The Ascent

by Jeff Long

  'Sure,' said Abe.

  'Or we can go down.'

  'No,' Abe decided. 'Up. It might be good.'

  'Can you belay?'

  'Of course.'

  For the next space of time, Abe belayed the ghost. He fed rope out with his good

  arm.

  Gus appeared. She was quite ugly now, but beautiful too.

  'Hi, Gus,' Abe said.

  'What's this shit?' Gus gasped. Abe followed her gaze. She was staring dismayed at

  the anchor. It was in near ruins – a lone, bent screw – and she had just trusted her life

  to it. Abe tried to see it from her perspective. He could have repaired the anchor. At

  least he could have warned her. He felt a little bad about that. On the other hand he

  couldn't say if she was any more real than Daniel. How odd, he thought. Even in death,

  Daniel was somehow their higher standard.

  Then Gus noticed the blood heating in a small pool on the glassy ledge. She knelt

  beside Abe and peered inside his ripped sleeve.

  'We have to get you down.'

  'No. Up,' said Abe.

  'Where's Daniel at?' she said. 'Does he know you're like this?'

  'He fell.'

  'No,' Gus determined. 'He's okay. Up there. He's in the cave.'

  From above, Abe heard Daniel's voice. 'Abe. You can come on now.' Showtime again.

  'What happened here?' Gus said.

  'It doesn't matter,' Abe said.

  Daniel's voice moved between them. 'Gus. Can he climb?'

  'Are you kidding?' Abe could tell she was mystified and angry. He wondered idly

  how it would be to kiss those torn lips smeared white with zinc oxide. She was his

  angel. 'He has to go down,' Gus reiterated.

  'It's a thousand feet down,' Daniel argued. 'Only one pitch up.'

  'But he's hurt. He's in shock.'

  Not so bad, Abe thought. In most respects, it was pleasant sitting here at Gus's

  knees with the planet curving on the north horizon.

  'There's a camp here,' Daniel said. 'It will be dark soon. We're best here.'

  'I thought I belonged,' Abe confided to Gus. 'I'm sorry.'

  'That's all right,' Gus said. 'Can you stand?' Abe stood.

  'Let me check your jumars. And your harness. And fix this helmet.' She was trying

  to take charge here. Abe could tell she was thinking of many things. 'Daniel,' she

  shouted up the wall. 'Abe's pack. Can you pull it up on a rope?'

  'I don't think so,' Daniel answered.

  'No problem,' Abe said. He reached for his pack, his pack of wonderful heaviness. He

  had hauled so much so high and there was only this eighty feet more to go.

  'Leave that,' Gus said. 'I'll bring it up. Can you climb?'

  Abe made his way up. It was much, much easier without the weight on his back. His

  wings were freed. He could fly.

  Daniel met him at the mouth of the cave. The cave was almost supernaturally

  perfect for human occupation. The floor was flat, the ceiling was seven feet high, and

  the walls were spaced wide enough to admit the two tents that were standing side by

  side. One was a faded peach color, the other was still orange. The cave wasn't very

  deep, maybe fifteen feet, and it looked like some equipment had been parked in the

  very rear.

  'Maybe you should lie down,' Daniel said.

  'I'm fine.' Abe was enchanted. He had entered another dimension in here. Outside

  there had been no respite. But here there was an inside to the mountain. There was a

  sanctuary not only from the rockfall and the crucifying sunlight, but also from the

  relentless verticality. He took a few prickly steps forward atop his two-inch crampon

  teeth. The floor was flat. He couldn't get over that. He had forgotten what it was like

  to stand on a horizontal surface.

  'We lucked out,' Daniel said. 'Look at all this stuff. The Kiwis just left it all.'

  Both tents were zipped shut, both were intact. Neither had so much as a tear in the

  fabric or a split in the seams. In contrast to the Ultimate Summit's fancy dome tents,

  these were old-style triangular structures with guy lines and center poles, the kind

  that required daily attention or else they collapsed. But years had passed and these

  tents were standing whole. Their spines were tight, not an inch of sagging, and their

  walls drummed to Abe's finger tap. They could have been pitched yesterday.

