Viking

by Daniel Hardman

  She found herself bending over the drinking fountain, letting water run in and out of her open lips while she debated. The agent made no indication that he’d seen her.

  This is ridiculous, she thought. Help’s finally arrived for Rafa, and no doubt pandemonium reigns at MEEGO. They’d be crazy to come after her now. Besides, she had to hurry back upstairs in case the video feed started up again.

  Resolutely she squared her shoulders and approached the man seated casually on the sofa.

  53

  The second ship’s arrival was masked by a series of pealing thunderclaps. Some of the crew looked up, but most were still clustered around Chen’s pale body.

  Rafa felt full of emotion: part pity and sorrow for Chen, part gratitude that she’d been spared a more miserable finish, part astonishment at his own narrow escape. Heward was not dead, just wounded, but Rafa felt no particular bitterness—just sorrow and regret.

  He straightened up and laid Chen’s hands on her chest, in time to see the first bolt of lightning out over the sea. By then a couple of the vikings were staring pointedly down the beach, where a detail of six suited figures was advancing from another Earth-built spaceship.

  Reinforcements? Surely they didn’t expect armed resistance from the vikings.

  Welcome to the party, sir. It was the leader of the first group who spoke.

  Put down the gun, Oristano. You’re under arrest. The speaker, a grizzled, leathery-faced man at the front of the new arrivals, looked angry. His gun was not pointed at vikings. Rafa looked at his face intently.

  Arrest?

  Don’t play coy with me. I’m tired of it. You came here to cover up your own shenanigans, not to serve justice.

  I don’t know what you’re talking about, Geire. Her backup had dropped his gun, but she still held hers.

  Besides trying to steal all the glory, you probably were going to cut in on the smuggling, weren’t you?

  Nonsense. I just want to make this bust and go home.

  Oh, you’ll be going home soon enough. I’ll take you in handcuffs.

  Come off it, Geire! This is just your ornery old temper talking. It’s all the most fantastic sort of speculation. Drop it before we have to start talking defamation or harassment.

  You think I didn’t know about your calls to Bezovnik? You think I don’t have records of where and when you got your payoffs? You think this sting was just about catching MEEGO? I gave you just enough rope to hang yourself, and you did it quite nicely. The raid on company headquarters gave us records of massive money transfers, phone calls, the works—it all matches up perfectly with the log I kept of your activity.

  Suddenly Oristano’s gun swung toward Geire. I’m not going.

  What are you going to do, shoot me in front of all these witnesses? His voice was heavy with sarcasm.

  I’ll shoot you all, she shouted frantically. I’ll say we met stiff resistance and it turned into a bloodbath. Nobody’s watching at MEEGO anymore.

  Geire just laughed. If you believe that’ll fly, you’re crazy. You’d never get us all. There’s always somebody who slips through the cracks and causes trouble later on.

  Slowly Oristano’s gun slumped. Then Geire gave a signal, and two of his men snapped handcuffs around her suited wrists.

  * * *

  Orosco, right?

  Rafa looked up to see a suited figure. Rain was beginning to fall, and the lightning was worse. Overhead, a single massive pufferbelly hung like a cumulonimbus gone solid.

  “That’s right.”

  Got a minute? I’d like to talk to you by yourself. Geire tossed his plasma pistol toward another agent, who picked it up with a nod.

  Rafa followed Geire slowly back toward the ship, and the beginning of the stairway carved in stone beyond.

  You may not know this, but I’ve been following you for quite some time, Geire began.

  “How’s that?”

  Well, MEEGO’s been up to no good for a long while, and we were itching to get a closer look. We happened to find out about your implants when you showed up on their roster. It was a simple thing to have the surgeon set a second frequency when he reactivated everything.

  “So I was a spy.”

  You were.

  “A mole.”

  If you want to call it that. But all in a good cause.

  “I assume that’s why Heward tried to kill me.”

  Probably.

  “You put me in a dangerous position without asking.”

  No more than you were before.

  They passed the ship and walked for a time in silence. The surf and the wind and the storm made turbulent swirl around them.

