Rugard looked with dislike at Ico Washington, kneeling on the pavement with a battered map spread before him. The weasel was oily and obsequious and slyly mocking. No wonder his former superiors had encouraged the little toad to run off to this wasteland! The Warden couldn't wait to get rid of Ico himself. Still, the man was convinced his piece of paper might give them a chance, even though to Rugard it looked like the kind of fantasy chart that fools bought from liars.
"Well? Did they come this way?"
Ico squinted upward. "Obviously we don't know. If I were them I'd stay off the roads to avoid contact with groups like us. But this highway could be the break we need. If we follow it we might be able to get ahead of them."
"The road goes north and south, not east. You said they'd go east."
Ico nodded. "They must, to use the transmitter. But look here. If this map is correct, this road must join an east-running one a few hundred miles north of here. We can make twice the time on graded pavement that they can cross-country, I'll bet. We follow these highways, get ahead of them, and throw out a net near the coast. They'll be lulled into complacency by then. We find them, get the transmitter back, and escape."
"That will take months!"
"The alternative is to rot like savages. And that could take years."
Almost imperceptibly, the country began to change as the quintet of adventurers hiked eastward. It rained a couple times, hard but not torrential, and that eased both their minds and the search for water. So did the ecology. The vegetation was getting denser as they traveled, changing from dead-looking desert scrub to savanna bush. The trees were fuller and grew closer together. The grass clumps were less separated. It was still dry country, with empty rivers and starched sky and conical red clay termite mounds that jutted from the soil like dented dunce caps, but for the first time since they'd landed in Australia the continent seemed to be getting greener. There was no hint of the sea, but their spirits improved with the health of the landscape.
Oliver half led and half tagged along, both guide and pet. It was difficult to get any kind of clear history out of him. He must have been a child when the sickness hit, and probably lost a piece of his mind when he watched a whole nation dying around him. Yet he'd survived from some inexplicable immunity and been wandering ever since. He was skittish, as if he might take it into his head to drift off at any minute, but he wasn't difficult to travel with. Content to mostly walk by himself, muttering at rocks and whistling at birds, he'd periodically demonstrate some bush skill or disappear to come back with fresh meat. Occasionally he'd hang on them like a dog, as if he took periodic comfort from human company. The next day he'd walk and sit and sleep apart. He displayed little curiosity about the modern world they'd come from and ate by himself, squatting on his haunches. He smelled rank but efforts to get him to wash were rebuffed, and perhaps he had a point. Even the insects kept their distance.
Among the other four, awkwardness persisted. Raven sulked, Daniel felt alternately fulfilled and at a loss, and Amaya seemed wounded. She reacted to Ethan's attempts at quiet conversation with gratitude but seemed cautious about striking up a real relationship. She'd obviously had a crush on Dyson. And Daniel still seemed smitten with Raven, who'd led him on. Only the journey held them all together.
So they walked, and talked of day-to-day things, but their feelings were temporarily corraled lest they threaten survival. Until one evening when Ethan approached Amaya as she took a turn gathering firewood.
"What's with Daniel and Raven?" he groused.
She sighed. "What do you mean?"
"They sidle around each other like gunfighters. I feel like I'm at a bad dinner party of a dissolving marriage."
"They're just in love." She said it morosely.
He looked at the two cooking silently by the fire already started, Raven unhappily avoiding eye contact. "One of them, maybe."
"It's both, Ethan. They're also mad at each other."
"For a while they were sleeping like spoons."
"Until they weren't so exhausted that they could start thinking about it. Now they're like repelling magnets. Serves them right to shiver."
"I like sleeping next to you."
She didn't reply. She knew he wanted more.
"But you're edgy around me in the daytime. Don't you like me, Amaya?"
She straightened at that, a forearm full of firewood, and looked levelly at him. She didn't answer.
"I like you. I like how you're smart. I like talking about building things with you."
She frowned.
"I like being with you."
"Here." She handed him the firewood and marched back to the campfire. Ethan followed. Oliver looked up with interest, sensing she intended to make an announcement. Indeed, Amaya now stopped and drew herself up.
"I think that now we need to talk about Ico."
Raven and Daniel looked at her curiously. Behind her, Ethan looked confused. "What?" he said in surprise.
"I think there are a lot of things being unsaid here that we should talk out," Amaya went on. "To help the group."
"What things?" Daniel asked warily.
"Well." Amaya looked at them each in turn. "Ico betrayed us, but we have to decide whether we're willing to forgive him. If we don't, there's going to be this poison."
There was a moment's uneasy silence.
"I don't forgive the little bastard," Ethan said, dumping the firewood onto the ground. "If he hadn't run to Rugard I wouldn't be fleeing here through the bush."
"Yeah," Daniel agreed. "Screw Ico."
"Who's Ico?" Oliver inquired.
"A former friend," Amaya told the Australian. "We didn't trust him." She turned to the others. "So why should he have trusted us?"
"What are you talking about?"
"You didn't trust him to take the pack and come back for us when we were dying of thirst, Daniel. Remember? We didn't trust him to represent us back home. He was the one who most wanted to go, and we all said no."
"That's because he's this weird little blowhard," Ethan scoffed, sitting down on a rock disgustedly. Amaya looked at him reprovingly but he just returned her stare.
"And what difference does it make if we do forgive him?" Daniel added. "He's not even here."