Voyagers II - The Alien Within (17 page)

“When I was in Cambodia, doing the documentary, it was like…”

“Yes?”

She made a little shrug. “Well, it was sort of like visiting distant relatives. I knew everybody there was sort of related to me, but I had no real ties to them. No emotional ties, I mean.”

“But you must have felt something,” he insisted.

“I felt guilty, I guess.”

“Guilty?”

“Because I had so much and they were so poor. Because I knew I was going back to Paris in a couple of weeks, while the people I was taping would have to stay in their villages and their poverty.”

“That’s just it,” he said, quickening their pace as they approached the heavier traffic of Piccadilly. “We have so much, and they have so little.”

An Linh asked, “What’s all this got to do with…”

He clutched her arm, almost hard enough to hurt. “There are people in this world who are working to change the balance of power, the balance of wealth.”

“People? Who?”

“Why should Nillson and Vanguard Industries have such enormous wealth? Why should the people of equatorial Africa be plunged into starvation and war?”

He was practically dragging her along the street. An Linh pulled her arm free of his grasp and stopped walking. She saw a doorway with a small sign hanging above it that read “The Lion’s Roar.” Next to the door was an advertising poster urging, “Take COURAGE.”

“I’m hungry,” An Linh said. “Buy me lunch.”

Baker frowned.

“This conversation is going to need Courage,” she insisted.

Reluctantly, he pushed the door open and they stepped into the smoky, noisy pub. Finding an empty booth toward the rear, An Linh slid herself in on the wooden bench while Baker went to the bar to order sausages and two pints of Courage lager. The pub was crowded with late afternoon customers, dozens of conversations buzzing simultaneously, good-hearted laughter, and a constant flow of people in and out the front door. In an American bar, An Linh knew, there would always be at least one man who would try to pick her up. Here in the pub, none of the men paid her any attention. Behind her relief at that, she felt a slight twinge of annoyance, but she knew that Cliff would see things very differently.

He struggled through the crowd to their booth, holding the plate of sausages and two mugs of beer high over his head as he squeezed past the men clustered around the bar.

Sliding in next to An Linh, he grinned boyishly.

“I guess nobody’s going to eavesdrop on us in here,” he admitted.

She smiled back and took a sip of the beer. “Now what’s all this about poor people and rich people?”

Baker glanced around the crowded pub before answering. Hunching even closer to her, he dropped his voice to a husky whisper. “There’s an organization…it’s international in scope, made up of people from every part of the world….”

“Including Australia?”

He nodded. “Including me. We need your help, love. In return, we can protect you from the likes of Nillson and Vanguard Industries.”

He was serious, she saw.

“You need my help to do what?”

“To find the frozen astronaut,” said Baker. “We want him.”

“But why?”

“Do you realize the knowledge he’s got stored in his brain?” Baker’s voice did not rise in volume, but it grew more intense, agitated. “I’ve listened to the tapes of his conversations with a psychiatrist….”

An Linh felt a shock of surprise. “Then you
knew
he’d been revived!”

“Yes. We did.”

“When you hatched the idea to do a documentary on Father Lemoyne—you knew?”

“We had the tapes. We had to make certain they were authentic. The psychiatrist might have been a double agent.”

“What is this organization?” she demanded. “Who belongs to it? Where does their money come from?”

Strangely, he seemed to relax. Grinning at her, Baker said, “The reporter’s instincts come right to the front with you, don’t they?”

“I need to know about this, Cliff.”

Baker lowered his voice even further. “You’ve heard of them. It’s called the World Liberation Movement.”

“But they’re terrorists!”

“No they’re not,” he snapped in a hissing whisper. “Not entirely. They’ve performed a few acts of sabotage and some assassinations, yes. But not as many as the media claims they’ve done.”

“A few?…” An Linh’s mind was spinning. “Cliff, they blew up that shopping complex in Madrid! And the airliner…”

“We get blamed for a lot of things that we never did,” he insisted. “And nobody gives us credit for the good things we have done.”

“What good things?”

“In the Central African War, for example. We saved the Ebos from being exterminated by the Nigerian army. We supplied the weapons the Ugandans needed to defend themselves.”

“But how? Why?”

“I can’t tell you. A lot of it I don’t know myself. They keep a very tight security wrap over everything, for obvious reasons.”

“But what is the World Liberation Movement trying to accomplish?”

“A redistribution of the world’s wealth.”

An Linh leaned her head back against the wooden wall of the booth. “Is that all?”

“It’s no joke, pet. This is for real.”

“A redistribution of the world’s wealth,” she echoed.

“And power,” Baker added.

“And power. Of course power. Power is what it’s all about, isn’t it?”

All that day Stoner wandered the streets of Paris, thinking, questioning, asking himself if the decision he had made was the right one.

