A Question of Time

Chapter 1

1935

Jake Rezner had never owned a watch, but the lack had rarely worried him, and he didn't mean to let it bother him today. Squinting up at the first direct rays of the morning sun, just coming clear of an eastern cliff, he thought that today the sun would let him tell time well enough. He might get back to camp too late for evening chow, but that wouldn't really matter. All he really had to worry about today was getting back before it got too dark to walk the Canyon trails. If he should get caught out overnight, or was so late returning that the camp authorities started to organize a search for him, they might begin to be uncomfortably curious about where he'd been.

For Jake the seven days since last Sunday had dragged almost as if he were in prison, or as if there could be something wrong with all the clocks and watches in the camp, and with the calendar that had spent this week, like every other week, hanging on a pole in the orderly tent.

Anyway, Sunday had at last come round again, and right after morning chow Jake had got hold of a canteen and come down here to the creek to fill it. At the moment he was squatting on the rocky lip of Bright Angel Creek, his right hand holding the two-quart vessel under water, air bubbles coming up in a way that made it look like he might be drowning a small animal. The canteen was surplus military equipment, like Jake's khaki clothes, like his sturdy boots and his round-brimmed fatigue hat, all on loan from the army to help the Civilian Conservation Corps get going in these dark days of the Depression.

Early June sunlight, hot but not nearly as hot as it was going to be in a few hours, sparkled off the surface of the noisy creek, glinting in the small patches where the water wasn't too chopped up by turbulence to be anything but white froth. The dazzle of sunlight on rushing water suggested moving pictures, and was the kind of thing that on a dull Sunday might have tempted Jake to sit here for an hour and just watch—but today, whatever happened, was not going to be dull. Not for him.

Small rapids, both upstream and downstream, generated unending hollow noises that sounded to Jake like a murmuring of many voices. In camp you could hear the rapids of the creek all day and all night, and on workdays along one trail or another they were sometimes audible. Since coming west to work for the CCC Jake had discovered that he could never listen for long to the voices of this or any other creek before they started making words. Right now the rapids upstream were louder than those below; and that seemed only natural, because the water upstream had just come tumbling all the way down from its source up on the North Rim, a mile higher and maybe ten crow-flight miles from this spot. Downstream from Jake, not more than fifty yards away, Bright Angel Creek plunged in a final subdued roar to its union with the wide, swift, silent Colorado at the very bottom of the Grand Canyon.

All the rapids in the creek kept on shouting their imaginary words at Jake, but right now they sounded like people arguing in some foreign language. Only one of those words was at all clear. It was a certain name, a girl's name that he'd learned only two weeks ago.

The last remnant of air came bubbling up out of the submerged canteen, and Jacob Rezner got to his feet, screwing on the container's metal cap. Jake at twenty-two was six feet tall and solidly built. His dark hair, kept cut short ever since he'd joined the CCC, still retained a tendency to curl. His greenish eyes had something in them that most people found a little startling, though very few could have said exactly why they were startled. The mobility of his mouth seemed to be connected somehow, perhaps sharing a kind of energy, with the strangeness in his eyes.

Fastening the canteen to his webbed army belt, Jake returned to camp by recrossing the creek, on a narrow bridge that marked the foot of Kaibab Trail. Trudging a few feet uphill from the bridge, Jake entered what the army people called the company street of CCC Camp NP-3-A. The street was basically two rows of khaki tents, twenty-five of them in all, most of them housing four enrollees each. Now that the hot weather was coming on in earnest, at least a couple of each tent's canvas walls were hiked up to let air circulate. Headquarters and officers' tents were grouped at the northeastern, upstream end of the camp. Latrines, supply, and the mule corral were scattered downstream along the creek. Today the makeshift corral would more than likely remain empty; generally no pack trains came down on Sunday. As a rule the rest of the week saw fairly steady mule train traffic, because all supplies except water had to be packed down here from the South Rim.

