Voyagers II - The Alien Within (7 page)

She began to understand that power has its own rewards. Yes, returning Keith and the alien would be a staggering coup for Vanguard Industries. The alien spacecraft was a treasure house of technology. Who knew what secrets it would reveal to those who captured it? And if they could revive the frozen astronaut, bring him back to life, that alone would be worth untold billions.

She succeeded. The price of success was marrying Nillson and letting him parade her before former lovers and future possibilities as his possession.

But the rewards! Once they had brought the alien spacecraft back into a safe orbit around the Earth, Vanguard’s scientists had dug into it like a swarm of ants stripping a carcass. In the first five years they found enough to change the world several times over, and to make Vanguard virtually an autonomous nation, such was the wealth and power uncovered.

And now, at last, they had brought the frozen human being back to life. Like Sleeping Beauty, they had revived the seemingly dead. Immortality was at hand. For that, the world would pay anything that Jo wanted.

But Keith Stoner had to be controlled now. At least for a while. Controlled and kept safe from harm. It wouldn’t do for the world’s first immortal man to disappear.

Or die.

It was past eleven o’clock and Richards had not shown up yet. Stoner sat patiently in the chair by the window, reading
Don Quixote
, part of the lifetime’s worth of literature that he had never gotten into before. He laughed at the antics of the emaciated old madman and his stout, earthy squire, Sancho. Like all the generations before him, Stoner saw something of himself in the earnest lunacy of the Knight of the Sad Countenance.

But within his mind, it was as though he were discovering facets of the human race that he had never understood before. It’s all a sham, a voice within him whispered. Each human being plays a role, presents a mask to the others around him, and the others all hold up their own masks to hide their own vulnerabilities.

No human is ever totally honest, Stoner realized. Not even with himself. He put the book down on his lap and stared out at the ocean. You knew that, he told himself. You’ve known that almost all your life.

Yet there was a part of him that found the understanding new and fresh and fascinating. A part of him that seemed to be perceiving the human drama for the first time.

When the portal opened it made no sound, but the glow of the wall’s transmutation caught Stoner’s eye. He turned to see Richards stepping through.

The psychiatrist stared at the book in Stoner’s lap. “You just started reading that this morning,” he said, his tone almost accusing.

“Yes,” answered Stoner, getting to his feet.

“You’re damned near finished!”

Stoner glanced at the book, still in his hand. He turned and put it down carefully on the windowsill next to the chair. “My reading speed is increasing, I guess.”

Richards bustled past him and picked up the book. “Seven hundred and thirty-two pages! You’ve
read
it? Without skimming?”

Stoner smiled. “Want to quiz me?”

“Should I?”

“Is it because psychiatry began among Middle European Jews that you tend to answer a question with a question?” Stoner asked.

Richards scowled.

“I’ll tell you what I’ve learned from Cervantes,” Stoner volunteered. “And from the other authors I’ve been reading. All of fiction is basically about one subject, and only one: women choosing their mates.”

“Women choosing…?”

With a nod, Stoner said, “Yep. That’s the common denominator of all fiction.”

“Not in
Don Quixote
,” Richards objected.

“The don’s adventures are just a frame to hold together a lot of little stories,” Stoner said. “All of those little stories concern women deciding whom they’re going to marry.”

“But not all fiction! A lot of it’s about men.”

Stoner’s grin widened. “Some of it seems to be about men and their adventures. But when you look closer, you see that what the men are really doing is trying to get certain women. And it’s always the woman who decides. The men are constant, always striving to get the woman. The women are never constant; they’re always trying to make up their minds about accepting this particular male or some other one.”

“Hamlet?” snapped Richards.

“His mother chose Claudius, and that’s what started all the trouble.”

“Hemingway!”

Laughing, Stoner said, “I just finished
The Sun Also Rises
and
For Whom the Bell Tolls
last night. The women make all the decisions.”

Richards stood there, frowning and tugging at his mustache.

“Try Jane Austen,” Stoner suggested, “or
Gone With the Wind
.”

The psychiatrist shook his head. Returning the book to the windowsill, he said, “I don’t really have the time to discuss literature with you. Come on, you’re going to lunch with Mrs. Nillson.”

“I’m ready,” said Stoner.

Richards led him through corridors he had not seen before, out to a parking lot and a sleek, silver, two-seated automobile.

“Alfa Mercedes,” Richards muttered. “My sublimation machine.” Stoner folded himself into the front seat as Richards slid behind the wheel and flicked his fingers over the keypad on the dash. The roof glowed briefly and disappeared. Stoner grinned. The same trick that turned a solid wall into an open doorway also turned the hard-topped car into a convertible.

