by Damon Knight
The afternoon was crystalline, the air almost still, the sun was warm on her back. Every step they took upward revealed more of the alien country. Land that had appeared flat and unbroken turned into a series of mesas with sharp edges; a black pit closed, became a barren lava flow; a cliffside of mud with a sparkling waterfall became brown jasper with a thick vein of blue agate. Deceptive, lying, deceitful land, she thought.
“Fifteen minutes,” Sam said suddenly, and Victoria almost bumped into him as she rounded a boulder as high as a two-story building.
She sank to the ground thankfully. Her legs were throbbing, her thighs so hot she was vaguely surprised that steam was not rising from her jeans. Office work and a daily stroll to lunch had not prepared her for this.
Sam squatted beside her and handed her his canteen. “It isn’t much farther,” he said. He pointed down the cliff. “Look. Poison Creek. Dry now, but sometimes there’s water. Alkaline. Tomorrow we’ll drive by it. You can pick up thunder eggs.”
“This is all very beautiful,” Victoria said. “I never knew that before.”
“It can be, if you accept its terms, don’t try to make it be something else. It fights back and always wins.”
“The eternal desert, like the eternal ocean?”
“Something like that.”
But he was wrong, she knew. The desert changed; she could see the evidence everywhere. It would change again and again. She did not doubt that the desert would win in any contest, but it would win by deceit. It would lull with a beautiful lie and then strike out. “No one would really try to fight a place like this,” she said. “Only a fool.”
Sam laughed. “Down there in Poison Creek there’s gold. You’ll see it tomorrow. It’s no secret. A grain here, a few there, shining, laughing. The desert’s little joke. It would cost more to ship in water and equipment to get it out than it’s worth even today, or tomorrow, or next year, no matter how high gold goes. God knows how many men have died or been wiped out, have gone crazy, trying to get rich off that gold. One way or another the desert kills them. The ones who last are those who can pick up a handful of the sand, look at the shiny grains and let it all sift back down to Poison Creek where it belongs, and then smile, sharing the joke. They’re the ones who accept the terms.” He stood up and offered her a hand.
“Can you do that? Leave it there, laugh at the joke?” Victoria asked. She tried not to grimace as her legs straightened out painfully.
“Sure. I’m not after gold. Come on. You’re getting stiff. It’s best to keep moving.”
She wanted to ask him what he was after, but she knew he would not answer. The reason they always got along was that neither ever asked that kind of question. They liked the same plays, music, books sometimes, and could talk endlessly about them. They argued rather often about politics, economics, conservation, religion, but it all remained abstract, a game they played. No other lover had been willing to remain so impersonal, had kept himself as uninvolved as she was determined to remain. He had asked if she was still married and she had said no, and the subject had never come up again.
Never again, she had said after the divorce, and it had been fine.
She thought of the cruel, deliberately hurtful words she and Stuart had flung at each other, as if each of them had been determined not to leave the other whole, unscarred.
“You’re some kind of creeping fungus!” he had yelled. “You’re all over me all the time, smothering me, sucking the life out of me!”
She had believed she was a good wife; it had come as a shock to learn that her goodness was an irritant to him. She never lied, always did what was expected of her, never was late by a second, never demanded anything not readily and easily available. She had been like that all her life, and her father distrusted her, Stuart hated her. The only two people she had tried to please wholly, absolutely, had ended by abandoning her. Never again, she had thought, would she ask anything of anyone. Never again would she be willing to give anything of herself to anyone. If no one could touch her, then no one could hurt her. If she belonged to no one but herself, no one could abandon her again.
But, she thought suddenly, never again meant keeping such a distance that everyone else, every man, would forever be a stranger. And strangers could be dangerous, unpredictable. Sam’s sudden rage and this return to affability made her uneasy. She knew it would be impossible to resume the careless relationship they had had only a day before. She tried to imagine herself again in his arms, giving and finding pleasure, and the images would not come.
