Viking (19 page)

“Like I said, I’ve interacted with vikings for a long time. I’ve listened to them
whine and wheedle and wallow in self-pity. I’ve seen cowardice and treachery and lust
and greed for so long that any other side of human nature seems foreign to me. A few
times I’ve felt sorry for a viking who was particularly wretched, but it’s always been
easy to dismiss that feeling after a peek at their background files.

“Until Rafa. I looked up his history, read the whole dossier. I’m sure you’ve got
your own perspective, but I’ll tell you right now I don’t believe it. If Rafa were a
selfish, cold-blooded killer, he would have gone to bed that night without a second
thought. Almost anybody would have. But so help me, Rafa is not most people.”

Julie gulped silently in an attempt to still the tremble at her chin and wiped away
the tears that were now streaming freely. “No,” she whispered softly, “he’s not.”

It was nice to hear somebody else agree with her.

1291 was blue with impatience. She’d first heard the strange language of the
speaking earthbound a couple days ago. When the pod headed out to sea instead of
investigating, she’d expected to return shortly, and so she’d been reasonably content
to follow. In the meantime she’d listened carefully, and caught snatches of the
broadcast on several occasions, but the confused babble of thousands of voices from the
pod made it difficult to distinguish.

As they dawdled in their watery cradles, 1291 became increasingly restless. She
wanted answers. So when the lowest primes finally puffed skyward, sated with fish and
sunshine, 1291 ballooned into a rapid current at 15000 meters and raced back to the
veldt before her elders could object.

As she traveled the chatter became more distinct. It squeaked along at frequencies
near the top of her audible range and used tones that were jarringly discordant—but it
was clearly speech instead of static.

Now she was within a couple minutes of the odd creature. She could see it by radar,
moving in the jerky, disjointed fashion of all earthbounds. It was near some other
animals that appeared quite similar in size and shape. And they were also noisy, though
they seemed capable of nothing more than monotonous squeals on quite a different
wavelength—not the sort of thing she would normally tune in.

Perhaps the talker was babbling in an effort to teach its companions. Or maybe it
was calling to the siren in The Cold. Maybe the siren couldn’t hear very well over its
own incoherent wails... Should she repeat this strange speech a little louder, so the
siren could respond?

She compressed her gas sacs and dropped out of the fast-moving air, noting with
delight that some small crunchy earthbounds were also nearby. 1291 had never been a fan
of soft, slippery sea fare—if she camouflaged carefully and had a little luck, perhaps
she could grab a meal before the crunchies saw her.

Despite Chen’s repeated stumbles, it was Abbott who gave out first. One minute he
was reeling drunkenly along, a crust of dried spittle around his lips; the next he had
crumbled to the dusty grasses without a word.

Rafa slumped to a halt and turned just in time to catch Chen, who careened blindly
into him and buckled at the knees.

He staggered back, regained his balance, and hauled at the sides of her
sweat-streaked biosuit to put her on her feet again. If she could run even a hundred
meters, perhaps the crabbies would let her go while they feasted on Rafa and
Abbott.

Chen just sagged to the ground and closed her eyes, her sides heaving desperately
for oxygen.

And then the crabbies struck.

A wave of anger swept through Rafa as he drew his knife. He’d battled despair in
every thought, every emotion since his arrest. He’d told himself it couldn’t get any
worse. But fortune seemed determined to prove him wrong.

Well, this time his enemy was not faceless, impersonal injustice, not cold exile or
harsh decree. It had blood and tissue and presumably a beating heart, somewhere under
those bony plates—and he intended to get his pound of flesh before he was through. A
scream tore from his throat and ripped the prairie.

Half a dozen crabbies pounded into his chest and torso in unison, their jutting legs
stiffening for the impact like daggers. Individually the animals were not especially
heavy, but even before they hit he knew his tired legs wouldn’t hold. So he
somersaulted backward, minimizing the effect of the blows and letting the creatures’
momentum flip his shoulders onto and off the turf again. As he rotated he stabbed
viciously with the knife, the point skittering across chitinous shell until it found
joints in the armor that gave reluctantly like under-ripe pumpkin.

