Getting back

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

"You're not supposed to be in this sector," Raven said to Daniel, her eyes flickering from him to the young woman at his side.

He stared back in amazement, taking in the familiar features. Her dark hair had been pulled into a ponytail, accentuating high cheekbones turned bronze by the sun. Her eyes revealed puzzlement. Unlike his huddled posture of defeat, she carried herself with familiar athletic quickness and grace, like a poised deer. He was confused by her confusion: he thought she'd be surprised he'd come to Australia at all, not that he was in any particular spot.

"You told me you didn't think you'd come here," he countered, his voice a croak. "Then I called and you were gone."

"Yes." She looked at the three newcomers as if trying to decide something. "My situation changed."

Daniel sipped more water and sat up straighter, the liquid tingling as it circulated, relieving the ache in his brain. "Your timing is good. We were in bad shape."

"You're very lucky."

Amaya was looking at Raven with a mixture of bewilderment and mistrust. Raven glanced at her, considering. "This is a surprise for both of us, as you can see," she said to the other woman. "We knew each other before."

Amaya absorbed this.

Daniel pointed at the man accompanying Raven. "He stole some of our food," he accused.

"No I didn't," the man said. "I saved it from a dingo. If I hadn't taken it, it would be gone."

"We ran to save Tucker," Amaya explained meekly.

"And left your means of survival to the dogs. I went to find Raven so we could decide what to do. I wasn't sure you could, or should, survive. You're in a hard world now and we weren't planning to meet anyone out here. Then we found this little guy- "

"Ethan, enough," Raven interrupted. "After talking with Ico there, we decided you needed rescue." It was clear the decision had been hers. "He told us about you."

"Why did you run from us?" Daniel asked Ethan.

"Because our business is private." He looked at Raven with the dubious expression of a follower still questioning the decision of his leader.

"And this complicates everything," Raven added. She looked out across the desert as she thought. It was almost as if she was sorry she'd found Daniel. Was she involved with this other man?

"We could just point them toward the compound," Ethan said.

"And get the Warden suspicious at the news of us? I don't want him coming out here. Besides, this group is in no condition to drag the big man that far." She pointed at the groaning Tucker. "What kind of snake? Did you see?"

"No idea."

"Well, if it was a taipan he'd probably be dead by now. Maybe just a death adder; he's too big a mouthful for that kind despite the name."

"So Tucker will live?" Amaya asked.

She shrugged. "He'll die, or get better."

There was a moment of silence at this appraisal. "She sounds like my doctor," Ico finally quipped.

Raven for the first time allowed a half smile. "You start to appreciate their wisdom out here." She looked at Daniel and Amaya. "Can you walk?"

They nodded uncertainly. "I'm feeling better," Daniel said. It was not just the water, it was this encounter with a Raven who seemed to know what she was doing. Confidence was as infectious as panic.

"Their sled might work to drag him as far as Car Camp," she said to the man called Ethan. "They can rest there while we search."

"And then what?" he asked in exasperation. "Who is this guy, anyway?"

"A friend." It was the first time she'd said it. "And then we decide what to do next."

Daniel was filled with questions. Who was Ethan? Search for what? "How did you first spot us?"

"Your fires," Raven said. "We thought you might be someone else."

"This Warden?" Amaya guessed.

"Yes. We needed to know who you were."

Amaya leaned close to Daniel, her eyes on Raven. "Is this the person you were talking about?" she asked softly.

He knew what she meant. "Yes."

Amaya looked dismayed. Raven was taller, prettier, stronger, Daniel saw through her eyes. More assertive. No, he wanted to say, it's not like that. But before he could think of what to say to the two women that would work, Raven spoke up.

"We knew each other," she said. "That's all."

Daniel didn't like that, either.

"Knew how?" Ico asked impatiently.

"She's the one who told me about Outback Adventure," Daniel explained stiffly. "She gave me the passwords. But she didn't tell me she was going."

"I didn't know then. I came in part because of you."

"Ah," Ico said, as if he understood everything. "And who's this guy?"

"Ethan Flint," the man said.

"Another trekker?"

"That was the plan."

"What happened?"

"My transport crashed."

"Oh, dear," Amaya said. "But you're here on vacation, like us?"

He laughed sardonically. "It's probably more accurate to say you're here in prison, like me."

"Prison? What the hell does that mean?" Daniel asked.

"That you can't get back unless- "

"Ethan!" Raven's voice was a warning.

