I was shaking. You reap what you sow.
Krom looked away. “We’re wasting time.” He undid the strap across his hips. He reached for the other straps — across his knees and ankles — but they were out of reach. He was grimed as the rest of us, worn in pain, and above and beyond that he’d endured his exile up the mountain. He regarded his bindings a moment, then folded his arms and took us in. “Let’s get it under control, chums. Mike, you’re out of line. Eric, calm down. Cassie, you’re overwrought. Listen to what he said, not how he said it.”
Krom was right. I was overwrought. Quite suddenly, I found an icy calm. I said, “Stop hiding behind Mike.”
Krom’s pain-glossed eyes went flat.
“Everything Mike knows about evac he knows from you. Everything you tell him he believes. You tell him we can spread our wings and fly out of here and he’ll start flapping. Why don’t you tell him the truth, for once? Tell him who’s responsible for the mess we’re in. You’re the man. You’re it.”
“You’re overwrought.”
“You’re the only one with a reason to blow up the 203 evac route.”
There was a gasp — Mike. Eric got him under the arms and hauled him upright, shooting a look at Krom. Walter’s eyes never left me.
I said, “That night I followed you, Adrian? You stopped on 203. Right at the bridge. Like you were checking it out. That when you decided where to plant the explosives?”
Krom laughed. “That’s right,” he said, “I sabotaged my own evacuation.”
I didn’t laugh. “Yeah, that’s absurd. Except that only 203 got sabotaged. Explosives on Pika were wired wrong. So all of a sudden Pika’s the only way out. You’re going to get us out, all right, but it’s going to be on your road. You fought Lindsay for it. You beat her. And now you have to finish the fight. Your road, against her volcano.” I stared at his slick yellow arm, where the scar hid. “I get the sacrifice thing now. The elders who offered themselves up to save the tribe — it’s a symbol for you. You won’t take it as far as they did, you don’t want to die, but you have to personally intercede with the volcano on behalf of the tribe. That’s why you built your road. That’s why you blew up 203. You had to have the tribe in your hands. If they escaped on 203, you didn’t save them, you didn’t win. It could have been done without you — all the planning and drills could have been done by computer sims. Any good manager could have run that show. But that’s not what happened with the tribe. That was personal. And you know what? I think you’re still in a mano-a-mano with the volcano. And the only way you can win is to get us out on your road. And maybe you’re even ready to risk the ultimate sacrifice, if it comes to that.” My hands, I found, were closed into fists. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to show he couldn’t take the pain. “We all go out your way or we die trying.”
Mike said, “What’s she talking about?”
“Cass?” Eric said. His look shifted to Krom then back to me. “You certain?”
Krom said, “She’s overwrought.”
“No, Adrian,” Walter said, “I don’t believe she is.”
Krom turned to Eric. “We’re wasting time.”
In the silence that followed, Eric called Bridgeport, who advised us again to stay put. Eric shut off the radio. He rubbed his forehead. “Let’s just…figure out where the hell to go. Cassie? You real sure you don’t want to go back down?”
Could I say yes? Could I say I knew one hundred percent we could not safely get out 203? Or Pika? Would I be saying the same about Pika if Krom had been a bloodless bureaucrat who went solely on computer sims and data streams? Could I be one hundred percent sure about my call? Because Eric’s made his position clear. He goes with my call. As long as I’m sure. And I’m going on second-hand volcanology and gut instinct and fear of a man who doesn’t count his wins the way I do. I wished I knew more about the volcanic plumbing. If I knew more, I could say with less fear that I’m sure. I was numb with cold and fear.
Krom said, to Mike, “Get these straps off me.”
Mike sprang to undo the bonds. “We’ll move you right now.”
“Where?” Walter asked it of Eric.
There was a pause, during which time Mike unbuckled a strap and Krom shifted and Eric and Walter got to their feet. A vacuum, and if I didn’t act now someone else was going to fill it. “I’m sure,” I said.
Eric told Walter, “We stay put.”
“Uh, no,” I said. “Look, we know the activity started in the moat.” I drew an oval in the ash, representing the caldera, and an ellipse within the oval representing the moat. “And then it diked up to Red Mountain.” I drew a line from the ellipse to the southwest loop of the oval. “So maybe it’s also traveled along the caldera’s ring fracture to where it intersects Mammoth Mountain.” I extended the line northward along the oval, and drew a triangle. “Here.”
They studied my drawing. My heart pounded. I thought of Lindsay’s drawing at the Inn, on top of Krom’s. All the circles and stars and lines and crosshatches. All the volcanic plumbing. What a mess.
Krom said, “You’re not a volcanologist.”
I met his look. “Nobody here is a volcanologist.”
Eric said, “What are you saying, Cass? The whole mountain could blow?”
“I’m not saying that.” Any number of things could happen. “All I’m saying is there’s complicated plumbing around here. All I’m saying is there have been phreatics on the mountain before — last time Inyo blew there were steam blasts up here. Lindsay showed me the old craters.”
Mike’s face darkened. “You knew?”
I’d known the challenge would come from Mike. “The last phreatics came with the Inyo system — five hundred years ago. Inyo’s quiet, Mike. I didn’t know there was a phreatic up here. Maybe Red Mountain’s stirring things up this time. Maybe Inyo will still go. I don’t know. I didn’t know. But here we are.”
Eric said, “You expect more like we saw up the road?”
“Could be.”
“Could it be more than that?”
“Could be.” I was dizzy, damp with sweat. “Not likely. Phil was monitoring up here — there’s been no discharge of magmatic gases, no shallow quakes. My guess is anything more will be the same stuff, coming around the old craters where the trees have been dying.”
“That your guess, Cass?”
I sought Walter’s counsel. He looked as I’ve rarely seen him in the lab, casting about for the answer. This damned strange mineral. He’s seen it before but what’s it tell him now? He doesn’t have the luxury of time so he’ll have to make an educated guess. How Lindsay would have loved this, the two of us mulling this over. Finally we capitulate — geology is volcanology, honey. At least for now. I said what Lindsay always said, “With a volcano, the past is a pretty decent guide to the future.”
Walter decided. “I agree. I would expect more of the same. Steam blasts in the old craters, perhaps, but not a fresh magmatic eruption on the mountain.”
“Cassie,” Eric said, “what do you want us to do?”
“Go up.”
They didn’t get it. Even Walter. Maybe they thought I was trying to ease the tension, with a joke. Then Eric got it. Eric, who knows when I’m joking and when I’m not. He stepped away from the porch overhang and tipped his head to look up the two thousand feet to the summit of Mammoth Mountain. “You’d better think again,” he said.
Mike scooted out to stand beside Eric.
“We’d be well above the old craters,” I said. “The likelihood of a new blast coming near the summit is less than one coming lower down.” Could I be one hundred percent sure about that? Nothing’s sure. The world is in eruption. I said, “It’s the safest place we can be, right now.”