Voyagers II - The Alien Within (36 page)

Looking forward, Stoner strained for a glimpse of the alien spacecraft. But the area where all the main tunnels converged was a jumbled mass of metal-walled structures. Like the holy places in the Middle East, Stoner thought. They cover over them with churches or mosques or temples. The more important the site, the bigger the structure they’ve built over it.

Still, he felt a tingle of anticipation as they made their way down the tunnel. From floating they went to the long-striding, half-loping walk that astronauts use in the meager gravity of the Moon. But that quickly gave way to the more solid tread of full Earthly gravity. Stoner soon heard the heavy, purposeful clicking of half a dozen pairs of booted feet against the plastic tiles of the tunnel’s floor.

More airlock hatches, and then they were inside a laboratory building, striding along a corridor that was flanked by labs and offices. Through the computer center they walked, then more labs and a wide, dimly lit storage area where arcane pieces of equipment were neatly shelved.

Another section where white-smocked men and women bent over display screens and light tables, and then a final airlock.

They stepped out onto a wide metal catwalk. It ran in a circle all around a hollow area brilliantly lit by so many arc lamps that there were no shadows whatsoever.

The nucleus of the atom, Stoner thought. The DNA in the heart of the cell.

At the center of the brilliantly lit hollow was the alien starship, just as Stoner had remembered it. A smooth metal oblong with gently rounded edges, twenty-five meters long, six deep. Light tan, almost the color of the coveralls that Markov and Baker and An Linh wore.

“So that is a starship,” said Markov, awe in his voice.

“Not awfully big,” Baker said.

“But think of how far it’s come,” said An Linh.

An extension of the catwalk led to a platform alongside the spacecraft. Without asking, Stoner walked to it. The others followed. They crowded shoulder against shoulder on the metal platform and peered inside the ship. Its entire top half was dimly transparent.

“He’s gone!” Stoner said.

The bier was empty. The body of the alien that had once rested upon it was missing. The artifacts that had surrounded the bier were also gone, and one whole bulkhead of the compartment had been removed to reveal a mass of stacked crystals, like diamond necklaces hanging by one end, that glittered in the light of the arc lamps.

Two human technicians stood inside the spacecraft now, clad in white coveralls. One held a hand-sized display screen which she peered at intently, checking off items on a list with an electronic stylus. The other bore a heavy backpack of metal cylinders. He bent down on one knee and slid a transparent visor down over his eyes. Then he started cutting the floor plates of the spacecraft compartment with a laser torch.

“The alien’s been taken away,” Stoner repeated.

Jo nodded. “They removed him years ago, so they could examine the body.”

“But…”

“The body has been cremated, Dr. Stoner,” said a new voice. “Burned to an ash. At my order.”

They all turned to see Everett Nillson, lean and pale as death, standing at the railing of the catwalk, grinning at them. Behind him stood a quartet of uniformed guards, each carrying snub-nosed submachine guns.

In the shadowless light of the arc lamps, Nillson’s pale, bony face looked almost like a death mask. The guards behind him stood impassively, hard and grim, their submachine guns held firmly in their hands and pointed at the five people standing at the edge of the alien starship.

“The body has been cremated,” Nillson repeated, “and the ashes have been fired off in a rocket that will plunge into the Sun. You’ll never find a trace of your alien, Stoner.”

For an instant Stoner stood rigid, staring into Nillson’s nearly colorless eyes. Then, in his mind, he heard a voice telling him, He does not understand. The physical body means little. I am with you, crèche-mate from another world. I am part of you now, my brother. Eternally. My body has served its purpose. Its loss is hardly a loss at all.

Still standing at the railing of the circular catwalk, Nillson gloated, “Now we are dismantling the spacecraft itself.”

Stoner glanced down at the technician slicing the floor of the spacecraft’s compartment with the laser cutting tool. Both he and his female supervisor kept their eyes on their work and made it clear that they were ignoring the byplay going on alongside them.

“I’m having it cut apart into small pieces. Then the pieces will also be propelled into the Sun.”

“You cannot do this!” Markov protested. “This starship belongs to the entire human race, all of mankind. It’s not yours to dispose of.”

Nillson laughed. “Possession is nine-tenths of the law. By the time your government learns about this, it’ll be too late to do anything about it.”

Stoner studied the tall, lank, cadaverous man who loomed before them. The man who was Jo’s husband. Nillson’s eyes were dilated, his face covered with a fine sheen of perspiration. His knobby, long-fingered hands were gripping the railing of the catwalk tightly, as if he were afraid of swaying or even falling down if he let go. He was dressed in an elegant suit of deep blue, but its high mandarin collar was hanging open and the suit seemed baggy, overlarge.

He’s lost weight since that suit was tailored for him, Stoner judged. And he’s high on something.

“In another few hours,” Nillson was saying, his voice rising shrilly as he spoke, “there won’t be a trace of the alien or his starship left. Or you, either, Stoner. You’re going on a one-way trip to the Sun also. Going out in a blaze of glory.” He giggled.

