Damon Knight - Orbit 20

He had been asleep; he could not have seen it, then. Victoria opened her mouth, looked at the fire, and instead of telling him about the thing in the valley, she said, “I woke up when the wind stopped and just walked out a little from my camper.”

“An’ saw something in the moonlight that scared the bejeesus outa you.”

She looked at him quickly, but he was turned away, facing the cliffs.

“I know,” he said, almost harshly. “When the moon’s big and bright, you see things out there. It’s when you start seeing them in daylight that it’s time to hang up the saddle.” He stood up. “You came through the gate back by Ghost River. Right?”

“I don’t know the name. By the gorge.”

“Not far,” he said. “Key’s in the thing?”

She nodded.

“I’m going to get it, bring it over here. You sit tight by the fire. Prairie Dog!” The dog jumped to its feet. “Come over here, boy, here. Stay, Prairie Dog.” The dog sat down by Victoria. “He won’t move till I get back. Won’t be long.” He took a step or two, then stopped. “Call it Ghost River ’cause nights like this some folks claim they can hear the water crashing down the rocks.” Then he left and she was shivering hard again.

It wasn’t like that, she wanted to cry out at his back. She had seen something! The dog put its head on her knee, as if in sympathy, and she whispered, “I did see it!”

The cowboy returned, took her firmly by the arm and led her out of the hollow, through a second gate. “That’s a mighty nice machine, Miss. Very fine. Just lock up tight and get some sleep. Going to be fine weather tomorrow, you’ll have a nice driving day.”

He opened the door and almost pushed her inside. “I’ll be right down there, but you’ll be all right now. Just lock it up and get some sleep.”

She snapped the door lock, heard a distant “Good night,” and shrugged off her coat and let it fall. She kicked off her shoes and fell into bed again and had no memory of pulling up the covers.

“Why would I tell such a ridiculous lie?” Victoria cried.

“That’s the right question,” Sam said.

She had reached the designated spot at ten, and two hours later Sam had arrived. She had coffee and sandwiches ready, and as they ate she told him about Mimi’s accident. Sam, she thought, had been impressed that she had driven here alone. Then she told him about the thing in the valley, knowing even as she started, while she still had time to back out, that she was making a mistake.

Sam started to unload his backpack, jerking things out with furious energy. He hadn’t actually called her a liar. What he had said, snapped, was, “Story time’s over.”

“Why do you think I’d tell any lie at all?”

“Maybe to pay me back. I know what kind of a drive that was. When that front came through I was prepared to wait three, four days. I can imagine how it was, bumping over rocks, sliding down gullies, hugging the cliffs over a thousand-foot dropoff, hating me for getting you into this. Fix old Sam. Tell him this cockama-mie story, watch his eyes bug. You tried. It didn’t work. No amusing little anecdote to hand over to your pals. Sorry.”

“I didn’t lie to you.” She tried to keep her voice calm and matter of fact, but she heard the indignation in every word.

“All right! You dreamed it then. Or hallucinated. You were stoned, or drunk. I don’t care what you call it, it isn’t true!”

“Because I didn’t get an affidavit or photographs?”

“Christ! Victoria, look, I know this country. There is no little hill back there. There are cliffs and mesas and chasms. No little hills you can stroll up in the middle of the night. That’s point one. Two: do you have any idea in the world how scarce water is out here, how far apart the wells are? Too goddamn far to take the old faithful dog along, you idiot! You carry water for your horse, for yourself, if you have the room. You don’t carry water for a fucking dog! Your old pal the cowboy had a nice fire blazing away, coffee on! What in Christ’s name was he burning? You expect me to believe anyone would waste water making coffee in the middle of the night, have a fire burning away while he slept? And the seven head of cattle. That area’s fenced off to keep cattle the hell away from there. No water, larkspurs in the spring— that’s poison, Victoria, like arsenic or ptomaine. There wasn’t a gallant cowboy. No ghost river. There wasn’t a thing spewing out campers!”

He hit his palm hard against the now empty pack. “Let’s get started. I have two hundred pounds of rocks up there.”

Angrily, in silence, Victoria pulled her pack on, adjusted the straps and waited for Sam to lead the way up the mountain. Much later it occurred to her that Sam’s fury had been all wrong. If he had believed she was lying, or mistaken, he might have laughed, might have been contemptuous or scornful. But furious? Full of hatred? Why? She could feel the shivering start again deep inside. When she looked up, Sam was watching. He turned and walked on.

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.