The usual Sunday sounds of the camp surrounded Jake. Laughter and swear words and arguments, and the one ever-playing radio. The army chaplain hadn't made it down today for Sunday services; most weeks he failed to make it, because it was a seven-mile mule ride on switch-back trails from the South Rim, and a lot more miles than that from the nearest place that even pretended to be a town.

Just below Camp NP-3-A, down on the cleared, relatively flat space of the creek's delta, some of the guys were starting a pickup softball game despite the growing heat. For most of the young enrollees this would be a day to play games, play cards, write letters, and just sack out. Here and there one of the guys would dig out a bottle he had secretly stashed away. Usually the officers and leaders looked the other way when that happened, unless someone showed up drunk for work, or too hung over to carve trails and haul rock.

With the filled canteen hooked securely on his GI belt, Jake approached his own tent, halfway down the company street, and stuck his head inside. Three of the four military bunks, including his own, were empty. Joe Spicci, short and wiry, looked up from the fourth sack, where he lay reading last Sunday's sports section.

Jake told him: "I'm going for a hike." He made the announcement reluctantly; but it made sense to let someone know he might not be back until late. He wouldn't want them starting a search if he missed evening chow.

"Where?" Spicci sounded interested.

"Just a hike." The answer was short; this was one hike on which Jake didn't want company. "See you at chow time. Or maybe even later."

"Too damn hot out there for me today." Joe raised the sports pages in front of his face again.

A hundred steps away from the tent, Jake had put the entire camp behind him. Hell, with a few more strides he was already practically out of sight of all the tents. The land down here at the bottom of the inner gorge was mostly barren rock, a real desert, but he was already around the nearest big outcropping shoulder. This formation, whose shape always put Jake in mind of a sheeted ghost, dwarfed the camp, even as it was dwarfed itself by the thousand-foot cliffs of the lower gorge. These cliffs mostly blocked out the view of the vastly greater and more colorful fantasies above. After living four months in a work camp at the very bottom of the Grand Canyon, Jake had learned his way around the place a little bit, but he still hadn't got used to it in his mind. Maybe you never could, at least not if you had any imagination.

But today, so far, he was hardly noticing the landscape. Because his mind was busy with something else. If any of the other men in camp had any idea… but none of them did. They couldn't, because Jake hadn't said a word to anyone.

His secret destination lay downstream, along the south bank of the broad Colorado. To reach the south bank he had to cross the Kaibab suspension bridge, just outside of camp. This bridge was somewhat longer than a football field, and just about wide enough to accommodate one loaded mule. It was the only span of any kind to cross the river for more than a hundred miles upstream or down.

The bridge sounded hollowly beneath Jake's boots. The river, here deep and smooth, rushed silently below. After Jake had crossed the bridge his way lay west, downstream along the newly constructed River Trail. He'd labored on this stretch of trail himself, worked hard, helping the experts set explosives here and there, digging and hauling broken rock.

Though water was a life-and-death necessity in this heat, he thought he might possibly have managed today without borrowing a canteen, because there was the river to drink from. But along these miles of uninhabited shoreline, more often than not the edge of the Colorado was too abrupt, too steep and sharp-rocked, to let a thirsty man get close enough to drink or scoop up water.

A man who fell in would be lucky to find a place where he could climb out again before the current knocked him against too many rocks. The mean and rugged riverbank was of a piece with the rest of the local landscape.

When Jake had made a few hundred yards downstream he stopped at a bend in the trail. Pausing there, he looked back, to make sure that no one else was crossing the suspension bridge. He had no reason to think that anyone would be interested in where he went, or try to follow him, but just in case…

He could be sure now. No one was following him.

Jake moved on, briskly.

For once he was oblivious to all the giants' handiwork around him. All he could think of were the same questions that had been tormenting him all week: Two Sundays in a row she's been there. If only she's there again. And if only she's still interested…

When the time came to turn off the River Trail it was a matter of scrambling and climbing, finding his own way across rough landscape. There was not even a deer trail to follow here. But Jake had been this way enough times now to have worked out a passable route for himself through the harsh terrain.

