wait, and Carson had grown tired of waiting in the hushed, funereal atmosphere of the residency compound. He needed time to think about the X-FLU problem, to figure out what went wrong, and—perhaps most important—to recover his equilibrium. He knew no better tonic than a long ride on horseback.
The grade horse caught Carson’s eye. He was a liver-colored bay with a head the size of a coffin. But he was young and tough-looking. He eyed Carson through a straggly lock of mane.
Carson stepped inside the stall and ran his hand along the horse’s flank. The fur was tight and coarse, the skin tough as tripe. The horse didn’t jerk or tremble; he merely turned his head and smelled Carson’s shoulder. He had a calm, alert gleam in his eye that Carson liked.
He picked up the front leg. The hooves were good although the shoeing job was abysmal. The horse stood calmly while Carson cleaned the hoof with a penknife. He dropped the leg and patted the horse on the neck.
“You’re a damn fine horse,” Carson said, “but you sure are one ugly son of a bitch.”
The horse nickered his appreciation.
Carson eased a halter over the animal’s head and led him to a hitching post outside. It had been two years since he’d ridden, but already the old instincts were coming back. He went into the tack room and looked over Mount Dragon’s saddle collection. It was obvious that most of the other residents were uninterested in riding. One of the saddles had a broken tree; another was just a screwed-together affair that would probably disintegrate the moment the horse broke into a trot. There was one old Abiquiu saddle with a high cantle that might do. Carson picked it up, grabbed a blanket and pad, and carried everything out to the hitching post. He buckled on his old spurs, noting that during the years of disuse one of the rowels had broken.
“What’s your name?” he murmured softly while brushing out the horse’s coat.
The horse stood there in the gathering light, saying nothing.
“Well then, I’m going to call you Roscoe.” He folded the blanket, placed it on the horse’s back, then added the pad and saddle. He looped the latigo through the rigging and tightened it, feeling the horse swell his belly with air in an attempt to trick Carson into leaving the cinch too loose.
“You’re a rascal,” said Carson. He hitched the breast collar and loosely buckled the flank cinch. When the horse wasn’t paying attention he jabbed his knee in its belly and jerked the latigo tight. The horse flattened his ears.
“Gotcha,” said Carson.
The light was now brighter in the east, and Venus had grown pale, almost invisible. Carson tied on the saddlebags containing his lunch, looped a gallon canteen over the horn, and swung up into the saddle.
No guard was on duty at the rear gate in the perimeter fence. Approaching the keypad, Carson leaned over and punched in the code, and the gate swung open.
He trotted out into the desert and took a deep breath. After almost three weeks of incarceration inside the lab, he was finally free. Free of the claustrophobic Fever Tank, free of the horror of the last few days. Tomorrow, the OSHA inspector would arrive and the grind would begin again. Carson was determined to make this day count.
Roscoe had a rough, fast trot. Carson turned the horse southward and rode toward the old Indian ruin that poked above the horizon, a few wrecked walls amid piles of rubble. He’d been a little curious since he’d first seen it from Singer’s window.
He rode past at a distance. Most of the ruin was covered with windblown sand, but here and there he could make out the low outlines of collapsed walls and small room blocks. It looked like many of the old ruins that had dotted the landscape of his youth. Soon, it was nothing but a diminishing point behind him.
When he was several miles from the lab, Carson dropped the horse into a walk and looked around. Mount Dragon had shrunk to a white cluster to the north. The vegetation of the Jornada desert had changed subtly, and he found himself surrounded by creosotebush that marched toward the horizon with almost mathematical precision.
He continued south again, enjoying the familiar rocking of the horse. A pronghorn antelope paused on a rise and looked in his direction. It was joined by another. Suddenly, as if on cue, they wheeled about and fled; they had caught his scent. He rode through a curious stand of soapweed yucca, looking uncannily like a crowd of bowing people, and he remembered a story passed down in his family about how Kit Carson and a wagon train had circled and fired at a group of hostiles for fifteen minutes before realizing they were shooting at just such a yucca grove.