She concentrated on climbing. When they got to the camp high on the mountain, Sam would not let her rest, but packed quickly and started down. “You’ll freeze up, or get a charley-horse,” he said cheerfully. “Then I’d have to backpack you out of here. I’ll get the rest of this stuff tomorrow.”
It was as if he had managed to erase everything she had told him, as well as his own reaction, but she did not have enough energy to worry any more about that. Doggedly she followed him down the mountain, seeing nothing now but the ground directly ahead.
She dreamed of a swarm of fireflies winking on and off in an intricate dance that she could not quite follow. It had to be seen from the center, she realized, and she began picking her way carefully to the middle of them. Observing the rhythms from the outside had been charming, but as she drew inward, she began to have trouble breathing; they were using up all the air, sucking the air from her lungs. Off and on, off and on, off. .
She woke up; Sam was shaking her hard.
“You were dreaming,” he said. “Are you okay?”
She tried to sit up and groaned. “What time is it?”
“Midnight. Hungry?”
When they came back with the rocks he had made dinner, but she had been too tired to eat. She had stretched out on the bunk and had gone to sleep instead.
“What you need,” Sam said, “is a cup of soup, which I just happen to have.” He jammed a pillow behind her back and stepped over to the stove. He made the camper seem very small.
“Haven’t you been to bed yet?”
“Nope. I was reading and waiting for you to wake up, starving and in agony. Soup first, then a rubdown, milk and aspirin.”
“If you touch me, I’ll die,” Victoria said.
Sam laughed and dragged a camp stool to the side of her bed. “I’ll hold, you drink.” After her first few sips, he let her hold the mug of beef broth. “I’ve got this guaranteed snake-oil liniment, made by the oldest medicine man in the West out of certified genuine magic snakes. What we do, see, is haul off the jeans, pull the cover up to your fanny and let me work on those legs. Ten minutes, and you’ll walk tomorrow. A miracle.”
“Hah!”
“Word of honor. If you misuse this potion, use it for anything other than what old Chief Calapooia intended it for, you will call down on your head, heart, soul and liver the wrath of the sacred snake god who then will do certain very nasty things to you.”
He kneaded and massaged her legs and rubbed the liniment on them until they glowed, then he covered her again, tucking the blanket in snugly; he brought her milk and aspirin, kissed her chastely on the forehead, and before he could turn off the lights and get himself in bed, she was sleeping.
When she woke up in the morning she could remember that during the night Sam had shaken her again, possibly more than one time, perhaps even slapped her. She must have had a nightmare, she thought, but there was no memory of it, and perhaps she had dreamed that Sam tried to rouse her.
She got up cautiously; while she ached and was sore from her neck down, she felt better than she had expected, and very hungry. There was a note on the refrigerator door. Sam had gone up the mountain for the rest of his gear.
After she ate she went outside; there was no place to go that wasn’t either up or down. It was only nine-thirty. Sam would be four hours at least; if he had left at seven, she had an hour and a half to wait. Time enough to drive back to the gate, locate the hill she had walked up
, look for the thing in the valley by daylight.
The keys were not in the ignition. Victoria found her coat at the foot of the bed and searched for the single key Diego had had made—one for her, one for Mimi, one for himself, so no one would ever be stranded outside if the others were delayed. She searched both pockets, then dumped the contents of her purse on the bed. No key. Growing angry, she stripped the bed and searched it, the space between the mattress and wall, the floor around it. Sam could not have known about the extra keys; he had been gone when Diego had them made.
She made the bed again, then found a book and tried to read, until she heard Sam returning.
“Why did you take the keys?” she demanded as he entered the camper.
He looked blank, groped in his pockets, then turned and opened the glove compartment and after a moment faced her once more, holding up the key chain. “Pains me to see them in the ignition,” he said. “I always toss them in there.”
Silently Victoria began to secure the cabinets, lock the refrigerator, snap the folding chairs into place. She had known he would explain the keys. He would explain the single key away just as easily. She did not bother to ask. Soon they were ready to leave.
