Getting back

by William Dietrich

  "You're going to drink frog vomit?" Ico asked.

  "It's not vomit. It's less ingested than milk from a cow's udder." She squeezed and the frog regurgitated the water into her mouth, splashing her face. "Feels good."

  "Geez, that's disgusting."

  "Not if it saves your life. Raven's right about one thing: the desert is full of water, if we know where to look." Casually, Amaya tossed the torpid animal away.

  The others tried it too. Raven laughed at her squirt, the first time they'd heard her do that. Daniel jerked at the sound, remembering before.

  "People really did survive here, didn't they?" asked Tucker. "Outback Adventure must have briefed you to survive here a long time."

  "Not really," Raven said. "I was intrigued by this idea and did my own research, just so I knew survival was possible. Outback didn't think I'd be here that long."

  "Which makes me wonder why you bother, Amaya, if we're about to call a taxi," Ico said. She was stooped over some plants, adding to her inventory.

  "Because the taxi isn't here yet."

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The cluster of natural stone monoliths that sheltered the convict colony called Erehwon first poked above the desert's horizon like sails on an ocean. Ethan told the group that the immense rocks sheltered a network of wetter valleys between, their creased crusts funneling water into shaded pools. That description was enough to make the party quicken its pace, despite apprehension about meeting the people who lived there. They camped that evening still eight miles distant, the setting sun making the geologic curiosity glow like coals.

  "The rocks look like big loaves of bread," Amaya said.

  "I'm hungry enough!" groaned Tucker.

  "They'll have food," Raven promised. "They've even started irrigation. You can see how the formation is a natural place to draw people adrift in the desert. A small group of convicts huddled there first and started to hammer out a society. Others were drawn in as if by gravity. The place keeps growing despite its management."

  "The Warden?" Ico asked.

  "He didn't get his position by charm."

  "So what kind of society? Free? Anarchic?"

  "It started like that, I think, but became just the opposite. We're talking about people who hate rules but need them more than anyone. I think they fell back on the model of a prison, the community they're most familiar with."

  "That just sounds dandy."

  "It's harsh. But that's what seems to work."

  They crossed the remaining distance the following morning, the rocks sheer as fortresses and smooth as breasts. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, but tendrils of smoke announced human habitation. With it came Daniel's realization that the challenge had shifted from coping with wilderness to coping with people. In less than three weeks he'd entered the wild, been humbled by it, and now was coming for succor to a society that sounded more restrictive than the one he'd tried to escape.

  He'd tested himself, he thought gloomily, and failed.

  "Welcome to Erehwon," Ethan said as they reached the edge. "Some people just call it the compound."

  "Easier to spell," Ico quipped.

  There was no fence or boundary that Daniel could see. The settlement's outskirts were marked by refuse: scraps of salvaged metal and glass glinting in the sun, random shreds of hoarded plastic and fabric, a pit of garbage picked at by birds, and the acrid odor of a latrine. Two women were moving slowly through this litter, bent and swaying as they picked through the debris, their features hidden by the curtain of their long hair. On a rock above a canyon entry, a squatting sentry with a spear watched the approach of the newcomers, laconically waved, and then stood to blow on what looked like a cattle horn. Its blat echoed through the canyons ahead. They'd been announced.

  "He doesn't seem very surprised to see us," Ico said.

  "No," said Ethan. "Most who try to escape come crawling back."

  A sandy track led into a grove of trees, the shade a relief. They'd entered the labyrinth of valleys and canyons between the red loaves of rock, a hot desert breeze rustling the gum and acacia trees. When they had passed out of view of the sentry, Raven told the group to wait for a minute and left the trail, disappearing into a small side crevice. When she came out a bulge in her pack was gone.

  "It's important to keep quiet about the activator," she explained.

  "Just make sure you put it where we can find the damn thing again," Ico replied. "No more misplacements."

  The party passed a wooden corral where two sleepy-looking camels rested, dusty and huge. "The British brought them from Afghanistan and some escaped into the wild," Ethan explained at their questioning looks. "They're still in the bush so the Warden caught a few to try to break. So far they eat more than they're worth, so we may just eat them. We've also got a few wild cows, a horse, and some kangaroo in the stables. We're trying to learn how to ranch them."

  Ico wrinkled his nose. "It stinks," he said.

  "That's a farm smell, city boy," Amaya replied. "Stables." She looked thoughtfully at the crude barns.

  Farther along was a pit and scattered logs indicative of a sawing operation, and beyond that racks where meat dried in the sun, orbited by flies. Despite the primitive nature of the settlement- it reminded Daniel of a medieval village- the adventurers began to unconsciously relax. Here was the familiarity of a community. Whatever might happen, they weren't alone anymore.

