William Dietrich - Getting back

That was the way to go, he thought. In a dream.

Ethan came back with a spear and Daniel hefted it for balance. They'd fitted an old knife on the end and it was dark with blood, which was good. Give Rugard something to think about.

"You okay?" Ethan asked.

"I'm okay."

There were steps on the concrete stairs and he turned to greet Raven. Instead it was Amaya, looking worried.

"Raven's gone," she said.

"What?"

"I looked all through the tower and she isn't here. Neither is Oliver. She's gone, with all her gear."

"With her gear?" he looked at her dumbly, not comprehending. "Gone?"

She nodded. "Gone. With the transmitter."

Ico Washington felt vindicated as he clung awkwardly to a pony and rode hastily eastward away from Gleneden with Rugard and Raven. He'd been right! Right about the enigmatic double-talk of Outback Adventure. Right about his map. And right about Raven DeCarlo. In the end she'd deserted her friends and betrayed her lover in her desperation to get back to civilization. She'd cut a deal with the enemy! Ico didn't despise her for it, he respected her. It was the logical thing to do. But it also confirmed his view of human nature. People are what they are, not what they pretend to be.

Now they were trying to put as much distance between themselves and the derelict city as possible, before signaling for rescue and escape.

Raven had come to Ico out of some sewer in the city, accompanied by a strange, smelly Australian who'd delivered her and then melted away in that deepest darkness before dawn. "The bad people need to stop," the man she'd called Oliver had kept muttering. Raven had come whispering that she was going to take him, Ico Washington, home. Then she had him quietly summon Rugard and they met in the empty showroom of an abandoned auto dealership. There she professed that she'd come to save the life of the suicidal Dyson because of his lunatic agreement to a duel. Too vain, still, to admit she wanted to save her own skin like anyone else. "If you and I and Ico run with the transmitter, there's nothing and nobody for them to fight about any longer," she explained.

Rugard was suspicious. "What's to prevent me from slitting your throat and taking that transmitter right now?"

"The hover won't put down unless they see me. They won't wait unless I walk to the door. They'd shoot at you as soon as rescue you. Ask Ico if you don't believe me."

Rugard looked at Ico.

"That's the story she's been telling from the first," Ico conceded. "Who knows if it's the truth?"

"So let's cut a deal," Raven said fiercely. "I need your activator. We're almost to the coast and the transmitter still doesn't work."

"We were wrong about the Cone?" Ico asked.

"I don't know. I don't think so, if your pilot talked about walking here. But maybe we'd have to find a point where the coast extends farther eastward. So right now I need the activator, and you need me to call in the aircraft."

Rugard scowled. "You promise to get me on board?"

"I promise."

"Wait a minute," Ico protested. "Back at Erehwon you said there was only room for two on a rescue craft. I count three of us."

"I can count," she replied impatiently. "Rugard can overpower the co-pilot. We leave that aviator here, take his place, and have the two rear seats as well. Then the pilot flies us to wherever you two want to go."

"But why take the runt along?" Rugard asked dubiously.

"Because I got you here!"

Raven ignored him. "We both need him to help us watch each other," she told Rugard. "I don't trust you."

The Warden spat. "I don't trust you, either."

"And neither of us trust him. This keeps us all honest."

The Warden smiled. "Hey. I'm the first honest man you ever met."

So now they rode, awkwardly trotting on their unaccustomed transport, taking three horses Rugard's army had gathered along the way. The Warden had distributed the few horses to reward whichever men held his favor at the moment, like parceling out women or sharing the best food or intervening in a quarrel. It maintained his hold over the convicts. The man had a base political craftiness to him, Ico admitted. When he vanished his mob would disintegrate like an unstable star.

Raven was crafty as well, or at least had a core of hard practicality. Ico looked over at her beauty, cold and remote when directed at him. He didn't like her, never had. But he admired her realism. He saw now what she'd been trying to protect: order, against anarchy. She'd always done what she had to do, just as his own alliance with Rugard had been necessary: both had acted in order to get back. They were no different, morally speaking. Somebody had to get back, if there was to be any hope for the others. Not everybody could get back. So it came down to the most logical people. Her, the United Corporations minion. He, the only one who had really seen things clearly. And Rugard… Rugard to cow the pilot into taking them where they needed to go.

It should have been this way from the very beginning.

Ico didn't feel pity for the ones being left behind. After spending so much enforced time with them, he wasn't at all sure United Corporations didn't have the right idea about Australia. There was an advantage to stability, after all, to having a society safe from disruption from cretins like these. An advantage to a pressure-relief valve. When you had unruly children, you sent them to a time-out corner. Was this continent any different? Even sending him here, he realized, had opened his eyes. There was a method to their madness.

But it rankled Ico that Raven didn't trust him. Like Dyson hadn't trusted him. When they stopped at a stream to water their horses he approached her.

"Raven, I didn't want to go to Rugard," he tried to justify. "I didn't want to leave you behind. I just wanted to go too. I needed to go, as the one best able to understand the political situation back home. If the rest of you hadn't run away from the compound we could have worked something out, I know it. I tried to reason with Tucker, but he wouldn't listen either. None of this violence was necessary."

"Yes it was," she replied.

He looked at her in frustration.

"Because I was going to leave you behind. I'm not your friend, Ico. You're just a means to an end."

"To get away."

"To save Daniel. Rugard would have killed him easily and he would have died for nothing."

"You did it to get away."

She didn't answer. Didn't want to. Because in the end her loyalty was stronger to United Corporations than to the man who'd fallen for her. Dyson was a fool. She wasn't that beautiful.

The disappearance of Raven and Rugard hit the warring groups hard. All that blood and then they'd been abandoned in Australia after all! Daniel had been prepared to die to end the fighting, but in the cool ruins of the morning's dawn he found he'd been condemned to a worse fate: abandonment by the woman he loved.

"She's trying to save you," Amaya reasoned. "That's the only way she would've gone with Rugard and Ico. You know that."

"I don't know it." His reply was hollow. He didn't know anything anymore. "That's what's so hard to accept. Why would she steal off like that without a word? I mean I felt I'd finally broken through to her. To leave me with no way to know…"

Amaya looked at him sadly. She didn't know why either. To slip away without a word or a message seemed a betrayal worse than taking the transmitter. Didn't Raven love at all? In the tumult of the last few months, Amaya's own life had changed profoundly. She'd found herself- a confidence in herself as a resourceful, valuable human being- and once she'd done that she'd found a man named Ethan she was beginning to love deeply. Would she leave him with no explanation? It would kill her if he left that way.