LC 02 - Questionable Remains (25 page)

She came to another tunnel. It occurred to her that she
should have been marking her trail in some way, that she
should have been making a map of her travel through the
cave. Mark it how? Smoke. Smoke from the candle. She would
mark her progress with an X in smoke. Her next rest stop
she would draw a map as nearly as she could remember, but she had no idea how to judge distance. Harley enjoyed
mapping the caves he explored. She wished he had taught
her how.

Lindsay smoked a large X beside the opening and
entered the passage. It was a wide tunnel that led upward.
This is good, she thought. The candle was burning low, and
she thought she could make better time now with the flashlight. She constantly swept the beam of light from the floor
to the walls and, when she thought of it, to the ceiling.
Caves are three-dimensional. It was like traveling in
space-the path she needed to take could be up or down,
as well as left or right.

Lindsay walked at a comfortable pace for what seemed
like miles. She didn't know how long. She wondered if she
could fix the watch. She desperately needed a sense of time.
If only she could make the hour hand work, that would
help. She was thirsty. She wondered if people really drank
their urine to conserve water in their bodies. The thought
repulsed her. That was good; maybe she wasn't that desperate yet. Surely, she would find water soon. She didn't
think she could pee, anyway. She stopped abruptly.

There was a choice to be made. Three separate passages
opened up before her. Damn, she thought. She didn't want
to have to make a choice; she wanted to be lost in a linear
cave. She shone her light into each tunnel and took the one
that had the steepest angle up. Go up, that was her plan;
always go up.

She walked only a few feet when she came to a ninetydegree turn and another choice of three. Again she took the
high road. Again and again she was met by choices of either
two or three ways to go. She was in a maze. "No, please,
no," she whispered. "Don't make this so hard." She wanted
to sink down and cry. Maybe she should sleep now, she
thought. Maybe with a good hour's sleep she would feel
better. Sleep on what? The hard cave floo? That would make
her feel great when she awakened. Instead, she lit a candle and smoked an arrow on the wall of each passage she took.
She needed a compass. Why couldn't her kidnappers have
given her a compass in the pack? Don't cavers carry them?
Damn them, damn them.

She came to a passage that went on for several hundred
feet with no turns, no choices. Maybe she was out of the
maze. Harley had said something about mazes. What?
What? She couldn't remember. "You have to know what
kind of cave it is in order to explore it safely," he had said.
"The arrangement of the passages depends a lot on how the
cave was formed." Great, what type was this? Chemical dissolution. Like a neon sign, it flashed in her head from a longago geology class. Caves formed through chemical dissolution had almost all types of passage structures. Impossible
to predict, at least for her. Would nothing break her way?
Lindsay came to an abrupt stop. The floor of the cave disappeared just in front of her. She shone the flashlight into
the void. It might have been the Grand Canyon. A dome pit,
a vertical shaft that went up and down, stretched out before
her. It was so big she couldn't see the other side. She couldn't even see the bottom. She threw a rock over the edge and
listened and counted, but she never heard it hit. She shone
the light above her. She saw no ceiling. She stepped back,
sank to the floor, and cried.

HURRY," SHOUTED CALDER6N. "Hurry!" The men cursed
and pushed the stone. It slowly ground aside, unblocking the
opening. "Stop!" he said. "I can fit through. Stop!"

Gladly the men stopped pushing on the huge boulder and
stepped back, leery of the gaping black hole revealed by the shifted
stone. Calderon, however, was not so timid. He rushed through the
opening and fell into a chamber below, dropping all but one torch.

Calderon stood up, holding the torch out so he could see. At
first he saw nothing. He stepped farther into the chamber and,
suddenly he saw a myriad of tiny reflections of his flickering
torchlight. "It's here! It's here!" he shrieked. "Thousands of diamonds! Thousands!" His exclamation brought the others rushing
into the chamber with their torches.

The additional light revealed pots of sparkling gems sitting on
a stone slab that resembled a stage. In the center stood a large
earthen jar incised with the winged serpent. The men sucked in
their breath. Calderon approached the treasure, his eyes flashing
with excitement. He was thinking about how he could keep all of
it. His eyes shifted from the pots filled with gems to the tall jar.

"This is where the large stone is," he said.

He took out his sword and broke the jar. A large bundle of deer
hide fell to the floor. Calderon rushed to it and began cutting through
the leather straps that held it together. "Bueno Dios," he exclaimed
as the unfolded hide revealed a large faceted crystal as clear as clean est water. "Look, look Diego." He held it up for him to see.

Diego, however, was not looking at Calderon. He held his torch
over one of the jars of gems and ran his fingers through them.

"Esta cuarzo, necio! It's only quartz. Not diamonds.
Quartz!" He threw a handful and they scattered over the floor of
the cave.

"What are you doing?" cried Calderon.

The other men examined the crystals. "Diego's right. They're
not diamonds at all. They're worthless," said one of the soldiers,
spitting on them.

"Fools!" cried Calderon, "Don't you think I can see through
your scheme? You want them for yourselves. But they are mine."
Calderon was barely intelligible with his damaged mouth and his
excitement.

"You are an idiot!" Diego cried. "Why I have followed you this
long, I don't know. You can have these worthless pieces of glass if
you want them. I'm leaving this place and making my way back
to Santa Elena."

