"Gores, Joe - Kirinyaga" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gores Joe)

louse, aren't you?"
"Listen, Hamlin, any fears you might have that I'll get Morna
away from you are purely make-believe. Just for the effect. But
this mountain is real. Take the boy back down tomorrow. His
sickness gives you a good excuse."
"While you stay up here? Mighty mountaineer turning back the
lowly actor because the mountain is too dangerous for him? No,
thank you."
"For Pete's sake," said Kendrick in a pained voice.
He went back inside. Perkins was lying on one of the bunks
with a forearm over his eyes. Kendrick knew the symptoms of
oxygen starvation vividly himselfheadache, loss of appetite,
nausea, vomiting. But he also knew Perkins, hero-worshipping all
the way, would struggle up the peaks if Hamlin didunless he
could deflect the youngster himself. Hamlin couldn't very well try
it alone.
"That film you saw of Hamlin climbing," he told Perkins. "That
was me. Hamlin's no better climber than you are, doesn't know a
damned thing about any really tricky rock or ice-work. Standard
III, maybe. You'll be facing Standard V pitches up there, and ice
and snow."
Perkins sat up, swung his feet to the floor. He said, hesitantly,
"You're saying we'd be fools to go on?"
"Bloody fools. Rest here the night and head down in the morn-
ing. Will you do that?"
Perkins finally nodded. He looked very ill. Kendrick stood up.
"I'll spend the night at Two-Tarn Hut," he said. "Neither Ham-
lin nor I would be comfortable if I dossed here."
He settled into the shabby wooden hut that crouched near the
bleak shore of Hut Tarn well before dark. He found himself fight-
ing a vague uneasiness. He finally isolated it: Hamlin wouldn't be
fool enough to try for the peaks alone, would he?
Golden sunlight slanted through the window to wake him. It
was late, nearly 6:00 A.M. Kendrick yawned, sat up, began pulling
on layers of clothing. The hut was icy. When he opened the door,
the dazzling white and black peaks towered starkly above, surely
close enough to touch across the miles of snow and icefields flank-
ing the glaciers.
Kendrick hurriedly lighted the primus and set water heating in
the sufuria. Amazing to get a window of weather this far into the
season, he ought to make the most of it. He poured boiling, water
over the tea leaves, sugar and dried milk in his cup, and to the
remainder in the sufuria added white corn meal, dried milk, and
salt to make ugali. Porter's rations, that, not European fare; but
he could subsist on ten pounds of food a week up here.
He ate at the window. As he had thought. Already wisps of
cloud were forming in the cleavage between Nelion and Batian,
where the Diamond glacier sparkled. The cloud falling on the ice
made it gray and cold-looking. Kirinyaga's usual rainy season
tricks. Sunshine, then