Getting Back (28 page)

"Friction."

The watercourse gave them just enough of a dent to brace themselves as they wedged upward, and the rough texture provided a tenuous grip. None dared look down. Daniel's sweat left a trail of dark droplets and Ethan breathed in short gasps, his muscles trembling from the tension. Tucker grunted with the effort to keep his bulk from sliding back downhill. There was enough slope to give them purchase, but it was like climbing a funnel, gravity trying to pull them toward a dark drain. The night was cool, the stars cold, and yet Daniel was hot from the exertion.

At least the view was extraordinary, he noticed when he glanced up. Other monoliths in the cluster of rocks gleamed gray in the dark like the domes of a religious sanctuary, their canyons and valleys lakes of shadow. The sky vaulted down and the desert horizon climbed up to tie into one vast sphere of ghostly luminescence, the rock he clung to at the center of this spectral universe. It was as if he was climbing the crest of a floating asteroid, he thought. His goal, the summit ahead, seemed to lead to space itself. The effect was dizzying.

His floating reverie was interrupted by a scrape and a muffled curse. Tucker was sliding backward down the chute. "Damn!"

Daniel tensed, praying. After several yards the big man managed to brake himself, abrading his arms and legs to keep his precarious contact with the rock. He skidded to a halt.

"You okay?" Daniel inquired quietly.

There was a long silence. "I'm okay. I can tell by the pain."

They started up again. It helped to keep eyes to the stone. There was one short stretch where the pitch was nearly vertical and they climbed by pushing against almost imperceptible undulations in the surface, straining from the exertion. Then the slope began to ease and finally to flatten. Daniel crawled shakily onto the roof of the monolith, his muscles rubbery. The surface of its crest was rough but basically level, eroded into shallow depressions that held pools of water separated by ridges of tougher rock. In the compound below figures still staggered drunkenly in the dying firelight. He felt horribly exposed, yet it was unlikely anyone could see him in the darkness. Dropping to his knees, he made his way to the far edge. Here the rock tower dropped straight down to Rugard's cabin, completely black in the night. There was no light from the house, and none from the brush nearby.

It was like dropping into the dragon's den.

"Gawd," Tucker said as he came up next to Daniel. "If my ass had puckered any more on that climb I would've collapsed on myself like a black hole. This is the craziest damn thing I've ever done, you know that?"

"A computer would never do it," Daniel agreed. "But it's not as crazy as me going down there." He peered into the darkness. "I can't see a thing, but I have to hope the transmitter is really down there and everyone is gone, drunk, or passed out. Rugard hasn't shared our secret, I'll bet, so nobody should be particularly alert. You're going to have to lower me as I rappel, and Ethan will help feed the line. Then you can both hoist me up. Can you do that?"

Tucker considered. "I can brace my legs against these little ledges up here. I won't be able to see anything though, so I'll just lower until Ethan says you're down. Ico's keeping an eye on the front door?"

"That's the plan."

Tucker began flaking the ropes loose in businesslike fashion while Ethan used knots to join them. Daniel tied an end around his waist and crotch vaguely similar to his memory of the rappeling harness he'd used on vacation. Backing down a sheer cliff was not as difficult as it looked, he reminded himself, so long as you were sure the partner feeding the end from around his waist was absolutely dependable. He hoped Tucker's snake venom had thoroughly worn off.

Daniel stood, saluted his companion, and walked backward as Tucker fed out the rope. He paused on the edge, double-checking his knots. Not exactly just another day at Microcore. Then he leaned back into space. His legs were braced against the cliff, his body straight, and the taut rope cutting into his waist was all that suspended him from eternity. The helplessness of it- the requirement for implicit trust in another human being- was exhilarating. As Tucker slowly let out rope he began to descend, walking backward down the cliff toward the pool of darkness below. He waited for a shout of alarm, but all he heard was the increasingly discordant drum of music. The band was getting drunk.

In the end it was almost too easy, far easier than the climb up had been. He dropped to the cabin's roofless terrace breathless but elated. He was down! Daniel waited until slack rope pattered into a pile beside him and then moved cautiously forward, listening. The guard, Jago, presumably still stood on the other side of the front door. The interior of the cabin was dark, its corners spooky, and Daniel tried not to think of the corpse of the crucified pilot, or convicts drinking from a skull.

