Outward Bound, page 6
One evening some occupants of Hut 1 who thought they had clocked pretty good times for the running circuit and cross-lake swim posted their achievements on the general board in the mess hall with the caption BEAT THAT! Before the next morning was through, there was a posting that Hut 2 had done this, and by the end of the day every hut was taking stock of its repertoire of talents and proposing contests from log sawing to gymnastics that its leaders thought it had a chance to do best at. From then on, the sight of a noisy crowd jostling around the board to see who had set a new record for what, and what new challenges were being issued, became a regular feature of the evening. The hut wardens joined in too, and whether or not it was largely theatrical, showed every bit as much enthusiasm and commitment as their charges.
At the end of the third week—halfway through Phase One of whatever was going on—Mr. Black had the records posted of scores achieved in earlier courses at Camp Coulie. So now the huts were striving not only to be best among themselves but to be the best ever. Several of the team leaders came up with the idea of a tournament to be held near the end of the final week. The camp authorities agreed to it and didn't seem especially surprised; apparently that had also happened with the previous courses.
Of course, this quickly turned into a contest to see which hut would collect the most "golds." It was widely accepted that the first two places would go to Huts 2 and 6, which were exceptionally fortunate in their endowment of good performers.
Two blacks in Hut 2—inseparable from day one and instantly dubbing themselves "Amos 'n Andy"—were the best runners in the camp. There was a three-quarters Amerind called Patch—short for Apache—who seconded the 2-X Team and was in the same climbing league as Linc and only a handful of others. And just to gall everyone, the 2-Y Team, led by its hut warden, Mr. Brown, jogged—with packs—the last half mile home from a ten-mile hike, singing its way in through the gate to a version of the standard army chant:
We don't know but we've been told.
You guys 'round here are getting old.
Clear the way and watch Y-Two,
The best from Coulie is coming on through.
Hut 6, for its part, had three crack swimmers, a weight lifting buff, and the record holders for the mile in a two-man canoe.
In Hut 3, Mace was a strong swimmer, and Kew, lithe as a monkey, would score well in the gymnastics. The others included some good candidates for the team events. All in all, the hut leadership—Mr. Green, along with Linc and Angelo—figured that with the right choices they might have a fair chance for third place. This, while 2 and 6 vied between themselves to be first and runner-up, became the real prize the rest of the camp was shooting for.
Chapter Thirteen
THE chance that Mr. Green had promised Linc to try some more advanced climbing came a few days into the fourth week. Linc was one of a group of ten who went with Mr. Green and Mr. Orange for a day of intensive instruction on some crags at the far end of the lake. They learned to use ropes and slings, methods of tackling faces and fissures, the arts of belaying and rappelling.
The next day, Mr. Green and Mr. Orange took the same group up a long, grueling route that ended on a ridge three thousand feet up. Six of the most adept students, including Linc and Hut 2's Patch, were selected for an overnight expedition and introduction to snow and ice techniques that Mr. Green would be leading high in the Sierra.
They set out from the camp in one of the vans before sunup and began the actual climb from just below the snow line while it was still early morning. Through the day they labored upward across snow slopes and icefalls, pacing themselves slowly as they learned the new craft. By nightfall they were high on one of the ice fields not far below a rocky ridge, where they gratefully shed their packs, stretched aching limbs, and pitched camp. The plan was to cross the ridge and return to the van via a roundabout route the next day.
Linc had never realized there were so many stars or that they could be so brilliant. The air was cold. He sat in front of one of the four two-man tents erected on shelves cut into the ice, letting the heat from the mug of beef soup he was clasping warm his gloved hands. Nylon overtrousers and a cagoule worn on top of the layers of clothing muffling him and the cagoule's hood pulled up over a wooden balaclava formed an outer skin against the wind. A loop of line clipped to his waist harness ran through a spike driven into the ice—an unprotected slip on the treacherous slope could send a person rocketing down for hundreds of feet. Above the level of the tents, peaks caught in the moonlight floated like ghostly icebergs on an ocean of night.
He knew now how to pick out the Great Bear, with its pointers to the Pole Star; the Belt of Orion; Sirius almost bright enough in the clear air to cast shadows. He realized as he watched that one of the points of light was moving. Some kind of high-flying aircraft, or maybe one of the bigger satellites. He'd never paid much attention to what people were doing up there: in the orbiting stations and space bases, on the Moon, and Mars, and places beyond . . . . (Was Jupiter farther away than Mars?) There were things in the news from time to time about something being built, or when an accident happened and people got killed somewhere, but he rarely remembered the details. They were like the billionaires who owned pieces of South America, or the war going on in China: things that just didn't figure into his life.
"Know much about what's out there, Linc?" Mr. Green had been watching him as he sat a few feet away, heating water for coffee on a kerosene Primus stove. Water took longer to boil at this altitude because of the lower air pressure. That was another thing Linc had learned today—totally useless, but so what? It might win him a bet one day. He shrugged. "Like what?"
