BLIND DESENT Page 7

"Nobody knows for sure," he said. "Possibly not even Frieda. The brain has a way of protecting us from memories that are too painful to be relived."

  "Did anyone see it happen?"

  "Nope. We'd split up to explore possible leads out of Tinker's. Most of us were fairly close to camp. Brent thought he had a going lead in the upper quadrant. There." McCarty picked up his hard hat, switched on the lamp and used it to point out a crack seventy or eighty feet up the back wall. "He and Curt climbed to that ledge. Brent went inside. Curt waited on the ledge, sketching. Sondra was photographing a broken formation. Zeddie and I had been pushing a lead behind that mountain of breakdown." Again he used the light to point. The vastness of the chamber swallowed the beam before it reached its objective.

  "So you were with Zeddie. Who found Frieda?"

  "No. It got kind of squirrelly. Our lead petered out. Zeddie was headed back to camp and I was going to collect Sondra when I heard a yell—high, like a bird or a stepped-on cat. There was no way to tell where it came from, but it sounded enough like a cry for help that I think everybody pretty much started trying to get to wherever they thought it was. We ran around like the proverbial headless chickens. Then we all started shouting at each other, so if Frieda called a second time there was no way to sort it out from the general hubbub.

  "Zeddie was the one who found her. She'd known where Frieda was going. Neither of them thought the lead had much promise, it wasn't blowing to speak of, but if you don't check them all out, you know the one you skipped leads to the bottom of the world and the next guy is going to find it.

  "Frieda was in a crawl space, vertical, mostly breakdown—unstable stuff. Zeddie had gone down twenty feet and could just see Frieda's head. A rock the size of a basketball but pointy on one end had lodged between Frieda and the side of the passage. The weight rested on her shoulder, wedging her in.

  "Zeddie got down as far as she could, squatted over Frieda, and lifted the rock straight up. Talk about clean and jerk! Zeddie's no slouch in the weight-lifting department. She pushed it up over her head. Curt and I got hold of it and brought it the rest of the way. It was a good forty pounds. Frieda's lucky it didn't crush her skull or break her collarbone."

  "Curt was there when you got there?"

  "No. Wait. Yes. He was trying to get Zeddie to let him go after the rock."

  "So Zeddie pulled Frieda out?"

  "No. That was a group effort. I doubt even the amazing Zeddie could lift a hundred and forty pounds of dead weight straight up. She got out, and I went down and got a cervical collar on Frieda. We tried to be careful, but you know how it is. For all the protection we could give her spinal column we might as well have hooked a tow chain under her armpits and yanked her out with a backhoe.

  "It was lucky she was unconscious. We didn't know her leg was broken till we had her out where I could get a look. The pain would have been horrific."

  "Frieda never said what happened? Wasn't she conscious at first?"

  "Her level of consciousness wasn't stable. She knew who we were but not where she was or what had happened. As near as we could guess, she was climbing down and loosened some rocks as she went by. When she was below them, they broke loose. The first one hit her right leg at the knee and sheared off the top of the tibia. That must have been when she called for help. Then the second rock hit her in the head.

  "Guesswork, but informed guesswork," he said with a laugh. "That's a doctor's bread and butter."

  Having finished with the story and clearing up the medical paraphernalia, he stood, unfolding with the ease of a dancer. "When we get you tucked up snug in the Stokes," he said to Frieda, "I'll get you on an IV to keep your fluids up."

  Anna didn't know whether Frieda had gotten Peter's message, but she had to keep talking. There was no way of telling what got through to Frieda, but all possible lines must be used to tether her to this world when temptation urged her to wander into the next.

  Since Anna hadn't bothered unpacking so much as a change of socks the night before, she had nothing to do for the moment. Sitting near Frieda's head, she took her friend's hand between her own. "I know, I know, I'd never dare take such a liberty if you were awake," she said as she pressed her friend's fingers. "But, hey, there's not much you can do about it, is there? And I don't know if it comforts you, but it sure soothes the hell out of me. This cave stuff is for the birds. Bats." For a moment she sat quietly, playing Frieda's inert fingers against her palm. "Think about this," she said after a time, talking as much to herself as to her friend. "According to the good doctor, everybody was by themselves, near you, all shrouded in darkness when the rocks fell. Except maybe Brent and Curt. They were together, but I'm not clear exactly how together. This of course narrows things down not one whit. Cogitate upon it and then wake up and tell me all."

