The Cloud Maker

Chapter 23

When they woke up the next morning, the herders were gone.

For the first time on the expedition Bill was the first to rise, immediately taking in the smouldering remains of the campfire and the baggage dumped in a pile beside it. He swore, then slapped his hand against the fly-sheet of Luca’s tent.

‘OK, OK.’ Luca emerged with tousled hair, rubbing his eyes. ‘What’s the problem?’

Bill simply pointed to the baggage and for a moment Luca craned his neck round, looking for the herders.

‘Oh, shit.’

Wearing only his thermal long johns, he walked barefoot across the dusty ground to the pile of heavy bags. Crouching down, he unzipped each one to double-check its contents. Without his top on, the alabaster white of his torso contrasted against the dark tan of his forearms and face. From the last week of being on the trail, he had lost a few pounds in weight and now looked lithe and wiry. As he crouched on the ground, with his body coiled over the bags, the entire line of his ribs was visible down his back.

Picking up one of the two wooden boxes that lay to either side of the fire, Luca prised open the top. Both boxes had a few broken slats from days of being strapped to the yaks, but the supplies were still carefully packed within.

‘At least they left the food and our gear.’

‘Yeah,’ said Bill. ‘But we’re stuffed if we don’t find a route up from here. There’s no way we can carry on with everything ourselves. How many days’ food do you think we have left?’

Luca shifted the boxes to one side and looked from bag to bag again, his frown deepening. ‘I don’t know, but we can’t afford to waste any more time. We’ve got to find a way up that rock-face. I’ll go up this morning and see whether there’s anything that will work. Are you okay staying here and sorting through the gear?’

Bill nodded. Twenty minutes later he was building up the fire as Luca tightened the laces on his climbing boots and, without another word, left in the direction of the mountains, his shoulders hunched with fresh determination.

He spent most of the day pacing up and down the base, scanning every inch of the mountains’ curving flanks. There was something about the cliff-face that was bothering him. No matter which angle he viewed it from, he couldn’t quite visualise the way ahead. The cliff itself was a vertical drop of about eight hundred metres with long, ragged cracks running down its entire length. It was solid granite and would hold their protection well, but it was the route itself that looked almost impossible. It was a maze of overhangs and long sections of perfectly smooth rock.

From time to time his vision blurred and for a few moments it would seem as if the rock itself was changing shape. But then he would blink again and it would change back, so that he was left looking at smooth, unpassable sections of rock.

By the time he got back to camp it was late afternoon and his eyes were aching.

There was no sign of Bill. A small fire made from clods of dried yak dung smouldered away by the tent and neat coils of rope were laid out over the fly-sheet. Resting on one of bags were bundles of nuts and friends, while the carabineers had been clipped by size on to slings.

Luca grabbed the battered kettle and shook it, feeling water slosh around inside before balancing it on the corner of the fire. For a moment he looked back at the mountains, his eyes searching for a route. There must be a way through. There just must be.

As he was taking the first sip of his coffee, he heard a commotion coming from over the ridge. With his mug still in his hand, he walked up the path to the first of the village shacks.

Bill was standing there, a rucksack open at his feet and about twenty villagers huddled around him. They had obviously dragged themselves from their huts and stood, some swaying from weakness, with their hands outstretched. Shaking his head, Luca threw his coffee onto the ground and sprinted the remaining distance.

‘Luca,’ his friend said, an expression of guilt spreading across his face.

Luca took in the emaciated figures crowded around him. ‘Tell me you haven’t…?’

‘I couldn’t stand by and let it happen.’

Luca began to say something then fell silent, shaking his head in disbelief. He couldn’t exactly get the antibiotics back again. The damage had been done.

‘Great,’ he said sourly. ‘Really fucking great.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Bill said again. ‘I just couldn’t stand the idea of us sitting healthily in our camp…’

Luca looked at the villagers gathered around them with their hopeful smiles. They held their medicine carefully in the palms of their hands, nodding their heads and giving thanks to these strange newcomers and their gift of healing.

‘But we only had a few courses,’ he sighed. ‘What the hell are you giving the rest of these guys?’

