The Ascent

by Jeff Long

'Then you remembered me,' Abe said. The words billowed from his mouth, cold

  layers of frost. He lifted the mask and took a deep draw.

  'No. But later they told me. There was a wild kid who stayed through the end.'

  'That was me.'

  For a minute neither of them spoke, then Daniel did. 'It must have been spooky up

  there all alone.'

  There had been a time when Abe had meant to say something like that to Daniel.

  But Daniel stole the march and now Abe was obliged to answer.

  'I wasn't alone,' he reminded Daniel.

  'They told me you went crazy,' Daniel continued. 'You quit school. You disappeared.'

  This wasn't going the way Abe had thought it would. 'It wasn't that dramatic,' he

  said. 'I had to think, that's all.'

  'Yeah,' Daniel said.

  There was no thanks. No explanation. Abe felt outmaneuvered. He had meant to

  ask Daniel what he'd done with the girl's haunting voice, and maybe this was his

  answer, that for him there had been no voice or at least no haunting, just a day and a

  night of prayer and broken knees and then the peace of morphone and a ride out in

  the litter. But Abe didn't believe it was that simple.

  'And I heard about your visit,' Daniel said.

  Abe looked away.

  'You went to her mother's. It took a while to get it all figured out. But we figured it

  out. Some kid with wire-rims and a swamp drawl. You.' Daniel paused. 'In the middle

  of the night? You terrified her.'

  'I know.' Abe barely heard himself.

  'She was already out of her head.'

  'Yes.'

  Behind the mask, Abe bit at his torn lips. This was the part that shamed him. All

  over again he remembered the windblown trailer park outside Rock Springs and near

  the back of a lone trailer with a burned-out lightbulb over a makeshift porch. It had

  been late spring, a cold Wyoming night with no stars, and right through the aluminum

  paneling he had heard a dog barking inside and footsteps as she came to the door.

  Abe felt old vertigo now, just the way it had been when the old woman's voice had

  asked who it was through the door. And then the handle had turned and the door had

  opened. Abe felt himself spinning desperately with no solid footing. He could feel Gus's

  eyes on him. She had not heard this story yet. Her confusion was becoming wonder,

  though. She had pulled off her face mask, too. The oxygen has suffused her features

  with color, highlighting their ravages.

  'But why?' Daniel said. He seemed genuinely perplexed. Probably he had been angry

  about it once, maybe he still was. But right now what Abe heard was pure curiosity.

  Indeed, thought Abe. All he'd gotten were more tears and more heartbreak. What

  more had he thought there was to get? 'I wondered, that's all. I was seventeen. I could

  hear her voice. But I'd never seen her face.'

  'But why?'

  Abe shrugged helplessly.

  'We didn't tell her about how long Diana lived,' Daniel said. 'We didn't tell her for a

  reason. She didn't know, not until you came along.'

  'I know.' Abe remembered how her eyes had grown wider, but by then it had been

  too late to stop and he'd told everything. He had put her through the whole tale. She

  hadn't said stop so he'd made her die all over again with her dead daughter.

  'It was bad enough,' Daniel murmured.

  'I know.'

  The three of them huddled there for another few minutes while the hanging

  cookstoves roared with blue flames and the wind thundered past like a waterfall and

  their words settled as cold vapor onto their worn-out hands.

  At last Abe spoke. 'I'm sorry,' he whispered. Was this why he'd come then? Yet it

  didn't feel like reason enough.

  'Now I know,' Daniel whispered back.

  Sitting stock-still in the tent crammed with gear and injured humanity, Abe could

  feel the chaos gathering all around him. Captured by a voice from long ago, he had

  caused suffering that came from the suffering Daniel had caused, merely by taking a

  risk. Neither he nor Daniel had ever meant to bring hurt into the world. And yet

  neither of them could seem to exist without the pain. How strange, thought Abe. How

  sad.

  Then Gus spoke up. 'That's all there was to it?' She looked shocked.

