And yet … as Rita stared again into the gloom, still the dream sense of foreboding pervaded her senses. It was the Wheel, she knew. For all that it was invisible in the cloud, it loomed in her mind as a threat—indeed, even a greater danger now that it was unseen.
She shuddered and turned away, feeling weary and raw and unready for any of this, for the day that lay ahead. The hangover didn’t help. She had gone to bed at three, having yet again drunk far more than was good for her, an entire bottle here alone in the apartment, on top of all she had imbibed up in the Saloon with the others. It seemed indecent to think of it now, all of them downing Richman’s fine wines when people down at Base were injured or dead. But then, what else had there been to do? And anyway how else was she to shut down any possibility of … sensing … things she did not want to sense?
But what now? Staying drunk all day, or until rescue came, was hardly the answer …
She jumped suddenly as an electronic squawk blared from somewhere in the flat, followed by a cough and then a hollow amplified voice.
‘Rita? Rita, are you up? It’s Clara here. I’m on the intercom. Can you hear this? If you can, go into the living room, you’ll see the panel there.’
Wondering, Rita moved into the living room. There, unnoticed until now, set into the pillar dividing the space from the kitchen, was a black panel that held a speaker and numeric keypad.
‘To answer,’ boomed Clara’s disembodied voice from the speaker, ‘just press the button marked Talk and speak into the panel.’
Rita found the button, pressed it. ‘Hello?’
‘Oh, good. I hope I didn’t wake you, but you said last night you’d be up by now.’
Rita had said that? She could not recall. She pressed the button again. ‘It�
��s fine, I was awake. You gave me a bit of a shock though. I didn’t know there was an intercom system here.’
There was a pause that seemed somehow embarrassed, and Rita had the sudden feeling that they had also discussed this last night. ‘Well, there was never any reason to use the intercoms before; it was easier to text or phone. But now that our mobiles are useless, and with the internal phone system down, the intercom system is all we have left. But anyway, we’re calling a meeting in the dining room to discuss our options for the day. There’ll be breakfast too. In half an hour?’
‘I’ll be there,’ Rita said.
Twenty-five minutes later, showered, and with a hurried coffee sitting uneasily in her stomach, she was ascending the Helix Staircase.
And there was no escaping it, she mused as she climbed, staring up at the vast cavity of the Well, the windows in the dome far above shrouded in grey: the Observatory felt different now.
Oh, it had always felt huge and imposing, but it was only now that it felt empty. Somehow, the knowledge that dozens of staff moved and worked within the place, even if they were unseen, had given the great residence a sense of occupancy. Now that Rita knew there was no one in the service tunnels or the kitchens or the offices, now that she knew there were only six of them in all those acres of rooms and hallways, now she felt a cold vacancy to the house, an outsized, inhuman sense of scale that no cosy heating or clever interior design could dispel.
She came to the Atrium and heard voices. The others, with the exception of Kennedy, who presumably remained in the Control Room, were all awaiting her at the dining table, Richman and Clara each looking bright and fit, Kushal and Madelaine with a rather more dishevelled air that perhaps matched Rita’s own state. Pots of fresh coffee and tea, and several trays of toast and a selection of cold meats and preserves were spread out for breakfast.
The Rich Man’s House Page 36