  The canyon opened to a broader park between the sandstone monoliths, an area several hundred yards across that was a mix of trees and trampled clearings. Water glinted at the base of one towering rock and a cordon of dry brush blocked casual access to it. Thatched huts, sheds, and simple roofs were scattered about in a seemingly haphazard plan. On a slight rise with its back to a cliff was a more substantial cabin of freshly cut logs, the wood still new and white-yellow. Smoke wafted from its chimney. Tame dingoes snoozed in the shade of the clearing and cockatoos stalked across the dirt. In the shade of a brushwood awning, someone slept in a fiber hammock. There was a pungent odor of unwashed humans, fire, cooked meat, and manure.

  I'm in a time machine, Daniel thought.

  They stopped at a rock-rimmed well and Ethan brought up a skin of water. Tucker slumped in the dust. It was quiet in the midday heat. Flint had told them more than two hundred people lived in this cluster of rocks but most seemed to have dispersed to one task or another.

  "Well, Ethan," Ico assessed, "this Warden character sure picked the right name for this dump. Erehwon! We're right in the middle of it, no doubt."

  "You can walk away at any time."

  "Calling yourself a Warden implies you can't."

  "He doesn't think you'd make it. That's why I don't expect him to be surprised we've come back."

  Raven told them to wait and mounted the hill to the cabin, speaking to someone in the doorway. Then she returned. "The Warden is still asleep. We'll get some food, and then you'll meet him. I'm going to try to get access to the transmitter."

  "Asleep at noon?" Ico asked. "What's to stay up late for?"

  They moved to the shade of a thatched lean-to and ate smoky meat, some white root, and a strange, nutty bread. "Kangaroo, bush banana root, and mulga seed bread," Ethan identified. "The bread was difficult. Appreciate it."

  "After some time in the bush, bread does seem pretty marvelous," Amaya agreed. "But the roo is pretty plain. Don't you believe in seasonings?"

  "We don't have any, except salt. Or what newcomers bring with them."

  "So the last of our food is about to go into the community pot?" Daniel asked.

  "Yes. Marx would approve."

  "And who the devil is this Warden we're waiting on?" Ico asked. "Some goon sent by United Corporations? What makes him top dog?"

  "He's just a convict," said Ethan. "A thief and assailant, sent here to rot like the rest of them. No one really liked chaos, so he put himself in charge."

  "No vote?"

  "Two men challenged him. Both disappeared."

  "
Disappeared?"

  "The ones he just wants to punish he makes more public, like hanging them up on rocks in the sun. A day of that, and the fight goes out of them."

  "And two days of that and they're like the pilot."

  "Exactly. Don't anger him."

  The door of the cabin opened and a young, slim blond woman came down the dusty hill to find them. She was dressed in a simple shift that looked cut from salvaged cloth- a parachute? Daniel wonderedthat showed her figure to good effect. Her brown arms and calves were bare and she was shoeless, her soles apparently hardened to the hot earth. "The Warden will see you now," she said, smug as a prom queen, her eyes passing appraisingly over Raven and Amaya to calibrate any competition. "Bring your offering." Then she walked back, provocatively swaying.

  "Offering?" Tucker asked.

  "That's you," Raven explained. "Fresh labor."

  "Great."

  "At least I know what he stayed up for," Ico said, following the blonde with his eyes.

  "Keep away from her," Ethan said. "Drina is Rugard's."

  "Rugard?"

  "That's the Warden's name. Rugard Sloan. But don't call him that. He doesn't like it."

  They climbed the hill. The log cabin walls facing the compound were broken only by the stout wooden door and slit-like loophole windows. Side walls extended to the rock of the backing cliff, making the structure look more like a blockhouse than a residence. The door opening was dark, and the newcomers expected the house to be stifling inside. When they ducked through, however, they saw that a back wall was absent from the cabin and the roof extended only halfway. There was a rear open terrace of hardpan dirt against the cliff, half of it shaded by a flat roof of woven branches. A low cave in the cliff face was closed off by a stake door, and a spring at the rock's base fed a shallow pool. The backing cliff rose two hundred feet. Daniel recognized the essential elements of a well-situated fortress: high ground, thick walls, a secure water supply, and even an apparent storeroom. The place was designed to withstand a siege. No vote, indeed.

  He looked around. A shadowy figure leaned in one of the dark corners, the gleam of what looked to be some kind of long knife or sword at his side. A bodyguard? Drina lounged on a crude wooden bed in a corner.

  "So you didn't like the desert after all," a rough voice said from another shadow. They turned to the sound, graveled from liquor or barked commands. "I could have told you what you'd find out there." Their host was sitting, they saw as their eyes adjusted, lazing arrogantly back in a surprisingly modern chair of metal and fabric. It came from an airplane, Daniel realized: probably the one that had crashed with Ethan.

