The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fifth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  I dropped into their tent. Laure and Kunga Norbu had joined them, and we were jammed in there. “No luck,” I said. They weren’t surprised.

  “Superleech,” Freds commented cheerfully.

  We sat around and stared at the blue flames of the stove.

  Then, as usually happens in these predicaments, I said, “I’ve got a plan.”

  It was relatively simple, as we didn’t have many options. We would all descend back to the Lho La, and maybe even down to Base Camp, giving Arnold the idea we had given up. Once down there the Brits and Freds and Kunga Norbu could restock at the Gorak Shep teahouses, and Laure and I would undertake to stop Arnold, by stealing his boots for instance. Then they could go back up the fixed ropes and try again.

  Trevor looked dubious. “It’s difficult getting up here, and we don’t have much time, if that other expedition is already on the North Col.”

  “I’ve got a better plan,” Freds announced. “Looky here, Arnold’s following you Brits, but not us. If we four pretended to go down, while you four took the West Ridge direct, then Arnold would follow you. Then we four could sneak off into the Diagonal Ditch, and pass you by going up the Hornbein Couloir, which is actually faster than the West Ridge direct. You wouldn’t see us and we’d be up there where the body is, lickety-split.”

  Well, no one was overjoyed at this plan. The Brits would have liked to find Mallory themselves, I could see. And I didn’t have any inclination to go any higher than we already had. In fact I was dead set against it.

  But by now the Brits were absolutely locked onto the idea of saving Mallory from TV and Westminster Abbey. “It would do the job,” Marion conceded.

  “And we might lose the leech on the ridge,” Mad Tom added. “It’s a right piece of work or so I’m told.”

  “That’s right!” Freds said happily. “Laure, are you up for it?”

  “Whatever you like,” Laure said, and grinned. He thought it was a fine idea. Freds then asked Kunga Norbu, in Tibetan, and reported to us that Kunga gave the plan his mystic blessing.

  “George?”

  “Oh, man, no. I’d rather just get him down some other way.”

  “Ah come on!” Freds cried. “We don’t have another way, and you don’t want to let down the side, do you? Sticky wicket and all that?”

  “He’s your fooking client,” John pointed out.

  “Geez. Oh, man … Well … All right.”

  I walked back to our tent feeling that things were really getting out of control. In fact I was running around in the grip of other people’s plans, plans I by no means approved of, made by people whose mental balance I doubted. And all this on the side of a mountain that had killed over fifty people. It was a bummer.

  11

  But I went along with the plan. Next morning we broke camp and made as if to go back down. The Brits started up the West Ridge, snarling dire threats at Arnold as they passed him. Arnold and his Sherpas were already packed, and after giving the Brits a short lead they took off after them. Arnold was roped up to their leader Ang Rita, raring to go, his camera in a chest pack. I had to hand it to him—he was one tenacious peeping Tom.

  We waved good-bye and stayed on the shoulder until they were above us, and momentarily out of sight. Then we hustled after them, and took a left into the so-called Diagonal Ditch, which led out onto the North Face.

  We were now following the route first taken by Tom Hornbein and Willi Unsoeld, in 1963. A real mountaineering classic, actually, which goes up what is now called the Hornbein Couloir. Get out any good photo of the North Face of Everest and you’ll see it—a big vertical crack on the right side. It’s a steep gully, but quite a bit faster than the West Ridge.

  So we climbed. It was hard climbing, but not as scary as the Lho La. My main problem on this day was paranoia about the weather. Weather is no common concern on the side of Everest. You don’t say, “Why snow would really ruin the day.” Quite a number of people have been caught by storms on Everest and killed by them, including the guys we were going to look for. So whenever I saw wisps of cloud streaming out from the peak, I tended to freak. And the wind whips a banner of cloud from the peak of Everest almost continuously. I kept looking up and seeing that banner, and groaning. Freds heard me.

  “Gee, George, you sound like you’re really hurting on this pitch.”

  “Hurry up, will you?”

  “You want to go faster? Well, okay, but I gotta tell you I’m going about as fast as I can. I don’t think I want to tell Kunga to hurry more, because he might do it.”

