Voyagers II - The Alien Within (21 page)

It was a beautiful afternoon in late spring, warm without being muggy. The skyline of Manhattan sparkled against the clean blue sky. Cheap, abundant electricity had transformed New York City. Electric cars had replaced most of the taxis and private automobiles; those that were not electric-powered ran on hydrogen fuels. No more soot or carbon monoxide was being pumped into the air. The gray smudge of pollution that once hung over the city like a funeral shroud had disappeared for good.

But Madigan had no time to admire the view. His only real thought about it was that the fusion generators that provided the electricity were very profitable for Vanguard Industries.

His little helicopter winged across the harbor and turned south, following the New Jersey coastline past Bayonne and Elizabeth, then swinging eastward out toward Sandy Hook. Madigan saw the near empty runways of the old Newark Airport on one side of him, the green-patined Statue of Liberty standing resolutely on the other side.

Finally the chopper dropped down onto the cracked concrete of the old Fort Monmouth Army Electronics Center. Vanguard Industries had bought the weed-infested base from the government several years earlier. Outwardly, the base still looked abandoned and forgotten. But there were certain Vanguard operations going on inside its dismal gray concrete buildings.

It made sense to turn Baker over to Nillson, the lawyer insisted to himself as he ducked out of the helicopter. It made him look good to the chairman of the board, and by offering to tell Jo whatever Nillson’s people pumped out of Baker, he looked equally good to the corporation’s president. It was the right move, he repeated. They won’t kill Baker. They know what they’re doing.

Cliff Baker lay naked on a table, wrists and ankles securely cuffed, legs spread apart. A bank of bright lights blazed overhead, and a team of men and women in green surgical gowns clustered so closely around him that Madigan could barely see his naked, vulnerable body. From his vantage point in the control room, above the floor of the interrogation center, it looked almost like an old-style surgical theater. They had even taken the bandaging off Baker’s shoulder wound and inserted a metal probe into the torn flesh.

Wires were attached to Baker’s nipples, fingers, scrotum, and toes. His eyes were clamped open, and an intravenous tube had been inserted into his left forearm.

“I don’t know where Stoner is,” Baker was muttering, his voice so weak that Madigan could barely hear it over the intercom in the darkened control room. “I don’t know,” he repeated.

One of the green-gowned women bending over him reached out a gloved hand and turned the dial of a gray metal box that stood on a wheeled table next to Baker’s outstretched body. She turned the dial ever so slightly, but Baker’s spine arched and he gave out a strangled scream.

“Suction!” snapped the man on the other side of the table. “He’s vomiting again. Clamp the tongue before he chokes on it!”

Madigan felt his own stomach heave, and he turned away. Sitting in the darkness, leaning forward eagerly until his forehead almost pressed against the one-way glass, Everett Nillson licked his lips and patted at beads of sweat on his upper lip. A woman sat next to him, someone Madigan had never seen before. She was very young, barely a teenager, and she wore a green surgical gown like the workers down in the harshly lit scene below. Her eyes were fixed on the work going on down there, burning bright and hot. Her hand stroked Nillson’s thigh, absently, automatically, almost like the reflexive twitch of a cat’s tail.

“For God’s sake,” Madigan burst out, “he’s told us everything he knows!”

Nillson looked up at him, his head tilting back slowly, his eyes dreamy. “Yes,” he said quietly, “I suppose he has.”

“Then let’s stop it before we have a corpse on our hands.”

Nillson turned from Madigan to the teenager sitting beside him. In the light from the operating room coming through the window, her face looked harsh, heavily painted. Ruby-red eye shadow and lips almost purple. Wild hair, brick orange.

“A little more,” Nillson said, smiling at the girl. “You’d like to see a little more, wouldn’t you?”

“If you would,” she replied.

“Oh, I would. Yes, I surely would.”

Madigan started for the door. He needed fresh air and a soundproof barrier between him and the noises gargling from Baker’s throat.

“Stay here,” Nillson said.

Madigan’s hand touched the cool metal of the door, but Nillson’s voice, as soft as the caress of a lover’s hand, froze him where he stood.

“Come back here and tell me about my loving wife,” Nillson said slowly. “What is she up to? How much does she know about this international gang of terrorists?”

