William Dietrich - Getting back

"I can do the trick."

He looked at her suspiciously. "Yet you came back to me."

"Yes. Because I need something else."

"Which is?"

She glanced at the storeroom. "Send the others out and I'll tell you."

"I don't trust them," Ico said.

It was evening. The four original Outback Adventurers were waiting in a cluster of boulders off the main clearing, a private place Ethan had picked out earlier where Raven would meet them after her negotiations with Rugard over the transmitter. The quartet had spent the afternoon touring Erehwon, a community that struck Daniel as a cross between a prison compound and a pirate outpost, repression atop cultural anarchy. They'd been told they would work for their keep: the men digging a reservoir while Amaya toiled in the kitchens. They were to design and build their own huts, using a stockpile of brushwood, and would have to earn their way to jobs of greater interest and responsibility: Microcore all over again, he thought. While everyone in the community was a kind of refugee, united by desperation, there was also a pecking order in the Warden's world in which the strong tended to exploit the weak. Bullying was epidemic. And because men outnumbered women two to one, sexual tension was palpable. Some of the women had paired off but most preferred to sleep in their own settlement in a separate canyon from the men, some trading sexual favors and others trying to maintain a rigid celibacy. It was a place of social disorder kept from boiling over by the rule of Rugard. What linked them was a longing for home.

"Raven wouldn't have brought us here unless she wanted to help us," Tucker now reasoned.

"She wanted to help him." Ico pointed to Daniel. "I just don't like being cut out of the loop while she brokers a deal with this Rugard guy. He is honest: but only about his own lack of scruples. And now he's closeted with this female hireling of United Corporations. Who knows what they're up to?"

"It's not like we have a choice," Daniel pointed out.

"Right," said Tucker. "Until she came along we had no hope at all."

"And we still might not if we don't keep watch on what Raven's doing," Ico warned.

"I don't think she's a bad person," Amaya said. "Just wrong. And useful right now. I don't know if this is going to work, but if it does we'd better start thinking about what we're going to do once we get back."

"That one's easy," Tucker said. "Take a shower."

"Have a beer," Ico amended.

"No, what are we going to do to put an end to this place? Who do we tell?"

"The media is transfixed by entertainment, not information," Daniel said. "Rugard is right. Why hasn't anybody heard about this place? Somebody has to have escaped. But no one tells. Or no one will listen."

"We've peeked behind the curtain, man," Ico said. "We gotta tell somebody."

"We're going to be sneaking back, not welcomed back," Daniel pointed out. "Our story is going to have to make an end run around authority. I think we start with the gurus of the cyber underground. This isn't mere conspiracy theory, this is a verifiable monstrosity, provable to any inspector sent down here. We get this on the Internet, tell the world, and suddenly the facade crumbles. Somebody in power will seize on this to embarrass their opponents. Once the truth gets out, Australia can't be sustained."

"Damn right," Ico agreed. "If we get back we've got the atomic bomb of scandals. We fan out and scream bloody murder. Then this asylum gets closed down."

"Why would Raven help us do that?" Tucker asked. "She thinks this is good for us."

"Raven doesn't need to know. All she has to do is get us back." Ico glanced out into the dusk. "Heads up, here she comes."

Ethan came with her, the two slipping into the cluster of rocks with a furtive dart, Raven's lips slightly pursed. They sat in a circle to hear what she had to say.

"It's going to be trickier than I thought," she began. "Rugard still has the transmitter in his storeroom, and he's going to let me work on it in return for my promise to take him along. But he won't let it out of his cabin. We can't just sneak out of here."

They looked at her gloomily.

She took a breath. "So I'm going to have to fake a repair with my electronic junk until we can steal it. There's a compound meeting and autumn celebration tomorrow night, lubricated with the compound's latest innovation: moonshine. Everyone will be there. We sneak into his cabin then."

"Won't he have guards?" Daniel asked.

"Probably. But I've got another idea about how to get inside. Has anyone done any climbing?"

There was an uncomfortable silence. "A little," Daniel finally conceded. "On an adventure vacation. But…"

"Could you rappel down that cliff?" She pointed to the monolith by Rugard's cabin. "Lots of drunks, a moonless night, and any guards facing outward. You slip down the cliff onto his terrace, steal the transmitter, and get hoisted back up."

"That's crazy."

"That's our only chance."

"Break in!" Ico exclaimed. "Why don't we just take Rugard with us? Cut a deal?"

She winced. "Because there's something else I haven't told you."

"Ah, geez. I knew it."

"The instrument will work, but it will only call in a rescue craft, not a transport. A small hover. My superiors knew the risk of sending me into this place with the knowledge I have and so they warned me up front that the beacon response plane would only take me. I have to be recognized. Me, and… the missing pilot."

They all looked at her in disbelief, stunned. Hope had been slammed shut again.

"I was really sent to find him, or at least learn his fate. He's the nephew of a board member who was being groomed to start up the ladder of promotion, and he was proving himself with this job. His failure to return caused quite a shock: apparently a crash like that had never happened before. There's even some suspicion of sabotage, because of his political connections. In any event, Rugard killed him. So that just leaves me… and room for one other."

"You want to go back with Dyson," Ico accused.

She looked at Daniel, then away, her face betraying just a moment of doubt. "No. I promised the seat to Ethan after he told me the pilot was missing and probably dead. I promised so he'd help me find the wreck." Ethan's face was impassive. "It's still his, by rights. It was his transport that crashed."

"But you didn't tell us this," Ico said.

"No."

"So we'd help you."

"Yes."

He looked at Ethan. "No wonder you weren't happy to see us. We threatened your spot."

"I just didn't want to use you."

"But she did. Because she works for U.C.! Because we're still being screwed!"

"Ico, shut up," Daniel said.

"Why should we believe you?" Ico persisted to Raven. "Why should we believe a thing you say?"

"Because I still need your help," she said stubbornly.

"For what? A bon voyage party?"

"If you help me steal the transmitter, you'll still have a chance to get back. Here's my plan. We retrieve the activator I hid, flee into the desert, call for help, uncouple the activator from the transmitter again so it can't penetrate the jamming, and you four go on toward the coast."

"Now there's a great plan. You go, we stay. How could I have ever doubted you?"

"No, this is your ticket to get back. Listen. The authorities won't bring me back without the activator. That was my assignment. I have to take the activator with me. But the transmitter alone- the piece that Rugard has been keeping-will work on the coast. It will work, if you get far enough east. I think. You hike there, signal, and by that time I'll have explained your cooperation to my superiors. They'll send in another hover and you'll come back heroes after doing what you set out to do: cross Australia. Such a reward has happened before."