Getting Back (15 page)

"That's good," Tucker said. "I came for a long ways."

"Let's be pessimistic," Daniel said. "Say a thousand straight-line miles to the coast, and we average fifteen a day."

"But only ten in a straight line," Amaya amended.

"Yeah, okay. So that's a hundred days. A bit over three months. We can do that, right?"

"I don't know if we can move even that fast," Tucker cautioned. "Eventually we have to look for food, water. Finding our way…"

"We should allow for injuries and rest," Amaya said. "And some R amp;R."

"We should allow for the possibility they set us down ten miles from the west coast and we have to walk across the whole bloody continent, which is as big as the United States," said Ico.

"Which is exactly the puzzle we asked for, right?" added Tucker.

"We know the most important thing," Daniel said. "We have to walk toward that rising sun. Exodus Port is on the east coast."

"And maybe we do know more," Ico added.

Tucker grinned. "Uh-oh, here it comes. He heard something after all."

"No. But I wasn't content with being spoon-fed by Outback Adventure, either. As far as I was concerned, they were the first challenge, with their 'we'll tell you this but not that' bullshit. So I did a little research outside the envelope."

"And?" Amaya asked.

"I bought a map."

"What! How?"

"You can get all kinds of stuff on the black market."

"They didn't confiscate it?"

"Not unless they unsewed my sleeping bag." He bent to his pack. "I put it in my lining."

Tucker was shaking his head. "You're something else, you know that, Washington? What you did is against the rules. What you did does defeat the purpose."

Ico was using a penknife to cut a small slit in his sleeping bag. "It defeats their purpose, which is to have us wandering around the desert like morons. My purpose is to prove I can beat the system and think for myself." He brought out a folded paper. "We're at war, people. With nature, with Outback Adventure, and with time. I intend to win." He unfolded the map. "Ta-da!"

"It doesn't matter," Daniel dismissed.

"Here, see?" Ico held it up proudly.

"It's useless, Ico."

He looked irritated. "What do you mean?"

"Show me on that map where we are."

"We're going to figure out where we are. With landmarks."

"Show me where we're going."

"Give me time, Dyson."

"Even if we had a clue where we are on your map, we don't know if it's fake or real. It could lead us astray as easily as take us where we need to go. It's a complete waste of time and money." He didn't like the fact that Ico had brought a map without telling them. Or eavesdropped. Or switched their drop-off point. It was an arrogant little stunt.

"Daniel…" Amaya mediated.

"Maybe," Ico said. "Or it just may save your ass." He was defiant. "I checked my supplier out. I believe this is real. And I'm trying to play the game by my rules."

"No you're not. You're trying to cheat. I want to beat them fairly, by finding our own way."

"You want to jump through their hoops. Good doggie."

"I think you should have stayed home if you need a damn road atlas…"

"Boys! Please!" Amaya looked like an exasperated schoolteacher. "Is this some kind of testosterone thing, or what?"

"It's a philosophical discussion," Daniel said.

"About ends and means," Ico added.

"Well, this boy thinks we ought to stop talking and start walking," Tucker said. "You two can argue along the way. About a hundred paces behind Amaya and me, please."

Ico sighed and shrugged. "Okay, I'll tuck the map away for now. You'll be asking for it later. In the meantime, which way, Mister Let's-Do-It-The-Hard-Way?"

Daniel pointed toward the rising sun. "That way."

Before they set out they filtered and drank water from the pools until they were satiated, trying to flush the last of the sleep chemicals from their systems. Then they filled all the water containers they had. With several weeks of food on their backs, they agreed, water posed their biggest challenge. They had to find it every two to three days, at most. Then, that goal established, they started east, following the base of a rocky ridge that led roughly in that direction. The walking was neither particularly difficult nor easy. There was little soil, the ground instead dominated by sand, clay, rocks, and a dry, clumpy grass that pricked at them when they brushed it, forcing a meandering course between its tufts. "Spinifex," Amaya identified. It was necessary to watch constantly where one stepped, but the route was fairly level and it was not hard to make progress in an easterly direction and keep oriented.

