DESERT MOON

The jeep’s left door handle scraped along the rough granite wall. Paul winced in sympathy as he urged the jeep slowly into the crevice. He felt the left rear wheel dropping down off a boulder and the car lurched toward the wall. Swearing, he gunned the engine and the old jeep leaped forward as if hit with a cattle prod, engine screaming in four-wheel low. It shot out of the tight crevice and dropped heavily into the soft sand beyond. Paul jammed on the brake and took it out of gear.

The canyon turned sharply at this point and he could see only a few meters ahead. The walls towered above, sloping gradually back out of sight as they rose. It was as if he were in the bottom of an immense dry well, in a little patch of sand not much bigger than the jeep. The engine sound roared back at him from every side.

He used the back of his forearm to wipe the dust from the windshield and peered at the way ahead. A two-meter ledge of water-smoothed granite blocked his further ascent of the canyon. Damn. No way the old jeep was going to climb that.

He switched off the engine, and instantly the desert silence closed around him the way water closes over a dropped stone. He sat in the heat and squinted out at the white glare. The engine popped and pinged as it cooled. The old girl had earned a rest - for six hours he’d been wrestling the jeep up the canyon, most of the way in granny gear. It was the toughest kind of going; the canyon was no more than a slash in the desert mountain range, barely wider than the jeep. The floor was a jumble of fallen boulders up to the size of Volkswagens. Three times already he’d been forced to stop and use his steel pry bar to pile rocks into rough ramps over the obstacles. Then he’d crawl up the shifting, unstable heaps of rubble, the shrill whine of the gearboxes filling the canyon. But this ledge was higher than the top of the car and there were no loose rocks available for a ramp. He thumped the wheel in frustration - he’d hoped to get a lot further than this before he had to walk.

“End of the road for you, old Jeep,” he muttered, pronouncing the name in Spanish: “Heap”. Paul tilted his hat back and wiped his forehead. He was hot already and he hadn’t even started to walk yet. He reached over to the little picnic cooler lashed into the passenger seat and pulled out a can of cold beer. He popped the top and took a long pull, savoring the first cool refreshing rush of beer in his throat, knowing the rest of the can could never taste as good as this first swallow. On a hot day when you’ve been working hard and you’re covered with sweat, nothing in the world beats an ice cold can of beer.

He smacked his lips in satisfaction and rolled the cold can across his forehead, further matting his already-wet hair. He opened the door, propped his boots on the dusty windowsill, and admired the smooth female curves of the water-slicked ledge ahead. This place doesn’t get much water, but it must really come through when it does. This one canyon drained this whole side of the mountain range, and every broken piece of those mountains traveled through it.

The washes are like rivers, he thought, rivers of sand ripped grain by grain from the granite peaks by the wind, each grain seeking the immense sump at the bottom of the desert, that man-made mistake, the Salton Sea. The sand rivers flow, but not continuously like other rivers. Perhaps once or twice a year water will flow in this river, moving the sand a few more meters along. And a few times in a century a tropical storm from Mexico will sweep into the desert and a major flood will come roaring through, rolling those VW boulders down the canyon like coal down a chute, reshaping the canyon floor in a few hours. But all that violence and fury dissipates as soon as the flood leaves the canyon and spreads out across the alkali flats beyond. The boulders are laid gently on the sand, new banks and bars are smoothed around them, and the water sinks tamely into the sand to continue its slow journey in darkness, far beneath the surface. Then all is as it was, except the alluvial fan is a few meters larger.

It was the fan at the mouth of this canyon that had first attracted Paul’s attention several weeks ago. He knew a fan that size must come from a large drainage area, and he had gotten a topographic map and traced the canyon to its source valley, high in the desert mountain range. Neither the canyon nor the mountain range had a name, but that wasn’t too unusual in this remote area. He knew the topos were drawn from stereoscopic aerial photographs, then calibrated from a few measurements actually surveyed on the ground. Such triangulation points are always marked on the topos, but there were none shown in this whole range. It meant that little if any groundwork had been done in the area, and that intrigued him enough to attempt this trip.

Now he was here, he could see why the surveyors had bypassed this range. The peaks were not particularly high, bore no trees or water, and showed no obvious signs of mineral value. To an eye accustomed to seeing land decently clothed in verdure, they seemed more than naked; they looked flayed, raw and red. Bare granite flanks, originally white, were scalded to pink and orange-red by untold millennia of baking desert sun. Granite burns like men do - first reddening, then flaking and peeling off in thin sheets that fall away to leave rounded boulders, making the mountains look from a distance like heaps of pebbles poured from a child’s hand.

Many an inexperienced hiker has left his car to strike out for one of those heaps, thinking to have a pleasant hour’s walk - only to find himself exhausted and dry-roasted, sun-drunk in the midst of a vast emptiness. And the mountains are as far away as ever, for these heaps of pebbles rear over a mile above the desert floor, and some of the pebbles are the size of an apartment building. Many die like that every year. For all our advances in communications and travel, the desert is as unforgiving as ever to the unwise traveler.

To people hurrying along a desert highway from one green place to another, the mountains loom as barren and uninviting shapes on the horizon, lifeless and lunar. But to an eye attuned to the muted colors and vast scale of the desert, they are truly beautiful. The pink slopes of the mountains stand bold and clean and vibrant against the electric azure of the sky, and the hollows are imperial purple. The rock surfaces are white and tan and gold, speckled with lichens in dayglow orange and red and chartreuse. And at close range the illusion of sterility is swept away by the profusion of life.

Between the boulders, in every crack and fissure, plants fight their slow and patient battles for survival. Each plant is hardened and armed against the heat, the drought, and the animals. They are not lush, most are not even green, but they survive year after year in some of the harshest conditions on Earth. Hardly a square inch of soil in the desert is without its life, from towering ocotillos, looking like stiff and thorny octopi thrust headfirst into the ground, to tiny leafless flowers like straight pins rising from the sand. And a multitude of other plants lie buried, waiting in armored shells for the first touch of moisture. When the rain does finally come, they rise in a few hours to carpet the desert in blossoming wildflowers to rival any alpine meadow. They sprout, bloom, reproduce, and die in a matter of two or three days, leaving the next generation sleeping under the sand, waiting.

Paul had spent years exploring this desert, and he saw and appreciated its beauty, even more moving for its subtlety. The desert teemed with life, both plant and animal, but to see it you can’t hurry past on a highway. You have to stop and move out into the desert, experiencing firsthand its vast scale in space and time. The desert is misnamed - it’s really only deserted by men, who can see few ways of squeezing money out of it. But it was exactly this solitude, this separation from other men and their quotidian concerns that most drew Paul to it. Whenever he could get away from the city for a few days he came to the desert, and he always returned feeling cleansed and refreshed, with the world of men restored to its proper scale.

He drained the beer and wedged the can behind the toolbox so it wouldn’t rattle loose on the way back. He took out the topo and worked out his position. A few miles ahead the canyon should open into a large shallow bowl ringed with the highest peaks of this range. Poring over the map at home last week, he had tentatively plotted his course straight across the floor of the bowl and up a long shoulder of rock to the highest peak of the range, designated only by its elevation, 5392. It looked to be a long hot climb, but he felt fit enough, the heat was not unbearable, and the view and satisfaction at the top should be well worth it. He had four days before he had to be back, so he should have plenty of time. He folded the map so this area was on top, put it in his shirt pocket, and got out of the jeep.

When he slammed the door, fine dust sifted like flour from the Heap. He slid his pack out of the back and leaned it against the car, then spread the big ground tarp over the other gear in the back. He cracked each window just enough to allow air flow, made sure the spare key was in its hiding place, and locked the car.

Taking hold of the pack by the shoulder straps, he swung it up onto his bent knee, then shouldered into it and strapped it on. It was heavy, nearly thirty kilos, more than half of that in a big water bag up near his shoulder blades. The weight of water, exactly one kilo per liter, was one of the constants of nature known to every desert traveler. To his mind it was the one disadvantage of desert hiking - even with no raingear, cold weather clothes, groundcloth, or tent, the desert backpacker always carries more weight, in water alone. He swung his arms and shrugged his shoulders a few times, bouncing to settle the weight comfortably on his hips and off his shoulders, cinching the straps and belts to his satisfaction. He took a last look around before setting out. The Heap was safe enough, barring the remote chance of an off-season flash flood or the even more unlikely possibility of it being discovered by vandals. He ran through a final mental checklist of the contents of his pack, then scrambled up over the rock ledge and started up the canyon.

There was no air movement in the canyon. The silence was complete except for the dry scrunch of his boots in the sand and the rhythmic creaking of his pack. The sand in the bottom of the wash was too coarse to hold tracks, but on either side the fine silt formed miniature banks and levees, delicate sand sculptures left by the last flood. The crisp undamaged edges suggested that no one had walked through here since the last rain, whenever that had been. For the first hour or so he strolled along easily, just enjoying being alone in the desert again.

But as the hours went by, he began to feel that he wasn’t making much progress. Each time he trudged around a corner, he expected to see the valley opening out before him, but each turn only revealed another stretch of canyon, indistinguishable from the one he had just left. In a number of places the walls were so close he had to turn sideways and squeeze through, his nylon pack whispering over waterworn walls like polished marble. When the walls closed in, the floor turned into a series of rocky ledges like a giant’s stairway. His legs began to complain about the frequent hoisting of the combined weight of himself and the pack. He plodded along with his head down, watching the footing before him, thinking very little.

He had become so absorbed in the rhythm of walking he was surprised when he turned one more corner exactly like the hundred before, and there was the valley before him. Turning aside, he found a flat rock for a seat and pulled one of the one-liter water bottles out of the side pocket of the pack. He took a sparing swig, swirling it around in his mouth before swallowing. He smiled to himself at the common misconceptions about the desert - in the movies the thirsty travelers invariably spat out the first swallow. What nonsense - as if they could afford to waste a whole mouthful of water. Of course, they always throw away their canteens when they’re empty too. What do they expect to do if they do find water?

He wiped his face on his bandanna and studied the valley in the slanting afternoon light. Apparently it had once been a lake before it had filled high enough to spill over the ridge and had cut the canyon through to freedom. The ancient lake was long gone, but it had left behind the sediment washed into it during its lifetime. The valley floor was a maze of round hills of dried mud perhaps thirty meters high, dissected by a wandering network of washes, meandering and dividing and re-converging into the main channel where Paul now stood. Patches of thorny brush were scattered along the larger arroyos, but the mud hills themselves were devoid of all life, a rare sight even in the desert.

The valley was ringed by a broken crown of jagged peaks, the highest, number 5392, directly opposite the canyon. Paul scanned the slopes on that side and found the ridge he had seen on the map. His eyes moved along the ridge top, tracing the route. Up that long shoulder, traverse around that bowl to that saddle, then along the crest to....

He stopped suddenly, peering at a thin dark vertical line jutting from one of the high points on the ridgeline. It stood silhouetted, black against the royal blue of the sky. He squinted up at it, wondering. What the hell was it? Clearly not a standing stone, too thick for an agave stalk, an unlikely spot for a barrel cactus - they tend to like the lower slopes more. It looked most like a man standing motionless on the round granite dome. Paul pulled the field glasses out of his waist pouch and trained them on the ridgeline, hurriedly adjusting the focus. The boulder-strewn summit snapped into perfect clarity, but the peak was bare. He swept the glasses along the skyline, thinking he must be looking at the wrong peak, but there was nothing there. He lowered the glasses and looked again. The round curve of the summit was clearly empty - whatever it had been was gone.

He stood still, puzzled, a moment more, then slowly put the glasses away. He was sure there had been something there, but so few things move in the desert. He supposed it could have been a bighorn, or even a lion, but it had seemed too thin, too upright. How strange. Maybe he was more tired than he realized. He resolved to make camp early tonight, and started up what looked like the largest arroyo.

Soon he was among the mud hills and the peaks were no longer visible. Most of the hills were capped by flat rocky slabs, and he stopped to examine a broken piece that had slid down to the arroyo. It was a solid mass of shells, the remains of an ancient oyster bed. Many of the shells were unmineralized, the mother-of-pearl gleaming as if still wet, incongruous in the baking heat and aridity. Except for these occasional slabs of shell, the hills were devoid of both plant and stone. Their sides were caked dried mud, hard and crusty to the touch, but a man’s weight broke through into soft silt that rose in choking clouds. The sandy washes were the only way through this country, and they branched and twisted in bewildering complexity, forcing him to walk many times the straight-line distance. He was not worried about getting lost on the way back - all he had to do was to keep going downhill to find the canyon. The arroyo was generally clear of brush, but in a few places he had to force his way through stands of catsclaw and mesquite, backing through to use his pack as a shield against the needle-sharp, recurved thorns. He kept track of the sun’s position to avoid getting turned around, but it soon dropped below the western hills. The sky turned a deep royal blue. Knowing how quickly night falls in the desert, he decided to camp at the next likely spot.

