Just as he got to the place where he should turn away from the river, he felt the earth begin to tremble. He crouched low, wondering if this finally would be the real earthquake. His glance shot up to the still-pink clouds high above the near rift wall, and pushing through them he saw a dark fume that he believed was the cloud of an exploding volcano. The tremor stopped, and he straightened cautiously. No climb to the top of the rift wall would tell him more than he now knew; there was a lot of tectonic activity going on in this part of the continent. Plates of rock were slipping and shearing, or magma was being shifted in subterranean cauldrons by the considerable tidal force of Hunted Moon, or, just as likely, both these things were happening. It ought to have worried him, but he knew the volcano was too far away to be an immediate danger; he’d grown up with earthquakes in his coastal homeland. Like Beth’s, his camp was far enough away from the rift wall to preclude its coming down on him, and only a truly massive quake could slosh the river out of its banks. He’d camped on ground high enough to be safe from that, too.

  The valley was still again, normal night sounds resumed. He looked toward Beth’s camp, saw nothing stir. Likely she’d slept through the tremor, her mind at rest.

  Good. He wasn’t thinking of Lydia. Well, now he was. She was never far from his thoughts, nor was the guilt that she conjured. He would think of Beth instead. She probably had difficulty in understanding how two people with similar specialties couldn’t come to accord over where and how they would live. She might even be a little envious that their talents were so much in demand they could pick and choose the projects they wanted. Then again, Beth seemed more willing to accept the consequences of her twelve-year-old decision to pursue an outside chance, a decision she must have consciously reinforced often over that many years, a determination to change and her ability to cast aside regrets. She wasn’t the least bit afraid of the future. He stopped walking and looked wistfully in the direction of her camp once again. He felt desire in his heart, a sincere wish to share what she had offered, but no responding stir in his loins.

  He started up to his camp, imagining that he could hear the roar of water flowing over the fins of giant turbines in a new dam. Then he froze. He did hear water, and not the swift movement of the Rift River. It was distant hollow sound, the kind of sound he heard before reaching a narrow gorge of white water. It was not a sound that he would mistake for any other, and he started running even before he shouted Beth’s name.

  His feet flew over stones and his shouts filled the valley as they echoed off the stony face of the rift wall. The distant roar mounted, gathered speed and grew closer. He was not far from her little camp in the dried-up riverbed, but even not far might be too far where a flash flood was concerned. He kept shouting, hoping she would hear and start running before he reached her. But he found her only half-sitting, looking a little confused as the noise spilled out of the canyon above, ahead of the water that was already shooting over the falls. He grabbed her arm and pulled her up and away, urging her to run faster and faster. Swirling water rushed at their heels just as they started up the hillock where his camp was. At the top he stopped to see what was happening, ready to run for the rift wall and to pull Beth along if he had to, but the water was safely behind them, gushing through the old riverbed.

  He stood panting, and Beth, standing next to him, was breathing just as hard as she watched the torrent of muddy water pour over the falls. The new river overflowed the old banks to the confluence with the Rift River, making the clear waters there so dark with mud it was visible even in the moonlight.

  “We’re safe,” he said, almost surprised that it was so. Beth didn’t answer. She seemed too shaken to speak. There were still a few glowing embers in the fire. Shelley threw some more sticks onto it and led Beth close. She wasn’t wet, yet she sat trembling and staring at the river she had just escaped. He put a jacket over her shoulders and let her sort out what had happened on her own.

  “Do you suppose it was a lava flow that caused it?” she said finally, turning away from the sight of rushing water crashing over boulders to look at him.

  Shelley shrugged. “There was another tremor. Maybe there was an earthquake off in that direction.” He waved generally off to the southwest. “It’s not unusual for whole rivers to get shifted off course, or back to an old one. Even . the Rift riverbed isn’t very stable.”

  She nodded knowingly. She couldn’t have lived in the Water Baron’s mansion for all those years and not have known the problems of rivers taking off in new directions, occasionally even leaving dams with nothing to hold. “How could I have been so stupid?” she asked him seriously. “Of all people, you’d think I’d know better than to put my camp in an old riverbed.”

  “I didn’t think of it either, Beth. If it had been spring, I would have, and so would you, I’m sure. But it’s been so dry … you can’t be completely safe anywhere in the rift-lands, not even on high ground. It could drop out from under you as unexpectedly as that flash flood. These tremors are more warning than we deserve; we just didn’t know how to interpret them.”

  “My bike …” she said, as if suddenly remembering she’d left it at the top of the falls. She had even moved it well back so that it would be safe from cliff fall in the event of a severe quake.

  “It’s gone for sure,” Shelley said. “Your camp gear, too.”

  She looked sulky now, and he could imagine that she was berating herself severely, not considering that if she had started on her return journey only this morning she would probably have been trapped in the canyon and killed for sure.

