Viking (22 page)

“You had no right, you know.”

“What are you talking about? No right to what?”

“To shut her out like that. She deserved the truth.”

“So I just spill the beans and she gets to duck for cover every time a stranger
comes to the door? Living in fear is no kind of life.”

“She took you for richer and poorer and all the rest of it.”

“I couldn’t bear to scare her to death. That’s no kind of way to love somebody.”

“The truth is the only way to love somebody, Rafa.” Chen sighed and looked up at the
stars. “Believe me, I’ve had plenty of time to ponder this one. Prostitution’s nothing
more than two people lying to each other and one lying to himself. There’s no love in
it anywhere.”

“Putting someone through torture isn’t love, either.”

“Love is giving somebody your naked self and letting them make their own decisions.
Sometimes they hurt you and you keep on caring. Sometimes they hurt themselves.” Her
voice broke.

“I guess I can’t blame her. I would have convicted me if I’d been on the jury. What
could Julie do? What’s the point of being a prison widow when I was going to die behind
bars and she had her whole life ahead of her?”

Chen shook her head, started to say something, thought the better of it. Finally she
ran feather-light fingers up his arm, across his shoulders, and behind his neck. Her
touch firmed to a soft tug. “A man shouldn’t have to die lonely.” She looked him in the
eye, her head inclined with meaning.

Rafa’s face was a study in motionless stone and shadow.

When he spoke again his voice was thin and quiet, but full of steel. “This one
will.” And he pulled her hand away.

Chen stood mesmerized for a dozen heartbeats, then shook herself and stepped back,
embarrassed. “I’m sorry.” She wheeled around and walked head-down toward the small
thicket.

After a moment Rafa’s voice came softly after her.

“Chen.”

She turned around slowly, as if a hand were rotating her by the shoulder. Rafa
lifted splayed fingers in the streaming starlight. One of them glinted faintly.

“The evidence of an affair was hardest on Julie. And on me. You’ll have to cut this
off my cold dead finger.”

Chen turned around again, her cheeks burning.

“Chen.” His voice was softer now.

Again she looked back.

“I may die lonely, but none of my friends will.”

A comforting warmth settled on her shoulders and whisked away the hot embarrassment
from her cheeks and throat. Her lips twitched with the hint of a bittersweet smile.

“Good night, sweet prince,” she whispered.

Julie licked her lips and pressed the key that would complete her call to FBI
headquarters. After another conversation with Dr. Satler last night, she’d decided to
call, but that didn’t make the approach any easier. She had lain awake till morning
rehearsing what she would say, and dark circles under her clear blue eyes testified to
the sleep she’d sacrificed.

At times her little speech had seemed pretty convincing to her own ear, but now she
admitted that getting any reaction at all was a long shot. After all, why would anybody
at the FBI be motivated to lift a finger for a convicted killer of one of their
own?

The phone sounded a soft alert to signal a connection, and the screen lit up
with the pleasant face of a young receptionist. Julie could see a busy office and
potted plants over her shoulder.

“Federal bureau of Investigation, Los Angeles field office. May I help you?”

“Hi. My name’s Julie Orosco. I’m trying to get in touch with Ray Gregory. Does he
work out of your office?”

The receptionist typed rapidly and studied a display off-screen. “Agent Gregory has
actually been transferred, but I have his new office number. Would you like me to
connect you?”

“Yes, thanks.” The screen went blank, and Julie waited anxiously. She was pretty
sure Gregory would hear her out; he’d come across as a straight shooter during their
one conversation months before, and during his testimony at the trial. At least he’d
answer when he saw her ID on his phone. He’d remember the name.

But thirty seconds later she was leaving a message, feeling an empty sensation of
anti-climax. She floundered through, wondering if she should elaborate, hoping
everything would not sound as implausible on playback as it did in her own ears. As she
was signing off the receptionist came back online.

“I’m sorry. I saw you had to leave a message. His calendar doesn’t show any specific
appointments, so I can’t guess when he’ll be back. If this is a business call I may be
able to reach him by satellite.”

