Viking

by Daniel Hardman

  “Another viking broadcast? That would give you four.”

  “No. This one doesn’t match the timing at all. It’s been there since the satellite first started receiving planetside transmissions.”

  “A phantom viking? Any chance there was a secret crewmember that MEEGO didn’t want anyone to know about?”

  Satler pursed his lips. “I seriously doubt it. The module is crammed full—people tripping all over each other. You could never hope to avoid being seen. Besides, how would someone like that get food or survive touchdown? And what would be the point?”

  “I don’t know. Obviously MEEGO’s up to something.”

  “No question. Everything about the way they handled this thing was weird.”

  “So what’s the secret?” Julie asked. “I can’t think of any skullduggery that would explain ditching part of the crew. They pay through the nose for every viking they hire. You’d think they’d treat them like valuable assets.”

  “More like a drain on the pocketbook. In another couple weeks the legal requirements for filing permanent claim on the planet will be met, and then all incentive to safeguard the crew will disappear. MEEGO will be paying enormous chunks to whoever’s still alive, so it’s in their interests to make that group as small as possible.”

  “They deliberately kill off the vikings?” Julie gazed at Satler with dismay and anger showing clearly in her clear blue eyes. She felt a sudden uneasiness at the big man’s casual acceptance of brutality and murder.

  Satler gestured dismissively. “It’s not as bad as it sounds. Of course there’s legal oversight and regulation, designed to prevent exactly that sort of behavior. The science teams on Earth report to the government independent of company management. Sort of a checks and balances system. Anyway, there are plenty of real dangers on a mission without a company fabricating its own. My point was just that the timing is wrong for MEEGO to be interested in getting rid of anybody. If they’d done it after their claim was approved it would make more sense.”

  Julie shifted uncomfortably and returned to the question of a phantom broadcaster. “How about a stowaway? Maybe a spy, keeping tabs on what MEEGO’s doing...”

  “Same problem. You just couldn’t smuggle another person past the crew.” Suddenly an expression of astonishment and enlightenment flooded across Satler’s heavy features. “Wait a minute. Maybe there is a scenario that fits all the pieces together.” He leaned forward and drummed his fingers on the table, the muscles in his forearm rippling with the rhythm. “Suppose the broadcast isn’t from another person at all. Suppose it’s from one of the vikings.”

  “But everyone’s accounted for.”

  “Exactly.” He paused to let the idea sink in. “What if one viking is sending out two broadcasts?”

  “What for?”

  “It occurs to me that if MEEGO really is hiding something, they’d be very hostile to a spy.”

  Now Julie was following his logic. “Somebody has a second set of implants.”

  “Or one set broadcasting at two frequencies,” Satler said.

  “And MEEGO found out about it.”

  “And stalled around long enough to find the leak. Then they arranged a stampede that took him out.”

  Julie closed her eyes at the sting of the words. She hoped the sudden onset of tears wasn’t visible.

  The silence stretched out wretchedly.

  Finally she shook her red hair, wiped her eyes with a fingertip, and managed a feeble non-frown.

  Satler cleared his throat. “Sorry. Guess I’m not very long on tact.”

  Julie smiled sadly. “It’s okay. I’m grateful for your information, even if it’s not pleasant.”

  “I don’t see any reason why the spy has to be Rafa. They were probably gunning for someone else. If those three signals are from vikings, then there are good odds he lived through the stampede.”

  “Maybe Rafa is the spy.” When Satler looked puzzled, Julie continued slowly. “The FBI claimed he was leading a double life. That always seemed a bit preposterous to me, but it might explain some things.”

  “Anyway, if we’ve got this figured right, they didn’t get the spy. The one cached stream that looks like a viking is still there.”

  Julie thought about that. “You were linked up at the time. Do you think he made it to the rock?”

  “I do.”

  “And that’s why you called me?”

  A meditative look came onto Satler’s face. He looked up at the ceiling.

  “To tell you the truth, I probably would have called you even if I thought he hadn’t made it.” He paused as if weighing his words.