An hour and a half after leaving camp he was several miles downstream, moving quickly despite the day's growing heat. Here he was still inside the lower gorge, a thousand feet deep and comparatively narrow. Still its high edges almost totally cut off his view of most of the vaster, deeper rocky wilderness of the upper canyon, and of both distant rims. At irregular intervals side canyons came slicing into the main one from both north and south. Some of these tributary gorges had names: Zoroaster Canyon, Bright Angel Canyon, Travertine Canyon, among others. Most were dry most of the time, but in spring those on the north bank ran with snowmelt from the high North Rim. And the rangers who had been here for years said that summer rains would turn all of them on again. Greenery had established itself along certain of these watercourses, showing that their flow was continuous, fed by springs.

Jake's steps—and his pulse—quickened as he came at last to the familiar mouth of the particular side canyon that he wanted. If this one had a name, he didn't know it. Its entrance was a lovely, inviting place in contrast to the stark, dark, almost eternally shaded rock by which it was surrounded. From a narrow opening the ravine, its floor green with shady vegetation, went curving up into the towering south wall. The stream issuing from this side canyon was only a trickle, up to Jake's ankles when he splashed in, but steady, and felt as cold as the Colorado itself. Here at the entrance the bed of the stream, flowing between natural pillars that Jake's imagination could easily see as carven monsters, offered the only place to walk.

A few yards up the side canyon the footing became easier, and a little trail appeared, paralleling the stream. From here on Jake really had to climb, now and then mounting gigantic stair-steps of tumbled rock. His boots squelched water for a while but the dry heat quickly dried them.

Half an hour after entering the side canyon, Jake was clambering up the last—for a while—of the series of steps. Then, on an interval of almost level ground, he moved forward among cottonwoods and willows. Here the narrow canyon bulged out a little on both sides, having at this point ascended to a softer layer of light-colored rock that Jake had learned was sandstone. Suddenly he stopped in his tracks, letting out a silent sigh of great relief. Fifty yards away he could see and recognize a human figure, that of a young woman who wore jeans and a man's work shirt. Camilla was there, almost exactly where he'd pictured her, waiting for him.

Today she had perched herself on a handy ledge of sandstone, deep within the shadow of the enormous cliff, not far from where the creek came down over a series of ledges that made a waterfall. Even at this distance Jake could see the startling pallor of her skin; he'd mentioned that to her last Sunday, and she'd told him how badly she burned if the direct sun got at her.

Camilla's reddish hair, lovely, long, and curly, stirred in the breeze that today as usual was moving down the side canyon. Even though she was sitting in the shade, dark glasses shielded her eyes, and she had one hand raised to shade them further as she turned her head to look for him—as if, despite the waterfall, she might have heard Jake approaching.

Just as on the last two Sundays—could their first meeting have been only two weeks ago?—she had her easel set up in front of her, and her drawing tools and papers were scattered about on nearby rocks.

Jake waved an arm in greeting, got an answering wave, and moved forward, trotting now despite the heat. Camilla got up from her ledge of rock and came a little distance toward him, stopping just within the shadow of the cliff.

Despite the dark glasses, which pretty effectively concealed her eyes, he thought there was something odd in the way she looked at him today. Maybe it was the angle of her head. Whatever it was caused him a moment of uncertainty, of shyness. He stopped just close enough to Camilla to reach for and clasp her outstretched hands.

"Hello." To Jake's surprise his own voice sounded shy, as if this were the first time he had ever spoken to this girl, or touched her. Last week she'd kissed him for the first time—a single kiss, gentle and quick—as he said goodbye.

"Hello, yourself." Camilla's husky voice was just as he'd remembered it—almost, he thought, with a deep sense of the incongruous, like Mae West's. She was about six inches shorter than Jake, and yeah, she was really built as nicely as he remembered.

She added, with a wistful tone: "I was afraid you weren't going to make it."

"Hell, I'll make it. I always do, when I say I will. I was worried you wouldn't be here."

"And I told you I'd be here." She paused, and with the dark glasses it was hard to tell what she was thinking. "Didn't I?" She paused again. "Aren't you going to kiss me?"