In a second he was on his feet again, relatively uninjured, two crabbies clinging
spider-like to his shoulders. He shook them off with a snarl. Pinches burned on his
calves and thighs as the crabbies dodged his slashes and sawed through the biosuit.

Soon they had noosed into a shoulder-high swarm that leapt at his unprotected face
and neck, rebuffed only by a blur of arms and blade. Injured and dying crabbies flopped
dazedly, their ruptured exoskeletons oozing fluid like egg yolk before disappearing
under frenzies of cannibalistic opportunists. Underfoot, his boots crunched and smeared
and mangled in the struggle to stay erect.

A claw penetrated Rafa’s guard and nicked his throat. A burning gash opened on the
back of his neck. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a seething mound where Chen and
Abbott lay.

Then a shadow fell, and something cracked like a whip past his ear. Between blows
with the knife, Rafa had a brief glimpse of snakelike tentacles curling around crabbies
and flicking them skyward.

More strikes hurtled down—dozens of tentacles moving too fast for the eye to follow.
Chen’s hips and shoulders reappeared.

The surging tide began to thin as rapidly as it had arrived. Rafa ripped a crabby
off his chest by one prickly sandpaper leg and sank to his knees. Now he could see
Abbott’s boots and one bloody brown hand curled slightly in the dust.

He looked up.

The sky was blotted out by a bloated blue medusa. As he watched, several tentacles
lifted with crabbies jerking helplessly at their tips, and disappeared in a cone of
pulsing mandibles at the center of the pufferbelly.

There was a gratifying munch as the tentacles came out empty.

Rafa wobbled over to his fallen companions, kicking at the remaining crabbies that
were hungry and foolish enough to brave the aerial attack. One came away from Abbott
with scraps of ear dangling from a reddened claw and promptly took to its heels. It
hadn’t gone five meters before it disappeared with another lightning strike from
above.

Wearily Rafa tugged at Abbott’s outstretched arms. The pufferbelly was certainly
saving their lives, and he seriously doubted the surviving crabbies—if there were
any—would be back. At least not while there was danger from above. But now he had to
get his comrades away before the monster was ready for a second course.

Abbott looked like he’d had an encounter with a homicidal pack of scissors. His suit
was in tatters and he was bleeding from gashes and cuts in a hundred places. But he was
breathing, and his head looked intact. At least he’d been lying face-down.

Chen was in better condition. She’d collapsed into the fetal position, leaving only
the tough layers of biosuit across her back exposed. The crabbies had flayed, scraped,
torn—but failed to do serious damage in the aborted feast. Her eyelids fluttered as
Rafa dragged her into a stand of tall grass and let her flop beside Abbott.

It wasn’t much of a blind, but it was all he could manage.

Rafa crouched and studied the pufferbelly through perpendicular green. It was
drifting away to the northeast, snapping up stragglers, the broad ribbed membrane
around its circumference fanning in silent rhythm.

“What happened?” Chen croaked.

“Shhh.” Rafa motioned her down and pointed.

Chen leaned back against Abbott and closed her eyes. “Not safe here.”

“It’s not after us. At least for now.”

“The crabbies.”

“They’re busy saving their own skins.”

Chen became conscious of the form behind her. She rolled to her knees with a groan
and placed dirty fingers along the artery at Abbott’s throat.

Rafa looked a question.

“Still going strong,” Chen said, her voice sounding a bit more alive. “Looks pretty
torn up, but I’d guess the main danger is infection.”

They lapsed into a silence punctuated by occasional dry coughs from Abbott and the
hoarseness of their breathing. Rafa had used his broken arm as a bludgeon in the
battle, adrenaline masking the pain. Now it throbbed in excruciating reproach.

Chen’s water bottle had somehow survived the attack. They drank greedily, their
thirst sweetening the mildewed taste.

A gust of wind rustled the meager camouflage, giving Rafa a peek at the pufferbelly.
It was now floating toward them, its tentacles retracted and motionless.

So much for distractions.

“Think you can stand?”

“Not a chance.” Chen was stretching out again, her eyes closed.

“We’re about to have company.”

“Then again, maybe I was wrong.” Chen swayed unsteadily to her feet, clutching
Rafa’s arm for support. When she let go, Rafa bent over and lifted Abbott’s body onto
his shoulders. His knees nearly gave out, but he forced legs to straighten by sheer
will, the veins popping out on his forehead like an Olympic weightlifter.

