Viking

by Daniel Hardman

  “You think I’m nuts, Mom. I understand. But actually I’ve never been saner. When I get home I’ll sit down and explain the whole thing.”

  “But what’s to explain? You’ve hashed this all out over and over again.”

  “I was working with half the facts. Trust me, Mom.”

  “Now Julie, ...” her mother began. But at that point Julie’s father, who had taken in most of the conversation in troubled silence, leaned over and whispered something gently in his wife’s ear.

  “But...” Lydia said.

  Another whisper in the ear.

  Julie leapt into the lull. “Well, I need to sign off.”

  “Call us later,” her father said solemnly. “We’ll be worried if you don’t.”

  “I will,” Julie said, trying to sound as casual as possible.

  And that was how the call ended—her mother clearly itching for more details, her father smiling determinedly, and Julie surprised to get off so easily. As soon as the screen darkened, she realized with regret that, in her haste to avoid a long debate, she’d disconnected without speaking to the twins.

  She had started to redial, then thought the better of it. Her mother would be playing bridge tonight; she could talk then without complications.

  Instead, she’d made another futile attempt to call Geire.

  When that didn’t pan out, she even tried Ray Gregory again, and left a message. What did these agents do, spend their lives dozing on the beach while the public needed them most?

  She pushed back her chair, stretched, and walked over to the window. Layers of flying traffic wove across a backdrop of glassy high rise that extended a hundred stories above and below. Nearby, a relatively short building ended in a rooftop park. It was a picturesque little square, complete with sand volleyball and a miniature golf course and neatly groomed lawn bordered by palm trees—a much tamer manifestation of nature than the raw wilderness of Rafa’s broadcasts.

  Where was he now? What was he seeing? Would he ever know that she’d called off the divorce?

  Julie wanted more than the two clips she’d watched last night and again this morning. Could there be more? Satler was supposed to be contacting his hacker friend surreptitiously to get a new batch of data from the satellite cache—or even better, to set up a steady feed that would let them monitor in real time. With the decrypter program, anything interesting could be displayed almost as soon as it arrived...

  39

  A buzzing droned steadily through the canopy and penetrated Rafa’s thoughts. With effort he retrieved a word and sluggishly forwarded it to the language centers of his brain.

  Cricket.

  He contemplated the word with dull incomprehension.

  Cricket.

  Still no reaction. He fell back to simpler concepts.

  Thirst.

  Death.

  The words were coming faster now. Falling. Salt.

  Salt? That triggered a response. His tongue and lips were coated with a briny, alkaline film of some sort. Weakly, he spat it out, too dazed to speculate on the question of how it got there.

  The motion brought a whoosh of kinetic sensation. Rafa’s forehead was throbbing and his neck felt unbelievably stiff. In fact, he could hardly move his chin from side to side at all. And what was causing the excruciating fire in his ankle?

  He opened his eyes. One responded readily, flooding his perception with flashing emerald leaves and an olive tangle of branches and vines. The other eye, its lashes crusted with blood, was too swollen to admit much light and did not answer his command.

  Other thoughts filtered through his rekindling awareness, one following another in a rapid succession that eluded full, deliberate grasp. He noted with a sort of detached surprise that he was floating, nearly vertical, in a pool of algae-covered swamp water that stank of decomposed vegetation and mold and a handful of other exotic odors. The stiffness at his neck was a flotation collar, embedded in his heavy biosuit and maybe triggered by violent submersion in the underjungle.

  Thirst, raging and desperate, hit like a thunderclap with almost physical force. His throat was parched and bruised, his tongue bloated. Hunger twisted in his belly, but it was secondary to the need for water.

  Without thinking Rafa kicked toward a cluster of roots a dozen meters away, then gagged at the stab that shot from a tortured ankle. For several minutes the pain was so intense that he couldn’t move. He hung motionless, heedless of the slimy plant matter on his face and the buzzing insects inspecting his forehead, breathing shallowly to resist the nausea, and clinging to consciousness.

