The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fifth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  “Useful.”

  “Yeah. So when they decide to go, they hop off into the Bardo. The Bardo is the other world, the world of spirit, and it’s a confusing place—talk about hallucinations! First a light like God’s camera flash goes off in your face. Then it’s just a bunch of colored paths, apparitions, everything. When Kunga describes it it’s really scary. Now if you’re just an ordinary spirit, then you can get disoriented, and be reborn as a slug or a game show host or anything. But if you stay focused, you’re reborn in the body you choose, and you go on from there.”

  I nodded dully. I was tired, and cold, and the lack of oxygen was making me stupid and spacy; I couldn’t make sense of Freds’s explanations, although it may be that that would have happened anywhere.

  We sat there. Kunga hummed to himself. It got colder.

  The candle guttered, then went out.

  It was dark. It continued to get colder.

  After a while there was nothing but the darkness, our breathing, and the cold. I couldn’t feel my butt or my legs below the knee. I knew I was waiting for something, but I had forgotten what it was. Freds stirred, started speaking Tibetan with Kunga. They seemed a long way away. They spoke to people I couldn’t see. For a while Freds jostled about, punching the sides of the cave. Kunga shouted out hoarsely, things like “Hak!” and “Phut!”

  “What are you doing?” I roused myself to say.

  “We’re fighting off demons,” Freds explained.

  I was ready to conclude, by watching my companions, that lack of oxygen drove one nuts; but what was my basis for comparison? My sample was skewed.

  Some indeterminate time later Freds started shoveling snow out of the tunnel. “Casting out demons?” I inquired.

  “No, trying to get warm. Want to try it?”

  I didn’t have the energy to move.

  Then he shook me from side to side, switched to English, told me stories. Story after story, in a dry, hoarse, frog’s voice. I didn’t understand any of them. I had to concentrate on fighting the cold. On breathing. Freds became agitated, he told me a story of Kunga’s, something about running across Tibet with a friend, a lung-gom-pa test of some kind, and the friend was wearing chains to keep from floating away entirely. Then something about running into a young husband at night, dropping the chains in a campfire … “The porters knew about lung-gom, and the next morning they must have tried to explain it to the British. Can you imagine it? Porters trying to explain these chains come out of nowhere … explaining they were used by people running across Tibet, to keep from going orbital? Man, those Brits must’ve thought they were invading Oz. Don’t you think so? Hey, George? George?… George?”

  16

  But finally the night passed, and I was still there.

  We crawled out of our cave in the pre-dawn light, and stamped our feet until some sensation came back into them, feeling pretty pleased with ourselves. “Good morning!” Kunga Norbu said to me politely. He was right about that. There were high cirrus clouds going pink above us, and an ocean of blue cloud far below in Nepal, with all the higher white peaks poking out of it like islands, and slowly turning pink themselves. I’ve never seen a more otherwordly sight; it was as if we had climbed out of our cave onto the side of another planet.

  “Maybe we should just shoot down to the South Col and join those Indian Army guys,” Freds croaked. “I don’t much feel like going back up to the peak to get to the West Ridge.”

  “You aren’t kidding,” I said.

  So down the Southeast Ridge we went.

  Now Peter Habeler, Messner’s partner on the first oxygenless ascent of Everest in 1979, plunged down this ridge from the summit to the South Col in one hour. He was worried about brain damage; my feeling is that the speed of his descent is evidence it had already occurred. We went as fast as we could, which was pretty alarmingly fast, and it still took us almost three hours. One step after another, down a steep snowy ridge. I refused to look at the severe drops to right and left. The clouds below were swelling up like the tide in the Bay of Fundy; our good weather was about to end.

  I felt completely disconnected from my body, I just watched it do its thing. Below Freds kept singing “Close to the Edge.” We came to a big snow-filled gully and glissaded down it carelessly, sliding twenty or thirty feet with each dreamy step. All three of us were staggering by this point. Cloud poured up the Western Cwm, and mist magically appeared all around us, but we were just above the South Col by this time, and it didn’t matter.

  I saw there was a camp in the col, and breathed a sigh of relief. We would have been goners without it.

