Voyagers III - Star Brothers (13 page)

STONER began to worry when he realized that the government car Ilona Lucacs had obtained was not driving in the direction of the airport.

“We’re not going to Sheremetyevo?” he asked.

Sitting beside him on the rear seat of the black unmarked sedan, Ilona replied easily, “No. To a military airfield out beyond the ring road.”

He gave her an inquisitive glance.

“When one works for the president of the nation,” she explained with a slight smile, “one does not have to travel by commercial airliner.”

Stoner accepted the explanation, realizing that the Hungarian woman was holding back part of the truth. As usual, he said to himself.

It was late afternoon. Stoner had spent the day making funeral arrangements for Kirill Markov through Rozmenko, the bureaucrat from the Academy of Sciences. There had been some legal holdup about reading the will, and Stoner had decided to go to Budapest with Lucacs rather than stew around Moscow, waiting for the lawyers to sort out the difficulty. Then he had returned to his hotel, stretched out on the sagging bed, and phoned Jo to tell her he was on his way to Budapest.

He could feel the cold of ice in Jo’s voice. “Is it absolutely necessary to traipse out to Budapest? Don’t you think you’re asking for trouble?”

Holding his wrist comm in his hand and keeping it close to his lips, he replied, “There’s something going on at their university that I’ve got to look into, Jo. It’s important.”

She caught the urgency in his tone. “Biochips?” she guessed.

“Clever woman,” said Stoner. “That—and maybe more.”

Jo made a huffing, sighing sound the way she always did when she accepted a situation without liking it. “Stay in constant touch with me,” she said.

“Yes, boss,” he joked.

He put the comm unit back on his wrist, picked up the little bundle of clothing that the hotel had obtained for him, and used the computer terminal built into the room’s TV set to settle his bill and check out.

Now, as he sat beside the young Hungarian scientist, their car passed through several checkpoints where soldiers with rifles slung over their shoulders minutely examined their passports and the papers that the driver had tucked in the visor over his seat. Finally the car pulled up on the concrete apron outside a huge hangar. A solitary military transport was parked there, twin jet engine nacelles hanging from swept-back wings. The plane was painted olive drab, and bore the markings of the Hungarian air force.

Almost wordlessly, Stoner followed Ilona Lucacs into the plane, ducking his head in its low, narrow interior. There were twenty seats inside, arranged in five rows, two by two with an aisle up the middle.

The two of them were the only passengers. A woman in military uniform poked her head through the hatch up front and asked in Hungarian:

“Are you ready to leave?”

“Yes,” said Ilona.

“Fasten your safety belts, then. No smoking.”

She closed the hatch and the engines whined to life. Stoner grinned at the brevity of the safety lecture. On a commercial flight they would have gotten a five-minute video that amounted to the same information.

They took off into the setting sun, the engines roaring so loudly that the whole plane rattled. Conversation was virtually impossible over the bellowing howl. The plane vibrated so much that Stoner kept his seat belt tightly fastened as they arrowed high into the air and sped westward.

“The flight should take only about an hour,” Ilona shouted over the din.

Stoner nodded and closed his eyes, pretending to sleep. Instead, he asked his star brother once again why the possibility that Lucacs and her coworkers were developing the beginnings of nanotechnology was so fearful.

We have known, you and I, that our symbiosis is the model for the next step in human evolution. We have worked for fifteen years to set the stage for that step forward, to create the global political and economic conditions for accepting this new concept. Why be afraid of it now?

Silence. Beneath the rattling droning roar of the plane’s engines Stoner heard nothing. No answer from his star brother.

He probed harder. I know the biochips carry with them the possibilities for abuse. This woman I’m with is a perfect example of that. But they are necessary. They are the first step toward the nanotechnology that will bring the human race its own symbiosis. What is there to fear?

Still no response. For the flash of an instant Stoner felt as if his star brother had gone away, abandoned him, left him as alone and separated as all the rest of the human kind. But the panic passed in less than a heartbeat. He knew his star brother remained within him, they were inseparably linked forever.

But his star brother was afraid, and this made Stoner feel fear—and an overwhelming urge to help his brother, to dig out the roots of this fear and conquer it.

