Higher Ground

by Becky Black

  “My parents taught me to be polite. And I imagine you’ve heard ‘please’ a lot.”

  “Don’t flatter me,” Adam said. “My family brought me up to think I was the little prince. Flattery goes to my head.”

  Zach stroked Adam’s hair and kissed him softly. “Boyfriend,” he said after a moment. “You called me your boyfriend.”

  “I guess you are. Everyone else seems to think so anyway,” he added, thinking of what Korrie had said to him when he was driving her to the meeting.

  “I know. Simon thought we were together. I mean together for a long time. Established.”

  “Really?” Korrie and Simon? Adam didn’t know what to make of it.

  “He asked me if we were considering having children.”

  “So that’s why you asked me about kids.”

  “Yes.”

  Adam felt adrift suddenly. Or beyond control. Like a dream he had sometimes had of driving a vehicle whose brakes failed. “We’d better get some sleep.” Zach stiffened in his arms, then moved away.

  “Right. I’m sorry.”

  Sorry. Another polite word which went with please and thank you but not as pleasurable to hear.

  “It’s just…” How to explain? “Everything is moving so fast. We shouldn’t let the situation make us act hastily.”

  “No. Quite right.” He’d turned his back to Adam. His voice came from a distance.

  Damn, Adam didn’t mean to appear to reject him. He wanted Zach, and when this ended, he wanted to stick around and see where they could go. He reached out and touched Zach’s shoulder. Zach turned back without speaking, but he did lie down close to Adam again and let Adam zip them both into the sleeping bag.

  “Zach,” Adam said softly. “When this is over, we’ll have all the time we need to work things out. Whatever you think, we’re not mayflies.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “People keep looking back,” Zach said quietly to Adam as they ate lunch.

  Adam frowned. “What? At us?”

  “No, they keep looking back down into the basin, at Arius.”

  They’d climbed high enough that the basin spread out below them like a map. This morning, Zach had seen a lot of people looking back down at it.

  “I wouldn’t worry about it,” Adam said. “It’s natural. The climb’s getting harder.” The grass under their feet had grown thin, the vegetation sparse. There were no more trees. Soon they’d be walking—and sleeping—on rock.

  “The novelty has worn off,” Zach said, thinking of what Simon has said about Amina and her routine. “Especially for the children.”

  “Yeah. Kids don’t mind an impromptu holiday from school for a couple of days, but now they’re missing home.”

  “If we’d just hear something from someone coming to pick us up. Even if they said they were days away, it would be something.” Zach tossed down the plastic plate he’d been using for his lunch.

  “The Franes will keep monitoring. Something will come through.”

  “Unless the council has turned them back somehow.”

  “You heard what Visha said. They have to check it out once a distress call is sent. It’s the law.”

  “And if the Institute tells them not to come? The outposts all work for them; will they defy the Institute?”

  “We did.” Adam smiled.

  Zach stopped scowling and returned the smile. “So we did.” His frown came back. “But we know the danger. They don’t.”

  “Then we’ll have to hope they’ll obey the law.” Adam drank from his water bottle and passed it to Zach to finish. “Try not to worry about it.”

  Zach tried as the group went on after lunch, but he couldn’t help himself. Every time he saw someone look back down the mountain, he worried. Every time he heard a child crying or complaining, he worried. Whenever he glanced at Simon or Visha to see them monitoring their radio but getting no signal, he worried.

  The worry poisoned his day. The sun came out again after an overcast morning, chasing the clouds away from the lavender-colored sky. In his daydreams, he and Adam were alone here, and he could tumble Adam into the grass. Adam would laugh. He laughed so much. If they got off this island, Zach wanted to get hold of a book of jokes and tell all of them to Adam until he was helpless with laughter.

  He’d laugh and then turn serious as they shed their clothes and made love. Zach could feel the sunshine on his naked back just thinking of it. He could feel Adam’s fine, fit body straining against his.

  Then they’d eat together and talk the sun down before making love again under the stars and sleeping under those same stars, naked, like primitive men under Earth’s stars a million years ago.

