The Robot's Twilight Companion

by Tony Daniel

  Charlie did have the funding for Everest, however, the next lowest solid matter. There was money enough. Was there time? Jeremiah looked into the sky, feeling his smallness, his inconsequence. I am thirty-five. I will be thirty-six by summer. Was he too old for Everest? No. People over fifty had climbed it. But they had struggled up, and the climb had nearly done them in. Up above, the Southern Cross hung mournful in the sky, with the Magellanic Clouds smeared across its crosspieces like shining blood.

  What it came down to was endurance and will.

  And the ability to face the ghosts of those who had died on the two previous attempts he’d been a part of. The chance that it would happen again. Death at the bottom of a three-thousand-foot scream. Jeremiah shuddered.

  The wind whipped up and his snow sizzled faintly, and again Jeremiah was a lone man under a big black sky. To the west was the blank east face of Aconcagua, glowing an impassive white. It seemed possible that he could question the mountain, the old Inca god, and get some sort of response, some sort of direction. But Jeremiah knew from long experience that the mountains did not answer. Or at least they did not answer directly. Like God. After all these years, he still believed. But he knew better than to pray. After a while, Jeremiah made tea for himself and took a cup in to Parra.

  When he got inside the tent, Jeremiah removed his plastic overboots, then the felt liners, wrapping them in a stuff sack. He rolled out his thermal pad and his down sleeping bag, and shoved the liners into the sleeping bag’s toe. He did not want them to freeze overnight and give him frostbite while he was climbing tomorrow. Then he got into the bag. It was very cold at first, but he’d brought warmth in with him, and the down retained most of what his body produced. Soon he was relatively comfortable. The bag smelled a bit moldy, a bit salty. He thought of Ánalia, in her small house on a narrow street in Mendoza. Ánalia, sleeping naked, brown among her white sheets. The wind flapped the tent. All tents were like this, everywhere. It was a separate universe he could crawl into, on any mountain on any continent. A cocoon, the stationary point around which all the relative world spun. Tents were a constant in his life.

  He awoke before dawn and found that his headache had passed and his diarrhea was no longer a problem. He was over his altitude sickness, and well on the way to becoming acclimated. He’d had much the same experience in climbing Vinson in Antarctica, but there the diarrhea had been a special problem because dropping his pants to relieve himself was a life-threatening maneuver in the cold. In the Himalayas, at much greater elevation, the mountain sickness had laid him up for two days, not merely with discomfort, but with exhaustion and unmoving muscles. He slept it off between fevers and vomiting, in a Sherpa’s hut. Then, on the third day, he was justwell . There was no gradual emergence; he walked out of the hut, up the trail, and joined the climbing party at base camp. By the next day, he was on the mountain.

  So he was used to the altitude once more. Without disturbing Parra, Jeremiah slipped into his liners and boots—cold, but bearable—and went out to start breakfast. He would need to melt a lot of snow this morning. He needed to force himself to drink large amounts of water before he began the real climb. The eastern sky colored, and Jeremiah heard Parra stirring within the tent.

  “Oatmeal’s cooking,” he called out, his voice a strange thing in the natural quiet.

  “Nick’s American Bar and Grill opens early these days,” Parra said, with a laugh. It seemed that the tent was talking. “Where are my biscuits anddulce de leche , you stinkingnorteamericano ?” After a moment, Parra stumbled out and held out his metal cup. Jeremiah filled it up with mush.

  “Yvon Chouinard will not touch this stuff,” Jeremiah said, wolfing down a big spoonful of his own.

  “The great climber does not eat oatmeal?” Parra was incredulous.

  “He got picked up for vagrancy when he was bumming out to Yosemite one time. Spent eighteen days on a work crew eating nothing but oatmeal once a day. Now he can’t stand the taste of it.”

  Parra looked with compassion at Jeremiah. “You Yankees have it very tough when you are young, let me tell you.”

  “Don’t call me a Yankee,” Jeremiah said. “Don’t ever call me that!”

  “What are you then, amigo?” Good question. Middle-class Southern white boy who accidentally ended up soloing the seven summits of the world? Well, five of them so far, anyway. And Everest would not be a solo, most likely. But he was digressing, as usual, avoiding the question.