“Jo?” Madigan asked, startled. He came slowly back to Nillson’s side, trying not to look out the window, not to hear what was filtering through the intercom. “You don’t believe that she knows anything?…”

“I do,” replied Nillson.

“I don’t think—”

“I don’t care what you think, Archibald. Or what you don’t think. You just make certain that my adoring wife thinks you’re still on her side. The instant you stop being useful to me, you know, you could end up on the table down there.”

Madigan’s stomach twisted. He tried to fight down the bile rising in his throat. And failed.

All through dinner at the sidewalk restaurant that An Linh picked out, Stoner listened to her talking about her childhood in this ancient city, knowing that he was getting a carefully edited biography.

She was stunningly beautiful, with the delicate blend of feminine fragility and lissome allure that characterized southeast Asian women. Lovely flowers, innocent yet knowing. As he studied her almond eyes and high cheekbones, her short-cropped ebony hair and sensuous lips, he realized she could be very seductive. Remembering an earlier life, he thought of how many American males had succumbed to the powerful charms of Indochinese women.

But she was not trying to seduce Stoner. Sex, even the casual flirting games that men and women constantly play with each other, was far from her mind. He could see that she was frightened, and whatever was frightening her was something that she did not want Stoner to know about.

He watched her and listened all through their leisurely dinner. Each time she came to a point that she wanted to keep hidden from him, her breath caught just slightly, her eyes shifted away from him for an instant, her hands smoothed the napkin on her lap or made tiny adjustments on the placement of her dinner plate, her silverware, or wineglass.

Stoner thought, She claims she’s a television news reporter, yet she hasn’t asked me anything at all about myself. A stranger steps off a train—a foreigner, no less—and rescues her from three thugs, and she doesn’t even ask where he’s come from or what he’s doing in this town. Then he smiled with understanding. Of course! She knows who I am.

He felt his body relax. She knows who I am. Maybe she’s been following me. A television news reporter. Who’s she working for? And why the scene at the train station? He mulled that over as he worked his way through the trout almondine. There was no need to rush; plenty of time to unravel the mystery. An Linh had recommended the house wine, and it was excellent: a crisp dry white, cold and delicious. For the first time, Stoner leaned back in his chair and surveyed their surroundings. The sidewalk was narrow, and the few pedestrians walking by had to navigate around the little tables or walk out in the brick-paved street. A huge old tree murmured overhead in the soft springtime breeze; strings of lights swung from its branches. A picture painted by Van Gogh, he thought. A scene from a Hemingway story.

He turned his attention back to An Linh and saw that she was truly frightened. It’s not just worry that I’ll find out she’s after a story about me. Those men at the station were real; it wasn’t a fake scene just to impress me.

She refused dessert, but Stoner chose a napoleon from the big tray the waiter presented. They both finished with good strong black coffee.

Then came the bill. Stoner watched her glance inadvertently down at the handbag she had left at her feet, and then up at him. He could see the chain of thoughts flashing through her mind: If I use my ID card to pay, they’ll trace it and know where I am. But he won’t have any ID at all; he can’t pay.

Stoner took the check from the waiter, asked the young man for a pen, and signed the back of the check.

“Will that be all right?” he asked.

The waiter blinked and frowned, but finally nodded.

Stoner got to his feet, went around the little table, and helped An Linh up from her chair.

“It’s a beautiful night,” he said. “Let’s take a walk.”

The sun still lingered above the horizon, painting the placid Connecticut River orange gold. Dozens of sleek launches and sailboats were tied up at the pier adjacent to the Goodspeed Opera House. Long limousines, black, white, even one of salmon pink, pulled up on the gravel driveway. Men in dinner jackets and women in bejeweled gowns were streaming from their limos and boats, smiling graciously at one another, laughing politely here and there as they headed into the old Victorian clapboard building. It rose shining white among the graceful old trees like a memory of an earlier century, when a man could build an opera house in the middle of the Connecticut hills to his own quirky specifications and then get the best performers in the world to come to it—if he were rich enough.