  At last his head cleared, and he set about a more cautious inventory of his condition, ignoring as well as he could the maddening dehydration and vertigo. What else hurt? His casted arm did; it hung heavy and sodden in the water, the fiberglass cracked. But it was tolerable. There was a crushing pressure around his left side, along his ribs. Felt like the time he’d been kicked by a horse in almost the same spot, only many times worse. And his face, hands, legs and back all stung from welts and tearing gashes left by his fall through the trees.

  Now the full recollection of his plummet from the skimmer came rushing back. He remembered the disorientation, the fear, and the queer, soothing resignation of a surrender to death’s sure embrace. What he did not remember—and could not understand—was how he’d survived. The curtain of vegetation was thick and unbroken overhead, obscuring the sun and making it difficult to guess the time of day; his trajectory had left no lasting scars. Apparently the dense mat of forest had broken his tumble enough to make a landing in the swamp water survivable, and safety features in his suit had done the rest.

  Gingerly Rafa rolled to his side and paddled toward more solid ground, careful to keep his broken ankle motionless. The pressure under his arm erupted into a flaming burn. He gritted his teeth and continued to claw through the slime, puffing to keep algae off his lips. The stiffness of the biosuit blunted his strokes, slowing progress until it was barely perceptible. But he persisted, suppressing steady groans of pain, until, after what seemed like an eternity, he was within reach of underbrush growing on solid ground.

  The water was still about waist-deep, with an invisible bottom of slippery rocks or roots that didn’t lend itself to standing upright. He rested for a moment, then twined the fingers and wrist of his good arm around the sturdiest plants he could see. The motion disturbed a small snake that whipped through the reeds and slid into the murky water at his left.

  He shuddered. What other fauna might be lurking? Every food chain had its king; the highest niches in Earth’s tropical swamplands were generally occupied by crocodilians large enough to consider him a tasty snack. And then there were the venomous spiders and insects, the ticks and leeches, the predatory cats... Rafa’s heart began to hammer. The opacity of the water assumed a sullen mystery. The mossy expanse of tree trunks, the twisted foliage that curved above his line of sight, loomed threatening and sinister.

  Even as the fear swelled, he heard a soft splash from the far side of the pool, and a ripple rose on the water’s surface at the periphery of his vision. He lurched out of the water, staggering at the sudden weight in his ballooned biosuit and the unspeakable agony of his bad ankle. He flopped into the weeds, face slapping the mucky grass, and grabbed blindly for higher support. His fingers found only reeds that came out by the roots without affording any purchase.

  He slapped his cast onto the bank, felt its lower edge snag on a rock embedded in the ground, and pulled against it, digging his fingers deeply into the mud and arching his back to snap knees and feet out of the water. For a moment he felt his grip eroding, and a sick surety of falling backward flitted through his brain. But then his digging fingers found another rock, and shoulders bunched to haul his knees underneath him.

  He crawled awkwardly through ferns and rushes, over the gnarl of a man-sized root, and onto a low-slung tree branch that extended into the deeper jungle away from the water. It was waist-high where it met the trunk, but Rafa
scooted anxiously outward until the ground was a safe two meters below, nearly losing his balance once on the slickness of the rounded surface between his knees and arms.

  Only then, with his breath coming in ragged gasps and his ribs and ankle shrieking at the pain, did he dare look back at the water. His exodus had torn a ragged black path across the surface, culminating in an irregular ellipse near the bank where he’d exited. There the water was clear and motionless—except for a pair of unblinking golden eyes that twisted at the end of snail-like mocha stalks.

  As Rafa watched, the stalks rotated and arched smoothly outward, moving independently, to perform an inspection of the bank and its environs with the unhurried precision of a predator at work. Finding nothing, one stalk retracted, a nictating membrane closing shutter-like across the eye as it submerged in the inky morass. The other stalk elongated until it was finger-thin and impossibly long and slid into the bruised, broken reeds he’d passed through moments before. A meter of it lifted off the ground and hung motionless, perfectly camouflaged against the mud and greenery, looking for all the world like the stem of another marsh plant.

