The Expedition That Found Its Own Footprints

How it begins

The footprints were ours.

Edith recognized the split heel of her own boot.

She was less certain about the grave.

It stood beside tomorrow's camp, beneath a neat pile of stones that nobody in the party remembered placing.

The expedition sponsor read the wooden marker.

His face lost its expensive color.

"An unpleasant joke."

Edith checked the sand.

No tracks approached the grave except theirs.

No tracks left it.

Tom lowered his camera.

"The plate is already exposed."

"You haven't taken a photograph."

"I know."

Beyond the camp, the desert continued with the indifferent confidence of a place that had survived many people calling it empty.

Edith knelt beside the footprints.

They led toward a supply tent.

Inside lay tomorrow's breakfast, half eaten.

The sponsor stepped backward.

"We turn around."

"Which direction?"

"The way we came."

She pointed at the split heel.

"That's the difficulty."

Tom removed the plate holder and wrapped it in his dark cloth.

He had developed photographs in worse conditions than this. He had told her so at every river crossing.

Now he said nothing.

Edith opened the supply book.

Three cases of food had been signed out yesterday.

She recognized the signature.

Not the sponsor's.

Not the guide's.

Hers.

The handwriting was competent but wrong in one small place. The loop she no longer used had been copied from an old map.

She looked at the sponsor.

"Who gave you my reference letter?"

"What?"

"The original. Not the copy."

Tom made a sound behind her.

On the emerging plate, the grave appeared exactly as they saw it.

Beside it stood the expedition sponsor.

Alive.

Holding the spade.

Edith closed the supply book.

For the first time since entering the basin, the evidence seemed less interested in predicting the future than in exposing somebody's plan.

She asked Tom to preserve the negative.

This time, he did not boast about his experience.