  Frieda moved and made a noise in her throat. Anna held her breath and waited, but Frieda never opened her eyes.

  5

  Things happened fast and so smoothly that Anna's estimate of Holden Tillman—already high—went up a notch or two. His quiet authority overlaid strict self-discipline. In another man it might have been abrasive, but Tillman created the illusion that he had time for everyone, an ear for every concern. In addition to a gentle, self-effacing humor, his manner provided the lubricant that allowed a disparate collection of people to operate with singleness of purpose.

  Anna and Peter packaged Frieda Dierkz. She was strapped snugly in the Stokes, her hands crossed on her chest and lashed in place with soft bandages. A helmet with a Plexiglas face shield was fitted over her head and a stirrup beneath her left foot so, should she become able at some point, she could keep the weight off her injured leg when the litter was tilted. The oxygen bottle was secured between her knees.

  Because of the radical ups and downs of the rubble-strewn path to Tinker's exit, the standard method of carrying a litter would have subjected Frieda to a bumpy ride. So Holden strung the sixteen people out along the path, and the stretcher was passed between two lines of cavers, eight on a side, moving Frieda from hand to hand in the fashion of a bucket brigade. As the stretcher left a caver's hands, he or she scrambled ahead, keeping the line always unbroken, always moving forward. In an effort to make her journey as uneventful as possible, the stretcher bearers would stand between stones and pass the Stokes overhead rather than lower Frieda and pull her up again, squat on their haunches on the high ground and keep the Stokes moving levelly a foot or so above the rock.

  The men were as motley a group as one could hope to assemble behind any one cause. One had a gray-shot beard and hair that tangled like Charley Manson's in his heyday. Another resembled an undergraduate from a conservative midwestern seminary. Various points masculine in between were represented. Most worked shirtless. In the cave's humidity, exertion brought body heat up. Sweat glistened on bare backs between streaks of dirt. Bound by convention even this far below Emily Post's basement, the women sweated beside them in tee-shirts and running bras. Lisa was there, her Rapunzel braids looped up under her hard hat, along with two other women Anna had not seen before.

  Like a column of ants passing a grasshopper up the line, they moved the injured woman across the ruptured floor of the cavern. Running, climbing, waiting, lifting, and running again, Anna worked all the kinks and aches of the previous day out of her muscles. Later there would be hell to pay, but for the present it was good to be moving.

  She'd thought more bodies in the limited space would exacerbate her claustrophobia. In the tighter crawls she believed it still would, but in the vast dark of Tinker's Hell, the crowd made things feel less alien, less likely to close down in an inky tidal wave and blot out the fact that humans had ever dared venture there.

  A sense of purpose brought with it a rush of high spirits that those who had been stranded with Frieda sorely needed. Though the injured woman was seldom far from the minds of her rescuers, there wasn't an aura of grim determination but laughter and hard work and sharing. As Anna took a long pull on a water bottle
offered by a stubby caver from Kentucky, she thought how good it was for people to be heroes, how much joy and confidence had been lost when the American public turned the care of themselves and their neighbors over to the impersonal rescuers of government agencies: police, fire fighters, paramedics, park rangers.

  Heroism had become almost taboo. Citizens were discouraged from mixing in "official" business. When the occasional soldier came forward and stopped a robbery or captured a would-be rapist, the next day's papers would be full of bureaucrats decrying the hotheaded interference and painting a somber picture of what-ifs in an attempt to dissuade any further outbreaks of vigilante kindness.

  A time or two Anna had been guilty of it herself. There were reasons: civil suits, idiots doing more harm than good, well-meaning people hurting themselves in their enthusiasm. But much of the time the help was turned away simply because it was too much fun playing hero. Nobody wanted to share the glory.

  Buoyed up on this beneficent rapture, Anna was of two minds. The good and kind Anna, who had learned to open doors for nuns, wanted to spread this wellspring of self-worth among the peoples of the earth. The real Anna figured the general public would just bollix it up, and let her good intentions wash down her throat with the tepid canteen water.

