Voyagers III - Star Brothers (17 page)

Then the machine automatically erased the wafer, so that if someone should take it from Tomasso it would be innocently blank.

Tomasso sat there on the edge of the cliff for a few minutes more, pretending that he was merely unwinding after a tense day at the office, watching the stars come out, trying to ignore the canned music, knowing that Hsen could now take Stoner if he acted swiftly enough. He had done his job for the Hong Kong industrialist. Tomorrow he would do his job for Jo Camerata as if this night’s work had never happened.

THE strange ceremony of sharing blood with Stoner made President Novotny shake his head with wonder as he prepared for bed in the mountain lodge. He had not expected mysticism from the American. Janos had insisted that Stoner was the key to cryonic suspension; this business of biochips and nanotechnology was something of a bolt from the blue, as far as Novotny was concerned.

He slept that night without dreams, the deepest and most restful sleep he had undergone in many, many years. The first rays of the new sun awoke him, and he fairly leaped out of bed, brimming with energy and a newfound inner happiness.

The bedroom was small but quite comfortable. Novotny padded barefoot to the casement window and pushed it open. The mountain morning was chilly, the fresh air sharp and invigorating. He drew in a deep breath of it. Outside in the trees and shrubbery he could sense the presence of his personal bodyguards, even though he could not see a trace of them. But they were there, faithful men who had spent the night in the cold outdoors because it was their honor to protect their president.

Perhaps I’m a foolish old man, overly prideful, he thought. What is there to protect me against? The world is at peace. Terrorism has been virtually unknown in Europe for years. Why do I force these loyal young men to spend a whole night so uncomfortably? It’s nothing but pride, arrogant pride.

Somewhere deep in his mind that thought surprised him. But he let it pass as he gazed out on the green wooded hills of his native land. How much blood had been spilled here! Once the Magyars were fierce Asian invaders who battled the Frankish hosts of Charlemagne to win this country for themselves. Over the centuries they became the eastern outpost of Europe, constantly pressed by the Ottoman Turks whose Janissaries captured Budapest and overran the Hungarian plain, but could not quench the flame of the Magyars. These hills were our last bastion, Novotny reminded himself. We held here, and eventually drove the Turks out of Hungary.

The Austrians, the Germans, and finally the Russians had all wielded power over Hungary. The heavy treads of lumbering tanks had ripped up the ground where cavalry had once swept past. And still the Magyars survived, the fire of their independent spirit often sputtering low, but never extinguished.

He recalled the bloody days of 1956 and how his father had saved him. A fervent teenager, Novotny had fought in the streets with his friends, throwing crude gasoline bombs at the tanks that rumbled down the broad avenues of Budapest, pulling as hard on the ropes as any other student when they toppled the huge statue of Stalin on Dozsa Gyorgy Street.

All in vain. All in vain. More tanks came and turned the city into a pockmarked, rubble-choked battlefield. The Russians prevailed, while the rest of the world ignored Hungary’s pleas for help. His father was arrested and jailed, while sixteen-year-old Imre Novotny swore to the police on his mother’s soul that he had not participated in any of the fighting or demonstrations.

Novotny found himself in tears as he gazed out the casement window. For the first time since those long-past days he felt the fear that had made him deny his own heritage. And the shame. He had known that the authorities were watching him. They allowed him to enter the university, but he was a marked man. He had to be better than the others, ideologically more pure, politically more loyal, because they were waiting for him to make the slightest slip. He lived in terror that one of his former friends, now in jail, would denounce him and his life would end in a dark cell with a bullet in the back of his head.

He remembered how his father looked when they had finally released him from jail: broken, gray, sick. I’m in better condition now than he was, and he was only fifty-three then. He slumped on the window seat and wept unashamedly. Papa died for me. He let them arrest him so that I would be spared. He gave his life for me.

It took nearly half an hour before Novotny could pull himself together. That all happened more than sixty years ago, he told himself. It’s over and done with. Why do you linger on such matters? You are the president of Hungary, and on the verge of acquiring power that can make you the most important man in Europe—perhaps in the world!

Forcing the haunted memories away from his consciousness, Novotny went down to the lodge’s dining room for breakfast.