"Go, then, go! I can carry these myself. "

As Diego turned to go, he felt a pain in his leg. He looked down,
puzzled at the arrow sticking out of his thigh. The soldier beside
him was felled with another arrow. Diego looked up and saw two
Indians, bowstrings drawn back to their ears. Arrows flew through
both of the other soldiers and through Diego. He lay on the floor,
his sword lying too far away. His harquebus and matchcord were
outside the chamber by the stone. He heard Calderon screaming.

"No, no! Get out of here! You won't take my treasure!"

Diego saw Roberto walk through the entrance behind the
Indians. So the old madman was right all along. Roberto was in
with the Indians.

Calderon was backed up against the wall, holding the crystal to
his bosom. "Roberto, I knew you had survived. So you, too, want
this treasure?"

"This is no treasure, you fool. Don't you know quartz when
you see it? No, I don't come to take anything from you but your
life, like you tried to take mine."

"What ?"

Piaquay and his brother listened. Piaquay intended to allow
Roberto his say before he finished the devil Calderon.

"It took me a long time." Roberto rapped his head with his
knuckles. "But I finally figured it out. You sent your cousins,
Sancho and Ruiz, to kill me so you could marry my Cristina."

"No, I-I'll share, I'll share the diamonds."

"There are no diamonds." Roberto picked up Diego's sword and
advanced on Calderon, who stubbornly clutched his "diamond"
and slid his back against the wall of the cave trying to get away
from him. Roberto raised his sword. Calderon cringed. The sword
hung in the air, ready to strike. Piaquay looked at Roberto.

"I can't," said Roberto. "There is no satisfaction in killing a
madman." He dropped the sword to his side.

Piaquay took an arrow, raised his bow, and pulled back the
string in one fluid motion. He did not hesitate to shoot into
Calderon's breast. Piaquay turned as his enemy sank to the floor.

"Come," he said to Roberto.

"Where is the other one?" asked Tesca.

Piaquay looked to the spot where Diego had lain wounded, but
was now gone.

"Diego," said Roberto. "Where did he go?"

As Lindsay cried, she wondered how much water she was
losing through her tears. Mingled with the sound of her
own sobs, she heard another sound, easing into her mind.
She didn't know why she hadn't heard it sooner. The cave
had been so silent, but there was now a white sound in the
background. What? She listened. Water? Was it water?
Lindsay rose and walked to the edge of the gorge. She listened and shone the light where she thought she heard the
noise. She saw glittering flashes in the beam. It was water
flowing from a hole in the wall of the cave, and it fell-fell
to who knows where in the darkness below.

It was a small waterfall. But a trickle would be all she
needed to drink from. It was to the right, she guessed, about
thirty feet. Just above the fall, about twenty more feet, was
a wide opening. Lindsay could see the scalloping inside the
walls of the opening where water once flowed long ago.

The wall of the cavern was rocky and almost vertical. A
rock climber could climb it. The thought came unbidden
into her head. A rock climber would have no problem
climbing it. She was not a rock climber, but she was strong.
Lindsay made it a point to be strong. Archaeology was
tough, hard work. But if she fell, she would fall into the
rocky shaft and die, or maybe just fall to-where?

Lindsay didn't want to die. She didn't want Derrick and
her parents to always wonder what had happened to her.
She wanted to get married and have a family one day. She
wanted to find whoever did this to her. She wanted to yell
at her parents for making her break up with Harley. She
wanted to live.

She was still in good shape, she reasoned. Tired, but in
good overall shape. As time went on, she would deteriorate,
become weaker, dehydrated, disoriented. She was also losing body heat. It was only a matter of time until she developed hypothermia in the coolness of the cave. She couldn't
go back and start over. She had to do what she could to save
herself while she still had strength, while she still had light
from her flashlight. A rock climber could make the climb,
but she had never done that kind of thing before.

Lindsay stepped back into the cave. She took off her backpack and sat with her back against the wall. She fished for
the rest of her nutri-bar and ate it slowly, thinking.

There are enough handholds and footholds.

But what if they are unstable?

I will fall.

What if I can't make it up the side of the shaft?

It's not that far, no more than fifty feet altogether. A rock
climber could make it.

But what if I can't?

I can climb down. Down must be easier than up.

But down is longer and deeper into the earth.

There will be passages along the way.

What if I just can't?

I can't stay here forever. I can't start over. I can't backtrack.

Why?

I just can't.

Lindsay closed her eyes, then snapped them open. No.
Don't do that. Don't close your eyes, you'll fall asleep. Do what
you have to do now, or don't. Lindsay rose and slung her backpack over her neck and shoulder. Cavers preferred to carry
their packs by their side. She remembered that now. It could
get caught if it was carried on her back.

She walked to the edge, again staring into the void. Just
do it. Do it. Do it. Don't think about it, do it. Please help me
decide. Please help me do it.

She took a deep breath. Her light hung around her neck
and under her arm, and she could aim it where she needed
it. She had become good at that. She would need both her
hands for climbing. She would manage. She could do it. It
was possible for a human to do this. She remembered a
story she'd heard in graduate school about a geology student camped near a volcano. The volcano erupted unexpectedly. It was later calculated that in order to outrun the
lava flow to safety he would have to make it in world-class
time. He was not even a runner. He made it. Humans can do
superhuman things when they have to save their lives. She
could do this.

Lindsay turned her back to the void and slowly put her
foot on the first rock along the precipice.