  The carry to the end of Tinker's took just over an hour. In the terrestrial world the sun would be rising. The rescuers were fresh, morale high, and no significant obstacles stood in the way. At the base of the climb to the balcony from which Anna had first seen the cavern, Holden called a stop. It was a near-vertical ascent scabbed by breakdown that created a more difficult haul to rig than a clean cliff face would have presented. There were nine hauls of varying difficulty to be rigged between Tinker's and the Rift. Holden and Oscar would rig those they came to. Teams from the surface would be doing the same. Working like the builders of the first transcontinental railroad, the teams would meet somewhere in the middle.

  The Stokes with its precious cargo was set well away from the fall zone, where stray feet and stones might compromise the patient's safety. Sondra made a halfhearted offer to stay with Frieda, but it was clear she itched to be in the center of things. Anna was glad to excuse her. Tucked back on a slab of breakdown, sheltered beneath a protective overhang of limestone, she looked after her patient and left the next round of heroics to those on better terms with the underworld. She adjusted the Stokes to make sure the head wasn't lower than the foot and the whole contraption was in no danger of moving of its own volition. She took Frieda's pulse, checked her IV and catheter. Her skin was cooler to the touch than it had been the previous night, and she seemed to be resting easier, sleeping rather than comatose.

  The climb to Tinker's entrance was alive with light and color. Under the dreary dun of the planet's skin, yellow helmets, aqua tee-shirts, and red and orange ropes shone with startling clarity. Line and personnel were snaking up the slope with a grace that, sequestered from the chatter and grunts, was balletic in its grace.

  Professor Schatz's vee-necked undershirt, more brown than white from dirt, was plastered to his body with sweat. He climbed stolidly up what looked, from Anna's viewpoint, to be an impossible incline. Around his waist, pulleys, trolleys, ascenders, carabiners, and webbing in gaudy hues hung like the tool belt of a carpenter from another galaxy. Crossed over his chest were two coils of rope, sixty pounds of gear at a conservative estimate. He moved with the supercilious good humor of a bear everybody thinks is tame.

  Zeddie Dillard's thick frame flitted from place to place with astonishing speed. She carried nothing, and Anna surmised she was checking the rigging, though she'd thought that was Oscar's job.

  Halfway down Tinker's, McCarty could be seen, a mere scrap of color bobbing on a rough sea of stone. Freed from stretcher-bearing duties, he made his way back to the old camp to gather packs that had been left behind.

  Anna's eyes slid back through the kaleidoscopic darkness in time to catch Sondra looking after her husband with an expression of disgust. Mrs. McCarty wrinkled her long nose and curled her lovely lips as if she'd just sucked up a mouthful of sour milk.

  On Sondra the expression didn't seem out of place, and Anna realized that the young woman spoiled her looks with a mask of discontent. Chances were she'd been asked to fetch packs, had turned the request down, and now felt she'd somehow been cheated out of the good assignment. A saying of Anna's long-deceased father floated to the surface of her mind and made her smile: "That woman would complain if you hung her with a brand-new rope."

  Oscar was lost in the throng. Helmeted, dirty, flitting between light beams, the cavers were nearly indistinguishable. Anna spotted Holden only because of his bright pink shirt and silver helmet. He'd already reached the balcony. There he directed a symphony of ropes. The Stokes would be hand-carried, but it had to be rigged.

  Anna's home park, Mesa Verde, was reached by a winding road cut into steep hillsides. She had worked her share of low-angle rescues, dragging the victims of automobile accidents up through the oak brush to the road. There was no way to avoid the back-breaking work. On a near-vertical, the Stokes would be rigged, a line fore and aft, so, should the carriers slip, the patient wouldn't be dropped unceremoniously back down the way she'd come, but the weight of the litter would be borne by human arms and backs. The only thing that could be depended on was that wherever one ended up standing there was never room to lift the way the safety films advised. Hands clutched where they could, held where they had to, and moved the litter on. Doan's Pills and Ben-Gay took care of the details after the party was over.

  Anna caught sight of Brent Roxbury climbing stairsteps of stone three and four feet high. Below, a man laughed, and Lisa, her braids swinging in loops beneath her helmet, averted her eyes. Evidently Brent's attire was exposing his shortcomings.