Jo Camerata Nillson stood at the base of the winding stairway, beneath the ornate chandelier, greeting the theatergoers as they entered. They were her guests. The Goodspeed had fallen on poor times a decade earlier, but Jo had bought the place and revitalized it. In bygone years it had housed revivals of old Broadway musicals. Now she had returned it to its original purpose, and the opera house was presenting a special performance of
Carmen
. The entire cast had been flown in from La Scala in Milan for this one evening.

Everett Nillson stood beside his wife, tall and elegant in a crimson dinner jacket. He wore medals from several nations pinned to its breast, and the French
Légion d’honneur
on a blue silk ribbon around his neck. Jo was in a white floor-length gown, classic Greek in inspiration, which subtly accentuated her tall, elegant figure. Her decorations were diamonds set in platinum at her wrists and throat, and a diamond clip in her thick dark hair.

“Quite a success you’ve made of this,” Nillson said after the last guest had been greeted and ushered up the stairs to their seat.

Jo surveyed the empty foyer. “It’s easy to fill the house when the tickets are free.”

“Do you think you’ll ever make a profit out of this place?” he asked, offering his arm to her.

“Only if I want to.”

As they started up the stairs, the familiar strains of the overture came filtering out to them. Nillson took a deep breath. “I suppose we’ll have to sit through the whole damned show.”

“Don’t you want to?”

“I don’t enjoy watching when I know what the outcome will be.”

Jo looked into his ice-pale eyes. “But it’s different every time. No two performances are exactly the same.”

“They both get killed every time, don’t they?”

“We all die, sooner or later.”

They reached the landing, and he stopped before the double doors that led into the theater. Bizet’s music was reaching for a crescendo.

“Jo, why are you fighting me?”

She felt a pang of surprise. “Fighting you? I’m not—”

“About this astronaut, this man Stoner.”

Jo’s mind raced into overdrive. Is this another one of his little traps? Is he really jealous of Keith, or is he just playing his usual power game with me?

“Everett,” she said, stalling for time to think, “when I first met you, all those years ago, I told you that the only thing in the world I wanted was to go out and recapture that alien spacecraft.”

“With Stoner aboard it.”

“He was aboard it, yes. And so was the knowledge that’s brought Vanguard billions in profits.”

“Tens of billions, actually,” he said. “But the real reason you wanted to get the spaceship was because
he
was in it.”

“So what?” she snapped. “You accepted the situation. And you made my marrying you the price for what I wanted.”

“Did I? You married me to make certain that you’d get what you wanted.”

Jo knew she had to control her temper. Everett was no man to face on raw emotion. “We were married at
your
insistence. And you know why.”

“Do I?”

“You married me to prove to the world in general—and the nastier members of the board in particular—that you were a real man.”

Nillson ran a long, bloodless finger along the side of his lean jaw. “Here I thought that you married me because I was the only male member of the board that you hadn’t fucked.”

She made herself smile at him. “That’s not quite true.”

He remained serious. “I thought that our marriage would prove to be a powerful alliance: your strength and vigor combined with my knowledge and wealth.”

“And it has been,” Jo replied. “Vanguard has grown tremendously.”

“Yes, I suppose it has.”

Inwardly, Jo reflected, A marriage of convenience. A corporate marriage. You should have known what he was like when he wouldn’t go to bed with you before the wedding. You were ready to accept anything, weren’t you? Anything.

“But your real reason for all this,” Nillson was saying, “is that you wanted to bring Stoner back to life. You’re still in love with him.”

“That’s nonsense.”

“Then why are you working against me?”

“I’m not! What makes you think—”

“You spirited him away. You hid him from me.”

“And you murdered Gene Richards!”

Nillson backed away from her blazing eyes, almost staggering, as if slapped in the face.

“I’m trying to find Stoner,” Jo insisted. “All along I’ve been trying to keep him safe and protected, so the competition couldn’t get their hands on him.”

“And you’ve failed miserably, haven’t you?”

She had no answer for that.

The overture came to its climax. The audience applauded.

Still standing between Jo and the door into the theater, Nillson demanded, “Have you made any progress at all toward finding him?”

“Some,” she equivocated. “If we both have people out trying to find him, it would be better if we worked together.”

He shook his head slowly. “You can beat the bushes looking for him, if you want to.”

“And what are you going to do?” Jo asked, suddenly frightened.