He chose a sandy cove surrounded by blue-grey smoke trees, far enough from thorn bushes to have relatively few thorns hidden in the sand. He popped the releases and swung the pack down, leaning it against the base of a smoke tree. It was a relief to have the pack off - he felt light as a feather. Bounding around like an astronaut on the moon, he set about making camp. He unrolled his foam mat in front of his pack and spread his bag over it, then seated himself comfortably with the pack for a backrest. The kitchen gear and the first night’s dinner were in the top of the pack. Soon the stove was roaring under a simmering pot of chili while he sipped his coffee and munched on a bit of jerky. By the time he had finished dinner and sand-scoured the dishes clean, it was completely dark and the desert stars blazed overhead.

He lay back against his pack, feeling relaxed and content, and gazed up at the stars. But the view was restricted by the smoke trees and the surrounding hills. He was still wide awake and felt like exploring while he was free of the weight of the big pack. He decided to try to climb the small hill closest to camp.

Dropping the field glasses, windbreaker, a bottle of water, and a bar of chocolate in the daypack, he started picking his way carefully up a shoulder of the hill. The oyster shell conglomerate lay thick on this side, forming a steep scree slope of loose talus. It was slow work in the dark, but the hill was not very high and he soon reached the top. He picked out a good rock and made himself comfortable flat on his back. He swept the glasses through the Milky Way, picking out the larger nebulae and clusters, mentally naming them to himself. Soon the night chill came on and he pulled on the windbreaker. Finally he just lay back, munching the chocolate and watching the sky wheel majestically overhead.

There was no moon, no wind, and no sound. The desert is one of the few places one can experience the total lack of sound; perhaps only spelunkers know a silence more complete. It was too dark to see the surrounding ring of mountains, but they were marked by the absence of stars low in the sky. A satellite crossed from north to south, probably a military satellite from its polar orbit. It winked as it tumbled in yesterday’s brilliant sunlight. It was the only indication that the planet had other inhabitants.

Finally he began to feel cold and sleepy, and he sat up and slung the pack over one shoulder. Just as he moved, something else did too: a soft scrunch of pebbles came from quite nearby - a small sound, but shocking in that immense silence. His heart slammed once against his ribs and he froze. Adrenaline ran its icy fingers up his back and neck to settle in the hinge of his jaw, and he tasted the sour metallic taste of fear.

It could have been a loose rock, toppling as it contracted in the night air. It could have been a lizard or a kangaroo rat, or even a sidewinder setting out on its nightly hunt. But it hadn’t sounded like any of those things - it had sounded exactly like a footstep on the loose talus slope he had crossed on his climb from camp. A surreptitious sound, a stealthy movement cut off, as if something had frozen when it realized it had been heard. Paul crouched stone still, half risen from the ground, breathing silently through his open mouth, straining his eyes and ears into the darkness before him. The sound replayed over and over in his mind, and each time he felt more certain that some other being stood in the darkness just a meter or two in front of him, motionless and watching like himself.

He stayed in that awkward position as long as he could, but the sound did not come again. His stiff legs began to cramp. It was only with a strong mental effort that he finally forced himself to breathe, to stand up. He paused again, tensed and waiting for some attack, but nothing happened. Slowly, carefully, he started picking his way back down to his camp.

He tried to listen for further sounds, but he seemed to be making an incredible commotion himself as he slid and clattered down the talus-covered slope. Rocks slipped from under his feet and rolled down ahead of him. He was aware of the noise of his clumsy passage spreading out across the silent desert night like ripples in a pool. He imagined small creatures all over the valley raising their heads, ears twitching, to listen to him blundering back to his camp. It was an uncomfortable feeling - the whole desert could hear him, but he could hear nothing but himself. The darkness, so comfortable before, pressed close around him like a smothering black shroud. It seemed much further on the way down, and he began to feel almost panicky before he finally reached the arroyo and could dimly make out the black rectangle of his pack against the sand. He hurried to it with relief, undressed quickly, and slipped naked into his old familiar sleeping bag.

At once he began to relax. He stuffed his clothes into the daypack for a pillow and put the water bottle within easy reach, then snuggled down into the warmth of the bag. Lying on his back, hands behind his head, he stared up at the stars. The night was outwardly just as it had been a few minutes ago when he was soaking it in so contentedly on the hilltop, but how different it felt now. His ears still strained to catch a sound from out there in the dark. He felt spooked, hyper-alert, muscles tight and nerves tense. He supposed all this was still the residual effect of the adrenaline from his first rush of fear. He consciously forced his muscles to relax.

He wondered at his fear - he usually felt very comfortable alone in the desert. Sure, there were some dangers, but he felt that he knew and understood them, and he took precautions against them. He had plenty of water, a good hat, a first aid and snakebite kit, good boots, a knife - he felt ready to meet most emergencies. Snakes were no problem if you didn’t try to play with them, and there were no other animals likely to attack a man. In fact, he usually felt safer out here than he did in the city. He wouldn’t think of laying out his bag and sleeping in an alley. Men were infinitely more dangerous and unpredictable than rattlesnakes and mountain lions.

Silly to get so spooked at a tiny little sound that could have a hundred ordinary explanations. But it had been so clear and so close - and so unexpected. Except for his own slight noises, he hadn’t heard a single sound since leaving the car - not a breeze, not a birdcall, nothing. It was eerie and unnerving to suddenly hear something that close in the dark. He had been so certain he was alone in the valley, no one around for many miles, a vast circle of safe solitude with himself at the center. And then in a second that huge circle had collapsed to a radius of a few meters, with the unknown pressing in from all sides. It was like driving a lonely road alone at night, and then hearing something sit up in the back seat. The hair on his neck still tingled, but he was finally starting to relax, to recover some of the tranquility he had come here to experience, although he was sure he was too excited to ever fall asleep.

He was walking at night through a strange landscape. Round granite boulders protruded from the long grass. The hills were dotted with dark copses of trees. He was climbing a hill, wending his way up through rocky meadows, toward some goal he could not now remember, but it didn’t seem to matter. A cool breeze ruffled his hair and brought the scent of water. He turned his head and saw the sheen of a large body of water below him in the distance. As he climbed he could see that the crest of the hill was surmounted by a high parapet of rounded sandstone, scoured into fantastic shapes by the wind. He had a pleasant sense of anticipation, of something good about to happen.

He heard footsteps and realized he was not alone. A number of dark figures were scattered over the hillside, some alone, some in groups of two or three. All were climbing unhurriedly, converging on the crags on the hilltop. Although several of the groups appeared to be conversing, he could hear only the soughing of the grass against his legs.

When he approached the foot of the rock formation he could see that the outcropping was full of openings, was in fact honeycombed with wind-carved caves. A number of people were already there, standing or sitting in the dark tunnel mouths, apparently waiting. No one spoke. He came to the base of the rocks and saw that he could easily clamber up to an uninhabited cave not far above. It was wide and shallow, floored with clean white sand. He sat comfortably on the sill, swinging his legs like a child, waiting silently with the others. He wasn’t surprised to find that he could see fairly well just by the starlight, although there was no moon. Even as he thought this, a glow came into the sky, far out over the sea. As it grew it sent rays of the palest blue and pink and green across the black sky, which were repeated in shimmering reflections on the water. Then the moon seemed to float up out of the sea, light as a balloon. His heart leaped at the beauty of it; he realized that this was what they had all been waiting for. At that instant a loud cry shattered the silence of the scene and wrenched him awake. He opened his eyes directly into the glare of the full moon rising above the mud hills. Before he had time to react, a ghostly echo of that wail from his dream returned from some distant canyon. His heart froze in his chest, and he sat up in his bag and looked around. The desert was transformed; it gleamed now in silver and sable - but the arroyo could have been a black-and-white still photograph. Nothing moved anywhere, and the silence was complete. He watched for a long time. At least in the moonlight he could see that nothing was creeping up on him.

Finally he lay back and tried to collect his scattered thoughts. He couldn’t have explained to anyone what had just happened. He wasn’t even quite sure what the cry had sounded like - it had ended before he was fully awake and the echo had been faint and confused by the reverberations. He had the impression that it had had some of the tones of a human voice, with different pitches, almost like syllables.

Except for the echo, he would have said that it was just part of the strange dream he had been having. He knew he had been dreaming as he awoke, although he couldn’t now recall what it had been about. All that remained was a vague sense of unfulfilled anticipation, for which he had no explanation. He was no longer quite sure what was dream and what reality. Had the cry been real, or just the echo - or either, for that matter? And was the expectant feeling a residual emotion from the dream, or something more? All he knew was that his heart was still pounding from his sudden awakening.

But he felt sure that the cry had been real; he had been fully awake when the echo had returned several seconds later. Now that he thought of it, that long a delay meant that the echo had returned from some distance away. Then the cry must have been quite loud, not just close by. What could it have been? Perhaps the death cry of some animal? He had heard the heart wrenching, almost childlike, shrieks that rabbits sometimes make as they die. But this was not like that. It had not been shrill enough, desperate enough. A coyote? Their cries are among the eeriest and loneliest on Earth. But he had never heard a coyote howl like that. The coyote calls to his kind and listens for a reply. But Paul felt certain that whatever had made that sound had expected no answer - knew there could be no possible reply. It had been full of solitude and sadness, a wistful melancholy - like the whistle of a freight train on a still night in open country, caught at the very limit of hearing. He imagined some creature out there alone in the desert, and wondered what it must feel like to howl like that, to need to howl like that. Quite unexpectedly, a lump swelled in his throat at the thought, and he shivered.

He crawled out of the bag, tiptoed gingerly a few meters away, and peed onto the sand, watching the little puddle being sucked down until there was just a tiny patch of foam sparkling in the moonlight. He shivered with the cold and scampered back into the bag, drawing it over his head and breathing into it until it was warm again. He scrunched his hips from side to side, excavating a depression for his butt. He gave a deep sigh and let his body relax again.

As he drifted back into sleep, eyes staring unfocused on the rising moon, he was suddenly brought fully awake by a strong sense of déjà vu. He had an uncanny certainty that this very scene - the moon, the desert, the branches of the smoke tree just so - had occurred before. Even the bizarre sense of anticipation suddenly seemed familiar. The sense of dreamlike unreality swirled around him, giving him a kind of psychic vertigo. He tried to focus his mind on the sensation, to understand or at least prolong it, but it was no use - it slipped away, leaving him wide-awake and excited.

Ever since childhood, Paul had been fascinated by déjà vu. He found it pleasantly mysterious. It always seemed as if there were some hidden meaning just beyond his grasp, some connection between normal reality and some other. He knew he had definitely never been in this arroyo, this precise situation before - how could it suddenly seem so familiar? Had he once had some kind of prescient dream about the place? Could he have been here in a prior life, or in some unremembered out-of-body experience? Or perhaps someone else had once been here, just like this, and now Paul was sensing that other memory, still hovering in the air? All the possibilities were equally fantastic and unlikely, and there seemed to be no way to ever know the truth. That was the mystery of déjà vu, and why he found it so interesting.

When it came particularly strong, as this one had been, he felt as if the barrier between this world and another had stretched thin, had become momentarily translucent like a frosted window. And on the other side, shadows moved in strange and inexplicable patterns. It was like a phantom memory, of a time and place that never were. When this happened, he tried to push his mind forward through the memory, to see if he could remember what had happened next the last time; to see, in effect, his own future. If he could do that, he could be sure the experience was real, and perhaps understand it. But he never succeeded. After many years he had come to the tentative conclusion that déjà vu was no more than the sensation itself: an illusion of recurrence.

Usually he enjoyed the rare experience, but tonight he had already been feeling so nervous and jumpy that it only made the night more weird. He shivered, and not only with the cold. Finally he fluffed his lumpy pillow and settled back down in his bag. He watched the moon for a long time, unable to shake off a sense of unreality and a vague unease.

He awoke feeling uncomfortably warm, and found the sun had replaced the moon on the eastern ridgeline. It couldn’t have been up more than a few minutes, but already it was too hot to stay in the bag. He unzipped it, threw back the top, and lay naked in the morning sun, breathing deeply of the last of the cool night air. Even the brilliant sunlight could not dispel the unpleasant aftertaste of the night. He got up as soon as it was light enough to see clearly, but discovered his back was uncomfortably stiff. He touched his toes a few times, then stretched high, wiggling his fingers over his head. He went through his usual routine of twisting and stretching, but he could not work out the kink in his lower back.

Usually this far into a backpack his body had adjusted to the extra weight, but now every motion brought a twinge. The aches and pains combined with the uneasy night and short sleep to make him irritable. He tugged petulantly at balky straps and banged his equipment around angrily. When he caught himself swearing under his breath, he realized what he was doing. This was no way to enjoy a trip. He put down what he was working on and took a few minutes to sit calmly and watch the light sweep across the sinuous curves of the hills. He forced his mind to be still and receptive. It worked. Soon he became intrigued with the movement of light and shadow across the arroyo. The mountains to the west glowed like molten gold in the slanting buttery light. When he stood up he found that his back had relaxed in the few minutes his mind had been distracted. His spirits picked up and he put the strange events of the night behind him.

