Viking (33 page)

“We never did clarify his motive very well. It’s always bothered me. Maybe the
implants are part of it; I wish we’d known that before. It makes the drug angle a lot
more likely—especially since we didn’t turn them up in our investigation. He must have
got them on the black market.”

 “Well, anyway, his implants were noted when he got his intake physical with
MEEGO. Orosco asked to have the existing circuits reactivated rather than getting a
whole new set, and the company was happy to oblige. It probably saved them a
bundle.”

Gregory’s eyes narrowed. “Let me guess. It saved us a bundle, too. Uncle Sam
recruited the surgeon and we got a free spy with nobody the wiser.”

His friend smiled. “Give that man a prize.”

“So his file’s locked to prevent a leak to MEEGO?” There was a note of puzzlement
and disbelief in Gregory’s voice.

“Actually, that’s a moot point now. Orosco is missing and presumed dead.”

“How do you lose somebody who’s got a transmitter and a GPS in their head?”

“How do they always lose their crews? Every mission there’s something. In this case,
Orosco was in the wrong place at the wrong time. A bunch of herd animals stampeded. His
implants went dead while he was running for his life, and when the dust cleared he was
nowhere to be found.”

“Trampled to death?”

“Must have been.”

“Any chance the stampede was a fake? Think MEEGO was onto Orosco and pulled the
plug?”

“The stampede was real, all right. You don’t choreograph something like that. But it
certainly could have been provoked. I’ll send you the dump and let you see it from
Orosco’s perspective. See what you think.”

“So what’s the status of the investigation of MEEGO?”

“It’s still open, but I don’t see what else we’re likely to accomplish. They kept
their nose relatively clean up until the time Orosco vanished, and now we have no way
to monitor what they’re doing.”

Gregory sighed and leaned forward, finally releasing the strain on the groaning
hinges of his chair.

“Too bad. Orosco’s wife thought MEEGO was up to something, and she wanted to nail
them for it and get her husband back. Back to a local prison, anyway... Well, I guess
that answers my original question. I know why I couldn’t get access to any of Orosco’s
records. I’m still mystified about this other lock, though. You say you can’t get
around it?”

“It’s a blank wall, Ray. Nobody has the kind of clearance it would take to unlock
his records completely. It’d take an act of Congress.”

“I don’t get it. His fingerprints ran through the database clean when we picked him
up. He couldn’t have much of a past... Who put the other seal on?”

“That’s also privileged information.”

“How about a date? How far back can you go before the lock kicks in?”

“About six years.” His friend frowned meditatively. “Actually, now that I think
about it, I have seen a block like this once before.”

“When?”

“A few years back a hacker got into some personnel records. Not really top-secret
stuff, just the home addresses of a few hires and fires. But you should have seen the
stink it caused. They had a team of computer experts flown out the next day to assess
the damage. They transferred everyone whose records had been breached, purged a bunch
of information, and set up special blocks on their files. Same sort of thing.”

“You think the bureau’s
protecting
Orosco? Why would they do that?”

“I don’t know. It’s all just a shot in the dark. But whoever created that seal
wanted to be sure nobody outside
or inside
the agency could see Orosco’s past.
And you don’t get that kind of security unless you need it.”

A flickering shadow and the sound of flapping woke Rafa. He opened
his good eye in time to see a vague shape glide away and sink toward the forest floor
at his left.

Unlike his last return from the nether reaches, his mind was instantly clear, though
his body burned and ached in more places than he would have thought possible.

He sat up stiffly, careful to maintain his balance on the slick bark of the branch,
wincing as abdominal muscles compressed his ribs. It was not bright enough to be full
day yet, but clearly the sun was above the horizon. The air was cool and somewhat
misty, softening the view both above and below. It gave the treescape an eerie
stillness that felt solemn but not entirely peaceful.

An owl-like hooting echoed faintly from overhead, followed by a harsh caw and a
resounding, pervasive chorus of clicks that gradually faded away.

