Viking (26 page)

As soon as she was high enough, she broadcast a report of her quest and its
triumphal outcome. The adults had harrumphed and scolded and ordered her to return at
once—no surprise there—and the youngsters had hooted jealously and proposed a feast. As
if there would be even a mouthful for any of them!

1291 had been planning to return with her prize in tow; the pod’s reaction to her
news made her reconsider. Her kind had no notion of pets or menageries, but they liked
to study things, puzzle them out. The rhyme and reason of the strange creature’s speech
was tantalizingly obscure—but she couldn’t carry it forever while they migrated, and
she doubted it would tag along on the ground, even if she managed to feed it. Besides,
it might disappear next time a companion felt peckish.

So after only a few minutes airborne, she descended to nearly the same spot where
she’d first apprehended her quarry, and let it sag to the ground in the first rays of
sunrise. She half expected it to bolt the moment her tentacle retracted, but it just
lay there, chattering away but sprawled motionless.

She prodded it thoughtfully, but it didn’t stir.

Well, maybe it played dead as a defense; she would move off a ways and see if it
recovered.

Chen scanned in every direction in anxious vigilance while Abbott knelt to tug Rafa
onto his shoulders. “He breathing?” she whispered. Her eyes flitted upward
nervously.

“Yeah. Can’t see anything broken or chewed on.”

“Hurry.”

Abbott grunted and rocked back on his heels, shaking his head reluctantly. “Too
heavy.”

“We’ll drag him, then.” They each hooked an arm and began to pull. Rafa’s heels dug
twin furrows through the grass as they scrabbled back toward the line of forest.

A hundred steps
, Chen thought.
Just a hundred.
The pufferbelly was
descending rapidly from its lookout position, tentacles outstretched. They had to make
it.

Rafa’s eyelids fluttered, and he twitched. In a moment Chen felt his biceps bunch
and roll as he lifted his arms.

“It’s okay, I can walk,” he groaned, his voice rough and guttural. They helped him
stagger to his feet. He clamped palms to his head and swayed dangerously. Abbott
glanced over Chen’s shoulder and jerked his head.

“Come on, buddy. We’ve got to get you to the trees before we have company.”

Rafa nodded, not looking up, and stumbled wobbly-kneed between them.
Fifty
steps. Twenty.
Chen looked back and was relieved to see the pufferbelly drifting
motionless, above and well behind them. Apparently it had concluded that it wouldn’t
win this race, and was reconciled to observing their departure. She shuddered.

They collapsed in a jumble at the base of a large conifer of sorts, a dozen steps
into the fringe of the forest. Perhaps it was not deep enough to be totally safe, but
Rafa looked unable to continue, and she and Abbott were scarcely better off. For a
while nobody spoke; they were too busy fighting for breath and calm, swallowing in a
vain attempt to renew the moisture in their parched throats.

Finally Rafa fished through the pockets of his suit, looking for pain reliever. He
fumbled for almost thirty seconds before remembering that it had been used up
yesterday. Then he leaned back and closed his eyes, looking disgusted.

“Thanks for coming for me.”

Abbott folded his legs slowly, and sat up with effort. “We couldn’t tell if you were
still alive or not, but we had to try to get you.”

Chen chimed in. “We saw most of the chase. The pufferbelly forgot about us right
away. We made a break as soon as it was gone. It was too busy trying to keep up with
you to pay any attention. I don’t know how you managed to run so fast.”

A ghost of a smile played across Rafa’s face. “Not fast enough. I don’t know how it
moves, but it’s no slowpoke.”

“We saw it pounce and thought you were a goner. But after a minute it started to
climb, and it looked like it was still holding you. Abbott thought it was going to let
go when it got high enough.”

Abbott looked away—in embarrassment, maybe?—but Rafa only grinned wryly. “I guess
that’d be one way to tenderize its meat. I would have been a mangled blob. Good thing I
blacked out.”

“Why did that happen?”

Rafa shrugged. “It had me upside down. That’s no big deal for a few seconds, but
when you’re whipping around like a yo-yo and can’t breathe properly and are already
light-headed with thirst and fatigue, I guess it can happen. I don’t remember much
after it took off.”