  I believed that. Kunga Norbu was using ice axe and crampons to fire up the packed snow in the middle of the couloir, and Freds was right behind him; they looked like roofers on a ladder. I did my best to follow, and Laure brought up the rear. Both Freds and Kunga had grins so wide and fixed that you’d have thought they were on acid. Their teeth were going to get sunburned they were loving it so much. Meanwhile I was gasping for air, and worrying about that summit banner … it was one of the greatest climbing days of my life.

  How’s that, you ask? Well … it’s hard to explain. But it’s something like this: when you get on a mountain wall with a few thousand feet of empty air below you, it catches your attention. Of course part of you says oh my God, it’s all over. Whyever did I do this! But another part sees that in order not to die you must pretend you are quite calm, and engaged in a semi-theoretical gymnastics exercise intended to move you higher. You pay attention to the exercise like no one has ever paid attention before. Eventually you find yourself on a flat spot of some sort—three feet by five feet will do. You look around and realize that you did not die, that you are still alive. And at that point this fact becomes really exhilarating. You really appreciate being alive. It’s a sort of power, or a privilege granted you, in any case it feels quite special, like a flash of higher consciousness. Just to be alive! And in retrospect, that paying attention when you were climbing—your remember that as a higher consciousness too.

  You can get hooked on feelings like those; they are the ultimate altered state. Drugs can’t touch them. I’m not saying this is real healthy behavior, you understand. I’m just saying it happens.

  For instance, at the end of this particular intense day in the Hornbein Couloir, the four of us emerged at its top, having completed an Alpine-style blitz of it due in large part to Kunga Norbu’s inspired leads. We made camp on top of a small flat knob just big enough for our tent. And looking around—what a feeling! It really was something. There were only four or five mountains in the world taller than we were in that campsite, and you could tell. We could see all the way across Tibet, it seemed. Now Tibet, as Galen Rowell once said, tends mostly to look like a freeze-dried Nevada—but from our height it was range after range of snowy peaks, white on black forever, all tinted sepia by the afternoon sun. It seemed the world was nothing but mountains.

  Freds plopped down beside me, idiot grin still fixed on his face. He had a steaming cup of lemon drink in one hand, his hash pipe in the other and he was singing “Truckin’.” He took a hit from the pipe and handed it to me.

  “Are you sure we should be smoking up here?”

  “Sure, it helps you breathe.”

  “Come on.”

  “No, really. The nerve center that controls your involuntary breathing shuts down in the absence of carbon dioxide, and there’s hardly any of that up here, so the smoke provides it.”

  I decided that on medical grounds I’d better join him. We passed the pipe back and forth. Behind us Laure was in the tent, humming to himself and getting his sleeping bag out. Kunga Norbu sat in the lotus position on the other side of the tent, intent on realms of his own. The world, all mountains, turned under the sun.

  Freds exhaled happily. “This must be the greatest place on earth, don’t you think?”

  That’s the feeling I’m talking about.

  12

  We had a long and restless night of it, because it’s harder than hell to sleep at that altitude.
But the next day dawned clear and windless once again, and after breakfasting we headed along the top of the Black Band.

  Our route was unusual, perhaps unique. The Black Band, harder than the layers of rock above and below it, sticks out from the generally smooth slope of the face in a crumbly rampart. So in effect we had a sort of road to walk on. Although it was uneven and busted up, it was still twenty feet wide in places, and an easier place for a traverse couldn’t be imagined. There were potential campsites all over it.

  Of course usually when people are at 28,000 feet on Everest, they’re interested in getting either higher or lower pretty quick. Since this rampway was level and didn’t facilitate any route whatsoever, it wasn’t much traveled. We might have been the first on it, since Freds said that Kunga Norbu had only looked down on it from above.

  So we walked this high road, and made our search. Freds knocked a rock off the edge, and we watched it bounce down toward the Rongbuk Glacier until it became invisible, though we could still hear it. After that we trod a little more carefully. Still, it wasn’t long before we had traversed the face and were looking down the huge clean chute of the Great Couloir. Here the rampart ended, and to continue the traverse to the fabled North Ridge, where Mallory and Irvine were last seen, would have been ugly work. Besides, that wasn’t where Kunga Norbu had seen the body.

