Instead of pretending to be Lara Croft, she should’ve put the life jacket on, just like he ’d said. But it was so tempting to show him that he wasn ’t the only tough one here. Well, she had definitely found the best way show him that . . .
What difference does it make that you can swim four styles if you can ’t control your right foot any longer ? The shore isn ’t too far away, an d the water is not as icy cold as it had felt at the first contact . . . But some cold monster keeps dragging you to its lair at the bottom of the lake and there ’s nothing, nothing you can do to fight it off. Only flounder helplessly and marvel at the enormous stupidity of your thought: “Just don ’t scream . . . Don ’t scream!”
And then there was t he sound of a splash behind her, and a few long momen ts later he was swimming next to her. Not teasing, not saying “Told you so ,” not saying a word. Just helping, helping . . .
Yes, had it not been for his help, she’d be dead by now. And it would ’ve been so incredibly dumb , to have come to this absurd workshop and drown like this , on some random leisure trip just three hours away from home. And , above all, to drown like an utter fool, trying to prove who knows what to who knows whom , for who knows why.
The story of her life: proving something to someone . . . To herself, to others . And what for? What for? Had she drowned now, everything she had been trying to achieve, everything she had been pulling the countless all-nighters for—everything would ’ve gone in vain and forever stayed unachieved and unaccomplished. And the funny thing is , no one would ’ve cared. No one but Mom of course. She would ’ve never recovered from this.
As for the office . . . Barnett would’ve heaved a sigh, shaken his noble head and said gravely , “It ’s a shame . . . She had such a great potential.” For a moment she even heard his low baritone: “Great potential.” But the next second his voice would ’ve dropped that deep sorrow and would’ve state d, in t he utmost matter-of—fact way , “We need to find a replacement.”
Not even a week would pass before she’d be completely forgotten. Out of sight, out of mind. Maybe a ye ar later, someone new would ask , while looking at the old documentation and trying to find the right person to contact: “Who ’s that? Is she still here?” And somebody else would reply indifferently , “Nah, she ’s gone for good. Drowned last year . Went to some off-site training, hit it off with some guy over there . . . They went for a boat ride and she never came back . . .”
And then it dawned on her. That’s why he ’d saved her! That ’s the reason!
Well, that might not have been the only reason, but still . . . had he come back alone, there would ’ve been a lot of explaining to do. And who knows how successful he ’d be at that. Such a classic plot : a couple, a boat, a tragic accident. The poor macho had had no choice but to save her! No problems, no explanations to deal with and , oh, such a convenient by-product: he ’s a hero! A real hero. A hero who saved that ignorant , presumptuous , pompous fool in a skirt. He risked his life , he jumped in to the water in his clothes, he did the right thing with no hesitation . These are signs of a true leader.
She felt that she was far from being fair to Robert, but there was nothing she could or wanted to do about her anger. Instead of feeling thankful , she felt irritation boiling up inside her. So you ’re Superman, right? You ’re above all petty human feelings, right? The whole , “I told you so ” concept is not for superheroes, is it? Can ’t you at least hint that I should ’ve listened to your warning ?
But he had to be a true hero. He dragged her to the shore, brought her around, arranged a campfire with in five minutes—and did it all as if these were his routine day-to-day activities. Although who knows, they may well be . No one has a clue about what he does at work. Or after work for that matter. Now he sits here and shows off his nerves of steel. Like an adult with a child. And that would ’ve been fine, except he ’s a r ascal who thinks women are second-class citizens, if not worse. He would ’ve jumped faster in to the water to save his dog! After that information that Kevin had relayed, all his help wasn’t worth a dime. That ’s right, isn ’t wo rth a dime!
Stella looked askance grimly at Robert. He was gazing into the dancing fire with that look of relaxation and comfort that people tend to have when they lay back on a soft recliner in front of the TV. Darkness had nearly fallen over the forest, and the glow of fire illuminating his calm face made him look like a hunter on a planned campout in the woods.
Robert apparently sensed her gaze.
“Better now?” he asked, turning to her.
Stella made an effort to answer politely. After all , he had saved her life, no matter what his motivation .
“I’m fine, ” her tone was still somewhat dry.
“Try getting some sleep if you can. We ’re moving at dawn.”
“That way?” Stella pointed in the direction from which the boat had brou ght them here .
“No, that way, ” Robert stuck out his thumb to point somewhere behind his back.
“To accomplish what? To get as far as possible from the lake?”
“You could say so.”
“Why?”
“There should be a road somewhere in that direction. It ’s better to spend an extra three hours, but to get to it.”
He was right. He was right again. And that was even more irritating .
“Are you going to get some sleep?” she asked, mostly to break the silence . It was obvious that quiet suited him just fine.
Robert nodded.
“Most likely, ” he said, not tearing his eyes away from the campfire.
“And I thought supermen never sle pt , ” Stella quipped.
Now that was really stupid.
But he didn’t mind.
“They do. When they get a chance.”
“What about wild animals?”
“The most dangerous ones around here are cougars. And they would never approach a fire.”
“Aren’t bears more dangerous?”
“Not for us. It ’s the smell of food that attracts them. Plus, there are no bears here.”