  Yellow urine stains to the side of each tent looked fresh. Empty food cans and paper

  wrappers lay loose in nooks and crannies of the cave, unperturbed by so much as a

  breeze. Ropes lay piled in limp butterfly coils, ready for use. Behind the tents, in the

  deepest recesses, heavy oxygen bottles were stacked like firewood, and red stuff

  sacks contained windpants and sweaters and personal gear – a Led Zeppelin tape, a

  can of sweet condensed milk, a photo of a woman.

  Tucked in this squared-off pocket of stone, the camp was free of the hazards that

  normally plague Everesters. No falling rock or ice in here, no avalanches, no wind,

  apparently not even the passage of time. In here the sanctuary was complete.

  'Let's sit down,' Daniel said.

  Abe sat in the open doorway of the faded peach tent. The air pads were still

  buoyant. Tears of happiness welled up at this luxury of sitting on a thing that was soft

  in a place that was safe. They were out of danger. Nothing could hurt him anymore.

  'Pretty wild out there,' Daniel said. He turned from the cave mouth and carefully

  eased himself to sitting beside Abe in the tent. He grimaced. Abe knew he would.

  Abe's muscles and joints were stiffening. His arm wound was starting to burn. It was

  logical that this hallucination would reflect his hurt.

  Side by side, Abe sat with his other. They didn't talk. Eventually Gus appeared at

  the cave entrance, wheezing for air. The outside had gone dark gold. The sun was

  setting.

  Gus pulled down her goggles and cast her fresh green eyes across them. Abe saw

  that she had carried a double load, tying his pack on top of hers. Without ceremony,

  she dumped the gear against one cave wall.

  'Now what the hell's going on, Daniel,' she demanded. She was angry. She didn't like

  mysteries.

  'The mountain whacked me,' Daniel said. 'I whacked Abe.'

  Close enough Abe thought, though his own telling of it would have elaborated on the

  ferocity of sunbeams upon a rock in ice, the gentle unlocking of noisy fate.

  'So fix him,' Gus said. 'Don't just sit there.'

  'Gus...' Daniel held out his hands with a gesture of helplessness. That was the first

  Abe saw of the flayed palms. Daniel's hands were laid open and bleeding. They needed

  help, he and Abe.

  Gus didn't hesitate. 'AH right then,' she breathed. There was work to do and no one

  but her to do it. She set aside her own weariness. Abe saw the tired resolve in her

  eyes.

  Gus started three stoves and cut ice for water with the adze of her axe. She worked

  on Abe first, stripping off his torn black wind shell and rolling up his sweater sleeve to

  expose the incision. It was deep. Abe looked in when Gus opened its lips.

  'You're the doctor,' she told him with a question mark on her face. She had his jump

  kit spread out on the ground, all his trauma equipment and meds.

  Abe was tempted to remark on the brightness of her eyes. That was all that came to

  mind. She was a masterpiece.

  Gus frowned at his sta
ring and said, 'You're fucking useless, Abe.' But she wasn't

  angry. Abe was glad for that because he loved her, she was his sister, too, just as

  Daniel was his brother. She customized a crude, bulky patch job on his arm. It turned

  red through the white cotton. Abe knew he ought to be concerned, but couldn't figure

  out why. He had begun to shiver in great spasms.

  'Daniel?' Gus pleaded.

  Daniel was watching from the side, his back slumped, palms bleeding. He was fading.

  'There's oxygen,' he told Gus.

  'No, Daniel. There's not. We didn't bring any.' Oxygen usually came up in later loads

  after more fundamental needs were met, such as food, fuel to make water, and

  shelter. And today they'd been stripped for speed, carrying mostly ropes and a single

  night's needs, and that didn't mean toothbrushes. Or air.

  'The Kiwis,' Daniel said. He was hurting more now. His voice was getting smaller.

  'Back of the cave. Hook him up.'