  "Anna?"

  "Yeah?" Anna said, trying to catch a glimpse of Brent's retreating form for the same reason people stare at car wrecks.

  "Anna?"

  "What?" she demanded, mildly irritated. As the word fell from her lips she realized who was doing the talking. Crabbiness vanished, replaced by a relief so powerful it bordered on euphoria. She scooted over to Frieda, wrapped mummylike in the coffin-shaped Stokes. "Welcome back," she said. Frieda struggled feebly. Picking at the knots in the bandages, Anna explained, "Sorry. We tied your arms in so they wouldn't fall against anything and get hurt. The main rescue team is here. You're in a Stokes at the end of Tinker's Hell. They're rigging the lines to haul you up. See?" She leaned back so Frieda could see the activity on the rock wall and know that she was safe and cared for.

  Frieda tried to lift her head and moaned. The helmet and cervical collar kept her from moving much, but the effort had caused her head to hurt.

  Anna cursed herself for her exuberance. She'd all but told Frieda to sit up and have a look around.

  "What's wrong with me?" Worry colored her words, but Frieda sounded calm, in control. Anna was so proud she felt her heart swell until it became a lump in her throat. Trussed up helpless, deep underground, she doubted she would behave as admirably. To banish the lump, she reminded herself that Frieda liked burrowing in the dirt.

  Fussing with bandages and buckles, she told Frieda all she knew of her injuries. She was careful to relate nothing of the speculation surrounding the accident. Frieda's mind would still be vulnerable, open to suggestion. When she finished, she forced herself to stop fiddling with Frieda's packaging. The woman was stable. Anna was only reassuring herself.

  Frieda blinked up through the clear Plexiglas safety screen on the helmet they'd fitted her with. Seeing her friend's discomfort, Anna eased it off, careful not to change the alignment of Frieda's cervical spine.

  "Thanks," Frieda said. "Let me sit up."

  "Better not."

  "Shit. I feel like such an idiot. I'm fine. If my leg wasn't broken, I could walk out of here. I'm tempted to call the whole circus off and crawl out. It's been done."

  Anna knew that. Years before, after the last big
publicized rescue, a caver had broken an ankle a long way in, near the Leaning Tower of Lechuguilla. Rather than subject himself to the Sturm und Drang of a grand rescue, he crawled the two days out. He wore through his own kneepads and the kneepads of every member of his team, but he self-rescued.

  "It's not your ankle," Anna reminded Frieda. "It's your knee. Not to mention your brains are scrambled. Besides"—she gestured to the cascading humanity on the wall, each caver busy and intent—"everybody is having such a good time."

  Frieda snorted, but there was a thread of laughter in the rude sound. A good sign.

  Anna questioned her about her hurts, asked all the things she'd been taught to ask to test for disorientation or brain injury. Frieda had a vicious headache that hurt down into her left shoulder, and her leg throbbed, but she knew who she was, where she was, and who was president of the United States. The only question she'd missed was "What day is it?" and since Anna wasn't all that sure either, she'd let it pass.

  Anna backed off, let the patient rest. Frieda lay staring at an invisible sky. Her jaw-length red hair was stuck to her cheeks. In a sudden spill of light from above, the freckles across her face stood out black against her unnatural pallor. McCarty had cleaned and bandaged the wound on her temple, but an ugly bruise spread from beneath the dressing, blacking the corner of Frieda's eye and suffusing her cheekbone with angry purple.

  "Last night you woke up and talked to me," Anna said. "Do you remember?"

  Frieda thought for so long that Anna worried this was not an end of the crazies but only another moment of clarity in ongoing delirium.

  "No," Frieda said finally. Her voice was strained as if the effort of remembering had exacerbated the pain in her head. "I had zillions of dreams. All bad. Not nightmare quality, just the can't-find-your-keys show-up-at-work-naked variety. On and on. Every time I'd think I was awake and could stop, something bizarre would happen and I'd realize I was back in the dreams." She reached for the water bottle and Anna pressed it into her palm. When she drank, water spilled down her cheeks. Anna wanted to wipe it away but didn't. Frieda wouldn't appreciate being mothered, and it was an art Anna was not sufficiently skilled at to risk rebuff.