Together we can do it, he said silently. Together we can face it and overcome it.

The drone of the jet engines faded away. The vibrations of the plane’s flight disappeared. Stoner was back on the world of his star brother, walking across a broad field of orange motile grass. The individual leaves flowed away from his boots as he walked, baring the slightly pinkish soil to his tread, then closed again behind him. The white sun shone hot and bright overhead. And once again he saw the tower that reached to the sky.

He stopped in the middle of the field, still so far from the tower that it seemed like a fragile silver thread gleaming in the sunlight, rising from the horizon and climbing up, up, upward until he had to bend slightly backward and crane his neck to see it piercing to the zenith overhead.

The world where my star brother was born, Stoner knew. But the presence in his mind whispered, That is only partially true.

The open field slowly dissolved, like watercolors washing away, melting, flowing. The great silver sky tower wavered and then dissolved from his sight.

Now Stoner stood in the midst of a vast city. Magnificent temples of polished stone rose massively all around him. He was in some sort of municipal plaza, huge smooth flagstones beneath his booted feet, temples of immense dignity on all four sides of the square.

The sky was red. Not like a sunset. Red as blood. Red with darkness rather than light. From somewhere beyond the massive bulk of the temples bright flares flickered, almost like explosions off in the distance. Yet Stoner heard no sound.

Utterly alone, he strode across the great stone plaza in the blood-red light, heading straight for the largest of all the temples, directly in front of him. His footsteps clicking against the flagstones were the only sounds he heard. Not even the sigh of a breeze disturbed the immense empty plaza.

A splendid broad stairway rose before him, topped by rows of gigantic columns. The frieze above depicted creatures who were far from human. With a mounting sense of dread, Stoner climbed those steep stairs while the sky flashed and darkened above.

Slowly he passed through the rows of columns, almost reluctant to enter the temple itself. Something was in there that he did not want to see. Danger. Horror.

The interior was dark, deeply shadowed. Stoner hesitated at the wide entryway, waiting for his vision to adjust, wishing that the darkening red sky were brighter. He shuddered and stepped forward.

A flash of light, like an explosion or a stroke of vengeful lightning, strobe-lit the temple’s interior for the briefest instant. Bodies. Twisted, agonized, horrifying bodies. Faceted eyes staring sightlessly. Alien limbs contorted in death throes. Bodies heaped atop one another as though piled up by a callous bulldozer.

Stoner blinked against the vision and darkness returned. He stood frozen at the temple’s entrance, unwilling to move forward, unable to move back.

Another strobe of brilliant light. There were thousands of dead bodies, mounds of them taller than his own head. All straining in their final moments toward a colossal statue of something not human.

Darkness again. Stoner was gasping for air. He felt sweat trickling down his brow, stinging his eyes. He wanted to leave this place of death. His nostrils flared, waiting for the stench of decay to reach him.

He felt, rather than heard, a distant rumble. A volcano erupting? The ground splitting apart? The red sky glowered and throbbed. The sullen dull light grew enough for Stoner to make out the piles of dead straining toward that enormous statue with their last strength. Their god, their hero, their final desperate chance for salvation. In the blood-red shadows he could not make out much of it, but it was totally nonhuman, bizarre, with strange shape and utterly alien geometry.

Yet it was not grotesque. Somehow Stoner felt the statue had a dignity to it, a grandeur, even. It had been created by a sculptor with loving devotion.

A sculptor who was dead. The city was dead. The entire world was dead.

The intelligent creatures who had created the statues and raised the temples and built the city were all dead. Extinct. Gone forever from the universe. Every form of life on the planet, from the simplest virus to the tallest trees and largest beasts, were all wiped out, killed without mercy and without exception. Their dead bodies could not even decay.

It was a planet of death. It had existed this way for millions of years. It would remain preserved in death until its star collapsed and exploded.

Why show me this? Stoner asked his star brother, while every nerve in his body screamed to be released from this grisly vision.

Because your world could become this, the presence in his mind replied. The human race could destroy itself and every living creature on Earth. Your people have that power in their grasp.

