The Contest Read online

  “When’s the weather going to clear?” Perry asked nervously.

  Cicero laughed. “People have gotten old waiting for the weather to clear up here.”

  Sneezy had his face pressed against the glass. “Look! There it is — Lucifer’s Claw!”

  “All I see is snow,” commented Bryn.

  Then, like a 3-D Pixelgram, it appeared out of the squall — a tall, misshapen, ice-covered spike, stark and massive.

  “Extreme,” breathed Sammi. It was the highest compliment she could pay.

  The helicopter began to descend.

  At 9,500 feet, Lucifer’s Claw was less than a third the height of Everest. It wasn’t even as tall as some of the peaks they had tackled in the Colorado training ground. But with a base just short of four thousand feet above sea level, it represented more than a vertical mile of ascent. Most important of all, they would encounter many of the same obstacles that the expedition would face in the Himalayas — glaciers, crevasses, ice walls, cornices, and all the bad weather a mountaineer could hope to use as preparation for the top of the world.

  It was three degrees below zero when the pilot unloaded the team and their gear onto the Atkinson Glacier at the base of Lucifer’s Claw.

  “I guess you bring a lot of climbers out here,” Perry commented.

  The pilot shrugged. “There were these three Germans back in the early 1990s. Never did find out what happened to them.” And he clambered back into the chopper and disappeared into the murky sky.

  Dr. Oberman put a hand on Perry’s shoulder. “Don’t look so terrified. He was kidding.”

  But away from the comforts and conveniences of the Summit complex, there was no time to be scared. First priority was shelter; then food.

  All at once, Dominic was grateful for their forced camp-out during the snowstorm at boot camp. The tents went up efficiently, the propane stoves were assembled and burning. It was now pitch-black outside. Dominic’s watch read two-thirty.

  They ate by the light of a small campfire — a luxury. At the high camp the next night, there would be nothing to burn. Cicero went over the plan.

  “If you climb your whole life, you’re never going to have a tougher day than the one we’ve got tomorrow. We’re going to get up that wall, and it’s all or nothing, because there’s nowhere to stop until we hit the south shoulder at eight thousand feet. We’ll sleep there, summit the next morning, and shoot straight down to meet the helicopter to take us out of here. We’ll be in the dark a lot of the time, so guard your helmet lamp with your life.”

  As Dominic concentrated on the team leader’s words, he became aware of a wetness on his cheeks. He sat there, expressionless, the tears pouring from his eyes. He’d been on the move for over ten hours, yet it was only now starting to sink in that he’d made it. His disbelief and his sympathy for Chris’s pain had left no room for him to feel joy. Here, in the dark and blowing snow of a remote Alaskan glacier, he finally had the chance to celebrate himself. The journey that had begun with him chasing his brother’s vial of Dead Sea sand down the parking ramp at the 7-Eleven had brought him here.

  And the next stop was Everest.

  * * *

  Perry Noonan’s climber’s Rolex, another gift from Uncle Joe, read 2:15 A.M. when he raced out of the tent he shared with Dominic to answer nature’s call. Of all the things he hated about climbing — and there were many — the bathroom situation was the worst.

  With the fire out, it was dark. No, that wasn’t strong enough. It was inky, suffocating black. There might have been moonlight somewhere, but behind fourteen layers of overcast it wasn’t doing him much good.

  He took a careful step, then a few more. In this visibility, to stray too far from camp was suicide. Another step — and suddenly he was down and sliding.

  It was like no terror he had ever experienced to be falling, out of control, when he was completely blind. Then it was over. With a whump at the base of his spine, he came up against hard rock or ice.

  A quick inventory. No broken bones, everything still attached. He got on all fours and began to crawl. He was out of the hole in a few seconds — at least he was enough of a climber to accomplish that. He was lucky. As near as he could tell, he had fallen into the gap between two chunks of glacial ice, each about the size of a refrigerator. If that had been a crevasse on Everest, he’d be dead already. Or worse — trapped alive and waiting for death. It had happened many times before, to amateurs and top climbers alike. It would no doubt happen many times again.