  They’d do all that if they were alone out here.

  Instead, he worried.

  * * * *

  Matters came to a head after dinner. People had been somewhat subdued during the meal. Even the irrepressible Professor Korrie was quiet until she ticked off her cat rather crossly when it bothered one of the children. The girl—only tiny and perhaps not used to animals—took fright at the cat and began to wail. Her mother took her away, casting a dirty look Korrie’s way as if it was her fault. Korrie scolded the oblivious cat, and that should have been the end of it, but the little girl’s crying set everyone’s nerves on edge. A few more children began to cry too. A baby in one of the tents shrieked so loud people jumped.

  Then it started.

  A man Zach didn’t know except as a face in the crowd stood up.

  “Okay, Benesh, when are you going to admit you’re wrong about this?”

  “What?”

  “Nothing’s happened,” the man said. A few people murmured what sounded like agreement. Zach couldn’t deny nothing had happened—yet.

  He stood up, Adam rising beside him. And then nearly everyone was standing. Some people started taking the children away. Torres, who’d been sitting by her tent with a mug of coffee, strolled over and stood in a position between Zach and the challenging man.

  “His name’s Jones,” Adam said quietly.

  “Mr. Jones,” Zach said, “I know this journey is difficult, but I haven’t changed my mind about my findings.”

  “Neither have I,” Korrie said.

  “You were always a troublemaker, Ann Korrie,” said a woman near to Korrie’s age, perhaps a decade younger. “If the Institute said black you’d say white. Sure that’s not what’s happening here?”

  “You think I want to hike up a mountain just to cock a snook at the Institute when I could be back home in my hammock? I might have been a troublemaker, but I was never a fool.”

  “Why haven’t we heard from the rescue ships?” Jones demanded. “Shouldn’t they have come by now? They’re not coming at all, are they?”

  “If you think we’re in no danger, then why do you care if the ships come or not?” Korrie asked.

  Zach took her arm. “Er, thank you, Professor, your support is appreciated.” But shut the hell up. He’d heard she’d been quite a renegade in her day—it was why he’d gone to her, knowing she’d never kowtowed to authority—but the disadvantages were showing themselves. The founding colonists had taken courses in conflict resolution to equip them to live in close quarters for years. Zach suspected Korrie had skipped a few classes.

  “Haven’t we climbed high enough?” someone called. “Surely the sea can’t rise this far. Can’t we wait here for rescue?”

  “There’s no way to tell how far the island will sink,” Zach said. “It might only sink a few meters, or it might be totally submerged.”

  “Or it might not happen at all,” Jones said. “You could be wrong.”

  “I’m certain it will happen. It’s only a question of time.”

  “But you could be wrong,” Jones insisted. He’d moved closer, and the firelight and darkness made him seem bigger and broader than Zach remembered him. Involuntarily, he took a step backward. Adam’s hand touched his back, and he stopped. Jones didn’t look ready to take a swing at Zach, but he
seemed determined to prove a point, assert dominance. Torres moved closer to him. She hadn’t said anything so far, not taking sides, just ready to do her job of keeping the peace.

  “You could be wrong,” Jones said again. “Your data could be wrong.”

  Any scientist could be wrong, of course. Zach wasn’t infallible. Even having the backing of a senior colleague like Korrie didn’t mean he had to be right.

  “Yes, it’s possible I could be wrong,” Zach admitted with reluctant honesty. He heard Adam groan.

  “Ah.” Jones smiled triumphantly.

  “Shouldn’t have said that,” Adam muttered, but Zach felt he had no choice. The people of Arius were a community of scientists. Even the nonscientists worked with or lived with scientists. Those born here had grown up around them. They knew a scientist who claimed he couldn’t possibly be wrong was either a liar or a fool. Surely to admit to them he could feasibly be wrong meant little. But were they thinking rationally? With blisters and aching backs and crying children? With the siren call of their homes and beds behind them?

  “I know this climb is difficult for many of you. And I know what you’ve left behind to follow me. Please believe I wouldn’t ask so much of you unless I was absolutely sure that staying in Arius would mean your deaths.”

