Getting back

CHAPTER FOUR

She was prompt, which Daniel had learned not to expect from women. She was waiting for him.

"Where are we going in the subway?" he asked.

"Not where you'd expect."

Daniel didn't really care. Her habit of answering obliquely amused him for the moment, and he frankly evaluated her at the entrance to the tube station as she'd evaluated him. Raven had not dressed in anything really feminine, but her cover-suit of synthetics stretched enough to show her to good advantage, slim but with some shape to her. Enough to make him curious to see her in something else. Her hair cascaded down her shoulders and subtle jewelry sparkled. Her choice was the understatement of a woman who understood her effect on men. Daniel had dressed casually but with thought as well, the walking shoes and durable denim shirt trying to suggest a kind of vigorous energy he calculated she might look for in a man. If so, she gave no sign she noticed.

"You look nice," he offered.

She smiled politely and dipped a shoulder to slip off a small backpack. "I carried this from home so now it's your turn for a while. It's dinner."

"When I suggested eating out, I didn't mean to be so literal."

"We're going to be far out. Did you bring a light?"

"I didn't know what you meant. I've got a flashlight, an antique cigarette lighter, and a matchbook. I would have brought a table lamp but it was awkward under my arm."

She laughed at that. "Good! It's best to be prepared." Then she skipped ahead of him and down the stairs into the tube station. He followed.

Commuters were still streaming upward to go home, trudging in a sluggish gray river of the rumpled and tired. None smiled. Whisper-signs tried to cheer them. "In the world of United Corporations," murmured one, "security assures happiness."

Daniel got out his fare card and prepared to breast the current but Raven tugged his arm.

"This way."

She ducked into a shadowy side corridor past posted signs that limited entry to authorized transit employees only. Did she work for the tube? They came to a locked door. A tapping of her fingers at the keycard panel and they were in, the heavy metal clicking behind them. They were in a maintenance storeroom, Daniel saw, filled with janitorial supplies. "You're a sanitation engineer?"

"I got the combination from a friend. He works here part-time."

"Ah." Was she looking for a mop and cleanser tryst? "Come here often?" he asked lightly, glancing around at the shelves of chemicals. "We could've just gone to my place."

She was at the back of the room, working at something on the wall, and didn't even bother to glance back at him. "Don't kid yourself." There was a clank and she lifted a vent grate to one side. "Come on."

There was a sign above the vent opening: ENTRY FORBIDDEN.

"Can't you read?" he joked.

She was already backing into a concrete chute, her legs dropping down out of sight. "Can't you think for yourself?"

He followed her to the back of the room and ducked his head through the opening. A concrete tube with rungs led into darkness below. Raven had already swung onto the ladder and was rapidly climbing downward, a light at her belt illuminating the next rungs. Daniel followed, mystified, his feet fumbling in the gloom.

When he reached the bottom thirty feet below he switched on his own light. Three tunnels branched out, bulbs glimmering distantly down two of them. There was the wet, dusty smell of concrete. "Are we supposed to be down here?" he asked.

"Who are you asking, Daniel? Me? Them?" She pointed toward the surface. "Or yourself?" She waited a moment for his answer, watching his face.

He looked around, then grinned at her. "Lead on."

She took the central tunnel and they emerged in a wider underground corridor, this one brightly lit by lamps every thirty feet. It stretched to a vanishing point in each direction, branching tunnels marked by ovals of shadow. There was a low hum of ventilation fans and a current of air. The concrete tube walls were lined with pipes, two of them a meter wide and others stepping down in size to an electrical conduit the width of a garden hose. Signs dangled with numbers and arrows. Dyson felt as if he was in a labyrinth. "Where are you taking me? To the minotaur?"

She glanced at him appreciatively. "A classical reference. Are you a scholar?"

"A history major. Damned useless, my father called it."

"Did he? What does your father do?"

"He died in marketing, a profession so futuristic in its outlook that he had a heart attack trying to stay trendy. He didn't regard history as merely irrelevant, he saw it as a threat to all he worked for. Which guaranteed I'd gravitate to it."

"He sounds like a man of strong opinions."

"Loud opinions, anyway. He believed in the kind of progressive change that keeps things exactly the way they are. I think he liked what the world became. Organized."

"And you don't?"

"It's dull."

"Do you really think so?" She looked at him with interest.

"I feel squeezed, sometimes."

"Yes." She nodded as if he'd given a correct answer. "And what about your mother?"

