Loosed Upon the World

by John Joseph Adams

I handed her the specs, thinking back to the guy who’d started this craze, the one buried under tons of sand and stone somewhere in Bright Angel Canyon. He probably hadn’t been paying attention either. People had lived through that flood.

  I could imagine “killer content” was rare. It might be worth more than all the metal ever mined in this state if you could get a good fraction of nine billion people to pay for it. The chances she’d get KC out of the canyon were much better than one in nine billion. It might work out.

  I didn’t tell her that if we saw anything really strange down there, she couldn’t upload it to any public site. There was no law against it, but I wouldn’t allow it. Not until Superintendent Mokiyesva gave his okay. Media drones swarming the place would upset the Canyon’s natural quiet, disturb the critters and the visitor experience. We’d learned that after the big Bright Angel flood.

  We spent the first night down at Indian Gardens near the old rangers’ bunkhouse. We slept under the stars. Katy wouldn’t have it any other way after she saw the Milky Way stretched like a smoky road from one Canyon rim to the other. She’d seen it before. I know because I showed it to her. But after five years under city streetlights, I let her think it was the first time.

  She took the specs off to go to sleep, but she still stared up, head resting on both hands, elbows open to the sky.

  “Stars aren’t KC?” I asked.

  She laughed, “Not like that, standing still. I’ve seen stars fly circles around the sky and constellations we can’t even see from Earth.”

  “Keep watching,” I told her. “This ain’t the movies.”

  She did for about five minutes. “What will I see? Shooting stars?”

  “Maybe, but if you watch long enough, you’ll see time. Watch it pass.”

  “Couldn’t you watch the sun and see the same thing?”

  “Sure, but stars are easier on the eyes.” We lay in silence for a long while before her breathing got deep.

  The next morning, I woke to her sleeping bag’s rustle. I opened my eyes. She was propped on her elbows, looking at me with a funny little smile. “Did you see it?” I asked.

  She nodded. “It was faster than I thought.”

  I laughed a little. “You’re at a good age to learn that.”

  She rubbed her green head with one hand. “Not fast enough to make KC. If I speed it up, it’s like everything else. If I don’t, no one will watch it long enough to see.”

  “You ever wonder what else they’re missing?”

  She got out of the sleeping bag, stretched her arms overhead, and bent from side to side. The sky was already bright, though the sun hadn’t come over the canyon rim yet. Pale yellow light filtered through the cottonwoods’ tender green leaves. They leafed out so early now.

  She shrugged. “Whatever it is, let’s get it on disk.”

  Not the answer I was looking for. I wanted her to recognize the beauty for its own sake, outside what money it could bring. I held out my hand. I hadn’t slept on the ground in an age. My hip was so stiff, I could hardly bend it.

  She saw what I needed right away. I guess when you live in a city, you learn to pay attention to people. She helped me up, and I hoped she saw how I needed her.

  “You got enough signal to upload stuff from down here?” I asked as I stood.

  “No. I think the Canyon walls are too high, and I can’t find a local network.”

  I put my hands on her shoulders and shook them playfully, like I used to do when she was a kid. “Then don’t use the specs. I’ve watched tourists for years. They think about framing their shots, what their friends will think of the pics, everything but the reality around them and how they fit into it.” I said the last five words one at time, so she’d know how important it was. Then I let her go and laughed, not wanting to come on too heavy.

  She gave me a hard look. It made me feel like I’d come close to preaching. “I came here to get KC.”

  I looked right back at her, my heart beating fast. I couldn’t believe how much what I wanted to say scared me. I said it anyway. “I thought you came to see me.”

  Her mouth fell open a little and her eyes got wide. “I didn’t mean . . . Shit, I did come to see you, but . . . You know.”

  I wasn’t sure I did. We stood there staring at each other. She seemed honestly embarrassed by what she’d said. Stepping up to give her a hug would’ve been the right thing to do, but I didn’t want to touch the tats again. My heart rate started to settle down, but only because I’d put a chill on it.