And Stoner realized that the terror he had felt in his star brother was not merely fear. It was shame.

Stoner opened his eyes, groaning, choking, the breath gagging in his throat. He felt perspiration beading his brow, his lip.

“A bad dream?” Ilona Lucacs asked, from the seat beside him.

He was in the jet transport plane. Its noise and vibration seemed comforting now, reassuring.

Gasping, “Yes, a bad dream. A real nightmare.”

“Are you all right?”

He nodded, struggling to pull himself together.

She pointed toward the tiny window at her elbow. “We are coming down for a landing. The flight is almost over.”

Stoner leaned across to look out the window. Nothing but green hills and country streams. Turning, he looked out the other side, across the empty aisle. No sign of a city.

“I thought we were going to Budapest,” he said.

Ilona Lucacs smiled apologetically. “Not exactly,” she said. “Not exactly Budapest.”

Jo swam the length of the pool slowly, methodically, using an overhand crawl stroke that provided the most propulsion through the water for the least amount of exertion.

Her mind was racing, though. Keith should have called by now. Even with the time difference he ought to be in Budapest. She had tried to reach him on the phone but the damned computer said it could not establish contact with him. Something’s wrong, she knew. That wrist comm unit ought to be good anywhere, that’s the reason we manufacture them. Millions of them sold all around the world. Why isn’t Keith’s working?

She reached the end, kick-turned, and started languidly back for the shallow end again. Maybe he doesn’t
want
to be contacted? That young Hungarian bitch was damned good-looking. I know I can trust Keith. Sure. But can I trust her?

Standing hip-deep in the crystal-clear water, Jo climbed out of the pool and called to her children, sitting under the big palm tree at the end of the patio, watching the Saturday morning science shows on TV.

“Cathy, Rickie—come up to my office. Time for a fire drill.”

“Aw, Mom, do we have to?”

“Again?”

Catherine was fourteen, that lean-legged coltish age when she was turning into a woman but still wanted to be a little girl. Richard, at ten, already showed his father’s stubborn jaw and penetrating gray eyes.

Jo did not bother to say another word. Both children knew that when their mother gave an order she expected them to follow it. There was no wheedling with Mom.

The three of them trooped upstairs to Jo’s office, just off the master bedroom, Jo wrapped in a sunset orange bath towel, Cathy in a flowered bikini, Rickie in his customary ragged cut-offs.

For more than an hour Jo drilled her children on the security measures that protected the house. Escape routes, emergency numbers to call, safe nooks for them to hide in until rescued. She called it a fire drill, but she also impressed on them that burglars might try to break into the house.

“Or kidnappers,” Rickie said solemnly. “Like on TV.”

“Yes,” Jo nodded, equally serious, “there’s always that possibility.”

“Kidnappers?” Cathy looked frightened.

“Don’t be upset,” said her mother. “There are always at least five live servants here at the house at all times, and they know how to deal with intruders.”

“You mean like Claudia and Uncle Nunzio?” Cathy looked unconvinced. “They’re so
old
!”

“Not too old to protect you,” Jo said. “And there are plenty of Vanguard security guards down the road, just a couple of minutes away.”

“They’ve got guns,” Rickie said, somewhat enviously.

“And we have all the electronic alarms and detectors,” Jo said, still concerned that Cathy might be frightened. She wanted her children to know what to do in an emergency, but she did not want to scare them unnecessarily.

“If anything happens when your father or I are not here, you can always call Vic Tomasso,” she told them. “If you see or hear anything that you think is suspicious, phone Vic right away.”

WASHINGTON

THE Secretary of Defense, whose normal expression was a sullen scowl, actually smiled as he began to speak. The President sank back in her chair, realizing they were in for a scolding.

“So it’s finally come,” said Defense, hunching forward and locking his hands prayerfully on the gleaming broad table top. “After years of starving the Defense Department, you need the Army. After ignoring the needs of the nation and trusting to a bunch of foreigners in the Peace Enforcers to do the job Americans should be doing for themselves, you need us. You
need
the military discipline and dedication that you’ve scorned for so many years.”