He walked the broad avenues in the morning hours, down the Champs Élysées to the Tuileries and into the Louvre. He edged his way through the early throng that crowded around La Giaconda, the Mona Lisa, and stared long at the enigmatic smile of that immortalized young woman. He listened to people speaking in a dozen different languages, chattering like the monkeys they so closely resembled. He saw that the painting was sealed behind thick plastic and roped off so that no one could get close to it. Stern-faced guards flanked the serene portrait. Like monkeys, the people had an innate urge to stretch out their hands and touch the picture.

He understood all their simian gibbering, no matter what the language.

In Japanese, “Why does she smile so?”

“She’s pregnant.”

“Nonsense! Is that all you women think about?”

“I read it in a book.”

Another voice, in German, “How much do you think it’s worth?”

“It’s priceless.”

“Yes, I know, but how much money would it take to buy it from these Frogs?”

“Don’t be so crass.”

“They must have it insured. How much is the policy for?”

“You’re impossible!”

And another, in New York American, “It oughtta be in Italy, not France.”

“Leonardo was employed by the French king, wasn’t he?”

“Not when he painted this.”

“How did it get to Paris, then?”

“How do you think? The French invaded Italy and stole it.”

“Oh, I don’t think so.”

“No? How much ya wanna bet?”

With an effort of will, Stoner tried to shut their chatter out of his mind and concentrate on the painting itself. What was Leonardo trying to tell me when he painted this? What was the message he put onto this canvas? The shadings of the woman’s eyes, the subtlety of her smile, the fantasy landscape behind her—the scene past her right shoulder did not match the scene behind her left.

For nearly an hour Stoner studied the painting, while tourists pushed past him, glanced at it for a moment or two, and then hurried on.

Finally Stoner understood. He smiled back at young Lisa Giacondo. Leonardo had created a masterpiece because he had the genius to recognize the goal of human aspirations and then capture it with his pigments. The serenity of a young woman’s smile. The placid pose, the calmly folded hands. This was what every human soul longed for: serenity, calm, the peace that passeth understanding. Despite the fantastic landscape beyond her window, Mona Lisa had achieved that elusive quality that humans call happiness. For six centuries, all who saw the painting were tantalized by that, yearning to understand what they were seeing. So few did. So few recognized happiness when they saw it.

He walked out of the Louvre at last, past the old Palais Royal and up the wide avenue to the magnificent Opera House. Then farther, into the narrow streets of Montmartre, where children ran along the alleyways in which Piaf had once sung for pennies. The labyrinth of dark, winding streets echoed with children’s shouts and laughter. Hardly an adult in sight: this was a working day. No tourists here, although an occasional steam bus huffed by, squeezing through the tight lanes left by the cars parked half up on the sidewalks, heading up the hill toward Sacré-Coeur.

Stoner hiked up to the basilica, his long legs plodding up the steeply rising streets. He watched a robot street cleaner patiently scooping up litter from the gutters. There was no graffiti on the walls. No loungers hanging around the neighborhood bistros. The economy must be good, Stoner thought; very good. The children he saw scampering through the streets were as much Algerian and Moroccan as French. But they played together without any noticeable antagonisms. They’ve been absorbed into the French culture, accepted by the Parisians. It took a few generations, but it’s happened at last.

Tourists swarmed around Sacré-Coeur. Stoner ignored them like a man turning his back on an exhibit at the zoo and looked out from the hilltop at the rest of Paris spread out before him. Far in the distance he could make out the spires of Notre Dame, the medieval cathedral where Quasimodo had held off the besieging army of beggars.

Where are the beggars today? Stoner wondered. Has poverty really been beaten, or am I merely seeing the best side of a rich nation?

He leaned both hands on the stone parapet and let the wind tousle his hair. It was a beautiful day, in a beautiful city. But Stoner knew what he had to do. His decision of the previous night had been the correct one. It had nothing to do with Elly or the life he had led eighteen years ago. Nothing to do with his personal desires or emotions. He had no emotions, they had been removed from his inner being, leaving an emptiness as deep and cold as outer space itself.

He nodded to himself. The purpose he had sought was now clear to him.

He found a pay phone and called Claude Appert, collect. Nicole answered, the inevitable cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth. She recognized Stoner and smiled.

“Keith! We worried about you. Where have you been all night? Did you see your friend?”

“Yes, I met him last night.”

“You stayed with him?”

“No, not really.”

“Ahh.” Recognition dawned on her face. “You made a conquest, eh?”

He made himself grin and let the question go unanswered. But inwardly he shuddered at the thought of embracing some unknown woman, mating the way monkeys mate, furious passion for a moment and then parting forever.

“Claude is at the university….”

“That’s all right,” he said. “Nicole, I’m going to have to leave Paris.”

“Leave? But why? When?”

“Today. This afternoon. I won’t be able to get back to your apartment and return everything Claude’s loaned me.”

“That is of no importance. But why do you have to leave so soon? An affair of the heart?”

“No, I’m afraid not.”

Nicole looked disappointed.