  “I guess you’ll have to make the trip back to civilization in my raft,” Shelley said.

  She looked at him sharply. “If you think I’m going to do those rapids with someone who is admittedly suicidal, you’re crazy as well,” she said hotly. “I’d rather walk. I did it once, I can do it again.”

  “In your bare feet?” Shelley asked.

  “Oh,” she said, curling up her toes. Then she looked at him desperately, searchingly, and he could imagine that she was looking for traces of madness in his eyes.

  “Don’t worry, Beth. It will be all right… I’ll be all right. I’m not going to kill us in the white water, I promise you.” He wasn’t lying, either. He might have some doubts about his own self-worth, but he had none about Beth’s. He wouldn’t let her get hurt on his account.

  “When?” she asked, sullen again but quickly resigned.

  “Tomorrow … is that all right with you?”

  “Yes.” Short, angry. “Shelley?”

  “What?” .

  “If you get me killed, so help me, I’ll …” But there was nothing to threaten and they both knew it. She had no choice but to go with him, whatever the outcome. He sat down next to her, wondering if there was anything he could say or do to ease her mind. Nothing came to him.

  “Better get some sleep,” he suggested finally. “You take my sleeping bag.”

  “I’ll just use the jacket. There’s no sense in your being cold because of my stupidity.”

  “Don’t be stubborn and freeze your ass just to prove—I don’t know what you think it will prove.”

  “I’m not trying to prove anything,” she said indignantly. “But what’s fair is fair. I’m the one who’s dependent oa your charity, and I don’t want to take advantage of your generosity.”

  “I’ve half a mind to take you at your word and let you freeze.”

  “Fine.”

  “But I’m not going to let you get away with it. Our circumstances have changed drastically in the last hour; not just your circumstances, but ours. We’ve got to pool our resources or we’ll never get out of the riftlands.”

  “Nice, but I have nothing to pool. Therefore, you take the sleeping bag.”

  “Beth, you won’t be any good to me tomorrow if you’re stiff and cold all night.”

  “Same is true of you. One of us is going to have to make do with the fire and the jacket, and it should be me.”

  “Damn it, Beth. Are you always like this?”

  “Like what?”

  “Stubborn as a courting lizard in a burning tree.”

  “Well, there’s one other solution to the sleeping bag problem. We’ll open it up and both sleep under it.”

  He looked at her, stricken. Had she been arguing all that time just waiting for an opportunity to make that suggestion? It would seem from the wry smile she wore that she had. He turned away from her so that she couldn’t see the flush that he knew came over his face. “Not … now,” he said.

  She didn’t argue with him, and in a moment he heard her get up and go to the sleeping bag. When he looked at her again, she was lying there with a stony expression on her face. Damn her.

  Chapter 13

  Beth watched Shelley coil the yellow lead rope and tuck it between the tube and the thick fabric deck. He kept his hands on the raft, still standing in knee-deep water. He seemed to be moving in slow motion. He was definitely reluctant to get underway. But finally he walked the raft out a few more meters into the river and hopped handily onto the rower’s seat. He pushed on the oars to take them farther away from the bank into the stronger current midriver.

  “It will be a smooth ride for a few kilometers, just like being out in the reservoir in a canoe except that you won’t have to paddle to get where we’re going. The current does all the work for us.”

  The sun was high in the east, its rays warming their shoulders and reflecting off the water. Beth was sitting on the bow tube, her feet on the bottom of the raft, and though there was no water inside, her toes were as cold as if she were dangling them in the river. She moved to the side and put the soles of her feet on the rowing frame in the sun.

  As they approached the first bend in the river, Shelley took a few strokes with the . oars to move the raft to the inside curve. The oars slipped into the water smoothly, covered to the shaft, and came out clean. Beth changed her stance so that she could paddle; she made a lot more froth and noise than Shelley, but she wanted to get the feel of paddling. She stopped when he did, and he turned again to talk to her. She listened carefully, for he was telling her about the float line that must be thrown if he went overboard and how to swim in the rapids if it should be necessary. He had talked of nothing except the river, the raft; no mention of last night.

  The tranquil kilometers passed quickly, and Shelley tensed up as the two channel tongues at the beginning of the rapid became visible. The river noise grew steadily louder until it was a solid roar.

  “We’re going in on the right tongue,” he said, his voice suddenly snappish as the big oars dipped.

  The tongue was a V of fast smooth water pointing downstream and surrounded by choppy white water that was high. The raft took the tongue square on the center and tipped over the edge into the rapid. Everything speeded up. Dead ahead was a standing wave that towered over the raft, and Shelley was hauling hard on the bars to take them to the left of it. It took no imagination for Beth to realize there was an obstruction in the water there and that if they hit it, it would flip the raft. And just as she realized the current would take the raft safely to the left she saw the tremendous hole of backwater filled with white, aerated foam that would never hold up a boat. There was a fence of current alongside and she paddled for dear life to help keep the raft on it and out of the treacherous foam. Water crashed over the bow, sending sprays that soaked her even in the stem; their momentum took them through a wave that she hadn’t even seen.

