Part 3 (1/2)

Kanakaredes folded and unfolded his six legs. It was disturbing to watch. ”I believe that I will try to sleep now,” he said, and closed the flap that separated his niche from ours.

The three of us put our heads together and whispered. ”He sounds like a G.o.dd.a.m.ned missionary,” hissed Gary. ”All this 'listen to the song' doubletalk.”

”Just our luck,” said Paul. ”Our first contact with an extraterrestrial civilization, and they're freaking Jehovah's Witnesses.”

”He hasn't handed us any tracts yet,” I said.

”Just wait,” whispered Gary. ”The four of us are going to stagger onto the summit of this hill someday if this f.u.c.king storm ever lets up, exhausted, gasping for air that isn't there, frostbitten to s.h.i.+t and back, and this bug's going to haul out copies of the Mantispid Watchtower.”

”Shhh,” said Paul. ”K'll hear us.”

Just then the wind hit the tent so hard that we all tried digging our fingernails through the hyper-polymer floor to keep the tent from sliding off its precarious perch and down the mountain. If worst came to worst, we'd shout ”Open!” at the top of our lungs, the smart tent fabric would fold away, and we'd roll out onto the slope in our thermskins and grab for our ice axes to self-arrest the slide. That was the theory. In fact, if the platform s.h.i.+fted or the spidersilk snapped, we'd almost certainly be airborne before we knew what hit us.

When we could hear again over the wind roar, Gary shouted, ”If we unpeel from this platform, I'm going to cuss a f.u.c.king blue streak all the way down to impact on the glacier.”

”Maybe that's the song that K's been talking about,” said Paul, and sealed his flap.

Last note to the day: Mantispids snore.

On the afternoon of day three, Kanakaredes suddenly said, ”My creche brother is also listening to a storm near your south pole at this very moment. But his surroundings are . . . more comfortable and secure than our tent.”

I looked at the other two, and we all showed raised eyebrows.

”I didn't know you brought a phone with you on this climb, K,” I said.”I did not.”

”Radio? ”said Paul.

”No.”

”Subcutaneous intergalactic Star Trek communicator?” said Gary. His sarcasm, much as his habit of chewing the nutrient bars too slowly, was beginning to get on my nerves after three days in this tent. I thought that perhaps the next time he was sarcastic or chewed slowly, I might just kill him.

K whistled ever so slightly. ”No,” he said. ”I understood your climbers' tradition of bringing no communication devices on this expedition.”

”Then how do you know that your . . . what was it, creche brother? ... is in a storm down there?” asked Paul.

”Because he is my creche brother,” said K. ”We were born in the same hour. We are, essentially, the same genetic material.”

”Twins,” I said.

”So you have telepathy?” said Paul.

Kanakaredes shook his head, his proboscis almost brus.h.i.+ng the napping tent fabric. ”Our scientists think that there is no such thing as telepathy. For any species.”

”Then how-?” I began.

”My creche brother and I often resonate on the same frequencies to the song of the world and universe,” said K in one of the longest sentences we'd heard from him. ”Much as your identical twins do. We often share the same dreams.”

Bugs dream. I made a mental note to record this factoid later.

”And does your creche brother know what you're feeling right now?” said Paul.

”I believe so.”

”And what's that?” asked Gary, chewing far too slowly on an n-bar.

”Right now,” said Kanakaredes, ”it is fear.”

Knife-edge ridge beyond Camp Three-about 23,700 feet The fourth day dawned perfectly clear, perfectly calm.

We were packed and climbing across the traverse before the first rays of sunlight struck the ridgeline. It was cold as a witch's t.i.t.

I mentioned that this part of the route was perhaps the most technically challenging of the climb-at least until we reached the actual summit pyramid-but it was also the most beautiful and exhilarating. You would have to see photos to appreciate the almost absurd steepness of this section of the ridge and even then it wouldn't allow you to feel the exposure. The northeast ridge just kept climbing in a series of swooping, knife-edged snow cornices, each side dropping away almost vertically.

As soon as we had moved onto the ridge, we looked back at the gigantic serac hanging above the trampled area of our Camp III perched on the edge of the ridge-the snow serac larger and more deformed and obviously unstable than ever after the heavy snows and howling winds of the last four days of storm-and we didn't have to say a word to one another to acknowledge how lucky we had been. Even Kanakaredes seemed grateful to get out of there.Two hundred feet into the traverse and we went up and over the blade of the knife. The snowy ridgeline was so narrow here that we could-and did-straddle it for a minute as if swinging our legs over a very, very steep roofline.

