by Ben Bova
“Where are we, anyway? How long have I been here?” Baker demanded.
Madigan said, “That doesn’t matter.”
The Australian newsman was dressed in a gray one-piece coverall, as featureless and undecorated as death itself. Madigan, usually an impeccable dresser, was clad in a dark blue exercise suit that fit tightly at the cuffs of his wrists and ankles. He wore running shoes.
Baker stopped and grabbed at Madigan’s arm. “Hey, I want to know what’s going on!”
The lawyer pulled his arm free with a faint smile that was almost a sneer. “You’re alive and you’re getting out of here. That’s enough for you to know.”
For the span of a heartbeat they stood facing each other. Baker looked unchanged from the day he had been taken by Vanguard agents in Paris, except that his shoulder wound was completely healed. But his eyes were different: the terror and agony of his interrogation were still in them, together with a smoldering fear and the implacable hatred of a man who had been reduced to a whimpering, pleading, gibbering animal who would say anything, tell anything, betray anyone if they would just stop the pain.
Madigan looked tense. His usual smirk of world weary superiority was gone. His face was drawn tight, eyes locked on Baker’s.
“Listen,” he said, “I’m taking a huge risk, and I’m doing you the favor of your life. Don’t—”
Baker lunged at him, wedged a forearm against his windpipe, and slammed him hard against the concrete wall.
“Don’t fuck around with me,” he snarled. “I don’t care what you’re risking. Where are we? Where are we going? Why are you doing this?”
“I’m trying to help you!” Madigan barely could grunt the words past Baker’s choke hold on him.
“After they turned me inside out and made me spill my guts?”
“I couldn’t do anything about that.”
“How long have I been in that cell?”
Madigan’s strangled voice rasped, “Six weeks…almost seven.”
“Where are we?”
“New Jersey…old Army base…can’t breathe!”
Baker took his arm away from the lawyer’s throat but kept him pinned against the wall. “Where are we going?”
Madigan coughed, then answered, “I’ve got a car outside. You can drive it to New York City. Lose yourself there. Then you’re on your own.”
“You’re helping me to escape?”
Nodding, the lawyer said, “Nillson thinks you’re frozen. He found out your blood type and tissue samples are compatible with his. He ordered you stored away for organ replacements.”
Despite himself, Baker sagged. “Organ…Jesus Christ.”
“I don’t want to be implicated in this,” Madigan explained. “I’m helping you to get out. Take my advice and stay out! Forget you ever heard of Everett Nillson and Vanguard Industries. Get out of the country and never do anything to draw his attention to you.”
Baker’s blue eyes were fiery. “What else is there? There’s got to be more to it.”
Rubbing his throat, Madigan said, “Under interrogation, you told us about this World Liberation Movement—how it’s trying to take power away from the corporations and the industrialized nations and give it to the Third World.”
“I spilled my guts, didn’t I?”
“You told us everything you knew, which wasn’t much. Just that the organization is much better organized than we thought it was, and you do what they tell you.”
Baker gave a sardonic little chuckle. “That’s all I know. They contact me and tell me what they want me to do.”
“Once Nillson was certain that he had screwed everything you knew out of you, he gave the order to have you frozen as soon as you had recovered and your shoulder wound healed.”
“And you decided to go against him?” Baker’s angry suspicion coated his words with scalding ice.
“I’ve done a lot for him, over the years,” the lawyer said. “A lot. I even spied on his wife for him. But I’ve never broken American law. Other nations, yeah, sure. You can buy your way out or just stay out of their country. But now it’s different. He’s asking me to be a party to kidnapping and murder. On American soil. Under American jurisdiction.” He shook his head. “I can’t do that.”
Baker released his hold on the lawyer. “Seems to me you’ve already been a partner to kidnapping and torture.”
“I’m helping you escape. I’m saving you from being frozen.”
“Is that murder?”
“It’s moot. Until frozen bodies are revived successfully, most courts will call it murder.”
“But the astronaut…”
“One case—maybe. There are suspicions that he wasn’t an ordinary human being.”
Baker frowned, perplexed.
“The scientists think that the astronaut might somehow have been affected by the alien spacecraft’s computer or…something, they don’t know what. But he might be different from other human beings.”
“Different how?”
“I don’t know!” Madigan snapped. “This is a waste of time. You’ve got to get out of here before somebody spots that car sitting out there on the highway.”
They began moving down the tunnel again, almost at a trot.
“So you’re helping me out of the goodness of your heart, are you?” Baker said, almost with his old jauntiness.
“Just remember that I’ve helped you, if and when the time comes.”
“You want a friendly character witness at your trial.”
“Damned right.”
They could see the end of the tunnel. The buzzing sounds of highway traffic echoed off the concrete walls.
“And I want you to remember,” Baker said, “that I can get word to Nillson about who helped me to escape.”
