Viking (9 page)

Perhaps this was the keening of a semi-conscious, wounded child.

But that seemed a dubious explanation. Although this speaker used basic speech
protocol, its IDs were pure fantasy. 171171971 of 13098973? There was no such pod—and
even if there were, it couldn’t be big enough to justify such a personal number.
Besides, 1291 had never known a skyfriend to skip across wavelengths in such a random,
choppy fashion, even in the throes of a terminal bursting. And in decoded form, the
data she was hearing was unpunctuated nonsense.

Baffled, she pulsed her tutu rhythmically, aligned to a magnetic band, and morphed
to take maximum advantage of the offshore breeze that blew toward the foothills where
the signal originated.

When she drew close enough for radar imaging, all she saw was a little earthbound,
too ugly to qualify as a morning snack. She hung uncertainly, a blush of deep purple
washing across the green scaliness of her underbelly and tentacles.

The signal was there, stronger than ever. But earthbounds couldn’t speak. The very
suggestion was ridiculous.

She broadcast a tentative salutation.

No response.

The earthbound lurched across the ground. Was it just her imagination, or was the
signal shifting with it? Maybe its auditory range was constrained above the standard
bands, nearer to where its own queer babblings seemed to concentrate... Again she
broadcast a greeting, this time higher and at maximum power.

The chatter ceased and the earthbound seemed to twitch and then freeze. 1291 turned
pink with astonishment. Had it heard her? What sort of creature was this? Pod mythology
mentioned speaking earthbounds, but only in the same accounts with animate clouds and
mountains—she had never credited it as anything other than fanciful storytelling.

As 1291 pondered, her receptors suddenly picked up the sounds of calves frolicking
in the distance. Curiosity gave way to pleasure at the prospect of a quick return to
food and socializing with the rest of the pod. She swelled to sky away from the bizarre
chatter, and soon her radar imaged the first of the errant calves rounding a hilltop to
join her in the boundless blue.

She signaled a stern but tolerant reprimand and sailed toward them with maternal
efficiency. She’d come back to this mystery later.

Julie brushed sandwich crumbs from the countertop and set her dishes in the sink,
the tang of aged cheddar and rye still strong on her tongue.

Mechanically she rinsed the milkiness from her glass, ran water, and then sank her
hands into the hot suds. Through the window, she glimpsed flashes of the denim-clad
twins frolicking in the loft of the barn. A draft of April air floated in, cool enough
to make her shiver. Her hands squeaked faintly against the glassware.

Last night’s storm was still brooding overhead, darkening the new growth that tipped
tree branches and framed the muddy flower beds around the farmhouse. Puddles glinted a
dull, opaque bronze from the rutted driveway where a tractor rested in stolid defiance
of the weather.

Her father had been up before sunrise to milk the cows. She’d heard him pull on his
heavy boots and jacket and thump out as she struggled with her own insomnia. Now she
caught snatches of halfhearted cussing as he fumbled with tools on the far side of the
John Deere. He’d had the hood up since breakfast.

Unbidden, her eyes wandered from the windowsill, flickered over the scarred cutting
boards and the ceramic cookie jar that said “Love at Home”, and came to rest on Rafa’s
letter.

It lay unopened atop the divorce papers she’d been procrastinating all morning.

She looked away.

When the last cup was neatly stacked in the cupboards, Julie pulled up a stool,
pushed the letter aside, and sorted through the waiting pile of forms with wrinkled
fingers.

They said the same thing they had an hour earlier.

Unhappily she fetched a pen and began to sign, careful to keep her eyes from the
hand-labeled envelope with the California postmark.

Julie S. Orosco.

She wrote it without thinking, then smiled bitterly at the surname that came as
second nature. She’d debated about going back to Sterlyn. Predictably, her mother was
all for it. But Julie felt ambivalent; apart from the desire to have the same name as
her girls, she wasn’t ready for a wholesale repudiation of the life she’d begun on her
wedding day.

It wasn’t so much an allegiance to Rafa, she told herself—it was a recognition that
marriage and motherhood had become dimensions that were indivisible from the rest of
her self.

Julie Sterlyn was simply not all of who she was.

Her pen finished its glum scratching and landed atop the sheaf of paperwork in an
untidy pile. Julie pushed it away and eyed Rafa’s letter once again. Sooner or later
she had to open it, if for no other reason than to pass on anything he’d enclosed for
Lauren and Kyrie.

She picked it up.

It was flimsy. Light. No surprise there—Rafa had never been long on words. Wandering
slowly out onto the porch, she worked a finger under the overlap and tore open the
envelope. The stamp seemed to stare reproachfully; Rafa’s terse but welcome love notes
had never needed postage.

Unwittingly her feet took her to the swing that hung from the patriarchal weeping
willow by the driveway. Sitting down on the damp oak seat and rocking forward, she blew
to make room for her fingers and withdrew a single sheet of paper.

The branches overhead creaked softly.

Dear Estrellita
, it began. Angrily she brushed back tears and shook her
head. Emotional already. She pushed harder against the ground, then leaned back and
kicked out, her gaze lost in the budding green above. In a minute the saline blur was
gone and she looked down again, ignoring the ground spinning dizzily beneath her.

As she finished, a flood of confusion and grief welled up from a region of Julie’s
heart that she had attempted to lock away, and she began to sob convulsively.

She wept for her own innocence, shattered by a vicious crime against a stranger; for
Lauren and Kyrie, who would someday retain only vague recollections of the man who sang
them to sleep and taught them to pray; for Rafa’s mother, abandoned in an antiseptic,
impersonal institution with no son to brighten her days. She wept for herself, a widow
to selfishness and hate, doubt and recrimination.