Something was different about Camilla today, as if she'd come to some kind of a decision. The kiss was everything Jake had been imagining, hoping and praying for, for the last week. Ten seconds into it, his right hand moved up for her left breast.

She let him get far enough to discover that under the man's shirt there was nothing on her skin but a little sweat, before she broke off the kiss and pulled away. The rejection was not violent, but it was firm.

"No," she said, in a suddenly uncertain voice.

Jake turned away and looked around. He turned in a complete circle. He had the sudden feeling that every rock in the walls of the narrow canyon, and every plant along the stream, was somehow watching them.

Now he was facing Camilla again. "Why the hell not?" His objection came out rougher-sounding than he'd intended.

She shook her head, making her red hair bounce. "Not yet."

"Then when?"

Camilla said: "Maybe after I know some more about you. Don't you want to know about me? You don't even know my last name."

"I don't care what your last name is. Tell me if you want."

She was quiet. Upset, maybe, though not at him. Still pretty much in control, of herself and of the situation. "You're right, names don't matter. Jake, I mean I have to be sure of you first. I have to be very sure."

"Sure of me? Sure of me how?"

"I have to know whether I can depend on you. Whether you want me enough to—take some chances for me."

Jake tried to think. All he could come up with at the moment was that this girl might be talking about getting married. It didn't really sound to him like she meant that, but what else could it be? He hesitated, making an effort without much success to see her eyes through the dark glasses.

He said uncertainly: "I tried to tell you last week what I'm like, what my situation is. If I had a real job, if I had any money, I wouldn't be here in the CCC."

"I know that. I understand about the CCC. If I'd had any money a year and a half ago, I wouldn't be here either." She paused, as if to contemplate her own situation, still mysterious to Jake. "That's not what I'm asking, whether you've got any money."

"What, then?"

"What I have to know, Jake, is can I depend on you? If I asked you to do something really hard, would you do it for me? Don't just blurt out yes. Take your time and think about it."

He took a little time. "I'd do it if I could. Anyway I'd break my ass trying."

Camilla seemed to be going through the various stages she needed to make her own decision final.

"All right," she said at last. It was almost as if she were talking to herself, though the dark glasses looked at Jake. "Come here," she said. And she began to undo the buttons of her shirt.

Twenty minutes later, lying naked beside this woman he didn't know on a patch of soft, dry, shaded sand at the very foot of the side canyon's western wall, Jake was saying lazily: "I just can't figure it, is all. A girl like you, as good-looking as you are, smart and everything, why do you want to get hooked up with a guy like me?"

Their clothing was scattered around them. Along with everything else, Camilla had taken off her dark glasses, revealing a pair of greenish eyes much like those that Jake saw daily in his shaving mirror. Now she reached out for the glasses and put them on again.

Through the glasses she looked at him strangely. She asked: "What's wrong with you? I don't see anything wrong with you. I told you what I wanted, and you said okay."

Jake ran a possessive hand down her smooth side, along the ribs and down her hip. She was better looking, by far, than any other girl or woman he'd ever before managed to persuade to make love.

He said: "You didn't really tell me what you wanted. Not yet."

Suddenly she seemed tenderly uncertain. "Oh Jake. I'm not sure where to start."

"How about starting with where you live? You wouldn't even tell me that much last week."

Camilla hesitated, then gestured. "Right now I'm living a little way up this canyon."

Jake raised himself on one elbow, squinting in that direction. He saw no sign of habitation. "You mean up on the South Rim?"

"No, not quite that far. Just a little way from where we are. Half a mile maybe."

"Jeez, the Rim is a lot farther than that. And I didn't know anyone lived in the Canyon. Except us poor slobs in the camp. Live with your parents?"

That made Camilla smile. "No. Where'd you get that idea?"

"A lot of girls live with their parents. Hey, you're not married, are you?"

"No."

Jake, somewhat reassured, lazily wondering what to ask next, reached out again with a large, sun-darkened, calloused hand. This time he just extended a forefinger and traced patterns on Camilla's marvelous, taut white belly. At the touch her belly contracted slightly with some kind of tickle reflex. So white and smooth…

"Got a cigarette?" she asked him, with a sudden, wistful yearning.

