Getting Back (6 page)

She turned this way and that with determined purpose, glancing upward at the dangling signs periodically for reference. The frantic beeping of the robot quickly receded and they began to relax, slowing to a brisk walk. As Daniel got his breath back he noticed a background murmur that rose in volume until it became the roar of falling water. She led him into a side passageway and down a flight of wet steps, his curiosity growing as the noise grew. Then out onto a balcony grating.

"The water comes from the mountains," Raven said. "Someday I want to see its source."

They were overlooking an underground reservoir, lit by only a few lights. A vaulted ceiling receded back into darkness. Water was pouring in from an unseen pipe, creating a pattern of ripples that sparkled in the artificial light. The water glowed blue, emphasizing the cistern's clarity.

"This is my private spot," she said. They sat.

"How'd you find this place?"

"I've been coming down here for two years."

"And you never got lost or caught?"

"No one ever challenged me. I started drawing maps, deciphering signs, and slowly figured it out. It's been like exploring an underground world. When I found this reservoir it was like I'd discovered my own private lake."

"Less pretentious than a restaurant, quieter than a club."

She smiled. "Exactly. You should like me, Daniel. I'm a cheap date."

She opened the pack and took out their dinner. Ordinary stuff: farmed-salmon sandwiches, wedges of genetically enhanced vegetables, vacu-packed brownies. "What did you bring us to drink?" she asked mischievously.

He opened his mouth in surprise. He'd supposed they would buy something.

"No matter." She pulled out a small pail that was tied to a string and lowered it over the railing to the pool below. When it filled, she lifted it up and sipped. Then she held it out to him with two hands like an offering.

"Is it safe?"

She laughed again, that delicious laugh. "It's the same water in your apartment except it hasn't flowed through the grub of city pipes yet. This way I don't have to carry a canteen. Water's heavy."

He took the pail and drank, watching her over the rim. It seemed sweeter and colder than the water at home. "I'll bet this is against the rules."

"Everything is against the rules, isn't it?"

"Everything that's good."

They ate quietly a moment, Daniel unsure whether he liked her or was merely intrigued by someone so eccentric. It would be interesting to get her in the same room with harridan Lundeen.

Yet despite the kiss and her trespassing boldness she also seemed somewhat shy, he judged. Or at least reserved. Guarded. Her enigmatic replies deflected as much as they revealed, and she volunteered little. Why had she brought him here?

"This isn't exactly the great outdoors," he finally ventured, trying to feel her out.

"Don't you like it?"

"It's weird. Interesting. Not a typical choice."

"I'm betting you're not a typical man."

"And you're not a typical woman?"

"No."

He made a guess. "A loner?"

"I'm not alone with you."

Daniel took a bite of brownie, watching her. Pretty. Smart. A bit full of herself, maybe. Self-absorbed, certainly. But interesting too. He leaned forward slightly and watched her unconsciously lean away. Standoffish: she liked to control relationships. Her assertion of leadership kept her safe.

"Why did you bring me here?" he asked.

She smiled mischievously again. "You're cute. Handsome, even."

He rolled his eyes.

"No, that's not it," she corrected.

"Thanks, Raven."

"It's more that you're curious. That you think. That you question. That you explore."

"Like you."

"Maybe like me." She sipped from the pail, setting it down. "So. Have you decided why you do?"

He sat back. "I don't understand what you mean by that."

"Well… what do you do?"

"I work on software at Microcore. Dumb stuff. I hate it."

"Why?"

"Because it's pointless. Right now they've got me on a project called a Meeting Minder. It tracks your schedule and analyzes its patterns, prescheduling based on your past activity. The goal is to make the next year as close to the last one as possible, for maximum efficiency. They're expecting a best-seller."

"I know it's dumb. I meant, why do you work on it?"

He looked at her in surprise. "Because it's my job. Everyone has a job."

"Why?"

" 'United Corporations has the right job, in the right place, for everyone,' " he quoted.

"No, why?" She looked impatient, as if he were slow.

He felt irritated. "What do you do?"

"I'm an investigator."

"Investigating what?"

She waved her hand. "Here. This. Now. Me. And you."

"Not exactly the wilderness."

"Something that's been explored by others can still be a wilderness to you, if it's your first time."

He looked around. "Well, you've got me lost."

"Do you like being lost?"

"I don't know." Was this a conversation or an interrogation? "It's not a question that occurred to me."

"Sorry. I ask a lot of things, don't I? I'm curious too."

"I'm not mindless like that janitor robot, Raven."

"I didn't say you were."

"You imply it by acting superior with your 'whys.' I think, I read, I have hobbies. I just built a catapult. I'm on a career track but I'm also my own man and I have adventures in my own way. Right now I'm trying to hack into Microcore's expense database. I want to put my bosses' obscene work charges on the corporate intra-web."

She looked interested at that. "Why?"

"Why, why," he mimicked. "You're like a two-year-old. Why? To elevate the gossip. To show I can."

"What's the point?"

"The point is that there is no point."

She began to nod, then shook her head. "I understand your point about pointlessness. But hacking into expense accounts is kind of juvenile, don't you think?"

"It's just a different kind of investigation, no different than this tunnel. I'm also in touch with the cyber underground."

"You mentioned that before. A bunch of people pretending, right? Rebels without a cause?"

"It's people who think for themselves. I think you'd be intrigued, if you tried it."

"Perhaps," she conceded. "But what's there to see, really?"

"You learn what's truly going on, without the United Corporations spin." He wanted to impress her. "You can use it to wake up."

"But do you really believe that stuff? I mean, I heard it was… crackpot."

"They put me inside another company, Raven. They let me download its secret."

Now she looked intrigued. She sat up straighter, tucking her legs beneath her. "What secret?" As conspiratorial as a schoolgirl.