Jo said, “Ev, you can’t…”

“Who says I can’t?” His tone turned truculent; his face hardened. “I can do whatever I damned well please, wife of mine. The only question is, what do I do with
you
?”

Baker pushed past An Linh and stood in front of her protectively. “You’re insane, you bloody bastard. Stark staring bonkers!”

“Ah, Mr. Baker.” Nillson made a vague gesture with one hand, seemed almost to lose his balance, then clasped his hand onto the railing again. “What should I do with you? A loyal member of the World Liberation Movement. You didn’t know that I run the WLM, did you? That
I’m
the mastermind behind you!” He lifted his head and laughed, his eyes squeezing shut, the noise coming from his throat sounding more like the yowling of a feral animal than human laughter.

Baker took a step into the short gridwork bridge that connected the platform girdling the starship with the catwalk where Nillson stood. The four guards immediately turned their gun muzzles to focus on him.

“You don’t see how funny it all is, do you, Baker? So grim! So angry!” Nillson wiped at one eye. “How loyal you were under torture. Taking such punishment to resist telling me what I already knew. Can’t you see the humor in that? The irony of it all?”

“I’d like to get my hands on you….” But Baker stood rooted where he was, immobilized by the threatening guns of the guards.

Nillson seemed totally unconcerned. “For years now I’ve been bankrolling that fat Korean and letting him think he directed the World Liberation Movement. Just as I let you think you were actually running Vanguard Industries, Jo.”

She flinched as if he had slapped her.

Nillson went on, “But it was I who brought the different terrorist groups together. I did it! Me! I could control them better if they all worked under one leader. I made Temujin my puppet, and he never even realized it.”

“But why?” Jo asked.

“Why not? There was power to be had, and a man should never pass up the chance to gain power.” Nillson ran the back of his hand across his forehead as he said, “I inherited a multinational corporation at a time when the world was tottering. I had the vision, the courage, to buy out the terrorists and bring them under my control. I let you, Jo, go after the alien starship. It was a gamble, but it paid off handsomely. It made Vanguard the biggest, richest corporation in the world. But it brought some unacceptable risks. So today I’m getting rid of those risks. Eliminating them.”

Jo turned toward Stoner, who stood unmoving, watching, listening.

“The only question in my mind,” Nillson said, “is what to do with the rest of you.”

“If you think…” Jo started.

But he paid her no attention. “Baker, how would you like to be the new head of the World Liberation Movement?”

“You’re crazy!” Baker snapped.

Nillson fixed a cold stare on him. “Say that once more and you’ll go back to that interrogation table.”

Markov raised his voice. “I am a representative of the government of the Soviet Union. You cannot—”

“You are a dead man!” Nillson snarled. “You had a heart attack on the flight that brought you here and died before disembarking. I’ve already got a writer working on the news release.”

Markov’s face went white. He stumbled backward half a step, and Stoner took his arm.

“Jo, my beloved wife—I think you’re going to fly off into the Sun with your lover. You’ve always wanted to be with him. I’m going to grant you your fondest wish.”

He turned his glittering eyes to An Linh. “And you, pretty girl. You’ve been a great disappointment to me. I wanted you to accept the fetus I had frozen and carry my son to term. Now I don’t think I need you for that anymore.”

Stoner finally spoke. “Do you think you’d live long enough to see a son born?”

All eyes turned to him.

“You won’t last nine months,” Stoner said, his voice low and hard.

Nillson gripped the catwalk railing even harder, struggling to control the fury that shook his body.

Stoner said, “Having yourself frozen won’t work for you because you don’t know if you can be revived successfully when and if the cure for your cancer is discovered. My case is suspect, and all the other trials failed miserably.”

“How can you…”

“It started in your gonads, didn’t it? And it’s eating away inside your guts. The pain gets worse each day, and the only end to it will be death.”

Jo’s voice was hollow with shock. “Cancer? Terminal cancer?”

“They discovered it just about the time I was revived, didn’t they?” he asked Nillson. Without waiting for an answer, Stoner went on, “So you blame me for it, in your subconscious. And it’s running wild, accelerating. No way to stop it.”

Baker stared at Stoner, then swung his gaze to Nillson. “There’s no cure? You didn’t discover a cure?”

Nillson’s mouth opened, but no words came out. Only a ragged, groaning sound. Spittle flecked the corners of his lips.

“There never was a cure,” Stoner said. “That was nothing but your own propaganda.”

“But I thought…”

Turning back to Nillson, Stoner said, “That’s why you don’t really care anymore what a mess you make of the world. It’s all a game to you now, a toy that you’re going to break so that nobody else can use it.”

Jo objected, “But we did freeze fertilized ova, more than a year ago. He wanted a son. He still wants one.”

Stoner shook his head. “Maybe he did then. But now he wants immortality.” Turning back to Nillson, “That’s it, isn’t it? You want to live forever.”

“The alien,” Nillson said, his voice dropping nearly to a whisper. “What did he tell you? What was his message?”

Stoner said nothing.