"Poverty got me out of the habit."

Whatever else was worrying her didn't let her fret about cigarettes for long. She was framing another question for Jake: "Would you still help me, if I was married? Not that I am."

"Sure. Damn right I would."

Camilla lay there in silence, letting him tickle her belly.

"So, you're not married… what's the story, then? You live alone?"

Camilla heaved a deep sigh. "No, not that either, I'm afraid."

I was beginning to figure something like this, thought Jake. Otherwise this would have been too simple. His right hand kept on exploring, testing the fact that he was now allowed to put his hand anywhere he wanted. Anywhere at all. Wonderful.

When Camilla spoke again, she seemed to want Jake's full attention on her words, and so she first reached down her own hand and caught his exploring fingers in a grip of surprising strength. Then from behind her dark glasses she asked, "Did you ever hear of a man named Edgar Tyrrell?"

"No, can't say I have. Should I?"

"No special reason why you should. He's a sculptor. A man who carves statues."

"I know what a sculptor is."

"Sorry. Edgar's pretty well known, among people who study art. Not really famous."

"All right. So you live with Edgar Tyrrell. I bet he's used you for a model."

Camilla had nothing to say about modeling. She extended her right arm gracefully, turning her body a little, pointing almost vertically up behind her. "He used to live up there on the Rim, near Grand Canyon Village, in a little house built right on the edge. He was there for something like thirty years. And then one day he left his house and his family and disappeared from human society. That was before I met him. He says he just walked down into the Canyon one day and never went back."

Camilla fell silent, looking at Jake. It was hard for him to tell with the dark glasses still covering her eyes, but he got the feeling she was hoping he would understand—something, whatever it was—without her having to spell it out for him.

But he wanted to hear her spell everything out, tell him just what she wanted from him. "So this fella disappeared from human society."

"That's how he puts it."

"And when was this?"

"I don't know exactly." Camilla hesitated. "A few months before I met him. That's what he tells me."

"Maybe he disappeared, but he still socialized enough to get acquainted with you."

"I let him pick me up." Camilla gave a sudden, nervous little laugh. She released Jake's hand and sat up abruptly. "I don't know how to tell it. Let's get dressed. It's a long story. I'll take you to see where I live. Maybe that'll make it all easier to explain."

So far, it didn't sound so awfully complicated to Jake. He said: "I'd rather look at everything you're showing me right now." But Camilla was already on her feet, brushing sand from her sweaty skin, picking up her clothes. Jake sighed and went along.

By the time he was dressed again, Camilla was already busy packing up her easel and stuff. "Give me a hand," she pleaded. The down-canyon breeze was freshening, trying to make off with some of her sketches, though she had them weighted down with small black rocks.

"Sure." Jake corralled the sheets of drawing paper that were on the brink of making an escape, and stuffed them under his arm, trying not to crinkle the papers too much. Now that he really thought about it, she couldn't be living all the way up on the Rim, and carry all this junk up and down with her on a fourteen-mile round trip every time she wanted to go sketching.

They had Camilla's art materials bundled up when, as if struck by a sudden thought, she demanded of Jake: "You didn't tell anyone you were meeting me today, did you?"

"Hell, no. Tell those guys there's a good-looking girl down here? Think I want an expedition following me out from camp?"

"No, I didn't think you'd want that… Jake, the creek water's safe." He had started to drink from his canteen.

He shrugged and drank from the canteen anyway. "I can refill before I head back."

"Oh my God. You know what? I packed you a lunch and then forgot all about it!"

Suddenly it was as if Camilla at the last minute wanted to delay taking Jake up to where she lived, and was thinking up ways to delay that trip. As if she was getting cold feet about something.

Jake had also forgotten about food, but at the mention of it he was suddenly hungry. If Camilla wanted to postpone his tour of her living quarters, it was all right with him.

