Part 12 (2/2)

The boy threw his arms over his head and tottered back along the path. Under their feet the earth seemed to sizzle, grit jiggling, like seeds popping in a hot pan. The ground was quivering.

The girl saw, far below, an articulated ma.s.s of metal slithering down the slope - a derrick, disjointed, drill shaft following, still attached to the derrick by a steel cable. She thought she could see a body on the slope.

She had once been out on the sea when a whale came up under her boat. The long sleek back had slipped out of the waves, water pouring aside from its bulk. It came up in a rolling curve, and its bifurcated blowhole opened and it took a breath, and the sound of air sucked into those vast lungs was what the girl could hear now as steam billowed from the flank of the mountain.

Mary put her mouth close to the girl's ear and yelled, ”I think I can hear people crying out.”

The girl listened, then she could hear it, too. She ran along the path, elbowed the boy aside, and made her way to where he had been standing. Her hair was instantly damp, and her face felt sweaty, then scalded. The steam was much farther off than she'd imagined. There was a long, creeping slick of gray mud moving down the mountain from the point where it emerged. There were smoking lumps of rock scattered below the geyser. The girl saw more bodies on the slope, and one man was staggering her way, his face and hands red and covered in blooming yellow blisters. He fell over before he reached her, tried to rise, then rolled faceup and lay still. The girl crept forward till she could see that his tongue was fat and white and that he had blood in his mouth.

She heard a faint call: ”Girlie!” She cast about - but it was the old able seaman, who had joined her, who spotted McCahon.

The engineer was lying a short distance from the steaming mud river. They scrambled down to him, and without any consultation, each grabbed an arm and dragged him away from the hot ooze and around the slight shelter of a hump in the cone. The boy joined them. They gathered around McCahon, all cringing as the ruptured fumarole spat out a few more rocks, and the sound of the geyser became deeper and softer - not quieter, only somehow more steamy.

McCahon's leg was smashed, his s.h.i.+nbone in his blood-soaked pants leg in several pieces, like beads on a string. His palms and one side of his face were deeply grazed. But he still was conscious, even after their rough handling. ”What about the others?” he said.

The old man shook his head. Then he sprang up and went back to Mary, who was gingerly trying to make her way down to them. He took her hands and led her like a beau handing his belle out onto the dance floor. He showed her where to sit and placed her hands on McCahon. She gently felt the engineer's leg.

”We'll need a stretcher,” the old man said, then added, to the engineer, ”I hope that, for you, this is just like an oil strike.” He meant that it was a dangerous business and was asking whether this was normal.

McCahon didn't seem to hear him. He reached past Mary and took hold of the girl's hanging plait. He pulled her closer, only to gaze into her eyes.

Mary said to the girl, ”You have some devil's claw in your bag. He could chew on that.”

The girl fumbled her small satchel around in front of her. It was hard for her to see what she was doing with her head to one side and hair pulled tight. She found her knife and slipped it into her ap.r.o.n pocket. She broke eye contact with McCahon to seek out the root. She pulled off a piece and folded it into his mouth. He let go of her hair.

The old man said, ”You two youngsters should run for help. Town is a distance off - but there are men in the crater and the airs.h.i.+p. You should try both directions, to be sure.”

”Yes,” said Mary.

”I'll go down,” the boy said. ”It's farther.” He jumped up and started away from them. The old man shouted his name - which was James. The boy hesitated, then gave a hasty wave and headed off.

McCahon took hold of the girl's upper arms, the blood from his grazes seeping sticky through her sleeves. She caught his gaze again. He had hazel eyes. ”I can't go,” she said to Mary and the old man.

”I'm afraid it has to be you, dear,” the old man said. ”It's at most only a ten-minute uphill scramble. And once you're there, you can leave the problem to the men. They'll know what to do.”

”Girlie,” said McCahon.

”I can't go,” the girl said. ”I mustn't.” She began to cry.

”You must - and be quick!” Mary said.

”It's wrong!” the girl wailed. ”It's wrong to leave him.”

”We're not leaving him. It's you who has to run for help. Mary can't see, and I'm not as spry as I once was.” The old man was being patient, but under it, he was exasperated.

The girl didn't hear this. She continued to moan that she couldn't go.

Mary suddenly punched her in the chest, shoved her so hard that she fell over and her arms were torn from McCahon's grip. She lay for a moment, stunned, then staggered up and ran off.

They watched her sprint down the path till she found a good place to climb and began to clamber up toward the summit.

It took more than ten minutes, though she went as straight and as fast as she could. She didn't even pause to look up. And as she got farther from it, the sound of the geyser grew less. But by then she could hear other sounds. And feel them. She felt like she was climbing a long, green baize-covered door, and some terrible thing was on the other side of it, knocking, pounding, straining the latch and the hinges.