  “I don’t know. But I’m not a Yankee.”

  They broke camp within an hour and started up the mountain. After snow-shoeing another mile, he saw that rocks began to poke through the snow, and then gravelly scree. Soon the snow became mixed with ice and scree entirely, and became too steep for snowshoes. They replaced them with crampons. Their weight was more concentrated over a smaller space now, and when there was no ice or rock to support them, they plunged hip-deep into the snow and had to plow forward. The process was very physical, and while it was tiring, Jeremiah felt fine and strong. Parra began to lag behind. The day was very cold, and the wind stole away much of the warmth they generated. Jeremiah estimated the wind speed to be about fifteen knots. This worried him somewhat, for it could be an augur of storms. When they got to Camp 1, he would ask Parra what he thought.

  Suddenly, from behind him, there came the familiar chilling roar that filled many a climber’s nightmares. Avalanche! It was far to their right, but angling down the slope of the mountain toward them. Where was Parra? There. He was a dot, far below Jeremiah, almost hidden by some rocks. Jeremiah watched in horror as the avalanche’s edge caught the rocks and sprayed upward over them, like breaking surf. It was not a large avalanche, but any avalanche was big enough to kill a man if it caught him just right. Parra was lost in the powder. Jeremiah turned around and ran down the slope in long strides, turning to either side as if he were skiing.

  “Gil,” he called out. “Gil Parra!”

  “I’m here. I’m okay.”

  Parra had seen the avalanche coming and made a run for the rocks that jutted out of the slope. He’d just made it to their lee side when the edge of the avalanche struck. He’d escaped with nothing worse than a dousing of snow.

  “That scared the shit out of me!” he said.

  “Me, too.”

  “I don’t think it would have got me, even if I hadn’t made it to the rocks,” Parra said. He was gabbling in a high nervous voice. “But it would have knocked me down. Maybe I would have broken something in the fall. Probably not.”

  Jeremiah agreed, but did not want to discuss the matter at the moment. Parra was badly shaken. He got out the stove and heated up some tea for Parra and himself. After drinking this, Parra seemed to calm down. They set out again. Jeremiah regulated his pace so that Parra could keep up.

  The sun had already sunk behind the mountains when they reached Camp 1. Chile, many miles on the other side of the rock and snow, was still bathed in light, but Mendoza would be turning on the streetlamps about now. Ánalia would be finishing up at her office. She always took a hot maté after work, the Argentine equivalent to the American South’s iced tea—they drank it morning, noon, and night.

  * * *

  Two days ago, Ánalia had not been able to make a maté for her siesta. After kissing Jeremiah, she went to the hot plate in the apartment, but the water kettle, sitting nearby, was empty. The only source of water was the bathroom down the hall.“I guess I will have to skip maté and get to the more important things,” Ánalia said, dangling the kettle by one finger. It slipped off and clanged back onto the cold eye. She stared hard at Jeremiah with what must be deep longing—for few desires were strong enough to make an Argentinian give up her afternoon maté.

  “Take a long siesta,” he said. “I want you all afternoon.”

  “I have patients waiting already, Jeremiah.”

  He drew her toward him and took her purse from her, set it down, then began to undo her blouse. “I’m selfish today. Let them wait.�
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  She laughed at this, but it was an uneasy laugh. Jeremiah finished with the blouse and it fell away. She moved to unbutton his shirt, but he stopped her. He wanted to take off her bra first. He loved the way women looked with only a skirt on. Ánalia, he corrected himself. I love the wayÁnalia looks that way. He reached around and found the catch to her bra, and with a rubbing motion, as if he were crushing an insect between his thumb and fingers, he undid it. Every time he did this, Ánalia would gasp. He suspected she was humoring him, but he liked even her false surprise.

  “How do you do that so well?” she asked. “I love the way you do that!”

  Practice. That was the real answer, which, of course, he dare not utter. Instead, he took a nipple between his lips and licked the tip. She gently pulled away and backed up, knowing that he wanted a full view.

