Viking

by Daniel Hardman

  There was a long pause.

  Oristano licked her lips. She’d been debating this next part for almost an hour, evaluating one Machiavellian twist after another. She wanted Orosco alive if she could manage it, both as job security and to keep her options open. Bezovnik didn’t really know who to finger as his leak. If she told him nothing he’d probably kill all three just to be on the safe side. But if she gave him a name, he’d know she was lying.

  “Go ahead, choose your poison. Want to kill my spy? It’s Orosco. Feel free to take him out. Or bring him back and spill the beans about the real purpose of this mission. I don’t really care which.”

  “How much?” His voice sounded defeated.

  “Ah. Ready to negotiate, are we?”

  “How much?”

  “Well, that depends on which option you choose. You kill Orosco and I lose a valuable informant. Of course I’ve got the murder to hold over your head, but no more fresh and juicy reports. My income stagnates. On the other hand, if you let him see the skeleton in your closet, it’s uncharted territory. Maybe whatever it is, is worth more than a murder.”

  “Give me a number.”

  “You know, I’m of two minds on this one. As a gambler I’m inclined to bet that peeking at your new headquarters is worth more than documenting a murder. I think you think so. But on the other hand, I’m not sure I want you as a long-term client. After all, blackmail is a hazardous and stressful occupation. Maybe I’d be better off to take a single lump payment and walk away.”

  “What kind of a payment?”

  “A hundred million.”

  “Are you out of your mind? I could never come up with that kind of cash! I was sweating bullets to find a way to shuffle the books just to get one million.”

  “Act your age, Bezovnik. I don’t expect you to snap your fingers and produce that kind of payoff.”

  “How do I get it, then?”

  “Some cash, of course. Also stock and plenty of options.”

  “What?”

  “Stock in MEEGO. You personally own shares worth six times that amount.”

  “But I can’t just give them to you. There are all kinds of regulations.”

  “Of course there are. But show a little creativity. Sell through the right chain of middle men. Deed over a block to charity. Bribe your favorite representative from the SEC. Or blackmail him; I might give you some pointers there. We could even get you married off to some stooge go-between, wait a few weeks, then divorce her and use the stock as alimony. We can work out the details.”

  Bezovnik’s voice was trembling now. He sounded sick. “Why do you want stock?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? I’m hedging my bets here. If your racket will really profit so much from a little cover-up, then I get a share of the take. Think of it as padding my retirement portfolio.”

  “The mineral deposit’s pretty rich, but it’s not going to make a hundred million worth of difference to my private pocketbook.”

  Oristano lay back in her chair with a sigh. “Maybe I have set the threshold a bit high. Not being fully privy to your secrets yet, that’s the unknown I wrestle with. You can always take the pay-as-you-go approach. I’ll set my rates when Orosco gets back to camp and I see what we’re dealing with.”

  Now he was furious, and the guttural edge to his voice became more pronounced as he spluttered. “Suck like a leech while it lasts! In a few weeks we’ll have the claim all sewn up. Then I can afford a few fines and a legal staff to fight whatever dirt you might release. Heaven knows it will cost me less than you do!” He broke the connection.

  Oristano was grinning like a Cheshire cat. She’d call again as soon as Orosco was back in camp.

  35

  Julie raised her eyebrows. “You say some of them are viking broadcasts?” She spoke loudly to overpower the sound of vacuuming from the hall outside her hotel room.

  “Two of the longest streams.”

  “But I don’t get it. None of the stuff we gave you was steady-state. Since when does a viking flip a switch on his implants? And besides, the satellite that picked up these transmissions didn’t get them through a planetside signal processor.”

  The grandmotherly woman on her phone screen shrugged. “I can only tell you what the decrypter told me. Most of the stuff was unintelligible, but he claims 87d and 29f both originated with a viking.”

  Julie tapped at her computer screen briefly to bring up stats on the signals she’d forwarded. She felt a surge of excitement when she saw the timestamps. Both had been transmitted to the satellite after the stampede.

