Voyagers III - Star Brothers (35 page)

“And manufacturing poison gas weapons,” added Tomasso.

“That’s just it,” Stoner told them. “Our technology is
global
in its power. Unless we control it carefully it can destroy us in a thousand ways.”

Jo said, “And nanotechnology is so big a step…”

Looking at her, Stoner said, “Right. Bigger than anything that’s come before it. It’s so big that it could shatter the human race before we learn to deal with it. That’s what we’ve been trying to avoid. That’s why we’ve worked to introduce nanotechnology gradually, carefully, with the least shock and pain to human society as possible.”

He turned back to Baker. “But you’ve made that impossible, Cliff. You’re forcing me to inoculate the world against your Horror. The consequences…god, I don’t know
what
the consequences will be.”

“That is of no importance at the moment,” Hsen snapped. “You will inoculate me. Now!”

“No,” said Stoner.

Hsen’s thin lips curved upward slightly. “You are in no position to refuse me. Unless, of course, you do not care what happens to your wife.”

Stoner thought swiftly. He’s a strong personality, not like Novotny. And absolutely amoral. Like Vic, he doesn’t feel guilt for anything he’s done. A star brother might open his heart to the rest of humanity; or it might simply reinforce his existing personality. A man of that strength, of that ruthlessness, with a star brother? We can’t take that chance, Stoner’s star brother agreed.

“I won’t do it,” Stoner said.

Hsen let his fury show in his face. He pointed at Jo and said to the black-uniformed men behind him, “Pin her arms behind her back!”

Not a man moved. They stood staring at nothingness, their submachine guns slung over their shoulders.

“Do as I say!” Hsen shouted.

“They can’t hear you,” said Stoner softly. “They can’t even see you.”

His face contorting with rage, Hsen grabbed at the holster on the hip of the commando nearest him. Pulling the heavy black revolver from it, he levelled the gun at Stoner. The others backed away, but Jo clung tightly to her husband.

“You can control them but you can’t control me!” he shouted.

“What makes you believe that?” asked Stoner mildly. “Do you really think that you’re some sort of superior creature? Do you think that your ability to make money, to steal and lie and murder, places you above normal men?”

Hsen squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. He brought up his other hand and pulled with both fingers. Beads of perspiration broke out on his forehead. His lips peeled back in the grimace of a hissing snake.

Ignoring him, Stoner turned to Baker. “Cliff, you’re sick. Maybe you’ve always been this way. Maybe it’s my fault. I don’t know if a star brother can heal the scars in your mind. There’s a chance that if you realize what you’ve done, truly understand the enormity of the evil you’ve unleashed—that realization might kill you. It’s a chance you’ll have to take.”

Baker backed away, one hand sliding along the railing of the catwalk. “No you don’t! You’re not sticking those alien monsters in
me
!”

“Stop speaking!” Hsen screamed. “I’ll kill you all!”

Without moving his arm from Jo’s shoulders Stoner told him, “Be quiet, little man. Cliff is a psychopath, and he needs our help. But you are a deliberate, calculating murderer. You are a carrier of death; you belong with the dead.”

“I’ll kill you!”

Stoner’s voice became as soft as the sweep of an angel’s hovering wings. “There is only one person here that you can kill.”

For a long moment Hsen stood absolutely still, holding the heavy revolver rigidly in both hands, pointed at Stoner’s chest. Then his arms began to tremble and slowly, painfully, his hands turned the pistol inch by agonizing inch until it pointed at his own face. Hsen’s entire body shook with the exertion. Rivulets of sweat ran down his face. His eyes were wide with horror as he stared directly into the yawning black depths of the gun’s muzzle.

“Now,” whispered Stoner, “if you truly want to kill someone, now you can pull the trigger.”

Hsen screamed an incoherent animal screech. The gun went off with a shattering roar and the upper half of his head disappeared in an explosion of blood and bone and brain. His nearly headless body slammed against the catwalk railing, vaulted over it and fell slowly twisting to the steel flooring fifteen stories below. It finally hit with a sickening wet thump.

Jo’s fingers tore into Stoner’s flesh. She screamed, and so did Ilona. Baker stared, goggle-eyed. Tomasso and Janos stood frozen in slack-jawed shock. Behind him Stoner heard Paulino gag and retch in the corridor outside the doorway. Jo was clutching at his bare torso. He could feel her gulping for breath, her whole body wire-taut.

