Voyagers II - The Alien Within (15 page)

The airport was shrouded in fog, and Stoner doubted that a small plane would be able to land safely. He glanced at the wristwatch Claude Appert had loaned him. Almost midnight. Markov’s plane was probably already overhead, circling.

But Stoner could hear nothing. The little airport seemed deserted, empty. The lights marking the edges of its one paved runway gleamed weakly in the cold gray fog. The cement ramp on which Stoner stood, just outside the airport’s brick administration building, was slick and puddled. The bricks dripped moisture.

Stoner pulled the collar of his trench coat closer around his throat. The fog’s cold fingers reached for him, wormed their way to his skin, chilled him. He shivered slightly, remembering the cold that had ended his earlier life. He did not like the cold. Or the darkness of this night.

Yet he smiled. How like Kirill, he thought. As melodramatic as a Victorian temperance play. Markov the romantic, picking midnight at a fog-shrouded airport miles out in the French countryside for their first meeting in eighteen years.

The night was absolutely still. The few men and women working at the airport stayed sensibly inside the administration building. In the misty distance, Stoner could make out the ghostly forms of private planes, single-engined, most of them, sitting in a line like sleeping birds. Their wings gleamed with wetness as they waited for the warmth of the morning sun.

A faint tendril of sound. Stoner turned his eyes skyward, trying to penetrate the fog. Yes, the purr of an engine, coming closer. Straining every sense, as if he could force the plane to appear, Stoner stood locked in place, waiting tensely.

Markov’s voice, over the phone, had not sounded surprised. Strained, worried, perhaps even afraid. But not surprised to hear from the man who had been his friend eighteen years ago; a man who had ended his life aboard an alien spacecraft, more than a million miles from Earth.

Like a supernatural apparition, the plane seemed to take shape out of the fog, its single engine buzzing quietly. Or perhaps the fog’s muffling the sound, Stoner thought.

It touched down on the wet concrete and rolled along on three wheels, then turned neatly and stopped. Stoner remained where he had been standing. A hatch on the plane’s side opened, and a short, solidly built man stepped lightly to the ground. That’s not Kirill, Stoner realized. But he took a step forward toward the plane, then another.

Watching as he walked forward, Stoner saw the Russian reach up to the hatch and help another man down to the concrete. An old man, rail thin and bent, bareheaded but wrapped in a long dark overcoat and muffler. He carried a cane, and once the younger Russian removed his helping hands, he walked slowly, hesitantly, like a man on a high wire, fearful that the slightest misstep would plunge him to his death.

But Stoner was moving faster, almost loping toward the slowly advancing Russian. Squinting through the fog he saw that it truly was his old friend. Stooped, aged, his face lined, his hair and beard gone completely white. But it was Kirill Markov.

“Kir!” he called out. “It’s me, Keith!”

Markov stopped and leaned on his cane. “Keith…my friend, my dear, dear friend.”

Stoner reached him at last and wrapped his arms around the old man’s frail frame. Markov clasped Stoner, too, and they held on to each other for long moments.

It is customary, a voice in Stoner’s mind whispered, as if explaining the gesture to a visitor. It is a show of affection to hold someone in one’s arms. Also, the ritual symbolizes peaceful intent, showing that one holds no weapons in one’s hand, nor has any concealed upon one’s body.

He waited for Markov to pull himself loose. The Russian seemed to be leaning on Stoner for support. Finally Stoner disengaged and, holding the Russian by the shoulders, looked deeply at him.

The years had not been kind to Markov. The blue eyes that once had twinkled with boyish mischievousness were now watery and lined with dark pouches. His cheeks were hollow, and even his smile tinged with grief.

“Kirill, it’s good to see you again.” Stoner meant it, even though he was saddened to see how his friend had aged.

Markov nodded, eyes closed. “I knew you would come back someday. I only hoped that I would live long enough to see it.”

His voice was soft and slightly quavering.

“Come on now,” Stoner said, sliding one arm around Markov’s narrow shoulders. “How old are you, sixty?”

“I will be sixty-six by the end of this year.”

“Ready for retirement?”