  “So these clips you just attached are the decoded versions?”

  “Yeah. But they’re a straight audiovisual feed, not a full vid.”

  “How come?”

  “I guess it’s pretty badly garbled. The decrypter claimed he couldn’t quite get everything coherent. Tried watching it as a vid and said the distortion almost made him lose his lunch.”

  “How much do I owe you?”

  “A thousand.”

  “That much?”

  “Well, the decrypter had to do some custom programming to post-process the stream. Said he was up half the night. Knowing him, that’s just a convenient line, but that doesn’t make his invoice go away.”

  Julie sighed. “All right, hold on for a second.” She keyed in a security code and transferred the payment, thinking nervously about her next installment on the legal bills, due at the end of the month. If she didn’t sell the house soon, her account would be back in the red for good. The spur-of-the-moment trip to Houston hadn’t helped.

  On the screen, Madison nodded briskly to acknowledge the arrival of the funds. “Okay, we’re even.”

  “Well, I still owe you a favor. Thanks for getting this done on such short notice.”

  “No problem. We try to keep our translators happy... Speaking of which, you interested in another job? We just got a big manual from Bolívar Mundial. It’s a rush, as usual. You could make back double what you just paid me.”

  Julie rolled her eyes with a grin. “You’re an incorrigible capitalist, Madison. If it’s anything like their last release, the first chapter will be worth five thousand by itself, and you know it.”

  Madison smiled primly, completely failing in her bid to look apologetic.

  “Anyway, I can’t,” Julie continued. “My life’s pretty much a disorganized shambles at the moment. Maybe I’ll call you back in a couple days.”

  “The manual has to be done by then.”

  “I know. But you’ll doubtless have some other urgent project that you’re willing to underpay me for.”

  Madison snorted. “Under this crusty exterior is a heart of gold—you know that. Did you notice my last attachment?”

  Julie’s eyes flicked to the readout along the bottom of her screen. “You mean that program at the end?”

  “Yeah. I finagled it out of the decrypter, so you can unscramble stuff yourself. I figured if he wanted to charge for programming time, the least he could do is fork over the results.”

  Julie shook her head in wry good humor. “I take back all the bad things I said about you, Madison. You’re great.”

  The gray-haired woman wagged her finger in mock admonishment. “Don’t you forget it, next time I call with a job.” Then she winked cheerfully and broke the connection.

  Julie continued to stare at the blank screen for a long time, pondering. She’d given Madison a handful of the longest transmissions from the cache on the off-chance that they might contain something useful—a clue to MEEGO’s behavior, perhaps, or hints about what had happened to Rafa. But she hadn’t expected viking broadcasts. Supposedly, vikings didn’t send out random, abbreviated snatches of radio waves; they emitted an uninterrupted signal on a constant frequency.

  Could they be from Rafa anyway? Her mind said it was a foolish leap of logic—but intuition cared little for rational inference.

  Well, there was one easy way to find out. Gulping the last mouthful of steaming no
odles from the open Chinese take-out box on the end table, she tapped a key and settled back to find out what a thousand credits had bought her.

  The picture flickered and jumped like shadows chased by candlelight, and tracers of whitish noise shot steadily across the screen; the audio seemed to pulse and pause in a syncopated buzz that was heavily laced with echo and warping feedback—so it took several seconds before she could understand what she saw.

  Somebody was running through knee-high grass and occasional clumps of taller sagebrush, hurdling boulders and depressions in the sandy soil. The rhythmic bobbing of a phantom head on top of a distorted picture made it almost impossible to catch details. She could see the flash of brown hands and the blur of knees and boots at the periphery of the picture as the runner planned his route and weaved across the terrain.

  He was working hard, but clearly this was not an all-out sprint. His breath came and went in bellow-like surges that coincided exactly with every third step. Small clouds of dust rose with every blurred footfall. Light from the sun overhead cast crisp, tiny shadows.

