"Well, I predict you'll get tired of being unsafe in about fifteen minutes." He shook his head, looking at Daniel speculatively. "There's some other reason, isn't there? Something that pushed you into this. What? Some kind of trouble? A woman?"
"There's no woman."
"Some muscle-thighed rock spider with breasts the size of coconuts?"
"There's no woman. It's just me. For me. I mean, don't you ever get tired of the routine here, Sanford?"
"Of course I do. Everybody does." He stood up and gazed across the top of the cubicles. "And I'll tell you the one thing you'll get for your money. It will make Level 31 look pretty damn good."
That night he called her again. Not because this was about Raven, of course, but because… because he wanted her to know. That he'd signed up. That they'd taken the man she thought they wouldn't take. So there.
On the sixth ring the circuit transferred and a voice came on line but the video picture was grayed out. "Hello?" A man's voice. Damn.
"Is Raven there?"
"Who's calling?"
"A friend."
"Your name?" He could hear clicks on the line.
"I'm just a friend. Look, could you put her on, please?"
"I need your name."
More funny sounds. Were they recording? "My name is none of your damn business. Let me speak to Raven."
There was a long pause. Then, "Miss DeCarlo is no longer here."
"What?"
"Miss DeCarlo is not here."
"This isn't her number?"
"She's left the city for an outdoor excursion."
He stopped at that. Had Raven gone too? "Do you know when she'll be back?"
"No. Do you wish to leave a message?"
Well there wasn't much point in that- if she was off on an Outback Adventure. Had he triggered her like she triggered him? "Who is this?"
"Do you wish to leave a message?"
More clicks. Was this guy a boyfriend, or something else? A mechanical monitor? "I want to talk to her before she goes."
"That's impossible."
To talk? Or was she already gone? "I want a forwarding number."
"Do you wish to leave a message?"
"There's no number?"
"Do you wish to leave a message?"
He drummed his fingers, considering. "Yeah, I want to leave a message. Tell her I called."
"We'll do that."
The connection went dead.
Daniel stared at the phone a long time. They hadn't asked his name.
Room upon room, level upon level, link upon link. A descent into an underworld in which the passwords and riddles and locks were always changing, identities shifting, allegiances unclear. Not just cyberspace, but a cyber pit of mysteries. He clicked and probed, searching for himself: could he find any reference to Outback Adventure? His search engines revealed no matches. Information on Australia had been wiped, except for rumor and uncertain memory. Coyle was right. It was ignorance that made wilderness.
Disbelieve.
Spartacus again, like an electronic nag. Have you decided, Daniel?
"I'm going away."
Away? Where?
"To the wilderness."
There is no more wilderness. Except here.
"I'm going to a special place."
Your place is here. With us.
"I can't do your truth cookie. I don't know how and besides, they've made me. I'm dangerous to you now. They found out about my hacking and they watch me. So… I'm going."
There was no response.
"I'm sorry. I know this GeneChem stuff is- "
There's nothing in the wilderness. That's why it's called wilderness.
"I think I can find something there."
What?
What indeed? Raven? "My reason for being."
Your reason for being is here.
"Goodbye. I have to go now."
The truth is inside, not outside…
CHAPTER NINE
"I'm crazy, but not a fool."
The phrase became Daniel's mantra as he started his preparations. You make your own luck, he told himself. He would research, he would train, he would purchase, and because of that he would survive. When he awakened in the Australian desert he would be self-contained and self-sufficient, a twenty-first-century primitive, ready to live as prehistoric man must have lived but with the added edge of modern technology. The challenge was daunting, but also energizing. Once equipped, he would need no one and nothing, except the fruits of the earth. He would enjoy total freedom.
Because of the peculiarities of its challenge- the emphasis on self-survival, unaided and undirected- the training and guidance from Outback Adventure was alternately generous and guarded. The mix put him off-balance. From earliest memory Daniel's life had been crammed with advice: recited by parents, drilled by teachers, whispered to him from office walls, pounded at him in commercials, nagged by machines due for a tune-up, or scolded by corporate officials conducting performance appraisals. Everyone, it seemed, knew exactly what he should do next. Until now. He could learn quite a bit about generic survival tactics, and very little about the place he would use them. Survival could be taught. Australia must remain mysterious.
What Daniel was presented with were catalogs. There were endless lists of available equipment. Inventories of Australian plants and animals. Data on the temperature (hot), rainfall (erratic), and elevation (low). Survival manuals so general that they included advice on building igloos, drying fish, and distilling sea water. The descriptions of the country he was to be deposited in, however, were spare.
"That would defeat the whole purpose, wouldn't it?" said Elliott Coyle.
"It's just odd, and difficult, preparing for a place that's been turned into a deliberate secret. There're no maps and no journals by previous adventurers."
"How did Columbus prepare? Cabot? Boone?" Coyle tapped his head and heart. "In here, not out there. They knew little of where they were going, but an immense amount about seamanship or forest travel. They succeeded on common sense. If you succeed it will be because of you, not because of us."
That's what he wanted. That's what he feared.
The shopping was initially exhilarating. Suddenly, money seemed to have no meaning. Departing on something as timeless and ill-defined as Outback Adventure was liberating. He felt like a kid in a candy store who could buy to fulfill a fantasy: Second-Skin to don for cold desert nights. A solar blanket squeezed into the size of a matchbox. Chem-candles to start fires. Torso webbing to hold clip-ons. Freeze-dried Stroganoff, couscous, strawberry shortcake, and Szechwan chicken. A water purifier, a solar battery recharge wafer, vitamin drops, a solar-lithium flashlight, a hydrogen pellet stove, Spider-Line, Supra-Boots, and a bush hat with band pockets for fish hooks, spare buttons, a barometer, and data wafers for his palmtop computer.
He spread it across the floor of his apartment and regarded its titanium glitter with initial glee. The paraphernalia of survival! Yet as he toyed with his acquisitions, weighing them individually while toting up his load, he began to feel misgivings. How much of this world did he really want to saddle onto his back? Every step would be a reminder of where he'd come from. Would that be reassuring, or oppressive? He sat on his couch and looked at his purchases, receipts curled like party streamers and box lids gaping like hungry mouths. He put on the bush hat and regarded himself in the reflection of a computer screen.
"G'day, mate."
He frowned.
"You look bloody ridiculous."
Suddenly the gear seemed a miniaturized replication of the United Corporations world, as cumbersome as a space suit. Out of curiosity he bundled the instruction booklets and weighed them. A pound right there.
He sat down again and began to think.
How could he carry enough on his back to keep alive for the months it would likely take to hike to the Australian coast and find Exodus Port? Even with the new food concentrates it suddenly seemed impossible. To be put down in the middle of nowhere, to find your own way to an unclear destination… was he insane? But then that was the nature of exploring, wasn't it? "Because of you, not because of us," Coyle had said. Damn right it would be a way to explore himself.