William Dietrich - Getting back

"How do you know where you're going?" Amaya asked Ethan, whose brittleness had softened at Raven's revelation. Now he was one of them, against her.

"We're following a songline."

"A what?"

"It's an aboriginal term. They believed the world was created when giant proto-creatures roamed an empty plain, singing into being all the rocks and plants and animals we see today. It's not such a strange idea to me- the new physics contends that matter at its most fundamental is just vibrating strings of energy, a kind of music. That we're made of music, fundamentally. These routes of creation are songlines, and aborigines were assigned to them. It's religious, and somewhat mysterious, but the practical aspect of it is that these lines formed a map, or a pattern, of trails. In a preliterate society you learned your way by singing the features you would encounter as you proceeded. The Warden picked up on this and had the inmates compose ditties to help them find their way when they make treks from Erehwon. 'Turn east toward kangaroo rock, the next good water is half a day's walk. ' That kind of thing."

She smiled. "Is it hard to keep in your head?"

"No harder than the telephone numbers, passwords, entry codes, and Social Security digits I held before. My brain's been emptying of one kind of memory to make room for another."

"And if you get back you'll have to switch again."

"Yes. But I'll have learned I can do both."

"Do you miss all the old numbers?"

"No. But I miss what they represented. When I came here I threw all my gear away and I've been regretting it ever since. We're tool apes. It's our only edge. So until we get out of here I'm trying to use what I can salvage. You've got an eye for that too, like with the sulfur. The purists would let the wilderness kill them, but with balance you can survive."

He showed the group how an old hubcap could be used to collect a tiny pool of morning dew, or how a pit could be lined with salvaged plastic, tented by another piece, and collect atmospheric moisture like a still. As they hiked, he demonstrated how a length of yellowed tubing cupped with cloth could be used to filter drinkable water from a muddy wallow by sucking it like a straw.

"You could use a reed for that too," Daniel said.

"But I don't have to. That's the point."

Daniel plucked a reed. "I don't have to have tubing. And that's the point."

Amaya continued to explore nature. At Raven's direction, she found and unearthed buried frogs in a wash. The hibernating animals, cool to the touch and sluggish from their muddy encasement, had exterior bladders swollen to the size of footballs. "I read about these," Amaya recalled. "They store rainwater in this mouth pouch until the next storm. They haven't digested it, so it's supposed to be no different than water in an animal skin."

"You're going to drink frog vomit?" Ico asked.

"It's not vomit. It's less ingested than milk from a cow's udder." She squeezed and the frog regurgitated the water into her mouth, splashing her face. "Feels good."

"Geez, that's disgusting."

"Not if it saves your life. Raven's right about one thing: the desert is full of water, if we know where to look." Casually, Amaya tossed the torpid animal away.

The others tried it too. Raven laughed at her squirt, the first time they'd heard her do that. Daniel jerked at the sound, remembering before.

"People really did survive here, didn't they?" asked Tucker. "Outback Adventure must have briefed you to survive here a long time."

"Not really," Raven said. "I was intrigued by this idea and did my own research, just so I knew survival was possible. Outback didn't think I'd be here that long."

"Which makes me wonder why you bother, Amaya, if we're about to call a taxi," Ico said. She was stooped over some plants, adding to her inventory.

"Because the taxi isn't here yet."

The cluster of natural stone monoliths that sheltered the convict colony called Erehwon first poked above the desert's horizon like sails on an ocean. Ethan told the group that the immense rocks sheltered a network of wetter valleys between, their creased crusts funneling water into shaded pools. That description was enough to make the party quicken its pace, despite apprehension about meeting the people who lived there. They camped that evening still eight miles distant, the setting sun making the geologic curiosity glow like coals.

"The rocks look like big loaves of bread," Amaya said.

"I'm hungry enough!" groaned Tucker.

"They'll have food," Raven promised. "They've even started irrigation. You can see how the formation is a natural place to draw people adrift in the desert. A small group of convicts huddled there first and started to hammer out a society. Others were drawn in as if by gravity. The place keeps growing despite its management."

"The Warden?" Ico asked.

"He didn't get his position by charm."

"So what kind of society? Free? Anarchic?"

"It started like that, I think, but became just the opposite. We're talking about people who hate rules but need them more than anyone. I think they fell back on the model of a prison, the community they're most familiar with."

"That just sounds dandy."

"It's harsh. But that's what seems to work."

They crossed the remaining distance the following morning, the rocks sheer as fortresses and smooth as breasts. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, but tendrils of smoke announced human habitation. With it came Daniel's realization that the challenge had shifted from coping with wilderness to coping with people. In less than three weeks he'd entered the wild, been humbled by it, and now was coming for succor to a society that sounded more restrictive than the one he'd tried to escape.

He'd tested himself, he thought gloomily, and failed.

"Welcome to Erehwon," Ethan said as they reached the edge. "Some people just call it the compound."

"Easier to spell," Ico quipped.

There was no fence or boundary that Daniel could see. The settlement's outskirts were marked by refuse: scraps of salvaged metal and glass glinting in the sun, random shreds of hoarded plastic and fabric, a pit of garbage picked at by birds, and the acrid odor of a latrine. Two women were moving slowly through this litter, bent and swaying as they picked through the debris, their features hidden by the curtain of their long hair. On a rock above a canyon entry, a squatting sentry with a spear watched the approach of the newcomers, laconically waved, and then stood to blow on what looked like a cattle horn. Its blat echoed through the canyons ahead. They'd been announced.

"He doesn't seem very surprised to see us," Ico said.

"No," said Ethan. "Most who try to escape come crawling back."

A sandy track led into a grove of trees, the shade a relief. They'd entered the labyrinth of valleys and canyons between the red loaves of rock, a hot desert breeze rustling the gum and acacia trees. When they had passed out of view of the sentry, Raven told the group to wait for a minute and left the trail, disappearing into a small side crevice. When she came out a bulge in her pack was gone.

"It's important to keep quiet about the activator," she explained.

"Just make sure you put it where we can find the damn thing again," Ico replied. "No more misplacements."

The party passed a wooden corral where two sleepy-looking camels rested, dusty and huge. "The British brought them from Afghanistan and some escaped into the wild," Ethan explained at their questioning looks. "They're still in the bush so the Warden caught a few to try to break. So far they eat more than they're worth, so we may just eat them. We've also got a few wild cows, a horse, and some kangaroo in the stables. We're trying to learn how to ranch them."