Viking (2 page)

With each intermittent flash of lightning, the robot relayed jumbled images, a chaos
of mud and stones and driving rain that loomed prominently in the center of the
panorama and sloped up and right to distant foothills. To the left, the vista evened
out to a grassy table before falling off into unbroken blackness.

“Where’s the module?”

“You’re lookin’ at it,” said the kid. “Dead center.” He nursed the lollipop, looking
amused.

“There’s nothing there but a huge pile of mud and rocks.”

“Look again.”

They studied the flashing screens intently. Was something glinting through the
mud?

“All the rain musta made the ground unstable. When we slammed down everything just
gave way, and half the hillside behind us slid. We’re lucky we weren’t buried alive or
crushed flat.”

“We
are
buried alive!” Whemper’s shout was nasal and whining. “We’ll never
dig out of this!” He opened his mouth to say more, but subsided in a paroxysm of
mucus-heavy coughs.

“We’re not buried,” said the kid. “We got the robot out, didn’t we?”

“That was ten minutes ago,” Whemper gasped. “More mud’s coming down all the time.”
He wiped some spittle on his sleeve and lifted his chin to ease the flow of air into
his lungs. Fear showed in the eyes of many of the crew members.

Rafa cut in. “There’s something. Eleven o’clock.”

They all stared at their viewscreens again.

An angle, too straight to be natural. The picture flickered and flashed. It was hard
to see, hard to be sure.

“Looks like the hydraulics on the cargo platform.” Heward’s voice was flat and
emotionless. “If that’s out, then for sure we’ve got an exit.”

Whemper scowled and spat. “We’re still in trouble. If mud can slide once, it can
slide again. The ground’s unstable, and we’ve gotta get out. Now.”

“What, just go charging out into the great unknown? You crazy? We don’t know what’s
out there! What about food? What about Bryzinski? You want to just leave him behind?”
Chen stood with her hands on shapely hips, contempt in every word.

Whemper opened his mouth to respond, but Heward beat him to it. “Chen, can it. You
too, Whemper.” He scanned their faces. “Remember what I said about panic?”

Whemper looked away and coughed again.

“Now let’s get on with it so we can decide what to do. What about the
computers?”

A tall black woman ran her fingers through close-cropped orange hair and sighed.
“Guess they’re built to take more punishment than I thought. They’re all up and
running. We’ll have normal communications as soon as we set up our booster
station.”

“Fine.” Heward nodded at the bodybuilder. “How about you, Bronx?”

The man’s eyes narrowed at the nickname, and he paused before responding. “Hull’s in
pretty bad shape. Sensors show metal stress in a hundred places. Some of the storage
compartments are smashed in, probably a total loss of whatever’s there. Power’s on
everywhere. We had a small electrical fire in one corridor. It’s out now. And the
head’s unusable.”

Chen looked confused.

“The bathroom,” Rafa interpreted. “It’s upside down like everything else.”

“Gee, thanks,
Daddy
,” Whemper said. “You gonna help the little girl go
potty?” Some of the crew snickered.

“How about the equipment hold?” Heward said.

“Got some water and mud leaking through. The hatch is jammed, so we couldn’t get in
to take a close look. Had to use cameras. Most of the machinery there was bolted down.
It might still work, if we can get it off the ceiling in one piece. But it’ll take a
while to get anything set up. Things looked pretty jumbled.”

They digested the news in silence. Some of their supplies were gone. Maybe the
vehicles, too.

“Okay. At least we know where we stand.” Heward was in command again, businesslike
and brisk. “We’re in lousy shape, but it could be worse. Now we need an action plan.
The first priority is to set up the satellite dish and get in radio contact.”

“Give me a break!” snarled one man. “Why should we care what Earth has to say?
They’re the ones that dropped us in this weather and started the mud slide! Why bother
linking up at all, ever?”

“Let’s at least get out of this coffin before we waste our time on them,” added
Whemper.

“Miss the fresh air, Wheezer?” said the bodybuilder.

Whemper spat, then scrabbled backward as the big man lunged across the room, grabbed
him by the throat, and clamped his fingers beneath Whemper’s half-shaved jaw.

“You trying to share your little disease with the rest of us, scab-breath? Is that
it?” He shook the smaller man roughly. “I asked you a question!”

