Behind him, closer to the cavern wall, was a woman cast in a more classic cave formation. Working by the light of two helmet lamps, facing into her camp like lanterned turtles, a lanky woman, so thin that anorexia came to mind, banged gear into packs. Her movements were abrupt, each cached item cracking in protest as she smashed it against the rest. Long straight hair, not caught back in a braid or bandana, swung around her bony shoulders with the angry switch of a mare's tail. Every few seconds she flung it irritably back from her face. As the curtain of hair was raised and the lamps painted her face, Anna noted sharp, clear features. Each was exaggerated just enough that the woman would never be considered truly pretty. Her nose was well shaped and large, her jaw thin, jutting slightly and ending in a squared-off chin with a hint of a dimple. The widely spaced eyes were long, exotic, and slightly unnatural looking. Her mouth was her best feature. The upper lip was well cut with a cupid's-bow fullness, the lower pouted but so girlishly it charmed rather than irked. Anna guessed she was in her late twenties.

"How is Frieda doing?"

Anna rolled over to see a woman hunkered down on her heels not three feet behind her. Anna had neither heard her coming nor sensed her presence. For protection, Frieda would have been better off with a Lhasa apso, she thought sourly.

"She's going to be fine," she said firmly, hoping Frieda could hear and take comfort.

The uninvited guest nodded slowly. She had a round bland face and dark hair pulled back under a bandana that had once been green. The kerchief was tied across her forehead in the fashion of pirates, artists, and outdoorswomen. "Frieda is one tough lady," she said after giving the matter some thought.

Bovine, Anna thought, but it wasn't an insult. The woman brought to mind not the cow-like traits of stupidity or of being easily led, but of solidity and being slow to anger. The image was helped along by dark brown eyes, black and liquid in the dimness, and her size. She was nearly a match for the bearded man. Unfolded, she was probably close to five-ten with broad hips and heavy thighs. She wore shorts and a white tee-shirt, the sleeves rolled above her shoulders. A soft layer of fat hid the muscle, but Anna was willing to bet she was terrifically strong.

"Zeddie Dillard," she said, and stuck out her hand. Damp hair curled from her armpits, and Anna was impressed. Zeddie wasn't more than twenty-four, yet she was as comfortable as an old hippie.

"Anna Pigeon."

Clanking cut into their exchange of pleasantries, and both looked to where the skinny woman knocked a cookstove into its component parts.

"Tantrums on the River Styx?" Anna asked.

"That's the doctor's wife," Zeddie replied with a careful lack of inflection. "And that's what's got her so pissed off."

"That she's Peter McCarty's wife?"

"That she's the doctor's wife."

"Ah."

"Zeddie Dillard, amateur psychiatrist and oracle to the stars," the woman said, and laughed. "Coffee?"

Anna was warming right up to Ms. Dillard. "Cream?" she asked hopefully.

"Better. Magic white powder that turns into cream if you stir it with a little plastic stick. It might not work down here," she added as she rose to her feet. "All there is to stir with is the community spoon."

"I'll be with you as soon as I've visited the ladies' room," Anna said.

Zeddie took a flashlight and used it to point out a black gateway between two sizable blocks of stones. "Unisex Johns. Easier on the cave," she said. "Put that pointy rock in the path. Privacy guaranteed."

Destination confirmed, Anna worked her way up from the ground. Everything hurt. The aggressively three-dimensional nature of caves ensured that she had been battered equally from all directions. She felt as if she'd been beaten up by experts. Muscles unused for decades cried their lament as she hobbled toward the powder room. Bruises made themselves felt in places that never came into contact with anything more abusive than a down comforter or silk underpants.

Nothing was easy.

Anna was accustomed to the practice of cat-holing, digging tidy holes for waste and covering them. She'd burned enough toilet paper in the wilderness to raise the stock of Scott Tissue a point or two. And she knew why it wouldn't suffice. None of the normal elements of the terrestrial world were at work here, no self-cleaning features built in. Pack it in; pack it out. With stoicism if not good cheer, she completed her toilette as she'd been told: a neat rectangle of aluminum foil, Lisa's "burrito bag." Anna laughed in spite of herself.

Zeddie was waiting with fresh-brewed water. Anna added brown powder and white powder and told herself it was coffee with cream. The group had gathered around an upended flashlight that took the place of a campfire. The people she'd observed earlier were there, as well as another man who had not been in camp before. In his forties, he looked in good physical condition. His hair was blond and cut short, reminiscent of the Nazis in World War II movies, but his face wasn't hard. If anything, he looked slightly timid, slightly aggrieved. He was clad in a muscle shirt and cutoffs so short Anna made a mental note not to get behind him on a steep climb unless she wanted to get to know him a whole lot better.

Zeddie saw where she was looking and muttered, "Brent Roxbury. Fortunately for Brent, there are no fashion police in a cave."

"Is Frieda any better?" Roxbury asked, interrupting their less-than kind gossip. The question sounded genuinely concerned, and Anna felt mildly guilty. To make it up to him, she forgave him the short-shorts.

"The same," she replied, sorry she didn't have better news. As Anna looked at the ring of concerned faces, Frieda's words of the night before seemed absurd. It was possible she had been thinking clearly and yet had been mistaken. If a blow to the head could erase the trauma, surely it could scramble the facts. Frieda might have been recalling an event from the delirium, a dream so real that in a confused state it would be remembered as gospel. Memories could and were implanted, often so deeply that even faced with proof that an event never actually occurred, a person couldn't shake the feeling from muscle and bone that it had happened.

If the words were true, just as Frieda had said, no psychological voodoo involved, then one of these individuals radiating sympathy and love had pushed a rock on her. Unfortunately, in a place as rigidly controlled and inaccessible as the bowels of Lechuguilla, the last minute solution of the wandering hobo with homicidal tendencies was unworkable.

"We haven't met," Anna said to half the group, wanting to hear their voices, feel the clasp of their hands, in hopes a sense of their trustworthiness would be communicated.

"Sondra McCarty," Zeddie said, adopting the hostess role. McCarty's wife was braiding her hair with both hands, a thick cloth covered band held ready in her teeth. Anna got neither a voice nor a handshake but merely a grunt and a nod.

Zeddie went around the circle. "Dr. Curtis Schatz." The big man with the furry chin looked up from where he sat. His eyes were obscured by glasses framed in mock tortoiseshell. The lenses caught the light and reflected back blank space.

"Hello," he said in a flat voice that gave absolutely nothing away and left Anna feeling snubbed.

"Two doctors," she said just to say something. "That's lucky."

"Not really," Schatz drawled, but without Holden's Texas warmth. A "Tennis, anyone?" effeteness lent his words a snobbish air. "I'm a doctor of leisure and recreation."

Anna laughed, realized it was not a joke, and laughed again. "Sorry," she said.

"No problem." Schatz returned to his coffee. Again no handshake. Near the center of the earth, life tended toward the informal.