Voyagers III - Star Brothers (34 page)

Slowly, tiredly, Lela climbed the steep green slope. The blond lay sprawled on his face several meters down the other side, his back a mass of blood.

Lela slipped and half slid down to where he lay. She pulled him over onto his back.

His eyes were glazed with pain. Yet he smiled at her, raggedly. “You think more of those bloody apes than you do of human beings, don’t you?” His voice was a harsh, bubbling whisper.

“Yes,” said Lela as she watched him die. “Yes, I do.”

LI-PO Hsen walked onto the catwalk in the starship chamber only after six black-uniformed men armed with pistols and submachine guns stepped out and formed a silent menacing line along the metal railing. Then the head of Pacific Commerce came through the doorway. He was too short, Jo noticed, to need to duck his head. The only addition to his usual shortsleeved shirt and comfortable, baggy slacks were the weighted lunar boots he wore. To Jo they looked almost like the boots deep-sea divers had used a century earlier.

Behind him came Zoltan Janos, his antiquated business suit still buttoned tightly across his stocky torso, his round bearded face staring in awe at the huge bubbling vat that simmered and steamed almost within arm’s reach of the catwalk.

Cliff Baker and Tomasso stood next to Jo, but their presences faded to nothing as she locked eyes with the man who had murdered her daughter.

Both of them tried their best to keep their faces from betraying the emotions that raged within them. Hsen felt the joy of long-awaited triumph. All the knowledge of the alien star-rovers is within Stoner’s mind, and I have him in my grasp. He will cooperate once he understands what can happen to his wife if he does not. It might even be profitable to give him a little demonstration, show him how easy it is to make a woman beg for mercy. Jo would try to resist, of course. I wonder how much pain it will take to break her?

Jo saw the corners of Hsen’s mouth twitch with the beginnings of a smile that he quickly suppressed. She allowed herself to smile back at him, and watched the surprise flash in his dark brown eyes.

That’s not the only surprise I’ve got in store for you, she told her enemy silently. You think you’re safe because you’ve got six goons with guns behind you. But just give me the opportunity to take my belt buckle off and I’ll give you the last surprise of your life.

Does he want to go to bed with me? Jo asked herself. It would be just like his kind of barbaric thinking, fuck the woman you’ve conquered. Okay, just say the word, take me to your bed and tell me to strip. That’s all I want from you now.

“I know what you are thinking,” Hsen said.

“Do you?”

“You would like to kill me, wouldn’t you?”

Jo said, “Wouldn’t you?”

“No, not yet. Not for a long time. Perhaps not at all, if you are reasonable.”

“You murdered my daughter,” Jo said, her voice as flat and wooden as that of a woman who had given up all hope.

“A regrettable accident.”

“You abducted my husband and tried to kidnap my son.”

“Your husband is an extremely valuable property,” Hsen replied. “As for your son, and the cloning apparatus that bears your daughter—I can take them, if I must, no matter what the cost. Or it might become necessary to destroy them. Archimedes has no nuclear shield, does it?”

Jo’s teeth clenched. Kill him! her blood urged. Kill him as quickly as you can, before he kills your babies.

“You don’t need to threaten me,” she said, her right hand slowly going to her belt buckle. “You’ve won. I know that the game is over.”

Hsen’s eyes became wary. “You accept defeat?”

Toying with her belt buckle, Jo said, “I understand when the time has come to make an accommodation.”

“Such as?”

Gesturing toward the steaming vat with her left hand, Jo answered, “You can control Vanguard through me. You can have access to all the technology of the aliens through my husband. As long,” her voice hardened, “as you promise not to harm my children or my husband.”

Despite himself, Hsen let his eagerness show. “Stoner will cooperate?”

“If I tell him that he must.”

“Truly?”

“Why not ask me myself?”

They all turned and saw Stoner filling the metal doorway, his bare chest showing, the ugly burns, his wrists skinned red, his beard and hair fiercely ragged. The guards levelled their guns at him.

“Keith!”

Jo ran to him, pushing past Hsen’s slight form and the shocked, gaping Janos to throw herself into his arms. He gripped her tightly.

“What have they done to you?”

“Not ‘they,’” Stoner replied. “Him.” He pointed at Janos with his left hand.

“Your finger!”

Stoner moved his accusing hand to point at Hsen. “Working for him.”