  At the bottom step, Rafa stopped and looked steadily at Geire’s face.

  “Before, you said.”

  Before. Then a shocked look, part fear, part confusion, crossed the weathered features. Geire took a step back.

  Rafa nodded. “Yes, I mean that before. How long have you been after me? Did you kill Oberling just so you could set me up? Did you follow me all the way here just to finish the job?”

  Geire stared back wordlessly

  “I'm guessing not. Your not brilliant—just a great opportunist. You want us to believe you were on to what’s-her-name all along, but it's as much an act as your righteous agent schtick. You’re only arresting her because you don’t think you can horn in on the action and get away with it. Not with aliens in the picture.”

  Geire shrugged. Believe what you want. I had to look; I knew you might still be dangerous to me. But I only picked up the trail by chance, when you met Oberling. You were a hard man to find, David.

  “I could say the same for you. I wasn’t even sure which faces from the bureau to look for. I just knew it had to be someone who didn’t make my official list. But when I saw you, I knew.”

  Then why did you come with me?

  “I was going to kill you with my bare hands. Now I think not. I’m sick of fighting. Go ahead and pull the gun. I see it in your pocket.”

  Geire drew the gun. You always were a bit too observant for your own good.

  “And hard to kill.”

  Yes. I thought I had things fixed so you’d get the death penalty. But you weaseled out of that and enlisted as a viking. I thought that would be okay, that you’d bite the dust sooner or later. Thought you were dead in the stampede. Then I thought you were dead when you got dumped in the jungle. But you just keep coming back to life. I guess it’s time for a little direct intervention.

  “Shoot. I doubt anyone will even care.”

  Ah, David, you undervalue yourself. You should have heard your wife pleading for me to send some protection.

  “You’ve talked to Julie? When?” For the first time, Rafa’s voice took on an urgency.

  Oh, several times recently. It seems she found a key to a virtual safe in Mexico City. She wondered if the FBI could tell her why you once lived in Quantico and went by a different name.

  Rafa paled. “What else did she say?”

  Oh, she speculated a bit about what might be in the most secure part of the files. The bank wouldn’t let her see them without your death certificate, you know.

  Rafa looked away.

  It’s an interesting question, actually. What is in those files? It would have to be something from your former life, of course. Something about seven years old; I checked the date on the account. Something that uses a bureau-issue encryption code.

  “None of your business.”

  I think maybe it is. In fact, my curiosity’s definitely piqued. But I’ve resigned myself. Apparently the bank has a policy to destroy top-secret data if there’s no legitimate claimant. If you die and Julie dies, that clears both names off the account, and the information goes away forever. I guess I’ll never know.

  Rafa hit him low and hard, driving his casted arm like a battering ram. The blow knocked away the gun even as it discharged, carving a long searing blister through the skin on Rafa’s back. It clattered off the sculpted granite and i
nto the sand.

  Geire turned green through his helmet, but he kept his feet. Somehow, from somewhere, he had picked up a rock. As Rafa recoiled from the collision, he smashed it down, striking a glancing blow behind one ear.

  Rafa went down on one knee, vision black, suddenly unable to tell up from down. He felt the whole world spinning wildly, saw Geire stumble over to the gun and raise it slowly from the sand. Rain and flashing lightning and tremendous claps of thunder melded into a gray fog.

  Then the pufferbelly struck. Faster than the eye could follow, thirty meters of sinuous, muscular tentacle whipped out, coiled around Geire’s neck and shoulders, and jerked him up and cliffward. He rose like a missile, thudded brokenly against the wall of rock, and then somersaulted down into the angry sea. No splash marked his passing.

  “Estrellita!”

  Rafa’s lung-searing one-word prayer vanished into the chaos of the storm.

  54

  “Nice looking apple,” said Julie, dropping into a chair near the sofa.

  “You want it?” the man asked, extending a manicured hand. “I’m not hungry anymore.”

  “Thanks.” She took it, feeling rather silly. “Come on, I’ll show you where my room is.”