  God, she was gorgeous. A flush under her tawny skin, crinkled nipples—brown almost to blackness. She wore no jewelry, which, when he’d first noticed, both surprised and pleased Jeremiah. Her white skirt made her skin seem even darker. She ran her long fingers over her chest, cupped a breast. Invitation enough.

  What really rattled him down to his soul was this combination of European and Native American expressed in Ánalia—as if the races had reblended to form the original ur-woman, the Earth goddess from the beginning. It was always women like this who moved him the deepest. Mandy was a sort of exception. Mandy with her perpetual mountain tan, but white as the driven snow under her long underwear. Yet still a mix of light and dark, the earth and air, in her personality. I loved her, Jeremiah thought. I love Ánalia.

  After Ánalia had helped him undress, she unzipped and dropped her skirt, leaving only her curious white shoes. He knelt before her, hoping that she would take as worship what was really only a way of taking off the irritating shoes. When he stood up, he picked her up—he was pleased that his upper body strength hadn’t completely deserted him since the summer—and took her toward his bed.

  Or not the bed this time, he thought. As he walked, she wrapped her legs about his waist and, reaching down, guided him within her. He took her to the window and leaned her back into the wall next to it. As he leaned into the wall, into Ánalia, he could see, in the corner of his eye, the distant Andes over the bare sycamores and squat buildings. He could not actually see Aconcagua from here, but he knew it was there, waiting. Frozen in place, waiting.

  Let the mountain wait.

  Ánalia wrapped her legs around his ass and pulled herself up and down his torso, spreading their sweat between them for a smooth slide, as if they both were covered with oil.

  And then, of course, the phone rang.

  He’d forgotten that he evenhad one. The ringing filled the little room with a loud insistency. Jesus Christ, where was it? Ánalia realized at the same time as Jeremiah did that there was no ignoring the sound. He eased back and she put her feet onto the floor. He pulled himself from her reluctantly, and the damn phone kept up its shrill buzz. Where the hell did the sound come from? He began to search the room, and Ánalia laughed at him jumping about bewildered and stark naked.

  Finally, Jeremiah found the telephone under a layer of paper and extricated it with an effort. He couldn’t remember anybody ever calling him since he’d moved in here. He wasn’t in the habit of giving out his number to local people he met, and he’d told his parents only to use the number in an emergency. He wasn’t sure if he’d given it to Ánalia, even. But then, she lived nearby, and physical contact was so much more enjoyable.

  “Hola?”

  “Don’t you ‘hola’ me, you piece of white trash from Alabama!”

  “Charlie!” he said. It wasn’t a question.

  “How the hell are you, Jeremiah Fall?” Charlie Worth sounded drunk. Or at least extremely happy.

  “I’m doing okay.”

  “Great, great.” Charlie was silent, even coy. Strange. Charlie Worth was a Texan, one of the most confident climbers Jeremiah had ever met, and a big-time financier to boot.

  “What do you want, Charlie?” Jeremiah went over to the bed—the phone would barely reach—and sat down.

  Again with the trace of coyness in his voice, Charlie said, “Why? Am I disturbing you?”

  “Would I let you disturb me?” Jeremiah looked over at Ánalia. She was smiling, a bit nonplussed, since she could not understand the English he was speaking. “It’s an old friend,” he said in Spanish.

  “Somebody there with you?” Charlie asked. “I should have known. But if I can’t even call you in the middle of the day and not interrupt your fun, I don’t know when it would be possible!”

  “It’s okay, Charlie. What do you want?”

  “You getting over climbing Vinson yet?” Charlie asked. After Jeremiah had gotten back from Antarctica, Charlie had been the first person he’d called to brag to.

  “I’m getting there.”

  “Feel like doing some more climbing soon?”

  “Could be. What’s up?” Whatwas up? Surely Charlie wasn’t about to offer him a place on a climb. Hadn’t Charlie quit for good after that horrible storm cost him most of a foot on Nanga Parbat?

  “I was thinking about climbing Mount Everest, myself,” Charlie said, deadpan. “I was wondering if you’d like to come along.”

  So, it was a joke he wasn’t getting. Maybe he’d been away from the States for so long that American humor didn’t make sense to him anymore.

