Necessary Evil (21 page)

When the Great Spirit sent down woman, he required

that she obey man just as Coyote listens to Rabbit.

—Tilok proverb

''
I
need you to stand on the log,'' he said after he had packed things and was ready to move.

"What for?"

She appeared miserably weak. Her belly was still cramping after two more incidents. "I can't go standing up, if you'll recall."

"I am happy to see that your sense of humor is returning. I am going to carry you piggyback-style."

"No way. You can't carry me down this mountain with a full pack."

"Just until you're feeling a little better."

When Kier had first arrived, she could barely speak. Able to walk a little now, he knew she hoped she could go on her own. Undoubtedly, she was struggling for every shred of independence she could find. It was important to this woman to be dependant on no man. But her dependence was a fact, and he hadn't a clue as to how he could change it. She said nothing when Kier hoisted her up. Putting her arms around Kier's neck and her legs around his waist, he felt her leaning into his back, supported by his heavy forearms under her thighs. He was able to hold her securely despite the field pack and two M-16s between her and him.

At 115 pounds, her weight alone would not slow him down much. But he had another 40 or 50 pounds of equipment hanging off him, making the long hike a real challenge. Last time he had checked, he was a lean 230 pounds—most of it solid muscle.

Before starting out, Kier threw a line around her back, tying it across his chest. It gave her something to lean against. Once on the trail, he began a smooth jog, which with snowshoes was really more of a fast shuffle.

"This Tillman man is a dangerous hunter," he said. "It will take him no more than another fifteen minutes to find the spot we just left—assuming he went back to Bear's Cave."

After a time, Kier stopped. His labored breathing seemed to fill the quiet. They were in a grove of large pine.

"It's like a park, as though someone cleared all the underbrush," Jessie said.

"People have camped here and burned everything near the ground." Kier kicked off the snowshoes. "Also, the treetops keep out the sun, so only plants that like shade will grow, mostly broadleafs or hemlock."

"Are we going to stop here for the night?"

"We can't." Kier paused. "We've got to keep going."

"Where?" she said.

"A cabin. You'll like it."

"I wanted to tell you, that the guy who I got with a grenade talked before he died. He said his group was doing something with a Tilok mink farm."

"Yeah. I had a captive briefly who told me the same thing. They took five mink to the clinic."

"Why, I wonder?"

"I haven't a clue. They were waiting for that plane to drop the pods and that's why they were here."

"Instant army."

"The crash according to this guy was unexpected."

"Undoubtedly, they were shooting holes in the plane while they were shooting at each other."

"I did some more reading while you were asleep in the hut. I'll tell you about it when we get to the cabin."

Kier led her through the woods beside the open trail.

"Give me just the good stuff of what you read," she said as they walked.

"I want to show you some more passages."

"Fine, fine, but tell me the guts of it now."

"I want to show you why I think they felt the need to clone people. I've got to explain the research. At the cabin. I'll show you."

After backtracking one hundred feet, they stood five feet off the tunnellike passage through the forest that was the pathway.

"Move your feet just slightly, like you would if you were waiting impatiently."

"When he sees this, he will think we are trying to ambush him?" She was catching on.

"He will wonder, and the wondering is enough. It will make him cautious . . . slow him down."

"Why am I moving and you're not?"

"Because he knows I wouldn't move."

"What? So I'm supposed to be stupid?"

"You'll learn, and then he'll read your knowledge in your track. But if I had said nothing and we had been here for twenty minutes, wouldn't your feet have moved just a tiny bit? If there was no movement, he would think we had only waited for a short time." Kier pointed behind her. "Take one step back." She did as he suggested. Squatting down, Kier flicked on a small light. "Now look at the size of your track. See how large it is and how the borders are blurred? Now look at mine." Kier stepped backward. "If he looks at this, he will wonder if we waited twenty minutes trying to catch him unawares.

"He'll know from my prior track up the trail that I was carrying you, that you were sick or wounded. Then he'll see that here you walked along after me. See the angle of your feet, compared to mine? And the way you stood next to me? He'll think you were waiting for me while I was looking up the trail, probably with my gun at the ready. When you step, you don't raise your feet high. You walk tired."

