Getting back

by William Dietrich

  "Isn't that hot?" Amaya asked.

  "It's shady."

  By lunchtime the heat pressed down with the weight of an iron and the morning excitement had given way to a dull dizziness. The flies were so persistent that the others began to envy Ico's head net. Finally Daniel spotted a shadow on the ridge and suggested they take a break. The shadow was made by a rock overhang, its shade dropping the temperature a good ten degrees. They collapsed in its gloom and noticed with relief that the flies didn't like to follow them into the cooler dark. Weary, they slowly unfastened pack pockets to nibble lightly on their food and sip water. Then they lay back.

  "So, are we having fun yet?" Ico asked.

  "It's a little bleak," Tucker admitted. "Still, it beats working for a living."

  "I've worked up a good sweat."

  "You know what I mean. This is different. We're doing what we want to do."

  "I read that primitive tribes had to work as little as two hours a day to feed themselves," Amaya said. "The rest was leisure."

  "To do what? Swat flies?"

  "You don't like it, Ico?" Tucker asked.

  "No, I do, I do. I think. The Big Nothing. It's what I came for. Different perspective, right? But I'm not going to pretend it's paradise, either."

  "It's hotter than I expected," Daniel admitted. "And this is the Australian fall?"

  "They don't really have an autumn," Amaya said. "I mean where leaves come off. But it should keep getting cooler. Our summer is their winter."

  "This is fall? What the devil is summer like?" Tucker wondered.

  "We should reach the coast and get back long before we have to find out," Amaya said.

  "And if not?" asked Ico.

  "We'll be acclimated, I hope. If we're stuck eight months and see their summer solstice, on December twenty-first, the sun should be directly above the Tropic of Capricorn at noon. We can measure its angle above us and try to calculate our north-south position from the Tropic. Get a better sense of where we are."

  "Oh good. Let's stay and fry our brains. Much easier than trying to read my map."

  "We'll also look at the stars tonight and find the Southern Cross. You can tell position by the distance of constellations above the horizon. The difficulty is determining our position east and west. That's what gave navigators fits for centuries."

  "And that, of course, is what we need to know."

  "Isn't the whole point not to know?" Daniel interrupted. "I'm not here to argue against maps, Ico, but didn't we come here to live in the moment without all these numbers fixing us in space and time? I caught myself guessing distance. But really, who cares where we are? For the first time in my life I'm just walking. I don't know how far we've come. I don't know how far we have to go. I don't know what time it is. My mind isn't three days ahead and two days behind and anticipating fifteen appointments and worrying about my retirement and my headstone. Suddenly my stomach is all I need to keep track of mealtimes and the sun is my alarm clock. I'm here, taking in the now."

  They considered that.

  "I agree," Ico said. "It's why I felt it didn't hurt to switch our drop-off point. Let's live in the moment. But at some point we have to get back." He glanced at his wrist. "It's one-seventeen, by the way, if I'm in the right time zone."

  "It's when you throw that watch away that you'll be in the right zone."

  "Touche." But he kept the watch on.

  They looked out at the desert from their rock shelter. A slope of sandstone gave way to a plain as flat and featureless as the face of a calm ocean. Stunted trees and shrubs, gray-green, studded the pan of sand out to a horizon where the ground evaporated into a shimmering mirage of blue water, bleeding into an equally blue sky. Nothing moved, except a hawk wheeling on the thermals.

  "Get back?" Tucker said suddenly. "Hell, I just got here."

  As the afternoon progressed the desert became more beautiful. What had seemed to be crabbed trees cowering under the hammer of the sun at noon now lengthened with their afternoon shadows, trunks of white and gray taking on sinuous grace. Colors grew richer as the sun dropped, sand making snaking dunes of an eerie red. They crossed two sandy watercourses with no visible water. Amaya pointed out that the tiny ants that marched everywhere on the riverbanks seemed absent on the dry streambeds. "We should camp on the sand," she observed. "Less bugs." It was prettier on the empty rivers as well. The white eucalyptus grew taller and more beautiful than the desert bush, and seemed in its serene majesty as timeless and still as the rocks.

