Getting back

PART TWO
CHAPTER ELEVEN

Daniel swam up out of a well of drugs and into an instinctively familiar music. The sound was uneven and yet strangely rhythmic, sweet and welcoming. It was bird-song, he dimly realized, a dawn chattering that he'd never heard from his soundproofed apartment in the city. This is what morning is supposed to sound like. He blinked and propped himself up on his elbows, looking fuzzily around. The landscape was alive with birds, flitting from tree to tree. Black ones, green ones. He recognized some from his reading: thornbills, honeyeaters, fairy wrens, crested pigeons. Green mulga parrots, iridescent in their plumage, were as startling in the tropic desert as ice. Even more improbable were the pink cockatoos with a crest of feathers that strutted across the grassy clearing like a troop of chefs on parade.

He'd made it. He was in Australia.

The sun was just rising and the light was a wonder. There were white-trunked trees at the border of the clearing- river or ghost gums, he guessed- and they glowed in this dawning perpendicular light like fluorescent tubes, as if lit from within by a life that answered the solar rays. Their dark shadows made an arabesque along the ground. Beyond was a crumbled ridge of red rock, its broken parapets studded with trees and bushes of a strange electric green. The rock was on fire with light, its red an echo of the new sun, and the sky at the crest of the ridge was a deep, well-water blue that framed the dazzle below. All the colors seemed exaggerated, as in a dream, and it occurred to him suddenly that he could still be dreaming, drifting in a drug-induced haze of anticipation. Only the others could confirm reality. He sat up, wincing at his stiffness, and looked for them. Amaya and Tucker still lay as if they were dead. Ico, however, was already sitting up with his back against his pack, looking at Daniel with amusement. He put his fingers to his lips so as not to break the moment and then nodded. The meaning was clear: isn't this great?

The ground sloped away to some water, shallow pools glimmering in a broad pan of sand. Reeds grew on the fringe of them like a brilliant slash of lime. More birds flitted among the rushes, calling out cries of joy.

He'd done it. He'd found Eden.

Slowly Daniel stood and rotated around in dazed confirmation. There was not a house or a vehicle or a contrail in the sky. There was nothing, except the birds and the trees and the smell of sweet water. It was the emptiest, fullest place he'd ever been in, and the realization was both exhilarating and disquieting. There was a peculiar clarity to the air, and it took a while for him to analyze what it was. Not just the lack of haze. No, it was the absence of machine noise. No hum, no drone, no grumble, no tick. No clockwork regularity. Sound instead was uneven, the sharp staccato clicks and rustlings of insects and small reptiles and flitting birds seeming jazzlike in its evolved disharmony: a riff, an improvisation. There was a welcome to such discordance but also a somewhat disturbing anarchy to it, an irregularity he wasn't yet accustomed to. He realized suddenly how the aboriginal drumming and chanting that he'd always found dull must have seemed utterly revolutionary to early man: chants and songs that were repetitive, mathematical, predictable, reassuring: an answer to the drumbeat of their own hearts. Order, to combat the dissidence of unruly nature.

As the sun climbed and the light grew flatter and more intense, the other two began to stir. While he waited, Daniel took his bearings. The clearing was a logical drop point, he observed: open, and close to water. He wondered if Outback Adventure had used it before. The area seemed so untouched that it felt like they were the first humans to ever be here, that Australia's long human history had never existed. Perhaps they were the first, since the plague. Coyle had explained that adventurers were set down in widely dispersed places, since the company had an entire continent to choose from. The idea was exhilarating. In the city, every place he stepped had been trod a thousand times before. Here his footfall might be primary. He was Adam! Deliberately isolated so that each group achieved the independence and self-reliance it was seeking. There could be no second thoughts about waiting here at the drop-off point for a ride back home. The transport wouldn't return no matter what happened. The time to back out was gone.

The finality of it was delicious, but so daunting he momentarily felt he was looking over a precipice into a chasm too deep to see bottom.

Amaya stirred, small and pretty in her sleepiness, and slowly sat up, looking around with dawning delight. "It's beautiful!" she cried, rubbing her eyes. "I feel like my brain's made of cotton from those sedatives but my God, the light! It's like a painting! Better than I dreamed!"

Tucker groaned and began to move as well. His eyelids fluttered. For a moment a look of fear crossed his face, and then he relaxed. He remembered.

Ico stretched, stood, and glanced around more appraisingly. "We're out of the cage," he pronounced.

"I still feel hungover from those chemicals," Daniel told him. "How about you?"

He looked sly. "I'm sleepy, but not from any damn witches' brew cooked up by Outback Adventure. I stayed awake and listened to some of the cockpit chatter."

"Stayed awake?"