  “But you could be wrong.” Jones wasn’t letting go of that fact. Perhaps he hadn’t wanted to come at all. Perhaps his wife or someone had talked him into it, and he needed to have the argument again and win this time. And what would he do then? Would he jump from could be wrong to is wrong and then…what? Zach knew what, and it chilled him. God, don’t let him have children. Don’t let him take children back down there to die.

  “Yes,” Zach said again. “I could be wrong.”

  With a triumphant look, Jones turned away. “He admits it,” he called to the watching crowd. “He’s not sure he’s right.”

  “Listen to me,” Zach called, as loud as Jones but with pleading, not triumph, in his voice. “If I’m wrong, you can turn around and go back and everything will be fine. If I’m wrong and you keep following me, you get tired and sunburned and maybe have to argue with your boss when you eventually go home. But in the end, everything will be fine.”

  He paused, looking at the silent faces watching him. Adam’s argument about sticking with Zach giving the best odds for survival played out in his mind and came out of his mouth.

  “But if I’m right, then by following me, you get to live. If I’m right and you go back to Arius, you will die.”

  He’d frightened them—he saw it in the faces of many of them. But he had to make them see. After spending the day wishing he and Adam were alone out here, he now feared that by this time tomorrow, they might well be.

  “Please, don’t let the hardship of the journey cloud your judgment. There’s only one rational choice here.” He looked around at the faces one last time. His tribe, Adam had called them. “That’s all I have to say.”

  And he had to get away suddenly. He walked, knees trembling, to his tent and then behind it, where he dropped to all fours and threw up. He knelt there, trembling, until he heard someone behind him. Adam. He held out a water bottle. Even in the near darkness, Zach could see the concern on his face.

  “You okay?”

  Zach drank water and spat. He rubbed a hand across his face, wiping away sweat and tears. “Adam, would you make me some tea? With honey in it if anyone has any.”

  His mother used to give him honeyed tea when he got sick. It had earned him some teasing from roommates when he’d treated his infrequent student hangovers with it. But it worked for him.

  “Ah, sure,” Adam said. “Why don’t you go into the tent and lie down? I’ll be a few minutes. And don’t worry. They’re tired, not thinking straight. Jones is all mouth. He’ll have changed his mind by morning.”

  Zach wanted to believe it. But just as he could be wrong, so could Adam.

  “Adam. Do you think I could be wrong?”

  “We already talked about this, and you were obviously listening, as you gave them the same argument I gave you.”

  Zach smiled. “Yes, I did. Thank you. It’s a good argument. Faultless logic.”

  But would tired, aching, frightened people respond to logic?

  * * * *

  Zach woke in the morning spooned against Adam, lying on top of their sleeping bag. They hadn’t had sex the night before; Zach had fallen asleep shortly after he drank the tea Adam brought him, only partially undressed, too tired to get out of more than his boots and pants.

  Adam’s erection pressed against Zach’s buttock, making him wish he had the time to turn into Adam’s arms and kiss him awake. Peel off his clothes and worship his beautiful body. Zach had a semierection himself, but knew he just needed to use the bathroom—the latrine, he’d have to call it—and began to move carefully out of Adam’s arms. Adam murmured, turned on his back, and went on sleeping.

  But he didn’t get to sleep for long. Zach realized someone was right outside their tent. When he began moving around, they spoke. Korrie’s voice.

  “Better come out here, lads.”

  Zach pulled on some pants, moving less cautiously and waking Adam.

  “Wha’ss goin’ on?” Adam muttered.

  “I don’t know. Ann says to come outside.” Zach unzipped the door flap and scrambled out. Korrie sat outside, drinking from a steaming mug. Many others were awake and moving about, even though it was only 05:15. They were making breakfast and breaking camp, all rather quiet and subdued. A sudden fear gripped Zach. Korrie looked up at him as he stood.

  “Some of them are turning back.”

  “No!”

  Zach’s shout brought people’s attention to him, and he ran to the dying campfire, finding Jones arguing with the Franes.

