Escape from Kathmandu (3 page)

So, Phil had his way, and we set up a tiny blind in the upper valley to the west of the one I had made the sighting in. We spent several nights up in an oak tree, and saw a lot of Himalayan spotted deer, and some monkeys at dawn. Phil should have been pleased, but he only got sullen. It occurred to me from some of his mutterings that he had hoped all along to find the yeti; he had come craving that big discovery.

And one night it happened. The moon was gibbous, and thin clouds let most of its light through. About two hours before dawn I was in a doze, and Adrakian elbowed me. Wordlessly he pointed at the far side of a small pool in the stream.

Shadows in shadows, shifting. A streak of moonlight on the water—then, silhouetted above it, an upright figure. For a moment I saw its head clearly, a tall, oddly shaped, furry skull. It looked almost human.

I wanted to shout a warning; instead I shifted my weight on the platform. It creaked very slightly, and instantly the figure was gone.

“Idiot!” Phil whispered. In the moonlight he looked murderous. “I’m going after him!” He jumped out of the tree and pulled what I assumed was a tranquilizer pistol from his down jacket.

“You can’t find anything out there at night!” I whispered, but he was gone. I climbed down and took off after him—with what purpose I wasn’t sure.

Well, you know the forest at night. Not a chance of seeing animals, or of getting around very easily, either. I have to give it to Adrakian—he was fast, and quiet. I lost him immediately, and after that only heard an occasional snapped branch in the distance. More than an hour passed, and I was only wandering through the trees. The moon had set and the sky was about halfway to dawn light when I returned to the stream.

I rounded a big boulder that stood on the bank and almost ran straight into a yeti coming the other way, as if we were on a busy sidewalk and had veered the same direction to avoid each other. He was a little shorter than me; dark fur covered his body and head, but left his face clear—a patch of pinkish skin that in the dim light looked quite human. His nose was as much human as primate—broad, but protruding from his face—like an extension of the occipital crest that ridged his skull fore-to-aft. His mouth was broad and his jaw, under its ruff of fur, very broad—but nothing that took him outside the parameters of human possibility. He had thick eyebrow crests bent high over his eyes, so that he had a look of permanent surprise, like a cat I once owned.

At this moment I’m sure he really was surprised. We both were as still as trees, swaying gently in the wind of our confrontation—but no other movement. I wasn’t even breathing. What to do? I noticed he was carrying a small smoothed stick, and there in the fur on his neck were some objects on a cord. His face—tools—ornamentation: a part of me, the part outside the shock of it all, was thinking (I suppose I am still a zoologist at heart),
They aren’t just primates, they’re hominid
.

As if to confirm this idea, he spoke to me. He hummed briefly; squeaked; sniffed the air hard a few times; lifted his lip (quite a canine was revealed) and whistled, very softly. In his eyes there was a question, so calmly, gently, and intelligently put forth that I could hardly believe I couldn’t understand and answer it.

I raised my hand, very slowly, and tried to say “Hello.” I know, stupid, but what do you say when you meet a yeti? Anyway, nothing came out but a strangled “Huhn.”

He tilted his head to the side inquisitively, and repeated the sound. “Huhn. Huhn. Huhn.”

Suddenly he jacked his head forward and stared past me, upstream. He opened his mouth wide and stood there listening. He stared at me, trying to judge me. (I swear I could tell these things!)

Upstream there was a crash of branches, and he took me by the arm and wham, we were atop the stream bank and in the forest. Hoppety-hop through the trees and we were down on our bellies behind a big fallen log, lying side-by-side in squishy wet moss. My arm hurt.

Phil Adrakian appeared down in the streambed, looking considerably the worse for wear. He’d scraped through some brush and torn the nylon of his down jacket in several places, so that fluffy white down wafted away from him as he walked. And he’d fallen in mud somewhere. The yeti squinted hard as he looked at him, clearly mystified by the escaping down.

“Nathan!” Phil cried. “Naaaa—thannnn!” He was still filled with energy, it seemed. “I saw one! Nathan, where are you, dammit!” He continued downstream, yelling, and the yeti and I lay there and watched him pass by.