  “I’m serious as a heart attack,” Charlie said, correctly interpreting Jeremiah’s silence. “I want to climb Everest. I’m willing to pay large sums of money to be able to do so, and I’m asking you if you want to do it with me, Jeremiah Fall.”

  Right. Charlie Worth climb Everest. At forty, with one and a half feet.

  “Charlie, you may be biting off more than you can chew,” Jeremiah said, trying to let his friend down easily.

  “Don’t patronize me, you son of a bitch!” Charlie shot back. “You’re as bad as that damn guide!”

  “What damn guide?”

  “I climbed the Eiger, Jeremiah. I said I’d never climb again, but I did it.”

  “Youclimbed the Eiger?”

  “Hell, yes, I did! And I want more. Higher!”

  “Don’t you think you should try something intermediate? Like maybe K2 or something?”

  “I mean it, Jeremiah,” Charlie said. Jeremiah could tell he was getting agitated, getting into that excited-nervous funk that only Charlie could achieve with wince-producing perfection. “Everest, Jeremiah!”

  Everest. Just the thought of her made Jeremiah shudder. He always thought of her that way, as female, as if she were a boat, with her high mast puncturing the stratosphere and trailing a great permanent plume like a masthead pennant. For the last ten years, she’d filled his dreams. And there was one dream, the bad one, which he would awaken from shuddering and sweaty. He and the other climbers he had known were clinging to the mountain like sailors clinging to the rigging, caught in a hurricane. Then the screams as one by one they lost their grips and fell into the miasma below. Finally, Jeremiah was the only one left. His hands were black with frostbite and he watched in horror as his fingers separated from his palms, oozing away like bananas squeezed in two. There was no way to hold on any longer, with only broadened stumps for hands. And Jeremiah fell. And fell. Andfell .

  Ánalia saw Jeremiah shake at the memory and came over to the bed and put her arms about him.

  “What’s got into you, Charlie?” he heard himself saying.

  “I decided that it was necessary for me to climb it.”

  “Why, for God’s sake?”

  Charlie was quiet for a long time, and the line almost sounded dead. It was amazing how little static there was on it, considering the distance.

  “I’ve asked you that same question a bunch of times, and you’ve never given me a satisfactory answer,” Charlie finally said.

  Well, he’s got me there, Jeremiah thought. Everest. A third attempt. Up until now, he’d put the mountain o
ut of his conscious mind.Since Mandy fell and I couldn’t catch her. But Everest was always there, looming massively in his dreams, his nightmares, his desires.

  “Just how are you planning to go about this little adventure?” Jeremiah asked. “You know we’re talking three-quarters of a million to a million?”

  “I’m prepared to invest whatever it takes. I have ten million that is relatively liquid, and I can get more if it’s necessary. A lot more.”

  Ten million. Charlie’s expert system interpreter was apparently selling very well. That solvedthat problem.

  “There’s permits,” Jeremiah said weakly. “You know Nepal is hell on giving out permits, and there’s no way you’re talking about trying the Chinese side.”

  “No, I think Nepal is the way to go,” said Charlie, sounding like a hardheaded businessman closing in on a deal. “There are several expeditions that have permits for next summer, I understand. I’ll bet you know one of those expedition leaders, and that you could suggest to them that, ah, we could give them a good price for a chance to participate.”

  “Bribe our way onto a team?” It had been done. Climbers took funding where they could get it, and sometimes it came with extra human baggage.

  Everest.

  Jeremiah tried to remember who had permits for next year. The Japanese had a team. Akima was the leader. There was a Canadian-American effort out of Seattle, too.

  I can’t believe I’m even considering this,thought Jeremiah. I am a barbarian. No ethics. Noway . No fucking way.

  ButEverest .

  “You think about it, Jeremiah,” said Charlie. “I’m ready to do this. I need your help or there’s no way, though.”

  “I’m sure you could find some way to arrange it without me,” Jeremiah replied.

  “Maybe. But we climb well together. Have you ever thought that the reason you didn’t make it up Everest those other times is because you didn’t have me along?”

  “You had retired. At least that’s what you told me.”