When Dark Bear had lashed the other end to a tree, Sam and Bambi and I started to pull our way along the rope, across the river to the opposite bank. When we reached it in safety, though the water had never come higher than midthigh, about three feet deep, I was exhausted from the strain and tension required to hold the rope and my balance. Bambi seemed much the same.
Sam scrambled up first onto the rocky slope and helped us out in turn. Then wordlessly—we were now too close to the waterfall to hear, even if we screamed—Sam clambered down over the rocky side of the falls to a small standing space and reached up his hands for Bambi. He took her by the waist from beneath as I tried to help steady her precarious descent from above. Then, all at once, something horrible happened.
Sam stood there, barefoot in the roiling mist on that narrow ledge of rock, only inches from Bambi, his long dark hair swirling out in the mist and mingling with her golden strands. As he looked down, his hands still on her waist, his silvery eyes smiling into her golden ones, I felt a sudden sharp pain.
What in God’s name was wrong with me? This was hardly the time to get mauled by the talons of the ugly green dragon of jealousy. Besides, who was I to feel this way? I, who’d almost destroyed everyone by disregarding pleas for sanity from all sources, to go trotting off on my own little lust-ridden sexual odyssey? Further, I had to recognize that Sam had never, never—not once, by word or deed—actually told me he and I might be anything more serious than blood brothers. So why couldn’t I be detached enough, or even concerned enough for him, to show the same love, openness, trust, and support that he’d shown me, the moment he realized exactly how I felt about Wolfgang Hauser? But, God, I just couldn’t do it. As I watched them, I felt as if someone had plunged a knife into my heart and twisted it. But this was hardly the time or place to lose control.
These thoughts rushed through my mind for the few short seconds—though it seemed like hours—that Sam and Bambi appeared to be hopelessly lost in each other’s gaze. Then Sam slipped Bambi through the slot in the rock and reached up his arms for me.
When he lowered me to the platform of rock, Sam put his lips to my ear and yelled above the roar of the waters: “Who’s that?”
I put my mouth likewise to his ear and yelled back: “My sister!”
He drew away to stare at me, shook his head, and laughed, though I couldn’t hear a sound. Then he slid me into the cave and quickly followed.
Sam’s flashlight led us back through the glittering labyrinth that had been cut over the aeons out of the solid rock and decorated by dripping water. It twisted back farther into the mountain until we reached a place where we could speak over the distant sound of the waters. Then I introduced Sam to Bambi.
“Well, my friends.” Sam’s voice echoed against the stalagmites of the crystal cave. “I’d really like to pause and admire all the pulchritude that’s crossed the wilderness in my behalf. But I’m afraid we have a rather big task before us.”
“Bettina and I have plenty to fill you in on, and Olivier does, too,” I told Sam. “It might be dangerous to remove Pandora’s manuscripts—I’m assuming they’re here—until you hear what we have to say. Besides, where could you find a better place to hide them safely than this?”
“I don’t plan to hide them at all,” said Sam. “They’ve been hidden long enough, it seems to me. Honesty’s the best policy: that’s your motto, hotshot, you taught it to me.” He smiled at Bambi and added, “Did you know the mountain lion is your sister’s totem? I wonder what yours will turn out to be.” As Bambi smiled back, I felt my fingers tingling—perhaps with the damp cold here in the cave.
“If you don’t plan to hide them,” I asked Sam with numb lips, “what will you do? Everyone in the world has been after these damned manuscripts of Pandora’s.”
“My grandfather has a terrific idea. Did he tell you?” said Sam. “He thinks it’s high time for the whole Indian Nation to do something for our reservations—something that might be a big boon to Mother Earth too.” When Bambi and I made no reply, Sam added, “Dark Bear thinks it’s time to open the first Native American electronic publishing house!”
Sam had sealed the manuscripts in slender, opaque, airtight lucite tubes that were stacked toward the rear of the cave. If you didn’t know exactly what you were after, in the dim light they’d seem just another clutch of stalagmites rising from the floor.
Sam had told me, that morning up on the mountain above the Sheep Meadow, how he’d painstakingly transcribed onto plain paper Pandora’s collection, inherited via his father, of ancient parchments, thin wood panels, and copper scrolls. Then he said he’d sealed the originals in “hermetic containers” and hidden them in a place where he thought they’d “never be found.” The plain paper copy Sam had made—the only copy, as he’d described it—was that set of documents he’d taken from his bank in San Francisco right after Theron Vane was