He glanced toward the table. Raven's electronic junk was still scattered across it- she must have put on a good show. Thankfully the transmitter sat there too, a beckoning machine. Or like cheese in a trap, he thought wryly. He took a step. No sound but his own panting and the distant, dying sounds of merriment. Another step, and then another. He felt like he was being watched. But no, the cabin was empty, wasn't it? Then he was at the table, groping across it to softly cradle the machine in his arms. You might just pull this off, he told himself. You might just walk out into the desert with the means for Raven to call home.

With the means for her to leave you. She'd be waiting in the starlight with the activator, waiting to go back to a world he'd wanted to escape from, waiting to go back to a system he wanted to condemn. Would she really come back for them? Did he want her to? Or did he really wish she would stay as they hiked to the coast- He froze. There was something else on the table, he saw dimly. A metal box the size of a shoe box. He reached out, his fingertips brushing the familiar dented surface of flaking paint. Tough enough to withstand an airplane crash, to weather a flood, to…

What was the activator doing here?

A match flared, brilliant in the inky darkness, transfixing Daniel like a deer. "See, we don't need her anymore," a voice said quietly. "Now we've got both units, and can signal whenever we want." The illuminated hand lit a candle.

It was Ico. He'd stolen Raven's hidden activator and gone to Rugard.

Outside Daniel could hear a rumble of feet up the hill as convicts began a charge for the front door. They'd been waiting for the light. He snatched the activator up to cradle with the transmitter, backing toward the cliff. "Don't do this!"

"It was the only way, Dyson." Ico stepped into the light, holding the tip of a crude sword against the floor like a cane, as if the idea of pointing it at someone had not yet occurred to him. "The only way to make sure one of us got back. Not that seductress from United Corporations! But the Warden… he has to have underground connections it would take us years to find. They'll harbor us, and hide us, and we'll get the cyber word out…"

"No! Not with convicts!"

There were men at the outside of the cabin door now, jerking it open.

Daniel stood at the cliff base, still roped in, his arms awkwardly full, looking up. "Pull!" he screamed.

"Don't be a fool," Ico hissed. "He'll kill us all! Think!" And then he jumped forward, the sword swung high to chop at the rope. At the same moment the door burst open and Rugard, Jago, and half a dozen convicts burst into the room.

"Sneaking thieves!" the Warden roared.

Daniel had only a second to consider. Which machine was more expendable?

Then he heaved the activator at Ico Washington as hard as he could. The heavy box hit his attacker full in the face and Ico went backward with a muffled cry, falling into the surging convicts. Daniel wrapped himself around the rope and was suddenly jerked up into the night. A spear skimmed past his swinging boot and clanged against the cliff wall.

"Get him!" the Warden howled.

Dancing like a puppet, Daniel was hauled by brute strength up along the dark cliff, using his feet to fend himself off as he swung. Something whizzed by him and missed. Then his ascent stopped and he dangled, helpless, the shadowy figures below taking aim. He was about to scream for his companions to pull some more when something heavy sizzled by as it fell, the wind cuffing him. It hit below with a crash, splintering, and the convicts howled. Ethan had dropped a rock! Then with a jerk Daniel was being hauled upward again.

"What if that had hit me!" he hollered upward.

"We could stop pulling!" Ethan called back.

From the confusion of shouts below he could hear the Warden's roar. "Come on, we'll get them when they come off the monolith!"

Then Daniel smelled smoke.

Ico's illumination of the slitlike windows in Rugard's cabin had signaled the waiting convicts- warned by Ico of Raven's plan- to rush the front door. It had also alerted Raven and Amaya, who had crept in behind Rugard's men. Once she found the activator missing from where she had hidden it and guessed what Ico had done, Raven had realized that his betrayal might be another kind of chance. Now it was all playing out as she had expected. With a little luck, the tables would be turned. "Let's go!"

The women seized either end of a stout wooden log and ran up the dark hill toward the cabin door. Raven had noticed a curious detail: the Warden had built his stout door to open outward so that any attackers could not easily batter it inward against its log frame. An excellent plan to keep assailants out.