  At a third riverbed they found a pool of standing water and stopped, the sky on fire behind them, a deepening blue ahead. "Honey, I'm home!" Ico called, heaving off his pack in relief. They guessed they'd come ten miles.

  Daniel was the only one who hadn't brought a tent, deciding to rely on a light tarp instead. Bright fabric mushrooms puffed up from the other three to form an instant village, the thin nylon a comfortable shield against the emptiness of this great outside. There was a bit of awkward unfamiliarity as they set up their stoves and prepared their first real meal, sharing dishes, but also good humor at the fact they were succeeding on their own with these simple tasks. Tucker dragged in some wood and lit a fire with a match. Its purpose was more psychological than to heat or cook. "Man is here!" Tucker shouted to the desert. "He will prevail!" The noise drifted away across the sand.

  "And woman." Amaya had erected her tent first.

  "There's only one of you," Ico noted.

  "She'll prevail anyway," Daniel predicted. "Smarter, saner, and more centered than any of us."

  She grinned at him. "Centered, or self-centered?"

  "The center of our universe," Ico crooned.

  As the light disappeared, so did the flies. Stars began to pop out, first like isolated beacons and then faster and faster, like a growing storm of snow. The night shone with starlight, the silken ribbon of the Milky Way a familiar streak but the constellations strange. Amaya pointed to a cluster of stars to the south. "The Southern Cross," she said. "We'll keep it on our right as we travel."

  Sparks climbed skyward and seemed to join the stars. Daniel got a laugh with his story of how he'd started a tiny blaze in his apartment.

  "I'll pay fifty bucks to see you do that again," offered Ico.

  "You brought money?"

  "Just what I had. In case we got held up somewhere." He shrugged. "I'll probably keep it though, for emergencies, and pay you at home."

  "That's crazier than rubbing sticks, you know that?"

  "Come on, I want to see you do it."

  "No, I'm too tired. Last time it took me hours. Besides, you'll get to see me do it for free once we run out of matches."

  "Civilization starting to look better then?" He held up a match.

  "Not good enough that I'd want to be carrying seventy-five pounds, like you're doing."

  Ico grinned. "It gets lighter with every match."

  The light and food and rest relaxed them, erasing memories of the heat of the day. They laughed at Ico's espresso maker with its solar battery chip, but they each had a cup.

  "See, what I'm looking for is balance," he explained. "I know this shit is silly, but why not take the best of both worlds and enjoy ourselves out here? It's society I don't like, not technology. Bureaucracy, not gadgets. My goal is to find out what's really necessary, what's really important, and then plan permanent escape. I take the essentials into a wild pocket of the world- maybe even sneak back here- and live my life, not theirs. Even Robinson Crusoe had a lot of shipwreck gear to salvage. I'd want that too."

  "You don't happen to have an ice cream maker stuffed away, do you, Crusoe?" Tucker asked. "I'm craving strawberry ripple."

  "Nah. But maybe there's still wild cows in Australia. If you catch one, Freidel, I'll make you a latte."

  Despite his weariness from the day's walk, Daniel was too restless to immediately sleep. He strolled up the riverbed, the gray sand shimmering under the stars and the night strangely comforting in its glow. This was not a
scary place at all, he decided. He also liked the smell of Australia. There was none of the odor of moist soil and decay like some wet northern forests he had hiked in, but rather a scent of dry wood and plant oils that strangely reminded him of dusty furniture. The aridity seemed clean. He could hear animals scuttling away in the night and he wondered who the group's neighbors were. There were no large predators in Australia, he knew. Eventually they might run into wild domestics- dogs, camels, cows, pigs- but for the moment nature seemed unfamiliar, harmless, and discreet.

  He sat on a log, looked up into the night sky, and shivered. The glorious immensity! Not just of the universe, but this strange red desert. It was intimidating to think of being so far from help, but liberating too. He could go anywhere, do anything. Be anything. All the restraints were off except the ones remaining in his head. This could be heaven, he thought: roaming endlessly with his house on his back and exploring the uncharted terrain of his own spirit. He could do it forever with the right person. Daniel wondered if Raven was out there somewhere, and if so whether she was walking with a man other than himself. He wondered if he'd ever see her again.

