Viator

by Lucius Shepard

  The weather dirtied up, cluttered gray skies, snow flurries driven by offshore winds, dazzling explosions of light, like huge photic rips in the landscape, no more than fifteen or twenty yards ahead of the prow, and the din of metal under stress grew so articulated, Wilander could imagine the precise injuries being done, the iron plates gouged, dimpling, tearing. Wind howled about the ship; fir trees dumped loads of old snow onto the decks, and snow blew across the shingle, building drifts against the boulders. At night they would go into the mess for an hour or so and during that time Aralyn would run outside, probably to do her business—he hadn’t attempted to instruct her on the use of the toilet—while he leafed through his maps, adding a detail or two, wondering if they were accurate, and after she returned, they would return to the cabin. Lunde called on Friday morning to hear his report (Wilander having failed to call) and, recognizing the number on his caller ID, not wanting to talk, Wilander switched off the phone and left it off. If they were leaving the Alaskan Coast, and he could no longer harbor any reasonable doubt that they were, he did not wish to spend his last minutes on earth supplying Lunde with a blow-by-blow account of the passage, committed to routine like an astronaut. He sat brooding on his bunk, despairing of himself for having traded in a decent life with Arlene for a trip to nowhere with this womanly animal, who was playing with a candy wrapper on the floor. A pretty animal, an animal who appeared to be naturally housebroken, a relatively intelligent animal, yet not a terrific conversationalist. She had forgotten Tom, but every so often she would smile, a smile whose seductive quality was neutralized by the vacancy in her eyes, and say, Food. They had only engaged in sex the once, but that night Wilander, who had reminisced about Arlene much of the day, tormenting himself with the idea of abandoning Viator, knowing he would never do it, came to feel so desolate that he could no longer psychically afford to give weight to the question of whether or not he was debasing himself—he wanted to lose track, to forget Viator, forget Halmus, Arnsparger, Nygaard, Mortensen, to forget Arlene, and he beckoned to Aralyn and patted the blanket beside him. Either she did not understand or she chose not to comply.

  —Come here, he said, patting the blanket harder.

  Squatting on the floor, her bare arms and legs sticking out from what could have passed for a ratty shawl and a vest of dirty blond hair, she looked like a feral child, and, though he realized she could alter her expression by a shade and then seem much less the savage innocent, that didn’t soften the comprehension of what he was doing, and he felt a distant displeasure, angry that she was forcing him to control her. He shouted, slapped the blankets, and that confused her. At length he dragged her onto the bunk beside him and showed her how a zipper worked—not that she would retain the information—and pushed her head down, hoping that she knew what came next. She did. Clever girl. But as he lay back, shutting his eyes, he saw the photograph that was about to be mounted in his permanent scrapbook, the shot that would fix for all time the image of derelict ex-human living in the shell of a wrecked ship with other derelicts and getting sex from a creature who was a pedophile’s wet dream and had less than a room temperature IQ, a photograph so vivid, he could smell his own decaying spirit, the soul rotting in the rotten flesh, and he went limp, shoved her to the end of the bunk, where she sat a moment bewildered, spittle on her lips, then tried to crawl up beside him, and he shoved her back again, cursed at her until she scooted down onto the floor, huddling in a corner by the sink, staring fearfully at him. Tears started from Wilander’s eyes and he understood that the emotional sponsor of those tears was neither regret nor loss, but a febrile self-pity based on a knowledge of what he was becoming. That daydream of his, playing Moses to the whistlers’ Israelites, he envisioned it differently now; he pictured himself reclining on a mattress of boughs, surrounded by whistler women, using them whenever the mood struck, eating the berries and meat they brought him, the lord of a flyblown forest kingdom, purveyor of a petty colonialism, his hair lengthening to a moss-like robe from which his penis would occasionally protrude; growing older and weaker until he could do nothing more than digest a few berries and wait in dread for the whistlers, gone past innocence under his tutelage, to kill him with their teeth or the flint knives he’d taught them to make so they could be more efficient in the hunt. He flicked off the light and turned onto his side, facing the walls, wishing the world would hurry up and end. He thought he had been another kind of man once, basically good, not perfect, but he couldn’t remember how it had felt. The wind gnawed at the iron bones of the ship, its harsh voice falling silent for an instant as if it were choking, having to dislodge a fragment from its throat, maybe a chunk of chian or shaumere, and then began to feast again.