Janos and the lovely Ilona Lucacs were there, filling their plates with sausages and eggs from the serving dishes on the sideboard. Stoner sat at the dining table in his blue jeans and open-necked shirt with nothing but a cup of coffee before him.

The American eyed Novotny as if studying a laboratory specimen, his dark bearded face solemn, his gray eyes probing.

“Did you sleep well?” Stoner asked.

“Yes, quite well,” said Novotny, taking a plate from the stack on the sideboard. “Quite well indeed.”

He turned away from Stoner and smiled a greeting to Ilona Lucacs. How her mother had wanted her to be a musician, like herself, Novotny thought. But she wanted to please her father so much that she went into science, instead. Now her mother lives alone without a daughter to comfort her, and Ilona works here in this guarded laboratory—because she has fallen in love with Janos! Novotny suddenly saw it in Ilona’s eyes, in the way her body inclined toward the man, the way she followed him and sat beside him.

And the lout doesn’t even pay her the slightest attention, Novotny realized. A new tendril of thought touched his mind. Somehow Stoner has interjected himself into the equation. Novotny did not quite understand the details of it, but he saw clearly that Stoner was involved with Ilona and her troubles.

Novotny felt as if he had been swimming underwater and had just burst up to the surface. He shook his head as if to clear it. Taking his place at the head of the table, he realized that there was no conversation. Each of them was locked inside a universe of self.

Just as I have been all these years, Novotny thought. He looked at Janos as if seeing him for the first time. A brilliant young scientist, and I have bent his career to my own purposes. Taken him out of the stream of research so that he could serve me personally, forced him to use his talents to prolong my life, bribed him with all the luxuries that a head of state can provide to become mine exclusively. No wonder he has turned inward. No wonder he has learned to ignore those around him, to trample over their feelings, to use others as if they were disposable tools.

He’s turning into another version of
me
! Novotny realized. I’m crushing his soul, like a vampire sucking the lifeblood out of him. In exchange for privilege and power he is renouncing his own humanity.

Novotny stared at the young man, his breakfast untouched and going cold. How many others have I done this to, over the years? The decades? How many people have I used as tools, as rungs of the ladder? How many have I condemned to obscurity or poverty or even death, once I was finished using them? Starting with my own father, how many have I killed?

The president did not notice that Stoner was staring at him now, watching him as his hands began to shake and his eyes filled once again with tears.

“All those souls,” Novotny muttered. “All those souls…”

He buried his face in his hands, sobbing uncontrollably. Janos pushed his chair back and ran toward the kitchen. Must be a telephone in there, Stoner thought, or at least someone who can fetch help.

Ilona stared wildly at the president, then turned to look at Stoner.

“He wanted the power,” Stoner said softly to her. “But he’ll never be able to handle the responsibility.”

To his star brother he said, The man was not one of the Great Souls. He was a little man, a grasping politician, totally self-centered. Once he acquired his own star brother, once he began to realize that all the men and women around him are his true kin, his guilt and shame overwhelmed him.

Just as you thought would happen, answered the alien in Stoner’s mind. You were right and I was wrong.

Stoner smiled grimly. There is no
you
and
I
, brother. We did not know for certain how the man would react. We were doubtful.

Both of us.

The one of us. And Stoner thought of the Christian doctrine of three persons in one God. Two is plenty, he said to himself.

Janos came back into the dining room. The president was still weeping inconsolably.

“His personal physician is on the way by helicopter,” said Janos. “He will arrive here in a few minutes.”

“President Novotny is suffering a nervous breakdown,” said Stoner calmly. “I doubt that he will be fit to work for some time to come.”

Ilona stammered, “How…what happened…?”

Getting to his feet, Stoner said, “That doesn’t matter. The important thing is that we’ve got to be away from here before the medic lands. There’ll be all sorts of police and security troops right behind him, and we can’t afford to be here when they arrive.”

“Leave?” Janos gasped. “Now?”

“We’ll never get past the security guards outside,” Ilona said.

“Of course we will,” said Stoner. He saw that Janos did not doubt his confidence for a moment. In fact, the man looked as if he were curious to see just how far Stoner could get.