"I told you I don't trust the bastards. I've got some friends in what you might call 'the medicinal trade.' There are things you can get that counter the normal sedative cocktail. I took some before we boarded and it fought the drugs. It was a little hairy- my heart raced for a time while I was trying to play possum- but it worked. I kept listening for hours until I got so damned tired and bored I just fell asleep naturally."

Tucker shook his head. "You're one paranoid dude, you know that?"

"I just wanted to make sure I knew what I was getting into, so I could scream bloody hell if I didn't end up liking it."

"And do you like it?"

Ico looked around. "So far."

"Where are we, master spy?" Daniel asked.

He looked sheepish. "Australia." There was a long pause. "I didn't pick up any coordinates. It was kind of hard to follow the airline bullshit. They seemed to have code words."

"Great. Did you learn anything?"

He winked. "The co-pilot is screwing an attendant. They talked about that for a while."

The others laughed. "Good job, Sherlock," Tucker said.

The eavesdropper grinned. "At least I tried. We hairless apes need information to survive. Right?"

"Which we don't have," Daniel said.

"Well," Ico added, "I know where we aren't."

"Kansas?" asked Tucker.

"No, where we're supposed to be." He enjoyed their mystification. "Since I was awake anyway, I had a little fun at the transfer point. They tied tags to us like corpses to sort us out. I had a minute to shift them while we waited on gurneys in the dark. We've been put where one quartet was supposed to be and they've been put in our place. Funny, no?"

"You switched our destination?" Amaya asked. "Why?"

"We don't know where we are. But now they don't either." He bent back his head to shout to the sky. "You lost your luggage, you arrogant bastards!" Some of the birds flew up in alarm.

Daniel shook his head. "You're crazy, you know that?"

"Damn right I'm crazy. Why else would I be here?"

There was some befuddled silence as the others digested what Ico had done. It shouldn't matter, should it? "So," Daniel said, "we don't know where we are or exactly where we have to go. Should we talk some strategy?"

"Australia generally gets wetter the farther east you go," Amaya recited, remembering the geography they'd been briefed on. "The desert looks pretty dry beyond the trees of this oasis. Judging from that, I'd say we have a long ways to go."

"That's good," Tucker said. "I came for a long ways."

"Let's be pessimistic," Daniel said. "Say a thousand straight-line miles to the coast, and we average fifteen a day."

"But only ten in a straight line," Amaya amended.

"Yeah, okay. So that's a hundred days. A bit over three months. We can do that, right?"

"I don't know if we can move even that fast," Tucker cautioned. "Eventually we have to look for food, water. Finding our way…"

"We should allow for injuries and rest," Amaya said. "And some R and R."

"We should allow for the possibility they set us down ten miles from the west coast and we have to walk across the whole bloody continent, which is as big as the United States," said Ico.

"Which is exactly the puzzle we asked for, right?" added Tucker.

"We know the most important thing," Daniel said. "We have to walk toward that rising sun. Exodus Port is on the east coast."

"And maybe we do know more," Ico added.

Tucker grinned. "Uh-oh, here it comes. He heard something after all."

"No. But I wasn't content with being spoon-fed by Outback Adventure, either. As far as I was concerned, they were the first challenge, with their 'we'll tell you this but not that' bullshit. So I did a little research outside the envelope."

"And?" Amaya asked.

"I bought a map."

"What! How?"

"You can get all kinds of stuff on the black market."

"They didn't confiscate it?"

"Not unless they unsewed my sleeping bag." He bent to his pack. "I put it in my lining."

Tucker was shaking his head. "You're something else, you know that, Washington? What you did is against the rules. What you did does defeat the purpose."

Ico was using a penknife to cut a small slit in his sleeping bag. "It defeats their purpose, which is to have us wandering around the desert like morons. My purpose is to prove I can beat the system and think for myself." He brought out a folded paper. "We're at war, people. With nature, with Outback Adventure, and with time. I intend to win." He unfolded the map. "Ta-da!"

"It doesn't matter," Daniel dismissed.

"Here, see?" Ico held it up proudly.

"It's useless, Ico."

He looked irritated. "What do you mean?"

"Show me on that map where we are."

"We're going to figure out where we are. With landmarks."

"Show me where we're going."

"Give me time, Dyson."

"Even if we had a clue where we are on your map, we don't know if it's fake or real. It could lead us astray as easily as take us where we need to go. It's a complete waste of time and money." He didn't like the fact that Ico had brought a map without telling them. Or eavesdropped. Or switched their drop-off point. It was an arrogant little stunt.

"Daniel…" Amaya mediated.

"Maybe," Ico said. "Or it just may save your ass." He was defiant. "I checked my supplier out. I believe this is real. And I'm trying to play the game by my rules."

