Jerry Oltion - Anywhere but Here

They were aborigines. Dark skinned, dark-haired, except for the ones who had gone gray, with wide noses and big smiles. That was a good sign.

Trent popped the latches on his door and opened it, to be hit with a wall of heat. He had intended to apologize for landing right in the middle of their get-together, but instead the first words out of his mouth were “Wow, it’s hot.”

“You get used to it,” said one of the group in surprisingly good English.

Trent squinted in the bright sun. This guy didn’t look like the others. He looked like a lobster that had been boiled too long, bright red and peeling even though he wore a big floppy hat and a loose-fitting gray robe.

Trent remembered what he’d meant to say. Stepping down to the red ground, he said, “I’m sorry we dropped in right on top of you. We didn’t—”

“We were expecting you,” said one of the aborigines, an older man with dreadlocked hair and a wispy brown beard shot with gray. His English was good, too, with just a little of the accent Trent would have expected from a native Australian.

“You were expecting us? How? We didn’t even know we were coming here ourselves until a few minutes ago.”

“The universe knows,” the aborigine said. He was wearing a leather thong around his neck with an irregular lump of black rock tied to it; he reached up and touched the rock as he spoke.

The red-faced man said, “We started walking here five days ago. He wouldn’t tell me why; just said I’d know when it was time. I thought we were headed for a town or a ranch or something, but we wound up here this morning and he says, ‘Now we wait.’ So we’re standing here in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the day, and I’m about out of patience, when here you come. My hat’s off to you, old man.” He lifted his hat, but dropped it right back on his head. Trent didn’t blame him; the sunlight felt like liquid fire.

He peeled out of his Ziptite and tossed it in the cab. Donna had already shed hers; she came around the front of the pickup, saying “Hi” to everyone on the way, until she stood next to Trent. “Hi,” she said to the aboriginal leader. “I’m Donna Stinson, and this is Trent.”

“They call me Billy when I need a name,” the aborigine said.

“And I’m Dale,” said the other man. “Dale Larkin.”

It took a moment for the name to register, but when it did, it hit like a load of bricks. “The bank robber? You stole the whole damned—how did you wind up here ?”

“Long story.”

“I brought you here to tell it,” said Billy. “So tell it.”

“Here? Now?”

“The heat makes him a little crazy,” Billy said. “Of course here. Of course now. This is where we are, and these people are only here for the day.”

“How do you know that?” Trent asked.

Billy laughed softly. “Would you stay any longer in this heat?”

That was a good point. But Trent wasn’t going to stand around in it and listen to a story all day, either. “Why don’t we find some shade before we roast?” he said.

Billy laughed again and waved toward the bushes with the parachute draped over them. “You have already provided it.”

That was a good point, too. “Fair enough,” Trent said. “Want a beer?”

“That would be fabulous,” Dale said.

“Yes, thank you,” said Billy.

Trent looked out at the other people and realized he didn’t have enough for everyone, but he and Donna went into the camper and brought out what they had, and the rest of their bottled water as well. The water proved to be a bigger hit than the beer; when the picking and choosing was over, the water was gone and there was a six-pack of beer left.

About half the tribe settled in under the parachute. The others spread out into the bush, digging for roots and who knew what else. Trent and Donna sat on the red dirt between two tufts of spiny grass, and Billy and Dale sat facing them. It was surprisingly more pleasant in the shade, even though the ground was still hot. Trent scooped up a handful of dirt and let it trickle through his fingers, and when he looked up at Donna, he saw that she was watching him and smiling.

“Earth,” he said.

“There’s no place like home, eh babe?”

“Nope.” He popped open his beer and took a swig. Nice and cool. No need for a nipple to drink it through, either.

Billy nudged Dale in the ribs. “So tell your story.”

Dale shifted uncomfortably. “What if they don’t want to hear it?”

“Too bad. The Dream brought them here, and we walked a long ways to meet them. Your lives are connected. From what Trent said a minute ago, I think it started before today, hmm?”

“He bankrolled the guys who invented the hyperdrive,” Trent said. “Donna and I helped them build their spaceship. But we haven’t met before.” He looked straight at Dale and added, “Then he robbed a bank right after I got some money out of the cash machine. I mean took the whole building and everything. The backwash blew me into the hole.”

“Sorry about that,” Dale said. If he blushed, it was impossible to tell behind his already-red skin. “I thought you were far enough away.”

“You miscalculated a little.”

“That wasn’t the only mistake I made, believe me.”

“Robbin’ banks is generally a mistake,” Trent said.

Dale shrugged. “We all fight the system in our own particular way. But I was out of cash, and almost out of options. After the Feds traced the money I gave to Allen and Judy, I had about ten minutes to grab what I could and get out of town. I holed up at my sister’s place in Granger and finished turning my van into a spaceship, but I didn’t want to go live on some frontier planet. I was getting pretty tired of living in the States, though, with all the anti-this and anti-that going on, so I figured I’d knock off one last bank and then go to Rio or something. But it didn’t turn out quite the way I expected.”

“What happened?” Trent asked, growing interested despite himself.

Dale laughed. “Jesus, what didn’t? When I jumped, I expected the cloud of air that went with me to push me away from the building a little when it expanded, but I didn’t stop to think that the building would be full of air, too, and all of that would be rushing away from the other side of the wall. So the entire bank came at me instead of away, and it slammed into the van like a runaway train. It smashed the whole right side and busted the passenger window, so all the air rushed out and sent me corkscrewing away like a wobbly football. I had to use an entire fire extinguisher to stop the motion, and another one to push me back to the bank.”

“Fire extinguisher?” asked Donna.

“Yeah, I had a bunch of C0 2fire extinguishers for maneuvering around. They work great for that; they’ve got those bell nozzles and everything. But you wouldn’t believe how hard it is to steer a van with one when you’re leaning out the door and spraying it into space.

“I managed to push the van back toward the building, but the building was tumbling, too, so I had to use another extinguisher to stop before I bumped up against it and got knocked away again. I’d planned to tie the van to the bank with a rope, but I couldn’t do that with the building spinning around, either, so I had to cross over the last few feet on my own, wearing just my Ziptite suit.

“And that’s when I realized that I hadn’t set the jump field tight enough. I’d figured it would cut the vault in half and I could just go in and throw the loot into the back of the van and be done, but it was still locked tight. There was a little nick out of one corner, maybe big enough to reach an arm through, but the edges looked sharp , and that Ziptite suit was starting to feel awfully fragile. And cold. Nobody told me how cold it would be! Or how scary. All that loose dirt and rocks and stuff that came along for the ride kept whacking into me, and the air regulator kept making that little popping sound when I breathed—I thought it was the suit getting ready to blow.”