Nillson smiled, a faint, ghostly smile on his cold, colorless face. “There’s another way to prevent the competition from getting their hands on him. A permanent solution to the problem.”

His long-fingered hand closed slowly, tightly, into a fist. To Jo it looked like the claws of a rapacious predator gripping its prey.

Inevitably Stoner and An Linh found themselves at the foot of the ancient stone bridge jutting halfway across the peaceful Rhone River. Moonlight glittered on the water. The stars shone splendidly above.

They walked slowly out onto the bridge, toward the little chapel that had been built there centuries ago.

“My mother is there,” An Linh said, pointing to one of the buildings in the city that bulked darkly against the moonbright sky. Hardly a single light shone from it.

“That’s the hospital?” he asked.

“The annex, where they store medicines and bedding and toilet paper and dead bodies whose relatives insisted on their being frozen.”

“You’ll be able to revive her someday,” Stoner said. “You’ll be able to return her to life.”

“Yes. Someday.”

“Why were those men trying to abduct you?” Stoner asked An Linh.

In the soft moonlight she looked even more beautiful. She hesitated, then turned away from him.

“You know who I am,” he told her, thinking to himself, But you don’t know
what
I am. Neither do I. Not yet. Not fully.

She turned back to him, and he saw that there were tears in her eyes.

“Why don’t you tell me the rest of it?” he suggested gently. “I can’t help you if I don’t know the entire story.”

“Will you help me to revive my mother?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Now? Tonight? Tomorrow morning?”

He wanted to reach out and pull her to him, not as a lover would embrace her, but as a friend, a father, an older brother might. But something stopped him. There are too many entanglements in the relationship between a man and a woman, he told himself. It’s too easy for any gesture, any word or hint of an emotion, to be misinterpreted. Yet he knew that she needed to feel protected, to feel less alone. Poor frightened lonely mammal, so lost and scared without a tribe, a family, a companion to share warmth with her. But he could not move himself to cross the distance between them. It was only a foot or so, less than a meter, wider than the gulf between worlds, a distance he could measure in light-years.

“No,” he said softly in the moonlit night. “Not tomorrow or the day after. Not for a while.”

He saw the protest in her eyes before she began to speak. “But…”

“Why revive her if the cancer is still there, waiting to kill her?”

“They have found a cure for cancer,” An Linh said.

“Really? A cure? One that works for all kinds of cancers?”

“It’s common knowledge,” An Linh said, wishing she felt as certain as her words.

Stoner smiled. “It may be common knowledge, but is it true?”

She glared at him.

“If someone’s found a cure for cancer, then your mother will be revived, sooner or later. You have the greatest ally of all, An Linh: time,” Stoner told her. “Time is on your side. She will wait. You must be patient.”

“For how long?”

“I don’t know. Not yet.” Then he smiled for her. “But the fact that I’m here means that we’ll know how to revive her soon. And if you’re right, we’ll be able to cure her disease.”

“But why not now?”

His smile turned sad. “Because I don’t know how to do it. And I’m not sure that the people who revived me could revive your mother—or would choose to.”

She understood. He could see that.

Slowly they walked to the crumbling old chapel and sat on its stone steps, still warm from the long day’s sun. An Linh began to tell Stoner her true story, the part she had kept from him. About her aborted career at Vanguard Industries and Nillson and Madigan and Cliff Baker.

“I must bring you back to Paris,” she admitted finally, her voice so low he could barely hear her. “If I don’t, they will kill him.”

The moon had set. In the shadow of the chapel’s hulking stones it was so dark that Stoner could not see her face. She fell silent at last, and he leaned his head back against the rough wall, thinking. She accepts responsibility for her lover’s life as a matter of fact. No scream for help. No railing at the heavens over an unjust fate. He’s the man she loves, and she’ll move heaven and earth to protect him.

Abruptly, he got to his feet.

“All right,” he said. “It’s time we got moving.”

Looking up at him, she asked, “Where?”

“To Africa.”

“Africa?”

“My daughter’s there. I want to see her.”

“But Cliff…”

“Send word to your friends in Paris that you’re following me to Africa. Give them a progress report and they’ll keep your boyfriend alive.”

“But there’s a war in Africa!”