"I knew it," Ico groaned. "I knew this was somehow fucked. Outback Adventure has screwed us, right? What, we have to pay more now to get out? Is that the scam?"

Ethan shook his head. "I wish it were that easy."

"Don't pay any attention to him," Raven said. "He doesn't know what he thinks he knows."

"I know enough to know- "

"I'll explain what I can soon enough," she went on quickly, firmly. "First we need to get to more water before the sun gets too high." Clearly she wouldn't tolerate too many questions yet. "Come on, we'll take turns pulling your… sled."

"Travois," Ico corrected. "But what the hell is your companion talking about?"

Raven said nothing. Ethan looked away.

Ico bent to pull the travois with Daniel. "There's something weird here, Dyson," he whispered like a conspirator. "When this pair found me, that woman of yours recognized my name."

With Raven and Ethan adding their energy to pulling the travois, progress became steady. They turned more north than east, Raven usually pointing the way but consulting occasionally with Ethan. When Flint took a break from the travois, walking silently as if lost in thought, Ico moved up beside him.

"Who the hell are you, really?" he asked.

Ethan glanced at the shorter man. "I'm you, three months ago. Hapless. Clueless."

"Gee, thanks."

"My equipment lost. My clothes still in tolerable shape. My fat reserves still intact and my self-confidence gone. Dropped into Australia like a virgin of fraud."

"And now you're an old pro who saved us."

"Not me. The deal was to take your chances in the desert." He nodded up toward Raven. "She's your Good Samaritan."

"Why?"

"Your buddy, obviously. I think it's foolish, letting you tag along."

"Who is she?"

"One of us, she says. Outback Adventurer."

"You don't believe her?"

"I don't disbelieve her. She just knows a little too much. For example, how does she know you?"

"She doesn't," Ico said, "unless Dyson mentioned me somehow. And if he did, why would she even remember?"

"Why indeed?" Ethan looked ahead.

"Unless word of my charm gets around."

Flint laughed at that.

"Listen, what in hell is going on?" Ico persisted. "There's something wrong with this whole deal, right?"

Ethan smiled faintly. "Let's just say you have more company out here than you expected."

By mid-morning the six of them had consumed Ethan and Raven's remaining water supply, and Daniel was worried they'd soon be in the plight they were in before. It was hot again, the weight of the sick man oppressive. They seemed to march in a cloud of flies. The land was featureless, intimidating in its monotony, and Raven seemed distant, as if still trying to decide something, glancing occasionally back at Daniel. Then shortly before noon Ethan led them into a crack in the earth that had been invisible until they came to its lip. It widened to a curious ravine enclosing a kind of oasis. A few gum and palm trees huddled in the geologic wrinkle, hiding from the worst of the sun. They dragged Tucker down into its shade and collapsed with relief.

"Where did this hole come from?" Daniel asked.

"I'm guessing a collapsed cave," Raven said, "but I don't really know. There's a spring at one end but it's too mineralized to drink from."

Ico's nose wrinkled. "It stinks like rotten eggs."

"Sulfur," Amaya guessed.

Raven looked at her with curiosity. "You're a geologist?"

"Just an amateur naturalist. I never liked the jobs I had so I studied for ones I hadn't. I wish I'd been a scientist on one of those old sailing ships, finding hundreds of new species at every landfall. Australia is so unfamiliar it's almost like that."

"She's found us plants and stuff," Ico said. "Things to eat. But not enough to drink. And if we don't find water, I don't know how much farther we can drag Tucker. He's just too big."

"If we don't get some fluids into him he's going to get too small," Daniel worried. "He'll dry up like a raisin." He turned to Raven. "I thought you were taking us to water."

She looked at him with smug amusement. "I have. Like the tunnels."

They looked around. "Do we have to dig?" Amaya asked.

Ethan laughed. "In this heat? Outback adventure! Outback murder is more like it."

"You've got water right under your nose," Raven said. "Or above it."

"Where?" Amaya said, frustrated. "I don't see it."

"Didn't you notice the rain the other night?" Raven asked.

"Notice it? We almost drowned in it," Ico said. "But the water's long gone. All I see are sand and bugs." He was watching a line of ants march up a tree.

"Exactly. The desert holds its floods in all kinds of places. Haven't you ever wondered why those silly ants spend their time parading up and down a tree?"

They all looked at the insects now. "Foraging for food, I suppose," said Daniel.