  It took him twenty-five minutes to locate the tent in the dark. He had been a grand total of twelve feet away. Shaking with relief, he crawled into his sleeping bag and huddled there, trying not to wake Dominic with his ragged breathing.

  It was then that he realized there was something he had forgotten to do. But another bathroom trek was out of the question.

  Five A.M., when Cap Cicero woke the team, was no different from the dead of night — pitch-black, ice-cold, and snowing.

  By a meager fire, the climbers melted snow for a breakfast of hot chocolate and instant oatmeal. No one had much of an appetite. After four weeks of preparation, there was climbing to be done, and this was not a drill.

  They struck down the camp. All gear — tents, stoves, sleeping bags — was to be carried on their backs to be reused at their next stop, nearly a vertical mile above them. It was time to don wind suits and Gore-Tex face masks and mitts, and to strap on crampons — boot attachments featuring twelve sharp prongs. The metal spikes bit into blue glacial ice as they shouldered their packs.

  The mission could not have been simpler. First, a half-mile hike to the base of Lucifer’s Claw, skirting dangerous crevasses. It made the hair stand up on the back of Perry’s neck. If last night’s tumble had been into any of these, there would be no Perry Noonan today.

  Once they reached the mountain, they were vertical almost immediately, ascending the steep wall.

  The front points of their crampons jabbed into the frozen shell covering the rock. Then a swing each from ice axes in both hands. Pull yourself up and start over again. Kick. Kick. Thunk. Thunk. To Dominic, the rhythm became almost as familiar as his own heartbeat.

  They climbed, roped together in pairs: Dominic and Bryn, Sammi and Dr. Oberman, Cicero and Perry. The expedition leader figured it would take all his talent as a guide to keep Perry from falling behind. The red-haired boy was nervously securing himself with ice screws every few feet.

  “For God’s sake, Noonan,” Cicero called impatiently, “if you put one more piece of hardware in that ice, you’re going to magnetize the whole mountain!”

  Sneezy was the odd man out. He climbed solo, taking miles of video of the ghosts cast by helmet lamps on the icy south wall of Lucifer’s Claw.

  The sun rose at around ten o’clock, or at least, as Bryn put it, “It’s bright enough to watch the snow blow in our faces.”

  They celebrated with water and Summit bars. The ice was thick and strong, and between the bite of ice screws and the front points of their crampons, the climbers were able to pause for a break while hanging off the wall. It felt something like comfort. Cicero and Sneezy changed positions. Now the expedition leader was solo.

  By that time, Dominic had lost track of how many pitches they’d climbed. It had to be at least a dozen. But they were not yet even halfway up.

  Within a few hours, it was dark again.

  The month of training held fatigue at bay for a long time. But when it finally came, it was crushing. All at once, the effort of swinging an ax seemed to call for superhuman strength. Kicking crampon points into the ice felt like blasting through armor plating. Their feet weighed sixty tons. Even Perry’s boundless energy to stud the mountain with screws disappeared. Sneezy had to remind him to place a belay station every thirty feet.

  Conversation dwindled down to the bare essentials — “almost there,” “hold this,” “tired.” Then even the essentials were no longer essential. After that, the only sounds were wind, g
runts of effort, and the crunch of ice axes and crampons.

  When their helmet lamps illuminated the rounding of the wall that marked the start of the shoulder, Dominic and Bryn sped up, a new vitality coursing through them at the sight of their goal.

  “We’re there?” puffed Sammi off to their left. “We’re close?”

  “Slow down,” ordered Dr. Oberman. “The angle of the shoulder has a foreshortening effect. It looks closer than it really is.”

  Sure enough, an hour of backbreaking work later, the shoulder appeared no nearer.

  They slogged on until Cicero front-pointed past them in a show of speed and stamina that was breathtaking. Above them, he disappeared over the rounding of the icy rock face. Once on level ground, he slung a top rope around a boulder and dropped it down the wall. Sidestepping with their crampons, the climbers converged on it. One by one, they ascended the line and joined the expedition leader on the shoulder.

  Bryn, Sammi, Perry, and Dominic collapsed in an untidy heap. But the guides soon had them up again.