He put the water on for breakfast, had a much-needed pee, and then strolled around camp to limber up. The temperature was rising fast, but it was a beautiful morning and he felt full of energy. With any luck he’d be to the mountain by late afternoon and could reach the top tomorrow morning or early afternoon. He’d have lunch on top, admire the view, take a picture or two, maybe leave a note in a can, and be down to the valley again before dark tomorrow. The trip was going well so far.

When he got back to camp the water was about to boil. He poured some into the coffee filter on his tin cup and the rest over his instant oatmeal and raisins. After breakfast he scoured the dishes and repacked his gear. He noted with satisfaction that he had gone a long half day and had had two meals and still had not finished his second one-liter water bottle. He refilled both bottles from the big fifteen-liter bag in the top section of his pack, then stuffed his garbage bag in an outside pocket. Finally he got dressed, first carefully knocking out his boots in case of scorpions. He checked around for anything he’d forgotten, swung the pack on, and set off up the arroyo.

He settled into a moderate but steady pace that would cover ground at a good rate without causing undue exertion and water consumption. The scrunch of his boots in the coarse sand became a rhythm to which he timed his breathing. He felt rested and strong, and he could feel his mind settling into the slower rhythms of the desert. In another day or two his body would adjust too; sweating and excreting less, increased stamina and heat tolerance, waking and sleeping in time with the sun. He had felt the change before - it was a good healthy feeling, and he looked forward to the experience again.

He walked briskly all morning, winding among the hills, savoring the desert sights and sounds and smells with little conscious thought beyond the mechanical choosing of his path. There were no more obstacles to avoid, but the steady uphill plodding in soft sand began to tell in the long muscles of his legs. When he stopped to check his progress on the map, he discovered that the arroyo was not even shown; another indication that surveyors had never been here, for it was certainly large enough to appear.

The branching maze of arroyos kept forcing him away from the direct line to the ridge and his progress was not as good as he had hoped. The heat sapped him too, so that he had to stop several times for rest and water breaks. The white sand was too hot for comfortable sitting and there was not the slightest sign of shade anywhere, so his only relief at the breaks was to turn his back to the sun and let the pack shade him.

In late morning he stopped in the scant shade of a stunted desert willow and took another swallow of water. His back was soaking wet where the straps crossed it, and his shoulders were starting to ache. The pack still felt heavy; he knew he wouldn’t start to feel the lightening for another day. He decided to break for lunch.

Shrugging out of the pack, he eyed the nearest hills. He didn’t feel very tired yet, but the steady plodding was tedious. He decided to climb out of the arroyo to see how far he had to go and to check his direction. He put a light lunch in the daypack and started up the nearest hill. There was no rock at all on this one, and he had to kick steps in the dried mud, like climbing a snowfield. With each step, his feet broke through the crust and slid back a few inches, quickly filling his boots with the powdery dust. The hill was so steep that he was forced to use his hands to steady himself, and soon he was going up on all fours. The dust rose around him and hung in the air. Lifted by the slight updraft of hot air going up the slope, the clouds hung motionless around him as he climbed, filling his nostrils.

Halfway up he had to stop to catch his breath and have a drink of water. He braced his feet against the shifting dust and looked around. Far below, his pack was the only speck of color in a sepia print. Although he would have liked a longer rest, he could feel his feet already slipping downhill. Clods of dried mud broke loose around his ankles and spun crumbling away, each followed by a tiny avalanche. Only in the desert could silt this soft and light form slopes so steep. What a sight these hills would be in a downpour - the landscape must melt like wax in a flame. But no one could see that nightmare vision and live; there would be no place from which to watch it, the arroyos would be torrents of boiling sticky mud. No place to be in the rain, he mused as he resumed climbing.

Clawing his way to the round summit of the hill, he threw himself down and waited for the dust to settle. He was sweating heavily and had to have another swallow of water. That had been harder than he had expected. There was a slight breeze up here which, though warm, was refreshing after the smothering dust of the climb. The view took what little breath he had left: stretching away on every side, row after row of identical round hills shimmered in the heat haze. Although there was fairly thick growth in places in the arroyos, not a blade of grass showed on the hills. No rocks, no cliffs or scarps, not even a shadow, was visible anywhere on the hills to mark one from another. It was like a frozen ocean, brown waves rolling away to the surrounding ring of peaks. And it had indeed been water once, for this was the desiccated corpse of a sparkling mountain lake. And not all that long ago. Out on the desert floor, he had seen ancient fish weirs and middens of oyster shells where Indian fishing villages had once lined the shores of an inland sea. The desert Cahuilla who still lived in the area had been fishermen only a few hundred years ago. Looking at the country now, it was hard to imagine.

He had cheese and crackers for lunch and an orange for dessert. Oranges were heavy for packing food, but were good sources of water, sugar, and vitamin C, and few foods were as refreshing in the heat. He saved even the orange peels, knowing that otherwise they would lie here for years. Things do not rot in the desert, they mummify, they become leather.

After lunch he scanned the upper end of the valley through the field glasses. He was clearly more than halfway across now. The ridge still appeared to offer the best route to the top, and it would also get him out of the mud hills sooner - hopefully before dark. The hills were bizarre and beautiful, but their sameness became oppressive. The eye yearned for varying shapes and colors. Compared to the lunar sterility of the hills, the ridge seemed carpeted with life. Ocotillo predominated near the base; jumping cholla, beavertail, and barrel cactus dotted the rocky slopes; and tall yucca and agave stalks bristled on the ridgeline. A faint haze of green hinted at all the other plants too small to make out at this distance. Although it was late November, the air temperature was at least thirty Celsius, and so dry that he sweated very little. He wore light colors, loose long sleeves and pants, and a broad-brimmed hat. He felt comfortable enough, especially after the rest and the refreshing lunch.

He half ran, half skied, back down to his pack. Compared to the twenty-minute struggle to the top, he was down in less than five, dusty but exhilarated by the speed. He stopped to empty the silt from his boots, then swung his pack on and resumed walking.

The terrain was changing. The slope of the arroyo was gradually increasing. Occasionally a rock protruded from the mud walls. Soon he was climbing over outcrops of a twisted and tortured greenish metamorphic rock. He rounded a turn and saw beyond a final line of hills the ridgeline he had been making for. He circled the last mud hill and came to the rocky foot of the ridge. He was so glad to be out of the mud that he didn’t even pause for a break, but started immediately up the rocky slope. It was steep, almost precipitous, and not easy going, for he had to work his way among standing boulders and thorny clumps of pencil cholla. But it was so pleasant having a change of scenery and a bit of a challenge after two days of plodding through sand that his spirits were soon restored. He was enjoying himself again, and he moved surely and steadily upward.

He made straight for the top of the ridge, hoping to find an old Indian trail. They often built their trails just below the crests of the ridges for practical reasons - a good field of view, the narrow trails cannot be seen from below, and travelers are never silhouetted against the sky. Many times he had clambered up a difficult slope, fighting through cactus and catsclaw to a peak surely never before visited, only to find an ancient but well-trodden trail only a few meters from the top. His terra incognita clearly used to be someone’s thoroughfare. He had been disappointed those other times, but he wouldn’t at all mind finding a trail on this ridge - the traverse along the ridge promised to be difficult and a trail could save him many hours.

He began to tire before he was halfway to the ridgeline. The brush was getting thicker and he was constantly climbing over fallen yucca stalks and hauling his weight up onto boulders. The day was also starting to heat up. Even in midmorning it seemed hotter than yesterday. After a particularly difficult pitch, he needed to take a break. Just above him a huge boulder projected precariously from the hillside, casting a tiny patch of shade on the scree below. He clawed his way up to it, but there was not enough level space to sit. He was forced to turn his back to the hill and lean back awkwardly against a sloping slab. He pulled off his hat and mopped his face with it. Unable to catch his breath, he stood panting, the oven-dry desert air parching his mouth and throat. He dragged out a water bottle and had a drink, but the usual single swallow didn’t make it. He had two more before his breath and heartbeat returned to normal and his muscles stopped twitching. He decided he’d been pushing too hard. He wasn’t in quite as good shape as he liked to think, and he hadn’t been getting enough sleep for this much exertion. He had a lot more uphill to do if he was going to get to the top of old 5392. Even if his strength lasted, his water wouldn’t at this rate. He still had enough, but it was going to be hotter and harder from here on. He’d have to slow down a little and take more frequent breaks.

Well, he still had plenty of food. He fortified himself with a chocolate bar and felt better immediately. He put the water bottle away, flexed his stiff knees, and pushed himself upright. He scrambled up around the side of the big boulder he’d rested under and walked right into the middle of a family of bighorn.

They all stood frozen, staring at each other: Paul with his hand pressing back a branch of catsclaw; a big ewe almost within arm’s reach; a young lamb just beyond her with a clump of grass in his mouth; and, six meters higher up, a large and very impressive ram. They were at least as tall as deer and much heavier-bodied. Their wool was short and wavy, and both adults had spectacular horns curled beside their solemn faces. For a long moment they all just stared, then the ewe pivoted on her hind legs and sprang high up the slope to a ledge not much bigger than a playing card. She glanced back once to make sure the lamb was following, then all three raced up the hill, each landing on a ledge just as it was vacated by the one in front. In a matter of a few seconds they had reached the ridgeline. It was a beautiful and skillful performance, full of athletic grace, but it was not silent. Their hooves rang on the granite, and small rockslides clattered down all along the line of their ascent, sending up puffs of dust. When the ram reached the top he went out on an overhanging precipice and struck a noble pose until his family was safely over the ridge. He remained gazing down at Paul for several minutes, then wheeled out of sight so quickly he seemed to vanish.

Paul stood in rapture, gazing motionless, hoping they would reappear. In all his trips to the desert he had never before seen the elusive borrego for which this part of the desert was named. They are among the shyest of creatures, living only in the most precipitous and inaccessible terrain. He knew they were around, he had frequently seen their droppings around waterholes, but when people were anywhere near, the borrego would remain high in the crags. He had never even seen one at a distance, and here he had just walked in amongst a whole family group. He wondered why he had been able to get so close - surely they had heard him scrambling up the hill. And he had had his rest break only a few meters from the sheep; it wouldn’t require the supersensitive ears of a borrego to know he was behind that boulder. But when he had climbed around the big block the sheep had been so surprised that they had frozen and stared. Such doubletakes are often fatal in the wild; most animals will get to safety first and stare later. It was as if the sheep had not been alarmed to hear someone near them, but then were dumbfounded when they saw who it was. Paul couldn’t help wondering what they had expected to see walk around that rock.

Still wondering, he resumed climbing, stopping often to pick the best way. Several times he thought the horizon ahead was the ridgeline, but each turned out to be only a slight decrease in the slope. The sun was past the zenith when he at last saw the crest just above him. He was breathing heavily again and only the perfect aridity of the air kept him from being soaking wet. As he clawed his way up the last stretch, he glanced to his right, toward the peak, and was dismayed to see that the crest was both steeper and rougher than he had guessed from below. No convenient ridge top trail was visible. It wasn’t going to get that much easier even when he got to the ridge.

When he finally made the top he collapsed on a boulder to catch his breath and look around. The slope behind him looked almost vertical from this perspective, and the mud hills stretched away below. In the distance he could see the arroyos converging on an insignificant-looking slit in the far wall, marking the entrance to the canyon he had come through. It tired him to think of the exertion required to get back there, and he did not look forward to crossing the mud hills again. Well, he didn’t have to face that for a day or so yet.

On the other side, the long curving ridge enclosed like an encircling arm a wide flat bowl at least two kilometers across, dotted with big mesquite and creosote trees. The ridge curved back toward the peak, cutting off this little bowl from the valley of the mud hills. Even at the lowest point of the ridge, he could see that the dry washes led inward, not out. A closed valley then, probably with a sinkhole in that big patch of brush near the center.

He checked the topo again and, sure enough, it showed this bowl as an open bay into the valley of the mud hills. Very sloppy mapping. Some bored draftsman either overlooked the detail or figured no one would ever notice his minor simplification of the landscape in such a remote area. Paul wondered if anyone had ever reported the error.

Well, it was good news to Paul. The floor of the bowl was relatively flat and open and looked quite smooth. On the far side it sloped gradually up onto the upper flanks of peak 5392. The floor wasn’t that far below him - he wouldn’t have to give up much elevation and he could walk much closer to the summit before he got into real climbing again. It would save hours of hard work, and he was in the mood for some easier going after that climb, especially now that the sun was approaching its full heat. He had a good drink, then picked his way down a small gully to the floor of the bowl.