“One of the fringe benefits of being relatively high up on the ladder of Vanguard Industries.” Richards grinned back at him. “You get a lot of special features for your car, way ahead of the production models.”

The engine purred softly, and the car eased out of the parking lot.

“Electric motor?” Stoner asked.

Richards nodded, swinging the car past the uniformed guards on either side of the parking lot’s entrance and out onto the access road to the highway.

“Most vehicles are electrical now. One of the little gifts your dead friend gave us: fusion energy.”

The car accelerated smoothly and quietly up onto the broad four-lane highway. Other cars whizzed past, as fast and quiet as a charging cheetah. Trucks rumbled along in their own lanes, passing all but the speediest of the autos.

“The trucks still use internal combustion engines,” Richards explained. “Hydrogen fuel, though. No more kerosene.”

“Nobody does fifty-five, do they,” Stoner shouted over the rush of the wind that was tousling his hair.

Richards pecked out another combination on the dashboard keys, then took his hands off the wheel and leaned back in his chair.

“She’s on automatic now. I won’t have to pick up the steering again until we turn off the highway.”

Stoner lifted his face to the glorious Hawaiian sun. He felt free and fine, the wind whistling by, the sunshine warm, the lovely beach racing past.

“There’s no speed limit on the highways anymore,” Richards told him. “No need to conserve fuel, so we adapted the European system. Besides, with magnetic bumpers and miniradar warning systems tied automatically to the computer that runs the engine, it’s almost impossible to have a collision.”

“There’s no seat belt.”

“Another gift from your friend,” Richards shouted into the wind. “An energy shell absorbs any impact forces and keeps you safely in your seat. The car can be totaled, and you’ll just get up and walk away from it. This’ll go into the production cars next year, they tell me.”

“Ought to please the insurance companies!”

Richards nodded happily.

Stoner eyed him for a moment. He could see through the psychiatrist’s veneer of self-control. “How fast can this buggy really go?” he asked.

Richards smiled slightly, and his left hand unconsciously snaked toward the steering wheel. “Pretty damned fast.”

“A hundred?”

“Miles or kilometers?”

“Miles.”

“Easy.” He reached into the compartment under the dashboard and pulled out a pair of skin-soft gloves. Stoner saw that they were worn nearly through at the palms and knuckles. Richards wormed them onto his hands, fastened the wrist clasps, then punched a single key on the dashboard. He gripped the wheel and leaned slightly forward. The car surged ahead with barely a murmur from the engine. Stoner felt the acceleration pushing him into the molded seat. But he missed the roar of power that he remembered.

The highway became a blur as Richards, hunching over the steering wheel, swung onto the leftmost lane and leaned on the accelerator. It was eerily quiet: only the rushing wind and the hum of the tires on the road surface. And the sudden, startling
whoosh
as they zipped past other cars. Fifteen minutes later Richards’s silver convertible pulled into a parking area set off the highway, next to the beach.

The psychiatrist was grinning like a kid as he braked the car to a stop. “A hundred and seventy!” he exulted. “How’d you like that?”

“Fastest I’ve ever traveled on the ground,” Stoner said.

Richards nodded happily. “I never had her up to that speed. Wow, she just glides along without a rattle, doesn’t she?”

Pulling himself out of the bucket seat, Stoner admitted, “I never thought electric motors could produce such speed.”

“Times have changed,” Richards said, getting out of the car. “A lot of things have changed.”

“I’m beginning to understand that.”

They stood by the gleaming silver Alfa Mercedes in the bright noontime sun. Its warmth soaked into Stoner’s shoulders and back; it felt good.

“Are we going to have a picnic?” Stoner asked.

Richards made an exaggerated shrug. “Search me. I was told to bring you here.” Looking back at his car and grinning again, “We’re a little early, of course.”

Stoner nodded an acknowledgment and turned to look out at the ocean. It seemed to shimmer like a heat mirage. Concentrating every fiber of his attention on the waves rolling up to the beach, Stoner forced the shimmering to stop. No hallucinations, he told himself. Not while he’s watching me. Then he heard the crunching of wheels on the parking lot’s macadam. Turning back again, he saw a long black limousine gliding to a stop alongside Richards’s sleek silver sports car. The limo’s windows were smoky dark; it was impossible to see who was inside it.

