William Dietrich: Getting back

"This man," Raven told the pilots, pointing to Ico, "is my designated successor and replacement. He can tell my superiors everything I can about conditions here. Probably more. He's earned the right to get back. Do you understand?"

Slowly, they nodded.

"Be careful of the other one," she said. "He has a temper."

"Damn right I do."

Then, before anyone could change their mind, she ran from the rescue craft and vanished in the bush like an extinguished spark. The hover lights switched off and the craft began rising into the sky.

"Stay off the com," Rugard told the pilots. "If you need to talk, you can chat with me."

Raven looked up at the hover's shadow wheeling away across the stars, and gulped. I'm trying to lose my way, she'd once told Daniel. It had seemed like a clever line at the time. Now it was simply true.

Then she walked back down the ridge to find her way with the man she loved.

The hover swung out over a glittering sea and followed a road of moonlight. The illumination was so bright they could see the dark pattern of huge reefs below, the water sparkling with luminescence.

"Where are we going?" Ico asked.

"To a recovery ship offshore," the pilot replied.

"No we're not," said Rugard. He tapped the pilot's shoulder with the gun. "Set a course for Jakarta. There's a lot of islands in Indonesia a man can get lost in."

"They'll be suspicious if we turn off course," the pilot warned.

"Then go down to wave level and get off their fucking radar, you moron." He grinned. "This is your captain speaking."

They descended to skim the sea surface as they flew north, spray speckling the hover canopy. Rugard sat back more easily, the knife in one hand and the gun in the other. He'd done it! He was getting back! He'd slipped out of the toughest cage they'd devised for him yet, and he had a lot of plans to make up for lost time. "See how easy life is when you just take what you want?" he told Ico. "And after that little spell of Purgatory, I've got a lot of taking to do. A lot of taking, indeed!"

"You're a moral-impaired, aren't you?" the pilot accused.

"I am the fucking face of pure evil, my friend! Your worst nightmare, sitting just one row behind you! That's why I say, and you do!"

"You got that right." The pilot's hand had drifted to an armrest console. Now a finger extended, and before Ico could open his mouth to ask why, there was a bang, a howling hiss, and Rugard was gone.

Ico was stunned, slammed aside so hard that the wind had been knocked out of him. Rugard Sloan and his flight chair had been shot out of the aircraft with a small explosion, moist tropic air now roaring into the emptiness where the convict had sat a moment before. Later, much later, Ico would remember he'd heard a trailing scream. But maybe that was just his imagination.

Certainly there was an impressive splash where the convict hit the ocean, twenty miles from the Australian coast.

The hover canopy snapped back down and the shriek of wind was shut out. They banked. "Some of the biggest sharks in the world down there," the pilot commented. "Of course he might never come conscious enough to notice, since his chute didn't have time to deploy."

Ico sat as if made of stone, his arm bruised from where the adjacent chair had erupted upward. The emptiness of the space it had occupied felt like an abyss.

"These Q-180s all have ejection seats," the co-pilot added. "Of course, a smart boy like you probably knew that, didn't you?"

Ico opened his mouth but could say nothing. His bowels felt like water. He was waiting to be fired out into space. Had Raven known?

"Now," the pilot continued in a drawl, "where was it you wanted to go?"

"Where… wherever you take me," Ico stammered.

"That's what I thought." And the craft set a steady course to the east.

"What do you miss most?" Daniel asked his wife.

Raven was showing now, swelling like a ripe melon, but they still came for daily walks. They followed a grassy ridge above the watered valley where the group had finally settled. To the east the sea glittered, to the west blue mountains loomed. It was such soft land after the desert. A place kissed by rain.

"Who says I miss anything?" She sat on a rock, sighing contentedly and feeling her unfamiliar roundness. She wasn't really tired but she stopped more frequently now for the baby, making sure the new Australian inside her had time to absorb the country as she was doing. She could see the new wood of their cabin in the glade below, and a wisp of smoke from the forge where Wrench, improbably content, was developing a new skill refashioning salvaged metal. She was alive and in love, if a little breathless. The climate was good and the potential of this place boundless. "I don't," she replied simply.

"Come on, you know you do. We all do."

"All right, what do you miss?"

He considered, looking down at their new village. Domestic animals gone wild had been captured to start new herds, and overgrown fields had been recleared for new crops. They'd been unanimous in agreeing to not settle in the sad ruins of an abandoned city, choosing this new site instead. But they made frequent trips "to town" to salvage the fundamentals of survival. Windmills turned lazily and a waterwheel spun with tireless regularity. They had a crude dynamo and lights now. The pooling of skills had lifted them out of the Stone Age rather rapidly, and they lived better than most people of just a couple centuries ago. They were already planning a school, and children to fill it.

"I miss knowing," he reflected. In the months since Ico and Rugard had disappeared there'd been no sign that anyone knew of their exile. Sometimes they spied flashes of light high in the sky and wondered if there were aircraft or surveillance drones far overhead. If so, they were as remote as heaven. Periodically another exhausted adventurer would stagger in from the west, a refugee from Outback Adventure, recounting a familiar struggle for survival. Nothing seemed to have changed. Their isolation continued.

"I like the work I do now," Daniel went on. "Build this, grow that. The payoff is tangible and it seems honest. And I don't miss the entertainment of the old world. It's like a blinding noise has fallen away that's allowed me to see. I like our new stories, told around the fire, and our walks, and our long, slow meals. I like knowing people again, knowing them deeply- even their faults. My friendships are deeper here. I like belonging to this place."

"Me too, Daniel."

"I miss the obvious things," he admitted. "The lack of medical expertise, for instance. We're young and healthy now, but what if we really stay here all our lives? I worry about the pregnancy."

She shrugged. "Women had babies without doctors for a long time. I'm not afraid."

"I should miss the art and science, I suppose, but I don't. It didn't mean anything to me in the life before. I should miss the stores, but I like making things for myself. It's more satisfying than buying. I should miss ideas, but we're finding old books and now I have time to read them. I feel healthier than I ever have, since we walk everywhere. It would be nice to flip a switch once in a while, but since there are no switches- no one else has them either- I don't even really miss that. All that I've lost has been filled up with other things: the land, the animals, the friends. You."

"So why did you even ask the question?"

He sat on the grass beside her. "I still feel guilty, I suppose, that you didn't go."

"Guilty! You weren't even there!"

"Guilty that I was so irresistible that you couldn't bear to leave me."

She laughed. "Oh, please!"

"Guilty that I couldn't give you a proper ring. Find us a proper church. See you in a proper dress."