Had she been foolish to stay away from the trial once she reached the heart-rending
conclusion that Rafa was guilty? Already she regretted the lack of closure, the
emptiness of saying goodbye by proxy.

Who would her daughters convict on the evidence when they were old enough to judge:
her, or Rafa? Would their cries for a father always haunt her dreams?

Elemental anger burned back in reaction to the doubt. How could she be torturing
herself like this? It only increased the damage from Rafa’s crime, made her an
accomplice to her own destruction.

He was the one who had betrayed his family, forsaken daughters and mother, and
violated her trust and his wedding vows. Julie’s fingers curled into a fist, crushing
Rafa’s letter to a tight ball. Her life had been gentle and happy until the decision to
divorce. She was a stranger to hate. Now she welcomed its searing pulse, stepped
deliberately into the laser focus and waited to be consumed.

But instead the venom flickered and was gone, taking with it the fire, the ice, and
the whimper. All that remained was a persistent, ephemeral melancholy and the nagging
practical concerns that a newly-single mother could not escape.

Rafa imagined he was saving the house with the inflated paycheck he was supposedly
earning. He thought his sacrifice would be to her benefit.

Oh, noble, very noble. He might have thought of that before murder came between
them.

Of course he didn’t see the “past due” section at the bottom of his legal bills,
wasn’t aware that the university had revoked all benefits, had no idea that their
accounts were frozen while the government reclaimed ill-gotten gains. Maybe he
would
underwrite college for the twins—if he managed to live long enough—but in
the meantime, it was Julie’s parents keeping food on the table and a roof over their
heads.

Even if Julie
had
been able to tap their modest savings account, would she do
it? How much had it been used over the years to satisfy Rafa’s love interest and
eventual victim? Or worse, how much had it grown from his crimes or even
her
contributions? The thought made her sick.

She had to take Rafa’s money when it finally started flowing, if she ever wanted to
escape the bills from his lawyers—and hers. Could she bring herself to accept it?

She’d already given up on the house. In a way, it was just as well: she wasn’t
looking forward to reinhabiting a place stiff with unhappy memories. Better to sell
everything. Rafa’s clothes, tools, trophies, books. The sandbox and tree house and
swing set. The fireplace. The bed.

Better to buy something small and secluded where she was a stranger.

But it still hurt to walk away from what had once been a happy home. It felt like
giving up. It
was
giving up.

It was also being practical. If she wanted to support herself and the twins after
Rafa died, cutting expenses was a necessity. She’d been doing freelance translation for
years, sending and receiving documents by email. As a home business it was pleasant but
not especially lucrative; with diligence and some luck it might save her the tedium of
lipstick and high heels and daycare and an impersonal cubicle in the corporate people
mill. Of course, luck had not been on her side much, lately.

Sighing, Julie pulled up the oft-neglected planner on her phone and looked up realtors
near their suburb in California. Time to list the house and get it over with. She
picked one at random and fired off a quick email asking for an appointment, wishing
even as she did so that she’d procrastinated instead.

As she cleared the screen a flashing reminder caught her eye. “Save Rafa for
twins?”

Julie had written the note herself, but for several seconds she couldn’t remember
what it meant. All she could think of was the literal meaning and its irony.
Save
him, indeed. Wouldn’t that be nice?

She looked at the date again, and suddenly the significance dawned on her. Today was
the first day Rafa’s viking broadcasts—that portion that MEEGO was required to release
as a token perquisite to immediate family—would be freely available. He’d asked her to
save a copy for Lauren and Kyrie.

She wasn’t certain it was a good idea. Was this the best way to remember their
father—living out his death throes on a violent world, surrounded by the dregs of
humanity? No matter how the company scrubbed for public consumption, it was bound to be
unpleasant.

Yet neither could she bring herself to deny the request. Not out of hand,
anyway.

Tonight she’d preview the broadcast and make a decision.

By the time their shift was over, the sun had been down for hours. Rafa stumbled
through the main hatch, scarred by the excavating claws of the mining probe, tramped
across the commons, and sagged wearily into the alcove where his bunk should have
been.

The mattress now hung uselessly overhead. Some of the others had cut theirs down,
but he was too tired to make the attempt. His head was still ringing from the bizarre
explosion of noise that had knocked him out for a few minutes during the day. Earthside
had no explanation.

Most of the crew was already sprawled around the room, eyes glazed with hunger and
fatigue, their boots and coveralls leaving muddy trails on the slanted former ceiling
where lights now glowed. Rafa was surprised to see one man kneeling in a corner,
whispering and genuflecting with his eyes closed.

The kid with the nose rings and ever-present lollipop was fingering a rosary while
he read a comic book. He nodded up at Rafa.

“What’s your story?” Rafa asked reflexively. He didn’t really expect an answer;
nobody on the crew seemed to like him, and the feeling was definitely mutual. But he’d
had so many students about this kid’s age that he couldn’t help the attempt at
interaction.

The candy made a popping sound as it emerged. “The usual: bad guys duke it out with
a muscle-bound hero while the babe waits in suspense.”

“Sounds exciting.” Rafa failed to keep the contempt out of his voice.

“Stupid, you mean.” But the kid didn’t sound offended. “Hey, I need an escape. World
could use a few heroes.”

I could use a babe waiting in suspense
, Rafa thought.

There was an open box of ration packets in the center of the floor. It looked
emptier than when he’d seen it at lunch time, but not much—apparently the craving for
physical rest was taking precedence over the desire for food. He noticed Compton
picking over some sort of jellied fruit that vaguely resembled peaches, and he winced
in sympathy.

Exhaustion hung heavy in the air, and at first its mind-numbing effects prevented
Rafa from heeding Chen’s plodding motions as she knelt in front of one reclining viking
after another. Eventually it registered that she had dispensed pills of some sort to
several of his crewmates.