About half the people in the park were single. Some who weren't single acted as if they were, and a few arguments broke out among couples. Edward heard one man telling his wife, "Christ, you know I love you, but doesn't this make anything different? Aren't we all supposed to be together here?" The woman, shaking her head tearfully, was having none of that.

Minelli had no luck finding a partner. His appearance— short, on the edge of unkempt, his grin a little too manic—did not attract the fit, well-groomed single females. He glanced at Edward across the open-air pavilion and shrugged expressively, then pointed at him and held a hand out, thumbs up. Edward shook his head.

Everybody was on edge that night, which was only to be expected. Edward stood to one side, unwilling to approach a woman just yet, willing only to watch and evaluate.

The dance ended early. "Not a great dance," Minelli commented as they walked in the dark back to Camp Curry. They separated near the public showers to go to their separate tent cabins.

Edward was not ready for sleep, however. Flashlight in hand, he walked west along a trail and came to the Happy Isles, where he stood on a wood bridge and listened to the Merced. In the distance, he could hear Vernal and Nevada falls roaring with snowmelt. The river ran high on the bridge pilings, black as pitch in the deeps, dark blue-gray in turbulence.

He glanced up at the stars. Through the trees, just above Half Dome, the sky was twinkling again, tiny intense flashes of blue-green and red. Fascinated, he watched for several minutes, thinking, "It's not over out there. Looks like somebody's fighting." He tried to imagine the kind of war that might be fought in space, through the asteroids, but he couldn't. "I wish I could understand," he said. "I wish somebody would tell me what this is all about."

Suddenly, his whole body ached. He clenched his jaw and slammed his fist on the wooden railing, screaming wordlessly, kicking at a post until he collapsed on the wooden deck and clutched his throbbing foot. For a quarter of an hour, back against the rail, legs spread limp, he cried like a child, opening and closing his fists.

A half hour later, walking slowly back to the camp, flashlight beam showing the way, he realized what he had to lose.

He climbed the steps to his tent cabin and collapsed on the bed without undressing. Tomorrow night, he would not hesitate to ask a woman to dance, or to return with him and stay with him. He would not be shy or principled or stand on his dignity.

There was simply no time for such scruples.

He did not understand what was happening, but he could feel the end coming.

Like everybody else, he knew it in his bones.

Chapter 58

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