“How did you get out…” Janos’s voice choked off as Ilona clumped through the doorway, still in the pressure suit, followed by Paulino. Both of them had removed their helmets.

“Who are these people?” Hsen demanded.

Stoner made a wry smile. “Two lost souls.”

Hsen folded his thin arms across his chest. “You are very clever, Dr. Stoner. But not clever enough to evade bullets, I trust.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Stoner said. Then he saw Cliff Baker and Tomasso, still standing off a few paces along the catwalk.

For a long moment he said nothing. The only sounds in the huge underground chamber were the frothing hiss of the immense seething, steaming glassteel vat and the distant whirring hum of the suction fans high above.

Stoner recognized Tomasso and sensed the fear and tension that made the man’s innards tremble. But no guilt. Not a shred of guilt. Tomasso felt no remorse for the role he had played in killing Cathy. He’s convinced himself that it wasn’t his fault, not his responsibility, Stoner sensed. Poor damned fool! All he fears is Jo’s vengeance. If only he knew what he should really be afraid of.

Turning to Baker, Stoner asked, “What are you doing here, Cliff?”

But before Baker could answer, Stoner saw it flashing through the man’s mind. He felt a sudden dizziness, a stomach-tumbling vertigo, as if the metal grillwork beneath his feet had given way and he was plunging in lunar slow motion down, down, down to the concrete floor fifteen stories below.

“My god, Cliff,” Stoner gasped. “Why? Why did you do it?”

Baker made a lopsided smile. “Why not?”

“Do what?” Jo asked, still in Stoner’s protective grasp.

“The Horror,” said Stoner. “Cliff created the Horror.”

Hsen and all the others stared at the Australian.

With a slight giggle, Baker said, “I didn’t create it. The stuff came out of a Vanguard laboratory—your own lab, Jo. The one at Mt. Isa.”

“That’s not a biology lab!”

“The plague isn’t biological,” Stoner said. “It’s caused by nanomachines. Virus-sized weapons specifically designed to destroy the cells of the stomach lining.”

Baker’s grin widened, became more twisted. “Two of Jo’s very bright lads were working on the next step down in size from biochips. One of ’em was a drinking mate of mine. Instead of communications chips, he wanted to create machines that could work inside the human body. He got the idea of designing microminiaturized machines that could build even smaller machines.”

“Down to nanometer dimensions,” said Stoner. “The size of a virus.”

“Right. The easiest one to build would be a machine that chewed up biological cells. That’s what he wanted to do first. As an experiment.”

“I’ve never seen a report about this work!” Jo said in an accusing voice.

“ ’Course not. They knew what they were doing could be turned into enormous profits for Vanguard. And power. That worried ’em.”

Stoner saw Hsen’s eyes glittering with the prospects of nanotechnology and the power it could yield.

“Being good lads, they let me talk ’em into quitting Vanguard before their work went beyond the theory stage. It was easy for me to convince ’em that no corporation could be trusted with this technology. So I got ’em both to come and work for the IIA. Gave ’em a lab of their own in Sydney and let ’em go ahead with their experiments.”

“And then you killed them,” said Stoner.

“I had to test the stuff, di’n’t I?”

Hsen seemed wonder-struck. “And then you turned the plague loose on the world?”

“Right. Started my own population control program,” Baker answered, almost laughing. “Women and children first, of course. Decent thing to do, don’t you think?”

“It kills women preferentially,” Stoner explained. “Especially pregnant women.”

“Rich women,” Baker corrected. “Kill the rich. Send the little buggers all across the world on airliners. Let the fat tourists and big-shot business people spread the plague among their own.”

“But the Horror is killing millions of people—rich and poor!” Jo said.

“Can’t be helped,” Baker replied, shrugging. “Can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs, y’know.”

Ilona whispered, shocked, “But all those people…”

“What of it?” Baker snapped. “Maybe the plague will wipe out everybody except those of us who’re clever enough to get off the planet. So what? There’s too damned many people on Earth anyway, everybody knows that.”

“If nanomachines cause the Horror,” Hsen mused, one hand lightly stroking his chin, “then other nanomachines can be made to protect a person against the plague. Such protection would be priceless. Absolutely priceless!”

He turned to Stoner, “Is that not so?”