In fifteen minutes he was down and striding easily across the pan. There were big stands of creosote and waitabit bushes here, larger and greener than he’d seen so far. He guessed that the closed valley may hold the little water it catches, so a water table remained far below, supporting these stands. He headed roughly across the center of the bowl, planning to skirt the big central thicket. There was not a breath of wind and the white sand reflected the scorching heat up into his face. He pulled his bandanna up around his throat so he wouldn’t get a sunburn under his chin. He was following a dry watercourse as the easiest path. It was only ankle deep, but as wide as a highway. He could see others like it converging on the central thicket. So many washes must collect a lot of water when it rained. He started to wonder if there might not be a salt pan in the middle of the thicket.

It took longer than he had thought to get to the center. As usual, it was both further and rougher than it looked from a distance. As he got closer, he realized his eye had been fooled also by the size of the thicket. It was much larger than he had thought - several hundred meters across, with some full-size acacias and desert willows rising from a dense tangle of thorny underbrush. So much lush growth in this arid country was a sure sign of water close to the surface. The mesquites could send a taproot down nearly a hundred meters, but those trees needed it much closer than that. There must be non-porous rock down there somewhere that kept the water from seeping away.

He reached the thicket and was circling the perimeter when he spied the glossy dark leaves of a Washington palm reaching above the other trees. He stopped, wondering. Palms rarely grew far from surface water; they were a hallmark of that rare treasure, an oasis. He decided to take a few minutes to circle around and see if he could find a way into the thicket, but he soon came back to his own tracks. There were no obvious paths. A number of small washes meandered in under the brush, but they were not big enough to keep their channels clear. He did see several more palms though, and became convinced there must be surface water in there somewhere.

He finally decided the likeliest spot was a low arch of thorns over a small wash. It was certainly not a trail, but it could be a runway for rabbits or some other small animal. He crouched and peered into the dark tunnel. It was low and looked very scratchy, but it seemed passable for a little way at least. He decided to try it, but he certainly didn’t need to drag the pack in if it turned into a dead end. He shrugged out of the pack and shoved it into the shade under a big burroweed, then crouched down and duckwalked awkwardly into the low crawlway.

He made fair progress for twenty meters or so, then his knees started to ache and he had to sit and stretch his legs out. The tunnel’s turns cut off the view of the outside and it seemed quite dark after the glare of the sand. It was no cooler for the shade though, and every time he brushed one of the bushes a rain of tiny dried leaves and twigs rained down and stuck to his sweaty skin. Dust rose around his shuffling boots, filling his nostrils. He went to all fours and crawled on, stopping occasionally to pull tiny thorns from his palms. Sweat ran down his forehead, burning in his eyes. The thought of a cool shady pool started sounding better and better, although now that he thought about it, the absence of animal trails probably meant there wasn’t any surface water. He was starting to think he would just come out on the other side without finding anything. He was prepared to be disappointed, but he was not prepared for the sudden drop-off that opened before him. He had put his hand on the edge before he saw it and he started back in surprise. Then he caught his breath in wonder.

He was on the edge of a vertical cliff perhaps ten meters high, surrounding a sunken depression in the midst of the thicket. It was roughly circular, about 50 to 75 meters across, with a rolling uneven floor, as if the earth had collapsed here. The palms he had glimpsed were actually only the tallest of a small grove growing from the floor of the depression. At their feet was a green and grassy knoll that sloped down to the low point of the hollow. And there, surrounded by rushes and cattails, shone a calm pool of gin-clear water with blue and orange dragonflies darting and dancing over it.

He stared in wonder at the unexpected beauty, so isolated from the desert all around it. The heat, his fatigue, the aching muscles and burning scratches - all were forgotten in his delight. He had found that rarest and holiest of grails for the desert backpacker: an unknown oasis. Topo maps usually marked every seep ever rumored to have once shown a high humidity, but this lush pool wasn’t shown at all. This was clearly a new discovery, at least for white men. And it was possible even the Indians had not discovered it. He had many times seen a dozen or more house rings built around a spring that never produced more than a few buckets a day. This pool could easily support a small town. No, the more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed: he just could be the first human being ever to see this beautiful little dell. The thought was exhilarating. To hell with peak 5392; it could wait for another trip. He wanted to camp here.

He scanned carefully along the encircling cliffs, looking for a way down, but they were unbroken and nowhere less than eight meters high. Thick brush lined the edge and leaned precariously out, stretching for the light. He could see many places where shrubs and small trees had toppled. There seemed to be no easy way down. He finally decided the best of a bad lot was a diagonal crack sloping down from a spot not far to his left. He began forcing his way that direction, lying on his belly and crawling on his elbows through the thick brush.

Again and again the thorns caught in his clothes, and he had to pull them out and break or bend the branches back out of the way. As he worked, he thought what a pain it was going to be to drag the big pack in here. If it was too bad, he might ferry stuff in using the daypack. Then maybe tomorrow he could work on the path and open it up a little with the saw on his army knife. He thought he’d leave the first few meters of the tunnel as is so the entrance wouldn’t be obvious. Already he was imagining keeping the place to himself, his own private oasis.

When he judged that he should be over the crack, he forced his way out to the edge and peered over. He leaned out, examining the crack with a climber’s critical eye. It looked possible but pretty tough, more technical than he liked to get into without a rope, especially with the big backpack. He decided to try it once without the pack before he went to the trouble of dragging it all the way in here. He turned around with some difficulty and dangled his legs over the edge. His toes found some solid footholds and he slowly lowered himself over the lip and started down.

He soon ran out of good handholds and stopped to look it over. He thought he could probably make it by jamming his fists into the crack, but there was no way he could do that with the pack on. He was still uncomfortably high and the stretches between holds were getting longer. The tightness of fear was settling in and he had second thoughts about going on. Maybe he should try to go back up and look for another spot, although he sure hadn’t seen anything that looked any better. Just then he caught the faintest whiff of that indefinable smell of clean water vapor. It was so deliciously inviting that he resolved to go on down. He worked to a good three-point hold, both hands and his left foot on the wall, and looked back over his shoulder to see how far he had to go.

There was a sharp cracking sound and his left hand dropped from the wall, still firmly grasping a solid-looking knob of rock. He felt his weight swinging him back away from the wall, but there was nothing to grab. As he swung out, the toe of his left boot shifted on its tiny ledge, then suddenly popped loose. Instantly his mind snapped into that surreal, dreamlike perception that comes with mortal fear. Time slowed to a crawl. His awareness of his body became intensely acute. He became aware of a bit of sock bunched between two toes, and could feel the weight of his hat on his head. His right hand, his only remaining connection with the Earth, was clamped like a vise over a rough projection of rock. Grains of sand crunched under his ultrasensitive fingertips, and he could feel the angular shape of each separate grain as it rolled over and over. His vision was intensified too, and motion became discontinuous. He seemed to be watching a slide show, an unhurried browse through a series of vividly clear images of the wall moving slowly past his face as he swung down and to the right. Every grain and edge, every bit of lichen, was observed in painstaking detail. Then his weight came fully onto his right arm, slamming the side of his face and the whole length of his body against the wall in a stunning, jarring impact. His right hand was torn free, and he fell.

He slid painfully down the wall at first, the blows and scrapes to various parts of his body coming too quickly to register fully. He seemed to be seeing it all in a dream, or as if it were happening to someone else. Then his feet struck solidly on some outcropping, his knees buckled hard against the wall, and he toppled backward into space. Time seemed to stop, and with it his panic. He hung weightless in the air and gazed calmly up at the top of the cliff as it swung slowly away. The overhanging shrubs glowed so emerald green they seemed to be lit from within with green fire. He could see every leaf in crystal clarity as they receded. He ceased to think at all, and simply floated. Then something indescribable happened and changed his whole universe.

He existed in thoughtless limbo for a long time before he became curious as to where, or even what, he was. He tried to open his eyes and discovered they were already open. It took him a moment more to realize that those shapes and colors he was seeing represented physical objects. With a strong mental effort, he forced meaning into the colored patterns, and found he was looking up into the broken branches of a bush. A desert lavender - he could smell its ethereal sweetness like a taste in his mouth. He wondered how he and the lavender came to be together in such a strange place. He could see it with atomic clarity, but he couldn’t remember what it signified.

There was another odd sensation he couldn’t place. He wasn’t even sure what sense he was picking it up with. It wasn’t vision, it didn’t taste like lavender, but it seemed quite insistent, powerful, and somehow two-fold. It was like a high clear trumpet over a slow bass rhythm, he thought, or perhaps a single white gull soaring high over deep rolling blue seas. He pondered the sensation idly, rolling it over in his mind. It seemed somehow familiar, as if he should recognize it. He thought it might be important, but his attention kept wandering. There was so much still to discover.

He found he was clutching something rough in his left hand and turned to look at it. He stared uncomprehending at a broken fragment of rock in his hand, then his mind opened sickeningly beneath him like a bomb-bay door. In a sudden rush, he remembered the cliff, the weightlessness, and then he knew the sharp and pulsing sensation for what it was - unbearable, excruciating pain.

It gripped him in searing agony, taking his breath away, and he moaned through clenched teeth, eyes bulging, tears streaming down his face. His only thought was an overwhelming desire for release - nothing else mattered. He endured only because he was helpless to do anything else. He lay sobbing up at the empty and uncaring sky.

The pain went on forever, but after a time - he had no idea how long - he found he was able to think again. He wasn’t sure if the pain was actually fading or if his body had just realized he wasn’t ready to come out of shock so soon, and had tucked him back under its protective anesthetic blanket. He had time to wonder how badly he was hurt. He had that unpleasant pressure around his heart that comes with a serious injury, when the body knows it’s in trouble and the mind doesn’t want to admit it yet. He knew he had dozens of scrapes and bruises, some of them pretty bad. The skin had been scraped completely off the back of his right hand. His face was tender and puffy on the right side, his cheek and lips were lacerated, and he could taste blood. He probed with his tongue and found a loose tooth. There was also a sharp catch in his side when he breathed, making him wonder if he had cracked a rib when he hit the wall. But the final fall, after he bounced off the rock, was a total mystery. He had no recollection of hitting the ground, but there seemed to be a discontinuity in his memory. He didn’t think he had been actually unconscious - at least not for more than a few seconds. But he felt indescribably strange and numb. He remembered hitting a ledge very hard and suddenly wondered if he might have broken a leg or ankle; he hadn’t given them a thought in his damage assessment. Now that he thought of it, that must be because that was the only part of him that didn’t hurt. As a matter of fact, there was no pain in his legs. None at all.

He was lying on his back, bent awkwardly over something round and hard beneath the small of his back. He tried to pull himself up to a more comfortable position, but the attempt sent such searing pains through his back that he nearly passed out. Swearing, he collapsed back and lay still. Something was wrong, but he was still so groggy that he couldn’t tell what it was. The clench of fear tightened around his heart. “I’m hurt,” he thought. “Oh, God, I’m hurt bad.”

He checked for pain in his hips and legs and could find none. In fact, his legs felt very strange. It wasn’t that they felt numb - they felt missing. He couldn’t tell how they were arranged; whether they were straight or crossed or bent or whatever. Suddenly he had to see them. With an effort that caused his vision to swim and made him dizzy, he managed to use his elbows to lever his chest off the ground and looked down. His legs looked normal enough, although the right knee of his jeans was torn and his knee was badly gashed. A patch of bloody, dirt-encrusted flesh showed through the hole, a flap of skin folded back through the denim. He winced at the sight of the ugly wound.

“I can’t feel that,” he thought dazedly. “Shouldn’t I be able to feel that?” He reached down gingerly to touch the wound, and nearly screamed - not because it hurt, but because it didn’t. His hand felt the torn knee all right - the sand, the wet tissues - but his knee could not feel his hand. He shuddered with revulsion. It was like touching a corpse; it felt like dead flesh. Panic swelled in his throat, choking him. In a fury of fear, he pounded on his thigh with his fist. A cloud of dust rose from his jeans and he could see his leg bounce, but he felt nothing. A primal terror clawed at his mind, spiraling upward, faster and faster toward... what, madness?

Then a calm reasonable voice spoke in his head: “I am afraid, Paul, that you have apparently broken your spine. The nerve is obviously severed. You would seem to be paralyzed from the waist down.”

With a shock of fear, he realized that of course it must be true. He must have landed flat on his back over a rock or log and cracked his spine like a twig. And if that is so, then he would surely die in this place. Oddly enough, the certain knowledge seemed to have a calming effect - it was as if he could relax now that he knew he didn’t have to worry about getting out, finding help, facing the future. He simply didn’t have a future any more.

The psychedelic state of shock began to drain away, leaving him exhausted and resigned. He had time to think wistfully of his full pack in the shade under that burroweed. He could see it so clearly it seemed he could touch it. All his food and clothes, the water, the first-aid kit, even his knife - everything he needed was right there, not more than a hundred meters away.

“Might as well be on the far side of the moon for all the good it will do you”, said that same calm voice. It was not a bitter thought, only pragmatic, and again he felt inexplicably calmer. No need to waste any more time worrying about that either. So his world was reduced to this tiny valley; everything beyond those walls had suddenly been swept away to an impossible, unattainable distance, and therefore no longer concerned him. He looked around at his new world.