Or maybe, Jake thought, she wanted him to be a thoroughly contented man before she took him there. From somewhere she brought out a metal lunch box with flowers on it, like something a little girl might have carried to school, and opened it to reveal sandwiches neatly wrapped in waxed paper, and fruit, and a vacuum bottle she said held lemonade.

The bread turned out to be home-made, the sandwich filling cheese and ham. Sitting on a rock Jake ate and drank with a good appetite. All the better, because by now he had thoroughly resigned himself to missing evening chow. Not that he would have minded missing a few more meals, in a cause as good as that of getting laid by this girl.

"You're not eating anything," Jake commented, chewing. "Want one of these?" He held out a wax paper packet.

Camilla shook her head. "I'm not hungry."

Jake shrugged. He thought vaguely that maybe she was dieting—though with a figure like hers he didn't see any need for it.

He asked: "So, how long have you been living in this mysterious place up-canyon?" Being diplomatic, as he thought, he didn't say with this mysterious guy.

Camilla started an answer, but broke it off. Then with seeming irrelevance she asked, "Have you ever been up on the South Rim?"

He nodded. "Sure. When I first came to the Canyon, four months ago, they drove us in that far in a bus from Flagstaff, then marched us down the trail on foot—ever see our camp, upriver at the foot of Kaibab Trail?" Jake took another bite of sandwich.

Camilla shook her head.

Jake went on: "Maybe I'll show you some time. In four months I only been up out of the Canyon a couple of times, for a weekend. You have to ride a mule up Bright Angel trail, or else hike up. And each time we passed through the little village on the rim." As he recalled, there had been about half a dozen buildings in view, including the railroad station where the Santa Fe spur line ended. And of course the big log hotel, with a few more structures scattered back among the trees. "What about it?"

"I came in that way, too. With Edgar, after he picked me up in a bar in Flagstaff." Camilla looked at Jake from behind her dark glasses as if she were daring him to comment on this admission. He didn't.

She went on: "One of those houses up there on the Rim is the one he used to live in. He used to have different models all the time, until he finally married one of them. You have to get over a little west of the head of Bright Angel Trail to see the house, and you might easily miss it even from there."

She was, Jake decided, harping on Edgar Tyrrell and his house because she was having a hard time deciding how to approach whatever it was she really wanted to explain. This decision was harder for her than the decision she had made when she took off her clothes.

She added wistfully, "I've never seen that Rim again."

Then, shaking her head as if to clear it, she asked Jake: "Are you finished eating?"

"Sure." He was definitely getting curious.

He closed up the lunch box, leaving the crumbs and remnants for the chipmunks and coyotes, and Camilla took the little box with the other stuff she was carrying, and started to lead the way along the little trail upstream. Jake followed her, carrying a couple of her things.

Before they had gone more than a hundred feet or so, she stopped and turned to Jake to say, in a voice that was growing strained: "See, there's too much time down here, near the bottom of the Canyon."

"What?" He blinked and squinted at her in the bright sunlight. "Too much time? You mean you've got nothing to do?"

"No. That's not what I mean. Too much time is what Edgar says when I ask him about—about some funny things that happen down here. At first I didn't know what he meant by too much time. But lately I can understand—I think. He says the river cuts open the earth, and the deep time comes spilling out of it like blood." Then she smiled nervously at the expression that must have been growing on Jake's face. "I'm not crazy, lover. You'll see what I mean."

"Okay. I don't think you're crazy." Actually the suspicion had very recently been born. But he wasn't really worried about it yet.

"Thank God," said Camilla, and once more turned to lead the way up along the trail beside the creek.

Jake, staying close behind her, was nagged by the feeling that the voices of the nearby stream were trying to tell him something. But he was distracted from pursuing that thought by the movement of Camilla's hips. Even if her jeans were a loose fit.

"So," he said, raising his voice a little to be heard above the sound of rushing water, "you live with Edgar?"

"I don't sleep with him. Not any more." Camilla paused, glancing back. "He's a—strange man."

"Yeah? He must be pretty old now if he lived up on the Rim for thirty years."

