'To protect the greater good they stand for. Sure, I work for them. I believe in them. And now you'd better believe in me.'
'But what are you doing here?'
'Cleaning up after Ethan's crash. United Corporations doesn't like to leave anti-jamming devices loose. And the pilot was the son of a prominent family. They wanted to know his fate.'
'Are you going to tell them?' Ico asked.
She looked down. 'No. He'll have died instantly. Heroically.'
'They sent you all the way down here to mop up?'
'For that and for… reeducation.'
'For what?'
'A reminder to me of what we're about. What the alternative to a United Corporations world, to a civilized world, is. What kind of people are put down here. They thought I might be having doubts about my job. That I might be going soft.'
'Why?'
She looked at him. 'Because…' She stopped.
Amaya watched her and Daniel sadly from across the campfire. She knew exactly why Raven DeCarlo had struggled with doubts about her job. She knew exactly why she had decided to save four people she would have been better off leaving for dead. Because of the restless, questioning, kind, and in his own way strong young man she was speaking to. Because her betrayals had finally become personal.
'I just can't believe they put you in the same sector!' Raven finally exclaimed. 'They told me I wouldn't see you!'
'That was a mistake,' Amaya said quietly. 'Ico switched the destination tags. They don't know we're here.'
They rested two days at Car Camp, giving Tucker more time to heal. As the venom wore off the big man was gaining back his customary animation and habitual good cheer, and he began hobbling stiffly around the place. 'I died and came back, children,' he told them. 'I had such weird dreams that this place is starting to look downright normal. I came back for a reason, I know it. I came back because there's something I have to do.'
Everyone else was wary. The hope represented by the battered box of flaking orange paint had been doused by their distrust of Raven, who remained subdued but not contrite.
'How did you know enough to quiz her on avionics?' Tucker privately asked Amaya.
'I didn't. I just made stuff up. She could have bluffed me.'
'You outfoxed her, Amaya.'
'Or she wanted to tell.'
Only Ico seemed capable of thinking ahead. He showed Raven his stained and battered map, asking her if it was accurate (she said she knew no more about the geography of Australia than he did), and he speculated excitedly about what might happen if they got the beacon to work and a rescue craft came. Would the surprised pilots simply take them back? Or would they have to hijack the aircraft and fly to a refuge?
'The one thing for sure is I'm not staying on the ground here,' he promised.
Raven's smile was wan. 'Let's see if we can get it to work, first.' Somehow, she reminded, they had to get the transmitter from this Warden.
Daniel was simply angry. He'd had real feelings for this woman and she'd led him on like an idiot. Amaya seemed embarrassed for him. Ico looked at him with a smirk. Only Tucker's friendship seemed unchanged: he seemed less panicked by their predicament than the others, expressing no anxiety about getting back. And Raven? She avoided him, looking pained. The damn thing was, though, that sometimes when he looked at her- the tilt of her head, the grace of her body- she still just about took his breath away. Yet how did he know she wasn't lying to him still? He brooded from hurt, telling himself to get over it, to get hold of his emotions.
When Tucker could maintain an ambulatory hobble they set out grimly for Erehwon, a place Ethan said was about three days distant at their slow pace. He led them with assurance even though there was no obvious trail or landmarks that Daniel could see.
'How do you know where you're going?' Amaya asked Ethan, whose brittleness had softened at Raven's revelation. Now he was one of them, against her.
'We're following a songline.'
'A what?'
'It's an aboriginal term. They believed the world was created when giant proto-creatures roamed an empty plain, singing into being all the rocks and plants and animals we see today. It's not such a strange idea to me- the new physics contends that matter at its most fundamental is just vibrating strings of energy, a kind of music. That we're made of music, fundamentally. These routes of creation are songlines, and aborigines were assigned to them. It's religious, and somewhat mysterious, but the practical aspect of it is that these lines formed a map, or a pattern, of trails. In a preliterate society you learned your way by singing the features you would encounter as you proceeded. The Warden picked up on this and had the inmates compose ditties to help them find their way when they make treks from Erehwon. 'Turn east toward kangaroo rock, the next good water is half a day's walk. ' That kind of thing.'
She smiled. 'Is it hard to keep in your head?'
'No harder than the telephone numbers, passwords, entry codes, and Social Security digits I held before. My brain's been emptying of one kind of memory to make room for another.'
'And if you get back you'll have to switch again.'
'Yes. But I'll have learned I can do both.'
'Do you miss all the old numbers?'
'No. But I miss what they represented. When I came here I threw all my gear away and I've been regretting it ever since. We're tool apes. It's our only edge. So until we get out of here I'm trying to use what I can salvage. You've got an eye for that too, like with the sulfur. The purists would let the wilderness kill them, but with balance you can survive.'
He showed the group how an old hubcap could be used to collect a tiny pool of morning dew, or how a pit could be lined with salvaged plastic, tented by another piece, and collect atmospheric moisture like a still. As they hiked, he demonstrated how a length of yellowed tubing cupped with cloth could be used to filter drinkable water from a muddy wallow by sucking it like a straw.
'You could use a reed for that too,' Daniel said.
'But I don't have to. That's the point.'
Daniel plucked a reed. 'I don't have to have tubing. And that's the point.'
Amaya continued to explore nature. At Raven's direction, she found and unearthed buried frogs in a wash. The hibernating animals, cool to the touch and sluggish from their muddy encasement, had exterior bladders swollen to the size of footballs. 'I read about these,' Amaya recalled. 'They store rainwater in this mouth pouch until the next storm. They haven't digested it, so it's supposed to be no different than water in an animal skin.'
'You're going to drink frog vomit?' Ico asked.
'It's not vomit. It's less ingested than milk from a cow's udder.' She squeezed and the frog regurgitated the water into her mouth, splashing her face. 'Feels good.'
'Geez, that's disgusting.'
'Not if it saves your life. Raven's right about one thing: the desert is full of water, if we know where to look.' Casually, Amaya tossed the torpid animal away.
The others tried it too. Raven laughed at her squirt, the first time they'd heard her do that. Daniel jerked at the sound, remembering before.
'People really did survive here, didn't they?' asked Tucker. 'Outback Adventure must have briefed you to survive here a long time.'
'Not really,' Raven said. 'I was intrigued by this idea and did my own research, just so I knew survival was possible. Outback didn't think I'd be here that long.'
'Which makes me wonder why you bother, Amaya, if we're about to call a taxi,' Ico said. She was stooped over some plants, adding to her inventory.
'Because the taxi isn't here yet.'
