with instant recognition when I met you, some part of you that I recognized in myself. I knew you, Raven. Or I'm going to know you. In some past life or some future one. That's what I thought way back in the city. I couldn't forget you. The only reason I haven't been able to forgive you is because I couldn't forgive myself. I couldn't forgive wasting so much of my life, going after the wrong things. I blamed you for me. But when I climb up these rocks and look out at the wilderness in all its timeless size and beauty, I realize how conceited such unforgiveness is. We're both so microscopic. We counted for nothing at United Corporations and we count for nothing here. We're nothing- except to each other. To each other, we count for everything.'
He reached up to touch her face and turn her to him, her eyes wet, bending to kiss her fully on the lips.
And then she thrust him away. 'No. Don't do this to me.'
'Raven…'
'I count for something, Daniel. I count in that world because I believe in it. You're a dangerous man, Daniel Dyson, dangerous to them and dangerous to me. So I'm going to leave you here, abandon you in Australia, while I go back and let them decide what your fate should be.'
'They put you here. They don't deserve your loyalty!'
'And I don't deserve yours. Please don't complicate things with this love of yours. Because I don't need it. I don't need it from anyone.'
'You know you do…'
She rolled away from him and kneeled, looking at him intently. 'Look. I need you to help get me out from under the Cone. Do that first. Do that for me. And then I'll decide where to go, or what to do, or how to live my life. Then, and only then, when I have a true choice, am I going to decide my why.'
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
As the land grew more hospitable, the fugitives began to encounter ruins that seemed both reassuring and disturbing. The decaying structures proved that humans had lived here, and presumably could again. They also warned of the impermanence of existence. People had not just lived here, but lived in comfort, with machines and full pantries and regular mail. Now they were gone, their memories weeded over.
The dented and holed aluminum blades of a windmill came first, peeping from the brush near the crumbling remains of its wooden tower. The steel water tank it had once fed was ruptured and sinking into dirt that was the same red color as its corrosion. When Raven touched the metal, it flaked like scorched paper. Five miles farther on they came across the shell of a cattle station, the roof of the ranch house long since ripped off by clawing winds and its walls sagging inward with the graceful weariness of old wood. The weathered gray of the wreck was spotted by scraps of plastic and metal and glass: a disintegrating metal wash tub, a faded plastic shampoo bottle, a broken frame with no picture. There was rusting metal machinery, a garden long dead, and brush-snarled lengths of old plastic pipe, purchased for an irrigation project the plague had not allowed to be completed.
'It's funny how fast things go in a bit more than a quarter century,' Daniel remarked. 'People still lived here when I was born, and now everything they did has sunk into the desert.'
'It's interesting how much stuff remains,' countered Ethan. 'Metal that doesn't have to be mined, plastic that doesn't have to be refined. It's like a rummage sale. There must be huge amounts of salvage in the old cities.'
'You're thinking of treasure hunting?'
'I'm thinking how fast a group of people could rebuild things, given the kind of junk that's in a place like this. I mean if we had to stay here. Here we are at one farm and we've got enough to make better hunting weapons, containers- even lumber to make a cabin if we wanted it.'
'Yes, lots to take,' Oliver said. 'Old things everywhere. But so are the spirits of the old ones. The Australians! Everywhere, even here. Can't you hear them?' He cocked his head to listen to the wind. 'This is their place, not ours. So it's bad luck to take anything from a place like this, mate. Bad, bad luck. We shouldn't camp here either. They'd come to us, in the night. We have to walk farther on, into the bush.'
'You believe in ghosts, Oliver?' Daniel asked.
'I don't have to believe. I see them all the time. The dead people, killed by new things. Killed by this stuff here.' He kicked at the machinery. 'I sleep away. I sleep where they don't come.'
'See them?'
'They're here, if you know how to look.'
'I agree,' Amaya said, as she looked around. 'This old station gives me the creeps. I feel like it's infectious.'
'It's just a ranch,' Raven said.
'It's a bunch of sad memories,' Amaya said. 'United Corporations should document and memorialize this, not hide it by sealing off the continent. This was genetic tinkering gone too far. Ordinary people should see this.'
'Ordinary people can't handle this,' Raven said. 'They wouldn't understand.'
'Understand that their system is run by blunderers?'
'Understand that sometimes mistakes are made, or sacrifices ordered, for society's greater good.' She was talking about them, they knew.
'And sometimes lives are wasted because of venal stupidity and greed,' Daniel countered. He'd been sour since the previous night.
Ethan was tired of the arguing. 'Let's take what we can use on the trek and leave.'
'No, don't take!' Oliver warned anxiously.
'I think he must have seen people pick up the plague from sifting through stuff, early on,' Amaya speculated. She put her arms on Oliver's shoulders and looked him in the eye. 'It's all right,' she said to the Australian. 'I've seen the ghosts too, and they want to help the living. They want the Australians to come back.'
His look was puzzled. 'They're coming back?'
'Us, Oliver. You, Daniel, Ethan, me. The new Australians.' She did not include Raven.
He looked doubtful, but didn't interfere as they took some metal to try to fashion spearheads, two glass bottles to carry water, and a handful of rusty nails. The fact was, they couldn't travel with much more. The weight wasn't worth the benefit. No wonder nomadic warriors used to destroy more than they acquired, Daniel thought. How much could they steal? So they walked on, heeding Oliver's advice to camp well away in the bush. They joked about it, but they were all secretly relieved in the morning that no ghosts had come at night.
Dirt station tracks sometimes led east now. When they were encountered the party followed them, making good if monotonous time. When the crude roads turned a different direction the five of them continued east by striking cross-country, the idea of finding their own way no longer foreign. On and on, by compass and by sun, a ceaseless rhythm. The days blurred into weeks and the land became thick with grass, the trees taller. They realized they'd left the worst desert behind. Australia was getting greener.
The first river with actual water in it was like a deliverance. The water was brown and the current limpid, but by God it flowed- a real river! They plunged in, clothes and all, even dragging a reluctant Oliver in with them, and then shed their clothes and splashed each other like savages, the sand cool and yielding between their toes. There was no self-consciousness; they'd been together too long. Besides, Ethan and Amaya sometimes slept away from the others at night and were assumed to be making love. Raven, however, stayed on her own side of the fire, aloof and unhappy. Daniel dourly watched her.
They camped by the river for two days to wash, play, and recuperate. Ethan didn't want to leave.
'This is the first time I've really been happy since I crashed in this nightmare,' he confided to Daniel. 'Maybe we should just stay here for a while.'
'And not get back?'
'Just take a break. What's our hurry? I'm finally having a good time.'
'With Amaya.'
'With the wilderness. What I came here for.'
'The batteries on those boxes won't last forever. Raven says maybe a year. We have to signal before then if we're ever going to warn the world.'
'So I have to walk again tomorrow?' The complaint was a deliberate imitation of a childish whine.
