Getting Back (22 page)

"You two are…?"

"Allies. Nothing more."

"And what does Erehwon mean?"

"I've already figured that one out," said Ico, who was listening. "It's an old name, from utopian literature. 'Nowhere,' spelled backward."

They followed the track for a quarter mile eastward before leaving it and striking north across the desert again. The stops were brief, but Raven's sense of purpose had given Daniel's group new energy. They marched without complaint except for Ico's periodic habitual wisecracks, and even he seemed happy now that they had direction.

"Are we there yet?" he jokingly called once, mimicking a tired child.

"Maybe here is there," Daniel replied. "Each place is the right place."

"Oh, please."

Raven looked back at them with interest.

As they trudged along, Daniel realized that meeting Raven and Ethan had given rise to a new emotional confusion. There were other people in Australia! He'd known that, of course- known about other Outback Adventure clients, at least- but actually meeting some changed the virginity of the place. So did the old track. Australia was still wilderness, of course, but suddenly a wilderness that at once seemed more familiar, more menacing, and more haunted. A populated wilderness. A wilderness with ghosts. His journey had changed in a subtle way.

The feeling of disorientation increased when they came that evening to a rusting light truck that was half buried in the sand of another dry riverbed. There was no road or track that he could see and so he assumed the old station vehicle had somehow been carried downstream by past floods. Its windows and upholstery were gone and its paint blasted away by sun and sand. The remains were the same color as the rusty hills, slowly melting back into the earth. And yet it was a human artifact, a reminder that people had long lived in this so-called wilderness: for fifty thousand years or more, anthropologists said. He was trekking in their shadow.

There was a rock cairn marking a well and they drank again. Tucker had come drowsily awake and was alert enough to begin rehydrating his body. As he drank he began to revive, croaking some puzzled questions. His dreams had confused him, but now he watched their new companions curiously. Dusk fell and Raven built a fire. Ethan disappeared for a while and then reappeared with a dead and gutted kangaroo slung over his shoulder. Clearly Daniel could learn something from their aloof companion's hunting skills. Ico was drowsing against the metal body of the old truck, seeming to take comfort from the flaking metal. Daniel got up to watch Ethan skin and butcher the animal.

The kangaroo was gamy, stringy, and good: as solid a meal as Daniel's group had had in several days. Tucker ate some, woozy but stabilizing. "Just a little on this stomach of mine," he said.

Ethan allowed a grin at how much the other three consumed. "Tomorrow I'll spear an elephant."

The stars came out, a familiar and comfortable ceiling now. Daniel felt an immense tiredness steal over him, as if he could sleep for days, but first he needed some questions answered. Where were they going? What was this Erehwon?

"Outback Adventure lied to us, didn't they?" he finally asked to begin things.

Raven's face was like an abstract painting, the fire flickering to illuminate first this plane, then that one, causing her to shift shape with each tongue of flame. She didn't reply, just looked at him with sadness.

"They didn't tell you everything," Ethan said.

"You don't know everything," Raven warned.

"I know the most important thing."

"Which is?" Ico asked.

"You're not supposed to get back."

It was suddenly cold despite the fire. Ethan had voiced a suspicion that had been nagging ever since Ico Washington's paranoid theorizing.

"The adventure is supposed to be permanent," Ethan said. "United Corporations thinks we'll be happier down here."

They looked at him with a combination of fear and disbelief.

"Some get back," Raven said.

Ethan glanced at her. "Maybe."

There was quiet as the newcomers absorbed this revelation. Elliott Coyle had said he'd gotten back, Daniel remembered. Elliott Coyle had promised an Exodus Port. "I thought the whole point was to find the way home," he said to Raven.

"The point is to let you realize this is your home."

"You knew this and you came down here? You knew this and you didn't tell me?"

She was silent.

"We didn't know any more than you," Ethan said. "The convicts told us."

"What convicts?"

