It was raining again.
Hap turned us to face back into the tunnel. We got a raw tunnel vision of the frantic figure in the rusting red cart. Hap worked the remote. I imagined I saw the keypad on the shaft turn from red to green. I imagined the chute gate opening, allowing the load in the shaft to flow down into the hopper, and thence into the black ribbed hose.
And then I did not have to imagine. I saw the hose ribs expand to accommodate the bulge, like dinner passing through a snake. I saw the spew of resins begin, into the cart. Milt tried to jackknife over the edge but he had no leverage. His attention shifted downward, toward his feet. I imaged they were already covered. He cried out. Animal in quicksand. Hap yanked the red cord and I saw the brake handle move, and the cart wheels began to roll, and my fears switched from Milt’s fate back to our own.
Hap said, “Let’s get out of the way.”
He herded us along the narrow ledge that hugged the hillside to a wide spot, like a roadside turnout. We watched from there.
The fickle rain had stopped. Sun shafted through black clouds.
The ore cart nosed out of the tunnel, trailing the uncoiling hose. Milt rode like a flagpole in front. Pinned by the rising tide of beads, immobile. Hap began to whistle — heigh-ho heigh-ho — but he only whistled one bar before he let it die. The cart rolled onto the elevated track that bridged the steep drop-off. It came to a stop against wood blocks bolted to the rails. The front wheels hit a lever that pulled the pin on the dumping mechanism, and the side gate opened to release its load. The load spilled into the ore chute, which angled down to the ore-processing mill below. But this load was resin beads, not ore. Milt slowly lost his footing and joined the flow of beads and, like a log at a waterfall, he went over the side and down the chute, disappearing into the mill. And still the beads flowed. We watched for agonizing minutes while the hose spewed beads into the cart and the cart dumped beads into the chute, down into the mill. And when the flow turned to a trickle and then to a stop, I guessed the stockpile in the shaft had been emptied. And the mill down below us was full.
Hap said, “Down we go.”
We started down the switchbacked path we had climbed hours ago with Oliver and Dearing. We crept, boots sticking in the fast-drying mud. But it was not the poor footing that unnerved me — it was the mill, slumping halfway down the hillside like its old frame could not contain its new load. We descended to the final switchback before our trail ended below, in the valley. I turned to look across the fall line to the butt end of the mill. It seemed about to burst.
If it burst, the beads would run free down the mountainside.
Hap opened his belt bag and withdrew a putty disk with a wired metal stub at its center. He brought out a spool of red-sheathed wire. He used the multi-tool knife on his belt to strip the insulation off the end and then he spliced it to the stub wires. He said “wait here” and then in afterthought, “you move, I shoot.” He caught me staring at the facepiece on top of his head. “Mind’s somewhere else.” His eyes were turned inward, deep-diving cavepool eyes. He pulled down the mask, connected the regulator, raised the hood. He started off, traversing the fall line toward the mill.
He turned to look at us once, unclipping the subgun from his shoulder harness, holding it at the ready.
I looked beyond him — where Walter was looking — to the mine camp with its tumbledown shacks, and across the valley to the canyon wall that rose to the far ridge where we had come in. I asked, “What’s the range of an MP-five?”
“Maybe a football field.” Walter shrugged, at the impossibility of reaching the end zone.
I focused on the near view. Hap had reached the mill. He hurried, shouldering the gun sling, slapping the putty against the mill’s butt-end, and then he retraced his steps, unrolling wire from his belt bag. By the time he reached us he had the wired detonator in hand. It looked like a garage door opener. He depressed the button. There was a concussive jolt from the mill, and then it yawned open.
Gravity finished the job.
I wished for veils of rain to shield us from the sight of the spew from the mill. Resins ran free, carpeting down the slope. It was only at the end of the resin-fall that the mill disgorged Milt, who seemed to have momentarily jammed the works, but then the beads like ball bearings greased his way and carried him along with the avalanche.
The avalanche threw off a dust cloud — golden resin fines going aerosol.
Walter bowed his head. I did not and so I witnessed the recapture of the resins in the stone reservoir at the bottom of the hill. Some ran wide, some stopped short, some spilled over the concrete lip, but when the final bead had come to rest, the reservoir was topped.
Milt lay on his back, legs half buried.
I watched the poisonous cloud settle over the reservoir, powdering Milt. His right hand lifted, then fell. I held my breath. Unlike Hap — still masked, still breathing canned air — Walter and I were without protection. I worried about that poisonous brew down there, about those unshielded gammas. We were a good long distance and I’d learned by heart the inverse square law — radiation intensity decreases as the inverse square of the distance from a point source — but I nevertheless edged behind Hap, putting him between me and that point source. He did not appear to notice. His attention was riveted on the scene below.
Walter whispered, “Keep your head.”
I turned to ask why.
He jutted his chin. “Above that pile of rock…”
I lifted my face.
“Don’t look.”
But I already had.
45
“Almost there,” Hap said, softly.
I barely heard him over the hiss of his breather but as he unmasked I fixed my gaze squarely on his drawn face, taking scrupulous care not to look up at the hillocks of waste-rock ore tailings so as not to direct his attention toward Pria, who had appeared from who-knows-where and then disappeared behind the nearest hillock, and who knew where she’d turn up next. Miss Alien Apparition. I had trouble believing she’d been there at all.
Hap peered up at the sky. The clouds were closing back in.
In that micromoment, Walter’s eyes met mine and we settled upon a plan.
I said, “Why are you checking the sky?” and when Hap’s focus drifted back to me, I tried to hold it. “You need more rain?”
He eyed me and then his attention shifted again, to the reservoir.
And now there was a feathering of black hair at the base of the nearest ore heap and Walter shook his head and lifted his feet in a mime—run Pria, run to tell Soliano and then run home to hide under the bed — but she had already disappeared again so she didn’t catch Walter’s drift.
Hap was now scanning the hillside above the reservoir.
I said, “Hap.”
Mercifully, he turned.
Walter said — as if he did not think my theory was hogwash—“You need a flood, Hap?”
I thought, it is hogwash. This may be a floodable canyon but how is Hap going to summon a flood? Here? Now? Walter and I were correct with our first scenario — the rains will wash the nuclides down to the aquifer. That’s bad enough. I took my turn: “I’ll play your game, Hap. I know what else the ring means. Means you’re going turn clean water into bad water.”
Hap listened, like he had listened to Walter’s counsel.
I caught Walter angling for a look up the hill. I angled too. Had Pria run, after all?
Hap shifted to look.
I said, “Milt’s legacy, right? Crap up the virgin. Like he crapped up your sister.”
Hap’s attention snapped back to me.
I saw Pria then, sidling out from behind the ore tailings hillock. She put her finger to her lips. I tried not to flinch and give her away. Walter started in again, yammering about the aquifer, voice rising in outrage, covering the sounds of Pria’s approach. She came in a low crouch, straight and true, right for us.