Chapter 7: Wednesday Morning

The silent alarm on my PDA definitely went off too early. Oh, it went off at five o'clock all right; my body just wasn't ready to be disturbed at that hour and it complained bitterly. Nevertheless I sat up, stood up, twisted the knot out of my back, and quietly pushed myself toward the bathroom. On the way I grabbed my roll of maps. Nadia was still asleep.

First I drank some water, then splashed some on my face, then dampened a cloth and rubbed it in. That felt better. After a few minutes on the toilet, I was good to go. Carefully and quietly I tiptoed down the hall, down the stairs, and out to the driveway where Nadia sat waiting in the jeep.

"Did you take all your maps?" I asked Nadia.

"Yeah, they're right here," Nadia indicated. I threw my roll next to hers, covered them so they wouldn't blow away, and told my PDA to start the jeep. Seconds later we were on our way.

"What about Dan? Did he leave anything behind?" I asked.

"Yeah, he did, but I got it," Nadia assured me. "There's something going on with him and Crystal, you know."

"Yeah, I saw that too. Whose idea was it?"

"Oh, Dan's, I'm sure. Crystal doesn't go after guys. She's got enough coming after her."

"She's been going after Adam," I pointed out.

"Even there, she's settling for leftovers," Nadia observed.

"You see 'em doin' anything?"

"Crystal sucked him off just before they left. I think she likes his PA."

"She did that with you sitting there?"

"Yeah. She was getting bored. Dan was getting bored. I think she just needed a quick wake-me-up," Nadia explained.

"That's fine for Dan, but what about Crystal?"

"I think they stopped somewhere on the way home. She takes guys to the Jump and Pump sometimes, you know. Either there or the Slip and Slide."

"That place is a dive. Why would she go there?"

"Well, you gotta remember her parents still want her to wear clothes all the time. I guess that means no boyfriends at home, either," Nadia speculated.

"Life is tough all over," I observed. "What about Teah? You think she knows?"

"She's probably too busy pissing in the bushes to notice. I'm not sure she cares. She's been making a lot of new friends lately."

"From Barbie doll to wet, messy, and toilet-free, all in two weeks, eh? Who'd a thunk it?"

"She still starts the day looking like Barbie," Nadia pointed out. "And she doesn't let herself get smelly."

"Halleluiah for small favors," I remarked.

There wasn't much traffic, of course, so driving out to the property took only forty-five minutes. The road was two lanes all the way and none of the filling stations, diners, and other roadside businesses were open. The air was a bit chilly but turning the heater on full blast helped. When you don't wear clothes, you learn to expect an occasional chill and deal with it.

The chasm itself wasn't visible from the road. We followed a fence for a mile or two, and then found an opening where the garbage trucks used to enter. At least, it was an opening after we got done looking at it.

If anything, the landscape was even more irregular than I expected. There were fields of hard clay molded into odd contours by runoff, fields of large boulders, and scattered rock formations up to twenty or twenty-five feet high. There wasn't much vegetation, just a few cactuses and creosote bushes. Either the ground was too hard or the area didn't get enough rain. The access road, such as it was, snaked around various obstructions.

The chasm area itself was fantastic. It was like a large shallow bowl, half to three-quarters of a mile across, with a total drop of about two hundred feet to the bottom. The chasm itself cut across the bowl like a giant crack in the earth, a couple of feet wide in most places. The whole area was dry that day but water had apparently flowed through the chasm floor, perhaps depending on the season. Over the years, this had apparently sculpted the whole area.

"This is awesome," Nadia said quietly. "It's like a gigantic, natural amphitheater or arena." She could have screamed her head off and no one else would have heard, but something about the place inspired reverence. Or maybe it was the quiet -- quiet so intense that there was no need to speak up.

The aerial photos had shown various roads and passages running along or across the bowl. I followed a couple of them as far as they went and felt like I was driving on the moon for the first time. From time to time we'd encounter an obstacle that made us turn back, but I knew most of them could be overcome with a little grading or a prefab bridge. Occasionally, we snapped pictures with our PDAs.

At a quarter to seven I started heading out of the bowl. Five minutes later we were on a rise overlooking the whole area. There, I opened another map and showed it to Nadia.

"Entry road, parking, start/finish, grandstands, shops and vendors, restaurant row, musical stage, gasoline alley, sanitary area," I called out, pointing to the respective areas. "At least, that's the way I see it today. I'm sure we'll to make lots of adjustments along the way."

"People could sit here and see the whole race, couldn't they?" Nadia observed. "Especially if they had binoculars."

"Yeah, or video feeds," I pointed out. "We could probably charge by the hour for video feeds."

I hated to go and so did Nadia. There were a thousand spots to explore, ten thousand surprises to discover, a million plans to make. Time, however, was getting short. We stopped at the next flat spot we passed, took a pee Teah-style, and hit the road back to town. Along the way we stopped at a diner called The Griddle of Nowhere and bought eggs Florentine with orange and dill sauce, sausage and feta strata, marzipan spongata, and cappuccino to go. It was excellent.

By eight we were safely back at the world-famous (not) Bald Mountain High School parking lot. Nadia left to find Dan. I was dirty, stinky, and food-spattered, but I was also meeting Adam at the showers. On the way I stashed the maps in my locker.