"Well, I don't know…"

She leaned back, disappointed. "Rumors, right?"

"No, this was real." Could he trust her? Here was a soul mate, he hoped. Someone who felt like he did. "A file. Genetic plans by this company to modify cereal grains to transmit disease to insects."

She took another sip of water, watching him. "Bugs? What's wrong with that?"

What was wrong with it? It seemed less sinister when he tried to describe it. Was this really worthy of a truth cookie? Suddenly he was less certain. "It might wipe out whole species. It messes with the environment."

"Oh." She thought. "There's been a reform law, hasn't there? It's probably okay if all these scientists are working on it, don't you think? What company?"

He was discouraged at her reaction but didn't want to back down. "GeneChem."

"Never heard of them. But to play devil's advocate, they're not in business to screw up, right? They're not in business to break the law. We modify crops all the time. Have to, in a world with twelve billion people."

"So we unleash disease?"

"On insects, sure."

"What about Australia, Raven?"

"We learned from it, I hope." She glanced away a moment and then back, as if trying to decide whether to tell him something. "Look, I'm not endorsing this GeneChem. I'm just asking how are we- you and me- to know? We're not scientists. We're not management. There's a difference between poking fun and challenging expert opinion."

She was watching him again and he didn't know if this was what she really felt or if she was testing him somehow. Dammit, he couldn't figure her out. "What if this mutates?" he asked.

"What if grasshoppers eat all the wheat and the world starves? Daniel, civilization has been modifying crops for ten thousand years. Now this underground of yours gives you one file and suddenly you have a monopoly on truth? Maybe there's more to the story."

"You sound like United Corporations. ' Trust us. You don't see the big picture.' Their patronizing attitude drives me crazy."

"I'm not patronizing you."

"Then kiss me again."

She looked suddenly uncertain, and turned away. "No." She wanted to, he was sure of it.

"You kissed me before."

"I… I was in the moment."

"What about this moment?"

She turned back, taking a breath. "I don't have to kiss you just because we came down here, or just because I did it once, or just because you're hacking corporate secrets, or just because I'm playing devil's advocate."

He slumped back. "Okay. All right already."

"I want to kiss you, except…" She paused, uncertain, looking at him curiously as if he baffled her as much as she baffled him. There was something she wasn't saying. "This electronic snooping is… in the establishment's arena, you know? Their game. I brought you down here because it seems outside that world. I thought you might feel the water, the magic of this place. I don't think you did."

"How do you know what I feel?"

"I know."

"I don't think you even know how you feel, Miss Why. Or why you do. One minute you're breaking into utility tunnels and the next defending their witch doctory."

She looked down at that. She was thin-skinned, he thought, and there was a moment's satisfaction at pricking her. But the arguing was silly.

"Raven, I think we need to reboot." It was slang that had come from the early days of computers.

"Yes, I don't want to quarrel. I was just debating a point."

"About corrupting the ecosystem?"

"About feeding the world."

"So I should ignore this kind of GeneChem stuff? Ignore the truth?"

"You can't know the truth. None of us can."

"I know the sloganeering of United Corporations isn't the truth."

"But don't you accept it? Conform? Compromise?"

"I'm tired of compromising. I'm tired of being the odd man out at work."

Again she looked interested. "Why?"

He groaned. "Why am I tired?"

"Why are you always the odd man out?"

"My colleagues say I don't believe in anything, that I have no faith in what we're doing." He stopped, as if to consider the truth of that opinion for the first time. "I don't know. I just look at everything sideways and it comes out funny."

"What if the sideways view is the right one, Daniel? What if you're right?"

"What if they're right?" He shook his head. "Now you've got me talking like you, going in circles. Waffle genes." He looked at her in discouragement. "I don't even know what side you're on."

"No. You don't know which side you're on. That's all I've been getting at."

He stood, suddenly tired of this. "Look, I'm sorry I disappointed you."

She stood too. "You didn't. It's for the best, I think."

"Am I going to see you again?"

She shook her head. "I don't think so."

"Okay. Fine."

"It's not for the reason you think."

"Sure." He glanced around. "Maybe you could show me the way out of here?"

"Listen," Raven said, reaching out to grip his arm. He started at her touch. "If we live in their world we make a thousand compromises, right? We take their pay, eat their bioengineered food. It's inescapable, correct?"

He looked at her gloomily.

"Unless we truly escape," she went on.

"But we can't, except to cyberspace," he said with exasperation. "That's my whole point. That's why the cyber underground is important. The world's one big company now, or at least a consortium of them. One country, one culture, one bottom line."

"What if it wasn't, Daniel? What if there was an alternative?"

"Escape? Where, down here?" He glanced up at the concrete ceiling. "No thanks."

"No, someplace else. Do something that takes courage to do."

"What do you mean?"

She took a breath. "I might go away. That's what I meant about not seeing you. Not kissing you."

He was puzzled at this. "Away?"

"There's an adventure company."

"Oh." Adventure travel was commonplace. Daniel had climbed, rafted, paraglided. "I've done that. It makes a good vacation."

"No. This one is different."

He frowned. They weren't different. They shepherded their clients, showed them some dirt and flowers with a down-home twang, and at the end held them upside down until all the credit cards fell out of their pockets. It was an industry like any other: its thrills and corny jokes and well-worn trails and easy lectures as ritualized as Japanese theater. "How is it different?"

"Sometimes you don't come back."

"The trek is dangerous?" There were always release forms because some of the climbs and treks and dives were genuinely risky. It was danger that gave it the thrill.

"It's in Australia."

"What?"

"It's a new company called Outback Adventure. Immersion in a total wilderness. It's up to you to find your own way out."