Or the Warden in.

Even as they heard the shouts and cries of the men inside, the women slammed the log firmly against the door, bracing it against the dirt. Then they lit two brands and ran along the cabin wall, firing its thatched roof.

Heavy shoulders crashed against the cabin door from the inside but it didn't budge. In an instant, smelling the smoke, the Warden understood. "It's a trick! A trap! The table, the table! Get up on the roof and out of here!"

Even as they dragged furniture over to boost themselves to the inner lip of the half-covering roof, a wall of flames breathed heat on the cabin eaves. From somewhere in the dark, a woman screamed. One of the braver convicts hauled himself up on the roof and danced on its brushwood frame to try to dash through the curtain of flames. He broke through near the wall and crashed back down into the cabin, burned, smoking, and howling. Frantic, the men hurled themselves again against the stout door. It wouldn't give.

"We're going to fry!" one of them yelled.

"No we're not! Get back to the cliff!" Rugard snapped. "The fire will just bring the others to unblock the door!" He started to cough then, cursing, as smoke billowed from the underside of the thatch. His men began bailing spring water, throwing it up toward the growing conflagration, but it did little good and in any case wasn't really necessary. There was no real danger, the Warden thought: there was a sufficient gap between roof and cliff where the flames wouldn't reach. If they had to they could retreat into the stone storeroom. But Dyson was getting away, a jerking fly now against the stars high above. That was humiliating.

Angrily, the Warden clutched Ico's arm. The smaller man seemed in shock, hypnotized by the flames, his nose bleeding from where he'd been hit. "Why didn't he cooperate, like you promised?"

Ico shook his head. "The woman. She's bewitched him."

"Where are they going?" Rugard demanded. "Where will they signal?"

"They won't," he said, and pointed shakily.

The Warden followed his finger. The activator to penetrate the jamming was sitting on the cabin floor. He sprang forward and grabbed it, suddenly exultant. Yes! "He dropped it?"

"He clobbered me with it. I would have had him otherwise."

"They can't signal without this, right?"

Ico looked at the spreading flames, smoke boiling out. They could hear the confused shouts of the rest of the compound as it was roused by the fire.

"Not here. Not unless she's lied to us again." Why had Dyson thrown away the means of escape? Desperation at his own clumsy attack? Or something more? "But now they have the transmitter. So we can't signal without them, either."

The fugitives rendezvoused at a dry creek bed in a side canyon where Amaya had cached their packs. Behind them was a confused yelling and the glow of fire. The three men were scraped and bruised from hastily sliding down the rear of the rock tower, Tucker limping painfully from a sprain. The women were panting. When they'd slipped by the cluster of boulders where they'd originally planned to meet, they saw more of Rugard's men waiting there and ran. Ico had obviously told the Warden where their supplies were supposed to be stored. It was good Amaya had moved them.

"Little snitch," Raven now muttered.

"Are they going to burn?" Amaya asked worriedly, looking back at the flickering orange.

"Just held up a bit, and angry as hornets. We have to move fast if we're going to get away and signal for rescue. You've got it, right?" She turned to Daniel.

"How did you know to pen them in like that?" he asked her instead.

"When Ico disappeared I got suspicious. Then I found the activator was gone. Amaya and I got a log to brace the door shut."

"But you let them lower me into the cabin anyway."

"Yes. Because we needed the transmitter. If I'd warned you off, our position would be hopeless. Now we can still get back."

"Don't you mean you can get back?"

"Ethan and I are your best hope."

"You're ruthless, you know that?"

"I'm practical. Besides, it was your friend who betrayed you, not mine."

Daniel was quiet at that.

"Can we just go, please?" Tucker said impatiently.

They shouldered their gear and fled into the canyon of the women's camp, brushing by a few confused occupants who'd turned out groggily at the noise and confusion. They paused at a cook hut to snatch a last few bites of food, but even as they did they heard the call of a cattle horn. One of the women was blowing an alarm to relay their direction, so they hurried on. As the fugitives reached the end of the canyon they saw the torchlight of a posse entering its head. Many of the convicts were drunk or unconscious, but not all.