Somehow he had to get out of the tree and make it to the openness of the beach. He
couldn’t stay here.

Rafa took a conservative swig of the rainwater he’d managed to collect the night
before, his worry about dehydration quick to reassert itself. The water tasted clean
and unbelievably sweet—but he’d go through it in five minutes unless he rationed
rigidly.

The sudden flow of moisture to his belly activated a latent, twisting hunger that
was physically painful. How many days since he’d had a decent meal? He recalled the
jellied fruit back at the module—once repulsively sweet and devoid of texture—with a
fierce longing. Even a ration bar sounded ambrosial at the moment. Rafa dug through his
pockets but only confirmed what he’d hoped wasn’t true: he had forgotten to restock his
suit back at the module. If he didn’t find the crew again soon, he was going to get
weak and sick from malnutrition, or else take an active part in the local food
chain.

What was Julie having for breakfast?

It did no good to speculate, and after a moment Rafa shook his head and began
scooting back down the limb. He had come farther in his adrenaline-impelled scrabbling
than he realized, and it was nearly half an hour before his unsplinted boot
touched the bed of leaves and sandy soil at the base of the tree.

Lowering himself the final half meter and easing his weight onto the good foot was
a painful transition. The branch was not much more than waist high where it met the
massive bole of the tree, but it was slippery and covered with moss, and he could not
jump lightly down.

In the end he flopped around like a drowning victim over a barrel and dug his
fingernails into the muddy corrugations for traction, while he explored blindly for a
place to set his good foot. The fire in his ribs was excruciating.

Once he could stand again, he gingerly placed some weight on the damaged ankle. He
had deliberately extended the splint beyond his heel for protection. On a hard surface
it might have worked well, but here the bluntly torn branches sank into the
loamy soil until the bones in his heel were taking most of the weight.

He paled and sucked in his breath, a sheen of sweat springing to his brow. No way
was he going to go anywhere on two feet.

He would crawl, then.

Later, Rafa could not remember much about his progress through the boggy forest. The
ordeal of pumping shoulders and knees, the stink of mud on his fingers, the sting of
nettle, the blend of floral and mold scent from enormous growths of fungus, the detours
around water and tree trunks—they all merged into a sort of waking dream that seemed to
go on and on and on.

He crawled until his forearms were trembling and sweat was dripping in his eyes and
the heat of the day had stoked the jungle to an oven and every cell cried out for
water. He drank with unsteady hands and studied his GPS and despaired to find a scant
two hundred meters of linear progress.

Then when he was strong enough, he raised a slimy fist at the indifferent jungle and
started all over again.

More delirium. More bugs and lizards and clicking things that spat at him and
scurried away. A fat snake twice his length that studied him unblinkingly from the
comfort of an algae-covered pool. He was beyond fear and crawled on without a backward
glance.

More sand in the soil. More sunlight. More heat.

When he couldn’t go another meter, he finished off the water.

After the gurgle of liquid in his throat died away and his harsh breathing quieted,
he heard a steady, rhythmic rushing. For a moment it conjured up the roaring of a crowd
in a stadium, the chant of a million spectators to the gladiator’s duel between man and
nature. Rafa felt panic at the onset of madness.

Then his auditory catalog clicked.

The sea.

The music of the cradle, endlessly rocking. It sounded so earthly, so familiar that
he wanted to shout for joy.

He was back on his knees with a renewed strength, pushing through the undergrowth,
heedless of the startled fauna. More dark foliage jolted by in unpitying unrelief. He
was gasping for breath and bathed in perspiration, his lips parched and cracked.

But the song of the surf was getting louder. He crawled on in a frenzy.

Then he felt the first glow of direct sunlight on his shoulders, and in a matter of
moments he emerged to a different world.

