The Best of Bova: Volume 1 (10 page)

The old man’s back was to him. All you have to do, Keating told himself, is to get within a few feet, pop the dart into his neck, and then wait a couple of minutes to make certain the dart dissolves. Then go down the way you came and back to the
pensione
for a hot bath and a bracer of cognac.

As he came to within ten feet of Rungawa he raised the dart gun. It worked on air pressure, practically noiseless. No need to cock it. Five feet. He could see the nails on Rungawa’s upraised hands, the pinkish palms contrasting with the black skin of the fingers and the backs of his hands. Three feet. Rungawa’s suit was perfectly fitted to him, the sleeves creased carefully. Dry. He was wearing only a business suit, and it was untouched by the rain, as well-creased and unwrinkled as if it had just come out of the store.

“Not yet, Mr. Keating,” said the old man, without turning to look at Jeremy. “We have a few things to talk about before you kill me.”

Keating froze. He could not move his arm. It stood ramrod straight from his left shoulder, the tiny dart gun in his fist a mere two feet from Rungawa’s bare neck. But he could not pull the trigger. His fingers would not obey the commands of his mind.

Rungawa turned toward him, smiling, and stroked his chin thoughtfully for a moment.

“You may put the gun down now, Mr. Keating.”

Jeremy’s arm dropped to his side. His mouth sagged open; his heart thundered in his ears. He wanted to run away, but his legs were like the marble of the statues that watched them.

“Forgive me,” said Rungawa. “I should not leave you out in the rain like that.”

The rain stopped pelting Jeremy. He felt a gentle warmth enveloping him, as if he were standing next to a welcoming fireplace. The two men stood under a cone of invisible protection. Jeremy could see the raindrops spattering on the stony ground not more than a foot away.

“A small trick. Please don’t be alarmed.” Rungawa’s voice was a deep rumbling bass, like the voice a lion would have if
it could speak in human tongue.

Jeremy stared into the black man’s eyes and saw no danger in them, no hatred or violence; only a patient amusement at his own consternation. No, more: a tolerance of human failings, a hope for human achievement, an
understanding
born of centuries of toil and pain and striving.

“Who are you?” Jeremy asked in a frightened whisper.

Rungawa smiled, and it was like sunlight breaking through he storm clouds. “Ah, Mr. Keating, you are as intelligent as we had hoped. You cut straight to the heart of the matter.”

“You knew I was following you. You set up this meeting.”

“Yes. Yes, quite true. Melodramatic of me, I admit. But would you have joined me at dinner if I had sent one of my aides across the street to invite you? I think not.”

It’s all crazy, Jeremy thought. I must be dreaming this.

“No, Mr. Keating. It is not a dream.”

An electric jolt flamed through Jeremy. Jesus Christ. he can read my mind!

“Of course I can,” Rungawa said gently, smiling, the way doctor tells a child that the needle will hurt only for an instant. “How else would I know that you were stalking me?”

Jeremy’s mouth went utterly dry. His voice cracked and failed him. If he had been able to move his legs he would have fled like a chimpanzee confronted by a leopard.

“Please, do not be afraid, Mr. Keating. Fear is an impediment to understanding. If we had wanted to kill you, it would have been most convenient to let you slip while you were climbing up here.”

“What . . .” Jeremy had to swallow and lick his lips before he could ask, “Just who are you?”

“I am a messenger, Mr. Keating. Like you, I am merely a tool of my superiors. When I was assigned to this task, I thought it appropriate to make my home base in Tanzania.” The old man’s smile returned, and a hint of self-satisfaction glowed in his eyes. “After all, Tanzania is where the earliest human tribes once lived. What more appropriate place for me to—um, shall we say,
associate
myself with the human race?”

“Associate . . . with the human race.” Jeremy felt breathless, weak. His voice was hollow.

“I am not a human being, Mr. Keating. I come from a far-distant world, a world that is nothing like this one.”

“No . . . that can’t . . .”

Rungawa’s smile slowly faded. “Some of your people call me a saint. Actually, compared to your species, I am a god.”