By noon, Carson reckoned he was about fifteen miles from Mount Dragon. He could just make out the cinder cone itself, a dark triangle on the northern horizon, but the laboratory had long sunk out of view. A low range of hills had appeared in the west, and he turned his horse toward them, eager to explore.
He came to the edge of a vast lava flow, black jagged rubble piled on the desert floor, covered with blooming ocotillo. This, Carson knew, was part of the vast lava formation known as
Carson rode along the edge of the lava, winding in and out, following the irregular pattern of the flow. The lava had spread amoebalike across the desert, leaving a complicated maze of coves, islands, and lava caves.
As Carson rode, he watched a summer thunderstorm rapidly build over the hills. A great thunderhead began to rear against the tropopause, its bottom as flat and dark as an anvil. He smelled a change in the air, a freshening of the breeze, bringing with it the smell of ozone. The spreading cloud covered the sun, and a cathedral-like hush fell on the landscape. In a few minutes the cloud was dropping a column of rain the color of blued steel. Carson urged Roscoe into a trot, scanning the edge of the lava, figuring he could weather the coming storm in one of the caves that were usually found at the edges of the flows.
The column of rain thickened, and the wind began to push skeins of dust along the ground. Lightning flickered inside the cloud, the rumbling of thunder rolling across the desert like the sound of a distant battle. As the storm approached, a low moaning filled the air and the smell of wet sand and electricity became stronger.
Carson rounded a point of lava and saw a promising-looking cave among the mounds of twisted basalt. He dismounted, removed his saddlebags, and tied Roscoe to a rock by his lead rope. He climbed over the lava to the cave entrance.
The mouth was dark and cool, with a soft floor of windblown sand. He stepped inside just as the first heavy drops of rain slapped the ground. He could see Roscoe, on the long lead rope, turn his butt to the wind and hunker down. The saddle would get soaked. He should have brought it into the cave with him, but such a saddle didn’t deserve special treatment. He would oil it when he got back.
The desert was suddenly engulfed in sheets of rain. The hills disappeared and the line of black lava faded into the gray torrent. Carson lay on his back in the dimness of the cave. His thoughts turned inevitably to Mount Dragon. Even here, he could not escape it. It still seemed unreal to him, this laboratory lost in the desert. And yet the death of Brandon-Smith was real enough. Once again, he tortured himself with the thought that if his genetic splicing had succeeded, she would be alive. In one sense, his overconfidence had killed her. Part of him realized this train of thought was irrational, and yet it kept returning to haunt him, again and again. He had done his best, he knew; Fillson’s and Brandon-Smith’s own inattention were responsible. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling of guilt.
He closed his eyes and forced himself to listen to the rain and wind. Finally, he sat up and stared out the cave opening. Roscoe stood silently, unafraid. He had seen it all before. Although Carson felt sorry for him, he knew it had been the lot of horses since time immemorial to stand in the rain while their masters took refuge in caves.
He eased back and absentmindedly ran his hands through the sand on the cave floor, waiting for the storm to pass. His fingers closed over something cool and hard, and he pulled it from the sand. It was a spearpoint, made from gray chert, as light and balanced as a leaf. He remembered finding a similar arrowhead once, out riding the range. When he brought it home his great-uncle Charley had become very excited by the find, saying that it was a powerful sign of protection and that he should carry it always. His great-uncle had made him a buckskin medicine bag for the spearpoint; then he had chanted and sprinkled pollen over it. His father had been disgusted by the whole proceeding. Later, Carson had thrown away the bag and told his great-uncle he had lost it.
He slid the spearpoint into his pocket, stood up, and walked to the cave entrance. Somehow, the find made him feel better. He would get through this; he would succeed in neutralizing X-FLU, if only to ensure that Brandon- Smith’s death had not been in vain.
The storm eased, and Carson stepped out of the lava tube. Looking around, he saw a great double rainbow arching over the hills to the south. The sun began to break through the clouds. He collected Roscoe’s lead rope,
