Sherpas
Catch-up service:
Take Me To the Untamed Places: My first poem on here. Does what it says on the tin
Ears - A Mongol warrior reluctantly administers the Khan’s orders
Forty-One Paces from God - Two Jewish girls encounter revelation underneath the Wailing Wall
Echoes leap between the rocks, spectral mountain goats pirouetting in the gloom. Down here, walls are craggy carbuncles that knock shadows of sound at obtuse angles. Behind us I hear the first wave of our expedition gasping for breath, swallowing the sulphurous air and struggling not to gag. Footsteps splash against the damp rock, ungainly as mallards splatting webbed feet on dry land. Some lean back to take deeper breaths, but are overcome by a wave of nausea as they see the spiralling vaulted roof. Vertigo in reverse.
On entering each new cave, we make way for the Clappers and wait for their indication of the safest spots to tread. If we are lucky they will help us avoid loose sheets of scree, brittle rocks bridges and the fibrous caltrops lain by giant centipedes that discard their barbed rear ends. They listen for the contours of the cave and daub a fluorescent paste - three parts fungi to one part juvenile salamander - along their chosen path. I lead the rest of the Sherpas along the ridge in single file, our explorers tottering behind us.
We have been down here for months. Professor Fairbrother has been lost for several days.
He had set off down the left-hand tunnel.
“I can hear the chorus.” Always a statement of fact, of observation, hiding the momentum of his movement. “I appreciate your ears are not as finely tuned as mine, but that’s not your place on this mission. You can count yourself fortunate that I am the leading authority in the field of subterranean harmonics. Trust my professional hunch. I shall head this way, find the Music Makers and then meet you at the other end of the tunnel.” He conducted the group with one hand while clasping his daguerreotype camera in the crook of his left elbow. “I’m convinced that this left hand tunnel loops around to a great orchestral mating chamber, whereas the other should lead the rest of the expedition down to the exit.”
He was hungry for acclaim, not discovery. We were content to let him go and make his discovery or be consumed by it. As Sherpas that is our role.
In my life I have touched the dome of the world and scraped the floor of abyssal plains, shivered under pack ice, depleted my oxygen to brain-purpling degrees and teetered over lethal depths. In front of every Great Man, there is a team and at the head of that team is a group of Sherpas. I have been on enough missions, quests and scientific expeditions that my skin is impervious to many forms of venom, my back a ribbed patchwork of scar tissue. Over centuries my family have grown to rely on a lung capacity that can conjure sustenance from the thinnest air particles. I have accompanied learned, hubristic, brave and vaulting men and women of natural philosophy to the doorsteps of dragons and ogres, writhing world snakes and infinitesimal faerie kingdoms. If you desire to poke your face through the gossamer curtain into the other-worldly then you must pay your price to the guide. We will take you to the edge of existence, ensuring you have a hearty meal and a warm pot of tea prepared for your arrival. Whether you make it back is your own business.
*******
We establish a camp at the exit of the right-hand tunnel. I oversee the erection of a robust tepee made from treated aurochs skin, the tarpaulin double-tanned for waterproofing. Soon two of my sons return with our dinner, speared cave scorpions. The claws are a delicacy when pickled, but even roasted over a fire they have a piquancy which is rare on my travels. That is the one advantage of these journeys under the ground. So much of the fauna is untouched by man’s influence that it provides an entire gastronomic universe to be explored. Jammy lichen, double-headed caterpillars that alternate salty and sweet depending on which segment of their body is consumed, blind moles - filleted - whose flanks taste of sweetbreads, with sunburst noses that pop with leathery spice, squeaking as we chew every last drop of flavour.
As itinerant workers we have to take the enjoyment where we can: licking the purest ice water from mountain peaks, chipping chemical deposits from underwater vents to be dried and smoked when above the surface, collecting the bones of old Sherpas who could not complete their travels; some to bury, others to turn into stock.
The window for the Professor to meet us is shrinking. We have spent so long in the cave system that our lungs risk permanent damage from the vents releasing noxious gases. There is little chance of him fetching the images that he craves, but that is his problem. The enormous spiralling shells of the Music Makers will reflect the light generated from his camera, making any attempt at capturing an image a pointless folly. No Society of Natural Philosophy will accept the empty spearmint tundra of an over-exposed slate. This new type of men who have emerged, that seek to classify and tabulate the mysteries of the world, fail to understand that these beasts are not there to garland an empirical argument proclaimed over tusks of brandy and buckwheat cigars. They are to be respected, admired, vaunted with sacrifice and feared.
We only lead our new employers to these places as the riches they offer are so grand and the penalties they threaten so dire. They wish to be masters of the world, no matter what the price. These men and women believe that to catalogue and categorise is to cast dominion over beasts and plants, but they rule them in this way in the same way that a blanket rules the rock it has been lain over.
I nod to my fellow Sherpa leaders: Arthanian, Xarad and Diluth. Each of us feels our skull prickle in a way that suggest it is time to give the exploration party their final call before we turn back and retrace our steps for the surface. We know not to take any more time in this place than is strictly necessary and nothing can compound us to stay a moment more than we should.
I throw a pot onto the fire, hissing snakes of steam roll away into evaporated nothingness. Our well-drilled team of twelve begins to break down the encampment, ready to move within ten minutes, the kata of packing and unpacking supplies stored in our muscle memory. Fairbrother’s assistant eyes us with disdain and frustration, our schedule not matching hers.
“The Professor is not yet returned.”