"She learned not to have opinions, which I guess made her minor in feminist literature useless as well. All theory, no practice. She used to say I inherited some of her waffle genes."

"And did you agree?"

"I didn't agree with much of anything after age twelve. But like most kids I didn't prevail, I merely escaped. A history degree was my best revenge."

"You sound about as close to your parents as I am to mine."

"Too strict?"

"Too… absent. I was adopted." She didn't seem inclined to elaborate.

"When she was widowed my mother announced she was turning over a newly independent leaf," Daniel said. "Three months later she married a clone of my father and retired with him to Costa Rica on the insurance. I haven't seen her for two years."

"And you feel guilty?"

"Relieved."

She watched for some sign of how this estrangement affected him, but his mask was indifferent. "Well. My theory is that no one knows what's needed or useless until they're dead. Maybe not even then."

"So how do you choose?"

"You follow your heart."

"Even into the pit of the minotaur?"

"The mythical monsters have been sponged from our world, Daniel. We're not in a labyrinth, we're in the Utiligrid, the utility network that feeds the city. These tunnels go for miles- miles and miles. They lead to reservoirs, power rooms, sewers, waste masticators. It's amazing, really."

"And we're not supposed to be here."

"I'm supposed to be here."

"Why?"

"Because it makes me feel alive!" She lifted her head and shouted. "Alive!" The call echoed down the corridor.

"Jesus! You'll get us caught!"

She laughed. "Maybe. Are you frightened of that?"

"No." He glanced over his shoulder. "Just nervous, okay?"

"There's nothing down here but utility robots, with brain chips about as smart as the potato variety. And we're not hurting a thing by exploring. Come on, I can take the pack for a while. We'll go to our picnic spot."

"No, I've got it."

She teased him. "Gallant as well. A man of the past."

"Sometimes I think I'm in the wrong century."

"Do you?" Again, she seemed to be appraising him. It reminded him of the joke about a first date being a job interview that goes on all evening. She didn't offer agreement.

Walking the Utiligrid was indeed like exploring a labyrinth but Raven seemed to know where she was going. "I've learned to read the signs," she explained. Occasionally the ground would tremble from the passage of a tube train overhead, or they would hear the rumble of pumps from behind steel doors, but mostly there was a humming stillness, their steps echoing on concrete.

"It's eerie down here," Daniel said. "Empty, like a catacomb."

"Don't you like it empty? Everywhere else is full."

"I like to get away."

"Down here is an away that gets to the heart of things."

Suddenly a dot of red danced across them and there was a warning beep. A detection laser. They turned and saw the lights of a maintenance-bot growing in intensity as it sped down the tunnel toward them, its orange crown flashing. "Uh-oh," Daniel said. The machine could summon the police. "Run!"

He yanked her arm and they sprinted down a side tunnel, Raven actually laughing as they fled. There was a bang as the janitorial vehicle took the corner too hard and bounced off the concrete. Then it was wheeling their way, beeping madly, its dim circuitry probably assuming they were some kind of giant rat in need of fumigation. He turned into one tunnel and another, utterly lost, and then Raven sprinted ahead of him to lead, twisting this way and that in the maze like a deer as the alarm shrilled behind them. Daniel followed her as he had on the run, noticing the swell of her hips and rhythm of her bottom as she ran. You sexually hopeless lunatic, he scolded himself. Then she pointed above at a dark hole in the ceiling and sprang, grasping a pipe. She looped her feet to catch the overhead piping with her heels and then boosted herself up into blackness. Daniel jumped, pulled, and kicked his legs to follow. They were in a tube that led upward but his climb ended when he banged into a steel cover. There was just enough room under its lid to squeeze together above the pipes.

She was breathing hard, grinning at him as the robot cart went honking by underneath in what seemed to be a machine imitation of frustration.

"What if it calls for help?"

"I don't think the cops like to come down here."

He realized that they were pressed against each other to wedge in place and he could feel the softness of her hair. Her smell had the sweetness of slight perfume and the tang of sweat. He was considering whether to try to kiss her when she turned and kissed him, quickly and hard. "That was fun!" she whispered.

"You're going to get us detained."

"No. The robots are stupid."

He leaned forward to kiss her again but she pushed him back. "We can't stay here, though, in case they search this quadrant." She dropped down through the pipes to land lightly on the floor.

"I thought you said the cops don't come," he called down to her.

"I've never seen them, but… Come on, before it comes back."