  There was a rustle and he turned. It was Amaya.

  "Can I join you?"

  He beckoned and she sat down on the log next to him. "It's nicest at night," she said. "No wonder that's when most of the desert creatures move about."

  "I think we're going to have to change our habits. Move early and late, hole up at midday. We're prisoners of that sun."

  "Prisoners? I thought we came here for freedom, Daniel."

  "Oops."

  "We just need to get in rhythm."

  "That's what I meant. But it was an interesting slip. I've heard that when you're jailed long enough you never really get free. You become a prisoner in your own mind. Everything looks like a wall. And you learn to like your jailers."

  "You're worried that's you."

  "Of course."

  "We do have to be realistic about what we can achieve out here," she said. "Animals aren't really free. They spend their lives bound by the weather, the seasons, and hunting or being hunted. We shouldn't romanticize them or their existence or pretend we can find a life without limitations. But I liked what you said today about getting away from numbers and schedules and maps. I think we're here to break bad habits, or at least recognize and examine them."

  He looked at her face, pale in the starlight. Amaya was actually quite pretty, he decided- not beautiful in the conventional sense of a model but rather kind, good, with bright, intelligent eyes, a wide smile, and a grounded sensibility he found reassuring. Her appeal snuck up on you. It was interesting she'd sought him out. "I think the voice of reason so far has been you," he said. "Us boys can get kind of silly sometimes. We enjoy the arguing. It's like a game."

  "I know."

  They sat for a while, staring up at the sky.

  "I never knew there could be so many stars," Daniel said. "We never see them at home. The light they cast is amazing."

  "Maybe someday those stars will be our new wilderness, do you think? A wilderness to explore that goes on to infinity. But not yet. We've barely put our toe into space, so for now this is as far out as people like you and I can get."

  "Did you ever want to be an astronaut?"

  She shivered. "No. Space seemed too cold."

  "So now you're a bush ranger instead."

  "I'm just a woman who wants to fall in love with this world as it is, or rather was. I don't need the planets. I want to feel at home here."

  "And do you?"

  "After one day? It's too early to tell. But I'm glad I came."

  "I was right about you being centered. You seem the most balanced of any of us. You recognize what we're seeing, you don't complain, and your gear seems well organized. You're so normal I'm wondering what you're doing here."

  She laughed. "Looking, like everyone else."

  "Looking for what? A place?"

  "No, a person. That's what women look for."

  "A boyfriend? You've sort of cut down the number of possibilities, haven't you? Three losers?"

  "Daniel, you're not fair to yourself. But no, not a boyfriend. I want a companion in a place that gets rid of all the modern complications that get in the way of friendship- and I may have found three such companions already. But that's not the person I mean."

  "Someone to love, then."

  "Someday. But another, first."

  "Who?"

  "Me."

  He waited for her to explain.

  "It's true I haven't found love yet," she said. "But what I realized back home is that first I have to find myself."

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  They rose at dawn again, as enchanted as ever by the ethereal light, and ate and packed quickly. Despite the lack of schedule they couldn't break the habit of disciplined briskness, readying quickly so they could put more miles behind them. Daniel, who had brought no tent and no sleeping bag and no stove, was ready first. His pack was lightest because the others were carrying more food as well.

  His supply was mostly power rations and staples, like rice. The others carried more elaborate freeze-dried meals.

  "I've got enough for a month if I stretch it," Daniel told them when Ico asked. "What I really need to do, and want to do, is live off the land. Otherwise I'm just a tourist."

  "More power to you," said Ico carefully, "but I mean no offense when I say we should each eat what we carry. I'm packing twice the rations but I didn't bring all this food to feed anyone else. I just don't want any expectations down the line, okay?"

  "No one expects you to feed us. If I lived off you, Ico, I wouldn't have achieved a thing by coming here. I don't want the fish. I want to learn how to fish. And if I catch one, I'll share it."