  The Indians were still securing their tents as we walked up. A week’s perfect weather, and they had just gotten into the South Col. Very slow, I thought as we approached. Siege-style assault, logistical pyramid, play it safe—slow as building the other kind of pyramid.

  As we crossed the col and closed on the tents, navigating between piles of junk from previous expeditions, I began to worry. You see, the Indian Army has had incredible bad luck on Everest. They have tried to climb it several times, and so far as I know, they’ve never succeeded. Mostly this is because of storms, but people tend to ignore that, and the Indians have come in for a bit of criticism from the climbing community in Nepal. In fact they’ve been called terrible climbers. So they are a little touchy about this, and it was occurring to me, very slowly, that they might not be too amused to be greeted in the South Col by three individuals who had just bagged the peak on an overnighter from the north side.

  Then one of them saw us. He dropped the mallet in his hand.

  “Hi there!” Freds croaked.

  A group of them quickly gathered around us. The wind was beginning to blow hard, and we all stood at an angle into it. The oldest Indian there, probably a major, shouted gruffly, “Who are you!”

  “We’re lost,” Freds said. “We need help.”

  Ah, good, I thought. Freds has also thought of this problem. He won’t tell them where we’ve been. Freds is still thinking. He will take care of this situation for us.

  “Where did you come from?” the major boomed.

  Freds gestured down the Western Cwm. Good, I thought. “Our Sherpas told us to keep turning right. So ever since Jomosom we have been.”

  “Where did you say!”

  “Jomosom!”

  The major drew himself up. “Jomosom,” he said sharply, “is in western Nepal.”

  “Oh,” Freds said.

  And we all stood there. Apparently that was it for Freds’s explanation.

  I elbowed him aside. “The truth is, we thought it would be fun to help you. We didn’t know what we were getting into.”

  “Yeah!” Freds said, accepting this new tack thankfully. “Can we carry a load down for you, maybe?”

  “We are still climbing the mountain!” the major barked. “We don’t need loads carried down!” He gestured at the ridge behind us, which was disappearing in mist. “This is Everest!”

  Freds squinted at him. “You’re kidding.”

  I elbowed him. “We need help,” I said.

  The major looked at us closely. “Get in the tent,” he said at last.

  17

  Well, eventually I concocted a semi-consistent story about us idealistically wanting to porter loads for an Everest expedition, although who would be so stupid as to want to do that I don’t know. Freds was no help at all—he kept forgetting and going back to his first story, saying things like, “We must have gotten on the wrong plane.” And neither of us could fit Kunga Norbu into our story very well; I claimed he was our guide, but we didn’t understand his language. He very wisely stayed mute.

  Despite all that, the Indian team fed us and gave us water to slake our raging thirst, and they escorted us back down their fixed ropes to the camps below, to make sure they got us out of there. Over the next couple of days they led us all the way down the Western Cwm and the Khumbu Icefall to Base Camp. I wish I could give you a blow-by-blow account of the fa
bled Khumbu Icefall, but the truth is I barely remember it. It was big and white and scary; I was tired. That’s all I know. And then we were in their base camp, and I knew it was over. First illegal ascent of Everest.

  18

  Well, after what we had been through, Gorak Shep looked like Ireland, and Pheriche looked like Hawaii. And the air was oxygen soup.

  We kept asking after the Brits and Arnold and Laure, and kept hearing that they were a day or so below us. From the sound of it the Brits were chasing Arnold, who was managing by extreme efforts to stay ahead of them. So we hurried after them.

  On our way down, however, we stopped at the Pengboche Monastery, a dark brooding old place in a little nest of black pine trees, supposed to be the chin whiskers of the first abbot. There we left Kunga Norbu, who was looking pretty beat. The monks at the monastery made a big to-do over him. He and Freds had an emotional parting, and he gave me a big grin as he bored me through one last time with that spacy black gaze. “Good morning!” he said, and we were off.