"Great." He dropped to follow her jogging form through the corridors.

She turned this way and that with determined purpose, glancing upward at the dangling signs periodically for reference. The frantic beeping of the robot quickly receded and they began to relax, slowing to a brisk walk. As Daniel got his breath back he noticed a background murmur that rose in volume until it became the roar of falling water. She led him into a side passageway and down a flight of wet steps, his curiosity growing as the noise grew. Then out onto a balcony grating.

"The water comes from the mountains," Raven said. "Someday I want to see its source."

They were overlooking an underground reservoir, lit by only a few lights. A vaulted ceiling receded back into darkness. Water was pouring in from an unseen pipe, creating a pattern of ripples that sparkled in the artificial light. The water glowed blue, emphasizing the cistern's clarity.

"This is my private spot," she said. They sat.

"How'd you find this place?"

"I've been coming down here for two years."

"And you never got lost or caught?"

"No one ever challenged me. I started drawing maps, deciphering signs, and slowly figured it out. It's been like exploring an underground world. When I found this reservoir it was like I'd discovered my own private lake."

"Less pretentious than a restaurant, quieter than a club."

She smiled. "Exactly. You should like me, Daniel. I'm a cheap date."

She opened the pack and took out their dinner. Ordinary stuff: farmed-salmon sandwiches, wedges of genetically enhanced vegetables, vacu-packed brownies. "What did you bring us to drink?" she asked mischievously.

He opened his mouth in surprise. He'd supposed they would buy something.

"No matter." She pulled out a small pail that was tied to a string and lowered it over the railing to the pool below. When it filled, she lifted it up and sipped. Then she held it out to him with two hands like an offering.

"Is it safe?"

She laughed again, that delicious laugh. "It's the same water in your apartment except it hasn't flowed through the grub of city pipes yet. This way I don't have to carry a canteen. Water's heavy."

He took the pail and drank, watching her over the rim. It seemed sweeter and colder than the water at home. "I'll bet this is against the rules."

"Everything is against the rules, isn't it?"

"Everything that's good."

They ate quietly a moment, Daniel unsure whether he liked her or was merely intrigued by someone so eccentric. It would be interesting to get her in the same room with harridan Lundeen.

Yet despite the kiss and her trespassing boldness she also seemed somewhat shy, he judged. Or at least reserved. Guarded. Her enigmatic replies deflected as much as they revealed, and she volunteered little. Why had she brought him here?

"This isn't exactly the great outdoors," he finally ventured, trying to feel her out.

"Don't you like it?"

"It's weird. Interesting. Not a typical choice."

"I'm betting you're not a typical man."

"And you're not a typical woman?"

"No."

He made a guess. "A loner?"

"I'm not alone with you."

Daniel took a bite of brownie, watching her. Pretty. Smart. A bit full of herself, maybe. Self-absorbed, certainly. But interesting too. He leaned forward slightly and watched her unconsciously lean away. Standoffish: she liked to control relationships. Her assertion of leadership kept her safe.

"Why did you bring me here?" he asked.

She smiled mischievously again. "You're cute. Handsome, even."

He rolled his eyes.

"No, that's not it," she corrected.

"Thanks, Raven."

"It's more that you're curious. That you think. That you question. That you explore."

"Like you."

"Maybe like me." She sipped from the pail, setting it down. "So. Have you decided why you do?"

He sat back. "I don't understand what you mean by that."

"Well… what do you do?"

"I work on software at Microcore. Dumb stuff. I hate it."

"Why?"

"Because it's pointless. Right now they've got me on a project called a Meeting Minder. It tracks your schedule and analyzes its patterns, prescheduling based on your past activity. The goal is to make the next year as close to the last one as possible, for maximum efficiency. They're expecting a best-seller."

"I know it's dumb. I meant, why do you work on it?"

He looked at her in surprise. "Because it's my job. Everyone has a job."

"Why?"

" 'United Corporations has the right job, in the right place, for everyone,' " he quoted.

"No, why?" She looked impatient, as if he were slow.

He felt irritated. "What do you do?"

"I'm an investigator."

"Investigating what?"

She waved her hand. "Here. This. Now. Me. And you."

"Not exactly the wilderness."

"Something that's been explored by others can still be a wilderness to you, if it's your first time."

He looked around. "Well, you've got me lost."

"Do you like being lost?"

"I don't know." Was this a conversation or an interrogation? "It's not a question that occurred to me."

