The biotech was a woman of steel; Anna suspected that, if pressed, Robin might leap a tall building in a single bound. Yet her years on the road, competing in countries where she had no one but her coaches and teammates, had left her vulnerable and oddly innocent, a bit of a stranger in a strange land.
Robin might have been able to withstand Menechinn’s unsubtle retribution for what they’d witnessed, but Anna knew for a fact that she wouldn’t have been able to withstand watching it happen.
EMASCULATION RECOVERY wasn’t swift, but by lunch Bob seemed over the worst of it. He quit sniping at his graduate assistant and tied her sleeping bag to the top of his already-overloaded pack. Anna guessed it was his way of making amends and considered dumping hers and Robin’s on him as well; see how much the bastard could carry. Had the sun not been out, she might have done it. As it was, she was feeling magnanimous.
Katherine rallied somewhat with the lighter load, both on her back and her psyche, but it didn’t last. Anna could tell her joints were causing her pain by the way she pulled on the pack’s shoulder straps and tried to ease her steps. Anna’s pack was grinding her bones as well, but, like Lawrence of Arabia – at least in the version with Peter O’Toole – she felt the pain but had learned not to mind.
AT THREE THAT AFTERNOON, they reached the rise above Malone Bay. The sun was already close to the horizon and so far to the south that the bay was in shadow. Snow, deeper here by several inches than on the other side of the ridge, was dyed the same battleship gray as the water of Lake Superior, lying cold and still beyond the bay’s straitjacket of ice. The sky’s winter coat of pale blue had faded till it seemed but a thin sheet of tinted glass between the Earth and whatever lay beyond.
In this colorless stillness were two cacophonous spots of color. On the ice of the bay, a few hundred yards from the dock, was Jonah’s red-and-white airplane, her raucous orange down comforter wrapped around engine and cowling, and, on the tiny porch of the cabin, the bright red blade of a snow shovel leaning against the railing.
Blessed as it was by a thick curl of lavender smoke issuing from the stovepipe, the cabin, scarcely bigger and slightly less ornate than a closet in a 1950s tract house, struck Anna as utterly charming. As they started down the gentle grade, the figure of Jonah Schumann emerged from the door and started up the trail.
Jonah met up with them and gallantly offered to take Katherine’s pack for the last mile. Anna hoped Katherine would accept and was impressed when she didn’t. The old pilot further wormed his way into Anna’s affections by telling them he’d flown in canned food, a box of wine, pasta and other delicacies to round out what would have been a bleak diet had they had to subsist on what they’d been able to carry in on their backs.
Adam, who’d cadged a ride on this mission of mercy, had hot Ovaltine waiting when they reached the cabin.
Anna was wearier than she’d bargained on.
“Jesus!” he exclaimed as the weight hit him. “Are you crazy or what? I don’t carry a pack this heavy. Holy smoke! Iron Woman.” He pinched her upper arm, and Anna was gratified.
“Fifty-three pounds,” she wanted to say, but boasting had a way of canceling out achievement, and, besides, she was too tired to talk.
“Help Katherine,” she managed. The cabin was so tiny, six people, four of them in backpacks, were like great Herefords in a pen made for lambs. She had to mill her way past Adam and Katherine to find a place to sit, then she was squeezed into a small straight-backed chair between a doll-sized table and a gas hot-water heater. Bob brushed his butt – a butt Anna had gotten to know far too well over the past nine miles – across her face to help Robin off with her pack. Anna might have taken petty revenge with a two-tined meat fork the summer ranger had left behind, but the offending portion of his anatomy was encased in too many layers for penetration.
Too tired to focus, she let her body sag and her mind slide inward. After Jonah and Adam departed, she would try to get her boots off. With them gone, there might be room enough to bend over.
Above her, the life of the herd went on. Bob was behind Robin, holding on to her shoulder straps as she fumbled with the buckles. “Here, let me help with those,” he said warmly and started to reach around her and the pack in a Kodiak-sized bear hug.
“Let me,” Anna said acidly and was about to contemplate the effort of rising when Adam turned from where he’d stowed Katherine’s pack against wall and bunk and stowed Katherine, as limp looking as Anna felt, on top of it.
“I got it,” he said.
Bob snorted.
“Bob, could you help me?” Katherine’s voice was plaintive, with a thread of something sharper running beneath – anger or love, maybe both. Bob shouldered his way to where his assistant sat, crumpled.
Anna intended to sit back down but realized she’d never made it to her feet. The mere thought of it had tapped her last reserves. She hoped Robin had the strength and patience to spoon-feed her the remainder of her required five thousand calories. Lifting an eating utensil might be beyond her powers.
Calflike in the corral, she watched dumbly as Adam undid the frozen buckles on Robin’s harness. There was definite byplay between the two of them, secret looks and small, quickly extinguished smiles, and Anna wondered if Robin’s boyfriend – Gavin or Galen or whatever – was on his way out. Seasonal Park Service life was hard on relationships. Permanent Park Service life wasn’t much better.
Life in general was hell on relationships, Anna thought tiredly. She wished Paul was there, wished she was in Natchez. How hard would it be? She could give up rangering – all it seemed to get her was wrecked knee joints and scars – and become a Mississippi housewife. Paul was an Episcopal priest when he wasn’t being the sheriff of Adams County. Anna could be a church lady. She liked hats. Anyway, she liked her NPS Stetson well enough. If she believed in God, it would be doable.
There was always a catch.
Jonah excused himself to check on the weather. Adam and Robin left shortly thereafter. Bob went out to bring firewood and stack it near the door. Finally there was room to move. Anna roused herself to a little housekeeping, the only kind she was much good at: setting up camp. She began efficiently storing their mountains of gear. In summer, extraneous items could be cached out of doors. In January, anything they wanted the use of, including the wolf traps, had to be kept inside the cabin. The traps had been designed for all weathers. It wouldn’t have hurt their form or function to be tossed out in the snow, but working with them would be harder if the metal was cold enough to burn skin.
“Can I do anything to help?” Katherine asked.
Anna had forgotten she was there. “Can you even move after the last two days?” she asked.
Katherine laughed and shook her head. “Surely there’s something I can do.”
“There’s not room to do it,” Anna said. She almost added “How are you doing? Are you holding up?” but caught herself in time. Concern and condescension were hard to tell apart, and Katherine’s brain was probably as tired as her body. Instead she said: “We won’t have to pack like this again. We couldn’t count on the weather breaking, so we hauled the traps in. If the weather’s too bad for Jonah to pick us up, we’ll leave them here.” She shot a malevolent glance at the internal-frame pack hanging on the wall at the foot of the bunks. “I doubt if I could do it again. That pack nearly killed me.”
She’d said it to make Katherine feel better, but it might be true. She might not be able to take that kind of weight again for a while. The previous season, when she’d been on a twenty-one-day fire assignment in the mountains east of Boise, Idaho, she’d noticed that the difference between the old firefighters and the young ones wasn’t in strength or endurance. It was in recovery time. The old guys, the firefighters over forty, were as strong as the kids. She and the others could lift and run and dig with the best of them. But they wore down. The kids were stronger after three weeks of hard physical labor. The grown-ups were just bone tired.
With much stomping, Jonah opened the door and leaned in. “Seen Adam?” he asked. “Weather’s souring. We’ve got to roll.”
“I thought he was with you,” Anna said.
“He’s with Robin,” Jonah replied, sounding vaguely ominous. Anna couldn’t tell if he was jealous or just worried about getting the supercub up before they got weathered in.
“I’ll help you look,” she said, grabbed up her parka and shoved her feet in her boots. She didn’t bother with