As she reached the summit, something scythed past her, thrumming. It was one of the mooring lines of the zeppelin. The airs.h.i.+p was still secure on three anchors, but it was circling the crater lip, as though a giant invisible hand had it by the end of those ropes and was lazily twirling it. The ground was trembling. Small stones shaken from the lip of the crater crumbled in a continuous flow into the thick gra.s.s inside. That gra.s.s was bristling like hair on a chilled arm.

The men around the huts and derrick were stooped and staggering and clutching their mouths. The girl hesitated at the sight of this inexplicable clumsy dancing, then set off down one of the goat tracks into the crater. She went carefully, watching her feet. She didn't look up again till the sole shouting voice below her reached a certain mad pitch.

There had been one man on the platform at the top of the derrick. As she'd started down the slope, she had registered that he was descending the ladder to see what was up with his fellow workers. She looked again when he began to shriek, ”G.o.d!” He was retreating back up the ladder, howling with terror. The men were lying on the ground now, flailing open-armed as if trying to gather in the air. The retreating man reached the platform. He looked around him, desperate. He was shouting, ”Oh, please, G.o.d, help me!”

The air in the crater had changed. It felt strangely feathery on the girl's feet and legs. She began to step backward up the hill. Below her the screaming man collapsed onto his knees and began to vomit. The girl saw that the air between him and her was roiling like the water in a tidal stream, where salt.w.a.ter and fresh mingle but don't melt together.

The girl turned and fled up the crater wall. There came a different sort of thud in the thumps and bangs all around her. A tw.a.n.g. From the corner of her eye, she saw a black coil of rope drop, and then the zeppelin swung over her, tilted at a crazy angle and attached by only two lines. She saw a rope ladder dangling from its control cabin, only partly unfurled. She saw white frightened faces at the open hatchway.

She charged upward, hauling herself forward on hunks of the soft gra.s.s.

Another mooring line was cut and dropped. The girl reached into her ap.r.o.n pocket and grabbed her knife. She yelled wordlessly at the airs.h.i.+p, waved her knife, and rushed to the last anchor line. She didn't stop to spare a glance at the men above her, who were clambering quickly to that same last line with their own knives. She reached the anchor, grasped the taut rope, and slashed at it. She sawed furiously with one hand, holding hard with the other. The rope parted, her feet left the ground, and the jerk flung her arm down so abruptly that she stabbed herself in the leg. But she didn't let go of the rope. She dropped her knife, fastened both hands to the rope, and was swept up, spinning, and plowing through the air like a rudder through water. The soft, heavy, gaseous stuff had filled the crater and overflowed, following the airs.h.i.+p, rolling behind it like a wave and pus.h.i.+ng it down again, toward the slope of the mountain.

The girl heard frenzied activity above her, and things began to fall past her - a big leather bag, a telescope, books, a chair - The rope ladder was fully extended now, and the zeppelin was so low that the ladder was dragging along the slope. It combed through the geyser at the fumaroles, caught on something for just a moment, then came away again, swinging heavily. The girl saw two figures dangling from the ladder, one apparently struggling with the other. Then the airs.h.i.+p hitched higher, and one figure fell, plunged through the plume of steam, and disappeared.

Once the girl had left them, the old man had taken Mary's hands and laid them with his own, clasped, on McCahon's chest. They bent over McCahon, very intent, on him as well as each other. They seemed so calm. McCahon was in pain, but the pain was remote. He didn't have to be patient, because he wasn't hoping to be rescued. He only wished that the girl had stayed. He wanted to see her. To see her and what would happen. He hoped he'd still be conscious when the fireworks really got under way. And he hoped that before she was killed, girlie got to see something truly beautiful.

The old people were talking, and after a moment he began to attend.

Mary told her story. She explained how she had come to be on the road where she and the girl had met, and how she had followed the girl to Gethsemane just to see what she did. ”But,” Mary said, ”I didn't want to survive. I only wanted a moment free of the pain. So I made a promise to it: I won't be long - I said - I won't stay in a room I can't pay for.”

The old man pressed his palm against her cheek. He touched her very tenderly.

She said, ”I only wanted one moment free, to climb to a high place and look back on my whole life, not just the final low place it had taken me to.”

McCahon slipped away for a moment and woke when the earth tossed him, as if it meant to turn him like a pancake on a skillet. Mary was asking the old man questions. ”He's your kin, isn't he, the boy?”

”Yes, my grandson, though he goes by another name. It's understandable. He wants what he can have. And I don't feel disowned.” He sounded like someone making an effort to make his peace.

A volley of stones went by, vicious and hissing, over their heads.

”G.o.d save them,” Mary said - of everyone.

”Tell me about your girl.”

”She's a runaway. She stole her father's horses and sold them in Gethsemane, and that's all I know. I don't even know her name.”

”That's not all you know, though, is it?” the old man said.

Mary thought for a moment. ”No. You're right. We know this, too: What? Could ye not watch with me one hour?”

The boy was able to reach the coastal road, where he borrowed a very nervous horse. He rode hard for town and help. He rode right into the sheriff and some deputies. The sheriff called the boy a panic monger - and a number of other things - and told his deputies to carry him off to jail.

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