He walked through the bright sunshine toward the limousine, Richards beside him. Its roof glittered in the sunlight. Solar cells, he realized. They make enough electricity to run the air conditioner and God knows what else, even when the engine’s off.

The chauffeur popped out of the limo as they approached, trotted around the length of it, and opened the rear door.

Jo Camerata stepped out.

She was as excitingly beautiful as Stoner had remembered her. Tall, with the long-legged curvaceous figure of a Hollywood star. Thickly lustrous black hair. Blazing dark eyes and rich full lips. And best of all, a mind, a spirit, as driving and demanding as Stoner’s own had been. An intelligence behind those midnight eyes that had made her more challenging than any woman he had ever known.

Eighteen years ago. She had been a child then, a student. Now she was a woman. She stood before Stoner, dressed in a simple sleeveless blouse of light blue and a darker wraparound skirt. Her throat was adorned with a choker of gleaming rubies and diamonds; a matching bracelet on her wrist.

“You’ve become a woman,” Stoner said to her. “You’re even more marvelous than I thought you’d be.”

For a moment she said nothing, then she turned to Richards. “Thanks for bringing him, Gene. I’ll see you back at the lab.”

The psychiatrist took her dismissal wordlessly, turned, and started back for his car.

“I thought we would picnic on the beach, Keith,” Jo said.

His memory wrenched back to Kwajalein, to the long hot frantic days and cool windswept nights on the beaches there when an eighteen-year-younger Jo Camerata drove the atoll’s male population wild in her cut-off jeans and skimpy halter tops, laughing as she splashed into the surf, knowing that every male eye was on her but wanting only the one man who was too busy to pay attention to her: Keith Stoner.

“A picnic would be fine,” he said.

The chauffeur was already pulling a wicker hamper from the limousine’s trunk. Stoner took it from him and followed Jo to the edge of the hard-topped parking area and out onto the clean white sand.

“Pretty empty for a public beach,” he said.

“It’s not a public beach. This is Vanguard Industries property,” Jo replied.

He looked at her, more carefully this time. In the flat leisure shoes she was wearing, she came just about up to his chin. “There’s something different about you, Jo.”

She glanced up at him. “Eighteen years. It’s a long time.”

“No, not that. If anything, you look better than you did then. More sophisticated. More adult.”

“You mean older.”

“It’s your hair,” he suddenly realized. “You used to wear it much longer.”

She almost grinned. “Long hair is not highly regarded among corporate executives. Keep it short and simple, like a memo.”

“You’re a corporate executive now.”

“I’m the president of Vanguard Industries.”

“The president! I’m impressed.”

She stopped and turned to face him. Stoner knelt slightly to let the hamper down onto the sand.

“You’ve changed, too, Keith,” she said.

Nodding, “I’m sure I have.”

“Your eyes…they’re different. The same color and everything, but…different.”

“In what way?”

She studied him for a long moment, then shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s there, but I can’t tell exactly what it is.”

They opened the hamper, took the blanket fastened inside its lid, spread it on the sand, and sat down.

“Chilled wine, caviar, sandwiches, brie…you pack quite a lunch,” Stoner said.

But Jo took a small black plastic oblong from the pocket of her skirt and ran it over the open hamper.

“You’re afraid of being bugged?”

“Goes with the job,” she said. “Industrial espionage, corporate politics—it can get pretty cutthroat.”

“And the government? The Russians?”

She tucked the electronic device back into her skirt and reached for the wine bottle. “The Cold War’s ancient history, Keith. It’s a very different world, thanks to you.”

“To me?”

“One of the bits of technology we found on the spacecraft transmutes matter into energy and back again quite easily.”

“I know. The door to my room…Richards’s convertible roof.”

She handed him the bottle and a corkscrew. “The same technology has made nuclear bombs obsolete.”

“How?”

“We’ve learned how to create a dome of energy large enough to cover a city. When it’s turned on, it protects the area inside from the blast and heat of a nuclear explosion.”

“And the radiation?”

Nodding, Jo said, “Radiation, too. All the energy from the nuclear explosion is absorbed by the screen.”

Stoner thought for a silent moment as he wormed the corkscrew into the cork, then pulled it out with a satisfactory
pop!

“That means that nuclear weapons are useless against American cities….”

“And Russian cities, too,” Jo said. “We sold the information to the Russians.”

“The American government didn’t object?”

She held out a glass that sparkled like crystal in the hot sun. “Lots of people objected. The President who okayed the deal was almost impeached. He lost his bid for reelection—never even got his own party’s nomination.”