by Reginald Bretnor
from "The Timeless Tales of Reginald Bretnor"
selected and edited by Fred Flaxman
© Story Books, 1997
Scott Alan Burgess in "The Work of Reginald Bretnor: An Annotated Bibliography & Guide" (Borgo Press, 1989), writes that "The Man on Top" is "perhaps the author's best-known story." It is certainly one of his most widely republished works. Originally appearing in Esquire in Oct., 1951, it was also printed in Senior Scholastic, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, The 6th Annual Edition of the Year's Best Science Fiction, 14 Great Tales of ESP, 100 Great Science Fiction Short Stories, and several other books and magazines in the U.S., Britain, Australia, Japan and Italy.
Who was the first man to reach the summit of Mount Everest? Barbank, of course. Any school kid can tell you -- highest mountain in the world, 29,141 feet, conquered finally by Geoffrey Barbank. I was forgotten -- I was just the fellow who went along. The press gave him the credit. He was the Man on Top, the Man on the Top of the World.
Only he wasn't, really. He knows that it's a lie. And that hurts -- especially when he thinks of me, and of the Holy Man.
Jealous of Barbank? I don't think I am. And you won't either, presently.
I hated him. A mountain is a quest, a mystery, a challenge to the spirit. Mallory, who died on Everest, knew that -- and his was the best reason for trying to climb it. "Because it is there," he said. But Barbank climbed it to keep some other man from being first on top. He climbed it because he knew no other way of getting there. Mysteries did not exist for him, and anyone who felt the sense of mystery was a fool. All men were fools to Barbank -- or enemies. They had to be.
I found that out the day I joined the expedition in Darjeeling. "The town's in a sweat about some flea-bag Holy Man," he told me after lunch. "Sort of a ten-goal saint, complete with extra supernatural powers. Let's go and look the old fraud over. Might have a bit of fun."
So the two of us walked down from the hotel, and, all the way, he boasted of his plans. I can still see his face, big, cold, rectangular, as he discussed the men who'd tried and failed --
Of course, they'd muffed it. You couldn't climb Everest on the cheap. He'd do things differently. All his equipment was better than the best. Because he had designed it. Because it cost a mint. Because --
It made me angry. But I had come too far to be turned back. I let him talk.
We turned into the compound of a temple. There was a quiet crowd there, squatting in the dust, and many monkeys. By a stone wall, under a huge umbrella, the Holy Man was seated on a woven mat. His long, white hair framed the strangest face I've ever seen -- moon-round, unlined, perfectly symmetrical. His eyes were closed. Against the pale brown skin, his full lips curved upward like the horns of a Turkish bow. It was a statue's face, smiling a statue's smile, utterly serene.
The people seemed waiting for something to begin. As we came through the crowd, it was so still. But Barbank paid no heed. We halted up in front. We stood there in the sun. And he talked on.
"What's more," he said, "I don't intend to bother with filthy Sherpa porters for the upper camps. Planes will drop the stuff. I'm making sure I'll be the man on top."
That set me off. "The Sherpa are brave men," I told him, "good mountaineers. Besides, it's more their mountain than it is ours."
"Rot," he snapped. "They're beasts of burden. There's nothing they can do that a machine can't do better. Natives are all the same." He pointed at the Holy Man. "Now, there's a sample for you. Look at that smirk. Pleased as punch with his own hocus-pocus -- dirt, nakedness, and all. They've made no progress since the Year One."
The Holy Man was naked, or nearly so, but he was clean; his loincloth was spotless white. "Perhaps," I answered, "they're trying for something else?"
And slowly, then, the Holy Man looked up. He spoke to Barbank. "We are," he said.
I flushed, knowing that he had understood.
An instant later, I forgot embarrassment. I met his eyes -- and suddenly the statue came alive. It was as though I had seen only the shell of his serenity, and now I saw its source. I felt that it was born, not in any rejection of the world, but in a knowledge of every human agony and joy -- in a sophistication so complete that it was frightening.
"Yes, we are trying," the Holy Man went on. His voice was beautiful and strangely accented, and there was humor in it, and irony. "But for something else? I do not think so. It is just that we are trying differently, we of the East and West -- and sometimes one cannot succeed without the other."
Pausing, he measured Barbank with those eyes. "That is why I can help you, if you will only ask."
Barbank's mouth curled. "He's heard the gossip down in the bazaar," he said aside. "Well, he won't get a penny out of me."
The smile danced infinitesimally. "Must I explain? There is a thing you do not understand. A mountain is much more than rock and ice -- especially if it is the highest in the world. No man can conquer such a mountain. His conquest can be only of himself."
I shivered. That was what Mallory had said.
"You damned old humbug!" Barbank's laugh roared out. "Are you trying to tell me that you can sit here on your dusty tail and help me reach the top?"
"I think I'd put it differently," the Holy Man replied. His fluid syllables were gently mocking now. "To be precise, I must say this. You never will achieve your heart's desire without my aid. Your way of doing things is not quite good enough."
Barbank's neck reddened. Fists clenched, he advanced a pace. Then he controlled himself. "Oh, isn't it?" he snarled. "Well, come along and watch! I can use one more mangy porter, I suppose. Damn you, you'll have a bird's-eye view!"
The Holy Man raised both his fragile hands. "Thank you -- but no," he said; and his gentle irony cut with a fine, cruel edge. "I'd rather wait for you."
