Getting back

by William Dietrich

  "Something like that." His look became serious. "How about the supplies?"

  "Enough to get us started. We'll be living off the land again."

  "Can we do it?"

  "We have to. Wasn't that the point from the beginning?"

  He nodded and then frowned, gathering his thoughts for what he was about to say. "Amaya, before we make our move tonight I want you to think about your options. I admire your courage for being willing to stay in Australia but I want you to reconsider. I think Ethan would step aside if you wanted to leave on the rescue plane with Raven. Australia is pretty tough, and I don't know how this Rugard is going to react when we steal his means of escape. He might try to run us down in the desert."

  "I know."

  "It's just going to be hard. And dangerous."

  She nodded. "I know. But I'm really not all that anxious to get back, Daniel, despite all the bad luck. Something is happening in my life."

  "I worry about you with all these men."

  She laughed. "What a ratio! I should be looking forward to all these men!"

  "You know what I mean. These guys are convicts, most of them. The shrinks couldn't straighten them out. All I'm saying is… this may be your last chance."

  "To escape, you mean, despite what Raven promises."

  "Yes."

  She nodded, more serious. "I know. But I've thought about it. I've been thinking about it ever since we woke up in Australia, not just since Raven told us about the transmitter. Sometimes I feel I belong, and sometimes it scares me to death. But to go back now would be to give up on myself. I'm feeling new things here, seeing new things, thinking new thoughts. Back home it's just… noise. So thank you, I'm staying."

  "All right. I thought that's what you'd say." He looked at her with a tilt to his head. "You're what Raven pretended to be, I think."

  "I think Raven pretended to be what she wants to be. She's just not there yet."

  He shook his head. "I don't understand her."

  "She doesn't understand herself."

  He looked at her quizzically. "Are we going to stay friends?"

  "I hope so."

  "I mean after Raven's gone. You're a special woman, Amaya. A good woman."

  "And you're a good man. But I've seen how you look at her. It's not the way you look at me."

  His expression was guilty.

  She smiled. "Not yet, anyway." And then his eyes followed her as she walked jauntily away.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  If Rugard Sloan thought he was about to leave Australia, he gave no hint of it in his meandering harangue to the crowd of two hundred that gathered in the clearing that night. He introduced the latest arrivals, crowed about the community's achievements, and gave dire warnings about the consequences of insubordination or shirking. "The sons of bitches in the real world sent us here to rot!" he shouted in hoarse reminder to the assembly. "Every day we survive here, every day we prevail here, we're spitting in their faces!" They roared their approval at that, and he grinned viciously. "We spit at them! And someday we'll pay them back! But meantime I love you people, and what we've built here! So it's time to take a night off and… party!" The crowd whooped.

  A makeshift band of drummers and wooden flutists started a pounding, hooting beat, and some of the assembly began to awkwardly dance in the sand. Fermented plant juice was passed out, forgivably awful because it was so fiery. A bonfire roared in the night. Daniel studied the cliff face above Rugard's cabin. It was dark, a slab against the stars.

  The Warden worked the crowd and then came up to Raven. "Why isn't it working yet?" he growled quietly.

  "I'm almost there."

  He grasped her hand that held a cup and tipped it forcefully toward the sand. His grip was like a vise. "I don't want you drinking tonight. I want you up at the cabin later, with me, getting that transmitter to work. The compound will be hungover and half-conscious tomorrow. We can't take all of them, so it would be a good time to slip away without saying goodbye. Understand?"

  "You're willing to leave these people you love?"

  "I'm willing to leave my own mother to get out of this dung hole."

  "I'll come to you later."

  "You'd better. I'm watching you, bitch. Don't think about leaving without me."

  "Relax, Warden." She smiled tightly, her wrist twisted. "We're working together, remember?"

  He looked at her intently, his gray eyes like hollows. "Don't fuck with me." Then he dropped her arm and moved away.