  'It was enough,' Daniel said.

  'Enough?' she spat. 'But that's nothing.'

  Daniel was unprepared for her outburst. 'What is it you want, Gus?' He glanced at

  Abe, who was equally baffled.

  'You guys,' she snorted, indignant. 'All this time it's been like, Jesus, one killed the

  girl, the other ate her heart. I thought, these two guys, they must have shared a great

  sin. Or sacrament. Something. Something bigger than this.'

  She didn't understand, Abe realized. Or maybe she did. She had expected whatever

  it was that bound Daniel to Abe – and through Abe, to the darker obsession – to be

  profound. Yet all he and Daniel had revealed was a memory of the aftermath. To Gus,

  it must have sounded like two old men trading tired gossip.

  'It was between Abe and me,' Daniel tried to explain. 'It had nothing to do with you.'

  'No?' She was angry now, a feat in this cold tent. 'Years now. Years, I've been

  fighting her ghost for you.'

  She turned on Abe. 'Remember? In the beginning I was afraid of you.'

  Abe remembered the night in his Base Camp tent, but he wouldn't have termed her

  warning shot 'afraid.' Before he could reply, she returned her attention to Daniel.

  'I told him to stay away from you. I thought he'd dig her up and bring her back to

  life. But I was wrong. Abe couldn't have brought her back. Because you never buried

  her.'

  Daniel fell silent.

  'I live with her. In our house. In our bed. Yes, you talk to her in your sleep, Daniel.'

  She drew at the air for breath. 'And now I come onto the mountain and she's here, too.

  Her name, her ghost. And it has nothing to do with me?'

  Gus glared at them both. Then her eyes started to glaze and her flesh darkened

  with cyanotic blue. Her anger thinned out.

  'Look, Gus,' Daniel murmured, 'I'm sorry.'

  'Not as sorry as I am.'

  Peeled back, her anger was pity and love, Abe marveled.

  She lifted the mask back to her face. The wind's thunder took over.

  Abe twisted away. One of the pots of water was ready. They shared, speechless, and

  started more ice over the flame. It would go on like that until dawn, Abe knew. They

  would eat and drink until it was safe to descend. No more sleep. No more words. Not

  tonight, not in this dangerous place.

  7

  At dawn, standing at the cave mouth in streamers of cold light, Daniel changed his

  mind. Abe was goosing his harness good and snug around his loins, and Gus was

  resting on her knees, pacing herself for the long descent back to ABC and from there

  down to Base for some rest.

  'I don't get it,' she murmured. 'So tired.' No mystery there, Abe thought. Even

  willpower could run out of steam.

  Just behind Daniel, their orange line plunged off into the black depths. No rope led

  upward into the sun, not even old Kiwi or Japanese stock buried under the green ice,

  because Four was the highest anyone had ever climbed on the Kore Wall. Above this

  point the route was a blank tablet, just as the entire face had been when Dani
el first

  approached it seven years earlier. Maybe it was that resonance – the tug of terra

  incognita – which caused Daniel's about-face.

  'I'm not going down,' he announced to them quietly. 'Not quite yet.'

  After a moment, just as quietly, Gus said, 'Say again?'

  'Believe me,' he said. 'I've been here before. And stopped. That was our mistake.

  One camp more, then we'll be in position. We can rest. And when we come back up,

  we can take this beast down. One stab. All the way.'

  'We're tired,' Abe said. From here to Five would require fresh cannon fodder to

  explore the way and build and stock the next camp. One thing Abe could say with

  absolute certainty. He was scarcely fit to descend, much less climb to 28,000 feet.

  'You're not invited,' Daniel said. 'It's my deal.'

  'Negative,' Gus said. She tried to put some razor in her inflection, but it came out

  slurred and dull. She couldn't even lift the orange rope to rig her descent and kept

  fumbling stupidly with simple carabiners. Only yesterday this woman had carried two

  heavy packs upon her back. Now she seemed feeble. If anything, her debilitation

  spurred Daniel's resolve.

