A Question of Time

Camilla started an answer, but broke it off. Then with seeming irrelevance she asked, 'Have you ever been up on the South Rim?'

He nodded. 'Sure. When I first came to the Canyon, four months ago, they drove us in that far in a bus from Flagstaff, then marched us down the trail on foot—ever see our camp, upriver at the foot of Kaibab Trail?' Jake took another bite of sandwich.

Camilla shook her head.

Jake went on: 'Maybe I'll show you some time. In four months I only been up out of the Canyon a couple of times, for a weekend. You have to ride a mule up Bright Angel trail, or else hike up. And each time we passed through the little village on the rim.' As he recalled, there had been about half a dozen buildings in view, including the railroad station where the Santa Fe spur line ended. And of course the big log hotel, with a few more structures scattered back among the trees. 'What about it?'

'I came in that way, too. With Edgar, after he picked me up in a bar in Flagstaff.' Camilla looked at Jake from behind her dark glasses as if she were daring him to comment on this admission. He didn't.

She went on: 'One of those houses up there on the Rim is the one he used to live in. He used to have different models all the time, until he finally married one of them. You have to get over a little west of the head of Bright Angel Trail to see the house, and you might easily miss it even from there.'

She was, Jake decided, harping on Edgar Tyrrell and his house because she was having a hard time deciding how to approach whatever it was she really wanted to explain. This decision was harder for her than the decision she had made when she took off her clothes.

She added wistfully, 'I've never seen that Rim again.'

Then, shaking her head as if to clear it, she asked Jake: 'Are you finished eating?'

'Sure.' He was definitely getting curious.

He closed up the lunch box, leaving the crumbs and remnants for the chipmunks and coyotes, and Camilla took the little box with the other stuff she was carrying, and started to lead the way along the little trail upstream. Jake followed her, carrying a couple of her things.

Before they had gone more than a hundred feet or so, she stopped and turned to Jake to say, in a voice that was growing strained: 'See, there's too much time down here, near the bottom of the Canyon.'

'What?' He blinked and squinted at her in the bright sunlight. 'Too much time? You mean you've got nothing to do?'

'No. That's not what I mean. Too much time is what Edgar says when I ask him about—about some funny things that happen down here. At first I didn't know what he meant by too much time. But lately I can understand —I think. He says the river cuts open the earth, and the deep time comes spilling out of it like blood.' Then she smiled nervously at the expression that must have been growing on Jake's face. 'I'm not crazy, lover. You'll see what I mean.'

'Okay. I don't think you're crazy.' Actually the suspicion had very recently been born. But he wasn't really worried about it yet.

'Thank God,' said Camilla, and once more turned to lead the way up along the trail beside the creek.

Jake, staying close behind her, was nagged by the feeling that the voices of the nearby stream were trying to tell him something. But he was distracted from pursuing that thought by the movement of Camilla's hips. Even if her jeans were a loose fit.

'So,' he said, raising his voice a little to be heard above the sound of rushing water, 'you live with Edgar?'

'I don't sleep with him. Not any more.' Camilla paused, glancing back. 'He's a—strange man.'

'Yeah? He must be pretty old now if he lived up on the Rim for thirty years.'

'He's pretty old.'

They climbed on. Jake couldn't see the sun from down here in the narrow canyon, but judging by the angle of the shadow on the east wall they still had a good many hours to go before sunset.

Camilla led Jake on, up along what was no longer really a trail at all. Glancing to right and left, Jake noted that the steep and winding walls of this little side canyon displayed basically the same strata of rock as those in the tremendous walls of the big one; there was no other way it could be, he supposed. That pale layer was limestone and the somewhat darker one just below was shale. For the last couple of months he had been picking up some knowledge of geology from the rock experts back at camp.

Presently he called again to Camilla: 'You and old Edgar live in a pretty isolated place back here.'

For some reason that made her turn, to study him through her dark glasses. Then she emphatically agreed with what he'd said and went beyond it. 'Not one in a thousand people hiking downriver the way you did could find this canyon.'

'Well, it's not that hard to find. I didn't have much trouble.'

'Only because you're something special. It is that hard to find.' For some reason her voice quavered. 'Not one in a thousand. Maybe not one in a million. How many other hikers and boaters do you suppose have gone right past the entrance to this canyon where you turned in, and never seen it there?'

Jake blinked at her, wondering. 'That's easy. Not very damned many. There wouldn't be a hundred people hike or boat past the mouth of your little canyon in ten years. This place is not exactly populated like a city park, you know.'

Camilla smiled at him, as if she wanted to be reassuring—or perhaps be reassured—and then turned back to her climb.

Jake went back to watching the hypnotic movement of her hips.

Another minute or so of staring at that movement, and Jake caught up with her and tugged gently on her belt.

Camilla stopped and turned and held out her arms. A moment later he was kissing her, and feeling up under her shirt again. How marvelous when there was no resistance!

Afterward they sat naked in the chill shallow water of the creek, letting it rush over their bodies, splashing each other.

Jake said: 'In a way it's funny, your talk about how hard this canyon is to find.'

Camilla, who had been laughing at something else he'd said, stopped suddenly. 'Why is it funny?' she asked. At the moment they were in shade, and she'd left her dark glasses off.

'Because yesterday I looked at the big map back at camp. And I couldn't see this canyon on it anywhere. This isn't Pipe Creek we're sitting in, and it isn't Horn Creek, right? Because there are rapids in the Colorado where Horn Creek comes in. And there's not supposed to be any side canyon with a permanent water flow between those two. But here we are.' Jake gestured at the steep enclosing walls.

Camilla didn't seem surprised to hear about the map. Instead she just looked melancholy and thoughtful. All she said was: 'I bet there are a lot of things your map doesn't show.'

When they were dressed again, they climbed on, while the canyon that had swallowed them turned this way and that like a great snake. The bends were getting sharper. Jake could no longer see farther than about fifty yards ahead at any point.

Once Camilla paused to tell him, as if in afterthought: 'Edgar calls this place Deep Canyon.'

Rounding the next turn, they came to a place where the canyon straightened out and expanded into a steep- sided amphitheater, the size of a small football stadium. The land inside was relatively level, half-overgrown with typical canyon bush and a few trees. At the far end of the amphitheater the creek fell into it in a high waterfall. Jake saw to his surprise that someone had neatly built a tall, narrow waterwheel into this cataract. And at the foot of the drop, getting splashed a little by the spray, stood a little stone building that looked like it ought to house a generator. Sure enough, wires ran on poles from the generator housing to another small building. This one was constructed of neatly trimmed logs, and actually appeared to be a house.

For the time being Jake took less notice of a kind of grotto, or cave, opening into the base of the western cliff, at the level of another layer of rock that Jake could recognize. The camp geologist had called this one Tapeats Sandstone, and had said it lay just over what he called the Great Unconformity, a term whose meaning Jake had never grasped.

At first sight the cave was only a shallow concavity, with a low, rather inconspicuous entrance; at second glance it looked deeper.

But right now Jake was paying attention mainly to the neatly constructed little house, which was sited high