  Ten

  “…what about Mortensen…”

  He woke to the absence of wind, of all sound, the port enclosing a circle of pewter morning light, and, sitting up, rubbing his eyes, he registered the absence of Aralyn. The cabin door stood ajar. He felt a pang in his chest, knowing that he had frightened her away, but immediately thereafter felt relieved and hoped she had gone. He splashed water on his face, changed into fresh underwear, a clean shirt, a little worried that there was no sound, no groaning metal—not that the sound was continuous, it was intermittent, Viator forging ahead, then storing up more energy, forging ahead again, shattering the barrier in stages, but lately, more often than not, he woke to the groaning and he worried that Viator might have run out of energy, that they would be stuck and how much would that suck?, fuck, fuck, fuck…He straightened out his thoughts from the skid they’d been in and saluted his image in the mirror, Bon soir, mon capitan!, and went briskly along the passageway to the mess. Which was a mess, coincidentally. His maps strewn about the floor and the outer door wide open, doubtless left so by Aralyn in her haste, letting in the wind. He bent a knee, prepared to start picking them up, but an animal chill touched the back of his neck and he straightened, suspecting that something was wrong. He stepped out onto the deck. The air was warmer, the icicles were beading at their tips, the snow underfoot was mushy, melting, and it was difficult to read the tracks, but there looked to be two sets of footprints leading to the stern. A soft grunting came to his ears. Perhaps some other animal wandered away from the Iron Shore. Wilander grew cautious in his approach, edging along the bulkhead. The grunting stopped. He paused, listening, and when it did not resume, he eased forward again, more of the stern coming into view, more yet, still more, and finally he spotted a gray-haired man standing facing the aft rail some thirty feet away, buckling his belt. Nygaard? Aralyn was there as well, creeping away along the rail until Nygaard barked at her, slapped her, raised his hand, threatening another slap, and she cowered. Wilander took in her chastened attitude and Nygaard’s masterful pose. He gave a cry, a feeble thing, it sounded as if he’d been shot in the lung, and charged, tripped, went sprawling on the icy deck. Aralyn broke for the starboard, passing from view, and Nygaard made a scuttling run forward, his face registering a comical degree of panic; then he retreated and flung himself over the rail.

  By the time Wilander regained his feet and staggered to the rail, Nygaard was down the rope and off into the forest. After the briefest of hesitations, he followed, furious at the little man for his transgression, for having befouled his woman, and he debated the truth of that as he went; he wondered if Nygaard might only be convicted of abusing a pet, but no, Wilander thought, catching sight of him heading over a rise (there you are, weaselly little shit), then passing out of sight…No, these were frontier circumstances, frontier laws must therefore apply. They hung horsethieves, sheepstealers, why not whistler-fuckers? He envisioned himself calling Nygaard to judgment—Nygaard would back away, stumble in the snow, put out his hands in defense, say something pitiable, and Wilander, looming above him, would say, I pronounce…I pronounce…Well, he would say something appropriate, something that would terrify Nygaard, that by its grandeur would infect him with dread, and then he would be on him with his fists flying, with kicks, goal-sc
oring kicks, delving in under the ribs, digging out his bones. As he floundered up the rise behind which Nygaard had vanished, a burst of light and noise, there came a shrieking and an accompanying flare of brightness that held and held, and he sank to his knees in the snow, stoppering his ears and squeezing his eyes shut. After an interminable time, the sound and light abated. He struggled to his feet and trudged to the top of the rise. Nygaard’s trail gave out in a patch of disturbed snow. Another burst of light and noise, farther away, off to his right, caused Wilander to grit his teeth. With Viator so near to leaving, the forest was full of stress points and Nygaard must have stumbled directly into one. He would have to be very careful; he did not want to pass through the barrier without the ship. Without her iron keel, the great stress-bearer to surround him, he had little chance of survival. Yet Aralyn, the qwazil and the wiccara, they had slipped through safely. He struggled with the idea, considering the notion of two-way travel, pro-and-conning, trying out the idea that passage one way was easier than passage the other, and, giving it up as too problematic, he began hiking back to the ship. It was tough going in the snow, the air turning to ice in his lungs, and as he paused to catch his breath, he was transfixed by the sight of Viator. The overcast had deepened, big snowflakes swirling down, and the ship, trapped between the two confining hills, looked to be straining forward, shouldering its burden of ice and snow, battered and indefatigable, every splotch, every dent, every evidence of its long labor, visible in that neutral light. He felt a unity with her, a shared principle, an inelegant workers’ purpose; they persevered, they hung in, they did their job. Tears came to his eyes on seeing his sister so resolute and undaunted. He glanced heavenward, less an emotional response than an involuntary attempt to clear his airway, and there, making a great soundless sweep across the lower sky was the creature of his dreams, the ropy wormlike thing, thrillingly vast, skimming the fir tops, clear for a split-second, a mile of gristle given definition by a central nub, leaving stillness in its wake. Wilander did not know what to do, dismasted by the sight. The firs had not bent beneath it, he had felt no great wind, so perhaps he had not seen it, perhaps he had fallen asleep in the snow and was dreaming. But the passage of the creature seemed a statement of finality. There was nothing left to do or say. He waited to be gathered, to wink out of existence, for some momentous event to occur. When it became clear that he was not to be taken, that this was not his time, only then did he collect the litter of self, the human stupidities, cram them back into his head, abandoning what would not fit, and went stumping through the snow toward Viator, not a thought in his head apart from that passage, that godlike passage, replaying it until the dark brown shadow it had cast became a dark brown cast of mind.