"And water." Raven stood. "First lesson: think like an animal. Like any animal, no matter how small the brain, because they need the same things we do. Birds need water, so a zebra finch can lead you to it. Trees need water, so you can cut into the roots of a bloodwood tree to drink. Ants need water, so they'll climb halfway to heaven to find it…" She sprang up, grasping the smooth trunk, and shinnied, grasping a branch to haul herself clear of the ants. Above was a dark opening in the wood. "Some of these trees have hollows," she called down, "and the cavities are a good place to look for a drink. The rain funnels into them and takes a long time to evaporate out." She snapped off a twig and cautiously probed, then lifted it out to show the end moistened like a dipstick. "Ethan! Throw up a cup and water skin!"

They spent an hour resting and drinking in the shade. Amaya foraged and found some bush plum. Life began to seem bearable again. They didn't ask how their guide had learned so much about the desert.

Raven looked at the fruit with approval. "Very impressive. I hope you can find other things that are useful."

"Like an oasis that doesn't stink so much," Ico said.

"Actually, sulfur's useful," Amaya said. "For a million things. Old medicines, pigments, dyes, food preservation, gunpowder…"

"Gunpowder!" Ethan exclaimed.

"The old black powder. Sulfur is one of the basic ingredients. The ancients used to call it brimstone."

"I knew we were in hell," Ico said.

Raven looked thoughtful. "Maybe you should collect some of your sulfur."

"What for?"

"We're in a world of scarce resources. Something like that could be useful."

Amaya shrugged. "I could. We don't have much else left to carry except Tucker." She got up to gather some.

"I'll help," Raven said, standing to brush herself off. "Knowledge like yours is vital. It's the only edge we have."

"Yes. It's just when the facts get ahead of wisdom that we get into trouble."

Raven nodded. "So are you finding it?"

"Wisdom? More than I bargained for, I think."

Her new companion smiled. "It's nice to have another woman along."

Amaya looked surprised at that. "Is it?"

"You can talk to men only up to a certain point."

She winked. "Then you think of other things to do with them." Jaunty now, glowing from Raven's appreciation of her abilities, she led the way to scrape some sulfur.

Daniel watched quietly, going over his previous encounters with Raven in his mind and wondering at her coincidental appearance. What exactly had she said to him? Why wouldn't she say more now? Who was she, really?

The women came back with the mineral. "The prospectors of hell," Ico greeted.

"Fruit of the land," Amaya replied.

As they gathered their things to move on, she drifted to Daniel. "Your friend Raven seems adept," she murmured to him.

"Yes. The only problem is, I'm not sure she's really my friend."

Before they set out again, Raven opened a packet of dried leaves and distributed a small pile on each of their cupped fingers. "Chew this," she instructed. "It will make the last few miles before camp go faster."

"What is it?" Ico asked dubiously.

"Rock pituri. The aborigines used it as a stimulant. It gives you energy and relieves thirst."

Ico stuffed some between gum and cheek as instructed. "Like cardboard," he said thickly. "What happens if I swallow?"

"Don't. It's a stimulant, not a food. You can also put the juice on cuts and stings to relieve the pain and promote healing." She spat, businesslike, and rubbed a gob on Tucker's bitten hand. He jerked at the touch and then relaxed again. "It helps fight any poisons."

The drug worked as promised. The travelers felt a flush of energy like a jolt of caffeine that helped get them through the afternoon heat. Tucker groaned in delirious dreams, his face and body spotted with flies, but some of his normal color seemed to be returning. Indeed, it looked like he might live.

The country they were trudging through was parched, however, the plain beginning to break toward low hills, the vegetation gray and dead-looking. Part of it had been burned black by fire. To the exhausted Daniel, Australia seemed an ugly place getting uglier, a sand and rock waste that led nowhere. A prison, Ethan had called it. What did that mean?

He planned to confront Raven that night.

Meanwhile step followed step, the puffs of dust rising, the horizon shimmering in its heat haze, the flies not as bad here but still present, a solitary hawk orbiting like a sentinel of doom. It was like his dream, he thought. He was lost on a blank plain.

Suddenly something glinted in the sun ahead, a familiar kind of flash that instantly caused him to become alert to the geography again. It was a reflection in the lowering sun. "What's that?" he asked Ethan, the two of them bent forward as they dragged the travois.

"Trash. Civilization."

It was broken glass, Daniel realized. The newcomers stopped, strangely dazzled by this sudden apparition of a shard of old technology. They'd come to a dirt track through the scrub desert, he saw, overgrown and decayed. Gullies cut across it and brush sprouted in its middle. On its shoulders were pieces of glass from bottles thrown by bush motorists long dead. Amber, green, clear. The party put down the travois and poked around at the fragments like bent birds, as intent as archaeologists. It was a reminder that another world still existed.