They headed toward a small stand of trees—barely more than bushes, actually—that
seemed infinitely far but was probably only a couple hundred meters to the west. It
required every ounce of stamina and determination for Rafa to go the distance. Twice he
stumbled and nearly dropped his burden. He didn’t have the energy to look back; every
step he expected a fleshy feeler to circle his waist.

The low-ceilinged shade enfolded them a few seconds before the pufferbelly arrived.
It reached through the greenery, its now-wine-colored tentacles curling with eerie ken
toward the spot where they crouched.

Rafa drew his knife again.

But the battle never began. Just as Rafa was steeling himself, the tentacles pulled
back through the branches, leaving the vikings wide-eyed and panting with relief.

* * *

They huddled around a small fire, their shoulders rounded to the velvet night, their
faces animated by leaping hues of gold and scarlet. Smoke from alien branches rose in a
noxious cloud through the leafy ceiling and up to a swath of unfamiliar stars.

Abbott had revived at sunset, while Chen was applying butterfly bandages to his
lacerations.

They fed him a triple dose of pain relievers and broad spectrum antibiotics and
divvied up what was left of the water. And they tried not to dwell on the dangers that
descending darkness might bring.

Dinner consisted of a ration bar broken into three tiny portions, plus a few vitamin
capsules. Rafa’s hip pouch had been shredded by the crabbies, its contents strewn into
the savannah; that left a handful of bars from Chen and Abbott to sustain them until
they reached the module.

The GPS showed that the vikings were scarcely four kilometers closer to their goal
than they had been in the morning. The crabbies had indeed bent their headlong
flight.

Rafa had foregone painkillers in view of their short supply and Abbott’s injuries.
His own lacerations were unpleasant but tolerable, but the broken arm screamed in
protest with every knife stroke on the tip of his makeshift spear. He grimaced.

Chen observed his steady whittling without expression. “Think it’ll do any good?”
she asked softly.

“What?”

“Your spear.”

Rafa looked at her across the flames.

“Can’t hurt.”

Abbott stopped humming
Amazing Grace
and shook his head. “Easier to let ‘em
get us. Put us out of our misery.”

Rafa kept whittling.

Finally Chen stood up and walked stiffly behind Rafa’s back to the edge of the
flickering light. There was the muted sound of a zipper and a rustling of leaves.

When she returned, she sank to her knees next to Rafa and spread her hands to the
warmth.

“You’re a runner, aren’t you?”

Rafa nodded. “Coached at UCLA.”

“You could have left us today.”

“Maybe.”

“You could have.”

“Believe me, that run was no picnic.”

Chen shook her head insistently. “You stopped because we did.”

Rafa stared straight ahead at the glowing coals.

When she saw that he didn’t intend to respond, Chen cleared her throat. “Anyway,
thank you. I used to think you were a first-class jerk.” Her voice sounded shaky.

Rafa nodded, still not meeting her gaze.

Abbott stirred awkwardly in the silence, the mahogany tint of his face and hands
contrasting starkly with the white bandages. “Still can’t believe we’re alive. It’s a
miracle.”

Rafa stabbed the glowing ashes with his spear point. “I’m not sure I believe in
miracles anymore.”

Chen looked at him curiously. “Why? What have you got against God? You’re the one
who’s always praying.”

“Let’s just say life hasn’t been kind to me.”

“Now there we’ve got something in common.”

Abbot spoke in a tired gasp without opening his eyes. “All of us.”

There was a pregnant pause.

“Okay, I’ll bite,” said Chen. “Let’s have a pity party. You go first.”

Abbott smiled thinly. “You want the short, dramatic version?”

“No need to abridge. We’re a captive audience.”

“Well, either way, it’s not much of a story. My family moved to Denver from Jamaica
when I was a kid. I grew up on the streets in the worst part of the city. Made it
through high school. Barely. Dad got killed by a drunk driver, and I had to work nights
to support my mom and my little sisters. Couldn’t do it. So I started dealing crack,
heroin, and ecstasy. Pays better than fast food, you know.”