  “Back paddle,” Shelley shouted, his voice echoing off the tall banks. She reversed her stroke. In this boiling, convulsing water, the raft was suddenly a big and sluggish beast that barely moved out of the way of one obstacle before it was time to duck another. The bottom of the raft was half-filled with water from constant sprays, and Beth found herself holding her breath, snatching air like a swimmer as water continued to pour over her. Then even more water poured in as Shelley pointed the bow into a huge wave that would have flipped them if taken on an angle or broadside.

  “Bail!” Shelley said, and Beth bailed, throwing one bucket of water out only to have two more come in.

  The river was pinched into a narrow chute between two banks that had grown into twisting and turning canyon walls, and once past the entrance Beth realized the worst problem they faced now was to keep the raft from being smashed against the far walls of turns where mighty waves of current crashed and broke. Shelley pulled to the inside of every turn, but sometimes there was another wall of water there in the form of a cresting standing wave. They had to swing wide, then paddle madly to escape the canyon wall.

  Then, as suddenly as it began, the canyon walls dropped away and the river widened and was placid again, the raft floating along the current in the center like a big old silver cork. The width of the whole rift valley was visible again, complete with lazily circling river birds in the air and webfooted ones swimming on the surface.

  “Don’t get too comfortable,” Shelley said, running his fingers through his hair to squeeze out the worst of the water. “It drops off again in just another kilometer … just enough time to get us bailed out.”

  “I thought we were going to sink,” Beth said, glad to see some progress in her bailing now. Shelley grabbed another bucket.

  “Can’t sink even if we’re full of water. But I don’t like the response. Let’s get it emptied.” He tossed a few bucketfuls, then said gently, “Frightened?”

  She supposed she was white, for she’d been deceived into believing that the first gentle kilometers were a fair sample of what to expect in the rapids as well. Now that she knew the truth, she did feel shaky. “I’ll be all right,” she said.

  “Me, too,” he said brusquely. “I just hope my knees stop knocking together before we get to the next one.”

  “How many are there?”

  “Fifty or sixty before we get to the coastal can’t tell for sure. My map is only a year old, but you know how things are in the riftlands. The whole river can shift overnight if there’s a good quake.”

  And there had been some good quakes somewhere, that was for sure. A mud slide could turn a river, even one as big as the Rift, and a fault block could drop meters and make a waterfall or a new rapid as the river sought the easiest downhill flow.

  Beth bailed conscientiously, then realized Shelley had pulled the raft into a gentle eddy, downstream of a big sandbar rising out of the water. Surprisingly, the raft stayed put, allowing Shelley an opportunity to survey the water ahead, where all paths were strewn with huge boulders, while Beth finished bailing. She could tell he would have trouble picking a way between them, for the water was choppy and foamy.

  “Ready?” he said finally. His knuckles were white on the oars.

  There was still water on the bottom of the raft, but it was getting harder to get it out. Shelley had seen it and obviously didn’t care. “Ready when you are,” she said, taking up the paddle.

  He nodded grimly and pushed on the oars to leave the eddy on the weaker, lower end. The current grabbed the bottom of the raft and sucked it out midstream. There were big boulders ahead, but plenty of time to avoid them. Thereafter there was less time, a lot less time, and Beth was dipping her paddle frantically in response to Shelley’s commands, hardly taking note of a boulder or the size of the wave billowing up around them, just so long as they were around them. It was always the time to change direction and swoop around yet another rock, or to keep away from a fat pillow of water that marked a submerged rock. There were trees with tangles of roots and branches ready to slap them or rip open the raft, most of them clinging to the banks but occasionally floating free and coursing the best current right along with the raft. Then Shelley would have to pull around the tree into less promising water, pointing the bow into standing waves that sent the raft bucking over crests and into troughs, as if it were a rollercoaster car.

  Just as Beth thought her arms might give out, they dropped into a jade-green pool and the river flattened. Tiredly, she exchanged the paddle for the bailing bucket. Shelley brought up the oars for a moment, and she thought his shoulders looked relaxed.

  “This isn’t so bad,” she said. “Tiring, but not impossible … and it’s kind of exhilarating.”

  “Everything’s fine until the first mistake,” Shelley said. His eyes were still on the river ahead, scanning near and far. He didn’t help her bail this time. When Beth complained, he reluctantly tossed a few bucketfuls.

  It was two days before she learned what a mistake was, just when she’d become complacent again and annoyed with Shelley’s concentration on the river even in seemingly smooth sections.