He remembered how inviting the valley had looked from the top - that grassy hill, the sun-dappled pool. The thought of the water made him aware of his thirst. He wondered if he could get to the pool. He figured it couldn’t be too far from where he lay. It sure would feel good to get a drink and maybe wash off a bit. He took a deep but careful breath. The pain in his side was more dull than sharp. He decided his ribs were bruised, but probably not broken, and none of his other injuries were too serious.

“Ah, just the back then,” came the quiet voice. “Yes,” he thought sardonically, “only a broken back.” He twisted his head and could see the red peeling bark of a manzanita rising beside him. He took firm hold of it with both hands. Then, holding his breath against the pain, he pulled himself over onto his side. Painful, yes, but not unbearable. He rolled over onto his stomach with a grunt and tried to raise himself on his arms. Sweat beaded on his forehead, but he seemed to be trying to lift a truck. He collapsed on his face. No good; he’d have to drag himself. He clutched at the sand and scrubby grass and began to pull himself across the rocks and dead brush that covered the ground here. He was on a gentle slope and he headed down, hopefully toward the pool. His legs were dead weight and seemed twice as heavy as normal.

It was a trip out of a nightmare. Every motion was painful, the ground was a tangle of broken thorn bushes and sharp rocks, and he seemed to be barely moving in spite of his superhuman exertions. Once he just stopped as if nailed to the ground. After tugging and straining, pulling out all the grass he could reach, he twisted around and looked back. One leg had twisted around and his dragging foot had caught on a root. He had to pull himself around and push the leg free with his hands before he could go on. His arms ached and his elbows and belly were badly scraped, but he was making some progress. The brush started to thin out and the slope increased, making the going a little easier. Then he could see a stand of bright green reeds ahead. He dragged himself to it, then grabbed big handfuls of the woody stems and pulled himself amongst them. As his weight forced them apart, he could see water glinting in the mat of dried stems beneath him. He let himself fall, pressed his face into the rank mass, and drank.

It was unbelievably delicious; cool and refreshing, with only the slightest mineral taste. Wherever it touched his skin it eased the pain. He drank deeply again and again, feeling the coolness growing in his belly. When he was full at last, he dragged himself along the edge of the reeds until he came to the little beach he had seen from above. He tore a strip of cloth from the tail of his shirt, soaked it in the water, and used it to scrub the blood and dirt from his hands, arms, and face. Each time he rinsed the rag, he could see a pink stain spread and fade in the pool. He cleaned his face and arms as best he could, then pulled himself up into a sitting position against a boulder to attend to his knee. He still found it extremely unpleasant to touch his legs, and he did the job as quickly as he could, being gentle just out of habit. It felt like bathing someone else. When he was done, he rinsed the cloth again and wound it tightly around his right hand, which seemed to have the worst abrasions - except for his knee, and it seemed unnecessary to bind a wound he couldn’t associate with himself.

He leaned his head wearily against the rock. He had done everything he could for himself, little enough as it was. Now what? He looked around at the little valley which had so suddenly come to represent his entire world. He decided it was probably a sinkhole; the water collecting in the center of the bowl must have seeped into the rock and dissolved out a cavern, which later collapsed to leave this little dell like a crater. It was still a beautiful place - a perfect Shangri-la in the desert.

“A pleasant enough place to die”, came that inner voice again. It was true, of course; there was a little shade, some soft grass to lie on, and all the water he could want. It would have been much worse if he had fallen while climbing that ridge this morning. He imagined himself sprawled across a boulder under the merciless sun, shriveling like a spider under a magnifying glass. He wouldn’t last more than a few hours out there. But death was no less certain here: he had no food, no possible hope of getting out by himself, and he had probably never in his life been in a more remote and lonely place. He thought briefly of the Heap back in the canyon. Even if someone were to come across it, they would have no way of knowing which way he had gone once he left the canyon. The few friends he had told of his destination would probably not remember exactly which peak he had been trying for. In any case, no one would even start to worry for several more days. It would probably be more than a week before anyone started searching, and no telling how long after that before they found the Heap. Even then, the chances of anyone tracking him this far from the car, and especially down into this hidden dell, were vanishingly small.

It was ironic. Here he was, in the middle of one of the hottest, driest deserts in the world, and the one thing he did not lack was water. He didn’t have so much as a chocolate bar with him, and in his condition he didn’t have a chance of catching any food. In one way it was almost unlucky to be near the water - it would keep him alive long enough to starve to death. He knew it could take quite a while to die here, and most of it was likely to be pretty unpleasant. Maybe it would have been better if he had broken his neck instead of his back; then he would never have awakened from that strange dreamlike fall. He wondered what that would have been like - maybe he would have just gone on dreaming.

It was odd how calm he felt, even after this discouraging appraisal of his situation. He supposed the severed nerves that doomed him also spared him most of the pain. After that first ghastly session he had felt little more than the various contusions and abrasions, as the accident reports always phrased it. In fact, he didn’t feel all that terrible. He wasn’t even particularly tired anymore now that he had rested. He had enough energy for another few hours of walking before dark - he broke off the thought with a snap. He was through with walking, forever. He looked down at his boots. They were his favorites, well broken in and comfortable, with lots of tread left. He had been to the bottom of the Grand Canyon in them, and crossed the Hollyford Face in New Zealand. They were associated with lots of good memories. Suddenly it seemed terribly sad that they would never take another step. They were just useless pieces of leather and Gore-Tex now. Like him, they had come to the end of their road. A lump swelled up in his throat, choking him and squeezing tears from between clenched lids.

“That’s the kind of thinking that will only make it worse,” said the calm voice in his mind. “Self pity will consume you if you let it.” Again he recognized the wisdom of these thoughts that came so unbidden. It must be some effect of the trauma; it was as if some wiser part of himself listened to his babbling thoughts and just had to break in when it saw him coming apart. At any rate, it was clearly some sort of survival mechanism, for the advice was always good. He relaxed a little, shifting into a more comfortable position. He discovered his hat, miraculously enough still on his head. He soaked it in the water and put it back on, letting the cool water run down his face and drip onto his shirt. He took a deep breath, held it until he felt calm, then let it out slowly and completely. Then he took stock of how he really felt about this dying business.

He regretted dying, he decided. He had so many things he still hadn’t done, places he still wanted to see. He had always thought he would get to see Machu Picchu before he died, and the pyramids. Hell, he’d never even gotten to Europe. And then there were people: friends and lovers, past and present; people with whom he’d shared love and good times and magic moments on mountaintops, in smoky bars, or in bed - wonderful people he’d like to say good-bye to. He wiped away two small tears, two tears that were all he had to give for so many good people. “Good-bye,” he said under his breath. “Good-bye, and thanks.” Then he felt a little silly. He didn’t want to get maudlin.

Mostly he felt disappointed. He’d been having such a good trip - and the oasis was the best thing he’d ever discovered. He’d been so elated when he saw it. He had a vivid image of himself squatting on the rim, just up there by that big mesquite only an hour or two ago, looking down here at this beach with surprise and delight evident on his face, and with never a thought that this would be the last place he would ever see. How little we are bothered by thoughts of our own mortality. He imagined someone else crawling through that thorny passage someday, another face peering over that same edge, lighting up with pleasure at sight of the pool. Except that next visitor’s joy of discovery might be tempered by the sight of Paul’s moldering bones stretched out beside the pool.

But perhaps not. Now that he thought about it, even his body would probably never be found. The desert was kind to inanimate objects, but bodies did not last long - protein was too valuable to waste in these parts. People who got lost in the desert were very rarely recovered. In all of his years of hiking in the desert, Paul had never come across a dead animal and only rarely so much as a bone. Once or twice he had found an unidentified long bone or two, but never had he found carrion.

“Up till now, of course,” he thought wryly. It was true; it was only a semantic nicety that separated him from being carrion, and a scavenger might not quibble about just how dead he was. In the cartoons there would be vultures circling overhead or perched in dead trees making morbid jokes. He was glad none were visible. In fact, he had seen no signs of any animal life at all. The thought made him wonder what fauna might inhabit or visit the dell.

There were bound to be the usual small animals: kangaroo rats, pinon mice, lizards, probably a rattler or two; but he guessed that the cliffs would stop most larger animals. A bighorn would have no trouble with the cliff, but he doubted that they would cross so much open country to get here. A very agile and thirsty puma might be able to do it, but he didn’t think a fox or coyote could. Perhaps the combined lure of fresh water and a nice juicy backpacker could bring a coyote down here.

He wondered what kind of animal would get him in the end. He couldn’t say why exactly, but he hoped it would be a lion or coyote, not just the beetles and red ants. He didn’t mind the idea of providing food once he was dead; he just preferred the mammals over the insects. Another desert traveler had once remarked in an excess of ecological zeal that he would rather end up in a coyote turd than in a marble mausoleum, and Paul knew what he meant. After all the innocent predators and scavengers killed by men, it seemed only right that we should help to even the score.

Surely the animals had found a way down to the pool. Water was an unsurpassed attraction in the desert. The tiniest seep always had an extensive network of animal trails around it; this pool must send a plume of water-scent for miles downwind. If they can’t find a way down the cliff, it must drive them crazy. Come to think of it, if anything did come down here, there would surely be tracks in the mud around the pool. He wondered if he had the strength to drag himself along the shore to find out. It could further injure his back. On the other hand, it didn’t make a bit of difference in the long run - he didn’t have a long run. Maybe he should try it, if only to keep from dwelling on his situation.

“It’s better to keep the mind occupied”, the strange voice concurred, “apathy is premature burial.” He was coming to trust these strange calm thoughts that popped into his mind ever since his fall. It was as if some other part of himself, somewhere below the conscious level, were quite familiar with this whole business of dying, were unworried about it, and just wished to ease the way for the poor terrified conscious part of himself. The voice seemed to speak from an ancient knowledge, wiser than his confused, fidgeting, everyday thoughts.

“Keep your mind open and alert,” it advised. “You only go through this once, you might as well pay attention so you don’t miss anything.” It was true - everyone always wondered what dying was like, and he was soon to find out, to be let in on the big secret. Maybe this voice was nature’s little built-in aid in facing fear and grief, the way shock helps you survive physical pain. He had seen a number of animals die, and once a man. In the last few seconds they always seemed to be distracted, looking through or beyond you, as if listening intently to something the rest of us could not hear. Perhaps they were listening to this still, small voice.

Whatever it was, he liked its advice. Stay alert. Stay active. Stay alive as long as you can so you know what’s happening to you. He resolved to explore the shore of the pool. He flopped over onto his belly again and began pulling himself through the grass at the edge of the tiny beach. Using his elbows like oars, he was able to draw himself across the sand to the water. The toes of his boots made long parallel furrows in the beach. The pain had receded considerably and it was not too bad now, just slow and tedious. The bank of the pool here was soft sand and didn’t show prints very clearly, but there were definitely some kind of marks. Most were small, probably bird tracks, but there were also quite a few deeper prints, apparently made by a heavier animal. He wasn’t very knowledgeable about animal tracks, but he thought these looked unusual; they seemed too long and narrow to be dog, cat, or sheep tracks. Would a big jackrabbit be heavy enough to make a mark like that? He didn’t know enough to be able to make up his mind. But at least something came here occasionally.

He lowered his face into the water and drank like a dog - “dipping your gob”, they’d called it in New Zealand. He could see more of the strange tracks in the bottom of the pond. A wader then, not just a drinker. Would a rabbit go in the water? He wondered what it could be. On any other beach he would say that children had been wading and playing in the sand - not too likely here. He lay sprawled on the bank for a long time, remembering playing as a child on other beaches, long ago and far away. He drifted into a half sleep, daydreaming of happy scenes from his childhood. Odd how we always remember ourselves as fully grown; it was hard to realize that he must have been a small child at the time of those memories.

After a time he realized he was in shade. Twisting around to look up, he found the sun had set behind the rim of the cliff. The sun must still be fairly high out in the valley; it would be hours before dark, but already the shadows were falling in the little dell. Almost at once he began to feel chilly, and wished he had some warmer clothes. He warmed up by dragging himself laboriously up the bank to the palm trees. He pulled himself up to the largest palm and collapsed panting on the scruffy grass at its base. His weariness flowed over his huddled form like a blanket without warmth.

Again he drowsed, thinking slow and disconnected thoughts about people and places that he had known and loved. He felt sad, and once or twice a particularly poignant memory brought tears to his eyes, but mostly it was rather pleasant, browsing through his past like a scrapbook. Knowing that he was on the last page now somehow colored the rest of it, the way one looks back at a book a little differently as soon as the last page is done. While reading, the story surrounds you and you lose yourself in the unfolding events; it’s only when it’s done that you think back through it and judge its quality.

