William Dietrich: Getting back

Coyle had taken a step back at this assault. "That's not fair," he objected, raising his hands. "Do you think that campground of yours over the hill is in any way realistic? Do you think twelve billion people can live like- "

"We can live like this," Daniel interrupted quietly. "We earned the right, by coming here and surviving here. You gave us that right by sending us here. We want to make a new society. And already it's more real, more satisfying, than anything your world has to offer."

"No." Coyle shook his head. "No, no, no. I'm sure your hamlet is… quaint," he conceded, the condescension plain. "But can't you see the irony here? You're not wandering. You're not nomads. You're not some kind of new human, reborn into some kind of grace. You're settling. You're becoming us. By building your new civilization- by doing what comes naturally to our species- you're setting out to destroy the very wilderness you came here for! You can't escape human nature, Daniel. You can't escape your own instincts. By building your village you're just starting down the road to another United Corporations world, except with more dirt and disease along the way. History will simply repeat itself. It's inevitable! Cut the pain short, and come with me."

"It's not inevitable. We're going to strike a balance and make a better world. We've learned from your mistakes."

"That's not what history teaches. It's an endless wheel of mistakes. Until now."

"Until here. The other thing our species does is learn."

Their counselor's look grew impatient. "If we have to, we can destroy you," he warned.

"No you can't," Raven replied. "If you come we'll go back into the bush until you go away. If you try to hunt us down your secret can't be kept from the thousands of soldiers it would take to prosecute such a war. And even if you did destroy us it would only prove how phony and bankrupt all your pretensions about this place are. Come after us, Elliott, and the truth about this place will pull your pyramids down around your ears. It's your society that's fragile, that can't tolerate questions or challenge, that has to fear its own best people and turn its back on its worst. So if you try to harm us it will ultimately be we who destroy you. Leave us alone: as a secret, a rumor, a myth. We want nothing from your world."

"You can't survive in the long run! It's impossible!"

"People survived here for fifty thousand years."

"I don't want you wasted!"

"Then stop sacrificing people here! Cultivate your so-called misfits before your civilization fossilizes! Because if you don't use them, we will, in our new society. And because of that, we're your only hope." She looked at him evenly.

Coyle's mouth was a line. "United Corporations has no need for your hope."

"Goodbye, Elliott." Raven took Daniel's hand, squeezed it, and, turning, began walking away.

Their counselor stood rigid, looking after them.

"Are you okay?" Daniel asked her, glancing back at the man in black.

She nodded, glancing up at the sunlight filtered by the trees. "Very okay."

"It's the opportunity of a lifetime!"

Ico Washington shook the candidate's hand reassuringly, smiled confidently, and saw himself, what he had once been, in the Outback Adventure client's eyes. Unhappy, suspicious, anxious, hopeful, vain. They were all like that, the young men and women who came through his door. Walking time bombs of dissatisfaction. They would go, and learn, and come back.

Or not.

There was always doubt, of course. These were people filled with doubt. So if you could never decide for them- that was against the rules, to push too hard- it was necessary to reassure. "It's the perfect experience for a dynamic, independent individual like you," he recited. "A win-win opportunity for everyone. It changed my life. I'm sure it will yours."

It was so easy. Just tell the truth.

The recruit left, liberated as always by the drastic decision and the vacuuming of his savings. Ico stood from his desk and stretched, looking out the tinted glass window. The city ran to the horizon, a chessboard of light as dusk fell, the office towers the board's strategic pieces. Ten millennia of human thought had created this. It was the apex of civilized achievement, and he its unsung defender.

Finally, he had a job he succeeded in.

Ico looked at the glow of corporate names, the tracery of lasers, the streams of homeward traffic. The city throbbed with the reassurance of ten million human hearts. He saw it differently since he'd come back. Saw what it all was for.

So strange, then, that Daniel and Raven had stayed.

Their decision troubled him. He'd thought of contacting the cyber underground, of course, but on reflection thought better of it. It would become another rumor of losers, and people wouldn't understand. It would change nothing, or ruin everything. So he'd done for Daniel and Raven what he could: more than they'd ever done for him! Told of their progress, urged their rescue. Coyle had gone himself and come back moody and irritable. The pair had sent him away!

He thought he'd known them better than that. What had the whole trip been about, if not getting back?

As he looked out he saw his own reflection in the glass. His tan fading now, his body a little softer. But a different confidence, surely. He'd done the right thing, hadn't he?

For a moment he saw in the glow of the city lights the red dust of Australia, and he recalled the snow-white trunks of the twisting ghost gums. The unreal clarity of it. A strange, strange place. His nightmares of it were of hot sand and relentless pursuit, so sometimes, after jerking awake in his vast, soft bed- the shadows of his condominium looming and the drumming of the city a mutter beyond his thick walls- he'd try to remember the sound of the birds. So many birds! But they wouldn't come to him.

Just as well.

He wondered, for the thousandth time, if Virus 03.1 had really been an accident.

Then Ico sat at his console, clicked up his schedule, and glanced at his watch. The one he'd worn to the wilderness.

"Your next appointment is here, Mr. Washington."