The Martian Viking

by Tim Sullivan

  The door slid open, and in scuttled a robot that looked like a fire extinguisher on crablegs.

  "I've brought the onees you requested," it said in the tones of an interior decorator. "You neglected to specify how many you need when you phoned in your order, so I took the liberty of bringing a dozen. Will that be satisfactory?"

  "A dozen?" Johnsmith could hardly contain himself. "Yes, I think that will be fine."

  "Where would you like me to put them?" the robot asked.

  Johnsmith looked around, and noticed that one table dipped in the middle. "Oh, right here will be fine," he said, tapping the table and smiling.

  A thin tube emerged from the robot's cylindrical body, snaked up onto the table, and spat out twelve shining onees that rattled into the table's depression, one right after the other. The tube descended back into the robot.

  "Do we have to . . .sign for this, or anything?" Johnsmith asked.

  "It will be deducted from your wages," the robot said simply. "Will that be all, then?"

  "Uh, yeah, that'll be all," Johnsmith said.

  The robot went out.

  Johnsmith and Alderdice stared at the gleaming onees, marveling. The way the dim light collected and shone from them, they were almost hallucinatory even without being touched. After a few seconds, Johnsmith realized that Felicia had not gone back to sleep, and was staring at them in angry disbelief.

  "What the hell is going on around here?" she demanded.

  "We told you before," Alderdice said. "We've ordered some onees from . . ."

  "From recreational services," Johnsmith finished for him. "Like ordering a pizza."

  "Those are just ball bearings," she said. "They wouldn't give you real onees."

  Her attitude began to annoy Johnsmith. "Want to touch one, then?" he said. "Prove that you're right?"

  She had no answer for him.

  "I guess they gave them to us because they're legal offworld," Alderdice speculated. "Though I must admit I've never heard about it before."

  "It makes sense," Johnsmith said. "They wouldn't want people on Earth to know about it, sure, but how else can you alleviate the boredom on Luna or Mars? Drinking and drugs are physiologically harmful, shortening the time a person can work. It's expensive to bring people up from Earth, so the government wants to get the maximum amount of work from each one of us."

  "They can't do that if we're onee-crazed all the time," Alderdice argued.

  "But we won't be. It doesn't take long for the effect of an onee to wear off. A nanosecond, maybe. And you're not physically drained after using one. All our superiors will have to do is make sure we don't use them during working hours, and that we get proper nutrition and rest. We could all live to be a hundred years old, and still be oneed-out every night for the rest of our lives."

  "Are you sure it doesn't have some long-term effect?" Alderdice said.

  "I'm not sure of anything," Johnsmith said, looking down at the onees. He stretched his hand out toward them.

  "They want you to take those things," Felicia said. "It's the opiate of the masses."

  "No, that's religion," Johnsmith said, remembering one of the more interesting videos he'd seen in college, Karl Marx vs. Jesus.

  "If they want you to take them, then you shouldn't do it," said Felicia. "That's one of the tenets of the revolution, and you should take it to heart."

  "How do you know what we should do?" Alderdice said. His training had made him run away from the onees on Earth, but if Johnsmith was correct, he would not be breaking the law just by touching an onee here in space.

  "Go ahead," Johnsmith urged him, without any of the malice he had shown the first time, in the effapt back on Earth. "Give it a try."

  "You first," Alderdice said, but he knew now, for the first time, that he would do it.

  "All right." Johnsmith reached out and scooped up one of the glittering little spheres. He fell back in his chair, eyes wide open, mouth agape with an audible gasp.

  "Just like that," Alderdice marveled. "He's gone."

  "Sure," Felicia said angrily, "the quicker they short circuit your brain, the quicker they can turn you into their slave."

  "I'm already their slave," Alderdice said with a ferocity he had never realized was in him. He went for the onees.

  "No, wait," Felicia shouted, "Don't do it."

  "Why not? Afraid of what we might do? Look at Johnsmith. Do you find him threatening?"

  "No, I just . . .don't want to be left alone."