  The pulse of distant insects seemed to quiet, and Rafa realized he was holding his breath. He let it out slowly, his nerves straining. Cautiously he began to inch outward along the limb. Whatever was in the water, he wanted to be as far away as possible. Clearly it was big enough to be dangerous, and the unmistakable splash he’d heard meant it could travel on land.

  He’d scooted another body length outward when his boots slipped and scraped loudly on the tree limb. The eye swiveled instantly on its stalk. He held its mottled golden gaze for what seemed like an eternity, heart pounding and feet scuffling ineffectually for a toe hold. A wave of lightheadedness swept over him, and he had to fight the urge to vomit. At last the alien brain behind the eye stalk seemed to conclude that Rafa wasn’t worth the effort of further hunting. Noiselessly it receded through the reeds, sliding into the water without a ripple.

  * * *

  Once he reached the broad fork in the tree branch, Rafa rested. The sweat was streaming down his neck and shoulders, and his face was ghastly pale. But he felt a little safer.

  He was ten meters up, with a clear view of the forest floor and the zigzagging branches all around. Overhead, the canopy seemed even thicker. Or maybe the sun was simply lower in the sky now.

  Not that it made any difference to the temperature. It was beyond torrid in the jungle—almost sauna-like. The atmosphere, steamy with humidity, hung with a thickness that was almost palpable. The drones and clicks of insects, the hoots of unseen tree dwellers imbued the riotous greenery with a life and energy that Rafa didn’t feel.

  For the first time he thought to consult his wrist readout. It reported 0330 hours mission time, but of course that had nothing to do with the local cycles of day and night. It had been 1420 when they’d left the module. Had he been unconscious for twelve or thirteen hours? With a grimy fingernail that trembled from fatigue, he navigated a series of menus and studied the digital plot on the small screen. It would be getting dark soon. He’d drifted in the swamp from before sunrise till almost dusk. He wondered how he’d escaped the notice of local predators for so long.

  At least that explained the thirst. During his tortuous climb he had begun to speculate that it might be a sign of internal bleeding, maybe from his cracked ribs. But now he guessed with relief that it was the normal reaction to hours of baking in the jungle oven. After he had attended to the stabbing pain in his ankle and found a way to slake the pangs for water, he’d get into the medical manual and see if there were other signs he should monitor.

  He checked the remaining menus methodically. His blood pressure looked good, and his pulse was steady though rapid. Not surprisingly, levels of adrenaline were sky-high and his blood sugar was low. There was no real diagnostic equipment to test for broken bones, but a diagram of his body showed bright red areas of pain localized around his ribs and ankle. No kidding.

  A study of the status of the communications system wired into his body showed green lights for functionality but static on the standard viking bandwidths. Nobody was listening or broadcasting—at least not to him.

  Déjà vu.

  At this point Rafa was too exhausted, too endorphin-spent to panic, but he considered the implications with a dreary, morose sort of pessimism. Obviously nobody was mounting a rescue effort. He admitted grimly that he hadn’t expected them to. They hadn’t lifted a finger before; they certainly wouldn’t now. For one thing, the fall should have killed him. For another, the jungle was so thick that aerial surveys were impossible; any rescuers would be forced to tackle the terrain on foot, which would be both hopeless and suicidal.

  And lastly, it seemed likely that Heward had dumped him on purpose. He’d loaded the skimmer in such a way that only the forward restraining harnesses were available, and then assigned him to ride in back. Was it just the luck of the draw, or something more?

  At least the GPS still worked. The quality of his online maps was noticeably better than it had been a few days earlier, when he’d been stranded before; the reconnaissance satellites had been busy. He pinpointed his position without difficulty. A scale conversion told him it was only half a kilometer to a point where trees tapered off into a small beach and the shallow reefs of coastal ocean.

  Was that where he wanted to go? It was in the same general direction they’d been flying, and he had the impression that Heward’s destination lay somewhere along the coast, though many kilometers farther south. Travel and foraging would probably be easier along the beach as well. If nothing else, he could wash the muck off and look for fresh water.