  The sun appeared at the Canyon’s eastern rim. We both turned to look. Its edge arched skyward until the full circle blazed down on us. Katy watched it until it cut loose from the horizon. She didn’t wear the specs and glanced sideways at me to see I noticed. I smiled to let her know I did, but it was hard to let go of the hurt I’d felt. I didn’t know if she was sincere or just acting that way. I shook myself out, got ready to hike. The warmth greased my hip now, but the sun would scald later in the afternoon. Katy slathered herself in sunscreen and we got going.

  We turned west on the Tonto Trail and headed off across the plateau. The Tonto Plateau is a huge shelf about halfway down the Canyon. It’s the broadest flat area below the rim. The four-legged animals loved it. Even bighorn sheep liked to hang out on the Tonto’s gentle slopes now and then. And they climb things on hoof I wouldn’t try without a rope. It was a restful place, even more so now that no hikers crossed it. A hot breeze seared my ears and dried my throat.

  Katy hiked fast, nipping at my heels. She covered ground like most city folk who wanted to check “Hike Grand Canyon” off their list of things to do: like doing laps at a track. I kept my own pace, let her nip. For all the years she’d spent in the city, nothing about the Canyon seemed to impress her now. Maybe she was trying to impress me that she could keep up. Maybe she’d seen it all in a movie already. More likely, nothing yet had jumped out as KC material, and she wanted to walk hard until she found some. I found myself walking slower and slower, hoping she’d look around more.

  I was glad I hadn’t told her about the mutant stag. She’d probably have broken out in a run to look for it. No, I wanted her behind me, where she wouldn’t scare off every living thing with slamming footsteps. I hoped we would talk, maybe straighten out the morning’s misunderstandings, but I couldn’t bring myself to start the conversation. I sure as hell kept my eyes open. I didn’t expect to see the old stag himself, but I was alert for clues as to what had changed down here that might’ve made him what he’d been.

  We crossed the plateau in the hours before noon. Floods had scraped out many of the deeper dips in the trail, leaving steep-sided gullies with bare rock or gravel-raveling slopes. Decades of rain had ravaged and ripped the place. It was as if the clouds themselves had decided to rinse it clean by lingering here more often.

  We came to a place where water had scoured the trail completely away. “This is what happens to a trail when no one’s around to care for it.” I patted my pulaski’s handle, where it was strapped to my pack’s side. “You ever think about doing trail-building work?”

  “I didn’t even know it was a job.”

  “It is,” I said, “and a damn good one.” Her expression let me know she wasn’t sure she believed it.

  I took the lead, showing Katy how to skid down the gravel parts and down-climb the rock. We scrambled up the gully’s other side. The sun stayed sharp, the air, hazy. The dust we kicked up joined the sweat salt stuck on my skin. I felt gritty as sandstone. I smiled. A hike’s second day was always when I started to feel more part of the Canyon and less a visitor.

  I pulled myself over the ledge at the gully’s top. I’d taken a few steps when I saw a big, greenish-gray slash out of the corner of my eye. I focused quick. A Mojave green rattlesnake, thick and blunt as a man’s severed arm and twice as long, lay stretched out in the sun. I was still in shock to see it this far east in the Canyon, when Katy came up from behind and stepped past me.

  The snake whip
-curled, rattling so fast it buzzed. It advanced on us, its head high and ready to strike. I grabbed Katy, but it took a yank to get her moving.

  When we got a couple meters away, the snake calmed down and I stopped.

  “Rattlesnake?” Katy asked, eyes alive behind her specs.

  “Mojave green. One of the tougher snakes.” I couldn’t believe she hadn’t startled at the rattle and backed off like any person with sense would’ve. My heart pounded. “How’s that for KC?”

  She shrugged. “We’d have to go back to get more footage, something more threatening.”

  My eyes almost popped out in disbelief. I realized she just didn’t know the danger. “You have no idea. They can strike half their body’s length. Neurotoxins in their venom will leave you in pain and prickly for months. They’ve got hemotoxins that will rot living muscle and leave an orange-sized dent in your leg.”

