"Maybe that's why I got out," I said. And I had to stop myself from going further. How could I say that he was corrupted by the tremendous job pressures in the field to the point where he'd do anything to make a reputation, without the argument getting ugly? Impossible. And Sarah would be upset with me. I only sighed. "What about the subject animal?"

Valerie said indignantly, "They'd trank it, study it, put it back in its environment. Maybe keep one in captivity, where it would live a lot more comfortably than in the wild."

Total corruption. Even the botanists looked uncomfortable with that one.

"I don't think we have to worry," Armaat said with his sly smile. "The beast is supposed to be nocturnal." -Because Phil had shown no enthusiasm for night blinds, you see.

"Exactly why I'm starting a high-valley night blind," Phil snapped, tired of Armaat's needling. "Nathan, I'll need you to come along and help set it up."

"And find the way," I said. The others continued to argue, Sarah taking my position, or at least something sympathetic to it; I retired, worried about the figure in the shadows I had seen that day. Phil watched me suspiciously as I left.

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 a.s.sumed 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 pa.s.sed, 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 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 "h.e.l.lo." 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 sc.r.a.ped 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 pa.s.s 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 seash.e.l.ls were strung on a cord of braided hemp. They were fossils, of sh.e.l.ls very like scallop sh.e.l.ls-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 G.o.d 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 had happened, I hadn't dreamed it. I had been blessed. 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 h.e.l.l 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 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 sh.o.r.e. 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 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. 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-d.a.m.n 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 III.

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 circ.u.mstances 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?"

"He's supposed to be. He's joining a big climb in two weeks. But he always stays here!"

"Sometimes it's full. Maybe he had to go somewhere else."

"Yeah, that's true." Suddenly he came out of his distraction enough to notice he was talking to me, and his clear, gray-green eyes narrowed as he examined me.

"George Fergusson," I said, and stuck out my hand. He tried to crush it, but I resisted just in time.

"My name's Nathan Howe. Funny about yours," he said without a smile. "I'm looking for a George Fredericks."

"Is that right! What a coincidence." I started picking up all the Star's bent mail. "Well, maybe I can help you. I've had to find friends in Kathmandu before-it's not easy, but it can be done."

"Yeah?" It was like I'd thrown him a lifebuoy; what was his problem?

"Sure. If he's going on a climb he's had to go to Central Immigration to buy the permits for it. And on the permits you have to write down your local address. I've spent too many hours at C. I., and have some friends there. If we slip them a couple hundred rupees baksheesh they'll look it up for us."

"Fantastic!" Now he was Hope Personified, actually quivering with it. "Can we go now?" I saw that his heartthrob, the girlfriend of The Unscrupulous One, had had him pegged; he was an idealist, and his ideas shined through him like the mantle of a Coleman lantern gleaming through the gla.s.s. Only a blind woman wouldn't have been able to tell how he felt about her; I wondered how this Sarah had felt about him.

I shook my head. "It's past two-closed for the day." We got the rack back on the wall, and the clerks returned to the front desk. "But there's a couple other things we can try, if you want." Nathan nodded, stuffing mail as he watched me. "Whenever I try to check in here and it's full, I just go next door. We could look there."

"Okay," said Nathan, completely fired up. "Let's go."

So we walked out of the Star and turned right to investigate at the Lodge Pheasant-or Lodge Pleasant-the sign is ambiguous on that point.

Sure enough, George Fredericks had been staying there. Checked out that very morning, in fact. "Oh my G.o.d no," Nathan cried, as if the guy had just died. Panic time was really getting close.

"Yes," the clerk said brightly, pleased to have found the name in his thick book. "He is go on trek."

"But he's not due to leave here for two weeks!" Nathan protested.

"He's probably off on his own first," I said. "Or with friends."

That was it for Nathan. Panic, despair; he had to go sit down. I thought about it. "If he was flying out, I heard all of RNAC's flights to the mountains were canceled today. So maybe he came back in and went to dinner. Does he know Kathmandu well?"

Nathan nodded glumly. "As well as anybody."

"Let's try the Old Vienna Inn, then."

IV.

In the blue of early evening Thamel was jumping as usual. Lights snapped on in the storefronts that opened on the street, and people were milling about. Big Land Rovers and little Toyota taxis forged through the crowd abusing their horns; cows in the street chewed their cud and stared at it all with expressions of faint surprise, as if they'd been magically zipped out of a pasture just seconds before.

Nathan and I walked single file against the storefronts, dodging bikes and jumping over the frequent puddles. We pa.s.sed carpet shops, climbing outfitters, restaurants, used bookstores, trekking agents, hotels, and souvenir stands, and as we made our way we turned down a hundred offers from the young men of the street: "Change money?" "No." "Smoke dope?" "No." "Buy a nice carpet?" "No." "Good hash!" "No." "Change money?" "No." Long ago I had simplified walking in the neighborhood, and just said "No" to everyone I pa.s.sed. "No, no, no, no, no, no, no." Nathan had a different method that seemed to work just as well or better, because the hustlers didn't think I was negative enough; he would nod politely with that straight-shooter look, and say "No, thank you," and leave them open-mouthed in the street.