“That is his choice, not ours. We do not keep to your schedule, we keep to the timetable of the beasts and their environments. If you cannot manage then…”
“I do not require a lecture on your services. I am well aware of what you provide and the style in which you dress up basic tracking. We are here at the Professor’s prerogative. I say we stay.”
“Madame Andstrom, no one may compel a Sherpa to do anything that impinges upon the survival of the clan.”
She reaches to her side and flashes a steely pistol.
“Regrettably if you must shoot some of us to make our point, then that is your decision. Although I would advise that your chances of making it out of this labyrinth without our direction may prove tricky in the circumstances.”
There is enough bluster bubbling underneath her arrogance that she lowers the barrel of the gun. A cog turns within her and she raises it to her head.
“I understand your code prevents you from allowing harm to come to a customer whom you accompany on a journey. Stay or I will be forced to pull the trigger.”
I lock eyes with Xarad, the oldest of the Sherpas. He shrugs, the creased ripples of his shoulders speaking simple truths to me. “There is no harm in indulging this woman. We try not to abandon our charges, but if they come to harm from their own pride, that is there mistake.”
I nod towards Xarad who returns the gesture. Turning back to the Andstrom I place my palms towards her. She lowers the gun in correspondence.
“We will stay until he arrives. He will arrive.” The tremble in her voice suggests that she, too, is acting out of fear before duty and greed above all. Her display of force comes from a notion of what ought to be done and how staff ought to be talked to. But we are not gardeners who can be intimidated into another hour forking at the dung heap.
“At least, madame, let us strike the camp fully, so that when the Professor emerges we are able to exit at speed.”
She nod at us, chin first, and we begin untethering bivouacs, dousing the rest of the fires, attaching crampons to our shoes and testing climbing gear. She returns to her logbook, lighting a cigarillo with a trained flick of the wrist before craning over he makeshift desk to examine drawings and photographs of her journey.
We are interrupted by a crashing dissonance. The sound of metal under enormous stress, harmonics cascading from unexpected angles, flattened sixths and diminished elevenths crumpling into each other, a furious cacophony. The Music Makers are hunting. My instinct tells me that if they have been disturbed by Fairbrother then the calls we would hear would be more playful, bucking triplets trilling through the cave system as they toss him in the air. These arrhythmic, metallic calls barrack us into a corner. It is a sound to make eyes water and teeth chatter. I look again at Xarad and he is unmoved. It is either the composure erected upon experience or he is determined to maintain stoicism in the face of the assistant’s provocation.
We feel the bass note first, a descending rumble that buzzes from our voice box to our diaphragm to our testicles, three deep painful vibrations. The note transforms into a shockwave. A tussocky shadow on the tunnel wall morphs into the enormous shape which is casting it. Armour plates grind against each other, cruel harmonies singing from the shell. They are trying to turn, to crawl back up a tunnel which they have outgrown. Shell grinds against the quartzite walls. The only thing saving us is the size of the creatures as they try to force their shell back against the roof of the tunnel, like a maddened soldier trying to slide a bullet back into a rifle.
Against all probability, a tiny shape emerges from the tunnel. The authoritative, academic posture of Professor Fairbrother has transformed into a scuttling daddy longlegs. He is crazed with adrenaline and fear, wide-eyed with the zeal of a man who has captured nature. He has his picture. He has survived the encounter. And in one arm he is cradling one of the Music Maker’s eggs.
Iridescent light pulses from the egg. Even at this distance I can see the bird-like blue-black shape rolling inside, its soft shell chirruping tiny arpeggios to itself. The Professor trips and the egg falls from his grasp, the gelatinous shell cracking as it strikes the floor. An instinctive tinny roar from the mothers blankets the cave. Their child is too young to survive. It is still ferocious. Acting upon instinct, the premature Music Maker envelops the Professor. It feeds. Doubling in size, but on unstable and unreliable creepers, the spawn zigzags towards our encampment.
I look to Xarad, but he has already fled. Timing, as a Sherpa, is everything. Now I have learned that there are two timetables: the one you tell the client and the one your keep for yourself. I am desperately trying to scramble towards the direction that Xarad’s impeccable timetable has taken him. I remember the old joke: two Sherpas out in the wilds. They hear a vicious roar. One runs, while another takes the time to do up his shoelaces. “What are you doing?” Asks the first. “There is no time.” His partner replies. “Don’t worry. I don’t need to outrun the beast. I only need to outrun you.” Xarad spread the wings of his stoicism to include me. Survival above all, so you may lead a new master to the edge of the abyss on another day. If he has outrun me, then I must outstrip our employers.
Pinballing from foothold to foothold, I race to find an exit. The voracious Music Maker foetus crawls at unnerving speed along the floor, driven by an instinct to feed that has been activated too early. It consumes three more members of the expedition, but in hunting them down it has left ugly gashes in its flank, the protective shell it relies upon still half-formed. Every cry of pain it lets out causes its mother to grind backwards again her tunnel. There is an aching sound, the sound of the earth itself groaning. The cave begins to collapse. Ancestral instinct kicks in as my hands and feet clasp to the rock, overriding my imagination which tries to convince me that the phantom ticks and scratches at my ankle are creepers ready to pull me to my death. Beneath me is devestation. The rotating adult Music Makers are causing the tunnel to collapse. They are singing songs of structure, attempting to use soundwaves to maintain the intergrity of the tunnel, but it is futile. Their anger and protective instinct damns everyone beneath them. The last I see is the body of a beast acting as a stopper for a giant bottle of wine that shall never be uncorked.