He was like the few black bears he had come across on the mountain, content with his own company, irritable when disturbed. The car stopped at the same place; the man and woman got out and looked at the trees below for a while, and then, hand in hand, walked into the woods, out of sight. Sometimes, if the weather was bad, they stayed in the car. Always around the same time, late afternoon-early evening. Jack had trained his binoculars on them for a closer look the first time, and then turned them away. He wasn't that kind of guy. But the couple did disturb him. He found himself thinking about them when for months he hadn't thought about other people, not a soul, at all.

The sky began to darken. He looked for the eagle he had earlier seen circling lazily close to the summit, but it was gone. He put his binoculars down, and trudged back down the track, and noticed one or two new cracks in the path.

His walkie-talkie crackled. Small birds scattered. A whining, suburban voice; Anderson, who went home to his wife and kids each evening. At least he didn't bother about small talk.

"Jack, this is Vancouver. Everything still quiet with you?"

"Vancouver, this is Jack. It is."

"It's just that your readings don't quite tally with the ones we're getting elsewhere along the chain."

"Well, that's strange, Vancouver. Everything's here as it's always been. For hundreds of years."

"Just the same, Jack. Can you check them again, and re-send them? Just so we can say we're sure."

He sighed. "If you say so, Vancouver. I sure as hell haven't got much else on my schedule this evening."

He carried on down the track. A deer leapt away through the undergrowth; he made a mental note of it for the wildlife log he compiled each evening. There was no danger of him surprising the couple in the woods; his shack was hundreds of yards above them, on the edge of the treeline. He made his way down the mountain, to the hut where he would re-transmit the same manufactured seismic readings in an hour or so, after Anderson had long gone home to the suburbs.

He stepped into the hut, placed his jacket on the hook with a sigh, lit the lamp, and fixed himself some coffee. He re-heated the huge pot of soup on the stove - it lasted him days, if not weeks - hacked off a hunk of his home-baked bread, sat down with the soup and slowly ate it, pondering things, coming to conclusions. The strange withering of plants near the summit, the new cracks appearing in the ground, and the fact that the top of the mountain was visibly changing its shape and beginning to bulge. You didn't need any instruments to measure it; you could see the change. Yes, he would have to tell Vancouver in the end. And Vancouver would react by sending more people up to conduct more tests; and the press and TV would get to hear of it; and sightseers would arrive. And the carefully constructed serenity of the past few months that had kept him sane would be blown to pieces.

He had had a number of jobs since ... Nothing that had lasted. Until this one. Maybe he would leave it a few more days. The mountain might begin to subside, the worst might be over for another hundred years, and he could remain undisturbed. He had always found it easier to keep quiet for a while than risk a scene. But there was always a storm in the end. It had come to the point when he had no idea when he was going to erupt, or for what reason, or what he was going to do next. In the end he had just walked out, for good. He knew they had tried everything and things couldn't have been any different and he had not thought of her for months, until he first spotted the couple, and since then every time he saw them he could not stop wondering about who she was with now.

That night, he dreamed he had committed a crime he could not confess to, felt society's hatred against him, feared going to prison, what they would do to him in there. A crash of thunder broke in; he stumbled to the door, flung it open, gazed up at the summit. The moon emerged from behind a cloud, just as lightning illuminated the top. He saw the mountain silhouetted, swelling with rage.

Two days later Anderson came on the walkie-talkie, bright and early, while he was still trudging up the track towards the observation ridge.

"This is Vancouver. Jack, how's it going?"

"Vancouver, it's going fine."

"Listen, thanks for sending those readings again. Maybe something's beginning to stir, maybe not. It seems to be quieter further along the chain again."

"It's still quiet here, Vancouver."

"Ok, Jack. But keep a close eye on things, will you? It's what you're paid to do. You're not up there just to enjoy the scenery."

Later that morning he watched steam rising from a known vent close to the summit. That was usual, but the day before he had seen steam coming from a new area. Jack spent some time measuring the movement in the bulge on the northern flank. It had grown appreciably in the last week, a metre a day. Magma was pushing upwards beneath his feet; the rocks could only resist it for so long. The deer and elk were definitely on the move, there was no doubt about it, making their way down the mountain, through the Douglas fir. He felt excitement and eagerness, as though he was the captain on a sinking ship.

In the afternoon he saw the car come up the road. Only the woman was inside. She got out and smoked a cigarette and stared at the view. Perhaps they had broken up and she had come up here for old time's sake. Or maybe he had not been able to get away for some reason, but she had found it easier to maintain her cover by coming up here all the same. There was nothing in the way she stood that suggested despair. Jack had lost sight of her after that as he came down through the woods and was surprised to find her in front of him, on the path. She seemed less surprised to see him.

"Are you the ranger?" she asked him, aggressively.

"No, I'm not the ranger."

"You've been watching us, haven't you?"

He pretended to be surprised.

"I've been aware of you. I haven't been watching you. I've better things to do."

"What do you do here?"

"I monitor the mountain for seismic activity. It's an active volcano. We think, one day, maybe, it's going to blow again."

"That's interesting. It's just that, we've been coming up here for a while now - as you know - and after a while you get accustomed to a place ..."