  So Freds and I tromped down to Namche, which reminded me strongly of Manhattan, and found our friends had just left for Lukla, still chasing Arnold. Below Namche we really hustled to catch up with them, but we didn’t succeed until we reached Lukla itself. And then we only caught the Brits—because they were standing there by the Lukla airstrip, watching the last plane of the day hum down the tilted grass and ski jump out over the deep gorge of the Dudh Kosi—while Arnold McConnell, we quickly found out, was on that plane, having paid a legitimate passenger a fat stack of rupees to replace him. Arnold’s Sherpa companions were lining the strip and waving good-bye to him; they had all earned about a year’s wages in this one climb, it turned out, and they were pretty fond of old Arnold.

  The Brits were not. In fact they were fuming.

  “Where have you been?” Trevor demanded.

  “Well…” we said.

  “We went to the top,” Freds said apologetically. “Kunga had to for religious reasons.”

  “Well,” Trevor said huffily. “We considered it ourselves, but we had to chase your client back down the mountain to try and get his film. The film that will get us all kicked out of Nepal for good if it’s ever shown.”

  “Better get used to it,” Mad Tom said gloomily. “He’s off to Kathmandu, and we’re not. We’ll never catch him now.”

  Now the view from Lukla is nothing extraordinary, compared to what you can see higher up; but there are the giant green walls of the gorge, and to the north you can see a single scrap of the tall white peaks beyond; and to look at all that, and think you might never be allowed to see it again.…

  I pointed to the south. “Maybe we just got lucky.”

  “What?”

  Freds laughed. “Choppers! Incoming! Some trekking outfit has hired helicopters to bring its group in.”

  It was true. This is fairly common practice, I’ve done it myself many times. RNAC’s daily flights to Lukla can’t fulfill the need during the peak trekking season, so the Nepali Air Force kindly rents out its helicopters, at exorbitant fees. Naturally they prefer not to go back empty, and they’ll take whoever will pay. Often, as on this day, there is a whole crowd clamoring to pay to go back, and the competition is fierce, although I for one am unable to understand what people are so anxious to get back to.

  Anyway, this day was like most of them, and there was a whole crowd of trekkers sitting around on the unloading field by the airstrip, negotiating with the various Sherpa and Sherpani power brokers who run the airport and get people onto flights. The hierarchy among these half-dozen power brokers is completely obscure, even to them, and on this day as always each of them had a list of people who had paid up to a hundred dollars for a lift out; and until the brokers discussed it with the helicopter crew, no one knew who was going to be the privileged broker given the go-ahead to march his clients on board. The crowd found this protocol ambiguous at best, and they were milling about and shouting ugly things at their brokers as the helicopters were sighted.

  So this was not a good situation for us, because although we were desperate, everyone else wanting a lift claimed to be desperate also, and no one was going to volunteer to give up their places. Just before the two Puma choppers made their loud and windy landing, however, I saw Heather on the unloading field, and I ran over and discovered that she had gotten our expedition booked in with Pemba Sherpa, one of the most powerful brokers there. “Good work, Heather!” I cried. Quickly I explained to her some aspects of the situation, and looking wide-eyed at us—we were considerably filthier and more sunburnt than when we last saw her—she nodded her understanding.

  And sure enough, in the chaos of trekkers milling about the choppers, in all that moaning and groaning and screaming and shouting to be let on board, it was Pemba who prevailed over the other brokers. And Want To Take You Higher Ltd.’s “Video Expedition to Everest Base Camp”—with the addition of four British climbers and an American—climbed on board the two vehicles, cheering all the way. With a thukka thukka thukka we were off.

  “Now how will we find him in Kathmandu?” Marion said over the noise.

  “He won’t be expecting you,” I said. “He thinks he’s on the last flight of the day. So I’d start at the Kathmandu Guest House, where we were staying, and see if you can find him there.”

  The Brits nodded, looking grim as commandos. Arnold was in trouble.

  19

  We landed at the Kathmandu airport an hour later, and the Brits zipped out and hired a taxi immediately. Freds and I hired another one and tried to keep up, but the Brits must have been paying their driver triple, because that little Toyota took off over the dirt roads between the airport and the city like it was in a motorcross race. So we fell behind, and by the time we were let off in the courtyard of the Kathmandu Guest House, their taxi was already gone. We paid our driver and walked in and asked one of the snooty clerks for Arnold’s room number, and when he gave it to us we hustled on up to the room, on the third floor overlooking the back garden.