“It went up maybe five hundred meters and just hung there. Waiting, watching the
sunrise, who knows? We couldn’t see much, except that it hadn’t eaten you. Then after a
while it came down again and dropped you in a heap and went off where it could keep an
eye peeled without being too close.”

“Maybe I was bait.”

Chen felt the hair along her neck prickle. Her face must have reflected her horror,
because Rafa grinned.

“Anyway, that was a gutsy thing to do, coming after me. I’m grateful.”

Chen smiled back and held out a hand as she rose. “Come on, lazy bones, I intend to
be home tonight if it kills me.”

Nobody laughed.

* * *

The hill country exacted a stiff toll for passage. Instead of steady forward
progress, they were continually climbing over mossified tree trunks, scrambling up
rocky defiles and trickling streams, and detouring around walls of vegetation too dense
to penetrate. The leafy blanket overhead obscured the sun; they would have been lost in
five minutes without compass and GPS. As it was, they had to make course corrections
repeatedly.

Within an hour they met the small river Rafa had seen on his map. It was dark with
silt and fairly narrow—about a stone’s throw across, maybe—but the banks were steep,
and the current looked strong and rapid.

They stared at it for almost a minute before anyone spoke. Finally Chen cleared her
throat.

“I’m not much of a swimmer.”

“You will be.” Rafa sounded grim.

Abbott shrugged. “It’s not that big of a deal. I’ll get you across. There’s no rocks
or rapids. Doesn’t look that dangerous.”

“I’m not worried about the current.”

They looked at Rafa, uncertain of what he implied. He was scanning the far bank, his
expression inscrutable. “This isn’t lowland jungle, but we’re almost on the equator. On
Earth, tropical rivers like this have all sorts of interesting things in them: piranha,
snakes, leeches, the odd crocodile or hippo...”

Abbott took a hasty step away from the chiseled bank, but Rafa shrugged. “We have to
cross, regardless. I guess there’s no point in waiting.” And without another word he
half-slid, half-scrambled down and into the current.

In five steps his shoulders disappeared into the murky water, and he began to stroke
smoothly for the far shore. The flow swept rapidly downstream, but he was a strong
swimmer. They watched with bated breath as he crossed the midpoint of the current. Now
it seemed like there were ripples everywhere; any moment Abbott expected one to become
a reptilian snout with carnivorous intentions.

Finally Rafa’s shoulders heaved upward again, and he was stumbling into a knee-deep
eddy, flicking muck from his hands. He turned around, looking relieved, and waved
encouragingly. The splint had apparently come loose on his broken arm; he pulled at it
gingerly while he watched their progress.

Abbott and Chen entered together, Chen clutching tightly to her partner’s shoulder,
her eyes wide with apprehension. As soon as their feet left the bottom it was obvious
they would far overshoot Rafa’s position. Abbott was not all that amphibious himself;
he had a real job to keep Chen’s chin up as she paddled.

Unexpectedly his knee struck something solid and slippery. Chen felt it too; she
screamed in terror and sank underwater to her eyebrows, then jerked out again, gagging
and spluttering.

A splash from Rafa’s position signaled that help was on the way. Abbott had stopped
kicking, afraid he would further aggravate whatever he’d just touched. Was it his
imagination, or had the object
moved
a little with the collision? Where was it
now?

Chen was panicked, her eyes wide, her fingers clawing. She dragged at Abbott,
plunging him under in an effort to rise. He swallowed some water involuntarily, felt
himself choking, and gave her a vicious, futile shove. He was up, then under again.
Rafa knifed toward them with powerful strokes, but it seemed like an eternity before he
slid an arm across Chen’s chest to hook her armpit and flip her onto his hip. For a
moment she struggled, unwilling to complete the transit on her back. But Rafa’s arm
tightened like a vise, and finally she went limp, except for ragged, hiccupy breathing
and jerky efforts to supplement progress with her hands.

Abbott coughed and sucked in great lungfuls of air, still fighting panic. Then his
boot brushed something again, and he realized there was mud underfoot.

They stumbled up the bank. Rafa was on hands and knees, having released his
stranglehold on Chen. She looked more alert than he did, now. His head hung down, his
shoulders were heaving, and his face looked pale. After a minute he joined his two
crewmates, who had dropped onto a warty log, disturbing a family of two-tailed
salamanders that chirped reproachfully as they wiggled down the eroded clay at their
feet.