He judged his own story now, and was not too displeased. Lots of adventure and color, interesting settings, absolutely wonderful characters. The plot was a little confused and directionless, but always interesting. True, the protagonist was occasionally dense, not as perceptive and wise as a hero should be, but generally a good enough sort, all in all. The few people he had hurt had been hurt unwittingly, out of carelessness, not malice. The main flaw, as he saw it, was the ending. It stopped so abruptly, with no clear moral drawn. No cosmic truth stood revealed by the example of his life. On the other hand, most of us have stopped expecting such artificial, neatly bound up endings to stories. The fashion now was to leave the reader to draw his own conclusions. Perhaps it would do. It was no best seller, certainly not enough for a mini-series, but he wasn’t too displeased, he decided sleepily.

He woke frequently during the night, shivering with the cold, and felt sure he would never be able to get back to sleep, but each time he soon drifted off again. Each time he awoke, the moon appeared to have jumped from point to point across the sky, until it disappeared in the west, leaving the night a black void. After waking up for about the hundredth time, it seemed that the night would never end, that he would go on shivering in the dark, half-awake, half-dreaming, forever. But then he realized he could just make out the shapes of the bushes around him, ghostly in the palest hint, the faintest rumor of dawn. As his eyes drooped closed again, a sound came from the direction of the pool: a soft, wet plop.

His eyes snapped open, but it was still nearly completely black. There was a lighter patch over there that he took to be the pool. He strained to see clearly, to make out the dark rushes beyond it. As he stared, he thought he saw a piece of the blackness move, breaking off from one dark shape and gliding across to melt into another. He couldn’t be at all sure of the shape, but something about it gave him an involuntary chill. It must be an animal, but there was something wrong with the way it moved. He didn’t know why, but somehow he was sure it was not a puma or coyote or bobcat, or any other animal likely to be stalking around a desert pool by night. The sudden fear he had felt at the sound on the hilltop returned, and he lay motionless and stared until his eyes watered, but nothing more happened. He dozed fitfully the rest of the night, troubled by fantastic dreams. When the sun finally crept into the dell hours later, there was no sign of anything around the pool or anywhere in sight. The moving shadow could have been just part of the strange and frightening dreams he had been having all night, but he was far from convinced.

The temperature soared immediately, going from too cold to too hot in a period of half an hour. The palm gave almost no shade at all. A good-sized acacia arched over him, but its thin and lacy branches gave little relief and the sun burned through every opening in the branches. The shadows of the eastern cliffs crept away across the pool and were soon sucked up like a spill by the rockpile at the base of the wall. It promised to be a long hot day.

Paul tried to decide what to do. He felt somewhat at a loss. What does one do when sitting around waiting to die? He couldn’t think of any way to occupy his time. He was experiencing an uncomfortable amount of pain, especially from his hand and the injuries to his face, but it was bearable. His wounds were starting to heal already - the smaller scrapes were scabbing and were itching more than really hurting now. He felt aggravatingly weak and trembly, and dizzy almost to the point of nausea. Part of that was probably due to the long sleepless night, he supposed.

But on top of everything else, there was a disorienting sense of unreality, even unconcern about his predicament. It was as if one person had fallen from the cliff and quite another had awakened on the ground. That strangely missing impact had not only broken his back; it had somehow separated him from everything that had gone before. He found that he was watching himself, like an audience at a play, waiting to see how this man Paul would behave, what he would do next. Perhaps it was another aftereffect of the shock, allowing him to bear the fear by not experiencing it directly.

The heat was getting truly oppressive now. He could feel the oven breath of the white sand on his face, in his lungs. It seemed infinitely hotter than yesterday, but he wasn’t sure if it only seemed worse on top of all his other miseries. The sun was high now, burning away what little shade remained still crouching under the bushes. The shadow of even the biggest Washington palm wouldn’t adequately cover a cat. The shrubs were low tangles of thorns, the acacias and willows only feather boas of tiny desiccated leaves.

He suffered in a torpor for a while, then at last could stand it no longer. He dragged himself as quickly as he could across the scalding sand simmering in the sun, then slithered gratefully into the pool. He lay like an alligator, weight on his elbows, floating just under the surface, head bent back to keep his face out of the water. It wasn’t especially comfortable, but it was cooler, and it kept away the blackflies that were starting to bite. He drowsed, heavy with heat and exhaustion. He even propped his head on his folded arms and slept for a while. But when he awoke he could feel the sunburn on the side of his face and his forearms. He flipped wet sand across his back like an elephant seal, turned his head to the other side, and drowsed again. He drifted in and out of sleep and unpleasant dreams so many times that he was never sure which experiences were real.

Once he found himself in his childhood bed. He turned his head on the cool crisp pillowcase and looked out the window at the impossibly green fields of long-ago summers. The white chintz curtains bellied, lifted, and parted to admit a round billow of air, full of the whirring clatter and green fragrance of a push mower. But when the breeze reached his face it was not the soft humid air of rural Ohio, but the furnace blast of hell. He awoke gasping, crawled as far as he could into the miniscule shade of a clump of reeds, and lay miserably trying to fall asleep again.

He crouched in a dark alleyway behind a pile of broken pallets, listening to the commotion in the street beyond: the pounding of many running feet, shouts, screams, the sickening muffled thunk of wood on bone. He cowered back as far as he could into the stinking heap of rubbish, but a shadow suddenly fell across him and he threw his arms over his head to protect himself. He held his breath, muscles tense, waiting for the blows to begin. But nothing happened. He peeped cautiously up through the crook of his elbow. The face that peered down at him was thin and dry, stretched over high skull-like cheekbones, the color of worn mahogany. The thin lips were drawn back, revealing a row of little pointed teeth. Paul yelped in terror and squirmed away, splashing wildly across the pool. When he looked back over his shoulder, he was alone. The surge of adrenaline and his pounding heart kept him awake then, and he lay without thinking for hours. Eventually he noticed the shadows of the western cliffs stretching out toward the pool, and knew that he had survived another day.

The hunger was bothering him more now, a continuous griping ache burning in his belly. He tried eating some grass, but it was coarse and bitter. Even with lots of water, it was like chewing on dental floss. He remembered reading somewhere that cattail bulbs were edible, and spent a long time laboriously tugging out a reed, but it had only stringy little roots like an onion’s and tasted like mud anyway. There seemed to be nothing else even remotely edible. Eventually he gave it up and dragged himself back to his “camp” under the big palm tree. He lay sprawled on his back, too tired and despondent to move.

One by one, the stars were coming out in the pale blue evening sky. He would stare at a perfectly blank section of sky, then realize that several stars had appeared unnoticed even as he watched. He tried to occupy himself by naming the stars, planets, and constellations as they materialized. But name after name eluded him and he grew frustrated and frightened. He was sure he knew all those names yesterday. Was his mind slipping away so soon - was he losing his ability to remember, even to think? It terrified him to think he was fading so quickly; and tomorrow would only be much worse than today - he would be weaker, hungrier, even more disoriented. He realized the chances were good he would not survive another day. Watching the flaming colors fade from the sky, he tried to accept that he would probably never see another sunset.

How difficult it is to imagine the world going on without us. To everyone else it would be just another sunset; a beautiful one, or a dull one, or an unnoticed one. But this time Paul would not be there, or anywhere for that matter. Strange to think that every sunset he had ever watched had been someone else’s last one. As he had sat admiring the colors, he had never given a thought to all the people who had died that day, who would have given anything to be able to enjoy this one with him. So tomorrow, no one would think of him.

But all this musing seemed unreal, as if he were watching it all happen to someone else, and was powerless to help. His feeling of observing himself returned, and he seemed to be floating up in the air, looking down at this pitiful, muddy, sunburned figure sprawled under a palm tree. It all seemed so melodramatic and sentimental, the kind of play he hated. Suddenly waves of pity for the poor helpless creature washed over him and he sobbed into his hands for all the missed opportunities and forlorn hopes, for the unrealized dreams of his parents when they had first held him as a baby. It seemed so stupid and pointless for it all to end like this.

“All that lives, dies,” said the voice of reason. “Only the manner of the dying matters, and even that, only for as long as it takes to die. When it’s over, all the dead are alike. There is nothing left to pity.”

The strange thought just floated into his mind like an announcer’s voiceover narrating a horrific scene. It sounded so detached from his current situation, so rational and dispassionate, that he was reminded suddenly of the long intellectual discussions he had so enjoyed in his college days - groups of earnest, drunken sophomores unraveling the meanings of life and death and God and love. All that had seemed so important then, and so exciting. They had felt so intellectual and adult, iconoclasts solving the problems of the world, pointing out where their elders had gone wrong, as if they were the first generation of sophomores the world had ever seen. Odd how such weighty issues just don’t seem so important later on. Do we find answers for ourselves, or do we just stop worrying about them? He smiled, remembering the other earnest young faces around him at those debates, and wondered what had become of them all. And what about himself - what had become of him? Here he was, very probably facing his dying day. What had he learned about life and death in his brief tenure on Earth? He could only shrug. Not much really.

But the warm and comfortable memories soothed him and he felt calmer than he had since the fall. To hold on to the feeling, he entered the old familiar debating format, but this time with himself.

“Yes, of course everything dies,” he replied. “But life also struggles against its fate. When it comes right down to the end, to the pain, to the cessation of being, each creature resists the inevitable. The prey always runs, or turns to fight even as the jaws snap shut. All of life seems to feel the injustice inherent in death when applied to itself. I think I’m bearing up rather well, all in all, considering my appalling bad luck in falling from the cliff in the first place.”

But the reply came back instantly. “You miss the whole point, like most of those who are about to die. It was not unlucky that you fell from the cliff. You knew when you started to climb down that you were taking a risk. Whether you thought about it consciously or not, you estimated the risk, decided the odds were good that you would survive, and elected to take the gamble. You’ve got nothing to complain about. You knew the odds reasonably well, but you didn’t know the stakes.”

“Oh, come now,” said Paul, enjoying the debate now. “I knew what I was risking: there was a small chance that I would be injured or killed. But that chance exists every time we walk down a flight of stairs or drive a car. We don’t usually think about it, but every such situation is a life or death decision.”

“No! Exactly my point - it was not a life or death gamble you took. The odds are absolutely unbeatable; death always, invariably, wins in the end. The only gamble you took was between death here and now, and an unknown, but just as inevitable, death later on. We cannot choose whether we live or die, we can only try to choose the place and the manner of our dying. You know the desert, you know what kinds of death are likely to be met here. You could have stayed away, locked yourself in your room, but you chose to increase your chances of dying a desert sort of death rather than some other. In effect, you gambled that you might be allowed to die such a death, and you won. You are spared all the absurd or sordid little deaths with which modern society abounds. There are so many worse ways, some truly hideous. You were not unlucky at all; you would seem to have gotten something of a lucky break.”

Paul actually had to grin at that in spite of himself, but stopped quickly when his sunburned lips cracked painfully. “Yeah, sure. I’m one lucky son-of-a-bitch all right. Damn, my memory may be fading, but my rationalizing is still in fine form. It’ll be the last thing to go.”

But he did feel better - the debate with himself made him feel less alone. And of course the other voice was right; there were many worse ways to go. He had always had a horror of a long lingering painful death, plugged into machines in a sterile ward, helpless to take any action at all. But here he was not in much pain - he felt mostly numb now - and in any case it was not likely to drag on much longer, as weak as he was. And he hadn’t just been snuffed out by the proverbial bus - he’d been granted a little time to come to grips with dying.

He lay on his back and watched the palm fronds gesturing gracefully across the starfields. His exhaustion overcame him and he drifted off into sleep.

He was jolted awake by a high ululating scream. This was no faint echo this time, but a deafening wail. He dragged himself up into a sitting position, blood pounding in his temples in the cold rush of fear. The pool was in full moonlight now, and there in the shallows by the reeds, something squatted on its haunches and howled its soul to the rising moon.

He couldn’t make out the shape of the body, but the head was thrown back and the open mouth was a black hole in a flat blue-white face. Paul stared dumbfounded at this vision from fantasy. He was sure he was awake now, but the thing in the pool was no part of normal reality. Still the thing howled, filling the air with its strange cry. It seemed so very real, but it couldn’t be. He gave up trying to understand, and simply boggled at the apparition before him.

And still the unearthly chant went on, changing and evolving through strange melancholy patterns that seemed to speak of unbearable losses and inconsolable griefs. Paul listened and was swept up into the emotion, suddenly aware of the chill of the night, of the loneliness of the void around him.

At last the thing finished its “song”. The silence crashed back around them. It remained motionless a moment more, staring up at the moon. Then it slowly lowered its head and looked directly at Paul. He shivered uncontrollably, transfixed by those eyes. And what eyes they were - large and pale yellow, with vertical pupils like a cat’s, giving a ghastly demonic look to the alien face. But what was even more frightening was the intelligence behind them - they looked like the eyes of a beast, but clearly they were not.

Then the creature moved. It rose from its crouch to stand on two legs, rising slowly like a stiff old man, though it stood no more than four feet tall. It walked slowly toward him, its eyes still fixed on his. Paul could hear its feet splashing softly in the water, and could only watch dumbfounded as the nightmare figure stalked up the beach and stood before him. He fell back on the sand and stared helplessly up as the creature bent over him and peered down into his face.