Jeremy stared at him, stared into his deep black eyes, and saw eternity in them, whirlpools of galaxies spinning majestically in infinite depths of space, stars exploding and evolving, worlds created out of dust.

He heard his voice, weak and childlike, say, “But you look human.”

“Of course! Completely human. Even to your X-ray machines.”

An alien. Jeremy’s mind reeled. An extraterrestrial. With a sense of humor.

“Why not? Is not humor part of the human psyche? The intelligences who created me made me much more than human, but I have every human attribute—except one. I have no need for vengeance, Mr. Keating.”

“Vengeance,” Jeremy echoed.

“Yes. A destructive trait. It clouds the perceptions. It is an obstacle in the path of survival.”

Jeremy took a deep breath, tried to pull himself together. “You expect me to believe all this?”

“I can see that you do, Mr. Keating. I can see that you now realize that not
all
the UFO stories have been hoaxes. We have never harmed any of your people, but we did require specimens for careful analysis.”

“Why?”

“To help you find the correct path to survival. Your species is on the edge of a precipice. It is our duty to help you avoid extinction, if we—”

“Your duty?”

“Of course. Do not your best people feel an obligation to save other species from extinction? Have not these human beings risked their fortunes and their very lives to protect creatures such as the whale and the seal from slaughter?”

 Jeremy almost laughed. “You mean you’re from some interstellar Greenpeace project?”

“It is much more complex than that,” Rungawa said. “We are not merely trying to protect you from a predator, or from an ecological danger. You human beings are your own worst enemy. We must protect you from yourselves—without your knowing it.”

Before Jeremy could reply, Rungawa went on, “It would be easy for us to create a million creatures like myself and to land on your planet in great, shining ships and give you all the answers you need for survival. Fusion energy? A toy. World peace? Easily accomplished. Quadruple your global food production? Double your intelligence? Make you immune to every disease? All this we can do.”

“Then why . . . ?” Jeremy hesitated, thinking. “If you did all that for us, it would ruin us, wouldn’t it?”

Rungawa beamed at him. “Ah, you truly understand the problem! Yes, it would destroy your species, just as your Europeans destroyed the cultures of the Americas and Polynesia. Your anthropologists are wrong. There
are
superior cultures and inferior ones. A superior culture always crushes an inferior, even if it has no intention of doing so.”

In the back of his mind, Jeremy realized that he had control of his legs again. He flexed the fingers of his left hand slightly, even the index finger that still curled around the trigger of the dart gun. He could move them at will once more.

“What you’re saying,” he made conversation, “is that if you landed here and gave us everything we want, our culture would be destroyed.”

“Yes,” Rungawa agreed. “Just as surely as you whites destroyed the black and brown cultures of the world. We have no desire to do that to you.”

“So you’re trying to lead us to the point where we can solve our own problems.”

“Precisely so, Mr. Keating.”

“That’s why you’ve started this World Government,” Keating said, his hand tightening on the gun.

“You started the World Government yourselves,” Rungawa corrected. “We merely encouraged you, here and there.”

“Like the riots in Tunis and a hundred other places.”

“We did not encourage that.”

“But you didn’t prevent them, either, did you?”

“No. We did not.”

Shifting his weight slightly to the balls of his feet, Keating said, “Without you the World Government will collapse.”

The old man shook his head. “No, that is not true. Despite what your superiors believe, the World Government will endure even the death of ‘the Black Saint.’”

“Are you sure?” Keating raised the gun to the black man’s eye level. “Are you absolutely certain?”

Rungawa did not blink. His voice became sad as he answered, “Would I have relaxed my control of your limbs if I were not certain?”

Keating hesitated, but held the gun rock-steady.

“You are the test, Mr. Keating. You are the key to your species’ future. We know how your wife and son died. Even though we were not directly responsible, we regret their deaths. And the deaths of all the others. They were unavoidable losses.”

“Statistics,” Keating spat. “Numbers on a list.”

“Never! Each of them was an individual whom
we
knew much better than you could, and we regretted each loss of life as much as you do yourself. Perhaps more, because we understand what each of those individuals could have accomplished, had they lived.”

“But you let them die.”