  Her group danced, to be seen. Except for Raven, they pretended to drink, to be seen. And then Daniel, Tucker, and Ethan slipped quietly away into the dark, one by one, even as the noise of the celebration grew. Sparks wafted up to dance amid the stars. Raven and Amaya drifted through the crowd, laughingly fending off advances and keeping an eye on the hill to Rugard's cabin.

  Sometime after midnight the women met in the shadows, wary and tense. "I can't find Ico," Raven reported. "I haven't seen him for an hour."

  "I don't think he's one for parties," Amaya said. "He told me he was getting more supplies before going to watch Rugard's door. You should have seen his pack when we started. He brought everything."

  "I haven't seen the Warden, either."

  "He's hanging on a new concubine. Drina looked furious."

  Raven looked out into the dark, feeling her sore wrist. "Ico wants to get back very badly, doesn't he?"

  "I think he's angry. He wants revenge."

  "I hope he's not so angry he does something foolish. Did you move the supplies away from the boulder cluster, like I told you?"

  "Yes, but I don't understand why."

  "And try making what I suggested?"

  "Yes. I don't know if it will work."

  "Good. Hopefully none of it is necessary. I'm going to get the activator. We'll meet the men with the transmitter and slip away."

  "Then why the precautions?"

  "Because it may be more difficult to get out of Erehwon than I would like."

  The monolith that formed the sheer cliff at the rear of Rugard's cabin was more a steep slope on its opposite side, its rock the texture of sandpaper. A watercourse that funneled periodic thundershowers down the face of the rock had made enough of a crease in the formation to give Daniel, Ethan, and Tucker a desperate chance of scaling it. They shouldered the ropes that Raven had liberated from a compound warehouse and then started their climb at a dead run, sprinting up the rock's lowest slope with a momentum that took them to a pool in a fold of rock thirty feet above the surrounding sand. They clung to its rim.

  "You okay?" Daniel asked the others.

  Tucker looked around at the bare stone. "No snakes so far."

  "I don't think a flea could cling to this dildo," Ethan said, looking upward at the pale formation rising like a horn. "How the hell are we going to get up this, Daniel?"

  "Friction."

  The watercourse gave them just enough of a dent to brace themselves as they wedged upward, and the rough texture provided a tenuous grip. None dared look down. Daniel's sweat left a trail of dark droplets and Ethan breathed in short gasps, his muscles trembling from the tension. Tucker grunted with the effort to keep his bulk from sliding back downhill. There was enough slope to give them purchase, but it was like climbing a funnel, gravity trying to pull them toward a dark drain. The night was cool, the stars cold, and yet Daniel was hot from the exertion.

  At least the view was extraordinary, he noticed when he glanced up. Other monoliths in the cluster of rocks gleamed gray in the dark like the domes of a religious sanctuary, their canyons and valleys lakes of shadow. The sky vaulted down and the desert horizon climbed up to tie into one vast sphere of ghostly luminescence, the rock he clung to at the center of this spectral universe. It was as if he was climbing the crest of a floating asteroid, he thought. His goal, the summit ahead, seemed to lead to space itself. The effect was dizzying.

  His floating reverie was interrupted by a scrape and a muffled curse. Tucker was sliding backw
ard down the chute. "Damn!"

  Daniel tensed, praying. After several yards the big man managed to brake himself, abrading his arms and legs to keep his precarious contact with the rock. He skidded to a halt.

  "You okay?" Daniel inquired quietly.

  There was a long silence. "I'm okay. I can tell by the pain."

  They started up again. It helped to keep eyes to the stone. There was one short stretch where the pitch was nearly vertical and they climbed by pushing against almost imperceptible undulations in the surface, straining from the exertion. Then the slope began to ease and finally to flatten. Daniel crawled shakily onto the roof of the monolith, his muscles rubbery. The surface of its crest was rough but basically level, eroded into shallow depressions that held pools of water separated by ridges of tougher rock. In the compound below figures still staggered drunkenly in the dying firelight. He felt horribly exposed, yet it was unlikely anyone could see him in the darkness. Dropping to his knees, he made his way to the far edge. Here the rock tower dropped straight down to Rugard's cabin, completely black in the night. There was no light from the house, and none from the brush nearby.