Even as he struggled to understand, he was swept by another wave of déjà vu. Although he knew he had never seen such a creature before, still some phantom memory tugged at the corners of his mind. He clearly remembered seeing that face before, looking down at him, exactly like this. The sense of déjà vu built to a terrifying intensity, and suddenly, with a thrill of horror, he had it.

He had seen that face before: it was the gaunt mummy face that had frightened him so badly in one of his strange half-dreams that very afternoon in the pool. Chills shot through him. He had at last broken through the déjà vu experience - he had remembered where he had seen the face before - but it still didn’t help explain it. Had he dreamed earlier of this future, or was he now dreaming of that past? How could a memory of a dream be so terrifyingly real?

“Yes,” he thought, “you have seen me before”.

His body jerked, startled by the thought. It was the same calm voice he had been hearing in his mind, but now he realized that it was a very strange thought indeed; the person of the pronouns had been reversed. Then, with numbing certainty, he knew that it had not been his thought at all, but had come from the thing looming over him.

A scream started to well up from his gut. The thing was speaking to him in his mind and, worse yet, obviously reading his thoughts. But what was so terrifying was that it spoke with the same voice with which Paul himself thought. It was the ultimate invasion of his privacy, of what he considered personal and safe. He wanted to push it away, to escape somehow, but there was no refuge inside his own mind. He was trapped with this thing inside his skull with him. He started to whimper helplessly.

“You must be calm,” he... they thought. “I would speak with you. I mean you no harm.” Only then did Paul try to speak.

“Wh… what are you?” he croaked. His lips were thick and chapped and his voice cracked from long disuse. He couldn’t understand his own words, and his voice sounded strange to his ears. His mind was spinning in helpless confusion. Still the creature watched. Paul licked his lips and tried again. But the yellow eyes blinked and the figure shook its head slightly.

“Do not try to speak aloud,” it thought in his mind. “It is unnecessary, and will only tire you.” Paul had no idea what to do. The creature, whatever it was, did not seem threatening. Of course, if it did attack, there was nothing he could do to defend himself. Paul’s eyes flicked quickly around him, scanning for a possible weapon - a stone or a stick.

“I could find you one if it would make you feel safer,” came the alien thought. “I assure you it is unnecessary. I’m quite harmless.” Paul realized the thing was reading his every thought. He could do nothing without its knowing beforehand. He was at its mercy, if it had any.

“Yes, I have mercy,” it thought. “It is one of the great differences between my people and yours.”

Paul tried to reply - he wanted to question this thing, to know what it was - but he didn’t know how to talk to it. He tried to formulate a question in his mind that it might be able to read, but the best he could do was to imagine a big fat red cartoon question mark.

The creature’s thin lips curled in a smile, but the smile was not at all reassuring, for it revealed small sharp white teeth. Paul’s terror and confusion increased. Instantly the smile vanished, apparently in response to his mental reaction.

“Yes, you have many questions, and you’re frightened. I understand, and I will try to answer what I can. But right now you’re having trouble with our means of communication. Nothing could be simpler; just relax and think as you always do. We will be able to hear and understand one another perfectly, especially if you calm down a little - your thoughts are remarkably confused at the moment. You will soon become used to it. It is infinitely quicker and easier than speaking aloud. After experiencing telepathy, vocal speech is like being forced to play charades to communicate.

“Telepathy? Charades? What the hell is going on here? Who are you? What are you? How can you read my mind?”

“Ah, now you’re getting the hang of it. Very good. You see, I don’t so much read your mind as... well, overhear it. For one who is attuned, it would be impossible not to hear your thoughts. I don’t wish to offend, but you could turn it down quite a bit and I could hear you perfectly well.”

“But how? How can you hear my thoughts at all?”

“I am sensitive to the thoughts of all creatures. Let me try to explain. Each mind generates a... field, an aura, if you will. The strength of the field is proportional to the mental energy available. The minds of the animals flicker and gutter like torches in the night wind. Even the plants glow with their slow, deep thoughts. But the minds of men are among the most powerful of all. Yours filled the whole valley as soon as you entered it. I could hardly have been unaware of your presence. I have been listening to you ever since you left your Heap.”

Paul had been listening attentively, surprised at the length and detail of the answer to his somewhat rhetorical question. But hearing the creature use that absurd name for his car, Paul suddenly realized he was having an impossible discussion with an impossible being. This was clearly a hallucination, the result of a lack of food and sleep. But how to make it stop? He groaned and squeezed his eyes shut tight, trying to get a grip on himself. When he felt a bit more rational, he tentatively opened his eyes.

The strange creature squatted in the sand beside him. It was not staring at him, but glancing idly about the clearing. As he watched, it shifted its weight to the side and scratched its buttock absently, brushing loose some sand that clung there. It seemed very real indeed, in fact, much more real than he himself felt.

Now that those piercing eyes were off him, he could take a better look at the thing. He noted that it was nude, male, and totally hairless. The skin was dark and wrinkled and looked soft, like worn old leather. The hands were lined and weathered and had long horny nails extending well beyond the fingertips. It looked most like the drawings of goblins he had seen in children’s books. Is this what your mind does to you when you start to starve to death? Call up scary boogiemen from your childhood nightmares? Was he to spend his last hours on this Earth talking to some dried-up, slightly pedantic, telepathic goblin?

The goblin turned its attention back to him, regarding him with calm yellow eyes. “You go too far, sir. Hardly pedantic, please. I prefer ‘helpfully informative telepathic goblin.’“

Paul clapped his hands over his ears. This couldn’t be happening! “I don’t care what kind of hallucination you are,” he moaned. “Just get the hell out of my head!” He pressed the heels of his palms as hard as he could into his ears, trying to squeeze out that quiet voice.

“Yes, you are feeling intruded upon,” it came again, not the least diminished by his efforts. “I understand. You feel that I am violating your privacy. But I assure you, Paul, there is no such thing as privacy. It is purely a myth. You are constantly broadcasting every thought and emotion to the world. Those who are sensitive can always receive your thoughts. The only difference now is that I’m transmitting back to you.”

This was too much. Paul felt totally incapable of judging if this were a dream or reality. He wished he could wake up and have it all go away. Then a chilling thought came to him that he might be going mad. Perhaps the fear and pain had started to break down his mind.

“What’s going on?” he moaned. “What’s happening to me? If all this is part of dying, I want to complain to the management. I thought I was supposed to see a brilliant welcoming glow at the end of a long dark tunnel. A beautiful transcendental vision at the end. What do I get? A mind-reading goblin to torment me in my last hours. I mean, is this fair?”

The “goblin” looked hurt. “Hey, you’ve got no reason to complain. That ‘still small voice’ stuff isn’t part of the regular service, you know. You wouldn’t get that from your feathered serpents or your cowled figure types.”

Paul was intrigued in spite of everything. “Wait a minute. All that calm, rational thinking after my fall - you mean that was you?”

“Sure, what did you think? You were in a severe state of shock. Your own mind was in no condition to give good advice; it had its hands full just keeping your sphincter closed.”

Paul was hurt. “I thought I was being so reasonable and adult it all.”

The goblin nodded solemnly. “Oh, you were, you were. Don’t get me wrong, I was very impressed with your stoicism. Your upper lip was a veritable duck’s bill. But don’t you see? That’s exactly the wrong way to go about dying. Don’t try to suppress your feelings, your fears. Let them out, now at the end. You’re dying, Paul. Don’t blow the chance to experience it fully.”

Paul was shaken to hear it stated so plainly. “I... I really am dying then? I mean, I thought so, but... well, I’ve gotten out of a lot of tight spots before. I could get lucky. Something could happen, somebody could come along.”

“Are you kidding? No one could get out of this one without divine intervention. No, friend, you’ve bought the farm this time.”

“You don’t have to be so damn flippant about it!” Paul exclaimed indignantly. “It’s pretty god-damned serious to me. It’s my life - what’s left of it.”

He felt absurd talking to this thing as if it really existed. He stared glumly at the bizarre vision. He seemed unable to exorcise it. Even if it wasn’t real, at least it gave the illusion of companionship. He had given up trying to understand what was going on. He felt too weak and confused to think clearly. It no longer seemed important to separate dream from reality. But it was better to talk, even if he had no idea who or what he was talking to. During the conversation he had been totally unaware of his thirst and physical discomforts. What the hell - he had nothing else to talk to.

“Hey, listen,” he said. “How come you can hear everything I think, but I can’t hear you unless you talk to me?”

“Nothing to it. I just keep my thoughts to myself. Everyone’s a little bit telepathic, but your people never developed the ability. I have to project at a very high level for you to hear me at all. You could turn your volume down too if you were aware of it. You’re like a deaf man, talking too loudly because you can’t hear yourself. When I function at my usual volume, you aren’t aware of me at all. If I’m very very quiet, I can come right up close to you, even share your thoughts - and you don’t notice me. Every once in a while, though, I slip up and you become aware of the contact, of something strange going on. Even then, the idea of another mind in there with you is so foreign that it never occurs to you. You sense the other consciousness, but you interpret it as some other part of yourself, somehow made distant and strange. To you it seems like your own memory, but you can’t remember what it is you recall - an unrelated memory.”

“But that’s déjà vu!” cried Paul, pushing himself up on his elbows in his excitement. “Is that what you mean? Those déjà vu’s I had - that was you? You were in my mind, listening to me, but you thought too... loudly? Is that what you mean?”

“Yeah, that was me. Sorry, I got careless. I don’t usually make so many blunders, but I got really interested in you.” He glanced sideways at Paul. “Then too, I wasn’t myself. I’d been a bit under the weather, off my feed, so to speak.”

“Feed? I wasn’t aware hallucinations had to eat.”

“Oh, sure. Psychic food, of course. I eat food that you imagine. But you weren’t imagining anything I liked. Most distressing.”

“Wait a minute. What is this? Psychic food? You eat what I dream up?”

“Yes. New idea to you, I know. Food for thought, eh?”

“This is ridiculous!” Paul shouted aloud. Suddenly he was angry. He could see that this last had been only a joke, but then what was the rest of it? Was the goblin just making fun of him all along? He stopped suddenly. Goblin? Goblin? What was he thinking? There’s no such thing as goblins. He twisted around to peer closely at the little man beside him.

“Listen”, he said between his teeth. “I may be hurt, I may even be dying. I may be a lot of things, but I simply do not believe that I’m crazy enough to make up a little wise-ass spook who makes bad puns without moving his lips. What the hell is this, the Twilight Zone? Is Rod Serling about to step out from behind those boulders?”

He grabbed a handful of the still-warm sand and clenched it as hard as he could, trying to hold onto something real. The sand dug into his palm and ground against his nails with an audible crunch.

“This sand is real,” he said. “I know this place is real. I walked here. I know where it is. And I know I’m real. The place is real, I’m real, but you...~ he jabbed his finger accusingly at the wizened face, “you can’t possibly be real. You’re nothing but a goddamned hallucination and I want you out of here. Right now! Do you hear me? You’re not real, I tell you!” He glared at the goblin, willing it to disappear with every gram of his strength.

The eerie yellow eyes continued to stare fixedly into his, but Paul had the impression that the other was thinking of something else, as if trying to decide what to do. Then, so suddenly that Paul had no time to react, it leaned forward and slapped its long bony hand down hard and flat on Paul’s chest, making a loud ‘Whack!’ that resounded back from the rocks. “No, I’m real enough,” the goblin said aloud in a hoarse whispery voice. “You’re the one having a little trouble with reality.”

Paul gasped and collapsed back on the sand. His chest stung where he had been struck. The blow had not been painful, but it had felt so solid, so... ordinary, that it was like an electric shock. He had been so sure the little man wasn’t real that now he lay stunned, looking up into that dark face. A wave of pure animal terror flushed through him, turning his muscles to water. His blood ran cold. “You... you are real,” he whispered, half to himself. The little man nodded.

“No shit, Jack,” came the clear voice in his mind. “You finally have it figured out. Real as rock,” he added, rapping his knuckles on a boulder for emphasis. “Listen, sorry about the slap, but I had to set you straight. It made you feel better to think I was just a hallucination, so I let it go on. Too long, I see now. I do apologize. So enough of that crap. No more goblins, no more hallucinations. Just little old me.”

“Little old who?” moaned Paul. “Who the hell are you? You really can read my mind; that part’s no joke. What are you? Where did you come from?”

The bony shoulders shrugged. “Okay. No more bull. Straight answers now, okay? Number one: who am I? Well, that’s kind of a tough one. I am me, just what you see, this person. My people do not use names; as telepaths, we have no need of them. So call me whatever you like. ‘Call me Ishmael’, like Melville said.