"Where does the road go?" Daniel asked, suddenly imagining it merging into pavement, freeways, ruined cities, and abandoned ports. Leading toward home.

"Nowhere," Ethan said. "It's an old station track that washes out, the station long gone. Nothing goes anywhere anymore, because there's nowhere in Australia to go to." He watched Ico fingering the dirt with amusement. "Your friend never see litter before?"

"Not here. It's startling, after so much nothing."

"There's leftovers from the Dying all around, if you know where to look. We'll camp by an old wreck tonight. We call it Car Camp."

"Don't you want to follow the road?"

"I said roads don't go anywhere. They're just lines on the earth with no purpose. The only place around here has no road in and no road out, because there's no place to go to or come from."

"And what place is that?"

"Erehwon. End of the line."

Daniel squinted, remembering. "That was one of the code words to Outback Adventure."

"Was it? The Warden just thinks it's a joke."

"You keep mentioning this Warden. There's one here?"

"You'll meet him. He runs the place."

"The prison keeper."

"It's another joke. Except it's not, really."

"You say there's no place to go to and yet you're out here, going someplace."

"That's different. That's her idea." He jerked his head toward Raven. "She thinks she can find something and asked me to help her look for it. The first hope I've had in a long time."

"You two are…?"

"Allies. Nothing more."

"And what does Erehwon mean?"

"I've already figured that one out," said Ico, who was listening. "It's an old name, from utopian literature. 'Nowhere,' spelled backward."

They followed the track for a quarter mile eastward before leaving it and striking north across the desert again. The stops were brief, but Raven's sense of purpose had given Daniel's group new energy. They marched without complaint except for Ico's periodic habitual wisecracks, and even he seemed happy now that they had direction.

"Are we there yet?" he jokingly called once, mimicking a tired child.

"Maybe here is there," Daniel replied. "Each place is the right place."

"Oh, please."

Raven looked back at them with interest.

As they trudged along, Daniel realized that meeting Raven and Ethan had given rise to a new emotional confusion. There were other people in Australia! He'd known that, of course- known about other Outback Adventure clients, at least- but actually meeting some changed the virginity of the place. So did the old track. Australia was still wilderness, of course, but suddenly a wilderness that at once seemed more familiar, more menacing, and more haunted. A populated wilderness. A wilderness with ghosts. His journey had changed in a subtle way.

The feeling of disorientation increased when they came that evening to a rusting light truck that was half buried in the sand of another dry riverbed. There was no road or track that he could see and so he assumed the old station vehicle had somehow been carried downstream by past floods. Its windows and upholstery were gone and its paint blasted away by sun and sand. The remains were the same color as the rusty hills, slowly melting back into the earth. And yet it was a human artifact, a reminder that people had long lived in this so-called wilderness: for fifty thousand years or more, anthropologists said. He was trekking in their shadow.

There was a rock cairn marking a well and they drank again. Tucker had come drowsily awake and was alert enough to begin rehydrating his body. As he drank he began to revive, croaking some puzzled questions. His dreams had confused him, but now he watched their new companions curiously. Dusk fell and Raven built a fire. Ethan disappeared for a while and then reappeared with a dead and gutted kangaroo slung over his shoulder. Clearly Daniel could learn something from their aloof companion's hunting skills. Ico was drowsing against the metal body of the old truck, seeming to take comfort from the flaking metal. Daniel got up to watch Ethan skin and butcher the animal.

The kangaroo was gamy, stringy, and good: as solid a meal as Daniel's group had had in several days. Tucker ate some, woozy but stabilizing. "Just a little on this stomach of mine," he said.

Ethan allowed a grin at how much the other three consumed. "Tomorrow I'll spear an elephant."

The stars came out, a familiar and comfortable ceiling now. Daniel felt an immense tiredness steal over him, as if he could sleep for days, but first he needed some questions answered. Where were they going? What was this Erehwon?

"Outback Adventure lied to us, didn't they?" he finally asked to begin things.

Raven's face was like an abstract painting, the fire flickering to illuminate first this plane, then that one, causing her to shift shape with each tongue of flame. She didn't reply, just looked at him with sadness.

"They didn't tell you everything," Ethan said.

"You don't know everything," Raven warned.

"I know the most important thing."

"Which is?" Ico asked.

"You're not supposed to get back."