Getting back

by William Dietrich

  "Me too, Daniel."

  "I miss the obvious things," he admitted. "The lack of medical expertise, for instance. We're young and healthy now, but what if we really stay here all our lives? I worry about the pregnancy."

  She shrugged. "Women had babies without doctors for a long time. I'm not afraid."

  "I should miss the art and science, I suppose, but I don't. It didn't mean anything to me in the life before. I should miss the stores, but I like making things for myself. It's more satisfying than buying. I should miss ideas, but we're finding old books and now I have time to read them. I feel healthier than I ever have, since we walk everywhere. It would be nice to flip a switch once in a while, but since there are no switches- no one else has them either- I don't even really miss that. All that I've lost has been filled up with other things: the land, the animals, the friends. You."

  "So why did you even ask the question?"

  He sat on the grass beside her. "I still feel guilty, I suppose, that you didn't go."

  "Guilty! You weren't even there!"

  "Guilty that I was so irresistible that you couldn't bear to leave me."

  She laughed. "Oh, please!"

  "Guilty that I couldn't give you a proper ring. Find us a proper church. See you in a proper dress."

  She shook her head. "I don't miss any of those things. I miss…" She pondered for a minute. "Chocolate."

  He nodded. "Okay. There's one."

  "Coffee," she went on.

  "Ouch. I remember that."

  "Perfume. Ice cream. Toilet paper. Aspirin. Magazines. Musicsymphonic music. Refrigeration. A laundry. Immunizations. New underwear. A flush toilet." She looked at him mischievously.

  "Okay, enough already! We're working on some of those things," he added defensively.

  "I know. And I don't really miss them, Daniel. I mean, if I had to choose between them and this place, or maybe I should say that time and this time… I thought I'd desperately miss them when I was back in that world, and even when I first came to this one. I did miss them. But they were just things, not happiness, and somehow the need for them has subsided. I'd miss my old sense of belonging to my company but instead I belong here: people have been very kind, after what I've done. I'm astonished at what I don't miss."

  "Sometimes I miss the trek," he said. "When it was just the four of us. It's easier now and more secure but when you add all these people… that meeting last night!"

  She laughed. There'd been an argument about sanitation. More rules. Daniel had been trying to back away from his role as de facto mayor, but Ethan wanted a charter.

  "Sometimes I miss you," she said. "When the others demand so much of your time."

  "I don't want to be sucked in by that. I want a balance."

  "And sometimes I miss not knowing, like you."

  "I wonder how we'd react if we did know? If we still had a choice?"

  They sat there, soaking up the sun. And then a black-clothed figure emerged from the edge of a wood and walked slowly toward them, his palms upraised and empty, his eyes cautiously watching. He stopped a few feet from them.

  "I've been listening," said Elliott Coyle.

  He was stylishly dressed as before, his kangaroo pin a point of contrasting brightness. There was a directional cone at his belt to eavesdrop on conversations but otherwise he carried nothing. Coyle regarded them with calm purpose, a half smile on his lips. Like a creature from a dream. Or the end of one.

  "Hello, Daniel. Raven. It's been a long time."

  They stared at the Outback Adventure counselor in shock. Coyle stood without apology or surprise, as if this reunion should, after all, have been expected. He studied them curiously as if they were the oddity, not him. "You're looking well, I see."

  They were speechless.

  "It's true what they say. About motherhood making you glow."

  Daniel felt irritated at that, feeling the observation from this man who'd helped put them here was presumptuous. He opened his mouth to retort but Raven put her hand on his arm. "What are you doing here?" she asked instead.

  "We've been watching you. Monitoring your progress. Even logging your daily walks. I had a hover set down last night and I've been waiting for you. I'm sorry about the spying, but I wanted to approach at a proper time. You're in a reflective mood today, so my timing is impeccable."

  "Timing for what?" she asked.

  "I've come to bring you back." As if the answer was obvious.

  "What?"

  "Your adventure is over. You've passed."

  They looked at him as if he was crazy.

  "We didn't lie to you. Exodus Port exists but just not in the way you expected. When you're ready we come get you. When we judge it's time."

  "Is this some kind of joke?"

  "It's no joke, Daniel. We told you it would be the toughest test on the face of the earth. Very few pass it. You two have. It's time to come back to United Corporations with me." He nodded reassuringly. "Ico is waiting."