  “We must have missed it,” Freds said. “Let’s spread out side to side, and check every little nook and cranny on the way back.” So we did, taking it very slowly, and ranging out to the edge of the rampart as far as we dared.

  We were about halfway back to the Hornbein Couloir when Laure found it. He called out, and we approached.

  “Well dog my cats,” Freds said, looking astonished.

  The body was wedged in a crack, chest deep in a hard pack of snow. He was on his side, and curled over so that he was level with the rock on each side of the crack. His clothing was frayed, and rotting away on him; it looked like knit wool. The kind of thing you’d wear golfing in Scotland. His eyes were closed, and under a fraying hood his skin looked papery. Sixty years out in sun and storm, but always in below-freezing air, had preserved him strangely. I had the odd feeling that he was only sleeping, and might wake and stand.

  Freds knelt beside him and dug in the snow a bit. “Look here—he’s roped up, but the rope broke.”

  He held up an inch or two of unraveled rope—natural fibers, horribly thin—it made me shudder to see it. “Such primitive gear!” I cried.

  Freds nodded briefly. “They were nuts. I don’t think he’s got an oxygen pack on either. They had it available, but he didn’t like to use it.” He shook his head. “They probably fell together. Stepped through a cornice maybe. Then fell down to here, and this one jammed in the crack while the other one went over the edge, and the rope broke.”

  “So the other one is down in the glacier,” I said.

  Freds nodded slowly. “And look—” he pointed above. “We’re almost directly under the summit. So they must have made the top. Or fallen when damned close to it.” He shook his head. “And wearing nothing but a jacket like that! Amazing.”

  “So they made it,” I breathed.

  “Well, maybe. Looks like it, anyway. So … which one is this?”

  I shook my head. “I can’t tell. Early twenties, or mid-thirties?”

  Uneasily we looked at the mummified features.

  “Thirties,” Laure said. “Not young.”

  Freds nodded. “I agree.”

  “So it’s Mallory,” I said.

  “Hmph.” Freds stood and stepped back. “Well, that’s that. The mystery solved.” He looked at us, spoke briefly with Kunga Norbu. “He must be under snow most years. But let’s hide him under rock, for the Brits.”

  This was easier said than done. All we needed were stones to lay over him, as he was tucked down in the crack. But we quickly found that loose stones of any size were not plentiful; they had been blown off. So we had to work in pairs, and pick up big flat plates that were heavy enough to hold against the winds.

  We were still collecting these when Freds suddenly jerked back and sat behind an outcropping of the rampart. “Hey, the Brits are over there on the West Ridge! They’re almost level with us!”

  “Arnold can’t be far behind,” I said.

  “We’ve still got an hour’s work here,” Freds exclaimed. “Here—Laure, listen—go back to our campsite and pack our stuff, will you? Then go meet the Brits and tell them to slow down. Got that?”

  “Slow down,” Laure repeated.

  “Exactly. Explain we found Mallory and they should avoid this area. Give us time. You stay with them, go back down with them. George and Kunga and I will follow you guys down, and we’ll meet you at Gorak Shep.”

  Gorak Shep? That seemed farther down than necessary.

  Laure nodded. “Slow down, go back, we meet you Gorak Shep.”

  “You got it, buddy. See you down there.”

  Laure nodded and was off.

  “Okay,” Freds said. “Let’s get this guy covered.”

  We built a low wall around him, and then used the biggest plate of all as a keystone to cover his face. It took all three of us to pick it up, and we staggered around to get it into position without disturbing him; it really knocked the wind out of us.

  When we were done the body was covered, and most of the time snow would cover our burial cairn, and it would be just one lump among thousands. So he was hidden. “Shouldn’t we say something?” Freds asked. “You know, an epitaph or whatever?”

  “Hey, Kunga’s the holy man,” I said. “Tell him to do it.”

  Freds spoke to Kunga. In his snow goggles I could see little images of Kunga, looking like a Martian in his dirty red down jacket, hood and goggles. Quite a change in gear since old Mallory!

