'Good news,' Anna said. With a wound to the head, it was. Deterioration of levels of consciousness or motor control augured evil, usually swelling or bleeding in the skull that, unchecked, would create deadly pressure.
Holden nodded. 'Peter is putting her on a hundred percent oxygen with a non-rebreather. He's got things well in hand. He separated Frieda from the others to give her a little quiet and privacy. He wants you to bed down over near her. Don't talk to her, he said. Let her sleep. Just be there in case she wakes up.'
'Got it.'
Holden pointed out the recumbent form that was Frieda Dierkz. In his shielded light, Anna could see the leg, an air-splint from foot to mid-thigh. Dr. McCarty was fitting the non-rebreather oxygen mask over the woman's face. Frieda was fighting his attempts to help her, moving her head from side to side and moaning in such a way that Anna was overcome with an irrational fury toward her tormentor.
Biting back words she was bound to regret, she knelt in the dirt near her friend's head and laid her hand on her brow. 'It's me, Anna,' she said softly. 'I got here as fast as I could. You couldn't have hurt yourself in the Bahamas or Paris, could you? It had to be here. You are such a pain in the butt, Frieda.'
'Interesting bedside manner,' McCarty said dryly.
Frieda stopped fighting. The tension went out of her muscles, and her breathing evened out.
'Ooh. Hey,' the doctor said. 'Maybe I'll have to give it a try.'
Anna laughed. 'Where are you from?' she asked on impulse.
'St. Paul, Minnesota.' She couldn't have said why, but it didn't surprise her. 'I'm glad you showed up,' McCarty said wearily. 'Let's go with the nasal cannula at six liters. I don't want her getting agitated again.'
Anna handed him the appropriate tubing and, when he had it in place, turned the flow to six liters per minute. He watched her carefully. She didn't bother telling him she was an EMT. Doctors seemed to make a point of being aggressively unimpressed by that tidbit of information.
McCarty took his patient's pulse one last time, then turned his light on Anna's face. She didn't like being diagnosed, and busied herself with her pack. 'Sleep,' he prescribed. 'Do you need something to help you?'
Too tired to laugh at him, she managed a 'No thanks,' and was rewarded by his departure.
She didn't pull out her space blanket or take off her boots. Laying her head on the unkind lumps in her sidepack, she was instantly asleep.
So deep was her unconsciousness that when she was awakened she didn't know if minutes or days had passed. For a horrifying moment she didn't know where she was; then, with no decrease in the horror, she did. Such was the suffocating blackness, Anna was blind, deaf, and dumb with it. Black filled her lungs, and she couldn't get enough air. Fighting the drawstrings of her pack, she felt for and found the little blue Maglite. Clicking it on, she carved a space big enough that she could breathe. The pounding of her heart racketed in her ears, and she had to go to the john desperately; a mere Baggie seemed inadequate to the task.
Breathing evenly, she quieted her heartbeat to a dull thunder. Through it she heard the noise that had pulled her from sleep: her name, a sound so insubstantial it could have been the whisper of a ghost. 'Anna…' and an exhalation.
On elbows and knees, she crawled over to Frieda. 'I'm here,' she said.
'Anna…' again, and something about a lake with marble clouds, and Taco throwing up on her good shoes.
Shading the light, Anna studied her friend's face. The skin was flushed on forehead and cheeks but white and drawn around the lips. Automatically she checked Frieda's pupils. Equal and reactive. No battle signs showed behind the ears. No fluids leaked from ears or nostrils, and the flesh around her eyes was not discolored. McCarty would have looked at all this, Anna reminded herself; still, she checked.
Frieda's gaze skimmed across her face and wandered to the impossible darkness above. 'Thirsty,' she said. Anna fed her sips of water, scared to lift her head lest there was a neck injury, scared of choking her to death if she didn't.
'Stay with me, Frieda. I came all this way. Don't leave me now,' Anna pleaded. 'I'm not leaving you.'
Frieda's hand closed convulsively on Anna's tee-shirt, bunching the fabric tight around her ribs. 'It wasn't an accident,' she said clearly.
'What? What wasn't an accident?' Anna demanded.
'Lily pads ruined,' she whispered, and Anna could see that reason had fled.
'Frieda,' she begged, but the woman's eyes closed. Anna resisted a cruel urge to shake her.
Not an accident.
Marble clouds, dog vomit, and lily pads: Frieda was delirious. It didn't take Freud to figure that out. But there'd been a moment's clarity. And a reason Frieda had asked for a friend, a noncaver friend from outside.
Anna sat back, traced her finger of light over the feet of her companions. 'God, but this sucks,' she muttered. Curling herself around Frieda like a Viking's dog on his master's funeral ship, Anna laid her head down once more. If anyone wanted to get to Dierkz, they would have to tread on some part of Anna's anatomy to do it. It was all she could do till morning.
Morning was two days away.
4
The next time Anna was dragged from sleep, the effect was not so jarring. People were on the move. A lantern pushed back the dark walls until the camp seemed almost spacious. Voices softened the sepulchral stillness, and there was the smell of coffee. The odor was weak, the brew undoubtedly instant, but it was enough to stir Anna's sluggish mind.
Lying motionless, she watched the wakening camp. This far from the sun, all was shrouded. Shadows claimed more than light, and light cloaked as often as it revealed. Focus flickered, changeable as candle flames, as a lamp caught one plane, then another, lopping off a nose with moving shadow, sparking an eye bright as opal. Colors were fired and quenched, leaving comet trails on the retina as they passed. Beams sought out sudden horizons at varying distances, and the cavern appeared to be expanding and contracting; an uncertain and secretive world, more hidden than would ever be told.
Anna fantasized about bringing great mercury-vapor lamps in and cranking up the wattage. The movie
Rolling onto her side, she realized that while she slept someone had spread a space blanket over her to keep off the chill. Fear had lain down with her, and at this sign of interference, she instinctively reached for a weapon. The reflex was a mere flick of her hand, aborted before her hand had moved even a finger's width. Here she was not a law enforcement ranger. Her assignment had been quite specific. Ladies in-waiting didn't customarily go heavily armed. Anna was without so much as a hat pin.
Remembering her nocturnal exchange with Frieda, she wondered how much danger there was. What was delirium and what was the truth? That, too, was wrapped in shadow. She looked over at her friend. Frieda's eyes were closed. If she slept, Anna didn't want to disturb her. She lay a bit longer, taking advantage of the extended night to see what fellows she had fallen in amongst.
Holden, Oscar, and Peter McCarty were huddled around a single lamp, heads low and close, fannies in the air. Anna guessed they were going over surveys of the cave, discussing the care of Frieda as she was subjected to the rigors of her rescue.
A big man, his face lost in darkness, stood a few feet behind them, listening but contributing nothing. Light from the floor caught the bottom of the cup he held, the edges of two large, soft-looking hands, and the underside of a jaw bearded in short red-brown whiskers as thick and shiny as a cat's fur. His bulk took Anna by surprise. He was more than
Behind him, closer to the cavern wall, was a woman cast in a more classic cave formation. Working by the light
