Voyagers II - The Alien Within (19 page)

“Security, love,” said Baker, sitting up on the bed. “No one knows more than they need to know.”

The Oriental and the Frenchwoman left as swiftly as they had arrived, but only after Mlle. Gard assured Baker that his shoulder would be stiff for a week or more and left him with a small bottle of pain-killers.

“
Adieu
,” she chirped from the doorway. “
Bonne chance
.”

An Linh closed the door behind them, then turned to Baker. “You’ve got to tell me more about this organization, Cliff. I want to know…”

But he was stretched out on the bed, eyes closed, snoring lightly.

From the landing at the top of the stairs that led into the station’s restaurant, the Gare de Lyon looked like a frenetic zoo. Stoner leaned both hands on the metal railing and watched the people rushing to and fro, lining up at the ticket windows, hauling luggage to the gates where the trains departed, knotting in little groups, running, gesticulating, and talking, talking—always talking, incessantly.

The noise was almost painful, and without letup. A thousand voices all going at once. Loudspeakers blaring announcements. Vendors calling out their wares. Even the people sitting at the tables spread out around the foot of the ornate
la belle epoque
staircase did more talking than eating or drinking.

A young couple embraced passionately at one of the gates, while the train—an aging TGV—thrummed with impatient power. Stoner tried to guess which of the pair would run to the train and which would stay behind. It was the man who dashed out along the platform. The woman waved to him briefly, then turned and walked slowly away. Stoner could not tell from this distance, but he guessed there were tears in her eyes.

Stoner’s train would not leave for Marseilles for another fifteen minutes. It was one of the new electric specials, gleaming silver as it stood waiting on its track, powered by the cheap electricity generated by the new fusion power plants.

A gift from the stars, Stoner mused. A gift
of
the stars: in the heart of each fusion reactor is an incandescent plasma hotter than the core of the sun, he knew.

And I helped to bring this to Earth, he thought. I did. But which me? The man who was born on this world, or the alien within me?

He blinked his eyes, and the scene before him seemed to shift, change focus. The people crowding the train station were still there, the trains lay stretched along the tracks, the noise and muted light slanting through the rain-spattered glass roof did not change. But now it seemed as if he were examining an exhibit in a museum, observing a strange tribal ritual. Far back in the recesses of his memory, Stoner recalled once as a teenager peering into a microscope for the first time and discovering the teeming world of living creatures that bustled and scurried within a drop of water.

He watched the humans bustling and scurrying through the train station, hyperactive monkeys jabbering away their lives, not a shred of dignity about them, living on their emotions, letting their glands and their mammalian brains dictate the ordinary moments of their existences. It’s not fair to think of us that way, said one part of his mind. But that’s the way you are, replied another voice within him. You have the power of abstract thought, the capability of comprehending the universe—yet you behave like the monkeys in the forests.

Stoner shook his head, as if to drive the alien voice out of his thoughts. It went silent, but he could feel its presence inside his skull, watching, observing, analyzing. There was no hint of censure in the voice, no anger or disappointment with the human condition. No pity, either. Nothing but precise objective measurement.

Then his eye caught a scene below him, one individual encounter out of the hundreds happening simultaneously in the tumult of the busy station. A woman with three young children and as many pieces of odd-sized luggage—plus a heavy pack strapped to her back—was trying to take a table among those spread out on the floor of the station at the foot of the staircase. She was wrapped in a shabby overcoat that was much too big for her and had a fringed shawl over her head. The children were bundled in old, stiff, quilted winter coats; to Stoner they looked almost like miniature astronauts in space suits that had been pressurized to the point where they could hardly bend their arms.

The waiter was yelling at her in French and waving his arms at her. She obviously could not understand him. The children were very young, the smallest of them barely a toddler. They looked frightened and about to cry.

On an impulse, Stoner hurried down the stairs toward them.

“These tables are for serving cocktails only,” the waiter was insisting. “For dinner you must go upstairs, into the restaurant.”

“We only want to sit down for a few minutes,” the woman was saying in strangely accented English. Her skin was no darker than a good suntan would produce, but Stoner realized from her singsong inflection that she was Indian.