“It was unavoidable, I say. Now the question is, Can you rise above your own personal tragedy, for the good of your fellow humans? Or will you take vengeance upon me and see your species destroy itself?”

“
You
just said the World Government will survive your death.”

“And it will. But it will change. It will become a world dictatorship, in time. It will smother your progress. Your species will die out in an agony of overpopulation, starvation, disease and terrorism. You do not need nuclear bombs to kill yourselves. You can manage it quite well enough merely by producing too many babies.”

“Our alternative is to let your people direct us, to become sheep without even knowing it, to jump to your tune.”

“No!” Rungawa’s deep voice boomed. “The alternative is to become adults. You are adolescents now. We offer you the chance to grow up and stand on your own feet.”

“How can I believe that?” Keating demanded.

The old man’s smile showed warmness. “The adolescent always distrusts the parent. That is the painful truth, is it not?”

“You have an answer for everything, don’t you?”

“Everything, perhaps, except you. You are the key to your species’ future, Mr. Keating. If you can accept what I have told you, and allow us to work with you despite all your inner thirst for vengeance, then the human species will have a chance to survive.”

Keating moved his hand a bare centimeter to the left and squeezed the gun’s trigger. The dart shot out with a hardly audible puff of compressed air and whizzed past Rungawa’s ear. The old man did not flinch.

“You can kill me if you want to,” he said to Keating. “That is your decision to make.”

“I don’t believe you,” Jeremy said. “I can’t believe you! It’s too much, it’s too incredible. You can’t expect a man to accept everything you’ve just told me—not all at once!”

“We do expect it,” Rungawa said softly. “We expect that and more. We want you working with us, not against us.”

Jeremy felt as if his guts were being torn apart. “Work with you?” he screamed. “With the people who murdered my wife and son?”

“There are other children in the world. Do not deny them their birthright. Do not foreclose their future.”

“You bastard!” Jeremy seethed. “You don’t miss a trick, do you?”

“It all depends on you, Mr. Keating. You are our test case. What you do now will decide the future of the human species.”

A thousand emotions raged through Jeremy. He saw Joanna being torn apart by the mob and Jerry in his cot screaming with fever, flames and death everywhere, the filth and poverty of Jakarta and the vicious smile of the interrogator as he sharpened his razor.

He’s lying, Jeremy’s mind shouted at him. He’s got to be lying. All this is some clever set of tricks. It can’t be true. It can’t be!

In a sudden paroxysm of rage and terror and frustration Jeremy hurled the gun high into the rain-filled night, turned abruptly and walked away from Rungawa. He did not look back, but he knew the old man was smiling at him.

It’s a trick, he kept telling himself. A goddamned trick. He knew damned well I couldn’t kill him in cold blood, with him standing there looking at me with those damned sad eyes of his. Shoot an old man in the face. I just couldn’t do it. All he had to do was keep me talking long enough to lose my nerve. Goddamned clever black man. Must be how he lived to get so old.

Keating stamped down the marble steps of the Sacred Way, pushed past the three raincoated guards who had accompanied Rungawa, and walked alone and miserable back to the
pensione.

How the hell am I going to explain this back at headquarters? I’ll have to resign, tell them that I’m not cut out to be an assassin.

They’ll never believe that. Maybe I could get a transfer, get back into the political section, join the Peace Corps, anything!

He was still furious with himself when he reached the
pensione.
Still shaking his head, angry that he had let the old man talk him out of his assigned mission. Some form of hypnosis, Keating thought. He must have been a medicine man or a voodoo priest when he was younger.

He pushed through the glassed front door of the
pensione,
muttering to himself. “You let him trick you. You let that old black man hoodwink you.”

The room clerk roused himself from his slumber and got up to reach Jeremy’s room key from the rack behind the desk. He was a short, sturdily-built Greek, the kind who would have faced the Persians at Marathon.

“You must have run very fast,” he said to Keating in heavily accented English.

“Huh? What? Why do you say that?”

The clerk grinned, revealing tobacco-stained teeth. “You did not get wet.”

Keating looked at the sleeve of his trench coat. It was perfectly dry. The whole coat was as clean and dry as if it had just come from a pressing. His feet were dry; his shoes and trousers and hat were dry.