  Kunga Norbu stood at the end of our cairn and stuck out his mittened hands; he spoke in Tibetan for a while.

  Afterwards Freds translated for me: “Spirit of Chomolungma, Mother Goddess of the World, we’re here to bury the body of George Leigh Mallory, the first person to climb your sacred slopes. He was a climber with a lot of heart and he always went for it, and we love him for that—he showed very purely something that we all treasure in ourselves. I’d like to add that it’s also clear from his clothing and gear that he was a total loon to be up here at all, and I in particular would like to salute that quality as well. So here we are, four disciples of your holy spirit, and we take this moment to honor that spirit here and in us, and everywhere in the world.” Kunga bowed his head, and Freds and I followed suit, and we were silent; and all we heard was the wind, whistling over the Mother Goddess into Tibet.

  13

  Fine. Our mission was accomplished, Mallory was safely hidden on Everest for all time, we had given him what I had found a surprisingly moving burial ceremony, and I for one was pretty pleased. But back at our campsite, Freds and Kunga started acting oddly. Laure had packed up the tent and our packs and left them for us, and now Freds and Kunga were hurrying around repacking them.

  I said something to the effect that you couldn’t beat the view from Mallory’s final resting place, and Freds looked up at me, and said, “Well, you could beat it by a little.” And he continued repacking feverishly. “In fact I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,” he said as he worked. “I mean, here we are, right? I mean here we are.”

  “Yes,” I said. “We are here.”

  “I mean to say, here we are at almost twenty-eight thou, on Mount Everest. And it’s only noon, and it’s a perfect day. I mean a perfect day. Couldn’t ask for a nicer day.”

  I began to see what he was driving at. “No way, Freds.”

  “Ah come on! Don’t be hasty about this, George! We’re above all the hard parts, it’s just a walk from here to the top!”

  “No,” I said firmly. “We don’t have time. And we don’t have much food. And we can’t trust the weather. It’s too dangerous.”

  “Too dangerous! All climbing i
s too dangerous, George, but I don’t notice that that ever stopped you before. Think about it, man! This ain’t just some ordinary mountain, this ain’t no Rainier or Denali, this is Everest. Sargaramantha! Chomolungma! The BIG E! Hasn’t it always been your secret fantasy to climb Everest?”

  “Well, no. It hasn’t.”

  “I don’t believe you! It sure is mine, I’ll tell you that. It’s gotta be yours too.”

  All the time we argued Kunga Norbu was ignoring us, while he rooted through his pack tossing out various inessential items.

  Freds sat down beside me and began to show me the contents of his pack. “I got our butt pads, the stove, a pot, some soup and lemon mix, a good supply of food, and here’s my snow shovel so we can bivvy somewhere. Everything we need.”

  “No.”

  “Looky here, George.” Freds pulled off his goggles and stared me in the eye. “It was nice to bury Mallory and all, but I have to tell you that Kunga Norbu Lama and I have had what you’d call an ulterior motive all along here. We joined the Brits on the Lingtren climb because I had heard about this Mallory expedition from the north side, and I was planning all along to tell them about it, and show them our photo, and tell them that Kunga was the guy who saw Mallory’s body back in 1980, and suggest that they go hide him.”

  “You mean Kunga wasn’t the one who saw Mallory’s body?” I said.

  “No, he wasn’t. I made that up. The Chinese climber who saw a body up here was killed a couple years later. So I just had Kunga circle the general area where I heard the Chinese saw him. That’s why I was so surprised when we actually ran across the guy! Although it stands to reason when you look at the North Face—there isn’t anywhere else but the Black Band that would have stopped him.

  “Anyway I lied about that, and I also suggested we slip up the Hornbein Couloir and find the body when Arnold started tailing the Brits—and all of that was because I was just hoping we’d get into this situation, where we got the time and the weather to shoot for the top, we were both just hoping for it man and here we are. We got everything planned, Kunga and I have worked it all out—we’ve got all the stuff we need, and if we have to bivvy on the South Summit after we bag the peak, then we can descend by way of the Southeast Ridge and meet the Indian Army team in the South Col, and get escorted back to Base Camp, that’s the yak route and won’t be any problem.”