It was a polite feeler. Julie wondered briefly how the woman defined “business
call”. She wanted to talk about a crime. Did that count—or was business only related to
an agent’s current cases?

“Maybe you can help me find the right person to talk to.” The receptionist raised
her eyebrows attentively, so Julie pressed on. “Agent Gregory knows me in connection
with a case he investigated a few months ago. I wanted to ask him for some advice about
looking into...well, into another crime.” It sounded pretty lame. Was she coming across
as a melodramatic housewife?

The receptionist’s manicured fingers tapped briefly on her desktop as she
considered. “Do you want to report something, or discuss an ongoing investigation?”

“Report, I guess.” Julie could almost see wheels turning behind the tolerant
smile—the receptionist probably had lots of experience with neurotic victims of the
neighborhood purse snatcher—so she pressed on quickly. “It’s about criminal negligence
or manslaughter on a viking mission.”

The smile became more businesslike. “I see. Well, off-planet activities are all
under federal jurisdiction, but our L.A. office doesn’t deal much with that sort of
issue. The exo people are all clustered at other major spaceports—Boston, St. Louis,
Salt Lake...”

“The company that’s running this mission is based in Houston.”

The receptionist nodded confirmation and sent nimble fingers flying over her
keyboard. “Houston division may actually have the largest exo team anyway. Supervisor’s
name is Oristano. Would you like me to transfer you?”

Again Julie nodded, and again the screen went blank. This time the status light
blinked green quickly to signal an answer, but she remained on hold, reading blurbs and
advertising from a Texas net station for a couple minutes before the screen lit up with
the image of a graying man with a crew cut. He had a fatherly sort of look about him
that immediately put Julie at ease.

“Mrs. Orosco? I’m Darnel Geire, Division Chief here in Houston,” he drawled amiably.
“The lady from Los Angeles said you wanted to discuss some criminal activity on a
viking mission based out of Houston.”

Julie nodded.

“Agent Oristano is actually in a meeting right now—and since I sent her to it, I
thought the least I could do was cover her calls while she’s gone.” He leaned back in a
leather-bound office chair and sighed comfortably, managing to seem relaxed but not
overly casual. On the wall behind him Julie could see dozens of framed certificates and
photographs, plus a large mural of a desert sunset. “Maybe you could give me some more
details.”

Julie cleared her throat. “My husband is a viking with MEEGO, Inc. I believe Houston
is their headquarters.”

Geire nodded and reached for a lotion dispenser on his desk without breaking eye
contact. “Go on,” he said, lubricating his hands slowly.

“I guess regulations require MEEGO to publish a portion of their viking feeds to
interested parties. Anyway, I followed Rafa’s activities as closely as I could up until
a few days ago.”

“Rafa?”

“My husband. I tuned in to him to see how he was doing.”

“I see.”

“Well, the last time his feeds were active he was doing field research near a huge
herd of some animal. I think they call them ‘hexapods’. Big reptiles things with six
legs, stand about three meters at the shoulder.” Julie couldn’t keep a slight quaver
out of her voice. “There was a stampede, and his signal went dead.”

Geire leaned forward in his chair, his leathered face expressionless. “What is your
husband’s status now?”

“MEEGO lists him as missing and presumed dead. They say he was trampled to
death.”

Geire studied Julie’s face gravely. “You don’t accept that?”

“Not exactly. He may be dead, but I have a hard time believing they made any
investigation at all.”

“Why’s that?”

“For one thing, they had updated Rafa’s status in their database within fifteen
minutes of the accident, but they claim not to have found a body.”

Geire raised his eyebrows. “That does seem pretty premature.”

Julie pressed on. “For another, at least one of the vikings had a serious grudge
against Rafa and was near the herd when the animals went wild.”

“You think someone deliberately started the stampede?”

“I do.”

“Was there anything in the viking feed that might be useful evidence?”

Julie shook her head bitterly. She’d been expecting that question and had no good
answer for it. Was Geire going to brush her off as a pathological worrier? She had
another card to play, if she dared lay it down.