Novotny is finished, Janos realized. The power is with this man Stoner. The people at Pacific Commerce will pay a fortune to learn what is in his mind, how he can control such incredible powers. I must stay with him wherever he goes—until I can make contact with Hong Kong.

Ilona looked doubtful, bewildered, but Janos took her by the hand and followed Stoner out of the dining room, leaving the president sitting alone at the head of the table, weeping inconsolably.

The head of the security team, a slim deadly-looking bald man in a dark zippered athletic suit, burst through the front door of the lodge as the three of them approached it.

“The president?” he nearly shouted, wide-eyed with anxiety.

“In the dining room,” said Stoner, realizing that Novotny’s doctor had obviously radioed the security team.

Stoner led Ilona and Janos past the men running up to the house and out to the parking lot where half a dozen black sedans were lined up in neat military precision. Two more men were standing guard there. In the cloudy sky they could hear the distant thrumming of an approaching helicopter.

“We’ll need a car,” Stoner said to the nearer guard.

He was reluctant for a few moments, but as Janos and Ilona watched in astonishment, the guard finally fished into his pocket and handed Stoner the keys for the nearest automobile. Within a minute the three of them were driving down the winding mountain road. A helicopter flashed overhead and four more autos passed them, racing all-out for the lodge.

Stoner, behind the wheel, smiled slightly.

“Where are we going?” asked Ilona, sitting beside him.

“To Moscow.”

“Moscow?” Janos, on the back seat, seemed startled.

“I have to attend the funeral of an old friend,” Stoner explained, as if nothing much had happened that morning. “Then we can go to Hawaii together, if you like.”

They drove in silence down the winding mountain road and finally came out on the main highway.

“Do you think you can get all the way to Moscow in this auto?” Janos asked.

“No need to,” Stoner replied, glancing up into the rearview mirror at him. The Hungarian still seemed more curious than anything else, as if he were observing an experiment in progress. “We can take a commercial airliner easily enough.”

“We don’t have our passports with us,” Ilona said worriedly. “Or any other identification papers.”

“We won’t need them,” Janos said, almost laughing. “Ilona, your hypothesis about this man was more correct than you know. The alien devices within him allow him to play tricks with your mind. He’ll be able to walk us through the airport, past the customs and immigration inspectors, and on to Moscow—without even paying for a ticket!”

“But…” She became flustered, upset. “I don’t have any clothes, my travel things…they’re all back at the lodge. I don’t have my…my…”

“Your pleasure machine?” Stoner asked. “You won’t need that, either.”

He sped along the highway straight toward the airport without having to ask for directions.

Two travel vans bearing Swiss license plates swerved up the mountain road to the lodge, slowing as they approached an army roadblock. The soldiers waved them on, pointing toward the continuation of the road that led back down off the mountain, away from the spur that ran up to the hilltop lodge, which was blocked off by bright yellow-painted wooden bars resting on sawhorses.

The driver of the lead van stopped and lowered her window. The second van pulled in behind her.

“We wanted to take some photographs from the mountaintop,” she said to the soldier. She was a beautiful oriental, high cheekbones, almond eyes, long dark hair.

“The road is closed,” the soldier said firmly. “No one allowed up there today.” He was young enough to grin at her from beneath his metal helmet. His automatic rifle was slung over his shoulder. Behind the sawhorse barrier stood three more soldiers, one of them with a sergeant’s chevrons on his sleeves.

“But we’ll only be here for today, then we go on to the capital.”

The soldier glanced back at the sergeant, who scowled fiercely. “I’m sorry,” he apologized to the driver. “It’s impossible.”

“What’s the trouble?” the driver asked. Behind her, half a dozen men and women crouched, clutching burp guns and grenades. “What’s going on up there?”

The soldier shrugged. “Something about the president, I think. There must be half a battalion up there by now, and more coming.”

The driver gave him a flashing smile. “Thanks anyway.” She put the van in gear and drove away, down the mountain, with the second van following close behind.

Picking up what looked like a CB radio microphone, the driver spoke carefully and reported that the mission to abduct Stoner from the mountain lodge had been aborted. From a transparent panel on the van’s roof, a tiny laser squirted the message coded into a burst of light to a satellite orbiting high above, which in turn relayed the information to the headquarters of Pacific Commerce Corporation in Hong Kong.