Markov laughed softly, but there was bitterness in it. “In the old days I would be just getting started on my career. The Soviet Union was called a gerontocracy, remember?”

They were walking slowly back toward the administration building. Stoner had no idea of where they would be going from there, but he instinctively headed for light and warmth. This damp cold can’t be good for an old man, he told himself, knowing that he wanted to be out of it himself.

“In the old days?” Stoner echoed.

“The Soviet Union has changed enormously, Keith,” said the Russian. “Because of you.”

“Me?”

“In a sense, my dear friend, you have destroyed the Soviet Union. There is little left of it, today, except the wreckage.”

Stoner looked into Markov’s eyes. The pain that he had seen elsewhere was in them, but sharper, deeper.

“Your wife.” It was not a question. Stoner knew.

“Maria Kirtchatovska is dead. Part of the turmoil that has racked my country for many years now. She was a casualty in the battles that have shaken the KGB and the Kremlin.”

“I’m sorry.” It sounded pathetically weak, even to Stoner himself.

“She went peacefully enough. They allowed her to take a painless drug.”

“But you’re…” How to phrase it? “You’re not in any danger?”

The bitter smile returned to his old friend’s bloodless lips. “I am a high official of what’s left of the Soviet government. I am general secretary of the National Academy of Sciences.”

“You?”

Markov’s smile broadened, and Stoner could feel the pain radiating from him. “Yes, me. You see how much Mother Russia has changed? A half-baked linguist known chiefly for chasing after his female students has become top dog at the academy. Thanks to you.”

They had reached the door to the administration building, but Markov showed no inclination to go inside.

“The strange thing is,” he said, “our marriage was finally beginning to go well. Maria and I were just starting to understand each other, after all those years, when the storm struck.”

“I really don’t know what’s happened,” Stoner said. “No one’s told me anything about it.”

Markov looked up at him, the gaunt, aged shell of the man who had once befriended Stoner and worked beside him on the distant atoll called Kwajalein.

“You remember Jo Camerata, of course,” he said.

“Sure.”

“Yes. She was in love with you.”

Stoner nodded.

“Once you decided to remain aboard the alien spacecraft, Jo returned to America. We communicated back and forth. At first she phoned almost every week, or I phoned her. Then the interval between calls grew longer. She went for months without calling.”

“And?” Stoner prompted.

“Ah, forgive me.” Markov smiled, almost shyly this time. “One of the attributes of old age. I tend to wander.”

“That’s all right. I want to know everything that happened.”

“She fought her way to the top of one of the largest corporations in the world,” Markov said, his voice taking on a new crispness. “She acquired the power she needed to send an expedition out to the edge of the solar system, to retrieve the alien spacecraft.”

“With me in it.”

“Yes, you and the dead alien.”

“And she brought us back to Earth,” Stoner said.

“Not without Russian help. The Soviet government insisted that we take part in the rescue mission and that all scientific knowledge gathered from the alien spacecraft be shared through the United Nations.”

“I see.”

“Jo’s corporation still reaped fantastic profits from what has been learned from the alien ship.”

“Yes, I know.”

“The two most important discoveries, so far, have been the energy shield and the fusion power generator.”

“Which have made the world safe from nuclear war,” Stoner said.

“And destroyed the Soviet Union.”

“What? How can…”

Markov shrugged, and the bitterness that Stoner had felt seemed to return. “Without the threat of nuclear weapons, the power of both the Soviet Union and the United States has dwindled enormously. For America, this has not had very bad repercussions. But for Russia, the change has been very painful.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It happened at a time when the old leadership—the gerontocracy of earlier years—had died away and a new generation of younger men was in charge of the Kremlin. Suddenly the threat of nuclear attack disappears. The world turns upside down. Eastern Europe goes into turmoil. Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary all renounce the Warsaw Pact. The Germans reunite themselves and tell both East and West to go to hell. The Soviet Union itself is split. The Ukrainians want independence. Moslem fanatics want to split the Kazakh and other Asian republics away from the USSR. Riots break out in Moscow—over television broadcasts from the West! The people suddenly demanded Western television shows and an end to shortages and restrictions of all kinds. The government tottered.”