  “Now’s the time you don’t rest,” barked Cicero. “Not until the tents are up and dinner’s on.”

  Their bodies had been pushed to the limit for eleven and a half hours. The altitude gauge on Perry’s watch read 8,063 feet. The air temperature was thirty-seven degrees below zero.

  Their destination was an unnatural-looking place, even in the forbidding environs of Lucifer’s Claw. The mountain’s towering walls were gray-white with frost and snow. But the shoulder was naked black rock, swept clean by a relentless wind.

  From the center of this obsidian moonscape rose the summit cone, more than a quarter mile up — tomorrow’s project.

  It was there that the four tents were placed, sheltered from the wind. Dinner was hot tea, hot soup, and a lot of instant pasta for carbohydrate energy.

  The adults went to their bedrolls early, extracting a promise from their teenage charges that this would not be a late night.

  “Remember what you did today,” said Dr. Oberman, “and what you still have to do tomorrow. Five A.M. wake-up.” She slipped into her tent, leaving them in the glow of a single helmet lamp.

  “Five A.M., five P.M.,” said Bryn wearily. “It’s all night here, unless you’re talking about high noon.”

  “Aw, come on,” countered Sammi, eyes gleaming. “Think about where we are — up a freak of nature that’s halfway to the North Pole, hanging on by our toenails —”

  “If you say it’s extreme,” Bryn interrupted, “you’re eating the tent.”

  “Well, it is,” Sammi insisted. “We’re thumbing our noses at gravity. I love this place! And if you’re a real climber, you should, too.”

  “I’m a climber,” Bryn retorted. “I just don’t delude myself into thinking this is beautiful. Because even if you could see it, it would still be the armpit of the universe.”

  “I suppose you’re going to dis E, too,” Sammi said scornfully.

  “It’s not what you climb; it’s that you’re climbing,” Bryn tried to explain. “The physical demands, the personal challenge — ”

  “Yawn,” put in Sammi. “How about you, Dominic? You climb for the rush, right? Or are you searching for your true self like Oprah over here?”

  Dominic seemed surprised to be consulted. Then he said slowly, “When I look at something, I automatically try to think of a way to get to the top of it. I don’t know why. Maybe because Chris does it. And he got it from my dad. It’s like when George Mallory was asked why he was climbing Everest, and he said, ‘Because it’s there.’”

  “He was joking,” Perry broke in.

  The others looked at him.

  “No, really. It was in a book my uncle gave me. There was a press conference, and one reporter kept asking, ‘Why do you want to climb Everest? Why? Why? Why?’ And just to shut the guy up, Mallory told him, ‘Because it’s there.’ It was a put-down. It’s nothing to base your life on!” He had started off softly, but now he was speaking sharply, his voice full of scorn.

  “I read you loud and clear,” said Sammi. “You hate this. So why are you here?”

  “I made it up that wall, same as you,” Perry defended himself.

  “Agreed,” said Bryn. “You did fine today. But it’s pretty obvious to the three of us that you’re just not into it. And if we can see it, Cap can see it, too. Why didn’t he wash you out?”

  “Maybe Cap is a better judge than you guys.”

  “Or maybe Tilt was right,” challenged Sammi, “and your uncle bought you onto this expedition.”

  Perry smoldered silently in the dim light.

  “Is it true?” prompted Bryn.

  The flush began in his cheeks, spreading until his many freckles melted together to create a complexion of fire.

  “Well, is it?”

  And then the dam burst. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said tersely. “My uncle didn’t buy me onto this expedition. My uncle bought the whole expedition! He’s Joe Sullivan — does that name ring a bell?”

  “The founder of Summit Athletic,” breathed Dominic, impressed.

  “And president, and chairman of the board,” Perry finished. “Cap didn’t cut me, and I didn’t quit for exactly the same reason — because Joe Sullivan always gets what he wants!” He was up, in the tent, and crawling into his sleeping bag before any of them could say a word. As upset as he was, he felt a certain measure of relief that this was finally out in the open. And if the others hated him, then so be it. They’d probably expected something like this anyway. Perry knew that speculation about him had been flying around boot camp. At least that was over.

