Viking (36 page)

Then he was shaking his head to chase away the tears, and pounding his clenched fist
on the unyielding rock. “You can’t have me!” he shouted in hoarse anger at the
arch.

His words disappeared swept out across the rolling infinity of the ocean, vanished
into the dark jungle in the distance without a trace. The arch winked amber, violet,
amber, violet. Overhead, an oversized dragonfly look-alike swerved as it encountered
the curved region of repulsion from the outside and flitted to compensate.

¡No me puedes tener!

Back to the text. Maybe another touch would toggle off the prompt and deactivate his
prison. He pressed experimentally. There was no visible change to the script, and a
handful of tossed sand confirmed that the barrier remained intact.

He tried two taps in quick succession.

Three.

A sustained, steady pressure.

The cursor continued its patient, inscrutable oscillation.

Maybe
, Rafa thought,
it will turn itself off if I don’t touch anything
for a while.
He spread-eagled wearily on the bare rock to wait, his eyes closed
against the nearly horizontal rays of sunshine.

What a strange picture this would make
. He imagined an old-fashioned
postcard of himself, sunburned and haggard, stretched prone on the rock under a
metallic crescent. “Wish you were here,” the card would say across the top.

What would Julie do with such a memento? Throw it away? Stick it in a musty old
scrapbook somewhere? Would she come one distant day, when this planet was safely
domesticated—impelled by morbid curiosity, perhaps—only to find his bones picked clean
and open-armed to the pitiless heavens? What would she do at such a scene?

Thinking about her activated latent reservoirs of pain. Intellectually, he’d long
since reconciled her pragmatic stance on the conviction. What good would it do to blame
her for taking the only available exit from a future of misery? He’d told Chen as much,
when she asked. Even managed to sound convincing.

His head said accept it, but his heart couldn’t. He’d managed a truce with the idea,
not peace. Hadn’t he been faithful to Julie? Hadn’t he done his utmost to protect her,
to take the honorable path at every crossroads? And as a reward she’d walked away.

His wounded pride fought all attempts at dismissal. In fact, the hurt and anger had
intensified with time. To protect the tenderness that his heart held for Julie, he had
suppressed the censure that wanted to lash out. So far the emotional paradox had
yielded a painful stalemate.

Now the thought of a futile and lingering death, trapped—again, yet again!—like a
helpless animal, disrupted the balance in his heart. The world hated him; it was time
he did some hating back!

Emotional barriers crumbled, and Rafa cringed. Corrosive recrimination would sear
away his wellspring of tenderness—and he no longer had the strength or will to prevent
it. In fact, he welcomed it even as he winced with revulsion. It was easier and
infinitely more comfortable to point an accusing finger and turn his back on Julie,
than to clasp a love that bared his heart for the stabbing. And if his prison never
vomited him out again, it took the sting out of dying lonely. A little.

He unconsciously held his breath, fingers clenching whitely, as the hostility
flared.
You betrayed me
, it screamed at his mental picture of Julie,
abandoned me forever when I was innocent and most needed comfort.

Precisely at the moment when the bitterness was most intense, a simple thought
interposed itself. It came quietly, making no demands for his attention or allegiance,
but with a soul-arresting certitude that took his breath away.

Choose to love her anyway. You are free to choose.

On its heels came the image of Chen lecturing him under the stars. “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.” And he suddenly understood
why she’d stopped then, what she’d left unsaid.

Chen hadn’t been urging Rafa to forgive—she’d been thinking about her own need to
love someone honestly—and recognizing how Rafa’s own short-sightedness had robbed Julie
of the same privilege. How could Julie forgive if her husband wouldn’t even let her
into his world, wouldn’t even let her share his pain?

Shame and regret crowded in as he saw how isolated he’d been, but almost immediately
the first thought returned.
Choose to love her anyway. You are free to
choose.

Yes
, he wanted to shout.
Yes!
The “anyway” acquired new meaning.
It wasn’t in spite of her disservice; it was in spite of his.