  * * *

  From the shingle, Viator’s hull was a brutish thing, black and blunt and patchy with ice, given a strangely delicate accent by the two crumpled screws with their defining crusts of snow, like two sugar flowers popping out from the belly of an unsodded grave; and there was an odd thing, as well, on the shore, a length of seaweed, iron in color, bulky, roughly man-sized, uncovered by the snow. Wilander’s path led away from it, but he let his feet stray him near and found that it was not seaweed as it had appeared, but rust; a man made of rust. On peering closer, he recognized that man to be Arnsparger. Fright drove him back a step. He had a second look. The body was fully clothed, the clothes cunningly fashioned of rust; arranged lying on its stomach, its arms held close, face to the side, gaping—it might have fallen from the stern. Arnsparger must have put it there to be found, a grisly piece of art, but artful nonetheless. Wilander knelt by the body. The detail was exquisite. All of ozim. Here was Arnsparger’s pen protruding from his trouser pocket; here the bulge of his wallet, the buttons on his shirt collar. He had not believed him capable of such. Beery, bluff Arnsparger, born in tavern light to a crowbar and keg of beer…he had done this? This miracle? How had he managed to fix the surface? Or did he, like the purest of artists, intend his work to be sacrificed, victimized by wind and weather? Wilander positioned his finger over Arnsparger’s jowly, stupefied face, then thought, no, not the face, he wouldn’t be the one to spoil the face, and, choosing an area near the belt, where the damage would not be so noticeable, he pushed in his finger. To his dismay, it went in easily. Ah, well. He withdrew it. Sheathed in rust, tipped in blood. He stared. Delicate flakes of red and black coated the finger from the knuckle to the first joint, giving way to glistening red. The fact of it sank in, as did the fact of a red leakage from the hole he had made. Something inside the figure settled, some imbalance registered, and its cheek caved in, rust leaked from an eyesocket. He jumped up and ran, nearly running up the rope, a mad scramble, flung himself over the rail, and made for the cabins, calling to Mortensen, to Halmus, wanting to alert them to a danger, but what was the danger? You couldn’t yell, Arnsparger’s turned into rust! and expect the same reaction you got by yelling, Fire! You would leave yourself open to ridicule, and rightly so. Mortensen wasn’t in his cabin; he must be down in the hold and he could rot there, because Wilander wasn’t poking his nose in the hold, no sir, not on his life, and he burst into Halmus’ cabin, noticing the glass had been knocked out of the port just as his feet skidded out from under him—he squawked, flailed, slammed down, knocking the back of his head painfully, not losing consciousness, squeezing his eyes against the pain. After the pain subsided he saw that the port glass was littering the floor and one of the crumbs, a chunk the size of a marble, held part of a brown eye. He thought it was reflecting his eye until he remembered his eyes were blue. Groggily, he sat up, bracing against the bottom of Halmus’ bunk. Turned the piece over in his hand. It showed the same from every angle, as if the eye were turning with it, interested in him. Wilander was too exhausted to register much of a reaction. Another chunk held the corner of a sneering mouth, and another a section of neatly trimmed beard. He had gone a ways toward assembling Halmus’ face before deciding he did not want to see the expression he had worn at the moment of death. Scattering the death mask on the floor, crunching the pieces underfoot, he walked along the passageway to his cabin and lay down on his bunk. Something dug into his back. The cell phone. He switched the thing on. Lots of messages, but he didn’t have a lot to say, just he wished this trip was over, Sayonara, and like that. He was tired, too full of angles for which there were no…The thought tailed off, uncompleted. He couldn’t count, he couldn’t think. His phone rang. Watching the little dingus vibrating on his chest made for a fun few seconds, but soon grew tiresome. It stopped. Seconds later it rang again. He picked it up, said, Hello.

  —Thomas? I’ve been trying to reach you. Where’ve you been?

  Around the world and back again.

  —Hey…Arlene! He was genuinely happy to hear her voice.

  —Listen, she said. That friend of mine, the hacker? I sent him what you told me…

  —How are you? Are you okay?

  —Thomas! You have to get off the ship! There’s a chance…

  —I’ve really missed you.

  She spoke to someone, her conversation muted, then said, The Fat Allie out of Mayorkiq. You remember? The fishing boat that Lunde told you about. There is no Mayorkiq, not anymore. The…

  —Do you miss me?

  —Yes. Yes, I miss you. The people in Mayorkiq, they went crazy, they all died except for two or three. They sent a…

  —I love you.

  That gave her pause, but then not for long. A science team went in and found these crates, she said. Nobody knew where they came from…

  —Arlene?

  —It’s obvious now they came from Viator. They contained an engineered virus.

  —I want to fuck you, he said gleefully.

  —This is serious, Thomas! That thing you’re always drawing? That thing in your dreams? That’s it!

  —The…what?

  —The virus! That thing you’ve been dreaming about. There’s a picture of it the web page he sent me. The crates must have cracked open. You’v
e got to get off the ship! We’re on our way out, Terry and me…

  Sternly, he said, I thought we’d settled that.

  —What?

  —I’m not leaving.