I don’t know if I’ve ever experienced a more satisfying moment.

When he had disappeared around a bend in the stream, the yeti sat up and sprawled back against the log like a tired backpacker. The sun rose, and he only squeaked, whistled, breathed slowly, watched me. What was he thinking? At this point I didn’t have a clue. It was even frightening me; I couldn’t imagine what might happen next.

His hands, longer and skinnier than human hands, plucked at my clothes. He plucked at his own necklace, pulled it up over his head. What looked like fat seashells were strung on a cord of braided hemp. They were fossils, of shells very like scallop shells—evidence of the Himalayas’ days underwater. What did the yeti make of them? No way of knowing. But clearly they were valued, they were part of a culture.

For a long time he just looked at this necklace of his. Then, very carefully, he placed this necklace over my head, around my neck. My skin burned in an instant flush, everything blurred through tears, my throat hurt—I felt just like God had stepped from behind a tree and blessed me, and for no reason, you know? I didn’t deserve it.

Without further ado he hopped up and walked off bowleggedly, without a glance back. I was left alone in the morning light with nothing except for the necklace, which hung solidly on my chest. And a sore arm. So it
had
happened, I hadn’t dreamed it. I had been blessed.

When I had collected my wits I hiked downstream and back to camp. By the time I got there the necklace was deep in one of my down jacket’s padded pockets, and I had a story all worked out.

Phil was already there, chattering to the entire group. “There you are!” he shouted. “Where the hell were you? I was beginning to think they had gotten you!”

“I was looking for you,” I said, finding it very easy to feign irritation. “Who’s this
they
?”

“The yeti, you fool! You saw him too, don’t deny it! And I followed him and saw him again, up the river there.”

I shrugged and looked at him dubiously. “I didn’t see anything.”

“You weren’t in the right place! You should have been with me.” He turned to the others. “We’ll shift the camp up there for a few days, very quietly. It’s an unprecedented opportunity!”

Valerie was nodding, Armaat was nodding, even Sarah looked convinced. The botanists looked happy to have some excitement.

I objected that moving that many people upvalley would be difficult, and disruptive to whatever life was up there. And I suggested that what Phil had seen was a bear. But Phil wasn’t having it. “What I saw had a big occipital crest, and walked upright. It was a yeti.”

So despite my protests, plans were made to move the camp to the high valley and commence an intensive search for the yeti. I didn’t know what to do. More protests from me would only make it look suspiciously like I had seen what Phil had seen. I have never been very clever at thinking up subterfuges to balk the plans of others; that’s why I left the university in the first place.

I was at my wit’s end when the weather came through for me with an early monsoon rainstorm. It gave me an idea. The watershed for our valley was big and steep, and one day’s hard rain, which we got, would quickly elevate the level of water in our river. We had to cross the bridge before we could start up the three high valleys, and we had to cross two more to get back out to the airstrip.

So I had my chance. In the middle of the night I snuck out and went down to the bridge. It was the usual village job: piles of big stones on each bank, supporting the three half logs of the span. The river was already washing the bottom of the stone piles, and some levering with a long branch collapsed the one on our shore. It was a strange feeling to ruin a bridge, one of the most valuable human works in the Himalayas, but I went at it with a will. Quickly the logs slumped and fell away from each other, and the end of the downstream one floated away. It was easy enough to get the other two under way as well. Then I snuck back into camp and into bed.

And that was that. Next day I shook my head regretfully at the discovery, and mentioned that the flooding would be worse downstream. I wondered if we had enough food to last through the monsoon, which of course we didn’t; and another hour’s hard rain was enough to convince Armaat and Valerie and the botanists that the season was up. Phil’s shrill protests lost out, and we broke camp and left the following morning, in a light mist that turned to brilliant wet sunshine by noon. But by then we were well downtrail, and committed.

There you have it, Freds. Are you still reading? I lied to, concealed data from, and eventually scared off the expedition of old colleagues that hired me. But you can see I had to do it. There is a creature up there, intelligent and full of peace. Civilization would destroy it. And that yeti who hid with me—somehow he
knew
I was on their side. Now it’s a trust I’d give my life to uphold, really. You can’t betray something like that.