“And that’s when Maria…?”

“She was a victim of the turmoil, yes. That was part of it. The situation is still volatile—like a bottle of nitroglycerin. Russia may explode at any moment.”

“And it’s my fault,” Stoner said.

Markov hesitated, then gave a weary sigh. “Yes, my old friend, it is at least partly your fault. But don’t be dismayed. Some of us are trying to build a new Russia, a stronger country, with the freedoms that we have yearned for over all these long centuries.”

“I wish you luck.”

“It will take more than luck,” Markov said. “We face civil war. Even the Baltic republics have declared their independence. And there are still plenty of enemies in the West who would be delighted to see the USSR dismembered.”

“At least you don’t have to worry about a nuclear holocaust.”

“No,” Markov agreed. “But there are poisonous gases and biological agents that can kill just as many people as hydrogen bombs would. The energy screens can’t stop them.”

For the first time, Stoner felt a shudder of alarm race through him. “Kirill, you don’t think anybody would use such weapons, do you?”

“They exist. In plentiful numbers. They can even be attached to the missiles that once held the nuclear warheads.”

“But that’s insanity!”

Markov’s sad eyes regarded him wearily. “Yes, once I thought so, too.”

“You still believe so,” Stoner said firmly. But he realized that Markov’s sadness was more than personal grief. The Russian bore the yoke of responsibility now, and it was crushing him.

“Keith, my first loyalty is to Mother Russia. Can you understand that?”

“Not to the Soviet Union?”

“Russia,” said Markov. His voice was soft, but all the strength of his heritage and his people was in it. “I must do what is best for Mother Russia.”

“Of course,” Stoner said. “I understand.”

“Then you know that you must come back to Moscow with me.”

Stoner felt no surprise at all.

“I would not do this for myself, Keith,” Markov said, “but it is necessary for my nation. There is knowledge in your mind, Keith, fantastic knowledge that not even you are aware of.”

“You think so?”

Markov nodded slowly. “We know everything about you, Keith. We have all your medical records, transcripts of all the conversations you’ve had with Dr. Richards. Our best scientists have studied you like astronomers studying a distant star.”

“And now they want to study me at first hand.”

“Yes. I’m afraid so.”

“But what if I refuse to go with you, Kirill?”

The Russian took a breath, then let it out in a slightly wheezing sigh. “Keith, I ask you to do this for me, for the sake of our old friendship. I need your help.”

Stoner looked past the white-haired old man, out into the cold night fog. Half a dozen men were waiting out there, he realized. Not merely the two that had accompanied Markov in the plane, but others who had come to the airport silently. Armed men, prepared to follow the orders they had received.

“If I refuse, you’ll be in trouble? In danger?”

“No,” Markov snapped. “We have progressed beyond that primitive stage. I will not be sent to Siberia for failing my mission.”

Eighteen years ago, he would have said that as a joke, Stoner remembered. Now he’s completely serious.

Markov went on. “You are the most important man on Earth, Keith. Your mind holds untold treasures of the alien’s technology. The secrets of their civilization are locked inside your brain.”

Stoner closed his eyes and pictured the interior of the alien spacecraft. The strange swirling writing that was engraved around the base of the alien’s bier was clear to him. He could understand the craft’s engines, how they converted gravitational field flow to directed thrust. He could see how to convert a handful of dust into enough energy to heat and light a mighty city.

But when he opened his eyes and looked at his old friend again, he realized that none of this was as important as the fact that a human being had been returned from frozen death.

“How old is the head of your government, Kirill? What’s the average age of the Central Committee? It may not be a gerontocracy anymore, but they’re all older than you, aren’t they?”

“Keith, you must come with me. Neither of us has any choice.”

Markov fumbled in the pocket of his overcoat and pulled out a strange-looking pistol. Stoner sensed the six other men moving through the fog toward them.

“Would you really use that on me, Kirill?”

“It isn’t lethal. It fires a dart that puts you to sleep.” But there were tears in the Russian’s eyes.

“You won’t need it,” Stoner said.

“You’ll come with me?” The surprise on Markov’s face was obvious.