Kier touched her shoulder. "Let's go. I think he'll get our message. The illusion is at least confusing."

When they returned to the pack, Kier pointed to a log.

"I can walk now," she said, obviously anticipating him.

"I want to jog," Kier said.

"Are you always so . . . dismissive?"

Kier turned to her, stepping so close that she looked up at him. Reaching out, he touched her face. He let his eyes say the words that he felt.

"Oh, God," she said, meeting his gaze. He thought he saw confusion and uncertainty in her face. Seconds passed before she lowered her eyes.

Kier dropped his hand and turned to pick up his pack. "I'll carry you. It will be faster that way. When you are stronger, you can go on your own."

"Come over here next to the log and I'll climb on."

Stars are the spirits of our forefathers.

On cloudless nights we are overcome by their smile.

—Tilok proverb

O
nce again, Kier gave her a line to pass behind her shoulders to provide support for her back. Since she held on without much conscious effort, she soon fell into a stupor. After an indeterminate period of jostling, she prodded herself conscious and saw no snow falling. A hole in the clouds revealed more stars than she had ever seen and a bright moon against the black-velvet sky shone so clearly she could make out its surface texture. In its light, their shadows danced behind them on the satin shoulders of the mountain. Kier walked now at an ordinary pace.

"So tell me again that we're going to sleep in a cabin with a fire."

"In a cabin, by a fire. But it will be tomorrow."

"So I wasn't imagining things," she said with some hope that it was really true.

"The only other guy who knows about the cabin is in Montana. But it's up to us to get there."

"What do you mean?"

"I would like you to consider just trusting me and not having me explain it. How do you feel about that?"

"Why don't you wish to discuss it?"

"It's one of the reasons I am carrying you."

Confused, Jessie looked around. To her left stood a sheer granite wall. Instantly, she looked down to her right and sucked in a breath. It was a straight drop. In fact, she couldn't see what Kier was walking on.

"Is this a trail?"

"Of sorts," he said cryptically. "I need to concentrate on keeping my balance. Try not to move."

She noticed now that he was carrying his snowshoes.

Her gaze wandered over the outline of the tiny ledge that they traversed. For the first time she observed the long stick in his right hand that he held in front of them, feeling along the rock ledge. As she considered the danger of such tenuous and blind footing, she could feel her heart beginning to pound. Her cotton mouth made swallowing difficult. For a moment, she shut her eyes tightly, telling herself to relax. A few slow, regular breaths helped.

Again she looked. They were moving across a cliff on a narrow ledge. Below there was an almost vertical decline. Directly overhead occasional rock overhangs blocked out the clear night sky.

After a time, the rock wall to the left disappeared, and there was nothing but snow to both sides and below them. Ahead was another mountain, rising gently from the end of their ledge. Far below she could see where the landscape turned dark in the moon's glow—a forest. Kier snapped on a light. He was knee deep in snow on a razorback ridge. Now, on both sides,

an abyss invited her mind to take leave of thought and embrace panic.

"Oh my God." She meant it as a prayer.

"I would like for you to carefully consider something."

"What?" She could barely speak.

''Loosen your grip around my neck just slightly, so as not to choke me."

''Oh. Sorry." She realized that she had pulled her wrists into his Adam's apple. "I don't mind telling you I'm frightened."

"I know what I'm doing."

She forced herself into a sort of calm. "I'm better now," she said after a time. "Can I help?"

"In a few minutes, I'm going to need to let you down."

Each of his deliberate steps followed much poking with the staff. The flat mountain surface ahead lay less than a stone's throw away. She longed to lie on it, touch it, kiss it. It was so massive, not nearly so steep as the ridge on which Kier now balanced. And it had trees, blessed trees. In front of them, she could just make out a tree near a large, dark area, like a cave. Actually, it appeared that the mountainside had an overhang. It was as if she were looking down the tube of a giant, curling wave. Ice and snow in the moonlight were the foam atop the breaker.

