Blind Descent

'Lean on me,' Anna offered lamely, at a loss how to comfort her.

'It can't be done,' Frieda said.

Holden smiled. It was inoffensive. The smile of a child. 'Au contraire,' he said. Anna could almost see the miles of rope and rigging stringing through his brain like the solution to a complex trigonometry problem.

He started to lay a hand on Frieda's arm but didn't, and Anna sensed for the first time what an essentially shy man he was. 'I got it covered. Remember who you're talking to here: Mr. Leave Nothing. Not Even Footprints. Lookie.' With his light he pointed to the narrow top of the keyhole. 'We're gonna rig you through there. No decorations. Straight line, like thread through the eye of a needle. Bad climb, good haul. You've got to go by your lonesome. There's just room for the litter. Not even a place for your scrawny little lady.' He winked at Anna.

'Good. Okay.' Frieda was so relieved she would have agreed to be shot through the keyhole by a cannon. Holden stayed a minute longer to give her a chance for second thoughts. 'Really,' she said at last. 'Alone is fine.'

'I didn't doubt it,' Holden said.

When he'd moved out of earshot, Anna asked, 'Why didn't you tell him about the glove on the rock? Both he and Oscar should know.' Anna's only reason for not reporting it was Frieda's return to consciousness. In regaining her mental powers, she had regained the right to make her own decisions. 'Do you want me to call him back?'

'No. Don't,' Frieda said. 'Life is too embarrassing as it is. An attempt on my life. Who'd believe it? Even I don't believe it. I can't remember anything that makes sense. Let's leave well enough alone. Please.'

It didn't feel 'well enough' to Anna, and it went against the grain to leave it alone. She'd ever been one to give sleeping dogs a good poke just to see if they were faking it. But she would go along with Frieda because she didn't want to upset her. And she had no proof, not of malfeasance, or even of negligence. Thirty hours-give or take-and they would be out. Thirty hours in a crowd all looking after Frieda's well-being. She would probably be safe.

For the descent to the floor of the Lounge and the haul up the other side, Anna was rigged along with the Stokes. A spider, a confluence of lines attached to the litter, met several feet above Frieda's midsection. Anna was tied into this spider, the Stokes cutting across her at waist level. Thus secured, she was always with her patient, there to reassure, to push the litter out from the wall when necessary, to handle any problems that came up en route.

Frieda was in good spirits, and it was contagious. They made it through the magnificent tables without destroying a single formation. On the ascent Anna found herself actually having a good time.

As promised, phone service awaited them at the top. Twelve or fifteen cavers were scattered around the low- ceilinged room that connected the Cocktail Lounge with Razor Blade. The space resembled the inside of a giant clam shell. Elliptically shaped, the floor and ceiling of bedrock, it came out in a concentric circle from the keyhole to a wide slot. At its highest point, the ceiling was five feet from the floor. There was little that human impact could destroy, making it the ideal place for the teams to congregate. All of the core group, including Oscar and Holden, had made the ascent. The other cavers were a mix of the rescuers from the first team and the three men responsible for providing the phone line.

Frieda was sequestered near the back of the clam shell, Holden's pack and helmet laid down like sentinels guarding her from all but Anna, Sondra, and the doctor. Peter McCarty was with her, taking advantage of the flat bit of earth to perform central nervous system tests he had been unable to when his patient was comatose.

Anna had done those tests she was familiar with. Frieda's limbs responded, she had feeling in her extremities, and there were no palpable deformations along her first eight vertebrae. Beyond these simple reassurances, Anna was out of her league and relieved to have someone with training double-check her work. Though it surprised her somewhat, she was also relieved to be given a respite from her duties as chief lady-in-waiting. Physically it was no more demanding than the jobs of any of the others. Often it proved less strenuous. When Frieda rested, Anna rested. It was the caring that sapped her strength. For Frieda she had to be strong, optimistic, unafraid. When she thirsted, she asked Frieda if she wanted a drink. When rope cut through her clothing to rub raw her flesh, she checked her patient to see if she suffered like discomforts. It was good simply to sit and be selfish.

