Getting back

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Ico Washington believed he knew what Exodus Port really was.

He hadn't found a geographic Exodus, of course. There was no bay on Australia's eastern coast that harbored an exit from this continental hell, of that he was sure. But there was a way to get back, Ico thought, a way that depended on exercising the mind more than the legs. You had to find a key to the lock, the answer to the riddle: that was the test of Outback Adventure. A test of wits! And in his case the answer was the transmitter. Whoever successfully signaled deserved to get back, and whoever did not deserved permanent exile. Every man for himself! Survival of the fittest! The orange-speckled cube that he'd safeguarded across half of Australia, and the battered transmitter that Raven had stolen, were- in combination- Exodus Port! With them he could not just escape, but return to the world of United Corporations a designated winner. Unless Raven got out from under the Cone and signaled first.

Right now Ico was in a world of losers. A dust-shrouded column of the crude, stupid, stinking, and dull. Rugard's Expedition of Recovery seemed to have developed some kind of perverse gravity, drawing in the desperate and cruel to make a small army, despite periodic desertions from its less-than-reliable ranks. People liked to belong to a group, Ico supposed. They liked being led. Plus, the vaguely understood promise of possible escape fired the growing mob like a promise of treasure. None knew, of course, that there was no room on a rescue craft for anyone but Rugard and himself. They'd realize that when the pair were gone.

Ico's conscience was not bothered by this planned abandonment because he'd come to loathe his allies. Familiarity had given him time to despise their tasteless jokes and vile nicknames and adolescent gang mentality. They deserved to be forgotten! They'd called him Psycho! And yet he was the only one who had brought them this far, he and the map that everyone had laughed at from the beginning.

Well, he'd leave them soon. Ico would win, he told himself, because unlike the others who were marooned, he'd been thinking from the beginning. That, he was convinced, was what United Corporations was secretly looking for. While the others had been drugged to sleep, he'd fought to stay awake. While the others had sheepishly agreed to geographic ignorance, he'd been out buying a black market map. Admittedly the map was crude and somewhat inaccurate. It showed highways that didn't exist, and omitted some that did. In main, however, it was a decent redraw- maybe from memory- of an Australia that had been real. Ico was convinced of this now because the map had been right too many times. Now, after the report of the confusion at the dam, the main army should meet the transmitter thieves on the road. Maybe in this abandoned city ahead in the foothills. The Expedition could see its towers.

Information was the edge, always the edge. Ico had it.

He looked back along the line of trudging men, swaying camels, and captured horses, the Warden riding commandingly on one steed liberated from an owner whose foolish resistance had gotten him killed. There were clusters of women too, some as heavily armed and nasty as the males and others the terrified and subdued inductees to Rugard's Cohort of Joy. A mob united by greed and fear. But they were following him. And if his guess was right, they'd already outflanked the fugitives and now, heading back west, they would shortly intercept them. It was possible he was wrong, of course, but Ico trusted his own instincts. Dyson had been bullheaded about direction from the very beginning: east, east, east. Dyson would think he could still outrun Rugard's big group. But then Dyson thought the map was useless, that Ico would tolerate being left behind, and that the bitch he was smitten with could be trusted. Dyson was a smug, immature, naive nitwit who deserved to be left behind. He belonged here.

Ico couldn't wait, from the door of an aircraft, to wave goodbye.

It was a scream which jerked Daniel awake, a wail of fear that penetrated the afternoon slumber he'd fallen into after satiation with Raven. He jerked up guiltily, momentarily disoriented. There were shouts of alarm in the plaza below.

He crawled to the edge of the parapet surrounding the flat roof. There was a confused knot of people and two horsemen galloping wildly away, one swaying unsteadily as if injured. There'd been some kind of brief fight, Iris weeping. He watched the mounted scouts retreat toward a stream of people coming into the outskirts of the city just two miles away down the main avenue, a swarm of convicts trotting toward them with excited purpose, yipping and crowing like animals. His heart sank. They'd been found, and not just found, but likely trapped.

He woke Raven and they hastily began to dress.

"Daniel! Where are you!" Amaya's voice.

"Just a minute!"

They both were half covered when Amaya stepped out onto the tower roof, jerking to an abrupt halt when she saw them. Then she blinked and composed herself.

"Thank God I found you. They surprised Iris and the men just barely saved her. Everyone's coming into the lobby."

"Rugard?"

"I think so, with a small army. A hundred people or more. Should we run?"

"Too late for that, especially if they have horses." Daniel thought about the tower. "Better to fight them here, perhaps, than in the open." He looked down to the plaza, one hundred and fifty feet below. "Keep everyone out of sight. I'll be right down."