"There," he said, running his staff into a spot in the snow that seemed to have no bottom. "How would you feel about my loosening the rope and your getting down?"

"Not good. But I'll do it."

Slowly she slid from his back, letting her feet sink into the snow until she found a foothold on the rocky surface. Removing the pack, Kier pushed it down into the snow like a candle in a cake. He motioned for her to sit on it.

"Have you ever seen that?"

She knew exactly what he meant. On the horizon a planet shone jewellike. She threw her head back, staring. Bright stars and lesser stars occupied every tiny patch of black, and the Milky Way was a shimmering cloud of light. Her cold fear mixed with awe. She looked into eternity. And it was so quiet. There was not a sound.

"It sounds really corny, but I feel like I'm part of God," she said. "How could I ever describe this?"

"What are you feeling?"

"Peace, I guess. This is all so crazy. We're dead meat. There's no peace for us. I wonder if the men who hunt us could ever feel this. God, when I look at this . . . all this . . . I have never seen a sight to match it . . . But it is not just in the seeing . . . it's . . . " She didn't know what to say.

Kier tried. "It's the experience of a spirit—a very thirsty, parched spirit—that wants to touch another. Grandfather says that by knowing your own smallness you can find a way to the whole. Under these stars you are finding your smallness. You touch the whole."

They both fell silent. She let her gaze trail along the length of the Milky Way and pick among the stars.

"Grandfather brought me to this place."

"I must meet your grandfather."

''He was on the mountain today. Not half a mile from you."

"An old man, with a bag around his neck. A leather bag and a heavy green coat."

"That's him. Where did you see him?"

"I didn't, I dreamed him. When I was sick and passed out. I dreamed he came. He told me to crawl. Begged me, really. So I crawled to a stream and drank and drank and drank." Kier didn't stop her. "It was a dream, wasn't it?"

"There were no tracks near you. It was a dream. On my wall at the cabin I had a picture of him in that green coat. You would have seen it."

"And the bag?"

''No. It wasn't in the picture. A great-grandchild was holding the bag."

"I saw him with the bag."

"Your mind supplied the bag. It's something that used to be common for Indians."

"Do you realize you always have an explanation for everything? It sounds like you believe in nothing but molecules."

"I don't know what I believe. I just keep going."

"Since you went off to college, right? You always quote your grandfather. You don't state your own convictions."

"You felt what you felt. That's real." Kier pulled out two coiled lines, one of which he cut to make a third.

"I need to show you a knot."

"Why?"

"We're going to do some mountain climbing and you're going to need it."

She studied while he wrapped one line around the other. All the while her sense of foreboding grew. When she could do it, he nodded. Getting down on his hands and knees, with the guns still on his back, he felt around in the snow. After a while, he grunted what sounded like approval.

"Did you find something?"

"Oh, yes," he said, sounding relieved. "A piton."

She knew what that was. It wasn't good. It was a device used by people who climbed cliffs. It would be anchored to the rock and mountaineers would dangle from it.

"Do we need a piton?"

"Maybe I could offer a suggestion."

"A suggestion? Here we are in the middle of the night on a freezing precipice with one lousy piton? I just met God, and I'm still scared, and you think with a few words, you can just . . . " She hesitated. What was she trying to say? "Just get on with it. I'll be fine. Just fine."

It was night. Dangling at night was almost unthinkable. It seemed to Jessie that where they stood the ridge's top wasn't more than a couple feet wide. Covered with snow, it created the illusion of a knife's edge. To the left, the down slope appeared walkable, if dangerous, but to the right it fell away almost vertically for several stories. Kier reached down with the line and pulled it as if he were running it through the piton. Just next to him was a sheer drop created by a massive split in the granite right where the ridge joined the shoulder of the mountain in front of them. It was as if a giant had pulled lengthwise along the ridge neatly severing it from the mountain and leaving a straight-walled, U-shaped, vertical fracture.

"Perhaps you could go first, and I could help lower you down. What do you think?''