  'Two more days, maybe three,' Daniel insisted. 'I'll use the gear the Kiwis left us.'

  There was at least 1,800 feet of rope stacked in coils, he explained. He would climb as

  high as possible each day, extending their reach. Each night he would return to the

  cave. He could sleep on the Kiwi's bottled oxygen and eat from their cache of

  freeze-dried food and nuts and even listen to their music. He was adamant.

  Abe tried to gauge his recklessness. Daniel wasn't exactly restored to yesterday's

  strength, but he no longer looked stripped and bloodless either. A night on oxygen

  appeared to have layered flesh and muscle over his near transparency. His eyes were

  clear, his strategy complete.

  'It makes sense,' Abe argued. 'But not good sense. Gus is right. You can't push it

  alone.'

  Suddenly Abe heard himself. He'd heard words little different from these in the

  thick of a Wyoming blizzard many years ago. Words hadn't swayed him from his

  mission then, and words weren't going to convert Daniel now. Abe blinked. He quit

  arguing. There was nothing to argue.

  'At least let me tape your hands again,' he said.

  Instantly Gus heard Abe's surrender. 'Screw you, both of you,' she said. She

  undipped her rappel device from the rope and sat back against the cave wall and shut

  her eyes. She was pulling herself together. She was Daniel's archangel and would

  never leave him, Abe knew. If Daniel went up, she would not go down. There was no

  point arguing that either.

  Daniel had taken the bandages off and the ugly flaps of skin were still weeping. Abe

  could see meat through one slice.

  'I should sew these first,' Abe said. He'd hoped to wait until they got down to ABC or

  Base, where the wounds could be properly cleaned and the thread wouldn't tear out in

  manual labor and his fingers wouldn't be half-frozen while he pressed the needle

  through.

  Daniel had his own considerations. 'There's not time for that,' he said.

  'But they can't stay open like this.'

  'Plastics, Abe, plastics.' Daniel grinned his cockeyed grin. It was the first time in

  many days Abe had seen anyone smile. Instinctively he smiled back.

  Mystified, Abe watched Daniel open the top pocket of his pack and fish out a tube of

  Super Glue. It struck him what was about to happen. 'That stuff's toxic,' Abe objected.

  'Yeah? So's the Hill.' Daniel's grin widened. The splits in his lips beaded with blood.

  With deft robotic efficiency, Daniel squeezed long strings of glue into the gashes on

  each palm and pulled the flaps shut with careful fingertips. He let the glue set up,

  holding his hands over the blue stove flame like a welder closing a seam, then flexed

  his hands in fists to assess the patch job. It was a rock-climber's trick, though Abe had

  never heard of people gluing more than a finger pad back in place.

  For a moment, Abe considered tearing the bloody bandage off his own arm, pouring

  Super Glue into the slit and continuing up with Daniel. But even at the thought, a chill

  went through him and he realized that it was this from which Thomas had fled down

  the mountain. It wasn't Daniel's natural authority up here that had driven Thomas

  away, nor that this black-haired kamikaze was berserk for ascent. No, what had

  scared Thomas off was the sudden recognition that he would become willing to die up

  here, not for this mountain with its pure diamond light and not for his own glory and

  benediction, but rather for Daniel, for the sake of freeing one soul from its cage. Daniel

  had led them so high they were nearly out of air and yet he was still aimed at the sun

  and they were still following. Abe wanted – desperately wanted – to stay with Daniel

  and climb on. But it was time for him to flee.

  'Good luck,' Abe said.

  'See you down at Base,' Daniel said.

  'Good-bye,' Abe said to Gus. She didn't even open her eyes to glare at him.