  Abruptly the runner looked back, and Julie caught her breath. For a split second she had a view of two other people, each clad in the familiar biosuit of Rafa’s crew. They were running, too, dusty and haggard and exhausted almost to the point of death. One was a woman who seemed vaguely familiar; the other was an older viking Julie recognized from her earlier links to Rafa. Their faces were hardened in fear.

  Behind them, a wave of shelled, tentacled creatures hopped forward, clicking hungrily.

  * * *

  When Satler used the agreed-upon knock on her hotel room door half an hour later, Julie opened numbly, without bothering to wipe the tears from her eyes.

  After the first clip her mind had been full of images—some real, some painted with the broad brush strokes of imagination—of Rafa’s battle with the crabbies. She saw his hands slick with alien blood, plunging a survival knife with desperation; saw him somersaulting and screaming and kicking. The sound that burst from his throat when he joined battle had sent chills down her spine and brought a lump to her throat.

  So Julie had started the second clip with trembling fingers. By then she knew it was Rafa, and had seen him survive the encounter relatively intact. The clip ended without warning as he crumpled in a heap among some stunted trees. But the crabbies and that bizarre floating thing with tentacles did not bode well; she braced for the worst.

  Nothing prepared her for that other peek at Rafa’s world. Instead of violence, it was a muted conversation in the flickering dimness around a campfire. Hearing Rafa’s voice had been heavenly—but his words stole her breath as surely as a physical blow. Her brain could hardly wrap itself around all the implications.

  Rafa acknowledged that he'd been named David?

  He really had been in law enforcement?

  Oberling was an old friend, not a victim chosen in cold blood?

  He’d kept silent about it all to protect his family?

  By the time Rafa left the tiny grove, Julie’s eyes were glazed with heartbreak and regret and pity and astonishment—plus a generous dose of wrath at her tight-mouthed husband. He could have told her during one of the visits to prison. Surely that would not have been dangerous. She wanted to weep and laugh and scream with frustration, all at once. But nothing came out.

  So she sat frozen, sharing her husband’s view of rings and starry night but feeling farther away than ever before. When Chen stole up and touched him softly on the shoulder, she flinched. One aspect of the woman’s intentions was immediately obvious from her body language, and Julie felt a terror far profounder than the heart-stop she’d experienced during the fight with crabbies—this was fear so raw and primal that it nearly drove her mad. Yet Julie found herself unable to sustain either jealousy or anger. Instead there was an infinite, ineffable sadness, a regret big enough to fill the world to overflowing.

  A wedding ring glinted in the darkness.

  Rafa’s words came through terrible distortion, as from an infinite distance. And then Chen went away and Rafa sank to his knees on the alien prairie and Spanish was flowing in soft, choking whispers, and Julie was sobbing uncontrollably. She pulled a pillow from the bed and sank to the floor against the wall, weak with emotion and totally blinded by tears.

  She felt the line of her chin grow wet and begin to itch at the drip, but the emotional pain was too paralyzing to move. She wanted to say something, shout out a word that would somehow wing its way to Rafa and embody all the sorrow and tenderness and desperation. But her thrashing thoughts came up with nothing. No language could possibly express what she was feeling.

  Her lips formed Rafa’s name and held it, unuttered, while her shoulders heaved and the sleeves of her sweater grew damp and lights flashed in the night outside her window. With her thumb she twisted the narrow band of gold that had always felt like it belonged on her finger.

  By the time the knock came, Julie had moved from vocal anguish to shocked silence, but her mind was still light years away. She didn’t even register the need to check the peephole before she shot back the deadbolt and let Satler in.

  Stepping through the doorway, he opened his mouth to admonish greater caution, but stopped short at the look on her face.

  “What is it?” he asked, sounding concerned.

  Julie opened her mouth, closed it again, hesitated, and then looked away, shaking her head.