  She looked at me now but focused about a foot past my head. I realized she was filming me, or worse, some “me” she thought would make killer content.

  “Stop it,” I said, quietly. “Please.”

  “Perfect,” she said, under her breath. “I will,” she said, louder. “I did.”

  I wondered what she saw in me, what she’d been looking at all morning. A stringy old woman, walking funny on a bad hip, now with eyes bugged out and terrified. If the snake didn’t scare viewers on its own, maybe my reaction would. Or make them laugh out loud. I wondered if she’d ask my permission to upload it. I wondered if I’d give it.

  “What will you do with all this money you hope to get?” I asked.

  She thought for a while, looking back toward the snake. Finally, she answered me. “I won’t have to work. I could do whatever I wanted.”

  “What would you do?”

  She thought hard on that too, which impressed me. “Come up with more KC. Hang out, relax.”

  “With who?”

  “Cool people.” She shrugged. “Everybody wants to hang out with people who make KC. They’re more interesting.” She looked down and smiled faintly. “I’d be more interesting.”

  I nodded, but the answer made me sad, somehow. Attention was likely hard to come by if you’re competing with nine billion people, but there ought to be something else out there worth working for.

  We walked on, hiking on the slope above the gully’s head to avoid any more surprises. I had a heightened awareness for anything linear and green-colored. It didn’t serve me well.

  The farther we got towards Horn Creek, the stranger the prickly pear cactus got. Prickly pear usually had succulent pads, the size of salad plates, standing tall in upraised branches. The ones here were wrinkled up like giant prunes. Their branches lay on the ground in shriveled green chains as if they didn’t have enough strength to stand up anymore. It made the place look like it crawled with snakes.

  We came to a gully that had eaten into solid rock at its head, creating a cliff we could not pass. The rock was loose and crumbly, impossible to climb.

  “Is this it?” Katy asked. “Do we have to go back now?”

  It pleased me to hear her disappointed at the possibility. I eyed the gully downstream, where there were slopes of softer material. They were too steep, loose, and long to walk down safely, but we could get down by cutting ledges and digging a path in a couple key places. I took off my pack and unstrapped the pulaski. “Let’s build some trail, girl.”

  She looked at me in disbelief.

  “A rough one, just a foot wide.”

  We walked back to where the slope was less steep, a soft spot in the shale. I cut the first bit, showing Katy how to set her back and swing the tool, always keeping it at or below the shoulder. Katy took over after a while. She was clumsy at first but finally got the rhythm. Swing and heft, swing and heft. She smiled and hummed as she worked. I’d have sworn she liked it. The crumbly rock was easy to work through, and we made a neat path to the bottom and back up in two hours.

  We got to the top. I took my pack off and enjoyed the cool of the sweat-soaked shirt on my back. Katy wiped her brow. Her tattoos glistened with sweat like dew-covered moss. She smelled green like cut grass again. The scent seemed alien. Most of the shrubs and grasses were gone, replaced by cactus that could live with the cycles of short, hard rains followed by long, brutally hot and dry spells. I wondered about forage for the deer. The shriveled, prickly cactus pads would not be edible to anything with a tender tongue.

  We looked back down our trail. It was a thin thing, a couple ledges cut into the hard places and a narrow platform dug into the soft parts. Katy looked from me, to it, and back again.

  “We did that,” she said. “We built it.”

  I smiled. “It’ll be there for us when we come back, for the critters and any hikers or rangers who come this way after us. This is good work.”

  Katy saw what I was getting at. “My videos will stay around, Aunt Sue. People will watch them over and over again if I do them right. They might change the way people think.”

  What she said was true, but I thought it over, because it missed something. Finally, I came around to it. “What a person thinks is only important if it changes what they do.”

  Her expression went sour. I knew I’d done wrong. She’d taken what I’d said as criticism, and it had hurt her.

  “The next big rain will take this trail out,” she said, striking back at me.

  I kept my voice as gentle as I could. “And then we’ll need somebody to come rebuild it.” I reached over and touched her cheek lightly. “Someone like you.” I patted the green leaf shape ingrained in her face. Her expression changed gradually. It got softer but touched with worry. She saw what I was really getting at for the first time: I wanted her to stay here with me, get a job at the park, and all that came with it.

