Voyagers III - Star Brothers (15 page)

Only one place where a phone would be. Stoner bounded back up the stairs and rapped sharply on Janos’s door.

Without waiting for an answer he opened the door and stepped in. As he suspected, this was a much larger room than the others. Windows on two sides gave splendid views of the hills and woods. A king-sized bed, neatly made up with a chenille spread. A fireplace. Even a TV set.

Janos sat behind a small desk, his mouth open and dark eyes blazing with surprise and anger. Stoner saw a computer terminal on the desk. And his own comm bracelet lying beside it.

“You said I could phone my wife if I didn’t reveal my location,” he said to the startled Janos.

“I will have someone call her—” Janos began to say.

Stoner walked slowly to his desk and leaned both his fists on its top, looming over the professor. “I would prefer to speak to my wife myself.”

Janos began to shake his head, but stopped before he really started.

Stoner said softly, “You wouldn’t deny such a simple request, would you?”

For a moment Janos seemed to be struggling within himself. Then, “No, it would be unkind to deny your request, I agree.”

“May I use my own comm unit?” asked Stoner.

“Yes. Why not?” Reluctantly.

Stoner picked up the silver bracelet and spoke Jo’s name into it. In less than two seconds her voice crackled through the tiny microphone:

“Keith! Are you all right? Where are you?”

“I’m fine,” he said, pacing slightly away from Janos’s desk. “Sorry I couldn’t call you earlier.”

“What happened? Where are you?”

Knowing that she could get a positional fix on his transmission from the satellite relaying his call, Stoner replied, “I’m not in Budapest. My Hungarian friends have taken me to one of their labs. Nothing for you to worry about. I ought to be on my way home tomorrow. If there’s any change in plans I’ll call you.”

“You’re sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine, Jo.” He smiled at her voice. “I love you, darling.”

“I love you, too. You had me so worried…”

“There’s nothing to worry about. Kiss the kids for me.”

“You’ll be home tomorrow?”

“I’ll probably stop off in Moscow for Kir’s funeral. Can you meet me there?”

“Yes. I’ll have to move my schedule around a little, but yes, I’ll be there.”

“See you in Moscow, then.”

“All right.”

“Good night, darling.”

“It’s seven in the morning here.”

“Did I wake you?”

“I wasn’t sleeping.”

“Have a good day, Jo.”

“You sound like a damned airline steward!”

He laughed. Her sense of humor was back and the fear was out of her voice.

“’Bye for now.”

“Take care, Keith.”

Stoner held onto his bracelet for a moment, then handed it back to Janos. As if waking from a dream, he stirred, blinked his eyes, then snatched the bracelet as if it had been stolen from him.

“Thank you,” said Stoner.

Janos watched with wondering eyes as the American calmly walked out of his room. He manipulated me as if I were a child, Janos said to himself. He has the power to twist a grown man around his little finger! If the president ever finds out about that he will want me to find the source of that power and give it to him. If the people in Hong Kong ever learn about it…

Sinking back in his creaking plastic desk chair, Janos realized, But if I can find the source of such power, why would I give it to anyone except myself?

STILL tangled in the bedsheets, Jo eagerly tapped on the phone console’s keyboard the instant Keith’s call ended. The small screen showed the coordinates of the call’s point of origin.

With a little whoop of triumph she ordered the computer to store the information. Then she phoned Tomasso. He was not at his apartment, but within seconds the computer tracked him down and made the connection.

“Keith phoned me a few minutes ago,” she said breathlessly. “He’s all right, but I want you to get a team of people ready to reach him.”

Tomasso’s face looked slightly puffy, sleepy. On the small phone screen it was impossible for Jo to see much of the background. In the back of her mind she wondered whose bed Vic was in and how much sleep he had gotten.

“Where is he?” Tomasso asked.

“Coordinates are on file. Get to the office and get to work!”

“Yes, boss.” Despite the dark rings beneath his eyes, Tomasso grinned at her with his flawless teeth.

Instead of returning to his room, Stoner went down the corridor to the door of Ilona’s bedroom. He stood there for a long moment, listening, hearing nothing.

Gently he tried the doorknob. It turned easily and the door opened.

She was stretched out on the bed fully clothed, glassy eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling, fingers twitching spasmodically. Her honey-colored wig of thick curls lay discarded on the floor, thrown aside in her rush. A helmet made of plastic straps studded with metal contacts was cinched tightly on her shaved head. Hair-thin wires connected to a console the size of a laptop computer resting on the carpeted floor beside the bed.

Stoner’s nostrils flared as if he smelled the stench of rotting garbage. His first instinct was to stride to the pleasure machine and smash it beneath his heel.

No! warned his star brother. Not abruptly.

Stoner knew he was right. He had to find the reason why Ilona could become addicted before he could truly end her dependency.

He sat on the bed beside her. She did not move, did not blink, did not acknowledge his presence in any way. My god, I could strip her naked and screw her all night long and she wouldn’t even know it. What an opportunity for necrophiliacs.