  "You're taking us all back?" Raven tried to clarify.

  "Not all of you, not yet. Just you two for now. A few more, maybe, when they're ready. When they've developed the skills needed to contribute to the United Corporations world."

  They looked at him blankly, awash in so many conflicting emotions that they didn't know how to respond. "How did you first find us?" Daniel finally asked.

  "Ico, of course. He told us where to look."

  "So he made it."

  "Yes, he made it." He waited for the next question.

  "And Rugard Sloan…?" Raven asked.

  "Did not."

  "And now we're to trust you?"

  Coyle glanced up at the sky. "Surveillance data helped pin your position and progress. It's quite impressive, frankly. Your little group is outside all theoretical parameters for this point in time. You two have exceeded all projections. You've become a leader, Daniel! An organization man after all! So it's time to leave the land of the losers and come back to modern life. Time to abandon the past for the future."

  "Like you," Daniel said.

  Coyle nodded. "Yes. Like me."

  "Come back to the companies that cooked up this monstrous hoax. That marooned us here. That let people die like flies. Come back with you."

  "Come back like I came back," Coyle replied softly. "Angry. Smart. Transformed. Don't you think I felt the same way as you do now? I was building a boat to float off when they finally offered me Exodus. I was furious. I wanted to expose everything. But when I thought about it, when I talked it over with them and let all my frustration pour out, I realized I was really angry at myself. For being blind so long about me, this place, and what was best for the wider world. Outback Adventure didn't lie to you two. Not really. We told you which way to go. We told you it would be hard, and dangerous. We told you what you needed to survive, and told you only enough to make you appreciate the value of civilized society. The only trick was that you didn't escape to a refuge, you left it. Eden is back there, with me! With United Corporations! Where all your needs are taken care of by machines! Where life is the easiest it's ever been! That's the lesson of this nightmare. That United Corporations doesn't just work- that it's vital. It needs to be protected. Australia protects it. I protect it. Just like the centurions once protected Rome."

  "No," Daniel said slowly. "What you do is murder."

  "What we do is give people what they want. We make clear the danger in that. The wilderness is a hard lesson. So the few with a knack for survival and organization are taken back. Always."

  "What if they don't want to come?"

  "That's not really an option. If we left you here, you'd corrupt the wilderness. Australia is a home for social misfits, not a breeding ground for would-be pioneers. You've come through the plagues of disorder, Daniel. It's time for Exodus."

  "And the price home?"

  "There's a few confidentiality forms to sign. Ico did. A discussion of how your new talents might best be used. In return, you win an important
, prestigious life. More money than you dreamed, and as much responsibility as you can handle. We're really quite a remarkable fraternity. Let me be the first to congratulate you." He waited.

  Daniel glanced at Raven, the gentle swelling of her breasts and abdomen. It would be easier to go back. Boring, perhaps, but safer and more comfortable. Their child nursed and schooled. Their child raised to be- "No," Raven said. "We're not coming back with you, Elliott."

  He shrugged. "That's a common early reaction."

  "We're not coming back with you because you're not from some kind of technological heaven, you're from an oppressive social hell," she went on calmly. "It was a place I believed in with all my heart but it required my heart. It devoured and froze it. It left me wedded to stability instead of possibility, and tore me in half. You're a demon, Elliott, on a devil's mission. You've got the blood of a thousand people on your hands. Ten thousand! I've seen them. I've seen the bones. You're a corporate monster, a robot with no soul, and I want my baby as far away from you, and your kind, as he or she can be. I despise United Corporations!"

  Coyle had taken a step back at this assault. "That's not fair," he objected, raising his hands. "Do you think that campground of yours over the hill is in any way realistic? Do you think twelve billion people can live like- "

  "We can live like this," Daniel interrupted quietly. "We earned the right, by coming here and surviving here. You gave us that right by sending us here. We want to make a new society. And already it's more real, more satisfying, than anything your world has to offer."

  "No." Coyle shook his head. "No, no, no. I'm sure your hamlet is… quaint," he conceded, the condescension plain. "But can't you see the irony here? You're not wandering. You're not nomads. You're not some kind of new human, reborn into some kind of grace. You're settling. You're becoming us. By building your new civilization- by doing what comes naturally to our species- you're setting out to destroy the very wilderness you came here for! You can't escape human nature, Daniel. You can't escape your own instincts. By building your village you're just starting down the road to another United Corporations world, except with more dirt and disease along the way. History will simply repeat itself. It's inevitable! Cut the pain short, and come with me."

