Oscar had lost the canyon trail immediately, almost falling in the little gurgling pool at the source of the spring; he had to sink to one knee abruptly to keep from pitching in. Spiraling blade fronds slapped him gently in the face. He stared transfixed at the roiled surface of the pool, which turned over itself as if a hose were spurting out water somewhere below the surface. So odd—here they were on a desert coastline, the mountains mostly bare and brown, and before his eyes water poured out of a hill. And steaming hot to boot. Where did it come from? Oh, he knew that. Law classes, surprising how much you had to understand for the law to make sense. And the way Sally taught that class, up in Dusy Basin and down on the campus; he felt he understood groundwater basins. He stood on the bony cracked hills, eons old, porous to water right down to the bedrock. So the ground beneath him was saturated, up to some level below him, a few feet, several hundred feet, depending on where he stood. Water down there slowly flowing, down its secret watersheds. A rib of bedrock, an underground upwelling. This was the top of one, pouring out a crack. A reservoir filled with stone. Underground waterfall. And hot because some cracks in deep bedrock were letting the earth’s internal heat seep up. My God. Could it actually be that hot down there? Well, the crust was only a few miles thick, and after that it was a few thousand miles to the core. Essentially he was standing on a ball of molten lava, with something as thin as aluminum foil insulating him from it.
The spring water scalded his fingers, and hastily he pulled away. Uneasy at the heat, which seemed now to have a faint red glow to it, he stepped over the stream and upcanyon, aware suddenly of a Pellucidar below like the insides of a foundry, bright yellow spills of molten metal leaving intense afterimages in his sight. Except in reality the superheated rock below was under such gravitational pressure that it could be called neither a liquid or a solid, not if you wanted to be accurate. A slight variation, a bolide gravitational or magnetic, and the dark night might suddenly explode on him. Have to live with that.
The woods were dark. Black on black. Oscar blundered into branches that were like wooden arms trying to tackle him. He couldn’t see well enough to move around out here, how did the others do it? The canyon floor was irregular and much of what he stepped on was soft. It made him squeamish and light-footed. Needed a flashlight. Definitely dark. Once a friend in Virginia had taken him out to see one of the caverns in the Shenandoah Mountains, and the guide there had shut down the light in one deep cavern, so they could see the purity of a complete lack of light. You couldn’t see your hand right in front of your nose, nor distinguish any motions it made. It was simply a field of the richest, blackest black he had ever seen.
This wasn’t like that. Overhead stars sparked between wind-tossed branches, and a single solar panel station blinked in the west like a streetlight seen from miles away. Presumably these were casting some light on the scene. How many candlepower was a star? Let’s see, a lit candle some eight miles away is supposed to be visible. They did an experiment about that, in the early days, wandering out on a clear desert basin. One man tramped back and forth to find out at just what point he lost sight of the distant candle. Eight miles? Maybe it wasn’t that far. What was stopping the light from being visible, anyway? What got in the way? Imagine that man out there wandering back and forth, a distant prick of light winking in and out of existence.
He could in fact see his hand in front of his face. Experiment proved this. Black octopuslike thing. But what stood before him, or at his feet: inky shapes on a field of sable velvet. It was possible to walk right into a tree. He proved that by experiment too. Subsequently he made his way with his hands stretched out before him, like a sleepwalker.
Nothing to see, but lots to hear. Airy voice of the wind scraping stone, hooting from time to time around sharp corners. The myriad shivery clicks of leaves overhead and around, a sound sometimes like water falling, but with the individual sounds sharper, more individualized—but so many of them…. The creaks of branches rubbing together, eucalyptus trees did that a lot, they were talkative trees. A scurrying underfoot that made him tread even more slowly, more lightly. Tiny creatures were rushing away as he approached, much as little people ran from city-stomping Godzillas in Japanese movies. And maybe some little guys with a superweapon like snake poison would try to bring him down. Necessary to move very slowly. Give them time to escape.
After a while he increased his pace again. Rattlers were likely to be asleep after all, and they were the only superpowers around. Maybe. Anyway he had to venture on. But it was probably best to give as much warning of his arrival as possible, so instead of trying to reduce the noise of his passage he increased it, swinging a stick around and hitting things with it. It also served as a blind man’s cane, warning him of trees and the like. Best, clearly, to move by sense of sound and touch. He recalled an acquaintance’s story, of walking by a lake at night in east Texas in early summer, stepping squick, squick at every step, as each step came down on one of millions of young frogs hopping about. Ick.
He came to the dim bulk of a canyon wall. So it was possible to see something. A bit confusing; apparently the canyon must fork here. He went right, and soon found himself struggling up through thickets of sage and other shrubs. One type was kind of a Spanish bayonet thing, a bunch of long, stiff, and very sharply pointed blades. Best to avoid. Really, this was stupid. What did he think he was doing? What did he expect to find? Surely no one else would have taken a route as crowded with vegetation as this. Bulldozer approach.
Still he struggled on through the tangled mass of branches. One advantage to hiking alone; you can do things so stupid that no two people together would ever carry on with it. Manzanita, or was it mesquite, anyway there was no way he could go through a nest of that stuff, no matter it was only thigh-high. Those branches were like steel. Go around. Keep going. Pure stubbornness, but after all he could turn around any time and get back to the hot springs easily, so why not? He could do this just for the fun of stupid stubbornness, mindless and pure. Holding to a course just because he was on one. Inertia. A gyroscope in the spirit, spinning madly. One time his friends had rated everyone in their group for strangeness, charm and spin. One to ten. Oscar was the only one given tens in all categories. Nice friends. But his placid moonfaced bulk, spinning? They must have been seeing in to this gyroscope.
The bushwhacking got more fun. This was life, after all—bashing around in the dark, fighting through tangles of very tough clutching branches, sometimes knee-high, sometimes well overhead. Allegory, Everyman, bungle in the jungle.
The moon rose, and everything changed. Something like a thick translucent white syrup poured into the canyon, making the trees into distinct beings, the mesquite patches into densely textured surfaces, as in an arty black-and-white photo of the sea’s surface, or snow on a forest, or something equally dappled. The droopy long leaves of eucalyptus trees swung in the wind, clattering lightly together. A spiky-barked, spiky-leaved, dusty little tree stood in his path like a growth seen through a microscope. Bacillus scruboakus. Oak, he has a heart of oak, Hank said when recommending Oscar be hired as town attorney. Should have known that any town that consulted someone like Hank when hiring an attorney was going to be seriously weird. Shadows moved and jumped, quivered and bobbed. He could see just enough to see that everything was moving. The wind didn’t seem as strong, or as loud. Moonlight thick as gel. Sage smell.