Whemper’s tongue was lolling and a strangled gargle escaped from his lips. He clawed
at the massive arms.

“You know why they put me away, don’t you? I broke a man’s neck in a barroom brawl.
Just snapped it in two.” The bodybuilder grabbed Whemper’s hair and jerked his head
back until he was facing the ceiling. “Just snapped it in two, Whemper.”

“But you’re not going to do that now, are you, Bronx?” Heward had the laser pistol
leveled at him.

The big man twisted around, still holding Whemper. In the sudden silence, the hoarse
delirium of one of the injured and cocooned vikings sounded strangely loud.

“I’m thinking about it.”

“And I’m telling you to think again. Unless you’ve got a death wish, you’ll play
your little ego games on your own time, not when you’re on my crew.”

The two men glared at each other. Whemper’s struggles were getting fainter. His face
was a ghastly bluish gray.

Finally the bodybuilder flung his victim away. Whemper spun half-conscious into the
bulkhead and sank to his knees, gasping raggedly for breath and clutching his throat.
Nobody moved to his assistance.

“The name’s Fazio, not Bronx,” sneered the big man. “But today I’m feeling generous.
Lucky for Whemper. Lucky for you.”

Heward gave him no time to react. His fist flashed out in a blur and crushed the
man’s voice box. An instant later, Heward’s knee caught him squarely in the groin with
enough force to lift him off the ground. Then a swiftly descending elbow hammered down
on his shoulder, and he collapsed.

Heward wasn’t even winded.

He smiled grimly at them as he walked over to pick up his gun. “There’s a reason why
I’m in command, you know. It’s because I’m meaner and smarter and stronger and faster
than the rest of you. If you ever begin to doubt that, I’ll be happy to set you
straight. Or you can ask Bronx or Fatso or whatever his name is.”

He jerked a thumb at Chen, who knelt with her medikit. Fazio wasn’t breathing right.
Rafa turned away as Chen swabbed his throat and selected a scalpel.

Julie Sterlyn Orosco was struggling with only marginal success to give her daughters
a bath.

The idea had seemed sensible enough. The twins had been romping in the hayloft for
hours, while Grandpa made half-hearted attempts to monitor their mischief. When they
finally traipsed through the rain and into the kitchen, sneezing, dripping, and laced
with the warm organic odor of the barn, her maternal instincts had led her directly to
the tub.

But in true child spirit, the girls weren’t ready for play time to end. Lauren,
normally the quieter of the twins, had promptly ducked her blonde ponytail into the
water and begun to shake it back and forth.

“Look, Mommy, I’m just like Dolly.” Droplets of water flew in every direction. Kyrie
shrieked with delight and began scooping handfuls of bubble bath, which she lobbed
despite high-pitched objections. Soon all three were laughing and splashing, and
Julie’s jeans and sweatshirt were soaked.

“I might as well have jumped in with you two,” said Julie, pressing chin-length hair
back from her eyes and puffing at the suds dripping from her eyebrows. She pushed up
her sleeves and reached for a towel. “Okay, Kyrie, you first.”

Kyrie plopped out and stood shivering while her mother circled the towel and tucked
it in. Then she ducked her chin so her hair could be rubbed and turbaned. In a minute
Lauren was also out, and the two girls were chattering up the stairs to find pajamas.
Lightning flickered through the window glass.

Julie surveyed the sodden bathroom with a sigh. She loved her daughters, loved to
mother them. These bouts of silliness had become a sort of tradition between them. She
straightened the shower curtain and replaced the soap and shampoo, not wanting to admit
how often she found such moments draining. Rafa used to be chief giggle-generator.

Slowly Julie stood, turned off the bathroom light, and pulled the door shut. Rafa.
Her almost-ex-husband. She could see his face sometimes in the wide brown-eyed gaze of
the twins, in their mannerisms. Every so often she would still roll over in the night
expecting to find him there, breathing quietly next to her. When she felt the emptiness
she could only clutch his pillow and cry softly so the twins wouldn’t hear her.

* * *

She had been standing at the kitchen sink, shucking corn, when Rafa came home from
the murder. The twins were toying with one diminutive cob boiling on the stove—their
“Rubber Duckie,” they said—as she heard the front door shut and called out a hello.