  “You can’t go!” Zach cried. “You can’t go back!”

  “I can do whatever I want,” Jones said. “At least half of them are coming with me, and if I can persuade them, I’ll take the rest too.”

  “You’re certainly not persuading us,” Visha said. She scooped up Amina, who’d come up and taken her hand. “We’re not fools.”

  “You’re the biggest fools here,” Jones said. “Gray, Dr. Howie, mad old Korrie, what have any of them got to lose? But you? You’ve lost your jobs and your home, made yourself criminals for him. You’re fools.”

  “That’s enough,” Torres said as Simon stepped forward, ready to take issue with this. She stood between those two but looked at Zach.

  “I’m going too,” she said.

  “What?” Damn. He should have known. She had no loyalty to Zach; she didn’t believe him. She’d only come to do her job.

  “Someone has to keep the peace,” she said as Jones stomped off to supervise the packing up. Simon took his family to have breakfast. Torres watched them go and looked back at Zach. “I know it means leaving your group with no cops. But I think I’m more needed with them. You’re less of a hothead than Jones.”

  “Barbara, please, you can’t do this. You’re supposed to protect these people. You can’t take them back into danger.”

  “I protect them; I don’t tell them what to do.”

  “Then don’t go. Please don’t go with them.” She might only be here to do a job, but she’d been such an asset to the group he didn’t want to lose her. And he liked her. He didn’t want her to die.

  She smiled and shook her head. She still didn’t believe him. Still thought nothing would happen. “I’ll see you back in town, Zach. And I’ll tell everyone you were acting for what you thought best, even if—”

  He cut her off by turning away, unable to stand it. Adam stood behind him, hastily dressed, hair uncombed. He looked worried and then quite alarmed as Zach turned to him. How stricken must Zach look to produce such a shocked expression? He tried to pull himself together, harden his heart. He couldn’t stop Jones going. He could only keep on climbing with whoever would come with him.

  “Come and eat,” Adam said, an invit
ation that appealed, despite Zach’s miserable state. He’d woken up hungry, since his dinner last night hadn’t stayed down long. He followed Adam back to their tent, realizing only then his feet were bare. The damp grass stuck to his skin.

  Dr. Howie waited for them with Korrie. “Good morning, Doctor,” Zach said. Howie wouldn’t desert them, would he? Like Torres, he had a duty to people. Like her, there were going to be two groups he had a duty to. Which would he choose?

  “Good morning, boys,” Howie said. “Looks like we start the really tough hiking today.”

  Relief washed over Zach, and his appetite for his breakfast increased when Korrie handed him and Adam plates of scrambled eggs, chunks of rather unevenly toasted bread, and apples. He ate too fast to even taste the food. His mind whirled a mile a minute, working on what he could possibly say or do to stop Jones and his followers leaving. Even at this point, he must be able to think of something.

  But they’d heard all the arguments and remained resolute. He knew what would persuade them—the smallest sign he was right about the island. A quake, even a tiny one, showing the ocean floor had started to subside. It frustrated him to distraction not having access to the monitoring instruments to tell him the status of the fault line. He’d only know it had finally given way when the ground under his feet told him.

  Catching himself praying for an earthquake, he lost his appetite again and sat passing his uneaten apple from hand to hand. He didn’t want to be right, he tried to remember. Best in the end for everyone if he was wrong.

  But he wasn’t wrong.

  He looked at Adam, smiling and joking with the professor. How could he have missed the chance to have sex with him again last night? However sick he’d been, however scared, it had been madness to lose any opportunity. Tonight, he vowed, he wouldn’t fall asleep before he made love to Adam.

  Made love? Seemed a rather fanciful idea, but justified, he believed. Two nights ago, the night the island could have cracked apart and sunk unnoticed by him, it had felt like making love. He’d been in love three times in his life. The first time, he’d been fourteen, and the other boy only liked girls, so it had faded away, like his many temporary crazes in those teenage years. Twice more since then, loves which had also faded in the end, but before then the sex had eventually become like it had been two nights ago with Adam.