  Gus crawled over Abe to the back and unzipped the rear flap of the tent. A wealth of

  goods lay stacked in neat piles. The oxygen was in two gleaming upright tanks. Gus

  manhandled one of the bottles and found a regulator and mask, then zipped the door

  shut and returned to Abe's side.

  When she fitted it to his face, the mask smelled like old food, and then Gus started

  the flow. Immediately Abe heard the oxygen flooding through the mask. Warmth

  crept through his limbs, and with it came a blossoming awareness. The afternoon's

  surreality drifted away like a rare gas. He was bleeding and would have to be sewed.

  He'd possibly suffered a concussion and should descend. Daniel was hurt and needed

  examining. And they were all near collapse from the long day. Clearly he had to help.

  But he was so tired.

  Abe lifted the mask away. 'What about J.J.?' In all his sorting out the dead, he'd

  forgotten the living.

  'J.J. bailed.' Gus's voice had sunk to a slur. 'Stashed his load. Rapped away.'

  So it was just the three of them. Abe wiggled the mask against his face, the slip loops

  tight, the air bladder snapping rhythmically. His head dipped down toward its pillow,

  Gus's lap. The wind had ignited outside. But here, inside, there was not a breeze. Just

  the three of them. Safe.

  'I wish we had the radios,' Gus murmured, slumping against Abe and Daniel. 'They

  should know. We need them.'

  Together, heaped against one another, they did the worst thing possible. They let

  down their guard and fell asleep.

  Abe woke with a start, struck by the image of Daniel falling toward him. He threw

  up his arm and there it was again, the slashing pain. Abe cried out, but his cry was

  muffled.

  He found the face mask wet with his own exhaled breath. Someone had turned on a

  headlamp, then dropped it to the floor. Its batteries were freezing up and the light

  was jaundiced. Abe lifted his head. In another setting, under different light, the scene

  might have been fraternal, even erotic, the three of them lovingly entangled. Beneath

  this sick yellowish beam, however, they looked like three corpses dumped into a

  common grave. Daniel lay flopped on one side, arms outstretched to keep the pain in

  his hands at bay. Gus was slumped against him. The gauntness in their faces carried

  surrender.

  'No,' Abe groaned. He forced himself upright. For a full five minutes he just sat, dully

  pulling at the oxygen in his mask. Then he clawed the mask from his face and leaned

  toward Daniel.

  'Here.' He pressed the mask to Daniel's mouth, closing away the bared teeth, the

  black beard. The mountain had begun to mineralize the climbers, coloring them like

  stone. Now, before Abe's eyes, Daniel's cheeks took on a flush and the beds of his

  fingernails washed pink.

  'Gus,' Abe said. Her eyes barely opened and Abe drew back, unnerved by the oxen

  dumbness in her gaze. He shook her. 'Gus, wake up. We have to wake up.' Her eyes

  glazed over and closed.

  Abe's watch said 12:35. Past midnight. He winced at the impossibility of that. The

  mountain was voracious and they were in its very belly. But where Jonah could afford

  to wait it out, they could not. By dawn they might never wake again.

  Abe unlocked his stiff joints and crawled to the rear of the tent. By the dimming

  light, he unzipped the door and found two more regulators for oxygen sets. He

  screwed the pieces together with his good hand and bayonet-mounted the masks and

  dragged the assembled sets back in. He strapped a mask to Gus's face and one to his

  own and cranked the flow to its full six liters per minute, not much by paramedic

  standards but the maximum for these mountaineering regulators. With his portable

  Gamow bag, Abe could have dropped them to a pressure relative to 12,000 feet

  elevation in a matter of ten minutes. But that was down below. On oxygen alone, the

  climbers all descended several thousand feet anyway, a temporary relief.

  With everyone 'sucking O's,' Abe scooted forward to address the water situation.

  The stoves had burned out while they slept, so he fished out three full cartridges and

  started new fires. He worked with the slow deliberation of a drunk. The oxygen was

  sobering, but with the pain in his arm wound and the stiffness in his limbs and his

  diarrhea and the bronchitis and all his other woes, the high altitude hangover was

  wracking.