Stoner closed his eyes. Inoculate the whole population of Earth? Turn nanotechnology loose for everyone, all at once? The results could tear human society to shreds. Most human beings couldn’t bear to see themselves as they truly are; it would hit them the way it hit Novotny. Half the world might go insane.

There is no other way, his star brother counselled. It is too late for gradual measures. Our deepest fears have come true. Humans have discovered nanotechnology and are using it for genocide, perhaps racial suicide. We have no choice now but to provide them with the means to protect themselves.

“Is it not so?” Hsen repeated, raising his voice angrily.

“Yes,” Stoner answered. “It is true.”

“The ultimate power!” Hsen said, half to himself. “The power of life and death. Over everyone! Over the entire world!”

Jo snapped, “You’re acting as if the power is already yours.”

“Of course it is! I control you, both of you. Dr. Stoner, you will begin by inoculating me, just as you inoculated de Sagres and the others.”

Stoner stared at him for long moments, his gray eyes seeing beyond Hsen’s jubilant face, beyond the starship being built atom by atom within the giant vat, beyond the confines of this world and time.

“Let me tell you about my star brother,” he said, so softly that the others strained toward him slightly to hear.

It began nearly ten million years earlier, on a planet imbedded in a thick cluster of stars halfway across the Milky Way. They were originally created as weapons, Stoner told them. The nanomachines were first invented to serve as implements of death. “Almost the same way you’re using them, Cliff,” Stoner said.

Before they wiped themselves out, the race that invented the nanomachines sent a few of its kind into deep space. Their best scientists saw that they had committed planet-wide genocide and tried to save a few of their own. The stars in their cluster were so close together that it took only a few years for a spacecraft to reach another civilized world. But the nanomachines that they carried within them, built for nothing more than killing, began to destroy that race, too. Like an interstellar plague, the machines killed and killed and killed.

The second race’s scientists worked feverishly to develop their own nanotechnology and counter the invading plague. They succeeded. They saved their species. For a while. They found that the nanomachines could be made to preserve the bodies they dwelled in, protect them against disease and cure injuries. Their lifespans lengthened incredibly. They became virtually immortal. But they did not know how to handle such godlike power. They allowed their numbers to grow beyond the ability of the planet to support them. The gift of life was turned into worldwide pollution that destroyed their biosphere. Again, a pitiful few were able to get away on spacecraft, but their race died in its own garbage and excrement.

And so it has gone. For millions of years, from one world to another, across the breadth of the Milky Way galaxy the nanomachines have spread. Over those eons the machines have gained incredible new capabilities as one race after another added different powers to them. Now they can be symbiotes, enhancing not only their hosts’ physical well-being, but the hosts’ mental abilities also. Yet not one race in a thousand has been wise enough to use them well. The race that sent them to Earth was one of those rare exceptions. Virtually every species to attain nanotechnology killed itself within a generation or two.

“The star brethren are a test,” Stoner concluded. “The human race’s ultimate test. Can we join with these symbiotes to move humanity to the next phase of our development, or will we use their powers to destroy ourselves?”

Hsen nodded as if he understood. “That is why this power must be restricted to the very few people who have the understanding and strength to direct all the others.”

“Such as you?” Jo sneered.

“Don’t you understand?” Stoner asked of them. “Don’t any of you understand? We’re talking about an evolutionary step as big as the invention of fire! Bigger! Even the biochips are trivial compared to nanotechnology.”

“Yes,” said Ilona. “I see. I understand.”

Stoner went on, “At first, evolution works at the physical level, changing species over geological spans of time. Once a species achieves intelligence, though, evolution becomes social. Our societies change, and that becomes the driving force in our evolution. Social changes happen over centuries, generations, incredibly faster than physical evolution works. But when the species invents science, the big evolutionary changes come out of technology, and they come so swiftly that it’s hard to keep up with them. The world begins to change in decades instead of generations.”

The others stared at him in silence.

“Two or three decades ago,” Stoner went on, “everybody was scared to death of nuclear weaponry. For the first time people realized that we had developed a technology that could wipe out all life on Earth. Politicians and scientists and diplomats worked out treaties to control nuclear weapons. But while they were doing that, our global technology was spewing out enough pollution to heat up the atmosphere and change the world’s climate.”

“And cutting down the rain forests,” Ilona said.