The Edge by Roland Smith Page B

him, which I didn’t want to do. I turned back to the cliff. I knew it wasn’t a race, but I really wanted to get there before Rafe.
    I set a brutal pace, and by the time I got there, I was panting like a dog. A tree was being fed by a spring about ten yards across. The water was deep. If Ethan had been there, he’d have been swimming. If I could swim, I’d have been swimming. I got down on my knees.
    â€œDon’t drink the water.”
    I nearly fell in. Zopa was sitting on the far side in plain sight, but he had been so still when I walked up, I hadn’t seen him.
    He laughed. “Where was your mind?”
    â€œAnd where were you this morning?” I snapped back, a little ticked off at being startled.
    â€œHere waiting for you,” Zopa answered calmly. “How is Ethan?”
    â€œHe won’t be climbing for a few days. Cindy is staying in camp with him. Don’t you sleep?”
    â€œNot in the way you do.”
    Big surprise. I didn’t recall seeing him sleep on Everest, either. But a lot of people don’t sleep on Everest. Not enough oxygen.
    â€œWe’re spending the night here. Did you bring your gear?”
    Zopa shrugged.
    â€œDid you bring the camel and donkey?”
    Zopa nodded.
    â€œHow did you know that this was where we would be?”
    This elicited another shrug. In other words, he wasn’t going to tell me, or else he didn’t know why he had come here.
    â€œWe’re using our portaledges to make a mountain on the cliff face,” I told him. “It will look like a Christmas tree lit up at night.”
    I was pretty sure Buddhists didn’t celebrate Christmas and wondered if Zopa even knew what a Christmas tree was.
    â€œCome around here,” he said. “You are shouting.”
    I wasn’t shouting, but it probably sounded like it to Zopa, who rarely raised his voice above a whisper that you could somehow hear twenty feet away. I walked around the spring and sat down next to him.
    â€œIs the water really bad?”
    â€œI drank a little a few hours ago, and I’m waiting to find out. I think it is probably good, but I would give it more time.”
    â€œSo if you start puking, we shouldn’t drink the water.”
    â€œCorrect. But you can take your boots off and soak your feet. You will need your feet the next few days.”
    My feet were in pretty good shape from walking around New York with the twins, and I had brought my best hiking boots and climbing shoes. I took my boots off, stripped off my socks, and put my feet in the pool. It was shockingly cold.
    â€œSnowmelt from higher up,” Zopa said. He pointed to the pockmarked cliff face. “The caves are all shallow. They go nowhere. No escape.”
    â€œEscape from what?”
    Zopa shrugged.
    â€œHow do you know they’re shallow?” The caves started two hundred feet up from the base. It was impossible to see into them from the ground.
    Zopa pointed. “Look.”
    It took me a while, but I finally spotted the silver anchors glinting in the sun. There must have been thirty or forty—the cliff face was peppered with them.
    â€œYou set all those anchors?” Which was kind of a stupid question, because who else would have set them? I was amazed that one person could explore the caves and set that many anchors by himself in a single day, or a half a day.
    â€œI assumed that Ethan is a good climber,” Zopa said, ignoring the question. “I was worried after his report about the condition of the rock. I found some good rock. Solid. Good anchors.”
    â€œYou should have waited. It wasn’t safe.”
    â€œIt’s not safe to climb skyscrapers in New York on your own either.”
    My former pastime. I didn’t know that Zopa even knew about this. Sun-jo must have told him.
    â€œI don’t do that anymore.”
    â€œI am happy to hear this. Who wants to die falling onto a busy street? I set the