  Gus revived before Daniel did. Finally all three of them were sitting upright,

  hunched close among their piles of sleeping bags and parkas and boots and overpants

  like sadsack figures in a Beckett play. The wind was roaring past the cave's entrance,

  but in here the tent walls didn't even ripple. It was as if the mountain had wanted

  them to slumber undisturbed, on and on.

  'We have to get down,' Abe said. First it had been Daniel in charge, then Gus. Now it

  was his turn. He had to manage this emergency. Gus had said it: He was the doctor.

  He loosened the slip loop around his head and pulled the mask down so that his words

  were unobstructed.

  'We have to go down,' he repeated. The altitude had eviscerated them. They had to

  descend and regroup. They had reached their limit this round.

  'We're close.' Daniel's words were muffled by his mask, but his eyes were glittering

  with summit fever. He was happy. They had pushed far and even if descent was in

  order, there was still time to come back and break through Everest's glass ceiling. The

  route's most serious obstacle, the Shoot, was now tamed. They had captured it with

  their ropes and it was open to passage. From here to the summit was only another

  2,500 vertical feet, a matter of one more camp, maybe two, a week or a fortnight, no

  more, and suddenly it seemed they were very close indeed.

  'Close,' Abe agreed. 'But we have to go down.' Descent was imperative. They had

  wounds to lick. And with Jorgens and Carlos out of the picture, and Thomas on his

  mutiny, the entire effort had to be reassessed. Even if the team could pull together

  the numbers for a summit bid, it didn't have the strength just now. Plainly they had to

  get down to Base Camp, all of them. Only then could they hope to launch the final

  assault. To continue on in their condition was simply to hand the mountain three

  victims.

  'Yes,' Gus
said. 'Down.'

  'We'll come back,' said Abe.

  'Yes,' Daniel said.

  'Let me see your hands.'

  Daniel held out his palms. Abe hissed inside his mask. On each hand, the flesh lay

  peeled open in long flaps. He cleaned the flaps and laid them in place and wrapped

  each hand with white tape. He used a special pattern favored by boxers and jam crack

  climbers, thick across the palm, strung between the fingers. Daniel would need all the

  extra padding possible for the long rappel back to ABC tomorrow.

  'Anything else?' Abe asked. He knew there was. Daniel had been favouring his left

  side ever since arriving at Four.

  Daniel removed his jacket and pulled up his sweater and shirts. Wrapped partway

  round his rib cage stood a livid bruise the size of a watermelon. The rock had bounded

  between his arms, just missing the abdominal cavity. A little more to the center, the

  rock might have punched in a whole section of the chest wall: flail chest sternum. At

  this height a flail chest would have killed him hours ago.

  Abe prodded at Daniel's huge rib cage. 'Is this tender? Here? Here?' As he probed

  and interrogated, Abe took stock. A gruesome furrow tracked along Daniel's spine and

  there were purplish surgery scars on his shoulder and the half-moons where they'd

  gone after the tendinitis in his elbows. There were other old marks on his arms and

  hands, and compared to these gouges and furrows and purpled seams, Abe's own

  climbing scars looked like the hesitation marks of a fake suicide.

  'Could be some hairline cracks,' he said.

  'Probably just bruised,' Daniel said.

  'You're lucky,' Abe said. He closed Daniel's jacket and started to lay an oxygen mask

  over his mouth, but Daniel took hold of his wrist.

  'I wondered about you,' he said.

  Abe felt his heart sink. At long last, this was it. But why was Daniel choosing to

  resurrect the past in this midnight storm so far above the earth? Their shared past

  could easily wait. For that matter, it could go unspoken altogether. Half a lifetime had

  passed without Abe feeling this need to dredge up the memory. What did it matter.

  Because it's there? he wryly thought.

  Above her mask, Gus was frowning. There was an alarm in her eyes, though Abe

  allowed that could have been a trick of the light. She started to shake her head.

  'I wondered what you'd be like,' Daniel said.