They stopped frequently; in the dry Poison Creek bed they picked up thunder eggs and filled an envelope with sand that Sam promised would contain some grains of gold. Once they stopped and he led her up a short, steep cliff, and from there it seemed the entire desert lay at their feet—brown, greenish-gray, tan, black. There were no wires, no roads, no sign anywhere of human life. The vastness and emptiness seemed more threatening than anything Victoria had ever experienced.
There had been no horse, Victoria thought suddenly. She could see the cowboy again—not his features, she realized. She had not seen his features at all. She visualized the fire, but not what was burning; the moonlight gleamed on the dog’s pale coat. And there was no horse anywhere. The sheltered depression had been bright; if a horse had been tethered there, she would have seen it. The cowboy would have taken it into shelter, not left it out in the brutal wind.
Sam pulled her arm and she stifled a scream. She had not heard his voice, had not felt his hand until he yanked her away from the edge of the cliff. He pulled her, stumbling and shaking, back to the camper.
Neither spoke of her near trance. Sam made dinner later, they played gin, slept, and, as before, she knew when she awakened that she had had nightmares. When Sam said he was taking her home, she nodded. She felt that the barren desolation of the landscape had entered her, that it was spreading, growing, would fill her completely, and the thought paralyzed her with dread.
II
Serena Hendricks met Sam at the back door of the ranch house.
“Stranger! Your beard is a bush! Does Farley know you’re here?” She had the complexion of a Mexican, the bright blue eyes of her German mother.
Sam shook his head. “Where is he?”
“Out there. God knows. A hundred degrees! You know it’s a hundred degrees? Gin and tonic. Lots of ice. Come on.” She drew him into the house.
Serena’s parents had worked on the Chesterman ranch, her father the foreman, her mother the housekeeper. Serena and Farley had grown up together and, Sam thought, they should have married, but had missed the chance, the time, something. She had married one of the hands instead and her three children ran around the yard whooping and playing rodeo, while Farley remained single.
Sam followed her to the kitchen. The air in the spacious ranch house was twenty degrees cooler than outside.
“We expected you and your friends back in April,” Serena said as she sliced a lemon and added it to ice cubes in a glass. She pursed her lips, closed one eye and poured gin, nodded, added tonic, stirred, then tasted it.
“There were complications,” Sam said. Sometimes he almost wished he had asked Serena to marry him ten years ago, back when anything was still possible. Serena rolled her eyes, drew him to a chair at the table, dragged another one close to it and sat down by him, her hand on his arm. “That means a woman. Tell me about it.”
Sam laughed, gently put her hand on her own knee and stood up. “What I’m going to do is get my stuff from the camper, go upstairs and take a shower and a nap.”
“Pig!” she yelled at his back. “You’re all alike! Inconsiderate pigs! All of you.”
When he brought his pack in she handed him a new drink. “Same room as usual. Supper’s at six. Sleep well, dream happy.”
Farley and Sam had been at U.C.L.A. together; they had climbed mountains together; they had lived through an August blizzard on Mt. Rainier together. Farley was slightly taller than Sam and leaner, and his hair was graying.
They sat on the wide porch drinking beer at midnight.
“You haven’t seen her since then?” Farley asked.
“I guess neither of us wanted to. She quit her job, moved. Got another job. Dropped just about everyone we both knew.” He finished the beer and put the can down. From far off there came a coyote’s sharp, almost human coughing, yapping cry. He waited. There was an answering call. Then another. They were very distant.
“She must have had a good scare,” Farley said. “There’s no Reuben in the territory, you know.”
“There’s nothing like she said.”
“There’s something, Sam boy. There is something. And I don’t know any way on God’s earth for her to have known it. We used to have a hand called Tamale. An old Mexican, one of Serena’s uncles. He died when I was five or six. It’s been that long. He’d tell us stories. Superstitious old bastard. He told me about Ghost River, scared me shitless. Haven’t heard that again since then. Until now when Reuben comes along and tells your friend the same thing.”
Sam felt prickles on his arms. “So there was someone. Who the hell was he?”