"Sorry. I ask a lot of things, don't I? I'm curious too."

"I'm not mindless like that janitor robot, Raven."

"I didn't say you were."

"You imply it by acting superior with your 'whys.' I think, I read, I have hobbies. I just built a catapult. I'm on a career track but I'm also my own man and I have adventures in my own way. Right now I'm trying to hack into Microcore's expense database. I want to put my bosses' obscene work charges on the corporate intra-web."

She looked interested at that. "Why?"

"Why, why," he mimicked. "You're like a two-year-old. Why? To elevate the gossip. To show I can."

"What's the point?"

"The point is that there is no point."

She began to nod, then shook her head. "I understand your point about pointlessness. But hacking into expense accounts is kind of juvenile, don't you think?"

"It's just a different kind of investigation, no different than this tunnel. I'm also in touch with the cyber underground."

"You mentioned that before. A bunch of people pretending, right? Rebels without a cause?"

"It's people who think for themselves. I think you'd be intrigued, if you tried it."

"Perhaps," she conceded. "But what's there to see, really?"

"You learn what's truly going on, without the United Corporations spin." He wanted to impress her. "You can use it to wake up."

"But do you really believe that stuff? I mean, I heard it was… crackpot."

"They put me inside another company, Raven. They let me download its secret."

Now she looked intrigued. She sat up straighter, tucking her legs beneath her. "What secret?" As conspiratorial as a schoolgirl.

"Well, I don't know…"

She leaned back, disappointed. "Rumors, right?"

"No, this was real." Could he trust her? Here was a soul mate, he hoped. Someone who felt like he did. "A file. Genetic plans by this company to modify cereal grains to transmit disease to insects."

She took another sip of water, watching him. "Bugs? What's wrong with that?"

What was wrong with it? It seemed less sinister when he tried to describe it. Was this really worthy of a truth cookie? Suddenly he was less certain. "It might wipe out whole species. It messes with the environment."

"Oh." She thought. "There's been a reform law, hasn't there? It's probably okay if all these scientists are working on it, don't you think? What company?"

He was discouraged at her reaction but didn't want to back down. "GeneChem."

"Never heard of them. But to play devil's advocate, they're not in business to screw up, right? They're not in business to break the law. We modify crops all the time. Have to, in a world with twelve billion people."

"So we unleash disease?"

"On insects, sure."

"What about Australia, Raven?"

"We learned from it, I hope." She glanced away a moment and then back, as if trying to decide whether to tell him something. "Look, I'm not endorsing this GeneChem. I'm just asking how are we- you and meto know? We're not scientists. We're not management. There's a difference between poking fun and challenging expert opinion."

She was watching him again and he didn't know if this was what she really felt or if she was testing him somehow. Dammit, he couldn't figure her out. "What if this mutates?" he asked.

"What if grasshoppers eat all the wheat and the world starves? Daniel, civilization has been modifying crops for ten thousand years. Now this underground of yours gives you one file and suddenly you have a monopoly on truth? Maybe there's more to the story."

"You sound like United Corporations. ' Trust us. You don't see the big picture.' Their patronizing attitude drives me crazy."

"I'm not patronizing you."

"Then kiss me again."

She looked suddenly uncertain, and turned away. "No." She wanted to, he was sure of it.

"You kissed me before."

"I… I was in the moment."

"What about this moment?"

She turned back, taking a breath. "I don't have to kiss you just because we came down here, or just because I did it once, or just because you're hacking corporate secrets, or just because I'm playing devil's advocate."

He slumped back. "Okay. All right already."

"I want to kiss you, except…" She paused, uncertain, looking at him curiously as if he baffled her as much as she baffled him. There was something she wasn't saying. "This electronic snooping is… in the establishment's arena, you know? Their game. I brought you down here because it seems outside that world. I thought you might feel the water, the magic of this place. I don't think you did."

"How do you know what I feel?"

"I know."

"I don't think you even know how you feel, Miss Why. Or why you do. One minute you're breaking into utility tunnels and the next defending their witch doctory."

She looked down at that. She was thin-skinned, he thought, and there was a moment's satisfaction at pricking her. But the arguing was silly.

"Raven, I think we need to reboot." It was slang that had come from the early days of computers.

"Yes, I don't want to quarrel. I was just debating a point."

"About corrupting the ecosystem?"

"About feeding the world."

"So I should ignore this kind of GeneChem stuff? Ignore the truth?"