“I’ll let you live! I’ll let them all live. Just tell me what the alien’s message was. It was about immortality, wasn’t it?”

“There is no message,” said Stoner.

“Don’t lie to me!” Nillson snapped, his voice stronger, angrier.

“No message.”

“That’s impossible! Out of all the worlds in the universe he came
here
. He was looking for us, searching for us. For a reason! There has to be a reason for the alien coming to us.”

Stoner said calmly, “It was random chance, nothing more.”

“It couldn’t be random chance! There’s a purpose behind his coming here. I know there is!”

“No purpose,” insisted Stoner. “None at all.”

“I don’t believe you!”

“The alien has no message for you or anyone. And there’s no hope of immortality for you.”

“You’re lying!”

“And you’re a dead man.”

“I’ll kill you! I’ll kill them all!”

Stoner looked deeply into those watery, pallid eyes and saw madness behind them. “I know,” he said, his voice almost sorrowful. “You’ll bring down the whole Earth, plunge them all into war and starvation and death. If you can’t live, no one will. Just like Hitler. Just like a spoiled neurotic little boy who breaks his toys in spite. If you can’t live, no one’s going to live.”

“Starting with you!” Nillson screamed. “Kill him! Shoot him down! Shoot them all!”

The guards raised their guns again, then hesitated.

Stoner said to Nillson, “The only person who’s going to die here is you.”

Slowly, like sleepwalkers, the four guards turned their guns toward Nillson himself. Blank-faced, they cocked the weapons and pointed their blunt muzzles at the lean, tottering chairman of the board.

Jo gripped Stoner’s arm. “Keith, what are you doing?”

“Putting him out of his pain. It’s what he really wants.”

But Nillson had turned to face the guards, his back pressed to the catwalk railing. “No,” he screeched, his voice high and pleading. “Not me! Not me!”

“Keith, please,” Jo begged. “You can’t murder him in cold blood!”

“It’s a mercy killing,” he said, his voice flat and calm. Within himself he felt no emotion whatever. Like a scientist terminating an experimental animal. Like a surgeon excising a cancerous tumor.

Nillson collapsed to his knees in front of the quartet of guns. “Please,
please!
I don’t want to die.”

A new voice boomed out of nowhere. “
Let him go, Stoner! Let him go or none of you will get out of there alive
.”

Stoner looked up at the loudspeakers spotted above the catwalk.

“You’ve come out into the open, finally,” he said.

Archie Madigan’s voice replied, “You forced my hand, Stoner.”

Nillson lay huddled in a blubbering heap on the catwalk. Jo, Markov, An Linh, and Baker were staring wide-eyed at the loudspeakers. The two technicians inside the spacecraft had stopped their work and were standing, stiff with shock, watching the drama being played out in front of them.

“Show yourself,” Stoner said to Madigan.

The lawyer chuckled. “Ah, now, that wouldn’t be the wisest thing for me to do, would it? You’ve a sort of hypnotic way about you, I’ve found.”

“Archie!” Jo shouted into the empty air. “Help us! Send somebody if you can’t come yourself.”

“Well now, before there’s any helping done, we’ve got to come to some terms,” said the lawyer.

“Terms? I don’t understand.”

Stoner said to Jo, “Archie’s the one who’s been behind all of this. Your husband thought he was controlling the World Liberation Movement, but Archie has actually been controlling your husband.”

Loud enough for the microphones by the speakers to pick up his voice, Stoner went on, “You’ve been the power behind the throne for years now, haven’t you, Madigan?”

“Indeed I have,” the lawyer replied. “Old Everett thought he was running the show, but he was jumping through
my
hoops without even knowing it.”

“You’ve been controlling Vanguard and the WLM both,” Stoner said.

“ ‘Controlling’ is a bit strong,” said Madigan. “I’d say I’ve been influencing my dear boss to a considerable extent.” The voice hesitated, then asked, “Does he really have cancer?”

Stoner nodded. “Terminal.”

“So that’s why he was so interested in you, at the outset.”

“You didn’t know?”

“It’s the one secret he managed to keep from me.”

“But once he began to suspect that my revival was a fluke, he lost his last chance to beat the game,” said Stoner.

Madigan’s sigh, amplified by the loudspeakers, sounded like a high wind rustling through a forest. “You’ve forced me to come out into the open, Stoner. I didn’t want to do that.”

“But now it’s done.”

“I haven’t made any plans for this. I thought Ev would finish you off, and I could go on pulling his strings.”

Stoner glanced back at Nillson, whimpering on the catwalk floor, and the four guards standing uncertainly over him, looking back and forth at one another and up at the loudspeakers.

“To what purpose?” Stoner asked. “Why have you been helping Nillson to promote terrorism around the world?”

“Ah, if you’d been born in Belfast in the year of our Lord 1970, you wouldn’t have to ask such a question.”

“That’s a good excuse,” Stoner countered. “But it’s not the real reason.”

“Little matter. It’s reason enough. The only question now is how to kill the five of you with as little mess as possible.”