  "There are ten more onees here," Alderdice said, and picked up the eleventh, "You're certainly welcome to—"

  By the time Felicia opened her mouth to protest, Alderdice was no longer able to hold even the most rudimentary of conversations.

  FIVE

  "WHAT A MESS." Ronindella shook her head. The effapt looked as if it hadn't been cleaned since Johnsmith moved in six weeks ago. It would take hours, days, to sort through all this junk and find what was worth saving.

  Smitty II didn't mind, though. He was burrowing through the debris as if it were his own personal playpen. His unabashed joy in the simple things reminded her of his father. She sighed in exasperation.

  "Smitty, you'll have to help me carry some things up to the flyby, as soon as Ryan gets here," she said.

  Smitty kept playing, ignoring her.

  "Did you hear what I said?" she demanded in a threatening tone.

  Smitty stopped and glanced apprehensively over his shoulder at her. "Yes, Mom."

  "Good. Now come over here and help me clean this stuff up, like a good boy."

  "Okay," Smitty replied mournfully. He almost wished that he was in school, instead of hanging around here, picking things up and carrying them out into the hall. He did most of the work, too, as it turned out, with his mother supervising.

  "I'd help you, Smitty," she said a couple of times, "but you know I have a bad back."

  Smitty kept working, wondering how old he would have to be to develop a back problem so he could get out of this kind of slave labor. He'd been working for about a quarter of an hour, when he saw something down behind a cardboard box that interested him. He waited for his mother to go to the bathroom before he took a closer look.

  On the floor, between the old, beat-up rug and the baseboards, was a shiny thing. At first, Smitty thought it might have been a marble, but as soon as he got a closer look, he knew better. It was smaller, and silvery, like a BB. Smitty pushed the box away, reached down, and—

  —he was swimming in salty water. Smitty had never been swimming before, and he certainly hadn't expected to end up swimming today, but here he was. He knew his Mom wouldn't want him doing this while he was supposed to be working. But he couldn't remember what he was supposed to be doing, anyhow. Who cared? This was great!

  The color of the water changed, went through all the tints of the rainbow, but it was still water. It was nice and clean and cool and wet, and he felt so wonderful that he wished it would never end. Every once in a while, he would see a dark shape through the colorful murk, but if those things were alive, they didn't bother him.

  He finally had to come up for air. He hesitated for a moment. Which way was it to the surface? If he waited much longer, his lungs would burst, but he didn't know which way to swim. There should have been light coming from above, but he couldn't see anything except the colors. He panicked, arms and legs flailing. This didn't get him anyplace, and his heart hammered in his chest from fear. He was going to drown.

  He thought of his father. His father taking him on a bus ride to the harbor. His father bemoaning the fact that there was no place for a kid to swim. His father pointing out things in the water. Showing him the buoy. The buoy.

  In imitation of the buoy, Smitty calmed himself. With his arms by his sides and his legs straight, he stopped moving. For a moment, he tumbled slowly. His body came to a stop and then righted. He began, almost imperceptibly at first, to rise. He gradually gained speed as he ascended.

  Now that he knew which way
to go, Smitty began to stroke in that direction, kicking his legs like a frog. He couldn't hold his breath for much longer, but he was determined to make it. In the murky green, blue, violet, pink, red, orange, yellow water, he thought he saw a twinkling star overhead. The color stabilized, becoming blue-green. He kicked harder, and saw more dappled light dancing enticingly just out of reach.

  He bobbed to the surface, inhaling greedily at the delicious air. Gasping, he tried to keep his head above water. He swallowed some of the salty stuff once and coughed, but he did better after that.

  He was treading water now, watching the swell of the surf, allowing himself to be lifted and gently set back down in a fluid trough, only to rise again. It could have gone on forever, it seemed to Smitty. Soon he was wishing for something to happen.

  It did.

  A monster with a long, sinuous neck and dripping jaws rose out of the surf. It was sort of like a dinosaur, only it had coiling things growing out of its head, which was too big to be on its body in the first place. The creature was an ugly, unnatural looking thing. And it was looking right at him.

