"The bullets have dropped below microseismic background. Nobody can hear them now." He smirked and flipped the mud-tipped twig onto the asphalt. "Makes you wish we were out there at work, doesn't it? Feeling the patient's pulse."

"Not really," Edward said. "Walking today?"

"Been," Minelli said, gesturing to the west. "Since about five. It's nice getting up in the dark. The sunrise was spectacular. Lots of my habits are changing. I'm

feeling very calm now. Does that make any sense?"

"Denial, anger, withdrawal . . . acceptance," Edward said. "The four stages."

"I don't accept at all," Minelli said. "I'm just calm about what's going to happen. Where are you going?"

"I’m taking the Mist Trail up to Vernal and Nevada falls. Never been there."

Minelli nodded. "You know, I've specked out where I want to be when the crunch comes." He raised a finger to Glacier Point. "You can see everything up there, and it's going to be spectacular. I'll hike up and camp out for a week or however long it takes, just to be ready."

"What if you meet some kind female?"

"I expect she'll go with me," Minelli said. "But I'm not holding out much hope." He rubbed his beard and grinned fiendishly. "I'm not grade-A Choice."

Edward glanced at a sticker in the side window: BORN TO RAISE HECK. "Mazel," he called back over his shoulder, walking east.

"I'm a Catholic boy. I don't know that stuff."

"I'm Episcopalian," Edward said.

"When are you .coming back?"

"In time for the meeting at five."

Edward followed the switchbacks of the first leg of the Muir Trail, pausing on rock-masonry vantage points to gaze out over gorges filled with roaring white water. He was halfway up the steep Mist Trail by eleven. The smell of moss and spray and damp humus filled his nose. Vernal Fall bellowed constantly on his left, ghostly clouds of moisture soaking his clothes and beading on his face and hands. He grimaced against the chill but refused to wear a parka or anything else that would isolate him.

The wet dark gray trail rocks reflected the sky and became a somber orange-brown. When the breeze blew thick fingers of mist in his direction, he seemed suspended in a warm amber fog, the fall and weathered, moss-covered granite walls lost in a general vaporous void.

I Saw Eternity the other night, he quoted, and not remembering the rest, concluded aloud with, "And it gave me quite a fright ..."