"You can't know the truth. None of us can."

"I know the sloganeering of United Corporations isn't the truth."

"But don't you accept it? Conform? Compromise?"

"I'm tired of compromising. I'm tired of being the odd man out at work."

Again she looked interested. "Why?"

He groaned. "Why am I tired?"

"Why are you always the odd man out?"

"My colleagues say I don't believe in anything, that I have no faith in what we're doing." He stopped, as if to consider the truth of that opinion for the first time. "I don't know. I just look at everything sideways and it comes out funny."

"What if the sideways view is the right one, Daniel? What if you're right?"

"What if they're right?" He shook his head. "Now you've got me talking like you, going in circles. Waffle genes." He looked at her in discouragement. "I don't even know what side you're on."

"No. You don't know which side you're on. That's all I've been getting at."

He stood, suddenly tired of this. "Look, I'm sorry I disappointed you."

She stood too. "You didn't. It's for the best, I think."

"Am I going to see you again?"

She shook her head. "I don't think so."

"Okay. Fine."

"It's not for the reason you think."

"Sure." He glanced around. "Maybe you could show me the way out of here?"

"Listen," Raven said, reaching out to grip his arm. He started at her touch. "If we live in their world we make a thousand compromises, right? We take their pay, eat their bioengineered food. It's inescapable, correct?"

He looked at her gloomily.

"Unless we truly escape," she went on.

"But we can't, except to cyberspace," he said with exasperation. "That's my whole point. That's why the cyber underground is important. The world's one big company now, or at least a consortium of them. One country, one culture, one bottom line."

"What if it wasn't, Daniel? What if there was an alternative?"

"Escape? Where, down here?" He glanced up at the concrete ceiling. "No thanks."

"No, someplace else. Do something that takes courage to do."

"What do you mean?"

She took a breath. "I might go away. That's what I meant about not seeing you. Not kissing you."

He was puzzled at this. "Away?"

"There's an adventure company."

"Oh." Adventure travel was commonplace. Daniel had climbed, rafted, paraglided. "I've done that. It makes a good vacation."

"No. This one is different."

He frowned. They weren't different. They shepherded their clients, showed them some dirt and flowers with a down-home twang, and at the end held them upside down until all the credit cards fell out of their pockets. It was an industry like any other: its thrills and corny jokes and well-worn trails and easy lectures as ritualized as Japanese theater. "How is it different?"

"Sometimes you don't come back."

"The trek is dangerous?" There were always release forms because some of the climbs and treks and dives were genuinely risky. It was danger that gave it the thrill.

"It's in Australia."

"What?"

"It's a new company called Outback Adventure. Immersion in a total wilderness. It's up to you to find your own way out."

"Raven, that's crazy."

"It's the ultimate challenge, Daniel. The toughest thing left."

"But Australia is quarantined. The plague…"

"Is over, according to this new company."

"But that's why this whole thing about GeneChem could be important! The fiasco in Australia…"

"Has been learned from."

"You can't be serious about going there."

"I want to experience true wilderness."

"In the Rockies, not there! It's got to be a scam."

She shook her head. "I don't think so. United Corporations has kept it quiet for a reason. For the few who seek them out it's seen as an… outlet. A test. An opportunity. It's kind of exciting, actually. To be chosen, I mean. They don't take just anyone, Daniel."

He looked at her in disbelief. Australia! The place was a planetary nightmare, a scientific embarrassment. Even if the travel ban had been lifted, it was like proposing to honeymoon in Hiroshima, or take the waters in Chernobyl. It didn't make sense. "Raven, the place was a hell hole."

"During the Dying. Now it's pristine." She looked away. "That's what they say."

He swallowed. "And you're going?"

"Maybe."

"Alone?"

Slowly, she nodded. "I'm better alone, I think."

He managed a pained grin. "Thank you for sharing that."

She cast her eyes downward. "I didn't mean that quite the way it sounded. I might go with the right person, if I could find them, but so far I haven't. It has to be somebody ready to change their life. Somebody who can't stand their life here. Somebody Outback Adventure would take." She waited.

So that was it. This had been some kind of audition. Had all her friends already turned her down? "Why haven't I heard about this Outback Adventure?" he stalled.

"It's a secret, a secret you have to keep. They have to control public knowledge to make it work. A secret like your GeneChem."

"And you think I should go too?"

"I'm not sure you're ready, Daniel."

"You don't know that."

"It's you who doesn't know."