“Then you know what ?” Stella stood up, feeling that she was about to make another dumb move. “I ’m going to take a walk. Just want to sit by the water.”
He was supposed to object. He was at least supposed to warn her not to get too far away from the campfire. But all he did was look at her with a kind of ironic interest in his eyes and say , “Sure.”
Then he turned back to face the fire and fell silent.
Stella clenched her teeth, cussing the whole stinking world in her mind, and , not being clear about the purpose of her trip herself, headed towards the dark mass of the lake. When the flames of the campfire were left behind, it suddenly occurred to her that Robert must ’ve interpreted her trip in an entirely different way. And in light of that natural interpretation , her bright “Sit by the water ” line was turning from the truth to a clumsy teen-like explanation stinking of a pathetic attempt at making a joke.
Something stirred in the dark woods. A cougar, Stella thought , with grim hope. She almost wanted to face some big bad wild animal. And , indeed , a wild beast emerged from the darkness : a little yellowish-brown squirrel. It jumped out onto the grass, curiously studied Stella with its dark , beady eyes and silently disappeared. It had little interest in people and their silly games.
When she came back Robert was gone. The campfire crackled cheerfully in complete solitude, its flickering light illuminating the trunks of the surrounding pines. There was something odd about this neatly arranged campfire with not a single sign of camping paraphernalia around it—neither accessories, nor food, nor people. Only a pile of brushwood nearby. Stella sighed, stepped into the warm circle and sat down on the ground. Twenty minutes of slow walk ing had blown away all her childish anger. What was left resembled only adult discontent. At herself, at Robert, at the entire situation. That plus a gnawing feeling in her stomach.
Suddenly she realized with a certain degree of amazement th
at Robert ’s absence didn ’t worry her at all. Not that she didn ’t care —in fact, the idea of spending the night in the forest alone was anything but appealing. But she simply knew that Robert would be back. It felt weird not counting on his return, not having a hunch about it, but simply knowing . Knowing with the same degree of certainty as one knows in the middle of the night that the sun will inevitabl y rise in the morning. Making the feeling even weirder was the fact that they had met for the first time three days ago and that it was hardly a pleasant acquaintance.
Somewhere on her left, a loud crack sounded. Someone—or something—was confidently and forcefully approaching the campfire. Stella stiffened inside, feeling cold in the pit of her empty stomach. Of course it must be Robert. Who else could it be? But what if it wasn’t him? Who ’s coming this way? Is it even human?
The darkness between the tree trunks suddenly thickened and became soaked through with hostility and danger. The cracking quieted for a moment, then resumed. Stella looked around, searching for a heavy branch . She spotted one on the opposite side of the campfire and was about to pick it up, when Robert eme rged into the light, a long , dancing shadow trailing him. He was carrying a bag, which upon closer inspection turned out to be his jacket.
“Our dinner, ” he anno unced to her casually, as if they had talked just a moment ago.
He squatted by the campfire, put the jacket to the ground and unfolded it carefully. Inside lay a pile of firm , bulky pot-bellied mushrooms. With an empty stomach , they looked very appealing.
“How are we going to cook them?” Stella asked, letting all her worries go for now.
Childish curiosity was tickling her.
“Will we smoke them?”
For some reason she imagined smoking mushrooms, threaded onto thin skewers. Or was that how you dr ied them?
“Our best bet would ’ve been to simmer them, ” said Robert. “But with no pans around we ’re going to bake them in coals. Hand me that branch over there, would you?”
Whether due to hunger or not, the baked mushrooms tasted better than any of the creation s served by the professional chief yesterday. They sorely lacked salt, they had a somewhat bitter taste, some of them were not easy to chew, but nevertheless, they were splendid. When the sucking feeling in Stella ’s stomach gave way to a fulfilling heaviness, she discovered that she was no longer in the mood for squabbling.
Following this softening in mood , the conversation somehow took its own course. Not surprisingly , within five minutes they were already talking about what had happened with the boat and who they should be thanking for arranging this al fresco accommodation . Stella was convinced that this was another mischievous wrongdoing by the same anonymous villain who had tried to blackmail Alex. The recent swim in the ice-cold water made her even less tolerant to any form of scheming than usual and she kept trying to figure out how she would find and expose the rascal who had been behind their unplanned adventure. Robert did not make the slightest attempt to argue with her but , when asked about his list of suspects, replied that it would be logical to suspect those who have something to gain from this sabotage —or in other words, everyone.
Stella then tried approaching the problem from a different angle , and , with the same vigor , began calculating who could have broken the boat’s meter in the heart of the night. It ’s impossible to pull something like that off in complete darkness, and doing it during the day would ’ve drawn attention, so likely the bad guy had operate d in the evening or using a flash torch. light. On top of that, he had to know whose windows overlook ed the lake. He also had to . . . She went on and on.
