and all those things seem in short supply out here. So to me, the challenge isn't surviving without civilization. It's learning from the wild and bringing that experience back to make civilization better.'
'You sound like Outback Adventure.'
'First we believed everything they told us and then we believed nothing. I'm just wondering if some of what they said is really true, in a deeper sense than they intended.'
'So what are you going to do if we get back?'
Ethan sighed. 'I don't know. My worry is I'll end up not feeling I fit in either place, or will be on the run as an underground outlaw. Maybe I could make a life here, but not like Oliver. Not like an animal. I'd want to build back some of what I had, and strike a compromise.' He looked at Amaya, walking ahead. 'Find someone to build with.'
The dusty, ragged, and unkempt members of Rugard Sloan's Expedition of Recovery, as he'd grandly decided to call it (although it was more like a lynch mob in mood and moral development), almost tiptoed along the blacktop road in wonder. Pavement! A small thing, but as fervently appreciated in this trackless wilderness as an exercise yard in a prison compound. Here was evidence of past civilization! Of destination! Possibility! Somewhere over the horizon were ruined cities and salvageable luxuries. Somewhere over the horizon was Raven's electronic key to getting out of this whole sorry mess. And because of that, the hardened, bitter inmates of Erehwon ran up and down the skin of asphalt like excited children, clucking over the road as if it were an open gate in a coop of fenced chickens.
The reaction made Rugard slightly uneasy. His followers were angry, yes, for the slaughter in the canyon. They were set on getting back what the bitch had stolen if it meant even the slightest chance of escape from this continental hell: and he'd told them that Raven held the key to getting back. But at Erehwon his rule was the only possibility. In leading them out into the desert, Rugard had made possible the danger that some of them might actually begin to think. He'd have to drive hard to discourage that.
What drove him was not just the desire to break out of this unwalled prison but to revenge himself on the urban smart-asses who had run away. Rugard hated their type, these wealthy urbanites who came here- hated their manner, their unconscious superiority, their naivete, their indignant outrage, their privilege, their whining, and their clumsy helplessness. How well he knew their kind! It mattered little to him that they were stuck in Australia as he was: they were of the same class of arrogant bastards who had imprisoned him. The same class that had held him down all his life: quietly sneering at him, ignoring him, jailing him, always trying to crush him. He was better than they were! Smarter, tougher. Now they'd done it again, humiliating him in his own home, and the possibility they might escape was so maddening he couldn't rest until he hunted them down. Yet Raven and her accomplices had a long head start because of the time it had taken Rugard to assemble supplies, saddle the camels pressed into service to help carry them, sharpen the weapons, and muster resolve. Some of his inmates had balked at following the fugitives at all! The Warden had reacted swiftly, making clear the necessity of fearing him more than they feared the desert. 'You can stay with the ants then,' he'd growled, burying one of those who hesitated to his scrawny neck and squeezing fruit pulp over his screaming head. Rugard had waited until the insects had eaten out the man's eyes and he'd begged for death, and then ordered him dug up, alive, his head pitted and bleeding with bites. A bandage had been wrapped around the victim's empty sockets and he'd been brought stumbling along, a reminder of the consequences of disobedience or hesitation, infection swelling the man's face like a balloon. The lesson had been salutary, the Warden judged. Still, the thieves were far ahead and the Expedition of Recovery needed help if it was to catch up. They needed an advantage.
Rugard looked with dislike at Ico Washington, kneeling on the pavement with a battered map spread before him. The weasel was oily and obsequious and slyly mocking. No wonder his former superiors had encouraged the little toad to run off to this wasteland! The Warden couldn't wait to get rid of Ico himself. Still, the man was convinced his piece of paper might give them a chance, even though to Rugard it looked like the kind of fantasy chart that fools bought from liars.
'Well? Did they come this way?'
Ico squinted upward. 'Obviously we don't know. If I were them I'd stay off the roads to avoid contact with groups like us. But this highway could be the break we need. If we follow it we might be able to get ahead of them.'
'The road goes north and south, not east. You said they'd go east.'
Ico nodded. 'They must, to use the transmitter. But look here. If this map is correct, this road must join an east-running one a few hundred miles north of here. We can make twice the time on graded pavement that they can cross-country, I'll bet. We follow these highways, get ahead of them, and throw out a net near the coast. They'll be lulled into complacency by then. We find them, get the transmitter back, and escape.'
'That will take months!'
'The alternative is to rot like savages. And that could take years.'
Almost imperceptibly, the country began to change as the quintet of adventurers hiked eastward. It rained a couple times, hard but not torrential, and that eased both their minds and the search for water. So did the ecology. The vegetation was getting denser as they traveled, changing from dead-looking desert scrub to savanna bush. The trees were fuller and grew closer together. The grass clumps were less separated. It was still dry country, with empty rivers and starched sky and conical red clay termite mounds that jutted from the soil like dented dunce caps, but for the first time since they'd landed in Australia the continent seemed to be getting greener. There was no hint of the sea, but their spirits improved with the health of the landscape.
Oliver half led and half tagged along, both guide and pet. It was difficult to get any kind of clear history out of him. He must have been a child when the sickness hit, and probably lost a piece of his mind when he watched a whole nation dying around him. Yet he'd survived from some inexplicable immunity and been wandering ever since. He was skittish, as if he might take it into his head to drift off at any minute, but he wasn't difficult to travel with. Content to mostly walk by himself, muttering at rocks and whistling at birds, he'd periodically demonstrate some bush skill or disappear to come back with fresh meat. Occasionally he'd hang on them like a dog, as if he took periodic comfort from human company. The next day he'd walk and sit and sleep apart. He displayed little curiosity about the modern world they'd come from and ate by himself, squatting on his haunches. He smelled rank but efforts to get him to wash were rebuffed, and perhaps he had a point. Even the insects kept their distance.
Among the other four, awkwardness persisted. Raven sulked, Daniel felt alternately fulfilled and at a loss, and Amaya seemed wounded. She reacted to Ethan's attempts at quiet conversation with gratitude but seemed cautious about striking up a real relationship. She'd obviously had a crush on Dyson. And Daniel still seemed smitten with Raven, who'd led him on. Only the journey held them all together.
So they walked, and talked of day-to-day things, but their feelings were temporarily corraled lest they threaten survival. Until one evening when Ethan approached Amaya as she took a turn gathering firewood.
'What's with Daniel and Raven?' he groused.
She sighed. 'What do you mean?'
'They sidle around each other like gunfighters. I feel like I'm at a bad dinner party of a dissolving marriage.'
'They're just in love.' She said it morosely.
He looked at the two cooking silently by the fire already started, Raven unhappily avoiding eye contact. 'One of them, maybe.'
'It's both, Ethan. They're also mad at each other.'
'For a while they were sleeping like spoons.'
'Until they weren't so exhausted that they could start thinking about it. Now they're like repelling magnets. Serves them right to shiver.'
'I like sleeping next to you.'
She didn't reply. She knew he wanted more.
'But you're edgy around me in the daytime. Don't you like me, Amaya?'
She straightened at that, a forearm full of firewood, and looked levelly at him. She didn't answer.
'I like you. I like how you're smart. I like talking about building things with you.'
She frowned.
'I like being with you.'