“Reuben,” Farley said. He stood up. “Can’t take these hours any more. Must be age. You want to ride out with me in the morning? I’m making the rounds of the wells. Lundy’s had bad water up the other side of Dog Mountain. I’m collecting samples to have tested.”
Water, Sam thought later, sitting at his window staring out at the black desert. Water was the only real worry out here. Dog Creek irrigated Farley’s wheat. Dog Creek determined if Farley would succeed or fail. Years when the snow did not come to the mountains, when the winds drove the sparse clouds over too fast to release their rain, when the summer started early, ended late, Farley watched Dog Creek, and the reservoir his father had dammed, like a woman watching a feverish child at the climax of a serious illness. The fear of drought accounted for the gray in Farley’s hair. There were a dozen deep wells on the ninety thousand acres of his ranch, most of them pumped by windmills, a few of them close enough to the power lines to use electricity. The water was pumped into troughs. If one of the wells started pumping bad water, or no water, if one of the troughs was shot by a hunter, sprang a leak in any way, that meant disaster. Days, weeks went by between checks of the troughs. In this country a lot of cattle could die in that time.
And she thought he would swallow that silly story about a cowboy and his dog!
They drove the jeep cross-country to inspect the wells, and Farley drove places where Sam would not have attempted to go. At one o’clock Farley stopped and they sat on the ground in the shade of an overhanging cliff to eat their lunch. There was a valley below them; on the other side were more cliffs. Suddenly Sam realized where they were: this was the same valley Victoria had talked about, viewed from the other side.
"See that fence?” Farley waved his beer can toward the opposite cliffs. “Three hundred acres fenced off. Tamale brought me out with him once, when I was five. I rode all the way, still remember. I asked him why this piece was fenced off and he told me about Ghost River. Said the cattle heard the water sometimes and went off the cliffs trying to get to it. I believed him. Never gave it another thought for years. Then I was home from school one summer and Dad had me come out here to fix one of the gates. I knew by then cattle don’t find water b
y sound, they smell it. I asked him about the three hundred acres. He said it always had been fenced because of the larkspurs that come up thick in there.” He looked at the other side of the valley thoughtfully. “They do, too,” he said after a moment. “Only thing is, they’re on both sides of the fence and always were.”
In the valley was a thick stand of bunchgrass, the sign of a well-managed range. No sage or gray rabbit grass had invaded there, no erosion scarred the land. No tracks flattened the grass, or made ruts in the earth. The valley was a cul-de-sac, a box canyon surrounded by cliffs. Where the valley narrowed, with a break in the cliffs, there was a drop-off of two hundred feet. The wire fence started at the gorge, crossed the ranch road, climbed the cliff, followed the jagged ridge around to the break. On the other side the fence resumed, still clinging to the crest, then turned, went down the cliffs again, recrossed the road and ended at the gorge, several hundred yards from the other section. The area enclosed was an irregular ellipse. The irregularities were caused by the terrain. Where heaps of boulders, or abrupt rises or falls, made detours necessary, the fence always skirted around to the outside.
Farley got back in the jeep. “Might as well finish,” he said, and drove along the fence on the crest, then started the descent down a rocky incline, bumping and lurching to the two-track ranch road and the first gate. He drove fast, but with care and skill; turned around at the second gate and made his way forward, as Victoria had done.
“Probably stopped along in here,” he said. “First curve out of sight of the road.” The gorge was nearby, and there should have been a hill to the right, but the hill was nothing less than another steep cliff. Farley studied it a moment, motioned to Sam and started to walk. Unerringly he turned and twisted and took them upward. They reached the top with little trouble.
“She could have done it,” Sam said, looking down at the valley again, across it to where they had been a short time before. He looked about until he saw the boulders she had mentioned. where she had sat down. They started toward them. They were on the ridge of an upthrust, picking their way over the weathered edges of crazily tilted basalt, which would remain when everything about it was turned to dust. In some places there was less than a foot of space between a sheer drop-off on one side and a slope almost that steep on the other.