The six black-clad commandos still stood as if they had turned to statues.

“How does revenge feel, Jo?” he asked.

She swallowed hard. “Numb,” she gasped. “I feel numb all over.”

“You would have felt worse if you had killed him yourself. Vengeance is always bitter, Jo. Always.”

Janos, his eyes nearly popping from their sockets, stuttered, “P-please…don’t…don’t kill me!”

Stoner stared at him.

“I didn’t know…I didn’t realize…”

“You knew,” Stoner said calmly. Extending his left hand with its stump where a finger should have been, “You knew exactly what you were doing. You just never thought that you’d have to face the consequences.”

The Hungarian fell to his knees and clutched Stoner’s legs. “Don’t kill me!
Please
don’t kill me!”

Stoner reached out and grasped his quaking shoulder with his four-fingered hand. “Don’t you think that I know the terror that lies deep in your heart? I feel it too, the terror of death, the fear that I will cease to be.”

Janos raised his tear-streaked face.

“Hsen killed himself,” said Stoner, “because he didn’t have the courage to face a world in which he would be powerless. I simply allowed him to do it. I can’t kill you—even if you deserved it.”

“Thank you!” Janos blubbered. “Thank you!”

But Stoner raised his hand. “I’m going to do something to you that might be much worse. I’m going to give you a star brother. You saw what it did to your president. What it does to you will depend on your own inner strength, your own ability to expand your consciousness to envelop the entire human race.”

“It’ll protect us against the Horror?” Jo asked.

“Yes. And it will change the way you see the world, for as long as you live.”

“What about me?” Tomasso asked, all in a rush. Stoner could see that it took every ounce of his courage to ask Jo the question. The muscles beneath the skin of his face were so rigid that he seemed to be wearing a mask of pain.

Jo looked up at her husband and then back at the traitor. “Just get out of my sight, Vic,” she said wearily. “Go away and never let me see you again.”

“Can…” Tomasso shifted his fearful eyes to Stoner. “Can I get it too, a star brother?”

Stoner nodded. “Will you share it with others? Will you return to Earth and help to inoculate your human brothers and sisters?”

“Ten billion people?” Tomasso’s voice was slightly hollow with the challenge.

“Everyone,” said Stoner.

“I’ll try,” he said.

“Good.”

“You’ll never do it in time,” Baker said, almost snarling. “They’re already starting to tear themselves apart down there. The human race is going to self-destruct!”

“You’re wrong, Cliff,” Stoner replied. “You’ve been wrong about almost everything.”

“Everybody dies!” Baker nearly shouted it.

“Not anymore,” Stoner said softly. “You almost had it right when you said that only those of us off-planet can survive the Horror. Space flight, the ability to live elsewhere than on the Earth, that’s what guarantees the immortality of the human race. Even if we fail to beat the Horror, the human race can survive here on the Moon and in the Lagrange habitats. Our fate is no longer tied to the fate of the Earth.”

“And star flight,” Jo said, the realization of it filling her voice with wonder. “With star flight the human race can outlive the Sun!”

Stoner smiled at her and pointed to the enormous vat beyond the catwalk’s railing. It had stopped bubbling. The steam was gone. Within its cylindrical glassteel walls they saw the graceful crystalline lines of the starship’s propulsion and guidance section.

“It glitters like a diamond!” Ilona exclaimed. “An enormous diamond!”

Stoner said, “A lot of it is diamond, especially the structural segments and the hull. Nothing but carbon atoms, properly arranged by nanomachines.”

Glancing down at the bloody remains of Hsen, Jo said, “That’s what he wanted. The starship. All the knowledge that the aliens hold.”

“There are no aliens,” Stoner said. “Not anymore. They’re our star brothers and sisters. Our symbiotes. We need each other to live.”

“Like multicellular organisms,” Ilona said. “Single-celled creatures joined together billions of years ago to produce the earliest multicellular organisms. Now we are joining with the star creatures.”

Stoner nodded. “First single cells, then aggregations of cells. Now we move on to a symbiosis that will create a new species, the next step in humankind’s development.”

“You’re not sticking those alien machines in me!” Baker shouted, waving his fists in the air. “You’re not going to turn me into an alien freak!”

Stoner took a step toward him. “Cliff, the symbiotes have made me more human, not less. There’s nothing to fear.”