Geire frowned thoughtfully and straightened his bolo tie. “I’m afraid there’s not a
lot we can do to help you at this point. If a viking did in fact provoke these
creatures somehow and cause your husband’s death, it would be a federal crime under our
jurisdiction. But documenting the origin of a stampede is virtually impossible, and
even with good evidence it’s unlikely that we’d accomplish much. The viking probably
won’t live out the month anyway, much less the quarantine period for a date with a
court on Earth.”

“How about MEEGO? Aren’t they liable for some of this? Wouldn’t it be negligence or
breach of contract or fraud or something if they just left Rafa to die?”

“That’s a fairly complex question. Yes, the company might be in violation of several
laws if your allegations are true. But again, only glaring cases are usually prosecuted
because proof is so hard to come by. Just a small portion of the company’s activities
is open to public scrutiny, and by the time we subpoenaed private records MEEGO could
probably sanitize everything. It’s a real handicap to investigate something that
happened light years away.”

“What if I could prove the company cut Rafa’s signal? That the comlink was broken on
Earth instead of planetside?”

Geire’s eyes narrowed. “I thought you said you didn’t have any evidence.”

“Not about how the stampede started...”

“But about MEEGO’s reaction to it?”

“Yes.” Julie was apprehensive about revealing her own connection to illegal hacking,
and she wanted to avoid trouble for Satler’s anonymous friend. But if that was the only
way to enlist some help, she had to take the plunge. “I have connections to a hacker
who downloaded the logs from MEEGO’s blinker satellite.”

Geire drummed his fingers slowly, considering the implications. “You realize that
the hack was illegal, of course.”

Julie shook her head impatiently. “The FBI can still use it as evidence, right? As
long as investigators acquire the logs without breaking the law themselves?”

Geire coughed. “That’s a simplification. In certain circumstances your reasoning
might apply. But you miss my meaning. Have you considered your own legal standing on
this? Did you pay for the services of this computer expert?”

“No. I don’t think anyone paid anything.”

“Why’d the hacker go to the trouble?”

“Milk of human kindness, I guess. I don’t really know the guy at all.”

“How’d you get the logs, then?”

Julie swallowed and shook her head. “I can’t say.”

Geire rubbed his chin in thought, then waved dismissively. “Well, we can come back
to that later. Any way to guarantee you have genuine data in the logs?”

“I’m not much of a computer guru, but the hacker claims the code of origin can’t be
faked. At least, not by anyone in the private sector.”

“And what exactly do these logs show?”

“Earthside tuned out Rafa’s transmissions several seconds before the satellite quit
receiving them. I went back and looked at all the other available viking feeds, and I
think the stampede hadn’t reached my husband when the signal died.”

“Maybe they could tell something gruesome was about to happen, and wanted to spare
the squeamish.”

“I don’t think so. During that lag a series of encrypted instructions from Earth was
blinkered to the planetside booster unit. Rafa’s signal went dead a few milliseconds
after the final batch of commands from Earth was executed.”

“So they completely cancelled his broadcast. But if he died a moment later, what
does it matter?”

“I don’t think he died in the stampede at all.”

“Why?”

“Because at the same moment my husband’s signal died, all of MEEGO’s other viking
feeds cut out due to ‘technical difficulties’. There’s a six minute window when no
viking feeds are available at all. But there’s no evidence of communication problems in
the logs.”

“What were they doing when the signals came back?”

“Searching for survivors in a skimmer. I guess several vikings were missing besides
my husband. But they were already a couple kilometers beyond Rafa’s position and
claimed to have found nothing. That’s simply not possible.”

“I don’t know about that. If these animals are as big as you say, there might not be
much to find... But let’s go back to MEEGO’s motivation for a moment. What earthly
reason would they have for wanting your husband dead?”

Julie shrugged. “I can’t begin to tell. Unless it has something to do with his
criminal record.”

“I don’t understand.”

Julie sighed mightily. Now was when she found out how open-minded her listener could
be. “Rafa was convicted on two counts of first degree murder a few months ago. It was
an unbelievable shock—just didn’t add up. At the time of his arrest I was sure he’d
been set up somehow. But the evidence from the trial was pretty compelling, and
eventually I quit believing his side of the story.”