  It was like dropping into the dragon's den.

  "Gawd," Tucker said as he came up next to Daniel. "If my ass had puckered any more on that climb I would've collapsed on myself like a black hole. This is the craziest damn thing I've ever done, you know that?"

  "A computer would never do it," Daniel agreed. "But it's not as crazy as me going down there." He peered into the darkness. "I can't see a thing, but I have to hope the transmitter is really down there and everyone is gone, drunk, or passed out. Rugard hasn't shared our secret, I'll bet, so nobody should be particularly alert. You're going to have to lower me as I rappel, and Ethan will help feed the line. Then you can both hoist me up. Can you do that?"

  Tucker considered. "I can brace my legs against these little ledges up here. I won't be able to see anything though, so I'll just lower until Ethan says you're down. Ico's keeping an eye on the front door?"

  "That's the plan."

  Tucker began flaking the ropes loose in businesslike fashion while Ethan used knots to join them. Daniel tied an end around his waist and crotch vaguely similar to his memory of the rappeling harness he'd used on vacation. Backing down a sheer cliff was not as difficult as it looked, he reminded himself, so long as you were sure the partner feeding the end from around his waist was absolutely dependable. He hoped Tucker's snake venom had thoroughly worn off.

  Daniel stood, saluted his companion, and walked backward as Tucker fed out the rope. He paused on the edge, double-checking his knots. Not exactly just another day at Microcore. Then he leaned back into space. His legs were braced against the cliff, his body straight, and the taut rope cutting into his waist was all that suspended him from eternity. The helplessness of it- the requirement for implicit trust in another human being- was exhilarating. As Tucker slowly let out rope he began to descend, walking backward down the cliff toward the pool of darkness below. He waited for a shout of alarm, but all he heard was the increasingly discordant drum of music. The band was getting drunk.

  In the end it was almost too easy, far easier than the climb up had been. He dropped to the cabin's roofless terrace breathless but elated. He was down! Daniel waited until slack rope pattered into a pile beside him and then moved cautiously forward, listening. The guard, Jago, presumably still stood on the other side of the front door. The interior of the cabin was dark, its corners spooky, and Daniel tried not to think of the corpse of the crucified pilot, or convicts drinking from a skull.

  He glanced toward the table. Raven's electronic junk was still scattered across it- she must have put on a good show. Thankfully the transmitter sat there too, a beckoning machine. Or like cheese in a trap, he thought wryly. He took a step. No sound but his own panting and the distant, dying sounds of merriment. Another step, and then another. He felt like he was being watched. But no, the cabin was empty, wasn't it? Then he was at the table, groping across it to softly cradle the machine in his arms. You might just pull this off, he told himself. You might just walk out into the desert with the means for Raven to call home.

  With the means for her to leave you. She'd be waiting in the starlight with the activator, waiting to go back to a world he'd wanted to escape from, waiting to go back to a system he wanted to condemn. Would she really come back for them? Did he want her to? Or did he really wish she would stay as they hiked to the coast- He froze. There was something else on the table, he saw dimly. A metal box the size of a shoe box. He reached out, his fingertips brushing the familiar dented surface of flaking paint. Tough enough to withstand an airplane crash, to weather a flood, to…

  What was the activator doing here?

  A match flared, brilliant in the inky darkness, transfixing Daniel like a deer. "See, we don't need her anymore," a voice said quietly. "Now we've got both units, and can signal whenever we want." The illuminated hand lit a candle.

  It was Ico. He'd stolen Raven's hidden activator and gone to Rugard.

  Outside Daniel could hear a rumble of feet up the hill as convicts began a charge for the front door. They'd been waiting for the light. He snatched the activator up to cradle with the transmitter, backing toward the cliff. "Don't do this!"

  "It was the only way, Dyson." Ico stepped into the light, holding the tip of a crude sword against the floor like a cane, as if the idea of pointing it at someone had not yet occurred to him. "The only way to make sure one of us got back. Not that seductress from United Corporations! But the Warden… he has to have underground connections it would take us years to find. They'll harbor us, and hide us, and we'll get the cyber word out…"

  "No! Not with convicts!"