  “Room?” said the man. He had an odd sort of smile on his face. She saw that his other hand held a gun. “I’d prefer to talk outside, where there are not so many people.”

  Julie was too stunned to think clearly. In a dream, she stood and walked arm in arm toward the revolving door. This could not be happening.

  “Call you a taxi?” asked the doorman. “Oh, never mind—here’s one now.” He pointed a white-gloved hand.

  Julie’s escort looked, and that was all the doorman needed. An elbow flashed in a blur, and the apple man was lying sprawled in a heap on the sidewalk. The doorman frisked him expertly, produced handcuffs from a back pocket, and snapped them on. Then he turned and smiled, just as Satler burst out of the lobby like a locomotive gone berserk.

  “Julie, it’s a trap,” he was yelling. “Geire’s crooked!” He pulled up short at the handcuffs, his eyes flying back and forth between doorman and damsel in distress.

  Agent Gregory removed his doorman hat with a comical little bow.

  “Mrs. Orosco. I met you once before.”

  “I remember,” she said.

  “This time I think I got the right guy.”

  55

  Rafa sat hugging his knees, his bare feet half-buried in cool sand. Overhead, a layer of fleece was quickly disbanding after spending its moisture in the night. Along the horizon, a gleaming band arched from the incipient fires of dawn. The air was clear and warm with the promise of sunrise.

  He’d picked the spot hours ago, when the world was inky black except for an occasional sparkle of Erisa Alpha’s electric blue through the clouds. Because there was only a mild ring tide on this moonless world, the steady lap of waves deviated little from the line they’d defined just a couple steps down the beach. He’d been motionless for a long time, content to listen to the music of the surf and let the beginnings of morning’s breeze riffle his hair.

  At his back, the dimness was alive with the sounds of heavy equipment, calls of greeting, and the bustle of settlement-rearing. The first scientists had arrived to raw wilderness, starry-eyed and impatient, almost three months ago; now there was a steady influx of men and machines. The latest transport had landed under floodlights a few minutes earlier, its feet settling on a stadium-sized pad of concrete with a clank that resounded through the jungle. Paths for pedestrian and vehicle traffic crisscrossed a broad swath of nearby forest, and the geodesic domes of living quarters and laboratories, mess halls and trading posts, glinted like brobdingnag beetles through the trees.

  Erisan Bay, they were calling this upstart new town and the famous ruins that resided nearby. Everybody seemed to agree that the alien builders weren’t native to this planet—they’d left far too little behind to be other than transitory visitors—but it was the Erisa system where they’d been found, and until more information came to light, “Erisan” was as good a label as any. They had built a city in the shelter of this cove, sliced a lookout plateau into the side of the cliff along the promontory, and then walked away. Nobody knew why or when or how—but with time and luck, they’d find out.

  In parallel with the archeology and anthropology at the ruins, a sizable delegation of scientists was studying real Erisans—the pufferbellies—with feverish intensity. The creatures had become somewhat elusive when radio broadcasts began sprouting like weeds all over the spectrum, and they had not taken kindly to skimmer fly-bys, but they were clearly intelligent, and meaningful two-way communication seemed achievable in the not-too-distant future.

  Rafa shifted his weight, stretched with sinuous strength, and then leaned back. His leg, temporarily free from the stiff strutwork lying in a heap beside him, itched and ached. He was walking again, thanks to modern medicine, but the limp and the scars would probably never fade completely.

  A quiet voice spoke in his ear, bringing a smile to his lips.

  “I thought I’d find you out here.”

  Rafa continued to face the steadily rolling waves, but his eyes closed in pleasure, and a certain tenseness left his eyes. Julie’s virtual visits made the loneliness bearable.

  “Guess I’m just a beach bum at heart.”

  Her laugh was musical. “I always suspected you were a bit sad to give up that job as a diver.”

  “Hmm. Coaching wasn’t so bad, once you got past the smell of the locker room.”

  “The dean called, you know. She says UCLA wants you back, once your quarantine’s up. If you’re interested, that is.”