  "We found more than you think," Raven said.

  "Yes, four more boobs, dropped from the sky. Well, come on then. Let's have a look." They shuffled forward, the Warden evaluating them as they studied him. He was tanned a swarthy dark like his underlings, his face clean-shaven and his dark hair cropped close as a helmet. Small scars wrote a history of combat on his face. His jaw was strong, his nose slightly hooked like a Roman aristocrat's, and his eyes were a curious, empty gray: the color of lunar dust, Daniel thought. The effect was cold.

  "Not much of a find, Raven. And me to care for them."

  "We weren't looking for anybody's help," Daniel interrupted.

  The Warden's eyes narrowed at him. "Then lucky for you that you found it," he growled. "You'd be bones otherwise." He had an arrogant authority that dominated the room, and the corded muscle of a man used to hard company. There was a stink of menace about him, a manner as instinctively vicious as a pit bull. He also appeared unapologetic about it. No, proud.

  "I'm not as bad as all that," he said, as if reading Daniel's mind. "I'm not going to bite." And then he gave a yellowed smile that suggested he just might. "My name is Rugard Sloan, but you'll call me Warden. Only Warden. I'm the father of this community."

  "Of Nowhere-ville," Ico said.

  He squinted at Ico. "You appreciate my joke. And you chose to come to Nowhere because the alternative was death in the desert, right? So. Who are you? What are your skills?"

  They gave their names and, at the Warden's urging, their former occupations. Only Ico hesitated. "A systems manager," he finally said.

  "Fired." It was not a question.

  "An opportunities transfer," Ico said defensively.

  "And before that?"

  "Tax analyst."

  "And fired. And before that fired. And before that fired. Am I correct?"

  Ico looked at him sourly. "Only because I tell the truth."

  "Don't be embarrassed. Your work history is typical of half the wanderers who come to me. Misfits, rejects, incompetents, rebels. In that world. But not in mine. I give them a home. In return they work for me, and work hard. We've come a long ways in a short time. I hope you give our little community a chance."

  Daniel spoke up. "We came here on a kind of wilderness sabbatical. Since our arrival we've been flooded, baked, and bitten. We weren't warned of any of this. We're a little hesitant to give anything a chance right now."

  Rugard nodded. "Do you think I created our little Purgatory? That I pulled the strings that put you here?" He snorted. "They told me less than they told you. But I've put it together, by gleaning information from this soul and that."

  "That we're marooned with a bunch of cons," Ico said.

  "I believe the phrase is 'morally impaired.' "

  "But rehabilitation…" Amaya began.

  "… Is a fairy tale to lull dumplings like you into believing they're safe from people like me," Rugard completed. He grinned. "Oh, they tried, of course, but I was really quite wicked. I like to be wicked, because it's payback for a lousy, unfair world I never asked to be a part of. They made me what I am! So they don't cure us, dear, they get rid of us. It used to be drugs and costly warehouse prisons; now it's a continent full of nowheres, fit for nothings. Cheap, guiltless. We got a speech: 'No guards, no walls. You're free to starve, slit each other's throats, or live like brute savages. If you try to get back by boat we'll sink you with the help of satellite surveillance. But if by some miracle you make it through our net, no one will believe you. And even if they believe you- even just as a paranoid legend on the cyber underground- the story will never get into our corporate-controlled media. Oh, and have a nice day.' "

  "So there's a lot of you?" she asked.

  "Thousands, I'd guess. Most die before we ever see them. Or maybe there's other compounds like this one. Who knows? Who cares? We're all just heinous criminals, sent Down Under to remake ourselves. Except we never get back, even when we do."

  "A whole continent as a prison?" Ico asked.

  "A whole continent to salve their conscience, is my guess. We all know capital punishment is abhorrent in today's politically correct world. Life imprisonment is expensive. Rehabilitation for the worst of us is a fraud. And Australia is already written off, a killing ground of plague. So my kind is dumped here while United Corporations makes up stories about our scientific rehabilitation, claiming they give us new identities to reenter society without moral stain. 'Cause any strife and you lose your old life.' We've all heard the jingle. It's just truer than we thought. It's not because we're brain-sponged that we don't get in touch with our families. It's because we're down here. It saves them a fortune."

  "But we're not convicts," Tucker objected.

  "Yes, the puzzling mystery. Why drop urban dilettantes into Devil's Island? Certainly you prove useful for my kind to feed off: we started robbing you of your supplies from the beginning. But if they wanted to deliver manna from heaven, why include you useless knobs of flesh in the freightage? It was only after talking to enough of you self-absorbed bastards that I figured out the common linkage."

  "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.