"The morally impaired who can't be rehabilitated are exiled to Australia. They're ruled by one of their own."

"This Warden is a criminal?"

"You're a criminal, Daniel. A voluntary one."

"This makes not a bit of sense," Ico said. "Except that we saw some shave-headed goons being herded onto a transport when we departed."

"There you go."

"It's supposed to be for everyone's good," Raven explained. "A new colony, like the British made in Australia. To give people like yourselves- ourselves- an outlet for our energies. In the old days there was a frontier, or a war. Now, there's… this."

"We didn't volunteer to be pioneers," Ico said.

"But you did, in a way."

"No," Amaya said. "It's just an adventure trek. A vacation, though an unusual one. We hike to Exodus- "

"There is no Exodus, is there?" Daniel said heavily.

Her voice was flat. "No. Not exactly." There was something more she wasn't saying.

"You knew this and you came here?" Ico was incredulous.

"The people who come here don't know it, obviously," she replied.

"She hasn't told you half of it," Ethan added bitterly. "You thought you were going to a kind of wilderness heaven, right? In actuality, they duped you into volunteering for hell."

You may end up in a place even less to your liking, Harriet Lundeen had said to Daniel once. Could the gorgon have known? Heard dark rumors? Or only wished what others had made true? "I still don't understand," he said thickly, even though he felt with a growing sense of dread that he did.

"It's so obvious it's comic," Ethan said. "They maroon us by giving us what we want."

"What we want is to get back home," Amaya said.

"That's the joke. You are home. There is no getting back. Or rather, you've already gotten back. You wanted to come here."

Tucker shook his head slowly.

"Look," Ethan said. "Did you really think they were going to give a whole continent to a handful of urbanites to work out our angst? Come on! Don't you know the history of Australia? It began as a penal colony, right? It was settled by British convicts. This continent was a safety valve to relieve the pressure of inequities in the motherland. The hard-core murderers went to the gallows but the petty thieves, the political rebels, and the urban poor came here. What could be more logical, after the plague, than to use an empty Australia as a penal colony again?"

"But we're not convicts," Amaya objected.

Ethan laughed at her. "You're dissatisfied. That's become a secret crime."

"But we approached them," Daniel said. "I couldn't even find Outback Adventure without help. How would they know…"

"Right. You approached them. Proof of guilt."

"And things like your reprimand," Raven added. "Your troubles at work."

"But how would they know about that?"

"Daniel, don't be naive." She sounded impatient, as if she was having to explain something to someone particularly slow. "They know everything. They listen to everything. They talk to people like Luther Cox and Luther talks to them. Once they got everyone onto the Internet, nothing was private anymore. Your life wasn't locked in your head and your desk drawer, it was spewed in electronic bytes across a global network. They told you it was encrypted but spying became child's play. You spied to find me, right? They know us better than we know ourselves, from our electronic droppings. Why was the government so enthusiastic about the Information Highway? It was another way to watch and control."

He stared into the campfire, not liking being played the fool.

Amaya was looking from Raven to Daniel, considering all this carefully. "Yet the person who told Daniel about Outback Adventure was… you."

Raven shrugged with dismissal. "That happens all the time, I think. People like us seek each other out, inform each other of the possibility, and even sign up together. We betray each other. They count on it."

"Who is this 'they'?" Ico asked.

"United Corporations. They ensure stability by putting potential troublemakers down here."

"Troublemakers?"

"Unhappy people. Misfits. Malcontents. Independent thinkers."

"That's a crime?"

"Not by statute, but the system works on… conformity. You know that. I think they try to get everyone on the same track. The young adults they don't succeed with go… here. You all selected yourselves. You all had a dozen chances to back out."

"Our punishment is getting the life we asked for," Ethan added. "The irony, the humor of it, is quite sublime."

"Yeah, I'm really laughing." Tucker's look was grim. "So you two are what? Fleeing from these moral-impaireds?"