On the hike back out, Phil continued to insist he had seen a yeti, and I continued to disparage the idea, until Sarah began to look at me funny. And I regret to report that she and Phil became friendly once again as we neared J—, and the end of our hike out. Maybe she felt sorry for him, maybe she somehow knew that I was acting in bad faith. I wouldn’t doubt it; she knew me pretty well. But it was depressing, whatever the reason. And nothing to be done about it. I had to conceal what I knew, and lie, no matter how much it screwed up that friendship, and no matter how much it hurt. So when we arrived at J—, I said good-bye to them all. I was pretty sure that the funding difficulties endemic in zoology would keep them away for a good long time to come, so that was okay. As for Sarah—well—damn it… a bit reproachfully I said farewell to her. And I hiked back to Kathmandu rather than fly, to get away from her, and work things off a bit.

The nights on this hike back have been so long that I finally decided to write this, to occupy my mind. I hoped writing it all down would help, too; but the truth is, I’ve never felt lonelier. It’s been a comfort to imagine you going nuts over my story—I can just see you jumping around the room and shouting “YOU’RE KIDDING!” at the top of your lungs, like you used to. I hope to fill you in on any missing details when I see you in person this fall in Kathmandu. Till then—

your friend, Nathan.

Well, blow my mind. When I finished reading that letter all I could say was “Wow.” I went back to the beginning and started to reread the whole thing, but quickly skipped ahead to the good parts. A meeting with the famed Abominable Snowman! What an event! Of course all this Nathan guy had managed to get out was “Huhn.” But the circumstances were unusual, and I suppose he did his best.

I’ve always wanted to meet a yeti myself. Countless mornings in the Himal I’ve gotten up in the light before dawn and wandered out to take a leak and see what the day was going to be like, and almost every time, especially in the high forests, I’ve looked around and wondered if that twitch at the corner of my sleep-crusted eye wasn’t something abominable, moving.

It never had been, so far as I know. And I found myself a bit envious of this Nathan and his tremendous luck. Why had this yeti, member of the shyest race in Central Asia, been so relaxed with him? It was a mystery to consider as I went about in the next few days, doing my business. And I wished I could do more than that, somehow. I checked the Star’s register to look for both Nathan and George Fredericks, and found Nathan’s perfect little signature back in mid-June, but no sign of George, or Freds, as Nathan called him. The letter implied they would both be around this fall, but where?

Then I had to ship some Tibetan carpets to the States, and my company wanted me to clear three “videotreks” with the Ministry of Tourism, at the same time that Central Immigration decided I had been in the country long enough; and dealing with these matters, in the city where mailing a letter can take you all day, made me busy indeed. I almost forgot about it.

But when I came into the Star late one sunny blue afternoon and saw that some guy had gone berserk at the mail rack, had taken it down and scattered the poor paper corpses all over the first flight of stairs, I had a feeling I might know what the problem was. I was startled, maybe even a little guilty-feeling, but not at all displeased. I squashed the little pang of guilt and stepped past the two clerks, who were protesting in rapid Nepali. “Can I help you find something?” I said to the distraught person who had wreaked the havoc.

He straightened up and looked me straight in the eye. Straight-shooter, all the way. “I’m looking for a friend of mine who usually stays here.” He wasn’t panicked yet, but he was close. “The clerks say he hasn’t been here in a year, but I sent him a letter this summer, and it’s gone.”

Contact! Without batting an eye I said, “Maybe he dropped by and picked it up without checking in.”

He winced like I’d stuck a knife in him. He looked about like what I had expected from his epic: tall, upright, dark-haired. He had a beard as thick and fine as fur, neatly trimmed away from the neck and below the eyes—just about a perfect beard, in fact. That beard and a jacket with leather elbows would have got him tenure at any university in America.

But now he was seriously distraught, though he was trying not to show it. “I don’t know how I’m going to find him, then…”

“Are you sure he’s in Kathmandu?”