Anna released breath she'd not known she was holding and laughed-a rush of air without sound-at the image that had held her in thrall; grasping hands thrust through the soil from a movie. Probably Stephen King.
'Frieda?' Zeddie said.
'Didn't make it.'
Anna watched the woman's face as the simple words sank in and thought she saw genuine sadness through the grime. In a spill of light, she caught sight of Roxbury at the same instant. He had already heard the news, yet sorrow and something else-a gestalt of expressions suggesting a painful and very personal loss-crumpled his face a second time.
'What happened?' Zeddie asked, and Anna drew breath to confess.
'She was killed in the fall.' Holden forestalled her. 'After the anchor gave way and brought down the mountain there was nothing anyone could do. Anna was lucky not to be killed too.'
The statement was more than an exoneration of Anna. It was an acceptance of the blame. He'd chosen the anchor that had carried Frieda and Anna to the bottom of the rift.
'I'm betting the anchor held, that the slide started above the boulder and knocked it loose,' Oscar said in an attempt to ease his friend. 'The anchor was sound. Rocks from above must have dislodged it. There couldn't have been any way to foresee that.'
Brent Roxbury interrupted with a strangled noise.
'If you're having a heart attack, I'm not up for CPR,' Anna said unsympathetically.
For a second he searched for words or breath, then he said, 'Listen.' They froze in a sudden tableau, expecting a reprise of the horrible grinding. Instead came a musical cadence of taps, clear and sharp and obviously man- made.
Again Brent whinnied.
More taps.
Anna laughed, and Oscar with her. They were saved.
'Well,' Holden said, a ghost of the twinkle flickering through. 'Somebody answer the doggone door.'
Zeddie was the quickest to respond. She scuttled up the newly fallen scree to where the taps emanated from. In her haste she started another rock slide, a tiny one this time, but enough to remind them how inherently unstable the slope was. Deep in timeless and un-weathered earth, jagged corners unsoftened by the influence of wind or water, breakdown was cemented in place with a dry mortar of silt that had filtered down fine as dust over the centuries. Without external forces to act upon it, this bedding went untested through soundless, lightless years. Once the delicate fabric was disturbed, it flowed like sand through an hourglass, trickling from beneath, shifting rocks that had been held unmoving for eons.
Having undipped a carabiner from a belt loop on her trousers, Zeddie rapped it smartly against a stone. No reply.
'I think it's too light,' she said, meaning the aluminum alloy of the 'biner.
McCarty dug a hammer from his pack, possibly the kind used to tap on patients' knees. 'Try this,' he said, and tossed it. Fortunately Zed-die's hand was sure even in the faint and shifting light, and she caught it. This deep within the earth nothing could afford to be casual. Greater threats than Hodags were ready to make mischief at every turn. Shadows waiting to swallow tools, holes to snap bones, passages like mazes to capture lost souls.
Hostile work environment, Anna thought, and no one to sue.
Using the hammer, Zeddie banged three times in quick succession. Three raps came back and the cavers sent up a ragged cheer that ended as spontaneously as it had begun.
'Does anybody know Morse code?' Oscar asked hopefully.
'SOS,' Zeddie offered. They all knew SOS.
'I think that's been established,' Iverson said dryly.
Another flurry of taps were exchanged for the reassurance of both parties. Nothing of moment could be transmitted, but the message that they were not alone, not forgotten, that help was on the way was enough.
'How long do you think it will take them to get through?' Brent said, and Anna was grateful he'd saved her from being the first to ask.
Holden and Oscar looked at each other in mute conference. Holden shrugged. 'I'd only be guessing,' Oscar said.
'Guess,' Anna demanded, unable to help herself.
'A day. Maybe two.'
Anna's heart shriveled up till it felt the size of a wizened lemon. 'Twenty-four-hour days or eight-hour days?'
'Could go either way,' he replied unhelpfully.
Holden took over. 'We got nothing to dig with and the best we can do to help is get out of the way. They're going to be pushing out on this slope, and it'll slide again before they're done. We've all put in close to a nineteen- hour day. Everybody's shot. Till we've rested we're just accidents waiting to happen. We'll set up a base of operations back at the other end of this hole. We've got beaucoup water. Rapunzel goes down forever. This cave's got enough air to be considered a wind tunnel in some parts of the world, and we've got food. Lechuguilla's warm and dry. All we've got to do is get comfy and wait for the cavalry to arrive. My guess is old Oscar here is being conservative. We only need wiggle room, not the Holland Tunnel. We'll be out of here in eight or ten hours. Let's go spread the good word.'
Though he'd chosen to be brave, macho, noble, and all the things that Anna and, she was sure, the others, had hoped he would be, Tillman remained a cautious man. Because of his ankle he tied himself between Oscar and Brent, the strongest of those in their truncated group. It could have been argued that McCarty was sturdier than Iverson, but he hadn't recovered from the trauma of the avalanche or Frieda's death-whatever demons stopped his voice and drained the blood from his lips.
Consumed by an all-encompassing fatigue, Anna was unable to take much interest in McCarty's well-being. Body, mind, and spirit were exhausted. The ache in her arm and her fear of falling kept her awake. The lure of the lamp kept her moving forward. She'd come to believe there were no flat level places in all of the inner space of Lechuguilla. The 'trail' they'd been calling the goat track was like the dotted line on a cartographer's drawing; it existed only in their minds. Reality was a stretch of rock that could be navigated only by borrowing from the traveling techniques of spiders, monkeys, starfish, and weasels.
On the careful trek back, McCarty was in line behind Anna, taking up the last position. 'Sondra?' he said with the startled intonation of a man remembering a package left behind in a taxicab. He had to say it a second time before the import penetrated Anna's haze of self-absorption.
'Sondra?' she echoed stupidly, and ceased all movement to summon the energy required to process the idea. 'Zeddie!' she hollered when the thought had percolated through the layers of dulled emotion.
'Yeah?' Zeddie called back. Anna could just see her, down on all fours like a muddy St. Bernard, fifteen or twenty feet ahead.
'Is Sondra back with Curt?'
A moment's silence followed, then the almost inevitable response: 'Wasn't she with you?'
Anna swiveled her head to see if the message had reached the doctor. It was the only part of her anatomy she felt she could disturb without danger of dislodging her corpus from the rock face. With the poor light and the distance, she could scarcely read his reaction, but it looked as if as much guilt as worry. Maybe he realized how late in coming was this concern for his missing spouse. Anna studied him an instant longer, trying to see if relief mixed with concern on his face. If it did, she missed it.
'She told me she was going to rotate out,' Anna remembered.
Now the doctor did look relieved, and Anna mirrored the sentiment. Intrigue in addition to all else that had happened might have proved to be the proverbial straw.
Camp was luxurious by caving standards: there was a fairly flat spot for everyone to lie down on. At Holden's insistence, food was eaten. Most were so tired they would have forgone the meal to avoid the effort of lifting the spoon from container to mouth. Understanding the need to fuel the body, Anna ate mechanically. The disappearance of Sondra was hashed and rehashed. The four cavers who had taken up the rear position on the Pigtail had spoken to her early on during the rigging but hadn't seen her since the actual haul began. Anna dutifully repeated her hopeful tale of Sondra's opting to rotate out. No one had seen her going ahead with the others, but such was the crush of cavers and the business of the traverse they might easily have missed her. She'd not told her