To the waiter, he said, “They are tired. They need to rest for a few moments.”

“Impossible! These tables are for paying customers, not charity cases.”

Stoner took the man’s right hand in his own and held it firmly. “The children are very tired, you can see that, can’t you? They’ll only be here a few minutes, I promise you.”

He released the man’s hand, and the waiter immediately slipped it into his pocket. Gruffly he said, “Only a few minutes, then.”

Stoner thought about ordering something for them to drink but decided that deluding the waiter into thinking he had been tipped was enough of an imposition on the man.

“Oh, thank you, sir,” said the Indian woman. She made a short shooing motion with one hand, and the three children clambered onto the rickety, wire-backed chairs.

Stoner nodded to her. “You’re very welcome.”

“We have been traveling for three days,” the woman said, easing the straps of the backpack off her shoulders. It clunked to the floor heavily. “My husband has left for a new job in Madras, and I am bringing the children and myself to join him.”

She would have been pretty if she had not been so tired, Stoner thought. She let her coat sag open and he saw that her clothes were entirely Western. So were the children’s. Without an instant’s hesitation she told Stoner her whole story: how she had married the man her parents had selected for her, when they had both been teenagers. How they had left India to escape the strictures of their families.

“I would have had six children by now, instead of merely three!” she said. “And a jewel in my nose, and a caste mark on my brow. Yes, for women in my village the age of freedom has not yet arrived.”

She was only twenty-two, Stoner discovered. Yet she looked much older. The children were very well behaved. They fidgeted and squirmed on their chairs, but they kept silent and asked for nothing. Stoner saw their huge brown eyes watching the adults around them eating parfaits and drinking from mysteriously shaped glasses.

Her husband had been a textile worker, but robots had eliminated the craft that his father had taught him. So she and their growing family went with him to find work, first in Bombay, then in the construction teams building the solar power arrays in Arabia, and finally in Flanders—where some textiles were still made by hand.

“We were so happy there.” She sighed. “He loved his work and I started at the university. I was to be a biotechnician!”

But Belgium is not India, she went on sadly. Her husband grew homesick, especially when the winter cold made them all ill. One winter he stayed. And a second. But by the time spring came, he had made up his mind to return to Mother India.

“I told him I would not go. I would not return to a society that only paid lip service to the rights of women. But he would not listen to me. Finally he told me that he was going home. I could come with him, or I could stay where I was. He was going home.”

Stoner did not have to ask what she had decided; she gave him no time to ask before continuing:

“I refused to go with him. But what could I do? I could not remain in the university; I had to find a job to feed the children. I became involved with another man, but he would not marry me even if I divorced my husband. He did not want to support children who were not his own, you see.”

The loudspeaker blared the announcement for Stoner’s train.

With a painful sigh, the Indian woman said, “So I am returning to my husband, after all. He has found a job in Madras. At least we will not be living in our home village. The city may be better for me.”

“I hope it is,” Stoner said gently.

“It makes no difference,” she replied. Gazing gently at the three silent, big-eyed children, she said resignedly, “They are the important ones. Their life is my life. I must protect them as best I can.”

Stoner walked her to the train, carrying the toddler in one arm and the largest of the makeshift suitcases in his other hand. She was taking the same southward-bound train, but her tickets were for the cheapest coach. It won’t be so bad for them, Stoner thought. The train will be in Marseilles in less than three hours.

He helped them into the train and saw them settled comfortably in two pairs of facing seats.

“Thank you so much, sir,” the woman said. “I am sorry to have burdened you.”

Stoner smiled at her. “No, no. I thank you. You have taught me what real courage is.”

And he left her, heading farther toward the rear of the train, where the seats were more comfortable and he could watch the landscape blurring past without being interrupted. He needed to think, he told himself; needed to reflect on what the woman had told him. But he was glad to get away from her, happy to find a seat all by himself with no one near him, where he could be alone, isolated from these constantly chattering monkeys.

The train was hurtling through the beautiful countryside, down the Rhone valley, dotted with vineyards and old nuclear power stations. Stoner remembered the furor over nuclear power in his earlier life. The nukes seem peaceful enough now. They haven’t harmed the environment. They don’t even have smokestacks. He saw his own ghostly image on the window, his face frowning in concentration. The conductor stared at him each time he passed, as if trying to remember something important, but each time he went past without demanding to see a ticket.

