William Dietrich - Getting back

"Filling enough that I'll bet no one ever eats two," Daniel said.

"I'll bet she won't even eat one," Ico said. He reached in his pocket and pulled something out. "Here, I had this on me when the flood hit." He slapped down a wrinkled hundred-dollar note. "This says there's no way anybody is going to eat that."

"The aborigines did."

"I want to see you do it."

She held up its writhing form. "I'll share it with you, Ico."

"I'd rather starve."

"You haven't even been hungry yet." Suddenly she tilted her head back, closed her eyes, and dropped the grub into her mouth, swallowing with an audible gulp without biting.

"Oh my God!" Tucker cried.

Ico was awed. "More astonishing than Ursula Uvula on Sex-Net."

Amaya looked straight ahead, fighting to keep it down. "The trick," she breathed tightly, "is to swallow it head first so it can't crawl back out." She shivered, then smiled. "It's really not too bad. I can't feel it moving." She snatched up the hundred dollars. "I want more when I make an ant ball," she said fiercely.

"It was worth a hundred bucks to see you do that," said Ico. "My God, Amaya, you are some woman. I'll have some fantasies about that one."

She threw some sand at him.

"No, really," he persisted. "That was better than fishing us out of the drink."

The foraging had restored some confidence and they set out east again. The loneliness of Australia was its preeminent characteristic: in the week since they'd arrived they'd seen no other human, encountered no other track, and discovered no road or evidence of past habitation. It was as if they were the last, or first, people on earth. The spangled night sky emphasized their feeling of smallness and Daniel realized what a distorted sense of reality it had been to spend most of his life in enclosed rooms.

Rooms were accomplishment enough to make their human builders feel important and small enough to make their occupants feel big. A room represented not just interior space but boundaries, enclosure, fortification, territory. The desert felt just the opposite. The flatness was so monotonous that there was little feeling of getting anywhere, and the sky so huge that Daniel felt like a microbe under the eye of the sun. Instead of being depressed by this perception, however, he decided to be encouraged by it. If he was not dominating his environment then he was becoming a part of it, woven into its web. It didn't make him smaller, it joined him to something bigger. Since he was made from chemicals first forged in exploding stars, he reasoned, he shouldn't be intimidated by the vastness of the sky but feel at home with it. Sister stars! For the first time in his life he didn't have to get out of his apartment, or workplace, or city, to get somewhere. There was no there, everything was here. He was always- no matter where he slept- home.

"So, are you finding what you were looking for?"

It was Amaya, dropping back to walk beside him.

"In part. I was just thinking I like the immensity of the place. It makes you feel less significant and more so at the same time, and somehow that feels right."

"Really? I'm a little frightened by it. It's bigger than I imagined. That flood, the suddenness of it, scared me."

"You didn't seem very scared. That was quick thinking to get the rope."

"I wasn't thinking, I was reacting. What if you three had drowned?"

He glanced at her. "It would have left the most resourceful of the four."

"No. I would have died, very lonely and very afraid and very quickly. I know that. It's beautiful here but I don't have that feeling of rightness yet. I think women need something more."

"People, I think you said."

"A person." Her look was both challenging and questioning.

Daniel was quiet, trying to decide how he wanted to respond. He liked this woman.

"You said you've found only part of what you're looking for," she finally went on. "What part are you still seeking?"

He took a breath. "A person."

"Oh." She watched him, his face tan, his clothes red from dust. There was a new hardness to him, she realized. Less of the boy and more of the man. Now he was looking straight ahead, avoiding her implied question. "We have that in common, I guess."

He stopped then and turned to her. She stopped too. "I joined Outback Adventure because I met a woman who told me about it," he explained. "I think she might have come here before me. I'm not really looking for her, but I wonder if she's out here somewhere. I wonder how she's doing. It wouldn't be honest not to tell you that."

Amaya nodded, trying not to betray emotion. "I understand."

"I like you, Amaya. You're like her, in a way."

Her smile was pained. "Daniel, that's great. I hope you find her."

"I just didn't want to mislead you or anything." He felt awkward, and suddenly resentful that she'd made him talk about it. He hadn't been thinking about Raven and now he had to.

"I appreciate the honesty."

"I mean she doesn't even like me, as near as I can tell. I just need… to be sure."

"That's fine. I was just curious. I'm sorry."

He squinted at her. "It must be hard for you being the only woman. I hadn't thought much about that."

"You're all behaving yourselves." She looked away. "I wouldn't mind finding your friend, though. Finding another woman. I think it would be less frightening."

"Sometimes I think she's out here, nearby. Like I can feel it."

"That sounds nice."

"No. It's distracting."

They were quiet for a while. Finally he reached out, his fingertips touching her hand. "Amaya, you'll find what you're looking for. Not just yourself, but someone else. I know it."

"I'm sure I will," she said lightly, looking around at the desert to avoid his eyes. "Sometimes the trick is discovering what you've already found."

The landscape became increasingly monotonous as they walked eastward. The terrain was flat, watercourses had disappeared, and the vegetation was shrublike and gray. Distance was beginning to take a toll. Pant legs were becoming frayed from the constant friction of stabbing grass and brush, and the flood had stolen replacement clothing. Daniel gave up a pair of shorts to be shared as a source of patches. They'd salvaged two hand-sewing kits that were proving invaluable, but had already consumed most of their thread. "We can unravel more from a pant leg," Amaya suggested.

Their feet were increasingly sore from the pounding, and their collective weariness seemed to be cumulative. Each night did not provide enough rest to make up for the exertion of the previous day. Yet instead of slowing they pushed harder, trying now to get to wetter, better country. Discouragingly, the terrain grew drier and hotter. They were walking on an ancient seabed on what is geologically the world's oldest continent, its mountains worn to nubs and its valleys filled with sediment by unimaginable time. It was so unchanging it seemed as if they were walking in place.

Their anxious progress gave them little time to hunt or forage, and their remaining food supply was falling rapidly. The strategy was to replenish it in kinder country, if they could find it, but meanwhile they looked when they could. Daniel still made his dusk circuits from camp, and managed to bring in two crested pigeons, a rock wallaby (a small, agile relative of the kangaroo), and a monitor lizard. Just for amusement he caught and carried back a thorny devil, a small squat lizard defended by conelike spines. It looked like a bizarre monster out of a lurid movie.

"You finally found something that looks worse than the food in junior high," Ico assessed.

One evening Daniel came back with a troubled look.

"No luck?" Amaya asked.

"No, I saw something," he said slowly.