The Kingdom

Sam opened his mouth to speak, then clamped it shut. Remi said, “I know what you’re thinking. But I’m sure, Sam. I remember drinking tea and staring at these characters on Jack’s laptop screen.”

“I believe you. I just don’t see how-” Sam stopped and furrowed his eyebrows. “Unless . . . When we landed here, how far were we from the last set of coordinates?”

“Hosni said less than a kilometer.”

“Maybe a half mile from the path Dhakal would have taken on his journey. What if he died near here, or ran into trouble and lost the Theurang chest?”

Remi was nodding. “And then our balloonist friends come along centuries later. They crash-land here and find the box. When was the earliest ma

“Just guessing . . . late sixteenth-early seventeenth century. But I’ve never heard of a dirigible from that period as advanced as this one. This would have been way ahead of its time.”

“Then at the earliest, it crashed here almost three hundred years after Dhakal left Mustang.”

“It’s plausible,” Sam admitted, “but hard to swallow.”

“Then explain these markings.”

“I can’t. You say they’re the Theurang curse, and I believe you. I’m just having trouble wrapping my brain around it all.”

“Join the club, Sam.”

“How’s your Italian?”

“A bit rusty, but I can give it a try later. Right now let’s concentrate on getting out of here.”

They devoted the morning to checking the guylines, setting aside those that looked too frayed or decayed; these Sam cut away with his Swiss Army knife. They repeated the process with the wicker-and-bamboo struts (all of which Remi checked for engravings but found none), then turned their attention to the silk. The biggest piece they found was only a few inches wide, so they decided to braid the usable fabric into cordage, should it be needed. By lunchtime, they had a respectable pile of construction materials.

For added stability, they decided to fasten eight of the dirigible’s balloon-cage struts to the interior of the dome. This job they accomplished in assembly-line fashion: Sam, using his knife’s awl, poked double holes in the canopy where each strut was to go followed by Remi inserting twelve-inch lengths of sinew thongs into the holes. Once done, they had three hundred twenty holes and one hundred sixty thongs.

By late afternoon Sam began cinching the thongs closed using a boom hitch. He’d secured almost a quarter of the thongs when they decided to call it a night.

They were up with the sun the next day and returned to the dirigible’s construction.

During the five hours of usable afternoon light they turned their attention to sewing closed the mouth of the parachute/balloon with strips of silk knotted around a barrel-sized ring Sam had fashioned from curved pieces of wicker.

After savoring a few crackers each, they retired to the gondola cave and settled down for what they knew would be a long night.

“How long until we’re ready?” Remi asked.

“With luck, we’ll have our basket ready by late morning tomorrow.”

As they labored, Sam had been working and reworking the engineering problem in the back of his mind. They had slowly been ca

As it stood, they had ten feet of gondola left. Based on Sam’s calculations, the remaining wicker combined with the chemical concoction he had in mind would be enough to get them aloft. Much less certain was whether they could ascend high enough to clear the ridgeline.

The one factor Sam was not worried about was wind. So far, what little they’d gotten had come from the north.

Remi voiced yet another concern, one that had also been nagging at Sam: “What about our landing?”

“I’m not going to lie. That could be our bridge too far. There’s no way to tell how well we’ll be able to control the descent. And we’ll have virtually no steering.”

“You have a Plan B, I’m guessing?”

“I do. Do you want to hear it?”

Remi was silent for a few moments. “No. Surprise me.”

Sam’s timetable estimate was close. It wasn’t until noon that they had the basket and risers completed. While “basket” was an overly optimistic word for their construction, they were nevertheless proud of it: a two-foot-wide bamboo platform bound together and secured to the risers by the last of the sinew.

They sat and ate lunch in silence, admiring their creation. The craft was rough-hewn, misshapen, and ugly-and they loved every inch of it.

“It needs a name,” Remi said.

Sam of course suggested The Remi, but she dismissed the idea. He tried again, “I had a kite when I was a kid called High Flier.”

“I like it.”

The afternoon was spent implementing Sam’s scheme for a fuel source. Except for a three-foot section in which they would huddle that night, Sam used the wire saw to dismantle the remainder of the gondola, cutting away as he stood inside it and handing up chunks to Remi. They managed to lose only three pieces to the bowels of the crevasse.

Using a stone, Remi began grinding the wicker and the remaining sinew into a rough pulp, the first palmful of which Sam dropped into a bowl-shaped section of the Bell’s aluminum skin. To the pulp he added lichen they’d scraped from every stone and clear patch of granite they could find on the plateau. Next came dribbles of aviation fuel followed by dashes of gunpowder Sam had extracted from the pistol’s bullets. After thirty minutes of trial and error, Sam presented Remi with a crude briquette wrapped inside a swatch of silk.

“Do the honors,” he said, and handed Remi the lighter.

“Are you sure it won’t explode?”

“No, not at all sure.”

Remi gave him a withering stare.

He said, “It would have to be packed inside something solid.”

At arm’s length, Remi touched the lighter’s flame to the brick; with a barely perceptible whoosh, it ignited.

Gri

“Did you have to use that analogy?”

“Sorry. The moment we get back to Kathmandu we’ll head for the nearest steakhouse.”

Buoyed by the success of their ignition test, they made rapid progress. By bedtime, they had nineteen bricks.

As the sun began to set, Sam finished the brazier by notching into its base three short legs, which he then attached to a double-thick aluminum bowl by crude flanges. As a final step, he cut a hole into the side of the cone.

“What’s that for?” asked Remi.

“Ventilation and fuel port. Once we get the first brick going, airflow and the shape of the cone will create a vortex of sorts. The heat will gush through the top of the cone and into the balloon.”

“That’s ingenious.”

“That’s a stove.”

“Pardon?”

“It’s an old-fashioned backpacking stove on steroids. They’ve been around for a century. At last my love of obscure knowledge pays off.”

“In spades. Let’s retreat to our bunker and try to rest up for the maiden-and final-flight of the High Flier.”

They slept fitfully for a total of two hours, kept awake by exhaustion, lack of food, and excitement. As soon as there was enough light to work by, they climbed out of the gondola and ate the last of their food.

Sam dismembered the remainder of the gondola save the last corner, which they pried free with the piton and knotted rope. Once the sawing was done, they had a pile of fuel that was as tall as Sam.

Having already chosen a spot on the plateau that was virtually free of ice, they carefully dragged the balloon to the launchpad. Onto the platform they stacked ballast rocks. In the center they placed the brazier, then secured it to the platform with sinew thongs.