She disappeared.

Raven touched his sleeve. "Daniel, if it doesn't matter where we are- you and me, I mean- maybe I should just give it up. Surrender the transmitter to Rugard."

He smiled at that, leaning to kiss her. "We can't make that decision by ourselves. Because it's more than just us now." He stood. "You'd better go get the machine and see if it works yet. This may be our last chance to get back."

She looked over the parapet at the approaching convicts and nodded gloomily.

Down in the lobby, Daniel assessed his group. Their look was of defiance. They were tired of being marooned, tricked, tracked, and preyed upon. Tired of being pushed around. That was good. There was a hard core to these people now, a determination to hang on to the hope they'd earned. He could rely on that.

"Okay," he began. "Is everyone here?"

"Even Iris," Ned said. His shoulder had almost healed but now his forehead had a new raw cut. From the horse scouts, Daniel assumed. "Our shopper."

She'd calmed from her fright. "The best prices I'd ever seen and I dropped it all."

The others laughed.

"It was bad luck to linger here," Angus reminded. He'd come back when he saw Rugard's army, and now he was trapped with them.

That made them quiet.

"Where's Oliver?"

"Staying away."

Daniel took a breath. "Okay. What's done is done. We tried to outrun them but that didn't work. It doesn't look like we can run through them, either; there's too many. What they want is the transmitter. What they want is to take away our chance to get back. So, we give up. Or, we fight so hard that they give up."

"You've seen this Warden," Peter said quietly. "What are our chances?"

"As bankable as a lottery ticket. As unanswerable as a prayer. They're tough, wild, nasty people." He grinned fiercely. "But so are we, now."

"Damn straight," Ethan said.

"The only ones who can decide if it's time to fight, however, are you. It depends on how badly you want to get back. How badly you want the outside world to know what happened to you. How willing you are to stay here."

"We decided this at the river, Daniel," Jessica replied. "It's not just getting back. It's what's right, not just for us but everyone. It's about contacting the cyber underground and the opposition and exposing this place in order to shut it down. It's about not just our little group, but every person they put in Australia. We ran away to come here. We've all run away our whole lives. We're still running. But Outback Adventure suggested we'd find our why if we came here. This is mine, I think. Not to get back, but to make a stand for something. It's not right for those convicts to steal our hope. To steal everyone's hope. I say we fight for that. For hope."

The others nodded. There was a grim resolve in their eyes. A quickening of pulse. A tensing of muscle.

"Can we beat them?" asked Peter.

Daniel stuck his hands in his pockets and glanced upward at the lobby ceiling. "Well, we've got the high ground. We can barricade the lobby and throw things down from above. This building will work as a fort, or a castle. If we hurt them enough, maybe they'll go away. If we can talk to them, we can tell them the truth: that Raven is the one allowed to get back."

"But can we do that?" Peter persisted.

He pulled out a figure from his pocket. "My good luck charm tells me we can."

"What the devil is that?"

"Gordo Firecracker, nemesis of evil," Amaya recalled dryly. "The worst charm you've ever seen. He's been carrying that doll all the way across Australia."

"Gordo is not a doll," Daniel said with mock tartness, holding it up so others could see. "He's an action figure. Not to mention my field marshal and chief strategist."

They laughed again.

"Great," Peter said. "And what does Gordo suggest we do?"

"Fortify for attack. Prepare for negotiation. And…" He looked thoughtful.

"Pray for a miracle?" Peter suggested.

"Build a catapult."

So the fugitives had run to ground in the first city they came to! After all the fancy talk of wilderness nirvana, they'd taken instinctive refuge in a damn skyscraper!

Ico snickered at the irony of it.

The Expedition of Recovery might have missed the fugitives entirely if they'd had the sense to hide in this civic labyrinth, but instead they'd gone looting for all the goods they professed to disdain. One of their fool women had been spotted scurrying down a side street, her arms loaded with useless jewelry. When the scouts had tried to ride her down the fugitives had boiled out of the Coraco Building like a disturbed hive, Rugard's men barely galloping off with their lives. But the incident had revealed the thieves' location and number, allowing the convicts to swiftly surround the base of the tower. Ico could see the baubles now, scattered on the plaza as uselessly as coins in a fountain.

The fugitives, visible through the broken windows, were working desperately to prepare. The lobby had been barricaded and it wouldn't be easy to get to them, the convicts knew. The Warden circuited the office tower thoughtfully and then walked out into the plaza, alone. Arrogant, weaponless.