  Julie waited, but when Satler continued he seemed to be changing the topic.

  “What’s Rafa like, Mrs. Orosco?”

  Julie flinched. How could she answer, even to herself? A year ago the praise and contentment would have rolled glibly off her tongue. But since the arrest, she’d used anger to justify divorce and achieve an emotional distance. All along she’d known better—even before the moment of soul-searching at the mirror. Now she was back where she started, but full of perplexing contradictions.

  How could she explain it all to a complete stranger in a one-sentence pronouncement? Again Julie’s eyes filled with tears. Her throat constricted, and she could only shake her head in mute misery.

  When Satler spoke, his voice was surprisingly gentle.

  “I thought so.”

  Julie looked at him in confusion. “What do you mean?” she managed.

  “Mrs. Orosco, I’ve been doing this sort of thing for years now, and I’ve spent man-months inside the mind and body of lots of vikings. Most of them are cruel and bitter and interested in only themselves. It’s never been tough to move on when one of them drops off the mission roster.”

  He paused.

  “Rafa was different?” Julie ventured.

  Satler nodded almost imperceptibly. “Easier to control. Less sullen. Better educated.”

  “He has a PhD, you know. Exercise physiology. He finished a year ago.”

  Satler smiled wistfully. “You’re proud of that, aren’t you?”

  After a moment, Julie nodded.

  Satler crossed his bulky forearms. “Education is a good thing. Usually, anyway. And I’m sure it was your accomplishment as well as his. But it’s not really the culture or the personality that made me call you. It’s more than that.”

  He began doodling aimlessly with his finger as he talked.

  “Occasionally the earthside teams tune in after hours, mostly out of curiosity. It’s almost like watching a soap opera, the way they go at each other. You wouldn’t believe the number of brawls that go on over drugs and women and the pecking order.”

  Julie looked appalled, and Satler shrugged. “Must sound pretty awful. Truth is, we sometimes have betting pools over who’ll be the last man standing. Guess we’re as bad as the Romans with their gladiators.”

  “Doesn’t it mean anything to you? These are human beings, people you talk to and work with all day long. And you’re a silent audience while they murder each other?”

  Satler flushed. “You don’t understand. There’s almost no law on those missions. What could we do—threaten to arrest them and haul them back to Earth? They’re quarantined for the duration.”

  “You could use the implants to keep them under control.”

  “We do that, at least in the worst cases. When we’re aware of the problems. But we don’t have a free hand to babysit every situation. The vikings themselves block us out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Regulation requires us to give the vikings some unmonitored time every day. It’s primarily a privacy thing. That’s why we have an on-site commander of the crew. After the shift ends we’re only allowed to tune in if they request it.”

  “And they don’t?”

  “Not very often. It’s part bravado, part stupidity, and part fear of getting caught. Half of them are sleeping around—sometimes at knife point—o
r doing drugs that they smuggled on board, or out burning local plants in search of a new buzz. All of which violates the terms of their contracts, even if the legal consequences are pretty tenuous. And that creates a nasty sort of peer pressure. Nobody wants to be the one to cancel free time for the whole group. It would make dangerous enemies in a hurry.”

  “So you’re careful to leave them alone, except when it’s for your own amusement?” Now there was scorn in Julie’s voice.

  Satler looked ashamed. It was a long time before he responded. “Technically the law permits random checkups, if they’re sparse and unintrusive. But I admit we don’t use the off-shift broadcasts that way.”

  Julie mulled over the bleak landscape Satler was painting. She couldn’t frame Rafa into such brutality without feeling sick.

  Satler cleared his throat and continued. “What I started to tell you about was the first night of the mission. Everyone was dead tired, and Heward got on his high horse about something.”

  “Heward?”

  “The commanding officer on the crew. He pistol-whipped Rafa and just about shot another guy who was being uncooperative.”

  “So that’s how Rafa’s face got injured.”