  Shortly after Abe started down, Daniel sallied up, trailing a rainbow of three colorful

  nine-millimeter ropes and bearing four more still coiled in his pack. Gus was belaying

  him from inside the cave, paying out rope as Daniel climbed up. He was bearing

  almost a thousand feet of rope, upward of eighty pounds. If there had been anyone

  else to watch, it would have seemed a boast. Alone, the load was nothing more than

  one man's calculation of himself.

  Just before Abe lost sight of him, he saw that the Shoot opened wider and angled

  back above the cave and that Daniel had quit front-pointing and was walking almost

  upright on the icy slope. At the rate he was going, Daniel might just do what he'd said:

  fix all the way to Five and still have time left over to build the camp and descend

  before he ran out of steam. As usual in matters of this mountain, Daniel was proving

  himself correct.

  The expedition would have a definite advantage with Five set in place. It would give

  them a high point from which to launch their all-out assault. Providing there were still

  enough healthy, willing players down at ABC or Base, they could repopulate the

  mountain all the way to 28,000 feet in a little less than a week of climbing. That would

  leave just a thousand feet more to go. They still had a chance. The last Abe saw of

  him, Daniel had come to a halt to pin one of his ropes to the wall with ice screws.

  It had taken Abe four hard days to get from ABC to Four. Now, in less than nine

  hours, he dropped a vertical mile and reached ABC in time for supper. Along the way,

  every camp was deserted, not a climber in sight. Except for Daniel and Gus high

  above, the mountain appeared to have been abandoned.

  ABC was deserted, too, except for Nima and Chuldum, who had been instructed to

  guard the camp. Abe couldn't comprehend what there was to guard against – the

  wind, perhaps, or the beat of sunlight – but that was Jorgens for you. He ran a tight

  ship when it was in drydock.

  First thing next morning, Abe set off in his trail sneakers alone. The ten miles of trail

  seemed to fly underfoot. That was his imagination at play. In fact what felt like an

  effortless tumble into the lower vall
ey was a struggle. His watch told him he was going

  slower and slower. But the farther he descended, the richer the air became so he

  didn't mind. After weeks on end of following the scant vertical tracery of their ascent,

  this flat trail seemed blatant, a virtual highway. Abe found it hard to believe the trail

  had once struck him as vague and confounding. The way was so clear down here, so

  inevitable. His pack was empty, his spirits light, and he wanted to race pell-mell down

  the rocky lane. It was frustrating to feel so invigorated and yet have such an unsteady

  step. He lurched on. All around him, the world assembled itself with details that grew

  sharper and more lustrous. A chorus of grouse gabbled on the perimeter of sunshine

  and frost. Big sticks of glacier mud hung beside the trail like temple columns.

  Insignificant rocks took on an almost sacramental distinctness beneath his Nikes. Part

  of his awe was plain hunger and fatigue and the richer air, Abe knew. But there was

  more than that to it. He had heard that monks wake in darkness so as to welcome the

  order of day. Now, descending from the Kore's dark, slaughtering radiance, he

  understood. These rocks, this birdsong, the blue sky: They were simple things, but

  they were everything.

  Base Camp sprang out at Abe with its candy-coloured domes and bustling industry.

  He came to a surprised halt and stood still, weaving slightly, taking it all in. He had

  forgotten how many tents were down here and how level the moraine was and what it

  was like to hear water flowing loose in a stream.

  There was laughter in the air, and an aroma of fresh-baked bread – that would be

  from Carlos's solar oven – and even the background silence had a lush melody to it.

  Roddy and Stump were rearranging what was left of the supply dump, and J.J. was

  clowning for the Sherpas, walking around on his hands. From the boom box by the

  mess tent, Pink Floyd – a high altitude mainstay – was weaving electric notes into the

  carnival of sights and sounds and smells, and Abe moved stiffly, drawn by the music.

  Suddenly he wanted to be among these people. He felt starved for their voices and

  their touch and their company.

  Kelly emerged from a tent swinging her waist-length mane – freshly washed, heavy

  as white gold – and she was the first to catch sight of Abe. Her face lit with a smile and