there were no rafts left on the sand; Ali walked back and forth, looking for their boats, sure she had misplaced their location. The pontoon tracks were clear, though. The rafts had all been taken.
'Wait,' she called after the lights. 'Hello.'
It was an absurd mistake. They had forgotten her.
But if it was a mistake, why had that soldier motioned her to sit down again? It was part of a plan, she realized. They had meant to leave her.
The shock emptied her. She'd been left. Marooned.
Ali's sense of loss was immediate and overpowering, similar to that time, long ago, when a sheriff's deputy had come to her house to break the news of her parents' accident.
The sound of coughing reached through the fog, and the full truth came to her. She had not been abandoned alone. Walker had forsaken everyone not under his immediate command.
Tripping in the sand, she rushed across the beach and found the scientists scattered where their debauch had dropped them, still asleep. They woke reluctantly, and refused to believe her. Five minutes later, as they stood on the edge of the sea, where their rafts had been lying, the awful fact seeped in.
'What's the meaning of this?' roared Gitner.
'They've stranded us? Where's Shoat? He'd better have an explanation.' But Shoat was gone, too. And the feral girl.
'This can't be happening.'
Ali watched their reactions as extensions of herself. She felt numb. Enraged. Paralyzed. Like her friends and comrades, she wanted to shout and kick at the sand and fall on her back. The treachery was beyond belief.
'Why have they done this?' someone cried.
'They must have left a note. An explanation.'
'Listen to you,' Gitner jeered. 'You sound like teenagers who just got jilted. This is business, people. A race for survival. Walker just jettisoned a bunch of empty stomachs. I'm surprised he didn't do it sooner.'
Ike came over from the cache site with a piece of paper in one hand, and Ali saw a row of numbers on it. 'Walker left a portion of the food and medicine. But the communications line is destroyed. And they took all their weapons.'
'They've left us here like a speed bump,' someone cried. 'A sacrificial offering to the hadals.'
Ali grabbed Ike's arm, and her expression made them pause. Suddenly her visitor in the middle of the night made sense. 'Do you believe in karma?' she asked Ike, and they followed her to the buried blanket of guns and knives'. It took less than a minute to dig it out. Then it took an hour to argue about who got which of the weapons.
'I don't get it,' Gitner said. 'Ike saves the guy. But then he gives the hardware to a nun?'
'It's not obvious?' said Pia. 'Ike's nun.' They all looked at Ali.
Ike detoured it. 'Now we have our chance.' He finished loading his sawed-off.
In the depot they picked through the boxes and cans. Walker had left more than expected, but less than they needed. Further, his men had plundered care packages sent down to the scientists by anxious families and friends. The interior of the sand fort was littered with little gifts and cards and snapshots. It added insult to the crime, and put the scientists into greater despair.
The scientists numbered forty-six. A careful accounting showed they had food for
1,334 man-days, or twenty-nine days at full rations. That could be stretched, it was agreed. By halving their daily intake, the food would last two months.
Their exploration was dead. All that remained was a race for survival. The expedition faced two choices. They could try to return to Z-3 – Esperanza – on foot. Or they could continue in search of the next cache, more supplies, and an exit from the subplanet.
Gitner was adamant: Esperanza was their only hope. 'That way, at least we're not dealing with a complete unknown,' he said. With two months' rations, they would have time enough to reach what was left of Cache III, splice the comm line together, and call in more supplies. He called anyone who did not agree a fool. 'We don't have a minute to waste,' he kept saying.
'What do you think?' they asked Ike.
'It's a crapshoot,' he said.
'But which way should we go?'
Ali could tell that Ike had made up his mind. But he wanted no responsibility for their decisions, and grew quiet.
'There's nothing but hole to the west,' Gitner declared. 'Anyone that wants to go east, go with me.'
Ali was surprised when Ike turned crafty and bartered with Gitner over the weapons. He finally let go of the rifle and its ammunition and the radio and a knife for an extra fifty days' rations of MREs. 'If you don't mind,' he said, 'we'll just take a stab around this water.'
Now that he had the majority of the weapons, food, and followers, Gitner didn't mind at all. 'You're off your nut,' Gitner told Ike. 'What about the rest of you?'
'New territory,' said Troy, the young forensics expert.
'Ike's done okay so far,' said Pia. Ali didn't defend her choice.
'Then we'll remember you,' Gitner said.
He quickly wrangled his crew together and got them packed for their journey, prodding them with the possibility that Walker might decide to reclaim what was left. There was little time for the two groups to say good-bye. People from each coalition were shaking hands, bidding one another to break a leg, promising to send rescue if they got out first.
Just before leaving, Gitner approached Ali with his new rifle. 'I think it's only fair that you give us your maps,' he said. 'You don't need them. We do.'
'My day maps?' Ali said. They were hers. She had created them with all the art in her, and saw them as an extension of herself.
'We need to remember all the landmarks possible.'
It was the first time Ali actively wished Ike would stand up for her, but he didn't. With everyone watching, she gave the tube of maps to Gitner. 'Promise to take care of them,' she asked. 'I'd like them back someday.'
'Sure.' Gitner offered no thanks, just hitched the tube into his backpack and started up the trail beside the river. His people followed. Besides Ali and Ike, only seven people stayed behind.
'Which way do we go?'
'Left,' said Ike. He was so sure.
'But Walker went right with the boats, I saw him,' Ali said.
'That could work,' Ike allowed. 'But it's backward.'
'Backward?'
'Can't you feel it?' Ike asked. 'This is a sacred space. You always walk to the left around sacred places. Mountains. Temples. Lakes. That's just how it's done. Clockwise.'
'Isn't that some Buddhist thing?' said Pia.
'Dante,' said Ike. 'Ever read the Inferno? Each time they hit a fork, the party goes left. Always left. And he was no Buddhist.'
'That's it?' marveled a burly geologist. 'All these months we've been following a poem and your superstitions?'
Ike grinned. 'You didn't know that?'
The first fifteen days they marched shoeless, like beachcombers. The sand was cool between their toes. They sweated under heavy packs. At night their thighs ached. Drifting on rafts had taken its toll.
Ike kept them in motion, but slowly, the pace of nomads. 'No sense in racing,' he said. 'We're doing fine.'
They learned the water. Ali dipped her headlamp underneath the surface, and she may as well have tried shining her light from the back of a mirror. She cupped the water in her palms and it was like
