William Dietrich - Getting back

The superintendent looked at the charcoal in bewilderment. "With what?"

"Friction. I made fire from my hands."

Landau paused. Thank goodness this loopy kid had already given notice. "You're a friggin' nut case, you know that?"

Daniel nodded.

"Listen, Dyson, you can't start fires here. You know that. It's against the rules."

"Everything is against the rules." He set down his wood and put up his hand to close the door. "I'm done now, don't worry. My arm is sore." He jerked his head in the direction of his carpet, littered with packages as if at Christmas. "I just have to take some things back to the store."

If information on Australian geography was meager, information on survival tactics was not. Daniel became a repository of trivia. Rommel's troops drank two and a half gallons of water a day in the desert, he read. Workers at Hoover Dam consumed an average of six and a half. African natives had used pierced and blown-out ostrich eggs as canteens. Rubbing oneself with chewed tobacco warded off insects.

"Too bad it's a controlled substance," he muttered.

Physical training became an obsession. Now his miles were timed. Alternate days were spent with weight and tension machines. He logged endless crunches, sprints, and even began a martial arts class. Daniel wasn't especially quick or coordinated, but he decided the discipline and drills of Asian combat couldn't hurt. He also sought out advice on practical, gut-level street fighting- more to give himself self-confidence than because he expected to have to use the knowledge.

One of the trainers, an ex-cop, looked at him doubtfully. "Hit first and give it everything you've got, Coogan," he said, wryly using the name of a current action hero. "It will all be over in fifteen seconds, one way or another." He looked Daniel up and down. "It wouldn't hurt to know how to run, either."

Daniel loaded his pack, weighed it, and then went over his list again. He filled it with rocks equal to twice the weight and climbed the stairs of his building. Then again, and again, and again. He spent a night on the roof in a bedroll with ground cover, kept awake by the lights and the heat. His back was stiff by morning.

He stalked, and butchered, a possum he spied prowling through garbage, comparing its internal architecture with the manuals he was reading. He practiced until he could hit crows with rocks. He ran in a downpour, drank water sluicing off an awning, and measured how much he could catch in his hat.

People ignored his eccentricity. Everyone moved in a bubble of anonymity.

The exception to this was an orientation and final screening session for regional participants, the first of several weekend seminars for the next class of Outback Adventurers. "We thought you'd like to see who you might rub elbows with in the bush," Elliott Coyle told a gathering of two dozen in a windowless rented conference room in the basement of Outback Adventure's office tower. "Just so you know you're not alone in your desire for wilderness challenge."

"Or our insanity," someone quipped. The group laughed nervously.

Daniel glanced around. Most of the participants looked to be in their twenties and thirties, a third of them women. A few had the whippet leanness of endurance athletes but the majority looked reassuringly ordinary, and uncertain about whether they were in the right place. They glanced at each other shyly.

"Some of you will insist on traversing the Outback on your own, we know, but most of our participants choose to form a small group," Coyle said. "I encourage you to consider it. For ourselves, it simplifies problems of delivery. For you, it enhances the chance of survival. Not to mention the possibility of forming friendships that will last the rest of your lives." He paused to let them consider that.

They looked at each other uncertainly. Who would they get along with? Who could they trust?

"We're also going to subject you to a physical, some inoculations, and a final psychological screening to make sure you're really Outback Adventure material. While some of this may seem intrusive, it's the kind of thing that could save your life in the end. So please, bear with us and accept our judgment."

The group looked surprised. They'd already made their decision and paid a deposit. Now there were last-minute hurdles?

A hand went up. "Did I miss something here?" the person who'd made the earlier quip now caustically asked.

Coyle looked at the short, wiry, thin-faced young man raising the question. "Ah yes, Mr. Washington. Ico, isn't it?"

"It is, Elliott." He stood. "So glad you remember me. Now, if I remember correctly, we're paying you. And we have to go through more bullshit tests? Come on! We're ready to go or we wouldn't be here."

Coyle looked at him calmly. "If you're ready, Ico, you won't have any problem with our tests. And if you don't like the Outback Adventure program, then obviously you aren't ready and can expect a full refund." He let his stern gaze pass across the room. "This is your life at stake here. We're not going to put you out there if you don't belong."

Washington sat down. "Corporate nonsense," he fumed. A couple of candidates snickered and a few others looked uncomfortable. Coyle ignored the rustle and called a couple of names to begin the screening.

The man sitting next to Daniel smiled. "That boy needs to get into the bush," he whispered. "I just want to."

Daniel studied his companion. The man was big, dark, and powerful, so long and solid that Daniel thought he looked like a folded tree.

"Everyone in this room has been tested up the kazoo since birth," Daniel whispered back. "Who wants any more?"

"You do what you have to do to get where you want to go," the man replied. He held out a hand. Like shaking a baseball mitt, Daniel thought. "Tucker Freidel. I was an Alaskan trapper in a previous life. And a Zulu warrior in the life before that." His brown eyes smiled.

"Daniel Dyson," came the reply as his arm was pumped. "And in this life, Tucker?"

The man grinned good-naturedly. "A failed computer salesman. My theory is, I can't do worse in the wilderness."

"At least you're honest."

"And as fed up as that little guy there. I'm willing for a last poke in the butt if it gets me out of here and into God's country."

"We're going to find God out there?"

"I sure as hell am going to look. I figure I might need Him."

"But not a computer."

Tucker laughed. "I sure as hell ain't packing one!"

"You know what Captain Cook said about the aborigines?"

"Captain who?"

"One of the discoverers of Australia. He said, ' They may appear to be the most wretched people upon earth, but in reality they are far happier than we Europeans. Being wholly unacquainted not only with the superfluous but the necessary conveniences so much sought after in Europe, they are happy in not knowing the use of them.' " Daniel winked. "Happy in not knowing the use of them. Like computers."

"And how do you know shit like that? You with Captain Cook in a previous life?"

"No, just a history major in this one. A walking repository of trivia. Though I guess you could call college a previous life. Or a hallucination."

Tucker laughed again. "Or a damn waste of time. But then, so was my marriage and most of my career."

"So now you're here."

"So now I'm trying to get there. Listen, do you know why I'm really going?"

"Why?"

"Because it's the one thing a computer would never do. There's no logic to it. I'm going because it's there, like that Everest guy said. Because it feels right. I like the pointlessness of it. The one time in my life when I'm not doing what I'm supposed to do. Can you understand that?"

Daniel nodded. He liked this guy. He seemed unpretentious, down-to-earth, self-aware.