  But could he get there? He dreaded a descent from this perch that he’d scratched and clawed his way to. Even if he got down without trouble, half a kilometer of this tightly tangled jungle would be a challenge with a machete, two good legs, and plenty of water.

  It would be murder in his current condition.

  Rafa lay in the crook of the tree branch, too weak and irresolute to move, feeling despair darken his vision like the night that would soon descend. He would never get out of this god-forsaken jungle. Never.

  Why couldn’t he have died in the fall? So much easier. Or for that matter, why had he run so hard in the stampede? Why had he even hired a lawyer for his trial? A nice quick conviction and a lethal injection would have saved so much pain and trouble. Probably would have been easier on Julie, too.

  Tears clouded his eyes. He let them accumulate, burn angrily down his cheeks, and drip like bitter raindrops to the carpet of leaves and ferns below. Overhead, a deep peal of thunder growled, and the hidden fringes of the canopy rustled in response to unseen breezes. The devastating loneliness that had erupted in a shout after his escape from the hexapods crowded in once again, more oppressive than ever. It stifled his breathing, constricted his chest, and intensified the shooting agony at his ribs.

  A fleeting thought to pray arose and was immediately hurled aside by the swelling rage it triggered. He was in no mood for metaphysical communion. Everything he cared about had been taken away—his wife, his daughters, his good name, his future, even the miserable company of the crew and the chance for a quick death.

  So much for divine intervention.

  The fury gave Rafa a reckless strength that consumed his lethargy and despair. He’d been resigned when the forest swallowed him, but fickle fate hadn’t followed through. Now if Death wanted him, he would not go gentle. Let it find another plaything.

  Rafa raised his head and scanned the environs with greater awareness, anger giving focus to his thinking. Only a few meters away were some small branches that might work as a splint. He scrabbled toward them, the searing fire under his shoulder and above his heel spurring him on, and snapped off several with savage impatience. Then he unzipped his suit, peeled it back to the waist, and pulled off the sodden cotton tunic underneath.

  The motion of his shoulder tore like molten acid at his ribs, and great wracking
sobs rose from his throat, but he refused to stop. He drew his survival knife and slit the fabric into ragged strips, then bound the sticks in a crude brace along his shin and calf, clenching his teeth and moaning as the bones in his ankle grated against each other in unnatural ways. There was terrible swelling, making it totally unthinkable to remove the boot.

  Better to let it hide the damage anyway—he wasn’t sure he had the stomach for a mangled, bloody, purple stump right now.

  He pulled the knots as tight as he could stand and circled the whole clumsy bandage several times. It didn’t keep the foot perfectly immobile, but he could put weight on the sticks without jarring his heel. Maybe that would make walking less painful and damaging.

  While he was working Rafa felt a few cool raindrops splash across the knotted muscles of his shoulders. The smell of fresh water, more than the sensation of blooming wetness, made his head snap up in sudden interest. The attenuated light from above had quickly dimmed in the past few minutes, and he could hear regular crashes of thunder and irregular swishing of wind as if at great distance.

  His thirst, partly suppressed by more immediate concerns, now rose black and towering. He must get something to drink. For one wild moment he considered climbing toward the storm, saw himself clawing up fifty meters of the massive trunks and standing open-mouthed on a flimsy exposed limb, rain pouring into his parched lips.

  Then saner reasoning prevailed. Surely rain made its way to the forest floor eventually. He simply had to find its path. The next moment he had his flashlight out and was shining it up at the jade thatch. The beam of illumination in the twilight glanced off pearls of rain in silent descent in every direction. Some were falling regularly near another crook in the limb he was on, another ten meters up.

  Without pausing to rezip his suit, Rafa struggled toward the water, the coarseness of the tree rubbing against his bare chest and arms. He redoubled his efforts as more drops splashed across his neck and into the small of his back, his mind filled with visions of arriving just as the downpour came to an end.