  "No, Dyson," Tucker said. "Then you teach us how to fish."

  "I'll be impressed if you just find enough water to fish in," Amaya said.

  "We'll find everything we need once we learn how to look." Daniel took the hunting knife he had brought and cut a staff of tolerable straightness from a gray-leafed, spiny bush, sharpening one end. "Voila,"

  he announced. "Walking stick, javelin, water probe, and ridgepole for my ground cover in case it rains. Free, portable, disposable, and replaceable. The perfect product. Patent number 8765321."

  "Yeah, but can you swat flies with it?" Ico asked.

  They set out, their boots striking up little puffs of dust as they walked, the pink powder settling on their ankles and shoes like fine talcum. The heat rose again, the insects came back, and this time there was no convenient overhang for a midday refuge. They rested in the shade of what Amaya identified as a mulga tree, their thirst enormous. Even though the air was too dry for them to visibly sweat, their thickening throats were warning enough of how the desert baked out liquids. They drank freely to replenish themselves. The horizon was a shimmer of heat haze and the range of hills they'd been following was flattening out. Ahead was a flat plain of scrubby emptiness, with no visible landmarks. It looked as featureless as an ocean. All they could do was follow compass, sun, and the stars to the east.

  Conversation lagged as the weight of their packs bit deeper and the insects became more annoying. At one point Ico got out his map, studied it, and then shrugged and put it back without comment. The desert was so featureless that there was nothing to establish their position with, even if the chart was real.

  Still, the freedom to choose their way was liberating, Daniel thought. They saw no kangaroos but did spy a dingo, a dog first brought by the aborigines and now wild as the wind. It loped into the brush ahead of them like a furtive coyote. There were birds, flies, ants. On a dare, Amaya tasted one of the green ants that the aborigines ate and said it tasted bitter, but mostly like nothing at all. She was the one who stopped most frequently to mentally catalog shrubs and grasses. Hawks and kites orbited in the sky.

  Daniel periodically threw his makeshift spear at a rock or twisted dead tree trunk, his accuracy inconsistent but slowly
improving until he began to tire. Ico, working to keep up under his heavy pack as the hours went by, shook his head in amusement. "Look at that, he's better than a dog. He throws his own stick."

  "Just aiming at the flies, Ico," Daniel replied. "I plan to spear them all."

  Tucker called a halt at mid-afternoon. "Blisters," he announced.

  The others took the opportunity to examine their carefully padded feet, readjusting protection and massaging red spots. "I'm so swollen it looks like I'm walking on melons!" Amaya wailed.

  "I thought I was in shape but I'm finding muscles the gym didn't know I had," Daniel confessed.

  "I'm finding pain my muscles didn't know they had," Ico sighed, leaning back against his massive pack. The others raised their eyebrows. "I know, I know, it's too big. Hey, I'm eating my way through it."

  Their hope of camping in a riverbed was dashed when none appeared the second evening. The initial exhilaration was gone and they felt not only tired but dirty. Ico sneaked a glance at his watch. He was waiting for the sun to go down. There was no fresh water and they realized they had to ration what was left.

  "How can we walk without water?" Tucker asked worriedly as the night's eventual chill lured them tighter to their fire.

  "It looked like the land falls off a bit ahead," Amaya replied. "We look in the depression for a riverbed and search seriously for water. We can't push farther until we find it."

  "But that's not very far," Ico objected. "We need to make our mileage."

  "No we don't. We need to drink."

  The stark truth of her statement sobered them for a minute.

  Tucker shivered. "And it's cold tonight. Colder than it was last night. Roast during the day, freeze at night."

  "That's the desert for you," Daniel said. "We should have caught that dingo."

  "To eat?"

  "No, to cuddle with. Aborigines used their dogs for warmth. A cold evening was a three- or four-dog night."

  "Awooooo," Tucker called. "Maybe I can lure one."

  "With that call they'll try to mate," Ico said. "That'll warm you up. Of course there's another alternative." He smiled sweetly at Amaya.