  There were men at the outside of the cabin door now, jerking it open.

  Daniel stood at the cliff base, still roped in, his arms awkwardly full, looking up. "Pull!" he screamed.

  "Don't be a fool," Ico hissed. "He'll kill us all! Think!" And then he jumped forward, the sword swung high to chop at the rope. At the same moment the door burst open and Rugard, Jago, and half a dozen convicts burst into the room.

  "Sneaking thieves!" the Warden roared.

  Daniel had only a second to consider. Which machine was more expendable?

  Then he heaved the activator at Ico Washington as hard as he could. The heavy box hit his attacker full in the face and Ico went backward with a muffled cry, falling into the surging convicts. Daniel wrapped himself around the rope and was suddenly jerked up into the night. A spear skimmed past his swinging boot and clanged against the cliff wall.

  "Get him!" the Warden howled.

  Dancing like a puppet, Daniel was hauled by brute strength up along the dark cliff, using his feet to fend himself off as he swung. Something whizzed by him and missed. Then his ascent stopped and he dangled, helpless, the shadowy figures below taking aim. He was about to scream for his companions to pull some more when something heavy sizzled by as it fell, the wind cuffing him. It hit below with a crash, splintering, and the convicts howled. Ethan had dropped a rock! Then with a jerk Daniel was being hauled upward again.

  "What if that had hit me!" he hollered upward.

  "We could stop pulling!" Ethan called back.

  From the confusion of shouts below he could hear the Warden's roar. "Come on, we'll get them when they come off the monolith!"

  Then Daniel smelled smoke.

  Ico's illumination of the slitlike windows in Rugard's cabin had signaled the waiting convicts- warned by Ico of Raven's plan- to rush the front door. It had also alerted Raven and Amaya, who had crept in behind Rugard's men. Once she found the activator missing from where she had hidden it and guessed what Ico had done, Raven had realized that his betrayal might be another kind of chance. Now it was all playing out as she had expected. With a little luck, the tables would be turned. "Let's go!"

  The women seized either end of a stout wooden log and ran up the dark hill toward the cabin door. Raven had noticed a curious
detail: the Warden had built his stout door to open outward so that any attackers could not easily batter it inward against its log frame. An excellent plan to keep assailants out.

  Or the Warden in.

  Even as they heard the shouts and cries of the men inside, the women slammed the log firmly against the door, bracing it against the dirt. Then they lit two brands and ran along the cabin wall, firing its thatched roof.

  Heavy shoulders crashed against the cabin door from the inside but it didn't budge. In an instant, smelling the smoke, the Warden understood. "It's a trick! A trap! The table, the table! Get up on the roof and out of here!"

  Even as they dragged furniture over to boost themselves to the inner lip of the half-covering roof, a wall of flames breathed heat on the cabin eaves. From somewhere in the dark, a woman screamed. One of the braver convicts hauled himself up on the roof and danced on its brushwood frame to try to dash through the curtain of flames. He broke through near the wall and crashed back down into the cabin, burned, smoking, and howling. Frantic, the men hurled themselves again against the stout door. It wouldn't give.

  "We're going to fry!" one of them yelled.

  "No we're not! Get back to the cliff!" Rugard snapped. "The fire will just bring the others to unblock the door!" He started to cough then, cursing, as smoke billowed from the underside of the thatch. His men began bailing spring water, throwing it up toward the growing conflagration, but it did little good and in any case wasn't really necessary. There was no real danger, the Warden thought: there was a sufficient gap between roof and cliff where the flames wouldn't reach. If they had to they could retreat into the stone storeroom. But Dyson was getting away, a jerking fly now against the stars high above. That was humiliating.

  Angrily, the Warden clutched Ico's arm. The smaller man seemed in shock, hypnotized by the flames, his nose bleeding from where he'd been hit. "Why didn't he cooperate, like you promised?"

  Ico shook his head. "The woman. She's bewitched him."

  "Where are they going?" Rugard demanded. "Where will they signal?"