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."
CHAPTER NINETEEN
"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 le
arn 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."
"Should work?" Ico asked.
"That's what they told me," she said defensively.
"And that must have been what the pilot was talking about when he gave me the activator," Ethan said. "That if we didn't have it, we'd have to walk to the beach."
"Listen, Daniel, this is insane," Ico pleaded. "We can't let these two run off with our help and then be stranded here, taking our chances in the wild. Who cares if the transmitter will work by itself? They know we'll never make it across the remaining desert! One of us should go on that plane with Raven to make sure she'll bring somebody back for us: somebody back here."
"You want to wait with the morally impaired?"
"Better than dying of thirst on her itinerary for us. I'm sorry, but she's lied to you from the minute you met her. If she wants our help, one of us gets to go."
"Who?" Daniel asked.
"Not you. You can't be objective about her. Frankly, it should be me. I understand the system now, I'm a good talker, and I won't be taken in by a bunch of United Corporations bullshit."
"You?"
"I've seen through them from the beginning. And I'll see through them at home."
"No," said Amaya. "You're not the right person, Ico. No offense, but you rub people the wrong way."
"We need a revolutionary, not a glad-hander!"
"We need someone who will be listened to. You'll sound too abrasive. Too extreme. Too… nutty."
"I'm the only sane person here!"
"I'm sorry. I just don't trust you to do this."
He threw up his hands. "Okay, you then. Not just these two, who somehow find us in the desert and have been using us ever since. They're going to leave us in the lurch, I know it."
"No I'm not," said Ethan. "I came here like you, Ico. I'm as angry about it as you are. I forced Raven to agree to take me back if she wanted to be shown that plane."
Ico ignored him. "How about it, Amaya? Women and children first."
"No! That's silly." She looked hesitant. "I… I want to finish trying to sort out my life here." Her look ended at Daniel as she said that. Raven would be gone again. "Ethan's one of us. He's been here longer than any of us. He's the one who was in the crash with the transmitter. United Corporations can't object to taking him back after he helped Raven. And he can talk for all of us, even the convicts. He makes the most sense by far."
"Yes," said Daniel. "Ethan's the logical one."
"Tucker, for God's sake…"
The big man shrugged. "I don't know if any of this is going to work, but I came to walk across Australia. I say Ethan too. This way the four of us stick together. All for one, one for all."
Ico looked around the group. "In Purgatory."
Daniel shrugged. They were set, the decision made.
"Fine, great." Ico sighed. "Let's go break into the house of Napoleon fruitcake up the hill there, and then run out into the desert."
"Ico, I'm sorry I can't take you all right now," Raven said. "It's the only way."
"That's what you say."
The four men were roused at dawn and marched to work on the reservoir. The community needed more water and was excavating a basin at the base of a cliff. Daniel would have preferred to have stayed in camp to make final plans with the women, but he knew such malingering would only arouse suspicion. All he could hope was that Raven's crazy plan to steal the transmitter could work, and that in the confusion of preparing for the night's festival, Amaya could succeed in foraging supplies for their escape.
Amaya told him at breakfast not to worry. "The women are friendly, most of them. We're a minority here, so they tell me where things are. I've also got another idea."
"What's that?"
"It's a surprise. Something Raven and I are cooking up."
There was a sullen mood to the group of men detailed to dig the sand pit, the hardest and dirtiest of Erehwon's current projects. "Welcome to the Warden's shit detail," one muttered. The digging team, equipped with crude tools of wood and hammered scrap metal, was an amalgam of freshly arrived convicts and impressed adventurers, as well as the stupid, slow, and those who'd drawn Rugard's ire. Accordingly, the pace of excavation was desultory. "I'm supposed to be excited about building my own prison?" one grizzled moral-impaired, a chronic petty thief, complained to Daniel. "It feels like I'm digging my own grave. I don't want a reservoir. I want out of here."
"So go," Daniel said.
"And die in the desert."
"So quit."
"One man tried that. The Warden made the rest of us drink his blood from the bowl of his skull. He said we needed to bond if morale was so poor."
The work on the west-facing impoundment was tolerable until mid-morning, when the sun cleared the cliffs and began beating into the pit. Then the temperature began to soar. The men took a two-hour break a
t midday but the enclosure was even hotter afterward, everyone coated in sweat and dust and tormented by flies. By mid-afternoon, Ico did little more than lean on his shovel, depressed and exhausted, staring blankly out at the pan of surrounding desert with his thoughts far away.
"You okay, Washington?" Tucker asked him at one point.
"No, Tucker, I'm not okay."
"Can I get you something, man? Some water?"
He waved him off. "Leave me alone. I'm trying to figure out a way to get okay."
They broke off work with the sun dipping toward the horizon, the cliff face still throwing off waves of heat. The sky remained cloudless, the air parched. It was difficult to imagine the pit and its surrounding dike collecting anything but heat.
Back at the main compound, they got a skin of water to drink and wash and then slumped tiredly, waiting for the gathering at dark. The community would party hard and sleep it off the next day. As the stars popped out, Raven found them.
"I worked on the transmitter to confirm it's in his storehouse and pleaded the need to scrounge more parts," she whispered. "A rope is hidden at the base of the monolith. We'll all go to the party to allay suspicion and then you guys will have to slip away. If you can steal it, we meet at two A.M. at the boulders. If anything goes wrong, you four pretend I tricked you into all this."
"That won't take much pretending," Ico said.
She looked at him impatiently. "Ico, I didn't put you here."
"I'm just skeptical about who's going to get me out."
"Let him be," Daniel said wearily. "He's cranky. We're exhausted. Concentrate your thinking on going."
They dozed, and ate, and after dinner Daniel went in search of Amaya. He found her down by the stables, carrying a bag of something up toward the canyon where the women had been assigned. "Need any help?"
"No, it's not heavy. Besides, it's for the surprise."
He wrinkled his nose. "A pretty fragrant one, I take it."
"You'll see. Didn't Ico call me the devil's prospector?"
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