“Two: what am I? I’m a man, like you.” He held up his hand, forestalling Paul’s question. “Yes, I’m human - possibly by a bit wider definition of the term than you’re used to, but I’m neither supernatural nor extraterrestrial. We’re the same species all right, or at least we used to be. There’s bound to be a bit of genetic drift by now.”

“Three: where did I come from? Now that one’s easier. Hereabouts, mostly. I was born not too far from here, up to the north a bit, actually, in a cave in the foothills of the Santa Rosas. Never had much need to go anywhere else. Just a local boy made good.”

He said it so matter-of-factly, with such apparent sincerity, that Paul felt convinced that if it weren’t true, the old guy at least believed it. Somehow, looking at the weather-beaten figure before him, he was inclined to believe him. He was talking to a man who had been born in the wilds of the desert and lived there all his life. And a telepath to boot. Now that he knew he was real, it was even more frightening.

Paul started to tremble uncontrollably. His arms and head began to twitch. He couldn’t catch his breath, he couldn’t think; his thoughts were flying around in a jumble. Suddenly he couldn’t take any more - he had to move, go some place he could think - he didn’t know what, he just had to get away. Without thinking, he turned and lunged violently away, but his back twisted and caught and an agonizing flame of pain stabbed through him. The moonlight swirled and darkened before him. He thought he saw the old man moving quickly toward him, but then his vision closed down to a tunnel, and he fainted.

When he opened his eyes his eyelashes fluttered against something gritty. He saw enormous fuzzy sand grains a centimeter from his cheek. He was sprawled face down, breathing hard, his open mouth drooling into the sand. The arid pungent spice of the desert sand filled his nostrils. He could feel the fading glow of the daytime warmth in the sand against his cheek. He couldn’t remember how he had gotten there.

He groaned and tried to push himself up, but was too weak to do more than roll over. His mouth was gritty with sand, but he didn’t have enough saliva to spit it out. He tried to push it out with his tongue, but it crumbled and felt awful against his teeth. He was terribly confused and disoriented. He looked up at the bushes against the night sky, and groaned as he remembered where he was. So that part of the nightmare had been real. What a strange dream he’d been having, about some weird old guy who lived out here.

He spat out the sand and wiped his lips. He was incredibly thirsty. He wondered if he was too weak to drag himself back down to the pool. If he didn’t do it tonight, he knew he’d never get down there in the heat of the day. He raised his head to try to judge the distance to the pool, then stopped, staring. Near his hand was a shallow dish made from a slice of a dried gourd, and it was brimming with clear water. It looked very inviting, but he shuddered involuntarily. He stared at it, his brow wrinkled in confusion as he tried to remember why the sight of that dish should be so disturbing. Then something moved in the shadows beyond it and he looked up into the cat eyes of a small gnome-like figure that crouched there watching him. A name came to him.

“Ishmael?” he asked thickly. “I thought you were another dream.”

The old man gestured with his chin toward the bowl. “Drink. It’s for you.”

Paul reached out to the gourd cup and took a tentative sip. The water was cool and refreshing. He felt life flowing back into him. The taste of the water was so familiar and normal, that it finally convinced him that he was not dreaming up his strange visitor. He still didn’t have a clue just what he was, but he knew he was real.

He drank some of the water and used the rest to rinse the grit from his mouth. He set the dish back on the sand and shot a furtive glance from under his brows at the old man, hoping he would go get some more.

Ishmael hesitated a moment, as if trying to decide whether he should go or not. He sighed, then took the cup and got up, knees cracking, and walked down to the pool.

Paul watched him walk. He was short and wizened, his skin wrinkled and saggy under his buttocks. He looked like a very old man who had spent all his life naked under a hot sun, essentially just what he claimed to be. He was extremely thin, but not emaciated. In fact, he seemed quite fit for a man his age, whatever that might be - Paul had no idea, but he guessed at least eighty.

He came back up the slope, walking with exaggerated care to avoid spilling from the shallow dish. He set it beside Paul and went back to his seat a few meters away.

“You should be careful to avoid such violent motions,” said the voice in his head. “You are weaker than you realize and your back has been severely damaged. Another spasm like that could kill you.”

Paul bristled irritably at some tone in the thought. “So what? What do you care? You think I’m dying anyway.”

“Oh, you are, Paul. We both know that. Don’t waste your time denying it. But you don’t want to die in agony, your back in spasm, racked with pain until you die screaming your life out. You’ve been spared most of the pain so far, but that could change if you’re not careful. Pain will only distract you from the important thing you’re doing. Much better to be relaxed, comfortable, accepting.”

“Oh, sure. Lie back and have a nice little death. Easy for you to say; you don’t know how it feels. You’re not dying.”

“It’s true I’ve never died myself. But I have seen many die, all my people have. And remember: we’re telepaths - each of us has experienced death many times, nearly at first-hand. It gives us a different perspective. Death is not a fearful mystery to us. We dislike pain and try to avoid it, as you do, but we do not fear death. We know it is, in the most literal sense, nothing at all to fear. Being dead is being nothing.”

“You think death is final then?” asked Paul, trying to make himself sound intellectually detached. He found it easier to discuss death in the abstract, but never before had his discussions of death been so immediately relevant. He hurried on. “I mean, there’s no afterlife? Nothing? Just kaput?”

Ishmael nodded. “No doubt about it. All that stuff has always just been wishful thinking. Of course, my people have an advantage in knowing what it’s like. A living mind radiates a kind of mental glow, as I said. It changes when you’re asleep or unconscious, but it’s always there. But when you die, the glow just disappears. We can see it happen, feel it happen. There’s no question. You just go out, like a light.”

Paul gulped, not quite willing to accept this so very final ending. “But maybe we come back,” he suggested hopefully. “Many believe that we come back again and again. Do you think that’s true?”

Ishmael shrugged. “We see no reason to think so. Consciousness is just a transient phenomenon, subjective but real, like a rainbow. We believe that mind is a field generated by electrical activity in the brain. No two minds are alike because no two brains have the same circuitry. When the circuits break down and the brain ceases to function, the field collapses. The physical circuitry of that particular brain will never be reassembled again, so that mind can never occur again.”

“But the same mind could be reborn, could come back in another body.”

“We think not. You see, we sense a personality directly. Each individual is distinct and instantly recognizable. We can’t be fooled by disguises or lies. It’s why we don’t need names. But after an individual dies, we have never yet encountered that same personality again; not in the same body, not in a different one, nor even floating around separated from the body that originally generated it. For us, there is no mystery.”

“You make it sound so simple. So we just stop, like the animals?”

“Of course. What else? We are animals, as much as your people try to deny it. Believe me, if extraterrestrials visited the Earth, they wouldn’t see any vast metaphysical division between us and the other animals. We’re all just local fauna to them. We’re all made of the same stuff, we have similar form, function, and habitat. We’re clearly related; you can tell just by looking at us. All the animals of Earth are quite literally blood kin, children of the same parents. And the more closely you look, the more similar we get. If you go down to the molecular level, we’re indistinguishable.”

Paul balked at this. “Hold on there. You’re going too far now. Sure, we’re animals, but man is different. We use tools, we build cities, we have art and music and science. Surely these set us apart?”

“Who are you kidding? Every species has qualities that set it apart. Are you so superior? Bears run faster, swim better, are many times stronger, and can survive in climates that would kill any man. You send a man and a bear out into the woods on equal terms and see who ends up as dinner.”

“But, but - bears are brute beasts. The animals have no higher awareness of themselves and the world around them - they’re not as sensitive to the subtleties of life.”

“Oh, so? Aware, are we? Sensitive? The shark has dozens of senses you haven’t even guessed at yet. You should hear a shark experiencing the world. They can tell what you had for dinner three days ago when you’re still a kilometer away. They make men look deaf, dumb, and blind.”

Paul persevered. “But we’ve developed the ability to alter our environment. The other animals have to take what they’re given, but we can shape the world to our own needs.”

“Shape the world? Viruses can change their own genetic make-up at will, though I think you haven’t discovered that yet. The blue-green algae created the oxygen atmosphere you breathe. Man has never done anything on that scale.”

“That’s absurd,” Paul shouted mentally. “The god-damned algae didn’t intend to change the atmosphere.”

“Intend? Did you intend to be intelligent? Did some African primate sit up one day, scratch his head, and say ‘Chee, I think I’ll be smart’? It’s no good, Paul. You can’t brag that we’re the chosen species just because we’re smarter than most. That’s using your own strength as a criterion. I’m sure the giraffes think they’re clearly superior because they’re the tallest animals. So your people use tools and build cities. Big deal - so do termites. And besides, in the words of an old joke, ‘What you mean “we”, Kemosabe?’ My people don’t use tools or build cities, but we fancy we’re as human as you. Some would say more so.”

Paul was astounded. “What? You don’t use tools? But every human culture uses tools, even the most primitive.”

The old man shrugged. “Sorry. Not ours. Don’t need ‘em. Oh, we will occasionally use a rock or stick if it’s handy and would be easier, but we don’t construct artifacts and carry them around with us. Too much bother.”

“You don’t have houses? No clothes?” The old man shook his head and gestured toward his naked body. “I can’t believe this. You mean you don’t even have clothes - not even in winter? It snows around here. Don’t you get cold?”

“Not at all. We’re quite adapted to the climate. To tell you the truth, we’ve always been amused the way you people are always wrapping things around you. You only think you need them because your bodies have gotten used to them. It’s self-defeating, like your desert vehicles: two tons of steel whose only purpose is to drag two tons of steel into places it would be easier to walk to. It doesn’t make sense. You set up imaginary obstacles, then take pride in overcoming them.”

“Well, you may be right about some of that,” Paul admitted. “I never thought of it quite like that before. But it’s exciting to get outdoors and pit yourself against nature and win.”

“Oh, come on. You can’t ‘pit yourself against nature’. You are nature. It’s like arm-wrestling with yourself. For that matter, there’s no such thing as ‘outdoors’ either. Do you really believe that putting up walls around a piece of ground somehow separates it from the rest of the world? There’s always dirt under the concrete, you know.”

“Oh, sure, should we all just quit our jobs and live naked in the woods, like you? That’s not practical for us. Not any more. We’ve changed since those days. We need our civilization around us, just as we need clothes around us.”

“Nonsense. You’re hypnotized by your artifacts. You force yourself to go on acquiring them, even though you know full well you don’t need them and they can’t make you happy. You started out making tools to make life easier, and you’ve achieved just the opposite. Now all you do all your lives is acquire more tools. Your life is infinitely harder now. You’ve enslaved yourselves.”

Paul stared at him angrily, feeling backed into a corner. He was out of arguments. “Jesus, just what I need. A regular Thoreau of the desert. A skinny Euell Gibbons.”

The old man glared back for a moment, obviously equally worked up by the argument. Then he held up his hand, palm out. “Yes, you’re right. It is not my place to try to change your ways. Our peoples each have their own ways to live in this world. We are far from perfect ourselves. Who is to say which way is right?”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, each thinking of what had been said. Finally Paul broke the mental silence.

“You seem to know a hell of a lot about ‘my people’. As a matter of fact, you’re pretty glib about the whole thing, considering you live way out here by yourself.”

“It’s true, I’ve never visited your cities. But I’m probably just as steeped in your culture as you are. The desert is full of you battlers with nature, each with his mind full of job worries, current events, mortgages, and vasectomies. We don’t miss much. We stay pretty current - and fairly consistently appalled, if you don’t mind my saying so. We haven’t been tempted to join you, believe me.”

“So you know all about us. But I still don’t know anything about you. How do you live out here, especially if you really don’t use tools? Your life must be hard, too.”

Ishmael smiled. “To my mind, infinitely easier than yours. We live a slower life, with fewer crises. We don’t rush from place to place, imagining that things will be different somewhere else. And we don’t spend our time making artifacts. We observe, we converse, we take pleasure in life. Food is not really a problem. Even here in the desert, there’s plenty. When we are hungry, we look around a bit and soon find what we need.”

At the mention of food, Paul’s belly clenched like a fist. “Oh God. Food. I’d almost forgotten. I know it’s a bit of a cliche, but I’m starving. You wouldn’t have any of those wild hickory nuts on you, would you Euell?”

The old man’s smile disappeared. He looked down as if embarrassed. “No, nothing,” he replied at last.

“Oh.” Paul closed his eyes, all too conscious now of the gnawing pain in his belly. Suddenly he brightened. “Hey, no sweat. What have I been thinking of? I’ve got plenty of food right in my pack. Listen, Ishmael, I would sure appreciate it if you could just bring my pack down here. It’s under a big burroweed just at the end of the trail I followed in here. It’s bright orange. You can’t miss it. You can have anything you want out of it.”

The old man did not look up. “No. I’m sorry. It’s impossible.”

Paul stared, not comprehending. “What? Impossible? Why? Is it too heavy to drag down here? Just bring the food bag then. It’s in the top center pocket, just under the flap. It wouldn’t take you ten minutes. I’m starving, for Christ’s sake.”

“Yes, I know. Please forgive me. This is most awkward. Please try to understand. I cann