  Smitty wanted to get away, but he couldn't move. He just kept treading water as the monster glided nearer and nearer. In seconds, it loomed over him. Smitty could smell it, an awful, rotten stench. The behemoth raised one limb. Smitty was amazed to see that this wasn't a flipper, but was jointed like an enormous, webbed human hand. The monster was going to pluck him out of the surf and eat him!

  Shutting his eyes, Smitty waited for the giant claw to descend. He knew that it was going to hurt a lot, so he said the prayers his Mom had taught him.

  Suddenly the insides of his eyelids glowed crimson. An explosive roar followed. Involuntarily, he opened his eyes.

  The monster was rearing back, a large chunk on the right side of its head missing, the flesh smoking and sizzling. It howled and bellowed deafeningly as it shook its ungainly head toward another dragon-shape emerging from the fog.

  A crimson bolt shot from the thing swimming toward them, sweeping across the undulating back of the monster, burning the glistening flesh as it went.

  The monster dove, creating a wave that swamped Smitty, making him swallow salt water. He struggled to stay afloat, unable to see or breathe for a moment. He gagged and coughed, rubbing the stinging salt water from his eyes. The sea around him was becalmed, revealing that the monster was gone. But the dragon whose fiery breath had driven it away was headed straight for him.

  Before he could even think of what to do, something grabbed him from behind. Some new sea monster, shaking his shoulders. If he could turn around, he could at least see what had hold of him.

  Using all his strength, he wrenched himself from the thing's grasp and turned in the water to face—

  —his mother.

  "Smitty, what is the matter."

  He watched the ball bearing bounce on the floor and roll under the convertible sofa-bed. Had that tiny thing really made all this stuff happen to him just now? He could hardly believe it, but it seemed to be true.

  His Mom was shaking him again, only not so hard this time. "Oh, Smitty, I thought you were having a fit or something," she said. "Are you all right?"

  "Yeah," he said, half expecting to swallow water as he opened his mouth. "Yeah, sure, I'm okay."

  "Maybe you should see a doctor."

  Smitty didn't think much of the idea. "I was just foolin' around, Mom," he said.

  Ronindella's brow furrowed, and she loomed over him much like the sea serpent that had been after him a minute ago. "You mean you were faking those terrible spasms?" she demanded to know.

  "Well . . .sort of." For some reason, he didn't want her to know the truth, even if it meant he would be punished. That little silver ball had belonged to his Dad, and in a way the two of them, father and son, had shared the thing. Smitty didn't care if it was wrong, he decided. His Dad was gone, but Smitty wasn't about to forget him.

  The flat of Ronindella's hand came down, and Smitty felt the sharp impact sting his cheek. "You had me scared to death!" she screamed. He could barely hear her through the buzzing in his ears.

  "I'm sorry, Mom," Smitty said, cringing as the tears started to flow. "I was only playing. I didn't mean anything by it."

  "Haven't I got enough problems without you frightening me like that? What's wrong with you?"

  "Nothing . . . ."

  "Maybe I'd better take you to church this evening. They're open all night, you know."

  "I know," Smitty said miserably, wiping his face with the back of one hand.

  "Well, I'm going up to the roof to see if Ryan is here with the flyby yet. You'd better behave yourself while I'm gone, if you know what's good for you. I want to see more of this stuff stacked up here in the corridor when I get back."

  "Okay, Mom."

  She went out, muttering darkly about finding somebody who could get the elevators working. Smitty listened to her footsteps diminish. Alone, he sniffed up the last of his tears and started to drag boxes out into the corridor, as he had been told to do. When he came back into the effapt, he tried not to look at the sofa-bed, but it was no use.

  He got down on all fours and crawled behind it, groping for the little silver thing. It would take his mother a few minutes to go upstairs and come back down. Maybe he could put the ball bearing in his pocket and take it home. Or hide it someplace and come back later to get it. No, that wouldn't work; he didn't even know what bus to take to get here.

  As he felt around on the grimy old carpet, everything abruptly turned blue-green. He had been in the water, but just for a second. His hand must have brushed the ball bearing.