Isaac Newton had discovered that for every action there is an opposite reaction. Popular wisdom declared that every dark cloud has a silver lining. While Ilona’s conscious mind was completely shut down in the tidal surges of pure pleasure coming from the machine, her unconscious mind was as wide open as it could ever be. Leaning over her, gazing into her unseeing eyes, Stoner tried to learn the who and why of Ilona Lucacs.

It was a matter of guilt. Born in an age when parents could pick the sex of their offspring, Ilona was the daughter of a proud and forceful woman who had overridden her husband’s desire for a son. Yet although the passive father had acquiesced to his wife’s wishes, Ilona was made aware from her earliest days that she was a disappointment to her father.

He was the nurturing parent, the one who was always there with his child. Her mother, a concert pianist, travelled all across the world. Ilona and her father remained in Budapest, where he could watch her and feed her and play with her. And make her know, hour by hour, day by day, year after year, how much he would have preferred a son.

She loved her father and broke her heart to please him. In school she skimped her studies to practice athletics. In a nation of fencers she became a champion with the foil. When she handed her gold medals to her father, he smiled and reminisced about his youth when he had been a saber fencer. Women were not allowed to fence saber in international competition. Too bad. Foil was good, of course, even though overly dainty. Now saber—ah, that was
real
fencing!

Ilona grew into a beautiful young woman. Not as tall and regal as her mother, but so obviously feminine that she felt almost ashamed of herself. She dressed as mannishly as she could when she entered the university. To please her father she took the science curriculum.

And found that she had a first-rate mind. She not only understood science, she loved it. For the first time in her young life she found that she was enjoying what she was doing not because it pleased her father but because it pleased her. At her graduation, when she placed first in her class, her father collapsed with a heart attack. She could not go on to graduate studies, she would be needed at home to take care of him.

Nonsense! her mother replied. She retired from her world tours and concentrated on video performances that she could do from Budapest. Ilona went on to get her doctorate. And her father recovered his health with stunning swiftness.

To be killed in a traffic accident. A few weeks after Ilona had moved from their apartment to begin work as an assistant to the youngest professor in the university: Zoltan Janos. He died in a head-on collision while driving to visit her in her new apartment.

She immediately fell in love with Janos and would have moved in with him if he had responded to her. But he was too wrapped up in his work to make a commitment to anyone. The old sense of guilt reasserted itself: Ilona believed she was responsible for her father’s death. The man she loved would not respond to her. Her work suffered. She grew morose, depressed.

Janos introduced her to the pleasures of direct brain stimulation, more as a way of “pepping up” than anything else. He had tried it himself, found it enjoyable, but had never delivered himself to it. Ilona, needing to be told that she was loved for herself, took the electrical pleasure of direct stimulation instead.

And became hooked on it.

Now Stoner knew the why and wherefore. He sat on the bed for long moments more, considering what to do. It was bitterly ironic. You’re willing to take the fate of the entire human race in your hands, he told himself, but accepting responsibility for the life of this one young woman gives you pause.

He leaned down and turned the dial that governed the amount of current being fed into her brain. Just a bit. Then he turned back the timer dial, so the machine would shut itself off and she would awaken.

He stood up and watched as the seconds ran out and the current stopped. Ilona shuddered, her eyelids fluttered, the pupils focused and she realized he was standing over her, a tall man with wide shoulders and a grim, darkly bearded face looking down at her.

“Oh!”

“It’s all right, Ilona,” Stoner said softly. “It’s all right. I just want you to know that you’re not alone. And you never will be. Not anymore.”

“I…what…” Her hands flew to her shaved head.

“It’s all right,” he repeated.

“Get out!” she screamed. “Get away from me!”

She ripped the electrode grid from her head and threw it at Stoner’s face.

“Meddling bastard! Get out! Get
out
!”

He turned and swiftly left the room, leaving her sitting up on the bed, clothes wrinkled, dishevelled, hands trying to cover her shaved scalp, feeling utterly miserable and confused.

Stoner wore his new clothes when he came down to the library: a fresh set of jeans, shirt, and jacket, all manufactured in Bangladesh. Ilona glanced at him warily, her tawny eyes angry, suspicious. She wore a simple white tunic over plain black slacks; no jewelry except a necklace of carnelian and matching earrings. Her wig had been carefully combed. Janos was in an old-fashioned double-breasted suit of light gray with pinstripes and a formal shirt with a carefully knotted tie that bore the crest of the university.

“I have just been informed,” he said, his eyes glowing, “that we will have an important guest join us for dinner. A very important guest. The president of the republic!”

Stoner saw that Janos was impressed with himself. Ilona did not seem surprised. Janos stood by the library’s one window, obviously struggling with the urge to part the curtains and look outside. The gas-fed fireplace was alight with thin bluish flames; their warmth felt good in the gathering chill of evening. A robot glided in with a tray of cocktails. Stoner sipped at his and identified it as a vodka martini. Probably the president’s favorite; not his own.

A helicopter thundered down on the parking lot outside. Janos gestured with both hands to keep Stoner and Ilona in the library.

“The butler will bring him in here,” he said. “No need to run outside and gawk like peasants.” But his free hand twitched toward the curtained window.