After his eyes adjusted to the brightness, he saw a scene lifted directly from a
tourist’s brochure—a strip of creamy sand slanting into the parabola of cobalt ocean,
overhung like an umbrella by a thatch of greenery. The beach was deserted
except for a handful of trilobite-like crustaceans that scuttled lazily at water’s
edge. The action of the breakers was mild—doubtless moderated by protective braces of
land that formed the cove—but he had never heard more welcome music. He had grown up in
the lap of the Pacific, dived and snorkeled since grade school, proposed to Julie
ankle-deep in lacey foam. This was as close to home as he had felt since
planetfall.

He scooted eagerly across the shadows on the sands, through a few meters of
shimmering sun, and into the water. It was deliciously cool—mountain ice to the solar
furnace overhead.

Immediately the burning, itching grime on his hands and wrists lifted away and the
fire in his side eased. Rafa loosened the zippers on his suit, splashed into every
sweaty recess, and plunged his face and neck into the rolling surf. The steady lull and
swell lifted invitingly, and he pushed without conscious decision into deeper water,
allowing his ankle to float limply and his muscles to relax under the patient, buoying
massage of the ocean.

It was half an hour before fatigue and growing sunburn drove him back to the shadows
along the high borders of the beach. He struggled awkwardly out of the top of his suit
and spread it to dry, then lay his bare shoulders on the gritty silica and dozed as his
body dried in the heat.

When Rafa woke it was late afternoon, the sky was overcast, and the promise of rain
hung heavy in the air. He brushed granules from his back and ran fingers through matted
hair, then sat up and set himself to some serious thinking.

It was a relief to be out of the swampy jungle, but his troubles were far from
over.

The minor abrasions, the cuts and scrapes and welts that covered his arms and torso
were not particularly important. His ribs were excruciating when he moved the wrong
way, but he apparently hadn’t punctured a lung or suffered from internal hemorrhage, so
they could probably keep.

Likewise, his casted arm was uncomfortable in the sodden, weakened fiberglass. But
it could be ignored. And symptomatically he felt much better after a dip in the
water.

However, his ankle was a serious injury that required more than just first aid. The
constricting fabric of his boot had prevented extreme swelling, but he guessed it also
hid at least one serious fracture and possibly some external bleeding. The same
pressure that restricted inflammation was also limiting healthy circulation; if the
skin was broken, there might be infection and eventually gangrene. Yet he didn’t dare
cut the boot away. It wouldn’t help him walk, but it was the best bandage he had for
the time being.

The question was, how much of a “time being” could he afford, and could he find the
rest of the crew in that interval? What about food? What about shelter?

Rain arrived while Rafa sat pondering. For a few seconds individual drops darkened
the sand in random thumps. Then the skies let loose in earnest and sheets descended in
pounding, blinding profusion. There was no thunder, no wind to impart a diagonal to the
precipitation—just a businesslike vertical downpour that began as abruptly as the flow
from a faucet.

As quickly as he could manage, Rafa crawled out under the open sky and spread his
suit top. By slapping at the artificial puddle that grew in the center, he completely
refilled the water pouch. Then he drank until his stomach was ready to burst.

The water kept coming.

He thought of digging a hole to store the excess, but quickly vetoed the idea.
Probably there was too much salt in the sand to do any good, and everything would leach
out anyway.

Besides, it had now rained twice in as many days, and judging from the muddy
dampness on the jungle floor, he could expect more of the same on a regular basis. So
perhaps his fear of dehydration could be retired. Now that he was out in the open it
should be a simple matter to collect water when needed. He just hoped he wasn’t going
to get sick from drinking it.

Rafa scooped up the dripping garment and retreated to the edge of the beach to wait
out the deluge, shivering slightly.

As he was re-donning the suit, he noticed a cluster of white berries on a bush
skirting the sand. Would they be edible? He was feeling weak with hunger. It had been
nearly two of this planet’s days—thirty-some hours—since the feast at the module—and
that had been his first solid meal after a long stretch of ration bars.

Of course, there was no immediate crisis if he didn’t eat—even a week or two without
food probably wouldn’t kill him outright. But he needed his strength—and the berries
were tempting.

After some thought Rafa crawled over to sever the cluster with his hunting knife. He
could carry them along and eat them if he got desperate.