“You know, I’ve been thinking,” Papa said at dinner, a couple of days later. “We should go camping before you go back to school.”

“Camping?” Hans said. “It’s barely spring time.”

“Oh, I have a marvelous new tent with a built-in heater,” Papa said. “It’s supposed to stay cozy even at sub-zero temperatures. I’m eager to try it out. We’ll leave in the morning.”

“Where are we going to camp?” Gretta asked.

“It’s a secret. I know how you love surprises, liebchen!”

He beamed at them, but Gretta noticed he’d barely touched his soup.

She nodded. “That sounds like fun,” she said cheerfully. “What a good idea, Papa!”

After dinner, the twins passed Stefania on the stairs. She had a couple of screens tucked under one arm. She smiled at them sweetly but said nothing. Hans followed Gretta into her room. She opened her desk drawers and rummaged around.

“That bitch! She took my school screen, too. She never gave our phones back either. I wonder what their plan is.”

“Whatever it is, I don’t think we’re going to like it. Most of our camping gear is at the school,” Hans said. He chewed on a cuticle. “I’ll see what I can find around the house that might be useful.”

“This week’s grocery delivery isn’t due until Friday, so they haven’t ordered any food to take with us,” Gretta said. “How much money have you got?”

Hans went to his room and came back with a handful of coins.

“Most of my allowance is on my school chip cards,” he said. “This is all I’ve got.”

Gretta took the coins. “I’ve got some cash, too. If Papa gets up at his usual time, I might have a chance to sneak out to the shop. I’ll see if there’s anything portable in the pantry tonight, after they go to bed.”

Gretta was up early the next morning, but Stefania was up before her and lurking near the front door, so she was unable to sneak out to the shop. It didn’t open until 10 am anyway. Gretta had to content herself with grabbing their boots and the warmest coats out of the hall closet before Stefania could think of some reason to take them off her.

After breakfast, Papa looked surprised to find them waiting by the flitter, dressed for cold weather and carrying their small school packs, with rolled-up blankets attached.

“There’s no need to bring all of that. I’ve made arrangements. You can leave your packs behind.”

Gretta raised an eyebrow at him.

“I really don’t think you should go to the trouble of buying me fresh underwear just to go camping in, Papa,” she drawled.

He flushed and mumbled something incoherent.

“Besides, it’s always good to have some extra padding when you’re sleeping on the ground,” Gretta assured him cheerfully. She headed for the flitter. “I’ll just put it in the back.”

“Oh, don’t do that,” he said hastily, stepping in front of her. “The rear compartment is already full. I packed it carefully and don’t want anything falling out.”

“We’ll put them under our feet then,” Hans said, and climbed in the back of the flitter. His father looked after him, clearly at a loss.

Gretta smiled at him. “I’m really looking forward to trying out your new tent, Papa! I hope you don’t snore,” she said. She sat next to Hans, arranged her gear under her feet, and put her seat-harness on.

Papa went around slowly to the front of the flitter, sat in the cockpit, and hit the button to close all the doors.

“Right,” he said, as if to himself. “Time for an adventure.”

Once in the air, they headed north. Beneath them, the occasional villages and farms of their zone gave way to forest. They gained altitude to pass over a range of hills that still had some snow on them. Gretta tried to look over the front seats at the GPS readout, but Papa spotted her.

“No peeking, now,” he said firmly, angling the screen away from her.

“How about some traveling music, Papa?” she suggested, and he brought up a play list. Chopin filled the cabin. Gretta wrinkled her nose. It wasn’t really her sort of music, but it would stop Papa from eavesdropping. She leaned over to Hans who was pressed against the door looking intently down at the ground.

“Do you see anything that looks like a camping ground?” she whispered to him.

He turned to look at her, and shook his head. “We’re above the depopulated zone now. They cleared everyone out of there during the last war. I think we’re getting near a restricted area,” he whispered back. Gretta stared at him, wide eyed.

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The flitter began to tilt upwards, the engine pitch rising. Gretta looked out her window. They were climbing up a great granite cliff. A half-frozen waterfall ran down it. The flitter reached the top and then lurched to one side, and then the other.

“Don’t worry,” Papa called back. “It’s just a minor malfunction. I’m going to have to land to check the engine.”

Gretta tightened her seat-harness. All she could see outside now was snow and rocks. The flitter wobbled in a wide circle and came in to land on the shore of a small frozen lake, stopping with a sudden jolt.

The doors opened with a rush of freezing air.

“Right,” Papa said, looking back at them and rubbing his hands together. “This might take a while. Why don’t you get some fresh air?”

He got out and looked around. “I know, why don’t you go and build a snowman over there?” He waved towards a smooth snow-covered hollow area about two hundred meters away. The twins exchanged a look, then climbed out of the flitter, taking their packs and coats with them.

“You won’t be needing those,” Papa called after them but they ignored him and trudged through the snow to the area he’d pointed to.