"He's pretty old."

They climbed on. Jake couldn't see the sun from down here in the narrow canyon, but judging by the angle of the shadow on the east wall they still had a good many hours to go before sunset.

Camilla led Jake on, up along what was no longer really a trail at all. Glancing to right and left, Jake noted that the steep and winding walls of this little side canyon displayed basically the same strata of rock as those in the tremendous walls of the big one; there was no other way it could be, he supposed. That pale layer was limestone and the somewhat darker one just below was shale. For the last couple of months he had been picking up some knowledge of geology from the rock experts back at camp.

Presently he called again to Camilla: "You and old Edgar live in a pretty isolated place back here."

For some reason that made her turn, to study him through her dark glasses. Then she emphatically agreed with what he'd said and went beyond it. "Not one in a thousand people hiking downriver the way you did could find this canyon."

"Well, it's not that hard to find. I didn't have much trouble."

"Only because you're something special. It is that hard to find." For some reason her voice quavered. "Not one in a thousand. Maybe not one in a million. How many other hikers and boaters do you suppose have gone right past the entrance to this canyon where you turned in, and never seen it there?"

Jake blinked at her, wondering. "That's easy. Not very damned many. There wouldn't be a hundred people hike or boat past the mouth of your little canyon in ten years. This place is not exactly populated like a city park, you know."

Camilla smiled at him, as if she wanted to be reassuring—or perhaps be reassured—and then turned back to her climb.

Jake went back to watching the hypnotic movement of her hips.

Another minute or so of staring at that movement, and Jake caught up with her and tugged gently on her belt.

Camilla stopped and turned and held out her arms. A moment later he was kissing her, and feeling up under her shirt again. How marvelous when there was no resistance!

Afterward they sat naked in the chill shallow water of the creek, letting it rush over their bodies, splashing each other.

Jake said: "In a way it's funny, your talk about how hard this canyon is to find."

Camilla, who had been laughing at something else he'd said, stopped suddenly. "Why is it funny?" she asked. At the moment they were in shade, and she'd left her dark glasses off.

"Because yesterday I looked at the big map back at camp. And I couldn't see this canyon on it anywhere. This isn't Pipe Creek we're sitting in, and it isn't Horn Creek, right? Because there are rapids in the Colorado where Horn Creek comes in. And there's not supposed to be any side canyon with a permanent water flow between those two. But here we are." Jake gestured at the steep enclosing walls.

Camilla didn't seem surprised to hear about the map. Instead she just looked melancholy and thoughtful. All she said was: "I bet there are a lot of things your map doesn't show."

When they were dressed again, they climbed on, while the canyon that had swallowed them turned this way and that like a great snake. The bends were getting sharper. Jake could no longer see farther than about fifty yards ahead at any point.

Once Camilla paused to tell him, as if in afterthought: "Edgar calls this place Deep Canyon."

Rounding the next turn, they came to a place where the canyon straightened out and expanded into a steep-sided amphitheater, the size of a small football stadium. The land inside was relatively level, half-overgrown with typical canyon bush and a few trees. At the far end of the amphitheater the creek fell into it in a high waterfall. Jake saw to his surprise that someone had neatly built a tall, narrow waterwheel into this cataract. And at the foot of the drop, getting splashed a little by the spray, stood a little stone building that looked like it ought to house a generator. Sure enough, wires ran on poles from the generator housing to another small building. This one was constructed of neatly trimmed logs, and actually appeared to be a house.

For the time being Jake took less notice of a kind of grotto, or cave, opening into the base of the western cliff, at the level of another layer of rock that Jake could recognize. The camp geologist had called this one Tapeats Sandstone, and had said it lay just over what he called the Great Unconformity, a term whose meaning Jake had never grasped.

At first sight the cave was only a shallow concavity, with a low, rather inconspicuous entrance; at second glance it looked deeper.

But right now Jake was paying attention mainly to the neatly constructed little house, which was sited high enough above the creek to avoid floods. No prospector's cabin, certainly. Not a shack or a hut, but a real house, boasting stone walls, glass windows, and a real shingled roof.

