The Abominable by Dan Simmons Read Free Book Online Page B

assaults of the mountain that began three years ago. It is only a few days since we published Mallory’s own account of the second reverse suffered by the present expedition…
    That reverse had been wind and snow, which had driven the men from their highest camps—“discomfited but very far from being defeated” was Mallory’s message to the Times. There followed several more paragraphs, summarizing Mallory’s refusal to surrender despite the cold weather, high winds, avalanches, and imminent onset of the monsoon that would end this year’s climbing season.
    I pause and look at my two friends, seeking any signal that I should quit reading and hand the newspaper around, but Jean-Claude and the Deacon simply stare at me. Waiting for more.
    A slight breeze has come up, so I grip the crumpled paper tightly now as I continue reading the long second column of prose.
    Mallory wrote his whole dispatch in this spirit of one who was about to engage in a desperate battle. “The action,” he said, “is only suspended before the more intense action of the climax. The issue will shortly be decided. The third time we walk up East Rongbuk Glacier will be the last, for better or worse.” He had counted the odds and was ready to face them. “We expect,” he said in a later passage of his dispatch, “no mercy from Everest”: and Everest, alas! has taken him at his word.
    I pause. The Deacon and Jean-Claude sit waiting. Far beyond the Deacon’s shoulder, a large raven hovers motionless on the slight breeze, its body poised above almost 5,000 feet of empty air.
    I skip any criticism of the prose style and continue reading: Mallory’s history as a “distinguished mountaineer” and his absolute determination to summit Mount Everest (“Alas!” I think, but do not say), the contributions of General C. G. Bruce, Major E. F. Norton, and others in the past, surpassing the Duke of Abruzzi’s height record of 22,000 feet, set on a distant and irrelevant mountain named K2.
    The story focuses on 37-year-old George Leigh Mallory, the determined and tested veteran of Everest, and young Andrew Irvine, only 22 years old—my age exactly!—leaving their high camp on the morning of June 8, presumably carrying oxygen apparatus, the two heroes being seen again only once more, hours later, by fellow climber Noel Odell, who glimpsed them “going strong for the top,” and then the clouds closing in, the snowstorm intervening, and neither Mallory nor Irvine seen again.
    I read aloud that, according to the Times report, on the evening of their disappearance, Odell had gone all the way up to the precarious Camp VI, shouting out in the roaring high-altitude night in case Mallory and Irvine were trying to descend in darkness. Mallory had left his flare and lantern behind in the tent at Camp VI. He would have had no means to signal others below, even if he were alive in the terrible night.
    After fifty hours had passed, said the Times tale, even the ever hopeful Noel Odell gave up hope and placed two sleeping bags in the shape of a T for observers with telescopes at the lower camps to see. The prearranged signal meant that no further search should be attempted—the two climbers were lost forever.
    Finally I lower the paper. The rising breeze tugs at it. The raven no longer marks the blue sky, and the sky itself is darkening now with afternoon. I shake my head, feeling the strong emotion from my two friends but not really understanding the depth and complexity of it. “There’s just a little more of the same,” I say, my voice hoarse.
    The Deacon moves at last. He puts his cold pipe in the chest pocket of his tweed jacket. “They said there were two more,” he says softly.
    “What?”
    “The first paragraph said that two men died. Who? How?”
    “Oh.” I fumble with the paper, running my finger down the last column to the final paragraphs. Everything is Mallory and Irvine, Irvine and Mallory, and then Mallory again. But there at the end. I