Breath burst from his lips, and his shoulders rocked rhythmically. Tears streamed
off his reddened cheeks as the anger vanished. It was an escape from the cramped
tyranny of self, surrender to forgiveness and peace.

Estrellita
, he whispered, over and over again.

Te quiero, Estrellita.

* * *

How long he wept, Rafa had no idea, but eventually the reflexive heaving of his
chest and the quiver at his lips subsided, and his mind returned to the question of
escape. Somehow the new stillness in his heart made the task seem possible. He wiped
his eyes with the back of a hand, blinked a few times, and turned to squint blearily at
the text.

Still glowing. Should he try to activate a different menu? There was plenty of unlit
writing to choose from, but what did it mean? He licked the salt-crusted roughness of
his chapped lips. What else might the device do? Would he accidentally trigger a booby
trap, or collapse the region of confinement, or launch some new and sinister
behavior?

Get a grip
, he thought wryly.
You have a nasty surprise and you start
seeing a bogeyman behind every rock. What kind of alien culture would build an artifact
like this, out in the middle of nowhere, just to torture or trap the unwary
visitor?

He rose onto one knee to study the script with renewed attention, arm braced against
a clear patch of metal on the column for support. The lit section was a block three
lines wide and as tall as his hand, bracketed on either side by glassy chrome and then
more script in similar-sized pieces. Taken together, the lines and gaps formed a sparse
band that completely girdled the curving column at waist height. Above the blinking
cursor there was a gap, and then a new series of glyphs began. These were smaller,
scribed more densely, and the spans of empty chrome between the line groupings looked
thinner and more scarce. If the device wanted a selection of sorts, and worked like all
menus Rafa had ever seen—from general to specific—then perhaps the upper band
enumerated possibilities suggested below.

That line of reasoning immediately sparked a hundred doubts and criticisms. Who
could say how an alien mind might work? What valid conclusions could he possibly draw,
inferring purely from human premises?

Yet what other assumptions could he make? He didn’t have the luxury of a leisurely,
objective analysis. He had to get out of this cage and make it down the coast if he
wanted to stay alive. He needed food. He needed water in the worst way. He needed an
earthside doctor to talk Chen through some serious intervention with his ankle. Or an
amputation, maybe. How long did it take for gangrene to set in? He looked longingly at
the sky. It had begun to cloud over half-heartedly; if rain fell, would it penetrate
the force field?

His finger rose from the blinking vertical line and hovered uncertainly over the
runs of text above. Some were quite long and lasted several lines, while others were as
short as four or five glyphs. Presumably each was a separate item of sorts. Did it make
any difference which he chose?

Nothing matters anymore
, came the unbidden thought.
Less or more
traveled, all roads dead-end just over the horizon.
But he shook his head angrily.
¡Todavía no!
He still had a few fierce tears left.

A short stream of symbols, the first and briefest above the cursor, immediately
reddened under his touch and began to luminesce. The alien voice uttered a few
syllables. Along the innermost surface of the pillar, a brilliant scarlet bolt rose
smoothly, flashed behind his trembling fingertips, arced against the silver overhead,
and curved back down to the opposing base. Under his knees, grains of sand began to
vibrate slightly. A thin line of crimson raced in a ring bounded by the legs of the
arch, where the invisible boundaries of his cage met the rock underfoot. The air
quivered with a low, resonant hum.

Flicker.

The azure of the sky abruptly deepened. The pounding surf stuttered and then
resumed, much subdued. A gushing breeze rolled off his shoulders and blew across the
rock; Rafa felt his ears pop slightly. The glare of the sun gave way to late afternoon
shadow, and the temperature dropped. The glowing symbols near his fingertips shifted,
morphed. The red faded and went out.

The low primes took their time pondering 1291’s proposal. They were ripe in years;
nearly two hundred cycles of dryness and monsoon had elapsed since the oldest had
descended from the nethers of the stratosphere, barely more than spores, and broadcast
a squeaky salutation to acquire a skyfriend family and designation.

They’d seen the pod ebb and flow under the complex dynamics of weather, disease, and
competition. They’d risen with long-time friends—including many of their own
hatchings—keening as their tissues, thin and swollen with age, surrendered to the
final, runaway gushes of hydrogen and burst apart.

