Getting Back (26 page)

"Our challenge of authority," Ico said.

"No! Your pathetic acceptance of it. You didn't challenge society, you whined about it. It's not just that you're useless- God knows the world is carrying billions of chunks of human deadwood right now, dispirited and zoned out- but you were worse than useless. You spread dissatisfaction like a virus without proposing any cure. At least my kind had the balls to take what we wanted. But you weaklings! You wanted to run away! So, they put you down here with the likes of me, the criminal and disaffected in one happy family. The only difference is that you paid to go."

"That's not fair," Tucker protested.

"Isn't it? Don't you recognize yourselves? They make you think you're a select few. Self-selected, the fact is. They make you think hiking through a wasteland is somehow going to qualify you for the corporate elite. What delusional vanity! What are you going to bring to a board gathering- marshmallow-toasting skills? They dupe you with your own self-importance! They turn your desires against yourselves! It's diabolical, really, how well they know you- how they let you betray yourselves. Challenging? Hell, you're compliant as sheep."

The others glanced at Raven. She was expressionless.

"Are you offended by my honesty?" Rugard went on. "You're simply not used to it. I find it ironic, kind of like advertising in the United Corporations world which always emphasizes a product's weakest point. If it's cramped they call it roomy, if it hurts they call it painless, and if it's bad for you they pick an athlete to sell it. And who gets to tell you the truth? Me! A moral-impaired! The first honest man you've met!"

"And you're the smart guy, Rugard?" retorted Daniel. "Lord of a log cabin? Sultan of a sty?"

The answering movement was so swift it was like the blurred attack of a wild animal. The Warden sprang from his chair and with the same fluid movement of his leap let the back of his hand crack across Daniel's face with a sound as loud as a whip. Daniel's head snapped sideways, shocked, and the entire group fell back, stunned.

Rugard leaned toward them, breathing hard, his eyes bright, holding out a quivering finger in warning. "I told you not to call me by my name. I told you, and I only tell once. To you I am the Warden, and if I even suspect insubordination, I'll gut you in an instant and unwind your entrails for the dingoes to feed on." Tucker's hands had bunched into fists but the shadowy guard with the sword had taken a warning step forward, and Ethan put a hand on the big man's arm to caution him. Daniel put his hand to his jaw. His ears were ringing and he tasted the salt of blood.

The finger dropped, the point made. The Warden let his features mask into a judicious amiability and he sat back down in his chair. "Does that seem harsh? Believe me, I'm the only thing that has kept all of you from being gutted already by the animals they send here. I run Erehwon like a prison, because I'm the ruler of prisoners. I'm the one keeping you safe."

Ico looked at Rugard thoughtfully. Life stripped of bullshit.

"This can't be possible," Amaya said. "Someone back home must know…"

"Why should anyone know? There's never a complaint, because no one gets back to complain. People compete to come here! Only a handful at the top know, and yet they have no blood on their hands. It's the perfect murder: profitable, easy, guilt-free. I wish I'd thought of it."

"You're lying," Tucker accused. "You want us to stay here with you."

"And you want to go to Exodus Port? Go look for it if you wish. Just remember that no account of what's really happening in Australia has ever surfaced in the outside world. Ask yourself why."

"We are going back, Warden." It was Raven.

"Really?" He was scornful. "You didn't last in the desert for a week."

"We weren't trying to get across the continent. We were trying to get a ticket home."

Rugard's face slowly revealed intrigue. "What ticket?"

"I worked in aviation electronics," she lied again, counting on her companions to back her up. "When I came here and realized we were trapped and met Ethan, I got curious about his crash. The rescue transmitter didn't work? Then I realized how ignorant you are."

He scowled.

"I realized how little you know about modern technology."

"Don't try me, bitch! What are you talking about?"

She reached in her pack and pulled out a cloth bag. Shaking it, she scattered some electronic chips and wire across Rugard's table. "Any beacon needs to be activated to penetrate the Cone of electronic jamming over Australia. They can't put normal rescue beacons in transport aircraft because convicts could signal to escape. You have to know the trick. Pilots know it, but you killed the one we had."

"He couldn't perform the trick! He was a double-talking aristocratic flyboy who led us on a wild goose chase after that moron standing next to you, and then promised money if I'd give him more time. Money! I wanted escape! His kind thinks they can buy anything. They've always thought that! He found out they can't."

"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."

The quartet looked at each other. If they made it back, it wouldn't be to become chums with United Corporations.

"The transmitter alone will work?" Tucker said, sounding skeptical.

"You're not supposed to know that, but yes, it will. There, not here."

"All we have to do to make Rugard's transmitter work is go to the coast?" Daniel clarified, puzzled.

"The Cone," Amaya said slowly. "The circle. That's what she's talking about. I've been wondering about that myself. If a satellite is projecting a blanket of electronic interference it should fall on Australia with a regular geometry such as a circle or oval. But the continent can't be that regular. At its edges, some pieces of land must leak out from under the Cone."

"They'd just make it bigger."

"No," said Raven. "There are too many sea and air lanes and nearby islands to overlap out onto the ocean very far. Australia is wider east to west than north to south. If you get to the east coast, the transmitter should work."