Free Reprisal by Mitchell Smith Page B

braid of Pigeon Mountain climbing rope--dynamic rope, with stretch and give to it to cushion a fall. She hunted through the pack again, found the folded plastic survival bag, took off her helmet and tucked the bag into it, then put the helmet back on and checked her chin strap.
    It was odd to be alone in the pit, in darkness, alone in the tangled miles of the cave. Odd to be without the company of other cavers, their noise and occasional grunts of effort working passages in climbs and crawls, or lugging gear. Without their harsh joking.
    Strange to be alone, and a relief. As if being beneath the earth in pitch darkness, coolness, silence, being here and all alone, were the truth of the human condition--and everything brightly lit, crowded, noisy and warm, were only a lie waiting to be exposed. Exposed by drowning and death. Exposed by loneliness and loss. The cave, like the bottom of the sea, presented the fact.
    Joanna imagined herself as Merle Budwing was, and Frank. In stillness, silence, and the dark. The difference being that she still knew of death-and the dead did not.
    She shouldered the pack and rope, took six carabiners from her sling and snapped them to her waist harness, and walked away from the hanging line ...
    trudging, sliding down the long, unstable hundred-yard ridge of broken fallen stone. An insect crawling along the rough dark carpet of an enormous room. ...
    It took her half an hour to get off the ridge of fallen rock and onto the pit's stone floor--scored and ravined yards deep by ancient rushing waters, scattered with the rubble the currents had left behind them, boulders, gravel, megaliths larger than houses. The vaulting space around, above her, seemed to sing in Joanna's ears, then shrink to only the reality of her helmet's cone of light--a yard or two across, a yard or two distant as she traveled.
    If she mistook a narrow trench in the pit's floor for a shadow in her light's beam, if she misstepped and broke her ankle, broke her leg, she could still self-rescue--crawl back to her distant rope in agony, rig her ascending gear, and struggle up, her bad leg dangling. It would take hours, it would be difficult, but she could do it, weeping, screaming if necessary.
    But if she slipped and fell here and broke her pelvis, or broke her back, then there would be no getting up the rope, even if she could drag herself over the long ridge of rubble to it. ... Then, she would lie licking damp stone for any moisture, and huddle dreaming, shivering, hallucinating as her lamp batteries failed, backup lights were exhausted, her rations were eaten ... and she died of darkness and thirst, before she could starve to death.
    Someday, after her car was found, cavers would come sailing slowly down through shadow for her body. They'd be very angry with her. ...
    Two hours later, Joanna had crossed the pit's floor, climbed a steep fifty-foot rise of rubble breakdown to its north wall, and stopped to rest a few minutes before climbing the forty feet of vertical limestone to the first passage entrance.
    It was a sheer wall of fractured soft stone-chocks and aids useless to wedge into cracks that crumbled and broke away on strain. It was hand-and-foot climbing. The Midstate Grotto had a policy of avoiding permanent bolted anchors where it could.
    "If you can't rock climb, don't cave-'cause where there're downs, there're going to be ups." One of Chris Leong's lectures. The Mad Chinaman--also known as Genghis Khan-Chris would be first down the rope, if they had to come for her body in a few months. He'd be absolutely furious. ...
    Joanna went to the wall ... sidestepped along its irregular base, and found a deep crack that seemed to go. She stepped up to wedge her boot toe in, then reached up and found a grip to balance her for the next toe-in. She slowly walked the crack up at an angle to the right along the wall, keeping her body away from the stone, using her feet to climb, her hands only for balance.--Her helmet light was