'Isn't it? Don't you recognize yourselves? They make you think you're a select few. Self-selected, the fact is. They make you think hiking through a wasteland is somehow going to qualify you for the corporate elite. What delusional vanity! What are you going to bring to a board gathering- marshmallow-toasting skills? They dupe you with your own self-importance! They turn your desires against yourselves! It's diabolical, really, how well they know you- how they let you betray yourselves. Challenging? Hell, you're compliant as sheep.'
The others glanced at Raven. She was expressionless.
'Are you offended by my honesty?' Rugard went on. 'You're simply not used to it. I find it ironic, kind of like advertising in the United Corporations world which always emphasizes a product's weakest point. If it's cramped they call it roomy, if it hurts they call it painless, and if it's bad for you they pick an athlete to sell it. And who gets to tell you the truth? Me! A moral-impaired! The first honest man you've met!'
'And you're the smart guy, Rugard?' retorted Daniel. 'Lord of a log cabin? Sultan of a sty?'
The answering movement was so swift it was like the blurred attack of a wild animal. The Warden sprang from his chair and with the same fluid movement of his leap let the back of his hand crack across Daniel's face with a sound as loud as a whip. Daniel's head snapped sideways, shocked, and the entire group fell back, stunned.
Rugard leaned toward them, breathing hard, his eyes bright, holding out a quivering finger in warning. 'I told you not to call me by my name. I told you, and I only tell once. To you I am the Warden, and if I even suspect insubordination, I'll gut you in an instant and unwind your entrails for the dingoes to feed on.' Tucker's hands had bunched into fists but the shadowy guard with the sword had taken a warning step forward, and Ethan put a hand on the big man's arm to caution him. Daniel put his hand to his jaw. His ears were ringing and he tasted the salt of blood.
The finger dropped, the point made. The Warden let his features mask into a judicious amiability and he sat back down in his chair. 'Does that seem harsh? Believe me, I'm the only thing that has kept all of you from being gutted already by the animals they send here. I run Erehwon like a prison, because I'm the ruler of prisoners. I'm the one keeping you safe.'
Ico looked at Rugard thoughtfully. Life stripped of bullshit.
'This can't be possible,' Amaya said. 'Someone back home must know…'
'Why should anyone know? There's never a complaint, because no one gets back to complain. People compete to come here! Only a handful at the top know, and yet they have no blood on their hands. It's the perfect murder: profitable, easy, guilt-free. I wish I'd thought of it.'
'You're lying,' Tucker accused. 'You want us to stay here with you.'
'And you want to go to Exodus Port? Go look for it if you wish. Just remember that no account of what's really happening in Australia has ever surfaced in the outside world. Ask yourself why.'
'We are going back, Warden.' It was Raven.
'Really?' He was scornful. 'You didn't last in the desert for a week.'
'We weren't trying to get across the continent. We were trying to get a ticket home.'
Rugard's face slowly revealed intrigue. 'What ticket?'
'I worked in aviation electronics,' she lied again, counting on her companions to back her up. 'When I came here and realized we were trapped and met Ethan, I got curious about his crash. The rescue transmitter didn't work? Then I realized how ignorant you are.'
He scowled.
'I realized how little you know about modern technology.'
'Don't try me, bitch! What are you talking about?'
She reached in her pack and pulled out a cloth bag. Shaking it, she scattered some electronic chips and wire across Rugard's table. 'Any beacon needs to be activated to penetrate the Cone of electronic jamming over Australia. They can't put normal rescue beacons in transport aircraft because convicts could signal to escape. You have to know the trick. Pilots know it, but you killed the one we had.'
'He couldn't perform the trick! He was a double-talking aristocratic flyboy who led us on a wild goose chase after that moron standing next to you, and then promised money if I'd give him more time. Money! I wanted escape! His kind thinks they can buy anything. They've always thought that! He found out they can't.'
'I can do the trick.'
He looked at her suspiciously. 'Yet you came back to me.'
'Yes. Because I need something else.'
'Which is?'
She glanced at the storeroom. 'Send the others out and I'll tell you.'
CHAPTER NINETEEN
'I don't trust them,' Ico said.
It was evening. The four original Outback Adventurers were waiting in a cluster of boulders off the main clearing, a private place Ethan had picked out earlier where Raven would meet them after her negotiations with Rugard over the transmitter. The quartet had spent the afternoon touring Erehwon, a community that struck Daniel as a cross between a prison compound and a pirate outpost, repression atop cultural anarchy. They'd been told they would work for their keep: the men digging a reservoir while Amaya toiled in the kitchens. They were to design and build their own huts, using a stockpile of brushwood, and would have to earn their way to jobs of greater interest and responsibility: Microcore all over again, he thought. While everyone in the community was a kind of refugee, united by desperation, there was also a pecking order in the Warden's world in which the strong tended to exploit the weak. Bullying was epidemic. And because men outnumbered women two to one, sexual tension was palpable. Some of the women had paired off but most preferred to sleep in their own settlement in a separate canyon from the men, some trading sexual favors and others trying to maintain a rigid celibacy. It was a place of social disorder kept from boiling over by the rule of Rugard. What linked them was a longing for home.
'Raven wouldn't have brought us here unless she wanted to help us,' Tucker now reasoned.
'She wanted to help him.' Ico pointed to Daniel. 'I just don't like being cut out of the loop while she brokers a deal with this Rugard guy. He is honest: but only about his own lack of scruples. And now he's closeted with this female hireling of United Corporations. Who knows what they're up to?'
'It's not like we have a choice,' Daniel pointed out.
'Right,' said Tucker. 'Until she came along we had no hope at all.'
'And we still might not if we don't keep watch on what Raven's doing,' Ico warned.
'I don't think she's a bad person,' Amaya said. 'Just wrong. And useful right now. I don't know if this is going to work, but if it does we'd better start thinking about what we're going to do once we get back.'
'That one's easy,' Tucker said. 'Take a shower.'
'Have a beer,' Ico amended.
'No, what are we going to do to put an end to this place? Who do we tell?'
'The media is transfixed by entertainment, not information,' Daniel said. 'Rugard is right. Why hasn't anybody heard about this place? Somebody has to have escaped. But no one tells. Or no one will listen.'
'We've peeked behind the curtain, man,' Ico said. 'We gotta tell somebody.'
'We're going to be sneaking back, not welcomed back,' Daniel pointed out. 'Our story is going to have to make an end run around authority. I think we start with the gurus of the cyber underground. This isn't mere conspiracy theory, this is a verifiable monstrosity, provable to any inspector sent down here. We get this on the Internet, tell the world, and suddenly the facade crumbles. Somebody in power will seize on this to embarrass their opponents. Once the truth gets out, Australia can't be sustained.'
'Damn right,' Ico agreed. 'If we get back we've got the atomic bomb of scandals. We fan out and scream bloody murder. Then this asylum gets closed down.'
'Why would Raven help us do that?' Tucker asked. 'She thinks this is good for us.'
'Raven doesn't need to know. All she has to do is get us back.' Ico glanced out into the dusk. 'Heads up, here she comes.'
Ethan came with her, the two slipping into the cluster of rocks with a furtive dart, Raven's lips slightly pursed. They sat in a circle to hear what she had to say.