The 'phone booth' had been established up near the keyhole, where those using it would be afforded at least the illusion of privacy. Always needing to be near the spotlight, Sondra squatted close by, sitting on her helmet, a notebook on her lap. Playing at being a journalist, Anna thought uncharitably. Maybe Frieda's rescue was the one big story she thought would give her the financial freedom to abandon what was apparently a loveless marriage. Schatz sprawled nearby, looking for all intents and purposes dead to the world.

Oscar used the phone, then Brent Roxbury, and finally Holden. After he'd been on the line for maybe three minutes, Sondra slammed her notebook shut like an angry schoolgirl and huffed over to where Anna was sitting.

'The New York Times.' She spit out the words. 'They're onto this story. Like they can know anything.' She flopped down, glaring at Anna as if waiting for her to take up the cause and fume with her.

Anna was too tired. 'You'll have the first-person I-was-there angle,' she said consolingly.

'Who'll care? By the time we get out of this hellhole it'll be old news.'

'I guess.' Anna concentrated on unwrapping a Jolly Rancher Holden had given her at the last rest stop. She wished Sondra would go away. Petty concerns in the face of disaster irritated her. She remembered a self-important tour guide from one of the many buses that plagued Mesa Verde during the tourist season. An elderly man in her group had collapsed on the porch of the museum, dead of a massive coronary. They'd practically had to pry the guide's grasping fingers from the corpse's wrist so they could shock him in an attempt to restart his heart. The woman was livid, spouting New Age bullshit about how she needed to say good-bye to his spirit. Later, when Anna was tying up the loose ends, it turned out the guide didn't even know the man's name. She'd traveled with the group for three days and had never been interested enough to remember it.

That was about as close as Anna had ever come to taking her baton to a visitor who wasn't actually breaking any laws.

'I told Holden I'd talk to the Times,' Sondra said. 'He said they declined. Those sons of bitches have no interest if you're female. Screw the truth. White male only wants to talk to white male. Big surprise.'

Holden Tillman's race would be pretty hard to discern over the phone, but Anna didn't say anything. Maybe the newspaper business was as sexist as Sondra believed. It wasn't a circle Anna had ever moved in, or ever wanted to.

'Anna,' Dr. McCarty called, and she looked over to where he sat with Frieda. 'Frieda's going to do her phone interview now. Want to come keep her company?'

Grasping at any excuse to leave, Anna pushed herself to her feet. As she stoop-walked toward the back of this cave-within-a-cave, she could hear Sondra grumbling, 'Anna. Of course. Anna. Now I suppose there's only one lady-in-waiting…'

'It's Katie Couric,' Peter called.

Sondra gasped. Or hissed. Anna couldn't tell with her back turned. In spite of herself, she laughed. She didn't much care if Sondra heard or not. The woman was beyond help.

Frieda did splendidly. Dr. McCarty's central nervous system exam had freed her from the cervical collar, and she was in excellent spirits. Whether she liked it or not, she was both a good sport and a trooper.

She was charming and gracious and brave and funny, lots of good stuff to quote on the six o'clock news. Or the ten o'clock news. Anna no longer had any sense of time. The little numbers the hands of her watch pointed at, then passed, had ceased to have meaning.

Phone calls finally at an end, Holden delivered the good news. At least it was good to everyone but Anna and possibly the doctor's wife. For the past five minutes he had closeted himself in a cranny near the keyhole with Peter McCarty. When the two men emerged it was to tell the rescue party that their hellish pace could be relaxed. Frieda was stable and alert. The break in her tibia was in no way life-threatening. With this fortuitous development they could afford to move more slowly, take greater care not to harm any of the natural resources of the cave.

Like a good citizen, Anna joined in the cheer, but her heart was creating a bizarre sensation in her chest by racing and sinking simultaneously. Thirty hours had seemed an eternity. Forty-eight rang in her ears like a death sentence. Get a grip, she told herself coldly. Pretend you are in a movie theater, a mall. The strategy was