"No you're not. You're trying to cheat. I want to beat them fairly, by finding our own way."

"You want to jump through their hoops. Good doggie."

"I think you should have stayed home if you need a damn road atlas…"

"Boys! Please!" Amaya looked like an exasperated schoolteacher. "Is this some kind of testosterone thing, or what?"

"It's a philosophical discussion," Daniel said.

"About ends and means," Ico added.

"Well, this boy thinks we ought to stop talking and start walking," Tucker said. "You two can argue along the way. About a hundred paces behind Amaya and me, please."

Ico sighed and shrugged. "Okay, I'll tuck the map away for now. You'll be asking for it later. In the meantime, which way, Mister Let's-Do-It-The-Hard-Way?"

Daniel pointed toward the rising sun. "That way."

Before they set out they filtered and drank water from the pools until they were satiated, trying to flush the last of the sleep chemicals from their systems. Then they filled all the water containers they had. With several weeks of food on their backs, they agreed, water posed their biggest challenge. They had to find it every two to three days, at most. Then, that goal established, they started east, following the base of a rocky ridge that led roughly in that direction. The walking was neither particularly difficult nor easy. There was little soil, the ground instead dominated by sand, clay, rocks, and a dry, clumpy grass that pricked at them when they brushed it, forcing a meandering course between its tufts. "Spinifex," Amaya identified. It was necessary to watch constantly where one stepped, but the route was fairly level and it was not hard to make progress in an easterly direction and keep oriented.

As delighted as they were to finally be in Australia, Daniel thought, it was satisfying to begin making progress across it. Ahead was their simple new goal, behind a confirmation of how far they'd come. Progress! A mile already. He knew he shouldn't be counting steps, but the habit of setting a schedule, measuring miles, and listing goals was impossible to break. They were not accustomed to wander.

The air had the same astonishing clarity of the videos they'd seen, with no atmospheric haze to soften what seemed a hard, angular land. The few clouds that had been present at dawn disappeared, leaving a blank blue sky of steadily increasing heat. As the sun rose and the shadows shrank, every grain of sand and waxy leaf seemed picked out in detail. In this light there was no mystery about the kind of place they had come to. It was brittle, thin, challenging.

"This is real in-your-face kind of country," Tucker called it.

As if to make his description literal, the flies came as the morning warmed, swarming in numbers beyond the experience of any in the quartet. The insects didn't bite but they orbited the adventurers' heads with a persistence that soon grew annoying. They buzzed into ears, eyes, nose, and mouth, seeking human fluids, and were kept at bay only with a tiresome flapping of the arm.

"Lord Almighty," Tucker complained. "I don't remember being told about these."

"I read about them," Amaya said. "The joke is that your waving arm was the Australian salute. Some claim the Europeans brought them. They're a curse, for despoiling the land."

"I just got here. They should go curse someone else."

A hot breeze kept the bugs at bay for a while but any stillness brought them back. "A thousand miles with these guys?" Ico panted.

"There's about thirty that have landed on that house you're carrying on your back," Tucker said. "Not that you'd feel the difference."

"It's your lunch, Freidel. Buzzing wilderness protein."

"Seriously, man. How can you expect to carry all that?"

"Flies?"

"No. Half an outdoor store."

"This pack is going to keep me not only alive, my good Tucker, but comfortable. It's a hell of a long walk to the beach and I'm not going to be miserable the whole time."

"You just need to keep up, that's all."

"I am keeping up, big guy. In fact, if I don't run you into the ground, I'll give you my coffeemaker." He nodded. "To carry."

The intensity of the southern sun soon became apparent. Much of Australia was as close to the equator as Mexico, and the solar radiation was more powerful than what the four were accustomed to. They stopped frequently to make adjustments. With the coolness of dawn swiftly evaporating, jackets came off and sunscreen came on. They donned wide-brimmed hats and sunglasses. Ico dug into his pack and brought out a fine mesh bag stuffed with food. He emptied the containers into other pockets in his pack and slipped the bag over his hat and head, pulling the drawstring around his throat. "Voila!" he announced. "No flies!"

"But you can't see what we came for," Amaya objected.

"I can see a hell of a lot better through this mesh than with flies in my eyes."

Tucker grinned. "Wait until he needs a drink of water."

Sure enough, when Ico loosened the net to drink, flies found their way inside the opening and began feasting on his sweat. He swatted angrily but the insects couldn't find their way back out. "Damn!" Finally he furiously pulled the bag and hat off his head and shook them to rid himself of the bugs. More insects whined around his head. "I don't believe this!" The others laughed.

He glared, then looked thoughtfully at the invention balled in his hand. "Don't worry, I've got a tube in this hardware store on my back. Next time I'll use it as a straw. I'll get it right." He jerked the net back on.

"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."