"Dan Simmons - On K2 with Kanakaredes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Simmons Dan)

intention of climbing higher than the South Col on Everest. Who would?
At least the view was less tawdry since the Syndicate cleaned up Everest and the South
Col, flying off more than a century's worth of expedition detritusтАФancient fixed ropes,
countless tent tatters, tons of frozen human excrement, about a million abandoned oxyge
bottles, and a few hundred frozen corpses. Everest in the twentieth century had been the
equivalent of the old Oregon TrailтАФeverything that could be abandoned had been,
including climbers' dead friends.
Actually, the view that evening was rather good. The Col drops off to the east for abou
four thousand feet into what used to be Tibet and falls even more sharplyтАФabout seven
thousand feetтАФto the Western Cwm. That evening, the high ridges of Lhotse and the ent
visible west side of Everest caught the rich, golden sunset for long minutes after the Col
moved into shadow and then the temperature at our campsite dropped about a hundred
degrees. There was not, as we outdoors people like to say, a cloud in the sky. The high
peaks glowed in all their eight-thousand-meter glory, snowfields burning orange in the
light. Gary and Paul lay in the open door of the tent, still wearing their therm-skin uppers,
and watched the stars emerge and shake to the hurricane wind as I fiddled and fussed with
the stove to make soup. Life was good. Suddenly an incredibly amplified voice bellowed,
"You there in the tent!"
I almost pissed my thermskins. I did spill the soup, slopping it all over Paul's sleeping
bag.
"Fuck," I said.
"God damn it," said Gary, watching the black CMGтАФits UN markings glowing and
powerful searchlights stabbingтАФsettle gently onto small boulders not twenty feet from th
tent.
"Busted," said Paul.

Hillary Room, Top of the World, 29,035 feet
Two years in an HK floating prison wouldn't have been as degrading as being made to
enter that revolving restaurant on the top of Everest. All three of us protested, Gary the
loudest since he was the oldest and richest, but the four UN security guys in the CMG jus
cradled their standard-issue Uzis and said nothing until the vehicle had docked in the
restaurant airlock-garage and the pressure had been equalized. We stepped out reluctantl
and followed other security guards deeper into the closed and darkened restaurant even
more reluctantly. Our ears were going crazy. One minute we'd been camping at 26,000 fe
and a few minutes later the pressure was the standard airline equivalent of 5,000 feet. It
was painful, despite the UN CMC's attempt to match pressures while it circled the dark hu
of Everest for ten minutes.
By the time we were led into the Hillary Room to the only lighted table in the place, we
were angry and in pain.
"Sit down," said Secretary of State Betty Willard Bright Moon.
We sat. There was no mistaking the tall, sharp-featured Blackfoot woman in the gray
suit. Every pundit agreed that she was the single toughest and most interesting personality
the Cohen Administration, and the four U.S. Marines in combat garb standing in the
shadows behind her only added to her already imposing sense of authority. The three of u
sat, Gary closest to the dark window wall across from Secretary Bright Moon, Paul next to
him, and me farthest away from the action. It was our usual climbing pattern.
On the expensive teak table in front of Secretary Bright Moon were three blue dossiers
couldn't read the tabs on them, but I had little doubt about their contents: Dossier #1, Ga
Sheridan, forty-nine, semi-retired, former CEO of SherPath International, multiple
addresses around the world, made his first millions at age seventeen during the long lost an