James Tabor - The Deep Zone

“Exhausted, both of them.”

“Yes. Long, hard day.”

Neither of them spoke for a while, Bowman lying down, Hallie standing over him, both listening to the cave talking: water flowing, wind soughing, every once in a while the sharper, cracking sound of rock breaking from the ceiling of some distant chamber. There would be silences of varying lengths and then another sound, explosive, as rock hit the cave floor. Some impacts were so distant that they sounded like small bags being popped, but others, closer, were louder and made the floor shake. It was a process that never stopped, like a human body continually sloughing off dead skin cells. And where the rocks landed was purely the luck of the draw. Hallie knew that a rock, pebble sized or big as a house, could hit any of them at any time.

Cahner had been right about objective dangers in the mountains. Caves had plenty of those as well. Rockfall was one, roughly analogous to avalanches. Up top, you could at least see and avoid avalanche-prone terrain. Down here, the only thing you could do was not dwell on the danger. If you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, well, you had to hope it would be big enough to kill you quickly.

“Are you just going to stand there?” She could hear the smile in Bowman’s voice.

“I don’t know. Is there room down there?”

“Plenty. Come on down and stay awhile, why don’t you?”

Hallie eased down to her knees, felt for the cave floor, and sat down beside Bowman. Or tried to. There wasn’t enough room between his body and the rock wall for her to sit. She squeezed down beside him on the cave floor. She couldn’t even lie on her back, but had to turn onto one side, facing Bowman.

“See? Tons of room.”

Hallie could tell he was still smiling. “For you, maybe,” she said.

“For us.”

“Oh, roomy as hell.”

She was lying on her left side and he on his right, their faces separated by a foot of darkness. She could feel the warmth of his body and smell the scent that had led her here, a salty, leathery smell with traces of something like burnt honey. Not a bad smell at all, she had to admit. Wonder what I smell like? But she quickly scratched that thought.

Hallie’s critical distance—the minimum space between her and another person before she began to feel uncomfortable—was greater than most people’s. But here, squeezed together with Bowman like two sardines in a tin, she felt safe and relaxed. She wasn’t making herself relax, it simply was what it was.

“I’m curious about you,” she said.

“I can understand that.”

“What is Wil short for?”

“Might not be short for anything. You’ve heard of Will Rogers? He was just Will.”

“Are you just Wil?”

“No. It’s short for Willem.”

“Sounds Scandinavian.”

“Middle English, actually.”

“How do you know?”

“My twenty-sixth great-grandfather was a soldier in the English army at Agincourt. An archer. Bowmen, they were called then.”

“So that’s where the name came from. Bowman.”

“Yep.”

“You’re serious about all this?”

“Very. My mother was obsessive about family history.”

“She got back that far?”

“Just a bit further. But the records start to fade beyond the eleventh century.”

“Where are you from?”

“Colorado. A little town called Arago. How about you?”

“Near Charlottesville, Virginia. But that’s not what I meant.

We’re Washington, after all. I meant, where do you work?”

“I know. No place important. You wouldn’t have heard of it.”

“Try me.”

She heard him sigh. “Say you go out to dinner. They want to know what I do. I say I can’t say. Okay. They drop it. But they can’t really . It’s Washington . You are what you do. They keep picking, through the soup, the salad. Halfway into the main course, they’re still picking. Not funny now. They get irritated. Think I’m weird, or just pretending, trying to get over on them. Man, woman, doesn’t matter. About dessert, I see them get down behind their eyes, the hell with that arrogant jerk look.”

“Wow.”

“Why wow?”

“That’s the most I’ve heard you say since we met.”

“Oh. Well, you asked.”

“So are you like, a black ops guy, doing clandestine things all the time? CIA? DIA? Delta Force?”

“I don’t talk about what I do. Didn’t I just say that?”

“Sure. I just wanted to see how you handled it.”

“Oh. Well?”

“A little testy. But not a deal breaker.”

“That’s good.”

“Why don’t you just make something up? Create a fantasy life?”

“Never works. ‘Fantasy’ is another word for ‘lie.’ You make mistakes. Somebody close finds out you’ve misled them about a huge chunk of your life… I mean, how would you feel?”

“Used. Abused. Betrayed.”

“Well, then.”

“Are you really from Colorado?”

“Yep. My mom is dead. My dad runs our cattle ranch.”

“Like, a working ranch?”

“Very working. About three thousand acres in Gunnison County. He’s a cattleman, through and through. A vanishing breed, but it’s all he knows. He’ll die in a saddle one day.”

Horses , she thought. “Are you a dog person or a cat person?”

“Not much for cats. Some dogs are okay. Really, I’m a horse person.”

Yes . “You know what? Me, too.”

“Really?”

“Yep. I grew up on a horse farm down in Virginia. My mom raises horses and trains them. I was riding before I could walk, almost.”

“What breeds? Quarter horses?”

“Quarters are kind of like Goofy, don’t you think? We have Morgans and Trakehners. They’re rocket scientists with four legs.”

“Ever worked cattle on a really good cutting horse?”

“No.”

“Then you can’t know much about quarter horses. Maybe not about riding, either.”

“Ever gone over a six-foot jump?”

“No.”

“Then you don’t know anything about horses. You’ve never ridden until you’ve jumped.”

He laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“How about this? I’ll get you on a great cutter if you’ll get me on a jumper. Deal?”

She could sense him reaching for her hand. She took his and they shook. “Deal.”

“You can ask some things about me.” She left her hand where it was.

“I already know some things about you.”

“How?”

“They put together files on all of the team members.”

“Who’s they?”

“Just they.”

“Okay, okay. What was in them?”

“A lot.”

“Example?”

“Stephen Redhorse.”

“He was in there?”

“Him and a few others. Not as many as I would have guessed, though. But from the volume of data, I’d peg him as the one. What happened?”

“Wasn’t that in the file?”

“It was in the file that you haven’t seen him for a few years. Not why.”

“We met at Hopkins. He was a physics PhD. And a full-blooded Native American. Comanche.”

“Complicated?”

“No. We got on well. The thing was, his parents hated me. All whites, really. We tried, but couldn’t get past that.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Are you really?”

“No,” he said.

“Me, neither. Not now, anyway. With hindsight, I can see it was for the best.”

“What happened with you and BARDA?”

“So we’re really going deep here?”

“We’re already deep.” No smile in the voice now.

“In more ways than one. Didn’t my file talk about that?”

“There were odd redactions.”

“Somebody wanted me out, and they made it look like I was selling secret research for big bucks.”