We pa.s.sed K.C.'s, threaded our way through "Times Square," a crooked intersection with a perpetual traffic jam, and started down the street that led out of Thamel into the rest of Kathmandu. Two merchants stood in the doorway of their shop, singing along with a ca.s.sette of Pink Floyd's The Wall The Wall. "We don't need no education, we don't need no thought control." I almost got run over by a bike. Where the street widened and the paving began, I pushed a black goat to one side, and we leaped over a giant puddle into a tunnellike hall that penetrated one of the ramshackle street-side buildings. In the hall, turn left up scuzzy concrete stairs. "Have you been here before?" I asked Nathan.

"No, I always go to K.C.'s or Red Square." He looked as though he wasn't sorry, either.

At the top of the stairs we opened the door, and stepped into the Austro-Hungarian Empire. White tablecloths, paneled part.i.tions between deep booths, red wallpaper in a fleur-de-lis pattern, plush upholstery, tasteful kitschy lamps over every table; and, suffusing the air, the steamy pungent smell of sauerkraut and goulash. Strauss waltzes on the box. Except for the faint honking from the street below, it was absolutely the real item.

"My Lord," Nathan said, "how did they get this this here?" here?"

"It's mostly her doing." The owner and resident culinary genius, a big plump friendly woman, came over and greeted me in stiff Germanic English.

"h.e.l.lo, Eva. We're looking for a friend-" But then Nathan was already past us, and rushing down toward a small booth at the back.

"I think he finds him," Eva said with a smile.

By the time I got to the table Nathan was pumping the arm of a short, long-haired blond guy in his late thirties, slapping his back, babbling with relief-overwhelmed with relief, by the look of it. "Freds, thank G.o.d I found you!"

"Good to see you too, bud! Pretty lucky, actually-I was gonna split with some Brits for the hills this morning, but old Reliability Negative Airline bombed out again." Freds had a faint southern or country accent, and talked as fast as anyone I'd ever heard, sometimes faster.

"I know," Nathan said. He looked up and saw me. "Actually, my new friend here figured it out. George Fergusson, this is George Fredericks."

We shook hands. "Nice name!" George said. "Call me Freds, everyone does." We slid in around his table while Freds explained that the friends he was going to go climbing with were finding them rooms. "So what are you up to, Nathan? I didn't even know you were in Nepal. I thought you were back in the States working, saving wildlife refuges or something."

"I was," Nathan said, and his grim do-or-die expression returned. "But I had to come back. Listen-you didn't get my letter?"

"No, did you write me?" said Freds.

Nathan stared right at me, and I looked as innocent as I could. "I'm going to have to take you into my confidence," he said to me. "I don't know you very well, but you've been a big help today, and the way things are I can't really be..."

"Fastidious?"

"No no no-I can't be over-cautious, you see. I tend to be over-cautious, as Freds will tell you. But I need help, now." And he was dead serious.

"Just giving you a hard time," I rea.s.sured him, trying to look trustworthy, loyal, and all that; difficult, given the big grin on Freds's face.

"Well, here goes," Nathan said, speaking to both of us. "I've got to tell you what happened to me on the expedition I helped in the spring. It still isn't easy to talk about, but..."

And ducking his head, leaning forward, lowering his voice, he told us the tale I had read about in his lost letter. Freds and I leaned forward as well, so that our heads practically knocked over the table. I did all I could to indicate my shocked surprise at the high points of the story, but I didn't have to worry about that too much, because Freds supplied all the amazement necessary. "You're kidding," he'd say. "No. Incredible. I can't believe it. Yetis are usually so skittish! And this one just stood there stood there? You're kidding kidding! In-f.u.c.king-credible, man! I can't believe believe it! How great! What?-oh, no! You didn't!" And when Nathan told about the yeti giving him the necklace, sure enough, just as Nathan had predicted, Freds jumped up out of the booth and leaned back in and shouted, "YOU'RE KIDDING!!" it! How great! What?-oh, no! You didn't!" And when Nathan told about the yeti giving him the necklace, sure enough, just as Nathan had predicted, Freds jumped up out of the booth and leaned back in and shouted, "YOU'RE KIDDING!!"

"Shh!" Nathan hissed, putting his face down on the tablecloth. "No! Get back down here, Freds! Please!"

So he sat down and Nathan went on, to the same sort of response ("You tore the f.u.c.king BRIDGE DOWN!?!" "Shhhh!!"); and when he was done we all leaned back in the booth, exhausted. Slowly the other customers stopped staring at us. I cleared my throat: "But then today, you um, you indicated that there was still a problem, or some new problem...?"

Nathan nodded, lips pursed. "Adrakian went back and got money from a rich old guy in the States whose hobby used to be big game hunting big game hunting. J. Reeves Fitzgerald. Now he keeps a kind of a photo zoo on a big estate. He came over here with Adrakian, and Valerie, and Sarah too even, and they went right back up to the camp we had in the spring. I found out about it from Armaat and came here quick as I could. Right after I arrived, they checked into a suite at the Sheraton. A bellboy told me they came in a Land Rover with its windows draped, and he saw someone funny hustled upstairs, and now they're locked into that suite like it's a fort. And I'm afraid-I think-I think they've got one up there got one up there."

Freds and I looked at each other. "How long ago was this?" I asked.

"Just two days ago! I've been hunting for Freds ever since, I didn't know what else to do!"

Freds said, "What about that Sarah? Is she still with them?"

"Yes," Nathan said, looking at the table. "I can't believe it, but she is." He shook his head. "If they're hiding a yeti up there-if they've got one-then, well, it's all over for the yetis. It'll just be a disaster for them."

I supposed that was true enough. Freds was nodding automatically, agreeing just because Nathan had said it. "It would be a zoo up there, ha ha."