  Hurriedly, he held his palms flat and went back over the same patch of rug again, more slowly this time. One moment he was in the shadows behind the sofa-bed, and the next—

  —he was in the sea, his hair plastered to his scalp. One monster was dead, or at least it was gone. But another was bearing down on him, its sharp breast cutting through the water like a knife. It had flippers, too, lots of them.

  But even through the fog, Smitty began to see that these weren't really flippers. They were stiff, moving in unison. They looked like oars.

  It was a ship! It was just like the ships in a video Dad had showed to him once. More than a thousand years ago, these ships had raided the coast of Europe. What had Dad called the guys who sailed them?

  Vikings.

  The rowers on the right side shipped their oars, holding them straight up so that they gleamed through the fog. The ship turned broadside to Smitty, and an oar was extended to him. The rough, bearded men pulled him out of the water, grasping him under the armpits. He was saved.

  Falling on the wooden planks of the deck, Smitty gasped and raised his torso up with one hand. The Vikings, in their fur and metal get-ups, were standing all around him. Suddenly, a naked man pushed his way between two of them.

  "Smitty!" the man said.

  It was his Dad!

  "Dad, I thought you were on Mars," Smitty said breathlessly.

  "What are you talking about, kid?" his Dad said, lifting him up and embracing him. "I'm right here with you."

  This was great. His Mom and Ryan had lied to him, as he had always suspected. Dad hadn't gone to Mars; he was here, on the high seas, having adventures with Vikings.

  One of the Vikings, a giant, laughed deeply, and all the others joined in. At first, Smitty didn't know whether to be afraid or not, but his Dad was smiling, so he guessed it was all right. Maybe they would all be friends, and just sail around looting and plundering forever.

  Just then a shadow fell over the deck. Smitty looked up to see another sea serpent, this one even more terrifying than the last. Before he could move, it opened its jaws and snatched something right out of his hand and—

  —his Mom was shaking him again.

  "Where did you get that?" she shrieked, pointing to the onee rolling on the floor.

  For a moment, Smitty couldn't answer. After all, he had just been attacked by a sea se
rpent. It would take a few seconds, at least, to get used to the idea that he was back here with his Mom yelling at him, and not with his Dad on the deck of the Viking ship. As he gradually became reoriented to his surroundings, he expected his Mom to hit him again, but she didn't.

  "Oh, Smitty," she said, tears starting to form in her eyes, "how could you do this to me?"

  This was worse than getting smacked, as far as Smitty was concerned. He hated it more than anything when she acted like this. He knew he had to do something to improve the situation.

  "Mom, I found it on the floor," Smitty explained, with just the right touch of desperation needed to convince her of his innocence. "Honest, I don't even know what it is."

  "But you were under the influence of an . . ." She glanced toward the door, as if Conglom police might burst in at any second. She never finished the sentence, as though pronouncing the word could send her to the moon. She didn't try to hit Smitty again, either; instead, she hugged him.

  "I'm sorry, sweetheart," she said. "But what you did is against the law. We'll call the police, but when they get here you'll have to pretend that you never touched it."

  "Okay, Mom," Smitty agreed. "But what is it?"

  "I think maybe Ryan should tell you that. He'll be down here in a minute, and he'll explain everything to you."

  She'd been trying to make him think Ryan was his father ever since Dad moved out of the apt. Smitty didn't like it, but what could he do but put up with it? Even Ryan didn't much like pretending he was Smitty's Dad, but he knew Ronindella wanted him to do it, so he did it. Dad was never like that. If Dad thought Mom was wrong about something, he told her so, and then she bitched at him until he gave in.

  Ronindella went to the phone and punched in a number. The screen remained blank.

  "Shit," she said. "It's been disconnected. Your father's not even on Mars yet, and it's been disconnected already. He probably hasn't paid his bill, if I know him."

  Smitty didn't like it when she said things like that about his Dad, but he didn't say anything. She would be even worse about it if he said something, and he might get punished, too.

  Ryan Effner came through the open effapt door. "Hi, Ronnie," he said, affecting cheerfulness. "Hi, kiddo."