"Oh, numbers, for example. Do you know how fast light travels?" Linc shook his head. Although, there had been something once at school about it, numbers weren't his thing. "Fast enough to go more than six times around the world in a second," Mr. Green said. "One hundred, eighty-six thousand miles." It sounded fast, but since Linc had no concept of that kind of distance, he was unable to relate it to anything. "Yet the light from the Sun takes eight and a half minutes to get here; the light from the nearest star, over four years; and from some stars, millions of years," Mr. Green said. "Can you imagine how big that makes the universe? You could fit the whole world into the planet Jupiter something like fourteen hundred times. And Jupiter would go a thousand times into the Sun."
Patch looked up from the door of his tent, where he was using a knife to clean ice from his crampons. He was the only one still up with them, the others having turned in already. "So how long is a light-year? he asked.
"A light-year measures distance, not time," Mr. Green told him.
"Distance? A year? . . . How come?"
"Like you might say that Coulie is about two bus-hours from Fresno. Get it?"
"Oh . . . . Okay."
"Do you guys think you could get interested in things like that?" Mr. Green asked them. He made the question sound more than just idle curiosity somehow.
"I dunno . . . I never really thought about it," Linc answered. He proceeded to do so—maybe for just two or three seconds; but they were the first ones in his life to be devoted to such consideration. "I guess, maybe . . . if there was some good reason."
Mr. Green nodded and seemed satisfied.
"This stuff's like concrete," Patch grumbled, grating the knife along a steel spike of the crampon he was working on.
Linc contemplated Mr. Green again while he sipped from the mug of soup. "So how about you?" he inquired finally. "How come you're into that kind of stuff? Have you been out there?" He waved a hand upward vaguely. "Is that something you used to do?"
"Careful, Linc. You wouldn't want to get one of the wardens RPO'd, would you?" Patch teased.
"Hell, nobody ever said anything about them not talking about where they came from," Linc replied.
"Mr. Green nodded. "It's okay. Linc's right." He looked away, up at the sky. He had a craggy face with hollowed cheeks and eyes that not only saw but interrogated everything. It was the kind of face that looked as if it had seen much and been through tough times. Although Mr. Green had never talked about much more than the matter at hand, Linc had formed an impression of him as quietly but forcefully competent in everything he did. He expected high standards but was always able to deliver at a level above anything he demanded from others.
Mr. Green looked back down at the Billy, which was just coming up to a boil. "Yes, I've been out there. And one day I'll probably be going back. There's something about it like people used to say about the sea. You come back and say you're going to give it up, but somehow it always drags you back again."
"Some of us figured you had to be military—all of you guys," Patch commented.
"I've done some of that too," Mr. Green said.
"Is it true what some people think: that that's where we're all headed for, military recruiting?" Patch asked him.
Mr. Green snorted. "Come on, Patch, you know I can't answer that."
"What made you think they were military?" Linc asked Patch.
"Oh . . ." Patch waved the knife he was holding. "Who else would you wanna put in charge of some of the people we've got here? You could find yourself having to deal with some real problem situations, know what I mean?" He swiveled the knife to point it at Mr. Green. "Let's face it, man, we haven't given you guys too bad a time. It could have been a lot worse."
"True," Mr. Green agreed. "This course has gone smoother than some that we've run. We've had groups go on the lam, sit-ins with guests barricading themselves in huts. We didn't always do everything right. And probably we still don't. We're still learning too." After a second or two he added, "Don't you guys go getting any ideas, though. There's a PAT squad on call in Fresno that can be airborne in fifteen minutes."
Linc finished his soup and munched a biscuit, asking himself if any of the talk had brought him nearer to figuring out what this all meant. He decided it hadn't. As far as he could see, the military-recruits theory still made as much sense as anything. He looked at Mr. Green again, spooning coffee powder from a tin into three plastic cups by the light of a battery lamp, and thought about the places he must have been to that Linc had never heard of, the things he'd seen and done. In the same way as the things happening out among the stars, there was another universe Linc didn't know existed, ways of life that he couldn't imagine. There was a whole world out there, and he'd lived all his life on a few blocks of it—literally.
Was there more to it, where things worked the way they did at Coulie? Were there places where people were valued because of what they knew and what they could do, not on account of how much they'd been able to screw out of everyone else, or the wires their friends could pull; where others wanted to know you because of what you were, instead of what they thought they could get out of you?
Quietly competent, he thought to himself, watching Mr. Green again. Expecting things to be done right but always able to do better. That, Linc Marani resolved, was the way he wanted to be one day.
The next morning they resumed climbing. The weather was fine, and Mr. Green decided to carry on over the ridgeline above as planned. As they drew closer to the ridge, it resolved itself into a series of shattered rock steeples protruding through the upper snow slopes. The bleakness and total stillness of the surroundings were unlike anything Linc had ever known. There was a savage grandeur about it all that produced unfamiliar stirrings in him. Higher still but near now, the icy towers of the Sierra peaks stood outlined against the morning sky. To the rear and far below, the floor of California's Central Valley stretched away into haze, a miniature landscape painted on a carpet of yellow and brown and green. Down there was a world of invisible, scurrying people beset with their fears and their worries, working themselves into sickness or early graves, robbing and murdering one another over things that didn't matter. But to know the reality that existed up here, you had to look upward and climb out of that. It was the first time Linc had felt an inner conviction that he was capable of, and had been made for, better things. But exactly what kind of better things, or where he might find them, he still didn't know.
