'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.'
CHAPTER FIVE
Still smarting from Raven's doubt, Daniel was called into the office of section supervisor Luther Cox four days later. Harriet Lundeen issued the invitation to enter what the office serfs called the glass cages. An employee of Dyson's rank was hired in the supervisory offices, fired (or 'given an opportunities transfer') in the supervisory offices, and otherwise had little reason to be there except to receive bad news. If Microcore had glad tidings to