As delighted as they were to finally be in Australia, Daniel thought, it was satisfying to begin making progress across it. Ahead was their simple new goal, behind a confirmation of how far they'd come. Progress! A mile already. He knew he shouldn't be counting steps, but the habit of setting a schedule, measuring miles, and listing goals was impossible to break. They were not accustomed to wander.

The air had the same astonishing clarity of the videos they'd seen, with no atmospheric haze to soften what seemed a hard, angular land. The few clouds that had been present at dawn disappeared, leaving a blank blue sky of steadily increasing heat. As the sun rose and the shadows shrank, every grain of sand and waxy leaf seemed picked out in detail. In this light there was no mystery about the kind of place they had come to. It was brittle, thin, challenging.

"This is real in-your-face kind of country," Tucker called it.

As if to make his description literal, the flies came as the morning warmed, swarming in numbers beyond the experience of any in the quartet. The insects didn't bite but they orbited the adventurers' heads with a persistence that soon grew annoying. They buzzed into ears, eyes, nose, and mouth, seeking human fluids, and were kept at bay only with a tiresome flapping of the arm.

"Lord Almighty," Tucker complained. "I don't remember being told about these."

"I read about them," Amaya said. "The joke is that your waving arm was the Australian salute. Some claim the Europeans brought them. They're a curse, for despoiling the land."

"I just got here. They should go curse someone else."

A hot breeze kept the bugs at bay for a while but any stillness brought them back. "A thousand miles with these guys?" Ico panted.

"There's about thirty that have landed on that house you're carrying on your back," Tucker said. "Not that you'd feel the difference."

"It's your lunch, Freidel. Buzzing wilderness protein."

"Seriously, man. How can you expect to carry all that?"

"Flies?"

"No. Half an outdoor store."

"This pack is going to keep me not only alive, my good Tucker, but comfortable. It's a hell of a long walk to the beach and I'm not going to be miserable the whole time."

"You just need to keep up, that's all."

"I am keeping up, big guy. In fact, if I don't run you into the ground, I'll give you my coffeemaker." He nodded. "To carry."

The intensity of the southern sun soon became apparent. Much of Australia was as close to the equator as Mexico, and the solar radiation was more powerful than what the four were accustomed to. They stopped frequently to make adjustments. With the coolness of dawn swiftly evaporating, jackets came off and sunscreen came on. They donned wide-brimmed hats and sunglasses. Ico dug into his pack and brought out a fine mesh bag stuffed with food. He emptied the containers into other pockets in his pack and slipped the bag over his hat and head, pulling the drawstring around his throat. "Voila!" he announced. "No flies!"

"But you can't see what we came for," Amaya objected.

"I can see a hell of a lot better through this mesh than with flies in my eyes."

Tucker grinned. "Wait until he needs a drink of water."

Sure enough, when Ico loosened the net to drink, flies found their way inside the opening and began feasting on his sweat. He swatted angrily but the insects couldn't find their way back out. "Damn!" Finally he furiously pulled the bag and hat off his head and shook them to rid himself of the bugs. More insects whined around his head. "I don't believe this!" The others laughed.

He glared, then looked thoughtfully at the invention balled in his hand. "Don't worry, I've got a tube in this hardware store on my back. Next time I'll use it as a straw. I'll get it right." He jerked the net back on.

"Isn't that hot?" Amaya asked.

"It's shady."

By lunchtime the heat pressed down with the weight of an iron and the morning excitement had given way to a dull dizziness. The flies were so persistent that the others began to envy Ico's head net. Finally Daniel spotted a shadow on the ridge and suggested they take a break. The shadow was made by a rock overhang, its shade dropping the temperature a good ten degrees. They collapsed in its gloom and noticed with relief that the flies didn't like to follow them into the cooler dark. Weary, they slowly unfastened pack pockets to nibble lightly on their food and sip water. Then they lay back.

"So, are we having fun yet?" Ico asked.

"It's a little bleak," Tucker admitted. "Still, it beats working for a living."

"I've worked up a good sweat."