Both sides watched him, the fugitives crouched by the windows.

He took a breath. "I… want… Raven!" he suddenly roared. His voice echoed away among the old towers. "Where is the bitch? She has something of mine!" The demand seemed to float, hanging in the air.

Daniel stood up in full view. "She can't come to the door right now!"

Men on both sides laughed. Rugard jerked around and his side quieted.

He turned back. "Your run is over, Dyson! You're surrounded, outnumbered, and out of options! You can't get back now without us!"

"And your men can't get back at all! Have you told your rabble there's no room on the rescue craft for anyone but you, Rugard? Have you told them that you've led them a thousand miles and are risking their lives to save only your own skin?"

He wheeled around to face his troops. "That's a lie!"

"No it isn't!" Daniel shouted.

"It's a lie like the lies United Corporations has told us all our lives!" Rugard roared. "Look at him! He's built a whole gang out of his promise to get people back, and they're laughing at us right now! He's sucked in followers with the promise that they can have the seats that by rights go to you!"

The convicts growled like the thunder from an approaching storm.

"No! That's not true…"

"He's a thief who's trying to keep you here like the others of his kind back home!"

The convicts roared, angry now, and a drumming started. They beat on pavement, they beat on stone, and they beat on rotting benches, rusting siding, and corrugated doors. Rugard strode back and forth in front of them, jerking his arms up in rhythm. Boom. Boom. Boom. As regular as a machine, as ominous as an approaching footfall. There was no complexity to it. Just a steady, solemn, ceaseless pounding to drive home their menace. It was a music of warning, a drumming to summon courage and infect a prey with fear. They'd found it! The key, perhaps, to getting back.

The sound rolled up to the windows where Daniel's followers worked more furiously, stockpiling anything they could pry loose to hurl down on their besiegers. It looked like a battle.

"The one advantage we have is height," Daniel kept lecturing, climbing from one floor to another. "I want them to think this tower is coming down on them if they try to rush us. I want an avalanche of furniture. A blizzard of debris."

I sound like a demented Napoleon, he thought wryly. He stopped to see what Amaya was doing. "You couldn't whip up another batch of gunpowder, could you?"

"Probably something worse if I'd time to thoroughly explore," she replied. "There might even be modern explosives somewhere, if we looked: this was a mining town. But we didn't get time for that so all we can do is strip this building." She began to point. "The rubber bumpers on some of the table furniture are being stripped off and fashioned into slingshots. For ammunition we can pull nails and screws out of the walls. There's metal trim with enough flex to pull back for makeshift bows, rods from shades already notched for scraps of glass to make arrows, and sprinkler pipe to use as spears. Not to mention tons of stuff to simply heave out of the windows."

"Your talents are wasted, Amaya. You belong in an arms race."

"I want to get rid of these people so we don't have to have arms races." She looked past him through the window to the green hills beyond the city's buildings. "It's so beautiful here, Daniel. Why infest it with criminals?"

"It must have seemed like an easy solution."

"If they ever came here- if they ever got out of their boardrooms and visited this place they've made- they'd see their mistake." She meant the executives of United Corporations.

"They won't. And I'm not sure they didn't intend this. Everyone at each other's throats. As a lesson for us, and a solution for them."

She looked at him softly. "It's good then that you and Raven…"

"Yes." He smiled sheepishly. "Things might have been different between us, you know, if she'd gone."

"If you'd let her go."

He nodded. "Right. You know, I love her, but I still don't know about her, Amaya. I still don't know her heart."

"I do. She's changed."

The drumming went on for an hour. The sound was enough to unnerve, if you let it, but they wouldn't.

"Christ, they're out of tune," Ethan complained, covering his ears.

"Musically impaired," Amaya added.

The convicts drummed and shook and reached inside themselves for the savagery the modern world had tried to cram beneath their surface, bringing it out again in snarls and wild howls so that they'd have the courage to charge for what they wanted. The coordination of the drumming brought them together, focused on the building and transmitter within. Then Rugard lifted his arm and the convicts fell raggedly into silence.

"Listen to me!" he shouted to his followers. "You want to get back? The way back is in that building! You want to get out of prison! It's through those people up there, the kind of people who put you into prison in the first place! Up there is the only way!"

"Don't listen to him!" Daniel tried again from the third story. "You can't get- "

"The way back is through him!"

The convicts roared. And as the Warden swung his arm the ragged army surged forward in the afternoon sunshine, a Stone Age charge of spear and club and sling and rock as timeless as humanity. Clan against tribe. Ego against ego. Pounding blood and dry-mouthed excitement.

Instinct had come to Eden.