come to this! I just want what's rightfully mine! So I say we end this before any others get hurt. You and me! One on one!'
'What?' Dyson's voice was quieter now.
'You heard me! You got the guts to back up your big mouth? You willing to fight for all these people you led into a trap? I'll fight you for the transmitter alone. At dawn! I win, I take it back! You win, we let you go!'
The face disappeared from the window. Somebody had pulled at him. Raven, it looked like. She knew what a mean sonofabitch the Warden could be. And Dyson was weak for her. He was afraid she'd talk him out of it.
'You and me, Dyson, to the death!' he called. 'Your choice of weapons! Then it's over for everyone! You man enough to face me alone? You man enough to come away from that woman of yours?'
Nothing. Silence. If nothing else his challenge was winning his own followers back, he felt. Rugard wasn't asking them to do what he wouldn't do. Rugard was going to fight for it himself.
'Dyson!' He was getting impatient. 'You willing to end this thing?'
Then the head came back. 'No!' Daniel shouted. It echoed over the plaza. 'You win, you get the transmitter. I win, we get the activator and free passage. That way, somebody gets back. And the bloodshed stops.'
Rugard was taken aback a bit. Give the fugitives the activator? Gamble everything? He didn't like the strength of Dyson's voice.
'You and me at dawn, Rugard!' Daniel continued, the challenge coming down defiantly, almost mocking. 'Spears! Winner gets the other's machine, and free passage! Winner takes all!'
Damn him. The Warden was quiet, absorbing his surprise at the acceptance. They must be desperate because the transmitter still didn't work. And yet that just drew them into his trap, didn't it? The fight was still his way out, his key to escape. Because Rugard Sloan could take a pissant like Dyson any day. He could chew up little men like that with hardly a breath, his domination complete. And then leave all these cretins behind.
'All right then.' He said it absently, almost to himself. Then he raised his voice. 'All right then! You be ready, boy! Dawn! To the death!' He swaggered as he left the plaza, a swagger for both Dyson and his own men. He knew he could take him, take him easily.
But he'd have to be careful. Rugard glanced back. Men without hope were dangerous.
Ethan shook Daniel awake. Light was filtering through the broken windows of the battered tower. Dawn was near.
Surprising himself, Daniel hadn't brooded on his decision but slept. Slept well: the battle had left him exhausted. He'd pushed aside Raven's fear before it became his own. Now it was almost morning. His last day in Australia if he won the activator, signaled for help, and left with Raven.
Or his last morning ever.
'It's time, mate.' Ethan stood back to let him get up.
'You're starting to sound like Oliver, you damn Australian.'
Ethan smiled. 'Oliver came back last night you know, after you were asleep. Through some tunnel under the city, like a little mole. Pretty shaken when he got here. I don't think he's used to what big groups of people do to each other.'
'I'm not used to it either.'
'Do you want some breakfast?' It was Amaya.
'No, I'm not hungry.' The statement made him chuckle at a memory.
'What?' she asked, looking at him strangely.
'Outback Adventure's screening lady. She asked me what I'd want for my last meal.'
She looked sad. 'And what did you say?'
'That I wouldn't have an appetite.'
He walked to the window. It was light enough that he could see the tired convicts sleeping around the edges of the plaza, keeping them penned. He didn't see Rugard.
It will all be over in fifteen seconds, one way or another, a trainer had said. He turned back. 'I need a good spear.'
'I'll find one,' said Ethan.
'And I'd like to say goodbye to Raven.'
'I'll find her,' Amaya said.
He sat by the window, still waking up, enjoying the growing pink splendor of the dawn in the direction of the sea. Such a lovely place, Australia. He should be concentrating on tactics-It wouldn't hurt to know how to run, the instructor had told him- but his mind was so crowded with memories it was impossible to think about the fight. Microcore, the tunnels, the clearing where he'd awakened in Australia, the wrecked transport, the climb up the monolith. It seemed like a dream.
That was the way to go, he thought. In a dream.
Ethan came back with a spear and Daniel hefted it for balance. They'd fitted an old knife on the end and it was dark with blood, which was good. Give Rugard something to think about.
'You okay?' Ethan asked.
'I'm okay.'
There were steps on the concrete stairs and he turned to greet Raven. Instead it was Amaya, looking worried.
'Raven's gone,' she said.
'What?'
'I looked all through the tower and she isn't here. Neither is Oliver. She's gone, with all her gear.'
'With her gear?' he looked at her dumbly, not comprehending. 'Gone?'
She nodded. 'Gone. With the transmitter.'
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Ico Washington felt vindicated as he clung awkwardly to a pony and rode hastily eastward away from Gleneden with Rugard and Raven. He'd been right! Right about the enigmatic double-talk of Outback Adventure. Right about his map. And right about Raven DeCarlo. In the end she'd deserted her friends and betrayed her lover in her desperation to get back to civilization. She'd cut a deal with the enemy! Ico didn't despise her for it, he respected her. It was the logical thing to do. But it also confirmed his view of human nature. People are what they are, not what they pretend to be.
Now they were trying to put as much distance between themselves and the derelict city as possible, before signaling for rescue and escape.
Raven had come to Ico out of some sewer in the city, accompanied by a strange, smelly Australian who'd delivered her and then melted away in that deepest darkness before dawn. 'The bad people need to stop,' the man she'd called Oliver had kept muttering. Raven had come whispering that she was going to take him, Ico Washington, home. Then she had him quietly summon Rugard and they met in the empty showroom of an abandoned auto dealership. There she professed that she'd come to save the life of the suicidal Dyson because of his lunatic agreement to a duel. Too vain, still, to admit she wanted to save her own skin like anyone else. 'If you and I and Ico run with the transmitter, there's nothing and nobody for them to fight about any longer,' she explained.
Rugard was suspicious. 'What's to prevent me from slitting your throat and taking that transmitter right now?'
'The hover won't put down unless they see me. They won't wait unless I walk to the door. They'd shoot at you as soon as rescue you. Ask Ico if you don't believe me.'
Rugard looked at Ico.
'That's the story she's been telling from the first,' Ico conceded. 'Who knows if it's the truth?'
'So let's cut a deal,' Raven said fiercely. 'I need your activator. We're almost to the coast and the transmitter still doesn't work.'
'We were wrong about the Cone?' Ico asked.
