William Dietrich - Getting back

"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?"