1291 waited for their decision, reigning in her curiosity and her restlessness as
best she could.

That her idea hadn’t been dismissed out of hand was encouraging. But the low primes
had not deviated from the longitudinal magnetic band they were following. They’d
stubbornly ignored the juvenile gossip about a strange speaking earthbound, even when
it was corroborated by scattered reports from other pods. And though they’d allowed
1291 her brief forays from the fold, they’d nagged her back again. With the start of
the stormy season, their patience was thin, and they longed to get beyond the mountains
where the turbulence was weaker.

Now the earthbound had somehow shot hours ahead of them, and its mad chittering had
caught the attention of most of the younger generation. How could an earthbound learn
to speak? Why would one suddenly start a frantic conversation in which it was the only
participant? What was it saying?

After lengthy deliberations, 2 and 3 signaled a decision. They repolarized and began
to slip sideways, out of the magnetic current. 1291 immediately sank from her detached
lookout a kilometer overhead. The rest of the pod converged as well, respectfully
quiet, but alight with curiosity and excitement.

We’re much closer to the talker than we were before
, began 2 without
preamble.
And since so many of you wonder about it, we’ll go in for a closer
look.

1291 lit up with delight.
The whole pod?

Certainly not. The weather’s looking nasty, and we don’t want any of the young
calves near the ground.

This was an obvious consideration that 1291 had overlooked. She remained silent and
embarrassed as 2 continued.

1291, we have heard you rebroadcasting its speech.

A few times. That is true.

Why did you do that?

I thought it might be trying to call the siren in The Cold.

But the siren can’t speak. It just wails for no reason.

Sometimes the siren seems to exchange signals with the speaking earthbound and
its companions. There’s a give and take like a conversation.

The siren only makes noise
, interjected 5.
It’s not proper language. So
what could the speaker be saying to it?

Maybe it wants the siren to join its pod.

But the speaking earthbound doesn’t have a pod. It’s all by itself, isn’t
it?

1291 gave the radio equivalent of a shrug.
Sometimes there are other earthbounds
nearby, but they only squeak or remain silent. I don’t know. Maybe the earthbound is
hurt, and wants the siren to help.

1291 perceived a yellow blush of amusement from 3, cherry surprise on 2 and 5. No
doubt they considered this a strange line of reasoning. After all, the siren seemed
incapable of any motion or intelligence, and nothing but flaming streaks ever descended
from The Cold. But she refused to apologize; nobody had a better explanation.

2 apparently felt no need to respond to this comment; he began designating members
of the scouting party with only a faint tone of humor in his voice. It was a larger
group than 1291 had expected; besides a couple dozen of the more boisterous juveniles,
97 and 293 were coming as supervisory adults.

When he was done, he launched into a lecture about responsibility and caution and
the need to get back to the pod in a timely fashion. 1291 acknowledged the counsel
meekly, along with the rest of the group. Then, as the primes began to repolarize and
get underway again, 1291 sank toward the pounding wash of surf a kilometer down and a
dozen ahead, trailing a stately retinue of escorts.

Rafa let out his breath in a rush. He still knelt beneath a metallic gateway, but
the lonely promontory and its jungle backdrop had vanished.

He seemed to be in an abandoned plaza of sorts. Beyond the circle underfoot, the
ground consisted of smooth but discolored stone, broken at regular intervals by
thrusting patches of wildflowers and the swollen, rough-scaled trunks and man-sized
fronds of enormous cycads. Ringing the area were other arches of the same size and
shape as his own, arranged like spokes of a wheel. At the hub stood a spike of smooth
stone perhaps a hundred paces wide—a tower that rose gracefully skyward to breathtaking
heights. It appeared to grow organically out of the ground, with a rounded flange at
the base and no noticeable seams or joints, though a grid of reflected sunlight
attested glassy window-work higher up. The poorly disciplined patches of vegetation and
the pervasive green mottle of lichen on rock suggested age and disuse, but the profiles
of arches and tower were hale and unbroken.