She was determined to show him no more of her fear, although she hadn't a clue as to how she would do what he asked. Kier wrapped the line around her thighs and waist, then passed it between her legs.

"Have you ever rappelled?"

"At the academy we did it a couple of times. But that was in broad daylight on an artificial rock wall. We had equipment. I had eaten. I hadn't been deathly sick. I had strength. I'll manage."

"Okay. Well, this will be very similar, only I will lower you. But if I slip or let go, this safety line, which you will pay out, will also be through the piton to stop your fall. You must hold the safety line and not let it slide through your fingers, except when you want to go down. Now lean back and I'll hold your weight."

She stood with her back to the sheer drop. Kier held the main line a foot from her chest. It went around his shoulder, across his back, down to the piton, then to her waistline.

"Go ahead and squat down."

Warily, she lowered on her haunches.

"Now lean back and let the rope take your weight."

She froze.

"Go ahead, just lean back."

God, dear God, she prayed. Her heart pounded and her hands shook. She felt humiliated. She was not a weak person and what was being asked of her was not extremely difficult.

She continued trembling. It was getting worse. By now a minute had passed. Kier squatted down close to her. His light illuminated their faces.

"Let's rest a minute. Just sit." He pulled her back from the cliff to sit on the pack. "I remember when I was a kid, I saw this movie on TV about Cheyenne Bodine, a man who was sent to a forest to hunt a creature that was killing people in the night. These guys would sit around the campfire and something—before it attacked—would throw dirt out of the bushes. It scared me bad . . . had me shaking under the covers. Turned out it was a bear."

"I'm trying—" she said.

"There's time," he continued firmly. "I'd lie in my bed, scared out of my mind. Now, I know what you're thinking. It's in your head that I was just a kid, that you're an FBI agent, and this story is demeaning because—"

"The story is about normal childhood fears,'' she interjected sharply. "This is about two adults on a mountain. If you'll shut up, somehow I'm gonna do this."

Gritting her teeth, she stood, went to the ledge, and held the rope in her left hand.

"Well, pull on the rope, give me some resistance."

He pulled firmly. She clamped her jaw, willing herself to lean back, trusting him to hold her. She took one baby step down the rock face. He played out a few inches of line, and she took another. The first few feet were not as frightening as she had expected. She was near him, and she could see. As she descended, though, the shadows deepened, and Kier became a monolith in the soft glow of the penlight that he held in his mouth. It was like descending into a well. By thinking about the smooth rock and occasional bush she passed, she did not dwell upon what might be coming.

After she'd taken perhaps fifteen downward steps, Kier stopped, and she felt the pain of the line cutting into her thighs.

"What's going on?"

His light shone over the edge.

"Look behind you." A few feet away on the other side of the chasm a snow-covered tree—some kind of needled evergreen—grew from the opposite wall. It looked gnarly, old, stunted, the base emerging from a crack in the vertical rock wall. The thick trunk made an L so that the top grew straight up, parallel to the cliff. Behind the top of the tree Kier's light shone upon the lower lip of a cave mouth in the cliff face.

"You'll need to throw your end of this line around the tree; then I'll show you how to use it to swing across."

Her heart sank as Kier dropped another line. Throwing the lariat to catch the treetop would be tough. The notion of somehow swinging her body through space, across the chasm, was terrifying. She couldn't even imagine climbing from the tree into the cave.

"I've got the end of the line. You need to get that loop at your end of the line around the top of the tree. From up here I'll work it down past one or two of the larger branches."

"Why did you get me down here and
then
tell me this?" Kier was silent. "Never mind, I know."

Only a vigorous throw would catch the broken top of the main trunk in the loop of the lariat. Turning sideways, she studied the tree. Maybe twelve feet away horizontally, the stubby treetop waited to be noosed some two feet above her height. From the top of the tree to its gnarled base was about twenty-five feet. The floor of the cave stood at eye level.

Jessie's first toss hit the tree's broken top. But when she tried to pull it tight, it slipped off. Three more throws were equally useless.