"You know what I mean. This is different. We're doing what we want to do."

"I read that primitive tribes had to work as little as two hours a day to feed themselves," Amaya said. "The rest was leisure."

"To do what? Swat flies?"

"You don't like it, Ico?" Tucker asked.

"No, I do, I do. I think. The Big Nothing. It's what I came for. Different perspective, right? But I'm not going to pretend it's paradise, either."

"It's hotter than I expected," Daniel admitted. "And this is the Australian fall?"

"They don't really have an autumn," Amaya said. "I mean where leaves come off. But it should keep getting cooler. Our summer is their winter."

"This is fall? What the devil is summer like?" Tucker wondered.

"We should reach the coast and get back long before we have to find out," Amaya said.

"And if not?" asked Ico.

"We'll be acclimated, I hope. If we're stuck eight months and see their summer solstice, on December twenty-first, the sun should be directly above the Tropic of Capricorn at noon. We can measure its angle above us and try to calculate our north-south position from the Tropic. Get a better sense of where we are."

"Oh good. Let's stay and fry our brains. Much easier than trying to read my map."

"We'll also look at the stars tonight and find the Southern Cross. You can tell position by the distance of constellations above the horizon. The difficulty is determining our position east and west. That's what gave navigators fits for centuries."

"And that, of course, is what we need to know."

"Isn't the whole point not to know?" Daniel interrupted. "I'm not here to argue against maps, Ico, but didn't we come here to live in the moment without all these numbers fixing us in space and time? I caught myself guessing distance. But really, who cares where we are? For the first time in my life I'm just walking. I don't know how far we've come. I don't know how far we have to go. I don't know what time it is. My mind isn't three days ahead and two days behind and anticipating fifteen appointments and worrying about my retirement and my headstone. Suddenly my stomach is all I need to keep track of mealtimes and the sun is my alarm clock. I'm here, taking in the now."

They considered that.

"I agree," Ico said. "It's why I felt it didn't hurt to switch our drop-off point. Let's live in the moment. But at some point we have to get back." He glanced at his wrist. "It's one-seventeen, by the way, if I'm in the right time zone."

"It's when you throw that watch away that you'll be in the right zone."

"Touche." But he kept the watch on.

They looked out at the desert from their rock shelter. A slope of sandstone gave way to a plain as flat and featureless as the face of a calm ocean. Stunted trees and shrubs, gray-green, studded the pan of sand out to a horizon where the ground evaporated into a shimmering mirage of blue water, bleeding into an equally blue sky. Nothing moved, except a hawk wheeling on the thermals.

"Get back?" Tucker said suddenly. "Hell, I just got here."

As the afternoon progressed the desert became more beautiful. What had seemed to be crabbed trees cowering under the hammer of the sun at noon now lengthened with their afternoon shadows, trunks of white and gray taking on sinuous grace. Colors grew richer as the sun dropped, sand making snaking dunes of an eerie red. They crossed two sandy watercourses with no visible water. Amaya pointed out that the tiny ants that marched everywhere on the riverbanks seemed absent on the dry streambeds. "We should camp on the sand," she observed. "Less bugs." It was prettier on the empty rivers as well. The white eucalyptus grew taller and more beautiful than the desert bush, and seemed in its serene majesty as timeless and still as the rocks.

At a third riverbed they found a pool of standing water and stopped, the sky on fire behind them, a deepening blue ahead. "Honey, I'm home!" Ico called, heaving off his pack in relief. They guessed they'd come ten miles.

Daniel was the only one who hadn't brought a tent, deciding to rely on a light tarp instead. Bright fabric mushrooms puffed up from the other three to form an instant village, the thin nylon a comfortable shield against the emptiness of this great outside. There was a bit of awkward unfamiliarity as they set up their stoves and prepared their first real meal, sharing dishes, but also good humor at the fact they were succeeding on their own with these simple tasks. Tucker dragged in some wood and lit a fire with a match. Its purpose was more psychological than to heat or cook. "Man is here!" Tucker shouted to the desert. "He will prevail!" The noise drifted away across the sand.