I must protect them as best I can
.

The woman’s words rang in Stoner’s mind. Yes, he agreed silently. We must all protect the children as best we can.

Baker was still sleeping when Madigan came into their tiny hotel room. The concierge had announced him, and An Linh was glad to see the lawyer from Vanguard Industries.

The only sign of surprise Madigan showed when he saw Baker stretched out on the bed, naked to the waist, his left shoulder bandaged, was a pursing of his lips and a low whistle.

“What happened?” he asked, his voice low so that it would not disturb the sleeping man.

An Linh said, “Madame Appert shot him. She didn’t like being questioned about Stoner.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Shot him?”

“She refused to tell us anything,” An Linh lied. “Cliff started to get rough with her. She pulled out a gun and shot him. We were lucky to get away without being caught by the police.”

Madigan went to the bed. “And who patched him up?”

Hesitating, An Linh improvised, “Why…I did. It wasn’t a deep wound, really. I…uh, I got some bandages and antiseptic from the pharmacy down the street.”

“Very professional work.”

“Thanks.”

He looked briefly around the cramped little room, then went to the only armchair, by the window, and sat in it. Madigan was wearing his corporation lawyer’s uniform, a dark gray hand-tailored suit that fit him perfectly; it was in the latest New York style, high-collared Mandarin tunic, razor-sharp creases along the trousers, a small diamond clip in the shape of the corporation’s stylized V over his left breast. An Linh’s balloon-sleeved yellow blouse and knee-length knit skirt suddenly seemed terribly ordinary to her.

“Sit down,” Madigan said. “No need to stay on your feet.”

An Linh took the only other chair in the room, a wooden ladder-back that stood by the combination vanity and writing desk.

“The concierge tells me you had two visitors a couple of hours ago, an Oriental gentleman and a French lady. Called themselves Mr. Van and Miss Gard, she claims.”

She froze. Trying not to reveal the slightest hint of surprise, An Linh held her breath for a moment, then slowly shook her head. “The concierge must be mistaken. We’ve had no visitors.”

Madigan smiled sadly. “The woman works for Vanguard. Why do you think I put you up in this particular hotel? She didn’t make any mistake.”

All that An Linh could do was to shake her head again.

“Mrs. Appert told you something, didn’t she?”

“No.”

“That’s a lie, dear girl. You mustn’t tell lies. You could get hurt, you know.”

He said it softly, almost sweetly, but An Linh’s blood ran cold.

Madigan chuckled, low in his throat. “By Jesus, you really are new to this business, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know….”

“That’s just it,” the lawyer said almost jovially. “You don’t know how to play this game. You don’t even know what the rules are.”

She sat there silently, waiting for him to go on.

“This is where you offer me your body, darling girl. In return for my protection, you go to bed with me.”

“Go to bed with you?”

“Come on now, is that such a repulsive idea?” He was grinning broadly. “Was it so bad the last time?”

The fears swirling through An Linh’s mind began to fade a little. She tried to organize her thoughts. Madigan had been a competent lover, nothing extraordinary, but nothing hurtful, either. And he had kept his word: he had recommended her for the PR director’s job the following week. She had expected him to demand more from her, but until this moment he had never bothered her again.

The lawyer made a small gesture toward Baker, sedated on the bed. “You do want to protect him, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Do you love him?”

An Linh nodded slowly.

“I want to protect him, too. And you, my dear girl. You need my protection. Very much.”

“From Nillson,” she said.

Madigan stared at An Linh silently. She felt him stripping her with his eyes. In the light of the rainy day filtering through the window curtains, his eyes were gray green, cold, guarded.

“Mr. Madigan,” she said, “I’m not a whore. Don’t force me to do something I don’t want to do.”

His lips curled slightly in a sardonic smile. “I wouldn’t dream of it. But if you want to keep him out of Nillson’s clutches, you’ve got to do something for me.”

“Do what?” she asked, her insides fluttering at what his answer might be.