  He snuggled in his bedroll and covered his ears in an attempt not to listen to their conversation. But the quarters were close, and he couldn’t help overhearing snippets here and there. Like Bryn’s comment: “You know what’s really Looney Toons about all this? He’s got the guts to take on Everest, but not to tell his uncle that he doesn’t want to go.”

  Or Dominic: “What bugs me is that he’s here, and Chris is sitting at home.”

  “Don’t even go there,” groaned Sammi. “Chris had no chance. They needed youth. If Perry wasn’t here, ten to one we’d be stuck with Tilt.”

  Perry was never sure what time he dozed off. But when he awoke, he could hear Dominic’s even breathing in the sleeping bag next to him. The glowing face of his watch told him it was after three. He lay there, bone weary, yet wired at the same time.

  Come on, Perry, go back to sleep! Wake-up is less than two hours away.

  Sleep would not come. He tossed and turned for a while, but the air mattress did little to soften the rock floor. His bones, already achy from the climb, began to protest in earnest.

  He crept out of the tiny tent, struggling into his jacket and boots as he moved. He stood motionless in the light snow, unwilling to risk even a step in the total darkness. If last night’s little episode was repeated up here, he could find himself four thousand feet below, permanently impacted in the glacier. Almost in self-defense, he located the helmet lamp and switched it on.

  “Oh.” For the first time, he realized he was not alone. Bryn Fiedler stood there facing him. “Couldn’t sleep, either?” he asked.

  She gave him no answer and began to saunter slowly away.

  Great, he thought. Either she just plain hates my guts, or she thinks I’m trying to spy on her trip to the bathroom.

  And then he noticed something peculiar. The girl wore no coat and was bootless.

  “Hey, aren’t you cold?”

  Still no answer, not even any indication that she had heard him. She kept on walking toward — what? There was nothing up here. If you went far enough, you’d just —

  “No-o-o-o!”

  His heart in his throat, Perry charged across the camp. He grabbed Bryn right at the rim of the shoulder, but she shrugged him off. Her strength and his momentum took the two of them over the edge.

  At the last possible second, his fingertips felt rock, an
d he clamped on in desperation. Sobbing in shock and terror, he tried to scream “Cap!” but no sound came out. All of his life force was channeled into the effort to pull himself back onto the shoulder. It was only a few feet — a single chin-up — but it seemed to take a very long time, and even more effort than the entire day’s climb.

  And then he found himself lying on level terrain. Bryn was gone. Gone as if she had never been there.

  “Cap! Ca-a-ap!”

  His cries brought everyone running.

  “What’s wrong?” roared the team leader.

  “She’s gone!” Perry howled, beyond hysteria.

  “Who?”

  “Bryn! Bryn! She just walked over the side! She killed herself!”

  “Where?”

  “Over there!” Still on his hands and knees, Perry led the team to the spot where Bryn had fallen from sight.

  Cicero switched on his helmet lamp and shone it into the blackness of the void below. Time ground to a halt in tense agony. If Bryn had plummeted all the way to the glacier, there was no chance that she would be alive.

  Here on the southwest face, the ice wall had come away from the rock of the mountain, creating a narrow envelope beginning about thirty feet below them.

  There, lying motionless in the bottom of that impossibly thin gap, lay Bryn. The whole party shouted down to her, but she did not respond.

  Cicero turned to Perry. “She walked over the side? Just like that?”

  “Yeah!”

  “That’s not it!” Sammi countered, shrill with hysteria. “She was sleepwalking!”

  Cicero stared at her. “What?”

  “She sleepwalks!” the girl exclaimed. “She did it at boot camp. That’s how all the stuff got busted up. It wasn’t vandalism. She couldn’t help it!”

  The team leader was furious. “And you didn’t see fit to tell me?”

  “And watch a good climber get cut?”

  “That girl could be home in bed instead of dead or dying!” snapped Cicero.

  The terrible reality crystallized in his gut and radiated outward, freezing his entire body. Sure, he had lost team members before — more than he cared to think about. It was the nature of this dangerous game. But he knew in an instant that this was different. Bryn Fiedler was sixteen years old. She should be preparing for the junior prom.