A few minutes later the door to the library was opened by a beefy-faced security man in the traditional dark suit. Then the president of Hungary stepped in, all smiles and nods.

He was a tiny man, slightly stooped, walking rather slowly. Arthritis, Stoner guessed. He looked sprightly, though, for seventy-eight. An elegant dark blue business suit. Still some color to his graying hair, and his skin looked a healthy pink without the waxiness of cosmetic surgery. His face was wreathed in a broad, toothy grin that squeezed his eyes to mere slits. He held an enormous cigar in his left hand, keeping his right free for clasping Janos’s.

“My brilliant young friend,” said the president. “How are you this fine evening?”

Before Janos could respond the president had already turned to Ilona. “And the lovely Dr. Lucacs. I see that you have been successful in bringing Dr. Stoner to us. I spoke with your mother this morning. She sends her love.”

Ilona smiled and blushed as the president brought her hand to his lips. For a moment Stoner thought she was going to curtsey.

“And you,” said the president, releasing Ilona, “are the illustrious Dr. Keith Stoner.”

He took Stoner’s hand in a surprisingly powerful grip. Janos said stiffly, “President Novotny.”

The man was so short that it was difficult for Stoner to see into his eyes. They were narrow and masked by thick dark brows. And they darted about the room constantly, never meeting Stoner’s gaze squarely, always shifting away as if searching for danger. Or opportunity.

Janos led them to the long dining table, where four places had been set at one end. President Novotny sat at its head, Janos and Ilona on his left, Stoner on his right. He wondered where the rest of the laboratory staff was having its dinner this evening. Equal but separate, Stoner said to his star brother. Which means not equal at all, the alien responded.

The food was good, the wine better, and dinner conversation pleasant and inconsequential. Once the dishes had been cleared away and several musty bottles of brandies put before the president, he lit a fresh cigar and began telling long, rambling stories about his childhood and early political experiences.

“Those were terrible days,” he said, puffing thick clouds of blue smoke toward the beamed ceiling. “My grandfather died in the uprising, my father was arrested and held for nearly six years. They wouldn’t let me join the Party until I was almost forty! That’s what the rebellion of ’56 left us. A heritage of suspicion and anger.”

“In the West,” said Stoner, “the Hungarian uprising was regarded with great sympathy. Students fighting Russian tanks with little more than their bare hands.”

For once Novotny’s eyes bored straight at Stoner. “The West applauded, but did nothing to help Hungary. The West praised our Freedom Fighters, but stood aside and allowed the Soviets to crush them.”

Stoner admitted, “True enough.”

“But—” The president’s eyes began to rove again and he smiled jovially, “—all that happened more than sixty years ago. Ancient history. Hungary is proud and free today.”

“And we will grow stronger,” Janos added.

“Indeed we will,” President Novotny agreed.

“By developing biochips?” Stoner asked.

Novotny’s smile faltered for just a moment. Then, “Why, yes, biochips are what they are called. You know of them?”

“They are being developed in the West, as well.”

“So I had heard.”

Janos nearly sneered. “We know about the work being done in the West. Primitive, compared to our research.”

“One British group is working with a team of primatologists in Africa,” said Ilona. “They are trying to establish linkages between humans and apes through implanting biochips.”

“Primitive,” Janos repeated.

Stoner replied, “I think the research that Vanguard Industries is doing is further advanced than that. I’m sure other corporations are also working on the concept.”

“The corporations do their work in secret,” Novotny said, his bushy brows knitting. “They do not publish their results in the scientific journals.”

“Nor do we,” Ilona pointed out. “Our work is kept secret. We are not allowed to publish.”

President Novotny spread his hands in the classic
what can I do
gesture. “You see that we have competition. It is important—vital—that our competitors do not learn of the advances we have made.”

Stoner wondered how they intended to have him help them without revealing the advances they had made. No matter, he told his star brother, we can always talk our way out of here when we’re ready to.

As if reading Stoner’s mind, the president turned to him and said, “Of course, this has almost nothing to do with you, sir. Our interest in you stems from your unique experience in surviving cryonic freezing.”

Stoner smiled back at Novotny. “Do you mean that you don’t believe there’s a connection between the two?”

Novotny looked startled and glanced at Janos.

The scientist glared at Stoner. “Until this moment, the connection was nothing more than a hypothesis of mine.”

With a grin, Stoner said, “I see that Dr. Lucacs has impressed the correct word on you.”

The president’s head swivelled from Stoner to Janos and then back again.

“What is your hypothesis?” Stoner asked as softly as a leopard padding through the jungle.

Janos looked distinctly uncomfortable. Obviously he had not intended to speak of this in front of President Novotny, but now he was in a corner.

“It will sound…outlandish,” he said.

“It is my idea!” Ilona snapped. “And it is pure speculation, nothing but a series of surmises.”

She’s trying to shield him, thought Stoner.

“I would still like to hear it, regardless of whose idea it is,” said the president. His smile was deadly now. He put his cigar in the oversized metal ashtray that had been placed at his elbow and reached for the nearest brandy bottle.