William Dietrich - Getting back

He planned to confront Raven that night.

Meanwhile step followed step, the puffs of dust rising, the horizon shimmering in its heat haze, the flies not as bad here but still present, a solitary hawk orbiting like a sentinel of doom. It was like his dream, he thought. He was lost on a blank plain.

Suddenly something glinted in the sun ahead, a familiar kind of flash that instantly caused him to become alert to the geography again. It was a reflection in the lowering sun. "What's that?" he asked Ethan, the two of them bent forward as they dragged the travois.

"Trash. Civilization."

It was broken glass, Daniel realized. The newcomers stopped, strangely dazzled by this sudden apparition of a shard of old technology. They'd come to a dirt track through the scrub desert, he saw, overgrown and decayed. Gullies cut across it and brush sprouted in its middle. On its shoulders were pieces of glass from bottles thrown by bush motorists long dead. Amber, green, clear. The party put down the travois and poked around at the fragments like bent birds, as intent as archaeologists. It was a reminder that another world still existed.

"Where does the road go?" Daniel asked, suddenly imagining it merging into pavement, freeways, ruined cities, and abandoned ports. Leading toward home.

"Nowhere," Ethan said. "It's an old station track that washes out, the station long gone. Nothing goes anywhere anymore, because there's nowhere in Australia to go to." He watched Ico fingering the dirt with amusement. "Your friend never see litter before?"

"Not here. It's startling, after so much nothing."

"There's leftovers from the Dying all around, if you know where to look. We'll camp by an old wreck tonight. We call it Car Camp."

"Don't you want to follow the road?"

"I said roads don't go anywhere. They're just lines on the earth with no purpose. The only place around here has no road in and no road out, because there's no place to go to or come from."

"And what place is that?"

"Erehwon. End of the line."

Daniel squinted, remembering. "That was one of the code words to Outback Adventure."

"Was it? The Warden just thinks it's a joke."

"You keep mentioning this Warden. There's one here?"

"You'll meet him. He runs the place."

"The prison keeper."

"It's another joke. Except it's not, really."

"You say there's no place to go to and yet you're out here, going someplace."

"That's different. That's her idea." He jerked his head toward Raven. "She thinks she can find something and asked me to help her look for it. The first hope I've had in a long time."

"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."