Barbank spat in the dust. He pivoted and strode off, pushing roughly through the murmuring crowd.
It was then I decided that he must never be the Man on Top.
It is a long way from Darjeeling through Tibet to Chomo Lungma, the Mother Goddess of the Snows, which we call Everest. The journey takes some weeks.
We were eleven white men, but we soon found that we were not an expedition in the usual sense. We were Barbank's retainers, walled off by his contempt.
The others left him pretty much alone. I couldn't. The Holy Man's prediction was my obsession now. I took it as my cue, and laid my plans.
At every chance, I talked to Barbank about the mysteries of the peak -- the awful Snow Men, whom the Tibetans all swear exist, and the dark, pulsating, flying things which Smythe had seen. I said that, very possibly, Mallory and Irvine had reached the summit first -- that he might get to be the Man on Top only to find some evidence they'd left. I even suggested that the Sherps might have climbed it long ago. And always I shook my head, quoted the Holy Man, and told him he would fail.
When we reached our Base Camp on the Rongbuk Glacier, I was his enemy, who had to be defeated, cheapened, put to shame. And there was only one way to do that. Though Kenningshaw and Lane were better men, he chose me for the assault. I had to be there, to see the Man on Top with my own eyes.
And that was fine. Because I could only stop Barbank from being first on top by being there -- by being first myself.
We followed the traditional approach -- up the East Rongbuk Glacier and the East Wall of the North Col -- up to Camp Five, five miles above the sea. Below Camp Four, beyond which Barbank would not let them go, the porters gave him endless trouble -- naturally. And, all the way, the mountain laughed at us. Against us, it sent its cruel light cavalry, the wind, the mist, the snow -- harassing us, keeping us constantly aware of deadly forces held in close reserve.
Yet, when Barbank and I and Konningshaw and Lane stood at Camp Five and watched the plane from India trying to drop the final camp higher than any man had camped before, the sky was clear.
We watched the pilot try, and circle, and lose eight separate loads. And then the ninth remained; its grapples held.
"I bought two dozen, all identical," said Barbank. "I told you there's nothing these damn natives do that we can't do better." And we all hated him.
He and I reached Camp Six, at close to 28,000 feet, late the next afternoon. We set the tent up, and weighted it with its own cylinders of oxygen. Silently, we ate supper out of self-heating cans. We crawled into our sleeping bags. Restlessly fighting the subtle, dreadful cold, we finally slept.
We rose before the dawn, and found that the fine weather still held, and that there wasn't even a hint of the monsoon. We breakfasted. We drank our tea. We made ready to set off.
Barbank stood there, on the narrow ledge. He looked at the vast dark mountain, at the broad yellow band beneath the summit pyramid, at the depths of rock and glacial ice below. He looked at me.
"And so I won't succeed in my desire?" he taunted me. "You bloody fool."
Then he turned, and we went up. We mounted to the ridge, and stared down the awful precipice of the South Face, down, down, 15,000 feet to the Nepal hills. We worked our way toward the second step, where Mallory and Irvine were last seen. Though the great swords of the wind were sheathed that day, its small, keen lancets thrust through all our clothes down to our flowing blood. What snow there was was dazzling, the sky was an appalling blue, and the summit was a hidden thing behind its plume of cloud.
Toward that plume we worked. Even with oxygen, it was pure agony. Up there, the air is thin, thin, thin. The thinness of the air is in your flesh and bones, and in your brain. You move, and pause, and try to move again. And presently your whole attention is confined to that next move.
I can remember certain things. The sense of danger on the second step, the fear that it might prove unclimbable. Barbank stopping to rub the circulation back into his hands. The hiss of oxygen. My own raw throat. The rising wind. The skyline snow peaks off across Tibet.
On such a mountain, physically, there can be no question over who shall lead. But morally there can. I can remember husbanding my strength, giving Barbank a drudging minimum of aid, and waiting for my opportunity. I can remember Barbank weakening, relinquishing the lead high on a summit slab. I can remember the look in Barbank's eyes--
The hours had dragged. My watch had lied. Eight and nine, and ten. I moved. I ached. I forced myself to try and move again. Endlessly.
Then, without warning, the plume enfolded us. Now it was small, wind-shredded, tenuous. The Top of the World was 50 feet away.
I realized it. I knew that I would be the Man on Top, that I had Barbank where I wanted him. And suddenly I stopped. I don't know why. I laughed aloud. I waved him on. He passed by, hating me. I followed him.
He reached the summit edge. He turned his head. I could not see his lips, but I could feel their curl of triumph and their contempt. He turned again--
And, as he turned, a single gust screamed past us and laid the summit bare. I saw its rock. I saw a wide depression packed with snow.
But in the center there was no snow at all, for it had melted. On his woven mat, naked and serene, the Holy Man was waiting there.
Slowly, his moon-round face looked up. He smiled upon us with his statue's smile. His soft syllables flowed through the frozen air.
In that tone of pleased surprise with which one welcomes an unexpected guest, he spoke to Barbank. "How did you get up here?"
Barbank staggered. A strange sound came from his leather mask. Automatically, his arm came up and pointed -- at the harsh summit, the ridge, the slabs, at all those miles of rock and ice and snow.
The Holy Man lifted both his hands. His gesture was exquisite, polite, incredulous. I could have sworn that in his voice there was no irony.
"You mean," he said, "you walked?"
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