  “I didn’t do anything because Rafa just stood and took it. Let himself get beat on. It was almost spooky.”

  “Spooky?”

  “Does your husband have any martial arts training? Judo? Tae Kwon Do? That sort of thing?”

  “No. He’s in good shape, but I think he’d get flattened in a fight.”

  Satler looked dubious. “I got as far as a brown belt in karate, once upon a time. And let me tell you, he’s no novice.”

  Julie’s brow wrinkled. “What are you trying to tell me?”

  “For a minute I thought there would be a battle. I think Rafa did, too. The way he stood, the position of his hands and arms, the balance of his weight for fast response—he learned that at a dojo somewhere. I think he knew exactly what he was doing. And I suspect he could have taken out Mr. Heward without much trouble.”

  The confusion must have shown on her face, because Satler tapped his finger on the table for emphasis. “Heward’s a very dangerous man, Julie. He’s been on several of these missions, and I’ve never seen anybody stand up to him and live to tell about it. But I’d lay my money on Rafa in an instant, if push came to shove.”

  “Aren’t you reading a lot into this?”

  “I’m telling you, I was him when it happened. He wasn’t even nervous.”

  “Then why did he let himself get hurt?”

  “When Heward pulled the gun he tensed for an instant, and I thought the fight was on. Then Rafa just sort of deliberately let go and relaxed, and I was wishing I’d set the pain threshold a lot higher. I’m not sure why he did it.”

  “So you called me because he didn’t defend himself?”

  “Well, indirectly. It bothered me. I couldn’t understand why he’d do that. So I stayed tuned in a while longer. Everybody went to bed except Rafa.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then he clomped off down the hallway and spent three hours reorganizing the cargo hold.” Satler’s voice was heavily tinged with disbelief.

  “What for?”

  “Heward had been bullying another viking on the crew. Fazio—big, mean guy with a rap sheet as long as your arm and a chip on his shoulder.”

  “I remember seeing him. He had some bandages on his throat.”

  “That’s Fazio. I guess Heward hurt him pretty bad right after they touched down. Fazio needed surgery. He was sleeping off the anesthetic the whole first shift. So Heward said he could make up for missing the rotation by working all night in the cargo hold.”

  “Was he up to that? I didn’t tune in until a day later, and he still looked awful.”

  “Of course he wasn’t up to it. But Heward’s got a sadistic streak a mile wide. He threatened to kill Fazio if the job wasn’t done.”

  “Rafa helped?”

  “Fazio was either too proud or too sick to give in. He went back to bed, and I think we’d have had a dead viking on our hands next morning. So while nobody was looking, your husband took off and did the job himself.”

  A lone tear coursed silently down Julie’s cheek.

  “Mrs. Orosco, I don’t know if I can explain the effect that night had on me. I was only intending to watch for a minute, to see what he was up to. I felt totally beat. It had been a long, long day. But after Rafa went to work, I was embarrassed to tune out. He wasn’t going to quit, and he had it way worse than I did. The blood was dripping off his nose. His back was killing him. I had a lot of the neurosensory feeds filtered, but even so, those three hours were torture. My arms and legs felt like lead, every muscle was dead, and the pain on my face was terrible.

  “Like I said, I’ve interacted with vikings for a long time. I’ve listened to them whine and wheedle and wallow in self-pity. I’ve seen cowardice and treachery and lust and greed for so long that any other side of human nature seems foreign to me. A few times I’ve felt sorry for a viking who was particularly wretched, but it’s always been easy to dismiss that feeling after a peek at their background files.

  “Until Rafa. I looked up his history, read the whole dossier. I’m sure you’ve got your own perspective, but I’ll tell you right now I don’t believe it. If Rafa were a selfish, cold-blooded killer, he would have gone to bed that night without a second thought. Almost anybody would have. But so help me, Rafa is not most people.”

  Julie gulped silently in an attempt to still the tremble at her chin and wiped away the tears that were now streaming freely. “No,” she whispered softly, “he’s not.”