Baker stared at him wildly.

“Believe me, Cliff,” Stoner soothed, “we’re all going to be more than human. You’ll see.”

The primitive fire in Baker’s eyes calmed. His hands unclenched.

Will he be able to handle a star brother within him? Stoner wondered silently. His own star brother replied, That is a test that every human will have to face, now.

Paulino’s timid voice came from the doorway. “Will we really be safe from the Horror?”

Stoner smiled at him. “And from addictions, too. Chemical and otherwise.” He nodded to Ilona.

“Immortality?” Jo asked. “Will we truly be immortal?”

“Maybe. With the star symbiotes within us, who knows how long a human being can live? Long enough to go star-roving, at least.”

“It frightens me a little,” said Ilona.

“It frightens me a lot,” Stoner admitted. “This is going to change human society completely. The upheavals are going to be tremendous.”

“But the alternative is the Horror,” Jo said.

“Yes. That’s the problem.”

“Then what are we waiting for?” she asked, with newfound strength in her voice. “We’ve got a whole world of work to do. Let’s get started. Now.”

JOÃO de Sagres stood at the crest of the bare pebbly hill and watched, breathless in the high altitude of the Nazcan plain, as the Sun touched the horizon exactly at the point where the long straight line arrowed to reach it.

The star brother within him had never seen the figures before, scratched into the bare soil of Nazca so many centuries earlier. Neither had de Sagres. Together they thrilled at the artistry and determination that had covered the empty plain with human purpose.

De Sagres smiled inwardly. How my cabinet members would laugh if they saw me here, alone, in this faded old windbreaker and worn-thin slacks.
El Presidente
should always have his entourage around him; he should wear hand-tailored suits with razor-edge creases and elegant silk ties. At least, thought the president, they no longer expect their leader to wear a military uniform.

The breeze gusting across the treeless plain from the Andes was chilling. De Sagres knew it would get much colder once the Sun had dipped completely below the barren horizon. Still he waited at the hill’s dusty summit. Waited and watched the sky darken.

Perhaps we should not have come alone, his star brother said to him. It’s a long way to the nearest station on the highway.

I had to get away, he replied silently, away from the crowds and the ceremonies. Away from the work and the pain and the grief. This night of all nights, I must be by myself.

He sensed his star brother’s hurt. Are we not one person? he rebuked mildly.

One person, my brother, admitted de Sagres.

It had been a long, hard year. The Horror was being brought under control, but slowly, ever so slowly. Nearly a quarter billion people had died in Latin America alone. A terrible, agonizing tragedy. De Sagres could feel the awful grief and misery that spanned the world. To him the deaths were not merely statistics; they were brothers and sisters who had perished, his blood, his kin. He had gazed deeply into the well of anguish. A lesser man would have given up hope and run away to hide.

But it has been only one year, his star brother replied. Less than a full year. And the death rate is dropping fast now.

De Sagres thought of the changes that were already taking place across Latin America and the rest of the world. Humans accepted the “alien” inoculations because they were terrified of the Horror. Then they found that they carried star brothers and star sisters within themselves.

Some went mad. Some seemed completely unchanged. But for most men and women, the star symbiotes seemed to make them more human than they had ever been. They could no longer look at another person as someone separate from themselves. They could not look at an animal or a tree or even a cloud in the sky as something outside their own existence.

Across Latin America, across the entire world, the human race was reaching toward a new level of existence. No one on Earth was untouched by the twin impacts of the Horror and the star symbiotes. There were no isolated human souls anymore. No one could stand alone and aloof, not once he acquired a star brother. Pushed by the Horror, pulled by the star brethren, all of humanity was swiftly becoming one huge interlinked family, brought together by ties of love and caring and—at long last—understanding.

The teachings of Christ are becoming the norm of human behavior, thought de Sagres. He smiled to himself. Even the Church is becoming Christian, at last.

Slowly the Moon rose from behind the sunset-tinged snow-caps of the Andes, enormous and full, pale and slightly sad looking.

De Sagres felt his heart thumping as he strained his eyes to see the lights of human settlements on the lopsided face of the Moon. And then he saw one single incredibly bright light, so brilliant that no one could miss it, rising up from near the edge of the Moon’s disc, heading out into the darkness of the night sky, racing into the depths of black space, stretching into a streak of blazing light that crossed the dome of the heavens and then dwindled swiftly and was gone.