Some roof. One side dropped down thousands of feet into what used to be China. Our left legs-three of Kanakaredes's-hung over what used to be Pakistan. Right around this point, climbers in the twentieth century used to joke about needing pa.s.sports but seeing no border guards. In this CMG-era, a Sianking HK guns.h.i.+p or Indian hop-fighter could float up here anytime, hover fifty yards out, and blow us right off the ridge. None of us was worried about this. Kanakaredes's presence was insurance against that.

This was the hardest climbing yet, and our bug friend was working hard to keep up. Gary and Paul and I had discussed this the night before, whispering again while K was asleep, and we decided that this section was too steep for all of us to be roped together. We'd travel in two pairs. Paul was the obvious man to rope with K, although if either of them came off on this traverse, odds were overwhelming that the other would go all the way to the bottom with him.

The same was true of Gary and me, climbing ahead of them. Still, it gave a very slight measure of insurance.

The sunlight moved down the slope, warming us, as we moved from one side of the knife-edge to the other, following the best line, trying to stay off the sections so steep that snow would not stick-avoiding it not just because of the pitch there, but because the rock was almost always loose and rotten-and hoping to get as far as we could before the warming sun loosened the snow enough to make our crampons less effective.

I loved the litany of the tools we were using: deadmen, pitons, pickets, ice screws, carabiners, jumar ascenders. I loved the precision of our movements, even with the labored breathing and dull minds that were a component of any exertion at almost eight thousand meters. Gary would kick-step his way out onto the wall of ice and snow and occasional rock, one cramponed boot at a time, secure on three points before dislodging his ice axe and slamming it in a few feet further on. I stood on a tiny platform I'd hacked out of the snow, belaying Gary until he'd moved out to the end of our two-hundred-foot section of line. Then he'd anchor his end of the line with a deadman, piton, picket, or ice screw, go on belay himself, and I would move off-kicking the crampon points into the snow-wall rising almost vertically to blue sky just fifty or sixty feet above me.

A hundred yards or so behind us, Paul and Kanakaredes were doing the same-Paul in the lead and K on belay, then K climbing and Paul belaying and resting until the bug caught up.

We might as well have been on different planets. There was no conversation. We used every ounce of breath to take our next gasping step, to concentrate on precise placement of our feet and ice axes.

A twentieth-century climbing team might have taken days to make this traverse, establis.h.i.+ng fixed lines, retreating to their tents at Camp Three to eat and sleep, allowing other teams to break trail beyond the fixed ropes the next day. We did not have that luxury. We had to make this traverse in one try and keep moving up the ridge while the perfect weather lasted or we were screwed.

I loved it.

About five hours into the traverse, I realized that b.u.t.terflies were fluttering all around me. I looked up toward Gary on belay two hundred feet ahead and above me. He was also watchingb.u.t.terflies-small motes of color dancing and weaving 23,000 feet above sea level. What the h.e.l.l would Kanakaredes make of this? Would he think this was an everyday occurrence at this alt.i.tude? Well, perhaps it was. We humans weren't up here enough to know. I shook my head and continued shuffling my boots and slamming my ice axe up the impossible ridge.

The rays of the sun were horizontal in late afternoon when all four of us came off the knife-edge at the upper end of the traverse. The ridge was still heart-stoppingly steep there, but it had widened out so that we could stand on it as we looked back at our footprints on the snowy blade of the knife-edge. Even after all these years of climbing, I still found it hard to believe that we had been able to make those tracks.

”Hey!” shouted Gary. ”I'm a f.u.c.king giant!” He was flapping his arms and staring toward Sinkiang and the G.o.dwin-Austen Glacier miles below us.

Alt.i.tude's got him, I thought. We'll have to sedate him, tie him in his sleeping bag, and drag him down the way we came like so much laundry.

”Come on!” Gary shouted to me in the high, cold air. ”Be a giant, Jake.” He continued flapping his arms. I turned to look behind me and Paul and Kanakaredes were also hopping up and down, carefully so as not to fall off the foot-wide ridgeline, shouting and flapping their arms. It was quite a sight to see K moving his mantisy forearms six ways at once, joints swiveling, boneless fingers waving like big grubs.

They've all lost it, I thought. Oxygen deprivation lunacy. Then I looked down and east.

Our shadows leaped out miles across the glacier and the neighboring mountains. I raised my arms. Lowered them. My shadow atop the dark line of ridge shadow raised and lowered shadow-arms that must have been ten miles tall.

We kept this up-jumping shouting, waving-until the sun set behind Broad Peak to the west and our giant selves disappeared forever.

Camp Six-narrow bench on snow dome below summit pyramid, 26,200 feet No conversation or talk of listening to songs now. No jumping or shouting or waving. Not enough oxygen here to breathe or think, much less f.u.c.k around.