Gretta put her gloves on and began scraping snow into a pile. It wasn’t much more than ankle deep so it would take a while to gather enough for a snow man. Hans crouched down facing the flitter and offered a running commentary while pretending to help pile up snow.

“He’s just standing there staring at us. Now he’s walking in a circle. Looks like he might be talking to himself.”

“He’s going around the back of the flitter. He’s opening the rear compartment. Wish I could see in. I really want to know what sort of camping gear he packed.”

“It’s empty,” Gretta said, packing a handful of snow onto the mound.

“How do you know?”

“I looked at the weight readout when we got in the flitter. Whatever is in there weighs no more than a couple of kilos.”

“Wait, he’s taking something out!”

Gretta looked up briefly. “Pry bar, from the emergency toolkit,” she said.

Hans wasn’t even pretending to gather snow now.

“Well?”

“He’s opened the engine cover. I don’t know of any part of a flitter engine that’s going to work better after you attack it with a pry bar. He’ll void the warranty if he breaks any of those seals.”

“Exactly,” Gretta said grimly.

“Uh oh. He’s getting back in the flitter. The doors are closing. Maybe he’s testing the engine.”

Gretta stood up. She could hear the hum of the flitter’s engine starting up. It hovered briefly above the landing spot then rose quickly and moved away from them. They stood there in silence for several minutes as the sound of the engine faded and was lost in the rushing wind.

“Well, there you go,” she said finally, briskly brushing the snow off her gloves. She blinked hard and stared at the ground.

“He really did it,” Hans said in a small voice. He kept on staring at the spot where the flitter had vanished as if it might reappear any minute.

Gretta busied herself getting some extra layers of clothing out of her pack and took off her coat. She nudged Hans out of his trance.

“Don’t get chilled. Put some more clothes on.” Slowly, he bent to his pack and began extracting clothing. She took off her own coat and unbuttoned the removable lining and gave the coat a shake. Little silver foil packets adorned with pictures of a beaming blond woman dropped on the ground.

Hans peered at them. “What are those? Snack bars?”

“Remember when the step-beast went on that movie star diet? Three bars a day for all your nutritional needs? She only stuck with it for a week or so, but she ordered a month’s supply. I found them at the back of a cupboard. That was all I could find, apart from the printer food stock. I think Stefania hid all the food somewhere, because I know there were instant noodles in there a couple of days ago.” She put her coat back on and divided the bars into two piles, and put half in her pack. “I hid them in my coat, just in case she decided to search our bags. Did you find anything useful?”

Hans found a rock that was free of snow and sat down to unroll his bundle of blankets. Several tins fell out. “I have some snacks I bought to take back to school. Nuts, chocolate, some soup and noodles. I got a tarpaulin we can use as a shelter, some string, a knife, and a hatchet.”

“Good job,” Gretta said. She scooped up the remaining bars and helped Hans put them in his pack, along with the other food items.

“That’s not going to last us long. What are we going to do now?” Hans said. He suddenly looked much younger and near to tears.

Gretta dived into her pack and drew out a battered hardback book. Hans peered at the title.

“I don’t think Goethe is the appropriate author for this situation.”

“You know Stefania doesn’t read anything that doesn’t have pictures in it.”

Gretta jiggled the protruding bookmark, and the book popped open, revealing a hidden compartment. She withdrew a small bag.

“Waterproof Faraday pouch,” she said, opening it and removing a phone. Next to it was a roll of cash, an id card that claimed Gretta was eighteen, and a windup charger.

“Why do you even have a Faraday pouch?”

“It came with the phone. People use them to hide stuff from the scanners at school. You just have to know who to ask.”

“Hey,” Hans said, picking up the roll of bank notes. “If you had this, why did you need my money for the store? And where did you get all this cash, anyway?”

Gretta rolled her eyes at him. “What do you think Frau Becker is going to do if I show up to the shop with a fifty-mark note? She’s not going to have change for it, and she’s probably going to tell our parents. As for where I got it, let’s just say there’s a lot of students at our school with too much money who like to have someone else do their homework.”

“You know, when Stefania sent us there to make Connections, I don’t think she meant for you to connect with the criminal underworld.” Hans picked up the phone. “We’re not likely to get a signal out here.”

“Probably not. But I did download the most detailed maps I could find. And the GPS will still work. You really think we’re in a restricted area?”

“Not quite in it, or the flitter alarm would have gone off. But I think we’re right on the edge.”

Gretta turned on the phone and waited for it to find their position. She opened the map app and loaded the appropriate region. Hans looked over her shoulder.

“Sheisse. Sometimes I hate being right. We can’t go back the way we came. It’s a sheer cliff. And north is all mountains. Crossing the restricted area is the only way we can get to a lower altitude without climbing gear, if we want to get back to civilization. I guess we just cross our fingers and hope the radiation has died down.” He swiped at the area outlined in red on the map to enlarge it.

Gretta straightened up and looked him in the eye. “We’re not going to let them win,” she said.

Hans took a deep breath and looked back to where the flitter had gone.

“No, we’re not,” he said, and picked up his pack.