The sky seemed to shudder. Ghostly shimmering veils of delicate pale greens and pinks rippled across the encroaching darkness. The aurora, never seen at this latitude except when a starship taps the core of the Earth’s magnetic field.

The dancing sheets of pastel colors seemed to be waving good-bye to the departing starship. A farewell from the planet. A farewell from all of humankind.

De Sagres waved too. Both his arms, like an eager child, until the light of the starship and the answering gleam of the aurora both disappeared and left the sky empty—except for thousands of glittering stars.

Dhouni Nkona stood outside his house and saw the silver arrow of light streak across the night sky of Africa. He watched, fascinated, as the aurora glowed the way it had thirty-three years earlier, when the alien’s ship had first appeared in Earth’s skies.

Beside the gray old man stood Lela Obiri, young, strong, slowly recovering from her ordeal of eight months earlier.

The star sister within her had confirmed what Nkona had tried years ago to teach her: that all living creatures are linked, united into a single form of life that spans Mother Earth. Yet her star sister expanded even that insight: all living creatures are linked even among the far-scattered stars. All life in the universe is one.

That vision had nearly destroyed Lela. The guilt and shame she felt over her murder of five men almost drove her insane. Almost. For months she could not face another human being. She lived in the preserve with the great apes while her star sister gradually, patiently helped her to understand her own depths of fear and hatred.

Now she stood beside Nkona, ready to take her place in the world of imperfect men and women once again. The old man gave her a fatherly smile. Lela was stronger now than she had ever been. The wound in her spirit was healing; the scar would always be there, but she would be all the stronger for having suffered the wounding and surviving. Men and women were imperfect, it was true; but they were striving toward perfection. Nkona believed with all the fierce passion in his soul that each human being was truly perfectible.

Less than fifty kilometers from where they stood, outside Nkona’s modest home on the fringe of the university campus, several hundred gorillas lived in peaceful contentment at last. No one had even tried to bother them, not since the star brethren had shown all who received what Lela had known from the beginning.

In Bangladesh it was nearly morning. Walking slowly along the sandy shore, Chandra Varahamihara turned his gaze from the gently lapping sea to the dark forest that lined the beach with tall swaying coconut palms and thickly gnarled
goran
mangroves.

He was a lonely figure, this frail bald-shaved lama in his saffron robe. But he was not alone. Within him dwelled a star brother, and he sensed all the hundreds of millions, the billions of humans who also shared their blood with brethren from the stars.

Once this region where the five mighty rivers met the sea was called the Plain of Death. The rivers would flood and thousands who had no dwelling place except miserable shacks along their banks would be swept away. The sea would be heavy with drowned bodies for weeks afterward.

Now, in his mind’s eye, Varahamihara could see the mighty dams far to the north in the mountains of Nepal that controlled the flow of the rivers. And the forests that had been planted to hold the moisture of the monsoon rains and prevent the erosion of the soil that the people needed to grow their food. Almost, he smiled. Nepal was becoming a rich nation, selling its hydroelectric power not only to Bangladesh but to India, China, and even the Soviet Union.

But the smile never came to his lips. The Horror had been particularly cruel in the great Indian subcontinent. Its ravages were diminishing as the visitors from the stars joined in the unity of life, but what a terrible, excruciating toll it had taken! Yet perhaps such pain was necessary. The wheel of life is lubricated with human blood, it seems. At least now the teachings of the Buddha were becoming the true frame of reference for all the people of Earth.

Yet he wondered. What changes will come when all men and women are linked with star brothers and sisters? We will survive the Horror, that much seems sure now. But can we survive the cure?

The lama lifted his worried face to the glowing dawn that touched the sea’s horizon with pink.

A streak of brilliant light rose in that brightening sky and climbed across the heavens. Varahamihara watched the starship until it disappeared from sight, uttering a prayer of peace to those who were heading for the stars. And of thanks.

But most of all he prayed for understanding.

In the dimmed lighting of the starship’s observation dome, Stoner and his son seemed to be standing on nothing, suspended in space, as the Earth dwindled to a mere point of light. Stoner rested one hand on Rickie’s shoulder and realized that the boy was already chest-high to his father.

Wherever they looked the stars crowded thickly against the blackness of space, like sprinklings of brilliant gems that dazzled the eye.

“We’re on our way!” Rickie shouted, a mixture of excitement and fear in his voice.