"And I don't know, it's just that it feels different somehow. In the last few days. "

"Well, not according to my instruments."

"We haven't seen so many birds lately. It's much quieter."

"Seasonal thing, probably. But if you're worried, perhaps you should stop coming up here ..."

She gave him another look.

"Do we bother you, then?"

"Nothing bothers me. Maybe coming up here gives you an extra kick, a sense of danger. I don't know. I've kinda given up trying to figure out why folk do things."

"You don't know what you're talking about," she said angrily, and turned on her heel.

Apart from Anderson, she was the only living soul he had spoken to in months.

"You're right, there may be something going on. It's just that I'm not sure how big it is yet."

Her eyes flashed triumph.

"I knew it! We both did. The other day, we both laughed ... But it did. The earth did move."

"One or two minor tremors."

"There's been nothing in the news about it."

"Are you keeping it secret?"

He shrugged. "Press, helicopters, tourists, other volcanologists. Chaos. It all could still be a false alarm. Just don't go any higher up, that's all I'm saying."

She smiled at him, for the first time; the three of them were in this together.

"Will you warn us, before anything gets out of hand?"

He thought of others connected to them down in the city; harbouring doubts, suspicions, growing anxious, getting mad.

That night he was thrown out of bed. Crockery crashed to the floor and smashed. The remnants of his soup overturned and smeared down the side of the stove. In the morning he walked up to the summit, and saw that steam explosions had blown out a small crater, scattering grey ash and dirt, sullying the snow and ice. He shivered, not from the cold. The bulge on the northern flank was like a boil, ready to burst. Tectonic plates, continents colliding, moon tugging at the Earth, nothing stable or predictable. After he had blown his top he always felt calm and cleansed for a few days, until it all started building up again. She was angry at first at his rages, then became shocked and scared when they kept coming. In the end she had said she could not live with his suspicions anymore.

A hill of beans in this crazy world. The walkie-talkie.

"Jack, this is Vancouver. What the hell are you doing up there?"

"Vancouver , this is Jack. What do you mean?"

"That quake in the night. Four.point five. Were you going to mention it at all?"

"Yeah, sure I was. Of course. There are things happening up here you ought to know about. I wasn't sure at first, didn't want to start a panic, but ..."

"Jesus, Jack! I don't believe this. Jesus!"

"You will lose your job over this. I may lose my job over this. We need to get people up there, fast. "

"I guess we do, Vancouver."

"Jesus, Jack! I don't believe this. Shit!"

There was a rumble; he wasn't sure whether it was from the sky or from the earth, but pretty soon the sky began to darken. He looked up and saw the eagle flying down from the summit, heading back to its nest. All his life he had evaded taking responsibility for things; in the last few months he had tried to reorder his life, to strip things down to the bare essentials, so there was nothing that could trouble him anymore. Now that time was over; he saw that. Soon all the other experts would be there, volcanologists, geologist, police, forest rangers. There would be a security cordon, helicopters would fly over the summit to look at the crater. And when they arrived he would be banished, sent down the mountain in disgrace. Unless ...

He contacted Vancouver again.

"Jack! It's going to take days to get everything organised, to get a team up there."

"I know, Vancouver. I'm going to camp closer to the summit, above the tree line. I'll get as many instruments up there as I can."

"Well, all right, Jack. God knows you're a bastard, I hate you, but I'm telling you officially, don't put yourself in danger. Unofficially, that's fine, you do what has to be done. And from now on, for God's sake keep in touch."

He did, faithfully. While Anderson fretted back in Vancouver with his administrative nightmare Jack reported that the crater at the summit was getting bigger as the earthquakes continued. He had established himself on a ridge directly overlooking it, so that he could give an early warning of any mudflows and avalanches. It was like looking down the barrel of a gun.

Up on the ridge every comfort was stripped away; up there in the blasted cold it was difficult to eat, sleep, survive. For a few days there was a lull, no quakes or steam escaping, although the bulge in the mountain kept steadily increasing. One late afternoon he took a walk and focused his binoculars down the mountain, uneasy about a promise he had made. He saw a familiar vehicle making its way steadily up the approach road, to the usual spot. He had promised to let them know if things changed, but up here on the ridge, it was impossible to alert them. They must have heard the warnings on the TV and radio; so they must be crazy. They didn't get out of the car for a long time. Perhaps they had decided they could not go on, had to finish it, but had to return one last time? Maybe some feelings were stronger than anything, and they couldn't put the lid on them, whatever the promises they had made. Or maybe, as he had suggested to the girl, the risk just turned them on. He didn't care; he owed them nothing.

He returned to the ridge and his instruments. The howling wind cut into his face, tugging and pulling him, as if it wanted to tear him away. The ground started shaking. He thought at first it was just another tremor, but the shaking wouldn't stop. His instruments were going mad. And then there came a roar, the biggest noise Jack had heard in his life, and he thought for a moment about his wife, and the couple in the car who had come up there one last time, and he saw that the top of the mountain, the beautiful, perfect cone seen on picture postcards, was collapsing in on itself. There were no more questions; this was the answer. He had waited all his life for this.

He grabbed the radio, and, as a warm wind rushed towards him, ahead of the huge black cloud rolling out of the summit, he yelled:

"The Lookout" by Greg Freeman