“You look awful, Rafa,” Chen finally managed.

“Hurt my arm again,” he murmured. Even through the thick sleeve, a pronounced bend
between elbow and wrist was visible.

“We’ve got to set that and get it re-splinted.” Chen drew her survival knife and
began hacking at the branches of a nearby sapling, her fear fading as medical training
took over. In the middle of the river, a man-sized turtle shell of sorts breached
silently, then sank under the water again. It was gone by the time Abbott could raise a
shaking finger to point it out. Rafa saw it, though; they exchanged a silent
glance.

A tug-o-war to straighten Rafa’s arm left all three of them panting. Rafa clenched
his teeth and groaned dizzily, but after a moment the pain appeared to subside, and his
expression cleared somewhat. He sat mutely while Chen bound on the splint. Then they
let him rest for a few minutes before squelching wetly on into the waiting forest.

The flora was green and alive with intense, almost stuffy background rustlings, like
a forest on earth—but also strange enough to color their thoughts with a keen awareness
of other-worldly atmosphere. The most common “tree” had a smooth lime trunk and massive
fronds like a banana; it grew in clumps to a height of perhaps ten or fifteen meters.
Scattered in and around these were lone pillars—the rearing trunks of massive conifers
and gnarled celery-stalk rods eighty meters high. Clearings were rare and small and
festooned with draperies of vine and finger-thick saplings. A machete would have eased
progress substantially, but they made do with sticks and bare hands.

As they walked, the scent of decaying leaves, wet chlorophyll and fungus filled the
air. The loudest sounds came from the crunch of boots on the forest floor and the whip
of disturbed branches and leaves. Occasionally they caught glimpses of denizens of the
forest—most little squirrel- and mouse-like scurriers, but also a few featherless
fliers and some raccoon equivalents that quickly vanished with a flick of brilliant
orange tails.

To pass the time, Abbott told funny stories about his childhood in Jamaica, and
Chen questioned him in detail about his children. The fitful banter lightened their
mood somewhat, and Rafa realized they were using the talk as a distraction from fear
and fatigue. He did not join in.

Chen had an additional strategy as well: she flirted. A few half-hearted comments
were directed to Abbott, but mostly she focused on Rafa. At first he wasn’t sure he was
interpreting her correctly—hadn’t he made his feelings clear enough?—but she became
more brazen as the morning wore on. For some reason Abbott thought his reactions were
amusing, and several times he coughed suspiciously after salacious double entendre from
Chen met with studied non-expression.

It all made Rafa edgy and annoyed. He had as many hormones as the next man—more, if
Julie’s oft-repeated teasing was accurate—and for once he sensed a softness behind this
woman’s posturing. She was less than half in jest.

That aroused feelings that were better left buried. It had been months since he’d
held his wife, and sometimes his thoughts lingered on private moments so tender and
irrevocably lost that he thought he would burst with pain and longing. A divorce
severed any loyalty to Julie—in theory it did, anyway—but even as an unattached male he
wasn’t ready to embrace the random whims of passion. It didn’t feel right, morally or
emotionally, even if it drove him crazy to resist.

He stalked on in silence, moving a dozen paces ahead when Chen peeled off the top
half of her biosuit to dry out. The thin layer of wet, white cotton that remained was
almost worse than no clothes at all, and she knew it. Abbott laughed and winked at
her.

Except for a fleeting glimpse of zebra-like stripes across a clearing, there was no
sign of larger animals. In a deliberate mental change of gears, Rafa wondered if this
sort of habitat had any large carnivores like Earth’s grizzlies or jaguars—and if so,
what he could do to protect the group in an emergency. So much about this planet was
still a mystery; if he hadn’t understood the viking death toll before, it was plain
now. He was glad they were all carrying tree limbs that could serve as bludgeons in a
pinch.

By noon they were thirteen kilometers closer to their goal, though Abbott claimed it
was a cinch they’d covered twice that much ground. Nobody argued; they just sank
wearily down to a crouch and gulped from water bottles they’d refilled at the first
bubbling gorge they crossed. It had long since grown hot, and their suits clung to
bodies slick with sweat. At least they weren’t in direct sun.