  It was nice to hear somebody else agree with her.

  24

  1291 was blue with impatience. She’d first heard the strange language of the speaking earthbound a couple days ago. When the pod headed out to sea instead of investigating, she’d expected to return shortly, and so she’d been reasonably content to follow. In the meantime she’d listened carefully, and caught snatches of the broadcast on several occasions, but the confused babble of thousands of voices from the pod made it difficult to distinguish.

  As they dawdled in their watery cradles, 1291 became increasingly restless. She wanted answers. So when the lowest primes finally puffed skyward, sated with fish and sunshine, 1291 ballooned into a rapid current at 15000 meters and raced back to the veldt before her elders could object.

  As she traveled the chatter became more distinct. It squeaked along at frequencies near the top of her audible range and used tones that were jarringly discordant—but it was clearly speech instead of static.

  Now she was within a couple minutes of the odd creature. She could see it by radar, moving in the jerky, disjointed fashion of all earthbounds. It was near some other animals that appeared quite similar in size and shape. And they were also noisy, though they seemed capable of nothing more than monotonous squeals on quite a different wavelength—not the sort of thing she would normally tune in.

  Perhaps the talker was babbling in an effort to teach its companions. Or maybe it was calling to the siren in The Cold. Maybe the siren couldn’t hear very well over its own incoherent wails... Should she repeat this strange speech a little louder, so the siren could respond?

  She compressed her gas sacs and dropped out of the fast-moving air, noting with delight that some small crunchy earthbounds were also nearby. 1291 had never been a fan of soft, slippery sea fare—if she camouflaged carefully and had a little luck, perhaps she could grab a meal before the crunchies saw her.

  25

  Despite Chen’s repeated stumbles, it was Abbott who gave out first. One minute he was reeling drunkenly along, a crust of dried spittle around his lips; the next he had crumbled to the dusty grasses without a word.

  Rafa slumped to a halt and turned just in time to catch Chen, who careened blindly into him and buckled at the knees.

  He staggered back, regained his balance, and hauled at the sides of her sweat-str
eaked biosuit to put her on her feet again. If she could run even a hundred meters, perhaps the crabbies would let her go while they feasted on Rafa and Abbott.

  Chen just sagged to the ground and closed her eyes, her sides heaving desperately for oxygen.

  And then the crabbies struck.

  A wave of anger swept through Rafa as he drew his knife. He’d battled despair in every thought, every emotion since his arrest. He’d told himself it couldn’t get any worse. But fortune seemed determined to prove him wrong.

  Well, this time his enemy was not faceless, impersonal injustice, not cold exile or harsh decree. It had blood and tissue and presumably a beating heart, somewhere under those bony plates—and he intended to get his pound of flesh before he was through. A scream tore from his throat and ripped the prairie.

  Half a dozen crabbies pounded into his chest and torso in unison, their jutting legs stiffening for the impact like daggers. Individually the animals were not especially heavy, but even before they hit he knew his tired legs wouldn’t hold. So he somersaulted backward, minimizing the effect of the blows and letting the creatures’ momentum flip his shoulders onto and off the turf again. As he rotated he stabbed viciously with the knife, the point skittering across chitinous shell until it found joints in the armor that gave reluctantly like under-ripe pumpkin.

  In a second he was on his feet again, relatively uninjured, two crabbies clinging spider-like to his shoulders. He shook them off with a snarl. Pinches burned on his calves and thighs as the crabbies dodged his slashes and sawed through the biosuit.

  Soon they had noosed into a shoulder-high swarm that leapt at his unprotected face and neck, rebuffed only by a blur of arms and blade. Injured and dying crabbies flopped dazedly, their ruptured exoskeletons oozing fluid like egg yolk before disappearing under frenzies of cannibalistic opportunists. Underfoot, his boots crunched and smeared and mangled in the struggle to stay erect.

  A claw penetrated Rafa’s guard and nicked his throat. A burning gash opened on the back of his neck. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a seething mound where Chen and Abbott lay.