"Not exactly," Raven said. "We think we may have a chance- an outside chance- to really get back." She looked at Ethan for confirmation.

"Raven says the transport that crashed when I arrived should have been equipped with some kind of transponder, or transmitter. Something to signal for help. We came out from the Warden's little colony to look for it. Now, I guess, you're going to look too. I didn't think we needed you, but she wasn't willing to let you…"

"How did you know about this transmitter?" Amaya asked slowly.

"I worked in aviation for a while," Raven said. "It's a guess. A hope. But it's worth pursuing if I ever want to get home."

"Avionics?"

"Yes… electronics, communications, that kind of thing. After stumbling onto Erehwon I met Ethan and he told me about his crash. It got me thinking."

"We're near the wreck?" Daniel asked.

"Pretty close. We'll try to find it tomorrow. So I think we should stop talking about this until then. Believe me, I know how confusing this is. Let's deal with it when you have some hope."

He felt dazed. He'd found her, and might even be marooned with her. Or not. He stood and moved off toward his bedroll in the darkness to think.

Amaya quietly approached Raven as the group broke up. "You don't seem as bitter as Ethan," she observed.

"I just admit that I chose to come here."

"You don't seem to be as shocked as us."

Raven looked at her evenly. "I've had more time to think about it."

"Think about our betrayal."

"I'm just a person who takes life as it comes. So should you." Then she moved away.

The next morning the group split in two. Amaya, remote and lost in thought, elected to stay at Car Camp to nurse Tucker. Daniel and Ico, however, decided to accompany Raven and Ethan to find the remains of the transport.

"We're nuts if we let that bitch move out of our sight," Ico muttered to Daniel as they set off. "There's something more she isn't telling us. You're so pussy-blind you can't see it, but I don't trust that siren to tell night from day."

"I hardly even know her, Ico."

"Yeah, right. She seems to know you down to the color of your shorts."

They walked northwestward, Ethan leading the way and happy to be free of the burden of pulling Tucker. He was back on their primary mission but still treated the newcomers as if they were unwanted, or as if there was some unspoken rivalry. He kept an emotional distance.

The pair had fled eastward from Erehwon, Raven explained as they walked, and the community would assume they were trying to cross the desert to get to the coast on their own. Members of the Warden's group deserted periodically, despite warnings of the trip's futility. Once out of sight of the compound, however, Raven and Ethan had circled back west toward Flint's crash site, stumbling on Daniel's party in the process. She seemed troubled by that coincidence.

"So what exactly are we looking for out here?" Ico tried to clarify.

"An emergency beacon," Raven said. "Something on the transport to call for help. All aircraft have one."

"Why wasn't it triggered in the crash?"

"We don't know," Ethan said. "The Warden took some kind of transmitter but it doesn't work. Nothing electronic seems to work here."

"So we're looking for something that does," she said.

"Why would it work?"

"That's technical."

He looked at her with dissatisfaction. "Then what?"

"We call for help."

"It would still operate after all this time?" Daniel asked.

"If it's standard, the batteries should last for a year."

"You never told me you worked in aviation."

"I never told you a lot of things."

They walked on in silence. Finally Daniel addressed Ethan. "What exactly happened to you?"

"I was coming here for the typical wilderness experience," he explained. "My transport crashed. I woke up still strapped to the bunk, half the plane gone, and everyone but the pilot dead. He unbuckled me, told me to wait, and went to the forward part of the wreckage I couldn't even see to get something. Then these strange people showed up- it was the Warden's convicts- and I ran. I fell, blacked out, came to. The pilot was missing. I think he told them they could get back if they caught me, but they couldn't. They let me live afterward because it was clear I didn't know a damn thing- or that if I did, I couldn't let it slip if I was dead. So the Warden took me back to Erehwon. There's a mix of convicts and refugee trekkers there, all of us confused. I thought I was stuck here forever until Raven came along."