Blind Descent

Then the passage opened up. Not gradually but with a sudde

A tu

A path had been worn down through this cluttered basement of the desert. Orange plastic surveyor's tape marked both sides, the dirt between pounded and tracked. This surprising touch of humanity gave A

The trail wound through enormous blocks of limestone studded with rough grayish-white formations called popcorn, then vanished in darkness beneath a low arch in the rock. Though impressive, and the size a relief to her fear-tightened mind, the cave had no life and no color. In a land devoid of sunlight, color was superfluous. Everywhere the puny beam of her headlamp touched was gray or white or brown. The paucity of light circumscribed the area, making it no larger than the small circle illuminated, creating a sense of fragmentation that was disorienting.

In the world above, the memory of which was already fading, there were signs and portents, clues that let one know one was alive: breezes, birdsong and crickets, the sound of distant thunder, the smell of sage. Here, the silence was absolute, the only sounds those of their own making. With the manhole closed, the air moved, but much more slowly, and the only smell was the dank odor of ancient rock. In this place unmarked by the rise and fall of the sun, the tides, the seasons, time ceased to have meaning.

With a thud and a scrabble, Holden Tillman joined her at the commencement of the passage. "Pretty neat, huh?"

"Neat."

"This is nothing. Wait till we get in the cave."

Iverson ducked into sight from beneath the arch. Something in the cast of his features, the set of his shoulders, had changed subtly. The unhitched movement of his joints had tightened up, become smoother. Responsibility wrapped around him, tying up all the loose ends. He radiated competence.

"Frieda and her team are on what is usually a two-day trek-maybe a day and a half. It'll be at least that hauling her out. Traveling fast, I figure we can get there in seven hours. Maybe a bit less. We've been over this before, but we're going to go over it again. I can make it. Holden can make it. If you don't feel up to it, A

"I'm okay with it," A

"If you get too tired, start getting stupid or scaring yourself, let me or Holden know. We'll take a break, eat a bite, swap some stories. Can't leave anybody by 'emselves down here. Hodags'll carry 'em off."

"Cave spirits," Holden said solemnly. "Mischievous little beggars."

"Got it," A

After a couple hundred yards the passageway came to an abrupt end, the floor dropping unceremoniously away into a pit so deep that light was lost. Water dripping from the ceiling laid a slippery layer over gold-colored stone that poured over the lip into the void. Two stalagmites, just more than knee high, protruded like eyeteeth on either side of the trail. A climbing rope was anchored to one of them, its hefty weave of nylon looking as insubstantial as a spider's web in the formidable throat of limestone.

"Boulder Falls," Iverson told A

"Me last," Holden finished.

Iverson hooked up his descent gear and, bracing a foot to either side of the line, walked backward, his weight on the rope, his body angled out over the shaft.

The descent didn't frighten A

A

As she sat in the seep puddle, the darkness began to harden around her. It was not a mere absence of light, it was a substance, an element, a suffocating miasma that filled her ears, clogged her nostrils, bore down on her shoulders and chest. When the pressure on her eyelids became such that she could feel the black leaking like raw concrete into her brain, she reached up and switched on her lamp.

Probably thirty seconds had passed since she'd turned it off.

The light pushed the cave back to its former size, and she breathed deeply, embarrassed that her sigh of relief was so audible.

"Lookie," Holden said, politely ignoring her personal crisis. "Cave pearls."

To the left of the trail, in a shallow basin on the lip of Boulder Falls, was a formation cavers called pearls. They formed much the same way pearls formed in oysters. As water dripped from above, rolling around grains of sand, the limestone in the liquid began to coat them. Because of the movement the pearls stayed free rather than being captured in a static formation.

"There used to be one in Liberty Bell. A big one we called the Jupiter Pearl," Holden said. "It had a red dot on it. Every time you came through, the dot was in a different place, orbiting around its tiny solar system."

"What happened to it?" A

"Some SOB stole it."

A

"Want a piece of candy?" Holden held out a red Jolly Rancher, and A

"I'm sorry about the Jupiter Pearl," she said to pay for the treat.

"So it goes," Holden said. "And then it's gone."

The sadness in his voice cut through her cloak of self-pity. In more ways than one, the underground was the only true wilderness remaining. The lead where Frieda had been injured had been discovered Tuesday. Thursday of the same week A