  We got there in the middle of the action. John and Mad Tom and Trevor had Arnold trapped on a bed in the corner, and they were standing over him not letting him go anywhere. Marion was on the other side of the room doing the actual demolition, taking up video cassettes one at a time and stomping them under her boot. There was a lot of yelling going on, mostly from Marion and Arnold. “That’s the one of me taking my bath,” Marion said. “And that’s the one of me changing my shirt in my tent. And that’s the one of me taking a pee at eight thousand meters!” and so on, while Arnold was shouting “No, no!” and “Not that one, my God!” and “I’ll sue you in every court in Nepal!”

  “Foreign nationals can’t sue each other in Nepal,” Mad Tom told him.

  But Arnold continued to shout and threaten and moan, his sun-torched face going incandescent, his much-reduced body bouncing up and down on the bed, his big round eyes popping out till I was afraid they would burst, or fall down on springs. He picked up the fresh cigar that had fallen from his mouth and threw it between Trevor and John, hitting Marion in the chest.

  “Molester,” she said, dusting her hands with satisfaction. “That’s all of them, then.” She began to stuff the wreckage of plastic and videotape into a daypack. “And we’ll take this along, too, thank you very much.”

  “Thief,” Arnold croaked.

  The three guys moved away from him. Arnold sat there on the bed, frozen, staring at Marion with a stricken, bug-eyed expression. He looked like a ballon with a pinprick in it.

  “Sorry, Arnold,” Trevor said. “But you brought this on yourself, as you must admit. We told you all along we didn’t want to be filmed.”

  Arnold stared at them speechlessly.

  “Well, then,” Trevor said. “That’s that.” And they left.

  Freds and I watched Arnold sit there. Slowly his eyes receded back to their usual pop-eyed position, but he still looked disconsolate.

  “Them Brits are tough,” Freds offered. “They
’re not real sentimental people.”

  “Come on, Arnold,” I said. Now that he was no longer my responsibility, now that we were back, and I’d never have to see him again—now that it was certain his videotape, which could have had Freds and me in as much hot water as the Brits, was destroyed—I felt a little bit sorry for him. Just a little bit. It was clear from his appearance that he had really gone through a lot to get that tape. Besides, I was starving. “Come on, let’s all get showered and shaved and cleaned up, and then I’ll take you out to dinner.”

  “Me too,” said Freds.

  Arnold nodded mutely.

  20

  Kathmandu is a funny city. When you first arrive there from the West, it seems like the most ramshackle and unsanitary place imaginable: the buildings are poorly constructed of old brick, and there are weed patches growing out of the roofs; the hotel rooms are bare pits; all the food you can find tastes like cardboard, and often makes you sick; and there are sewage heaps here and there in the mud streets, where dogs and cows are scavenging. It really seems primitive.

  Then you go out for a month or two in the mountains, or a trek or a climb. And when you return to Kathmandu, the place is utterly transformed. The only likely explanation is that while you were gone they took the city away and replaced it with one that looks the same on the outside, but is completely different in substance. The accommodations are luxurious beyond belief; the food is superb; the people look prosperous, and their city seems a marvel of architectural sophistication. Kathmandu! What a metropolis!

  So it seemed to Freds and me, as we checked into my home away from home, the Hotel Star. As I sat on the floor under the waist-high tap of steaming hot water that emerged from my shower, I found myself giggling in mindless rapture, and from the next room I could hear Freds bellowing the old 50s rocker, “Going to Katmandu.”

  An hour later, hair wet, faces chopped up, skin all prune-shriveled, we met Arnold out in the street and walked through the Thamel evening. “We look like coatracks!” Freds observed. Our city clothes were hanging on us. Freds and I had each lost about twenty pounds, Arnold about thirty. And it wasn’t just fat, either. Everything wastes away at altitude. “We’d better get to the Old Vienna and put some of it back on.”