Bill gave a sheepish shrug and looked away.

‘Just a few painkillers. Everyone saw me give the antibiotics out, so I had to give them something. It’s all I could think of and… well, it won’t do them any harm.’

As he spoke, another hand stretched out from the crowd. As Bill doled out two small white pills, finishing the bottle, a movement from the far side of the village caught Luca’s eye. Another figure was striding towards them.

‘Who the hell…?’ he murmured.

She was tall, with two straight curtains of very dark hair framing her face. In contrast to the shuffling forms of the villagers, she moved with the vigour of full health, the hem of her dirt-stained tunic billowing out behind her.

She came close and even beneath the grey scarf that was tied like a surgeon’s mask across her face, the men could tell that she was furious. Strong dark eyebrows were angled low over green eyes that blazed with hostility. She stared from Bill to Luca, then back again. Around them, the crowd fell silent.

Raising her right arm, the woman yanked the scarf down to the neckline of her tunic.

‘What the hell do you think you are doing?’ she asked in English and with only the lightest trace of an accent. Jerking her chin up, she gestured to the bottle Bill was holding.

‘Give me that.’

Bill’s mouth dropped open in surprise as he handed over the empty plastic bottle.

‘You speak English.’

Ignoring him, she glanced at the bottle’s label before looking up again, eyes bright with anger.

‘Nurofen,’ she said. ‘You have got to be kidding me. Have you any idea how irresponsible that is?’

‘I just thought…’

‘No. You didn’t think,’ the woman cut in. ‘This village is riddled with cholera, and here you are handing out painkillers! Don’t you understand, these people actually believe your Western drugs will cure them? All you’re doing is abusing their ignorance.’

‘Hold on a second,’ Luca interrupted, pulling himself together. ‘Bill’s already handed out all our courses of antibiotics — stuff we now don’t have for ourselves. He couldn’t handle disappointing the others so had to give them something.’

The woman gave him a scornful glance. Then, turning to the assembled group of villagers, she spoke quickly in Tibetan, her voice low and emphatic. After a few moments the villagers began to look from her to Bill and Luca, their faces uncertain. As she continued speaking, they started to shake their heads and back off a pace or two, jealously guarding the white pills.

‘Of course they don’t believe me, why would they?’ the woman said, exhaling in frustration. ‘You’ve given them hope, and that’s the first they’ve had of it in a long time. But why do I get the feeling you won’t be around to pick up the pieces when they realise the drugs don’t work?’

‘Look, we didn’t mean any harm,’ Bill protested, his hands raised defensively.

‘That’s what you all say…’ she began, then drifted into silence, shaking her head in disgust. She let the empty bottle fall from her hand and Luca and Bill watched as it rolled a few centimetres on the ground before sticking on a patch of mud. Pulling the scarf back across her mouth, she gave them a final, withering glance before heading back towards the far end of the village. As she left, the crowd started to disperse, a few people staring down at the empty bottle before retreating to the wooden stoops of their homes.

‘Jesus,’ Luca said, his eyes wide. ‘Where the hell did she come from?’

‘I have no idea,’ said Bill, ‘but now I really do feel like an idiot.’

Luca turned to see his friend staring down at the empty bottle, his shoulders slumped.

‘You were only trying to help. Don’t take it to heart. At least a couple of them will be saved by the antibiotics.’

‘Yeah, but…’

As Bill raised his head, the beginnings of a smile crept across Luca’s face.

‘I’ll tell you one thing, though. We’re sure as shit not getting a dinner date out of this.’

Slowly Bill’s expression eased, the tension starting to drain from his face. He glanced back at the hut the woman had entered.

‘Who do you think she is? I mean, she barely even had an accent.’

‘Beats me,’ said Luca. ‘Maybe she’s an aid worker or something. She looked more Nepalese than Tibetan to me. Wherever she’s from, I get the feeling she wasn’t too impressed.’

‘Yeah, well, I was only trying to help,’ Bill muttered. Straightening his shoulders, he turned back towards their campsite.

After a final, curious glance towards the woman’s hut, Luca followed.