“Listen. If anyone comes looking for me, tell them exactly what’s happened. Don’t hide anything from them.”

Her disappointment changed to a disturbed, almost worried, frown. “What are you saying, Keith?”

“I’m taking a trip. South, toward Marseilles. And then to Algeria and on into Africa, where the war’s going on.”

“But that is madness!”

“I’ve got to do it, Nicole. I can’t explain why right now, but that’s where I’ve got to go.”

She shook her head, hard lines etching her brow.

“Thanks for all your help,” he said. “And remember, if anyone asks about me, tell them everything. Hold nothing back.”

He punched the button that cut off the connection before she could ask another question. They’ll be safe enough, Stoner told himself. No one will hurt them.

But he wished he felt more certain of that.

As they turned in from the Strand to the alley that led to the Savoy’s front entrance, An Linh asked Baker, “Let me get this straight: you’re using Madigan so that you can find the astronaut for the World Liberation Movement?”

Nodding, he took her arm as they walked past a snub-nosed black taxi that was deftly turning around in the narrow circle in front of the hotel’s entrance. The uniformed doorman was tooting his whistle for another taxi; a trio of Arabs in Western business suits and checkered burnooses held in place by twisted goat-hair cords stood beside him, gesticulating animatedly as they spoke with one another in their guttural yet strangely musical language.

Baker glanced back over his shoulder as he answered, barely loud enough for An Linh to hear him over the taxi’s motor and the noise from the street, “That’s right, love. Vanguard’s got a helluva lot more resources than we do.”

“And Madigan thinks that he’s forcing us to help him.”

The Australian grinned broadly as they pushed through the revolving door. Inside the hotel lobby, he took her arm and whispered, “He’s using us; we’re using him. Turn about’s fair dinkum, right?”

An Linh kept her silence as they rode up the elevator to their suite. But in the back of her mind she kept thinking, Cliff’s right. This
is
the biggest story of the century. Not just the frozen astronaut, though. The World Liberation Movement. If they’ve penetrated Vanguard Industries, they must be
huge
. What a story it will make!

The red message light was blinking on the phone terminal. Baker went straight for it as An Linh dropped her handbag into the nearest chair and headed for the bathroom. She remembered an old Australian dictum that Cliff had once told her: “Nobody ever owns beer; you just borrow it.”

By the time she came back into the sitting room, Baker was hunched forward in one of the armchairs, staring at the image of Archie Madigan’s face on the phone screen.

“Okay,” Madigan was saying. “I’ve got the scrambler working. Nobody can listen in on us.”

“What’s happening?” Baker said.

Madigan cocked an eyebrow as An Linh moved into his view, standing behind the chair in which Baker was sitting.

“The boss has been asking about you,” he said, a slight smirk playing across his lips. “I told him he should offer you your job back. He said he’d think about it.”

An Linh suddenly felt like a mouse being eyed by a grinning, evil cat. Taking a deep breath to steady her voice, she replied, “Is that why you’ve called?”

“And scrambled the transmission?” Baker added.

Madigan’s smile turned almost apologetic. “No, of course not.” He seemed to straighten a little in his chair. “We’ve run a computer check on every person known to have come in contact with Stoner during his days on Project Jove….”

“Jove?” asked Baker.

“That was the name of the project to make contact with the alien spacecraft, eighteen years ago.”

“Oh. I see.”

“We’ve gone through every person on that project, all the people who he knew when he worked for NASA, and as far back as his classmates at college….”

An Linh asked, “All of them? Every single one?”

“As many as we could identify,” said Madigan. “We’ve even checked out his kids and his ex-wife.” Madigan’s hazel eyes flashed a silent message to her, and An Linh knew that she could never trust this man.

“Find anything?” Baker asked.

“The kids haven’t seen him in twenty years. His ex-wife is dead. We’ve got an army of people checking out everyone we can get to, including one of the Russians from Project Jove that Stoner got particularly friendly with.”

“Who’s that?”

Madigan glanced down for a moment, probably at the computer screen on his desk, An Linh thought.

“I don’t have his name here at the moment,” he replied. “But there is somebody that you two can check out for me. A French astrophysicist named Appert. Lives in Paris.”

“He was on the project with Stoner?”

“No. They went to school together.”

“That’s a long time ago,” said An Linh. “The man must be retired by now.”

Madigan looked straight at her, and again his changeable, traitorous eyes sent a shudder of distrust through her.

“We are checking out everybody,” he said firmly. Then, lightening his tone, he went on, “Besides, we’ve learned that Mrs. Nillson brought Stoner to Naples, and he left her villa several nights ago. Of all Stoner’s former associates and friends, this man Appert is the closest one to Naples.”

“We’ll check him out,” said Baker.

“Do not mention Vanguard Industries,” warned Madigan. “I repeat, Vanguard is not to be mentioned.”

“Never heard of ’em,” said Baker, grinning.

Madigan grinned back at him and cut the connection. The telephone screen went blank.