Stoner tousled his son’s hair. “Yes, we are. This is going to be our home for a long, long time, Rick. You’ll be a grown man before we return to Earth.”

“How long will it take to get to the world where the star brothers came from?”

Stoner called up the figures in his mind. “It will seem like a couple of years to us.”

“Cathy will be born by then, won’t she? She’ll be a little baby.”

“You’ll be her big brother, Rick. You’ll help to take care of her, won’t you?”

“Sure.”

Stoner and his son walked back to the living quarters, where there were normal-looking walls and furniture. He had designed this part of the ship to look as much like their home in Hilo as possible, even down to the plant hangings and carpets.

Half the scientists of Earth had wanted to go along on this first human flight to the stars. Politely but with implacable firmness, Stoner had refused them all.

“The ship’s sensor systems will be transmitting data to you constantly,” he had said. “That will have to do until more starships are built.”

The only other one aboard their ship, other than Jo and Stoner and their children, had been the dead and frozen body of Kirill Markov. The first duty that Stoner had performed once the ship had cleared the Earth/Moon region was to release Kir’s sarcophagus and send it searching outward among the stars.

“Good-bye, old friend,” Stoner had whispered. “May you find eager minds wherever you travel.”

Now he lay in bed next to Jo, watching the stars through the transparent diamond ceiling above them.

“Just like home,” Jo murmured.

“This is our home,” he replied. “All the home we’ll know.”

“I’ll miss seeing the Moon.”

He smiled. “You’ll have other sights to entertain you. Have you noticed that the stars aren’t just pinpoints of light anymore?”

“No…” Jo stirred slightly beside him, as if concentrating her attention on the panoply of stars above them.

“See? They’re like little oblate spheres. Almost like teardrops.”

“Oh yes! They’re all that way.”

“In another few days they’ll look like streaks, smears that are red on one end and blue on the other,” he told Jo.

She moved closer to him, pressed against his bare flesh. He slid an arm around her lovely shoulders. The scent of her hair was like jasmine.

Jo asked, “Are you certain we had to leave?”

He turned and looked at her in the light of the stars. “Helluva time to ask.”

“We could always turn around.” But she was grinning at him.

“
I
had to leave, Jo. Maybe you and the kids didn’t, but I had to. I’ve done everything I could do. If we had stayed on Earth they’d start to treat me like some kind of royalty. Or worse, a deity.”

“You wouldn’t like to be worshipped?”

“I haven’t done anything to be worshipped for,” he said tightly. “I failed, really. I wanted to introduce the star brethren gradually, gently, give the human race enough time to absorb the changes that nanotechnology will bring. But I failed.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“Still…”

“You did everything you could.”

Stoner did not reply.

Propping herself on one elbow, Jo looked down at his starlit face and said, “I’m glad it worked out this way. If it hadn’t, you’d have spent the next hundred years trying to ease them into nanotechnology. You’d have broken your heart trying to make things right for every last idiot on Earth. Now they’ve got to do it for themselves.”

“But can they? Can they absorb this without destroying themselves?”

With a shrug of her bare shoulders, Jo answered, “We’ll find out when we come back.”

Stoner thought about it for a few moments. Then, “Maybe you’re right, Jo. I thought I could give them a new world, but maybe in the final analysis nobody can give the human race anything. They’ve got to make it for themselves.”

“Sink or swim.”

“Ten billion lives,” he muttered.

“Less than that, after the Horror,” Jo corrected.

Nodding absently, “Well, the human race has beaten other challenges in the past. The Ice Ages, wars, famines…”

“They’ll make it,” Jo said confidently. “By the time we return they’ll have statues of you in every city on Earth.”

“God forbid!”

She laughed.

“That’s exactly what I wanted to avoid,” Stoner said. “That’s why we had to leave. If I had stayed on Earth they would have never left me alone. They would have wanted to…to…”

“To deify you. Or at least make you a saint.” Jo lay back on the pillows. “Saint Keith of the Star Brethren. They’d hang your portrait in the Vatican.”

“That’s not funny.” Despite himself he was grinning at her.

“No, it isn’t. Especially when we both know you could have never said no to any of them. Never duck that damned sense of responsibility of yours.”

Stoner changed the subject. “I know it was a lot to ask, Jo, bringing you and Rickie—taking you away from everything, away from home…”