Camilla was standing right beside Jake, looking at him as if judging his reaction.

He asked her: "You live here?"

Camilla said: "I do."

"With Edgar."

"Yes." She cast a nervous look around, and lowered her voice. "But I don't want to live with him any longer."

"Leave."

She shook her head. "It's not that easy. You'll see."

"He hasn't got you locked up."

Camilla said nothing.

Jake squinted at the layout before him. All was quiet, not even a dog barking. "Where is he now?"

"Resting. He usually works at night. Digging out the kind of rocks he likes, carving them…"

"Can't blame him for resting, in this heat."

The path leading to the cottage brought them closer to the grotto. Jake, getting a better look as he passed, saw that it was really a cave, considerably deeper than it had first appeared. The hole was too dark inside for him to see much more.

Camilla observed his interest. "Want to go in and take a look? We can, Edgar won't mind."

"I don't care," said Jake. But he followed Camilla when she went in.

The relative coolness was welcome. Once Jake's eyes were out of the glare of sunlight he could see the interior fairly well. A ghost of the glow of sunset was reflecting in from the light limestone wall on the other side of the amphitheater.

"It's sunset now," said Camilla. "Now's the time when—"

Then she fell abruptly silent.

It took Jake another minute to realize that the two of them were no longer alone. The figure of a man was now standing at the dark mouth of the lightless inner regions of the cave. Just standing there and looking out at Jake.

Jake peeked as best he could into the zone of greater dimness. The spare figure might have been almost as tall as Jake if it hadn't been hunched over. The man was dressed in overalls, some kind of boots, and a work shirt, and his hair and skin and clothing were all gray with what looked like rock-dust. He was holding an inhumanly motionless pose; he might almost have been a statue.

In the gnarled fingers of one evidently powerful hand, the man was clutching a sizable chunk of rock. After a moment he opened his hand and let the chunk fall, to strike the rock floor with a dull sound.

In the next moment the same hand reached out to a large switch bolted to the rocky wall, and a battery of electric lights sprang into life. The half-dozen fixtures, mounted on tall metal stands around the cave, were streamlined, looking very modern. In fact they looked somehow more than modern, they looked like no lights that Jake had ever seen before.

Under their radiance the whole inner cave, which had been deeply shadowed, burst into full visibility. The lights were positioned on every side, some high, some low, and they almost abolished shadow. The glowing, peculiar bulbs revealed that the floor and walls of the cave were pockmarked with holes, places where sizable blocks might have been dug out. A long workbench, crudely built but sturdy, littered with tools and chunks of pale stone, ran along one wall. The walls and floor and overhead of the cave were mostly dark, formed of a material Jake had heard the rock-and-blasting experts call Vishnu schist. It was commonly found in the lowest layer of the Canyon's walls just below the mysterious Great Unconformity. The whitish intrusions here and there in the cave's walls were new to Jake.

But none of this, interesting as it was, could hold Jake's attention for more than a moment or two. Not in the presence of the man who now stood before him.

The dust-covered figure suddenly turned his gaze on Camilla, and rasped a comment. "So, you've caught another one."

She answered timidly. "Don't say that, Edgar. He's a friend of mine."

"Oh, I don't doubt that. Most men would be delighted to be your friend. But have you told him yet?"

Camilla, looking from one man to the other, seemed to be afraid to say anything more.

"Told me what?" Jake demanded.

Suddenly Edgar caught sight of the lunch box, which Camilla had put down on a ledge of rock. With some muttering that sounded vaguely like a curse, he snatched up the little container at the same time raising his other hand as if he were about to strike the girl.

Jake, starting to shout something angry, took a step forward. But Camilla, cowering back from the blow that never fell, yelled at Jake to stop. It was a scream of such sudden heartfelt terror that he unthinkingly obeyed.

Then he looked back at Edgar. "Told me what?" he repeated, harshly.

"Nothing of real importance." Wicked eyes gleamed at him out of the old man's dusty face. "Just that, today, the silly business that you have called your life is over."