  Rafa shook his head slowly. “Nah. They’ll do fine without me. Besides, a lame coach would just get the team’s pity, not their attention. I’d have to ride along behind them on a golf cart at every workout.”

  “I saw Dolores a couple nights ago.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She was a lot more lucid than normal. Grumbled about the tortillas and the salsa she gets whenever the rest home serves Mexican.”

  Rafa chuckled. “A Mamá siempre le gustaba el chile más bravo. And I have yet to eat a good store-bought tortilla.”

  “That’s about what she said. But her language was a bit more colorful. Good thing the girls don’t speak Spanish very well.” The amusement in Julie’s voice was unmistakable.

  “You took them along?”

  “Lauren insisted. She wanted to show Grandma how she’d learned to play checkers. It was fun to see them all together. I took a vid for you.”

  “Did she look healthy?”

  Julie hesitated. “Actually, the nurses say her heart’s getting worse. The pacemaker can only do so much. Their prognosis was pretty pessimistic.”

  Rafa nodded, a lump rising in his throat.

  “But she asked about you. Called you David. She wanted to know when you’d be coming back.”

  “Did you explain the quarantine?”

  “I didn’t have to. She knew there was a waiting period. She’s a mighty shrewd woman, Rafa. I think she knew all along what the trial was, what it meant for us. And to tell you the truth, I suspect the sort of ‘coming back’ she had in mind refers to the state of our marriage more than anything. She just wanted some reassurance that we’d be together when this was all over.”

  Rafa made no attempt to stop the tears that were trickling down his cheeks. “That’s one assurance I’m ready to give to anyone who’ll listen. Try and keep me quiet.”

  “Is this the tight-lipped man I married?” Julie teased.

  When Rafa didn’t respond, she positively giggled. “Okay, I spoke too soon. It’s still you: a real conversational spartan.”

  Rafa shrugged awkwardly. “Actually, I’m probably even worse now. It seems like I’ve been interviewed and debriefed and talked to and talked about until I’m ready to go cross-eyed.”

  “You never did like being the center of attention.�
��

  “It was finally starting to die down to where it was livable. Then news of the claim settlement broke, and I’ve hardly had a moment to myself.”

  MEEGO’s legal rights to the planet had been rescinded as soon as their intrigue came to light, and the government had stepped in as sole owner without even needing to invoke eminent domain. Then a friend of Rafa’s, a member of the law school faculty at UCLA, had contacted him with the bizarre suggestion that he file his own claim to Erisa Beta II.

  Vikings normally had no standing as potential property owners, since they were exploring for a paycheck. But in Rafa’s case, the employee contract was invalidated by documentable attempted murder. And he could show proof of independent occupancy—including meaningful exploration efforts—for the specified interval. The planet was his for the price of a paltry filing fee.

  Of course the government balked. They were exceedingly reluctant to yield deed on the most valuable piece of real estate ever cataloged. Just the fact that biology on Erisa Beta II was conducive to human habitation made the planet a gem; the Erisans and the pufferbellies made it priceless.

  If it had come down to a battle of technicalities, the government might have won the day, even with a rabid team of law school professors on Rafa’s side. But as was bound to happen, the sensational story of his claim burst onto global headlines and was tried in the court of public opinion. Almost before thunderstruck bureaucrats could stutter out a response, they realized that a fight had become political suicide. So they’d worked out a deal with Rafa: he got everything, everywhere on the planet, as long as it didn’t show traces of the Erisans; any alien handiwork went to the public. And the politicians had returned to their lairs, somewhat red of face, to scheme about property taxes.

  It made Rafa the greatest land baron in history. The ocean lapping at his toes, the vast stretches of jungle and forest and distant mountains beyond—even the asteroids that lived in captive orbit beyond the rings—all belonged to him, lock, stock, and barrel.

  But right now, it felt just as confining as the orbiting clean room where he would go to spend the last three months of quarantine. He opened his eyes to gaze at the shimmering salt water, and sighed noisily for Julie’s benefit. “Wealth and fame are only annoying, as far as I’m concerned.”