In a moment she felt him slip an arm around her waist and nuzzle her softly behind
the ear.

“You smell like a locker room,” she laughed. “How was the meet? Did all the extra
workouts with what’s-his-name pay off?”

Rafa lifted some corn silk out of her hair and kissed her again, on the nape of the
neck this time. Lauren and Kyrie, accustomed to Daddy’s romantic interest in their
mother, hooted in appreciation. But somehow the lingering touch triggered a premonition
of trouble. Julie swiveled, felt his arms tremble, and studied his face. It looked
pinched, withdrawn.

His finger touched her lips before she could voice her question.

“Saw something sad on the way home. I’ll tell you about it later.”

Partly reassured, she nodded as he turned to climb slowly up the stairs. When she
followed soon after, she found Rafa at the side of the bed, head bowed in prayer.

In the early days of their marriage her husband’s religious feelings had been a
surprise. Despite a thorough Lutheran upbringing, Julie’s beliefs had never felt
particularly compelling to her, while Rafa approached day-to-day life in a manner that
made words like “faith” and “providence” seem as natural as breathing.

She grew to appreciate the structure and stability that Rafa’s habits brought to
their lives, even if she didn’t always share his perspective. And she was pleased to
observe the twins acquiring a faith of their own, drawing on their father’s
example.

At the moment, however, the sight of Rafa intent on communication with a higher
power was somewhat unnerving. Just how bad could things be? She knelt and rubbed her
palms across his rigid shoulders and waited to find out.

* * *

Her mother looked up from arranging silk daisies and dried lavender as Julie
collapsed into an easy chair with a sigh.

“Are they in bed?”

“Not yet. They still have to brush their teeth. And they’ll probably want a story.”
She could hear the exhaustion in her voice.

A thump vibrated the ceiling.

“What are you girls up to?”

“Mommy, Kyrie’s jumping off the bed again!”

Her dad put down the paper with a heroic sigh. “I’ll go read something to them.” He
scooped up a pile of children’s books and winked at Julie as he disappeared through the
doorway.

Julie breathed a sigh of relief.

“You two have been great. The girls are loving this visit. I hope we aren’t driving
you crazy.”

“Of course not.” Her mother stepped back to assess her handiwork. “We haven’t seen
enough of you for ages. First college kept you away, then the Peace Corps. Then you
moved to California.”

Julie felt a familiar twinge at the disapproval in her mother’s voice. They had
never seen eye to eye on Julie’s decision to marry Rafa and settle half a continent
away; the rest of her siblings were all conveniently clustered within an hour’s drive
of the old family farm in Wisconsin.

Her mother had never said much about her feelings, though. She’d even gone out of
her way to get to know Rafa.

Until the arrest.

The police had showed up on the doorstep with a warrant, and Julie’s world had
crumbled. Suddenly Rafa was unwilling to repeat the story he’d told her the night
before, about finding a body moments after a fatal shooting. They had handcuffed him in
front of two panicked little girls who were crying for their Daddy, opened the door and
walked him right out of their life.

Julie cleared her throat. “Lauren found the rope swing in the loft. I thought you
took that thing down years ago.”

“Your father wouldn’t let me. Jamie and Christian spend hours on it when they come.
I wish they wouldn’t. It’s an accident waiting to happen.”

“Of course it is. That’s the only kind of play kids are interested in.”

Julie’s mother laughed in agreement.

The conversation lapsed. Julie gradually felt her weariness melt into a foggy
drowse. She was nearly asleep when she realized her mother had asked about something.
The zoo on Friday?

Julie yawned while her brain re-engaged. “I don’t know. We might not even do it.
Sandra was thinking about going along, but it turns out she’s got to pick up Jamie from
a campout. Maybe we’ll go next week instead.”

“I can watch the girls here, then. You could use a little time to yourself. Might
help you finish up that paperwork if you didn’t have Lauren and Kyrie to worry about
for an afternoon.”

Julie exhaled slowly. “Maybe.” She couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice.
Sometimes her mother couldn’t leave well enough alone.

Lydia’s head came up from behind the flower arrangement. “Having second thoughts
again?”

When Julie said nothing, her mother came around the counter and took a seat on the
sofa. She leaned forward.