Reprisal by Mitchell Smith

there, satisfied, dug in her pack and replaced her helmet lamp's battery. By bright new light, her watch displayed numbers near noon that made little sense to her until she thought about them, concentrated on them.
    She'd been in the chimney almost two hours. And up had been the proper way to go. If she'd tried going back down the squeeze, conformations different, descending, she would have stayed in the stone forever.
    ... The afternoon was difficult because she was so tired. Too tired, too cold in cool air to map, stretch the tape, check the compass and inclinometer, get the readings right and noted. She rambled through an upper passage that turned and turned again, a maze she committed to memory as she passed, with a veteran caver's noting of lefts and rights, ups and downs. ... She found a side crawl that had a breeze blowing from it, slid into that and down into shallow water, very cold--then stood and waded behind her lamp's light into a small chamber so bright with frost-white tapestries it hurt her eyes. Flashing from reflected water drops, from lacework and white ribbonwork in stone suspended from the little room's high ceiling, her helmet's light doubled and grew brighter in reflection, in rainbow refraction of roses, sulfurs, mauves and old ivory-chryselephantine. Miniature blizzard-white islands lifted from a shallow pool as clear as air, where her lamp's light shone down through perfect water to sparkle from quartzite pebbles on its floor.
    No one had ever seen the small glittering room before--and likely no one ever would again. It had been waiting for millions of still and silent years of darkness for some living creature with curiosity and courage to search for it, and discover its loveliness. She had come, and it was hers.
    For hours, as Joanna drove east toward the coast, early evening's falling sunlight forest odor seemed elements of a dream, an odd dream of roofless space and green of growing things.-Reality remained the coolness and darkness of the cave.
    The cars approaching, then thumping past her, seemed driven by dream figures, two-dimensional, who had no notion how to find their way out of a dark labyrinth of miles of passageway, falls, and faults. No notion of how to do that--then climb four hundred feet of slender line out of a cavern's well of darkness, emptiness. To climb exhausted, stepping up as each ascender--one at her right foot, one at her left knee--slid up the rope in turn, and gripped.
    Up forty stories to the light.
    ... She drove east, the Volvo's trunk full of wet and muddy clothes, boots, mud-streaked coils of Blue Water rope and PMI rope, along with equipment needing cleaning, drying--and for anything steel, a light touch of oil. She'd poured hydrogen peroxide over her right palm where the skin was gone, and that had hurt so much that spots swam before her eyes--tiny water-gray spots moving through a gray field. Then she'd taped on a gauze bandage.
    Her legs and shoulders ached from rope climbing. Even with ascenders, four hundred feet was four hundred feet. And her hands were sore--skinned palm, scraped knuckles, fingers bruised from gripping rock. Her hands hurt, cramped around the steering wheel.
    ... She came in on the nine-thirty ferry, with night unfolding like a bat's wing along the Atlantic's horizon. She drove along Strand, then up Slope Street and into the cottage's narrow graveled drive to the garage.
    There were chores to do--the ropes to be hosed, coiled, and hung to dry, and all the other equipment cleaned and put away ... equipment packs and rope sacks turned inside out to air. A couple of hours of chores.
    Joanna was too tired, too hungry, to start working right away. She left the garage, went up the cottage's back steps and through the kitchen door, then almost called out that she was home--almost, but caught herself. After a few more weeks, she wouldn't even begin to call into empty houses.
    She decided on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a glass of milk--put