Robert listened to her theories again without interrupting , and once more simplified everything dramatically once she was finished. There was no reason to fiddle with the meter , either in front of everyone or in pitch-dark night, he said. It was sufficient to take the boat for an absolutely legitimate ride, go around the nearby cape, adjust—or rather misadjust—all you want with no t a single soul around to see you, and come back in the same open manner. Which is precisely what someone had done this morning, according to the chitchat at today ’s breakfast table. Whoever that was, this person unquestionably knew what he was doing, since everything was done very professionally. In addition, this anonymous well-wisher had preferred not to take any risks and had prudently got rid of the walkie-talkie, which , despite all the rules , was missing from the boat at this point.
Stella didn’t argue. He was right. But still, still . . .
“Still, how do we find th e jerk?” Stella asked thoughtfully.
The question was of course purely rhetoric. Nevertheless, to her surprise, an answer was offered .
“We’ll know tomorrow.”
“How?!”
And suddenly Robert cracked a smile.
“Easily. Whoever is behind all this will be leading the rescue effort. Assuming of course there is a rescue effort.”
Sometime later, listening to the whisper of the wind, which was taking its evening promenade in the tops of the trees, they drifted on to the topic of wilderness camping, lost tourists and silly superst ition s . This time it was Robert ’s turn to do most of the talking. Stella was only asking occasional questions and couldn ’t help but wonder why he had chose n not to mention any of this in his morning speech. She listened to the stories about people making tiring and pointless rounds in the woods, about mushroom and berry poisoning, about stings that kill and bites that leave nothing but bad memories, about those who lost hope and those who found themselves.
Then an exotic word, the taiga , was spoken and it turned out that once Robert himself had lost his way in this endless Russian forest in which he had ended up at the invitation of a buddy student. The buddy emerged as result of a student exchange program, and after listening for two semesters to his vivid stories about the taiga and the dark -blue waters of the bottomless Lake Baikal, Robert decided that he had to see all of this with his own eyes.
He flew halfway around the world, marched enthusiastically into the wilderness an d on the third day lost his group. Stella didn ’t catch how exactly this had happened, but felt that a clarification wasn ’t necessary. Perhaps the fact that , out of the six other people present, the only person with some English skills was that buddy had something to do with it. The fact of the matter was that Robert found himself completely alone in the midst of a dark forest.
They found him twelve days later. He subsequently learned that by that time almost no one believed that he was still alive—novices don ’t last that long alone in the taiga. But they kept looking—mostly because of that buddy of his, who kept insisting on sticking to their mission. When the rescuers came across him , his face covered in two weeks ’ worth of stubble, ragged, dirty , and hungry as a wolf, he had already lost hope of getting out of this alive. But he kept walking, just like they kept searching. It also turned out that during this time he tramped a very impressive distance, especially considering the complete lack of normal food and any sort of equipment. The only detail that cast a dark shadow on this tremendous achievement was the fact that he had walked in the wrong direction, each day getting deeper and deeper into the heart of the taiga.
As for the buddy, they traveled together to the back of beyond and even farther more than once. The buddy liked repeating a somewhat pictur esque statement : “Everyone dies, only some live, ” and , in full accord with this simple philosophy , climbed the mountains, did extreme tourism and was in general very creative when it came to looking for trouble. They met a couple of times a year, every time in a new place, along with a small team of the same sort of risk-loving adventure-hungry adrenaline junkies , and got a full scoop of these adventures. “Only some live . . .” the buddy would say after pulling off another crazy stunt. And then , one fine day somewhere in South America, he had fallen from a cliff . . .
Robert broke off.
“Were you with him?” Stella asked after a brief silence.
Robert looked up.
&nb
sp; “Yes. But not close enough. All right, let ’s change the subject.”
Stella kept quiet. After everything she had just heard, all the high stakes of the w orkshop , with its planted notes and the broken meter , suddenly became cheap and nearly pathetic. Not only the w orkshop, but everything that had led her here : all the power struggles at work, the entire Volano story —everything that just recently had seemed so important and critical now paled and shriveled into insignificance .
“Do you want to win here?” she asked.
Robert shrugged. “I like competing.”
“So you agree with Clark that all we want is power?”
“Never cared for it. You ’ve got to be really insecure to want power.”
“Insecure?” she asked, surprised. “I don ’t think powerful people look insecure. When you have power, people depend on you. You ’re in control.”
“No,” said Robert. “You ’re not . Look, you ’re smart, but you ’ve got it all wrong. This power thing, it ’s nothing. Even the word is wrong. It ’s just people agreeing to do what you want. But the moment they decide to disagree , your power is gone. You may feel in control of some, but only because you depend on others. You depend on everyone. On people above you, on people below you, on your peers . . . You ’re just a part of a system. The more power you have , the less free you are. And I happen to value my freedom.”
“I never thought of it that way, ” Stella said.
Robert poked the fire with his stick.
“You’re not alone.”
He’s right, she thought. Power is such a misleading word. Why do we even want it in the first place? It ’s almost as if we want others to make us feel important by following our orders. And the moment they do, the moment they confirm our importance, we want more and more people to confirm it. And there ’s no end to it. But is it worth it? Is it worth anything? Is it the way to spend your life? Someone once said that the worst crime you can commit against yourself is to deprive yourself of living. Is this what we do as we choose to chase after that thing we call power?
Awakening, 2nd edition Page 20