  "It's not inevitable. We're going to strike a balance and make a better world. We've learned from your mistakes."

  "That's not what history teaches. It's an endless wheel of mistakes. Until now."

  "Until here. The other thing our species does is learn."

  Their counselor's look grew impatient. "If we have to, we can destroy you," he warned.

  "No you can't," Raven replied. "If you come we'll go back into the bush until you go away. If you try to hunt us down your secret can't be kept from the thousands of soldiers it would take to prosecute such a war. And even if you did destroy us it would only prove how phony and bankrupt all your pretensions about this place are. Come after us, Elliott, and the truth about this place will pull your pyramids down around your ears. It's your society that's fragile, that can't tolerate questions or challenge, that has to fear its own best people and turn its back on its worst. So if you try to harm us it will ultimately be we who destroy you. Leave us alone: as a secret, a rumor, a myth. We want nothing from your world."

  "You can't survive in the long run! It's impossible!"

  "People survived here for fifty thousand years."

  "I don't want you wasted!"

  "Then stop sacrificing people here! Cultivate your so-called misfits before your civilization fossilizes! Because if you don't use them, we will, in our new society. And because of that, we're your only hope." She looked at him evenly.

  Coyle's mouth was a line. "United Corporations has no need for your hope."

  "Goodbye, Elliott." Raven took Daniel's hand, squeezed it, and, turning, began walking away.

  Their counselor stood rigid, looking after them.

  "Are you okay?" Daniel asked her, glancing back at the man in black.

  She nodded, glancing up at the sunlight filtered by the trees. "Very okay."

  "It's the opportunity of a lifetime!"

  Ico Washington shook the candidate's hand reassuringly, smiled confidently, and saw himself, what he had once been, in the Outback Adventure client's eyes. Unhappy, suspicious, anxious, hopeful, vain. They were all like that, the young men and women who came through his door. Walking time bombs of dissatisfaction. They would go, and learn, and come back.

  Or not.

  There was always doubt, of course. These were people filled with doubt. So if you could never decide for them- that was against the rules, to push too hard- it was necessary to reassure. "It's the perfect experience for a dynamic, independent individual like you," he recited. "A win-win opportunity for everyone. It changed my life. I'm sure it will yours."

  It was so easy. Just tell the truth.

  The recruit left, liberated as always by the drastic decision and the vacuuming of his savings. Ico stood from his desk and stretched, looking out the tinted glass window. The city ran to the horizon, a chessboard of light as dusk fell, the office towers the board's strategic pieces. Ten millennia of human thought had created this. It was the apex of civilized achievement, and he its unsung defender.

  Finally, he had a job he succeeded in.

  Ico looked at the glow of corporate names, the tracery of lasers, the streams of homeward traffic. The city throbbed with the reassurance of ten million human hearts. He saw it differently since he'd come back. Saw what it all was for.

  So strange, then, that Daniel and Raven had stayed.

  Their decision troubled him. He'd thought of contacting the cyber underground, of course, but on reflection thought better of it. It would become another rumor of losers, and people wouldn't understand. It would change nothing, or ruin everything. So he'd done for Daniel and Raven what he could: more than they'd ever done for him! Told of their progress, urged their rescue. Coyle had gone himself and come back moody and irritable. The pair had sent him away!

  He thought he'd known them better than that. What had the whole trip been about, if not getting back?

  As he looked out he saw his own reflection in the glass. His tan fading now, his body a little softer. But a different confidence, surely. He'd done the right thing, hadn't he?

  For a moment he saw in the glow of the city lights the red dust of Australia, and he recalled the snow-white trunks of the twisting ghost gums. The unreal clarity of it. A strange, strange place. His nightmares of it were of hot sand and relentless pursuit, so sometimes, after jerking awake in his vast, soft bed- the shadows of his condominium looming and the drumming of the city a mutter beyond his thick walls- he'd try to remember the sound of the birds. So many birds! But they wouldn't come to him.

  Just as well.

  He wondered, for the thousandth time, if Virus 03.1 had really been an accident.

  Then Ico sat at his console, clicked up his schedule, and glanced at his watch. The one he'd worn to the wilderness.

  "Your next appointment is here, Mr. Washington."

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