Blind Descent

The "how" of the first attack on Frieda became clear.

Brent Roxbury had been following a lead on the back wall of Tinker's Hell. Curt was waiting for him, working on sketches for the survey. Brent was gone a considerable time but returned to say the lead had petered out. It hadn't. The end wall of Tinker's was honeycombed with back doors, at least two of which exited into this undiscovered room. Brent had come out in the cavern and seen Frieda.

A

That was how. "Why" was still at large. A

Leaving the dead man's tracks, she walked back to the flowstone, an honest-to-God yellow brick road through a subterranean Oz.

Fatigue, awe, and fear combined to make the unreal surreal. Walking was upright, unhampered. It put to death the cavers' theory that there was no unbroken ground in this great cave. Vision was limited to the stingy reach of her lamp, but such was the glitter, she felt as if she walked in a moonlit garden. Stone flowed beneath the creek, and she waded across. Ice-cold water soothed feet too long confined in heavy leather. Beyond, she climbed a low rise and circled a formation of white spheres, piled one on another until the entirety of it resembled an elephant sitting on its haunches, forelegs raised the way she had seen them do in circus acts.

Past the Impressionist pachyderm lay what she had been seeking. Expectation did little to soften the blow. As she leaned against the elephant's cool flank, her eyes prickled with tears. The cavern extended another four or five hundred feet. Aragonite chandeliers had hung in defiant profusion from a ceiling of gold. The meandering stream had curved through formations looking more like cloud than solid earth. The end of the room had been cloaked in draperies of such delicacy it would have taken little imagination to see them moving in a nonexistent breeze. At their base, filled by a waterfall from the creek, was what had been the room's crowning jewel, a clear blue lake, garnished with lily pads of ruby-colored stone.

That was what had been. Before poison rained down from above, then was pumped back up in the form of double homicide. "Marble clouds, lily pads ruined," Frieda said that first night in Tinker's. She'd seen it. What remained was tragic, Philistines in the temple. Aragonite trees lay smashed on the cavern floor, their branches defiled with dirt and rock from a gout in the ceiling. The lake was full of mud, the lily pads broken. Half the lake and part of the waterfall were buried under cement and pea gravel. A pipe casing a foot in diameter cut through the ruined ceiling to plunge into the hideous pile and disappear.

The Blacktail, as Holden said, was drilling legally on a legal lease. But concrete trucks had run night and day, pulverizing the desert and causing the one neighbor in forty miles to complain of noise. Roxbury had ordered too much pipe. Inspired by the image of Peter angling his drinking straw into Zeddie's milkshake, A

When they'd hit open space, the cavern where A

Unanswered questions abounded. Why had Brent been part of it when he didn't have the courage-or the lack of morality-to go through with it? He'd ordered the extra pipe, the additional concrete and gravel, and had made a feeble attempt to falsity the data. So feeble, he must have wanted to get caught. Brent had pushed the stone to kill Frieda and might have been the one who started the slide that finished the job. Had he done it for money? From the way he lived, he hadn't gotten enough to make it worth killing over.

A

The soullessness of the business of business saddened her. One roll of film finished, she loaded a second. Crimes of passion committed by passionless men for money.

The Park Service would deal more harshly with participants within its own ranks. Jobs would be lost, reputations destroyed. Charges of conspiracy and racketeering might buy prison time for the perpetrator. For Oscar Iverson. He'd spoken with Brent in the Pigtail. He'd known Brent was meeting A

"A

So wrapped was she in her thoughts and belief in her solitude, she screeched like an owl and stumbled back. As she fell, her lamp was knocked askew. Light from an alien helmet struck her night-adjusted eyes with the force of an oncoming locomotive. Less than two yards away a man stood blanketed in darkness.

"You are in a great deal of trouble, A

22

Shielding her eyes, A

"The same."

"Get the light out of my eyes."

He acted as if he didn't hear. Adjusting her headlamp to illuminate him, she joined the pissing contest.

"What are you doing here?" she demanded.

"The best defense is a good offense. I'm here to find you. Curt said you'd gone on alone, adding stupidity to your considerable list of transgressions. Lord! What a travesty."

His light had slipped beyond her and touched on the desecration of pipe and cement. "What an unholy mess." Trained on his face, A

A

Laymon turned his back on the mountain of cement and pea gravel. "My secretary went to Oscar's office. The key was missing from the board. You were gone. Mr. Schatz was gone. A quick check and we found the padlock cut on the gate to Lechuguilla's access road. So we put together what we hoped wasn't going to turn out to be a rescue team."