Chapter Fourteen
THE location for Phase Two would be a place called Seville Trace. All Linc knew about it was that was situated somewhere near San Antonio Texas.
It looked as if it had been built as a hotel and fallen victim to the wired interstates, which let drivers doze while vehicles cruised on robo-drive, with the result that people didn't stop as frequently as they used to anymore. Or maybe it had been undercut by the spate of unstaffed "motelmats," where machines took care of registration and dispensed all needs including disposable linen. Whatever the reason, it was now taken over by other interests for the continuation of whatever it was that had begun at Camp Coulie.
Linc and the others had thought that the purpose of the operation might at last have been divulged with the completion of Phase One. They had expected something like a "passing out" parade, or at least a touch of ceremonials to honor those who had made it through, with maybe, as the culmination, an announcement of what it was all about. But nothing like that took place, and as far as that particular issue was concerned they remained in darkness.
They did hold the games at Coulie, two days before the end of the final week. Hut 2 just squeaked in ahead of Hut 6, and Hut 4 took the coveted third place. Hut 3, under Linc and Angelo, and Julie's Hut 8 tied for fourth place, and only two of the other huts managed to achieve golds. In Hut 7, Arvin personally took first for the bench press and runner-up for the squat lift. As with his performance at the climbing crag, it was done through brute force and determination. He'd never trained with iron systematically in a gym in his life.
But apart from that there was just a low-key winding down of everything, with another address by Mr. Black on the final evening, generally complimenting everyone and citing a few special commendations where called for. There were general rounds of farewells to the wardens—for whom, in many cases, respect and affection had become quite sincere and deep. But the overall tone was designed to restrain the inmates from getting too excited and carried away. The message seemed to be that whatever was going on wasn't over, and there was more to get through yet before letting up would be in order. They did all get a shoulder patch to wear, in the form of a doubled C motif set in gold against a red California sequoia.
About half those who completed Phase One at Coulie came to Seville Trace. The rest went to a different Phase Two, being held at another place. The remainder of the arrivals at Seville Trace were from Phase One staged at a place called Meyer Flat in Colorado.
Two two-story accommodation wings extended back from the ends of a front building containing offices, function rooms, and communal and dining facilities. The U formed between the wings contained a recreation area with a pool. Outbuildings erected on what had previously been the parking lot contained workshops, classrooms, and a gym. Standard dress was blue shirt and navy tie with a dark, tunic-style suit for the boys, ditto for girls but with a skirt.
Rooming was in fours, the slots being assigned, not chosen. Linc shared Room 207 with Patch and two of the contingent from Colorado—who wore blue shoulder badges showing a mountain peak. One with a Canadian accent, naturally enough dubbed Rocky; the other a black guy, Johnny, who sounded Jamaican. It seemed the general policy to mix the Coulie and Meyer people in this way. Flash, Mace, Rick, and Arvin were also among those who came from Coulie. Julie, however, was not. After their first brief encounter, intrigued by her as Linc was, the routine had been too demanding for him to get to know much more about her during the remainder of their stay at Coulie. The last he saw of her was as she was boarding a bus with a group leaving for Fresno a couple of hours before Linc himself was due to depart. He could have made a better effort, he told himself afterward.
Another face that Linc had hoped he would see more of, but who had presumably been routed elsewhere, was Angelo's. Both of Hut 3's "Macs" were missing from Seville Trace too.
The staff wore the same style of tan uniforms as had those at Coulie. Phase Two would focus on assessing schooling and identifying proclivities for technical, artistic, or other skills, and the names that most of the staff went by reflected the various specialty subjects they covered, such as Mr. Hacker, Ms. Writer, Mr. Math. The objective, the new intakes were told by the Director in an introductory talk reminiscent of Mr. Black's at Coulie, was not to shoehorn them into categories or any particular role but simply to uncover and get a measure of aptitudes. Everyone had their usefulness. The unusual, the oddball, the rare talents, were of special interest. They were what Phase Two was aimed at singling out.
Room 207 was on the outside of the block, facing the highway about a quarter mile away, where the drone of robo-trucks passing at precise one-minute intervals continued through the night. The room was doubtless more functional now than when the establishment had been a hotel, containing two single beds on either side of a central table, with chairs, a double bureau, shelf units, a shared hanging closet, and individual lockers for other clothes and personal effects. On the day following their arrival, Linc and his three roommates were resting up in the hour and a half of free time after the evening meal. It had been a day devoted mainly to becoming familiar with the program and organizing schedules. The Phase One program at Meyer sounded as if it had been similar to that at Coulie, ending also with a spontaneously organized contest of games. As was often the way when there was nothing pressing to attend to, the talk drifted around to what the purpose of the operation might be. Nobody was any nearer an answer, but they never tired of speculating on the subject. By now, few of the speculations were new.