  “Let’s get going,” I said. I wanted her to think it over for a while. I wouldn’t ask her to stay straight out unless I thought she’d say yes. “I want to camp at Horn Creek tonight.”

  We walked on, and I stayed sharp-eyed. The Canyon has nooks, cracks, and caves aplenty to hide in. I searched the ground and sky. The snake and the cactus spooked me, but I kept the possible dangers to myself. I wanted her to see the beauty here and the peace of it.

  A couple California condors soared so high above us, they looked small against the Canyon’s walls. The trail dropped into a little side canyon along a stone ledge too hard to get washed out. Three condors stood together on the ground down there.

  I put an arm out to hold Katy back. They looked like a group of bald, feathered kids. That’s how big they were. The two bigger ones turned their black, beady eyes our direction. The smaller one kept its face to some carcass they’d all been picking at.

  “Vultures?” asked Katy. She stared avidly through her specs.

  “Condors,” I told her. I was proud she’d made a good guess, but worried about how intent she seemed. Not paying attention; more like working on buying it for herself. “Be aware. Condors are carrion eaters, but I’ve seen them fight over carcasses. They have a young one with them, which might make them defensive. Stay close. Don’t move fast unless I do.” She nodded, eyes still stuck on the condors.

  I took Katy’s hand and walked real slow down the trail. I figured we could get past them if we didn’t make any fast moves or get too much closer. Our footsteps, quiet as they were, echoed around the little canyon like sharp whispers. The place stank with the rotten-fish scent of flesh long dead. I swallowed against a gag and pinched my nose shut with my other hand.

  “Bob?” the biggest condor said. The name gurgled up from deep in its throat.

  I froze, shocked to hear a word from its big, hooked beak. My mind spun on it. Bob Patchett was the only man left in the California condor captive breeding program. He’d been alone up there at Vermillion Cliffs for decades, hand-feeding every baby bird until it was old enough to hunt for itself. I’d heard rumors he even chased the parents off sometimes so the little critters would still need him. I had no trouble believing
they were smarter than parrots, given similar training.

  “Bob?” the condor said again, louder this time. “Bob?” It took two hops toward us, each one long enough to shame any human broad-jumper. “Bob?” It sounded hopeful. I noticed the carcass they shared: a wolf. The condors in comparison made it look mighty small.

  Katy squeezed my hand tighter each time it hopped. A condor won’t usually attack a person, but they’ve got beaks and talons evolved to pluck tendons from dead mammoths and smilodons. They can do serious damage just poking around, being curious. The creature was close, no more than thirty feet off. I shuffled sideways down the trail, keeping my eyes on the condor. Katy stuck with me, her palm slick with sweat on mine.

  The bird saw our retreat and took another desperate hop forward, a really big one this time. It flared its wings to catch a little glide. I swear those big, black wings touched the canyon walls on both sides. They could’ve wrapped around the two of us twice. The long feathers at its wingtips spread out like too many fingers. The damn thing was way too close. In seconds, it could start pecking at our hands, looking for a treat. I thought fast and remembered the one thing that made Bob Patchett really mad. He’d been married once. The woman had been last to leave the program up there. I searched for her name.

  “Diane!” I shouted. “Diane!” I launched a curse-laden tirade against this woman I’d never met.

  The condor knew the name. He jumped backward twice and ruffled up the feather frill at the base of its bald neck. Just as I’d suspected, thinking about Diane had put Bob out of the nurturing mood, probably every time.

  I pulled Katy along with me. We made quick time up the canyon’s other side. I continued cussing Diane as we climbed. When we got back up on the plateau, I felt safer. A condor wouldn’t hop after us this whole way, and they weren’t built to attack from the air.

  Katy looked at me wide-eyed. “What is a condor, and who’s Diane?”

  “California condors. We saved ’em. When I was your age, there weren’t more than a couple hundred left.”

  “How’d you save them?” She looked at me, honestly interested.