  “What?” he demanded. Now the worry was more pronounced.

  Julie dropped into a chair and waved him to another. By the time he had settled his bulky form, she’d achieved a semblance of self-possession.

  “Some of the stuff in the cache is from Rafa.”

  His look of amazement made the silence eloquent.

  After a minute Julie continued. “Two of the seven. I’ve just been watching them.”

  Satler hesitated, feeling his way uncertainly. “Is he okay?”

  Julie managed a quavery smile. “I must look pretty bad, huh?”

  A nod.

  “Well, actually, he’s alive and well, at least as far as I could tell from broadcasts. Or was a day or two ago, anyway. He definitely survived the stampede.”

  “Mind if I take a look?”

  Julie nodded assent and padded off to the bathroom. Satler heard the door lock and water splash in the sink.

  When she emerged a few minutes later, most evidence of tempestuous emotion was gone, though her eyes were still a bit red, and her sweater had some dark, moist patches. She smiled a bit sadly and returned to her chair, curling her feet underneath her with supple grace.

  Satler tapped his fingers on the table as if deliberating, then swiveled around to face her.

  “You sure picked the guy on the white horse, Julie.”

  The corners of her mouth twitched.

  “Sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “I felt like a trespasser at the end. Maybe I should have turned it off.”

  “I’m sure you’ve seen worse.”

  Satler pondered that for a protracted moment, then kneaded his temples with powerful fingers. “Anyway, we’ve got to decide what to do with this.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, now we’ve got proof that he’s alive. That ought to make the feds perk up their ears and take us seriously. Maybe we can get some protection.”

  “Geire gave me the impression that they do all their work earthside. Do you really think he’d send agents out there to pick up Rafa, and spoil his chances for a bust?”

  “Not protection for Rafa. Protection for us.”

  “Oh.” Somehow personal danger had faded in Julie’s mind.

  “Don’t kid yourself, Julie. Someone tried to take us out a few hours back, and if they’re halfway serious, checking into separate hotels on my aunt’s credit card will hardly stop them. We’re in over our heads here. It’s high time we called in the cavalry.”

  “Think they’ll come? Geire didn’t seem all that enthusiastic
about bailing out someone the bureau put behind bars for killing one of their own.”

  “When they see the video, they will. And if they have any sense, they’ll reopen the murder case. There’s got to be proof of what Rafa said.”

  “You believe him, then?”

  Satler cocked a solemn eye at Julie. “I believed him even before I heard an explanation. Same as you.”

  Julie nodded, wishing she felt happier about her own show of faith.

  36

  Eccles cleared his throat and clutched his computer nervously as he entered the president’s office. It was a part of the building he’d never been in before. He had no idea why he’d been summoned.

  Bezovnik came right to the point. “We’ve got a problem with our communications system on the Erisa mission.”

  If a man could raise his eyebrows violently, Eccles did.

  “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t know. I’ll get right on it.”

  Bezovnik waved impatiently to cut him off. “I think you misunderstand. I’m not accusing you of negligence. The system’s working fine.”

  Eccles looked puzzled.

  “Let me ask you a question. If a viking gets out of range of the planetside signal processor, we lose his transmission, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Why is that?”

  Eccles felt his way cautiously. This was all common knowledge; he wasn’t certain what was prompting the quiz.

  “Well, sir, the implants draw power from the electrochemical impulses in their host’s body. Unless you implant a battery and booster, they only have strength for very limited-range broadcasts. And they don’t typically use a frequency that would penetrate the ionosphere, anyway. They depend on the planetside signal processor to encode the transmission and shoot it up to our satellite.”

  Bezovnik nodded. “And I assume that the skimmers have some sort of built-in relay as well?”

  “That’s right. A viking could go a thousand clicks and still stay online, as long as he didn’t wander away from the skimmer.”

  “Okay, now, suppose a viking did have a battery to boost the transmission. Could he send directly to the satellite?”