Madigan stumbled to a halt.
“We’re now partners, my friend,” said Baker. “When I need your help, I’ll expect to get it.”
“You can’t…”
Baker gripped the lawyer’s shoulder and squeezed hard. “It’s an old Chinese custom, mate. If you save a man’s life, you are responsible for him forever.”
He let go, turned away, and sprinted out to the car that was waiting on the shoulder of the highway, leaving Madigan standing there openmouthed and rubbing his shoulder.
Four days later Cliff Baker was just outside Colombo, Sri Lanka, luxuriating in a private mansion that had once been a maharajah’s winter palace. To call it ornate would have been an understatement: each room was gaudier than the last, decorated in gold and ivory, silk draperies of blazing reds and yellows, vivid blues and purples, tables inlaid with silver, goblets dripping with precious jewels, tapestries and cushions and fountains and peacocks strutting unafraid of strangers through the lush gardens that surrounded the domed and minareted palace. A wall of living green guarded the grounds. Baker swam in the pool, ate sumptuously, slept on silk in a maharajah’s bed.
Alone. For forty-eight hours he wandered through the palace without seeing another human being. The servants were all robots, exquisitely programmed to make him comfortable and cater to his every physical need, except for sex. But they were totally unable to answer any of his questions.
It was the evening of his second day there. Baker was lounging in a heap of pillows, swathed in loose-fitting pajamas of royal blue threaded with silver. The remains of his dinner had been carried away by robots so identical that he could not tell them apart. A warm night wind wafted the draperies along the open garden doorway, bringing just a hint of salty sea tang with it. Baker held a golden, jewel-encrusted goblet in his hand. A robot stood to one side with a bottle of twenty-four-year-old unblended Scotch whisky in its grip.
“Fill ’er up again, mate!”
The robot swiveled on its trunnions and accurately poured a pony of whisky into Baker’s goblet.
“Make it a double.”
The robot complied. It was of a different design from the others, different from any robot Baker had seen before. Instead of the usual
squat, utilitarian, fireplug shape, this one was a slender cylinder of gleaming stainless steel with a dozen arms folded compactly against its shaft until they were needed for some function. Like a bloody Hindu goddess, Baker thought, with all those arms.
“Make it a triple,” he ordered.
The robot’s arm did not move. “Three drinks in such a short time interval can lead to intoxication,” it said with the sultry singsong voice of an Indian woman.
“That’s the whole idea, isn’t it? Intoxication? There’s nothing else to do in this bloody palace, is there? Not even TV.”
“Intoxication is to be avoided,” said the robot, almost as if it really cared.
“They had to use a woman’s voice, didn’t they? Everything under the sun in this fuckin’ Taj Mahal except a woman. Where are the dancing girls? What kind of a palace is this, anyway?”
He started to chugalug the beautiful Scotch when an entirely different voice replied, “You are unhappy with the accommodations, Mr. Baker?”
It was a man’s voice. Deep basso. Baker sputtered whisky and looked around. A very large Oriental man was standing in the doorway that led out to the garden.
Baker scrambled to his feet. “Who the hell are you?” he demanded, just a bit drunkenly.
The Oriental smiled broadly and walked into the splendid room. He wore a simple khaki jumpsuit and black paratrooper boots.
“I am your host, Mr. Baker. Permit me to introduce myself. You may call me Temujin.”
He was big. Well over six feet tall and broad across the shoulders. The jumpsuit strained tightly across his chest and arms. Torso as solid as the trunk of an oak tree. Legs to match. Even his hands looked huge, heavy, powerful. At first Baker thought he was shaved bald, but then he realized that there was no hair at all on his parchment-yellow face, not even eyebrows.
“Temujin,” Baker repeated.
“Yes. That is not the name I was born to, but it is the name I have adopted.” He extended his arm, beckoning the Australian to come toward him, as he went on, “What’s in a name, Mr. Baker? In the tongues of central Asia, Temujin means, literally, Man of Steel. In the languages of the Chinese it means Supreme Man of Earth.”
“I’ve heard the name before,” Baker muttered, almost mesmerized by the whisky and the Oriental’s imposing presence.
“Indeed you have. It was the birth name of the greatest man of all history, the man you Westerners know as Genghis Khan.”
“The barbarian conqueror.”
“The Mongol emperor who ruled all men from the China Sea to the Danube River!”
Baker shook his head, trying to clear away the cobwebs. “All right, just who the hell are you, really?”
Temujin laughed heartily. “I am your host. This palace is mine.”
“Yours?”
“Yes! I hope you have been comfortable. I regret the lack of human companionship—especially women. I’m afraid that I have been testing you. I find sex to be too disconcerting, too distracting. I wanted to see if you could obey orders and remain here without the pleasant diversions that women offer.”
Oh, my God, Baker thought, a king-sized queen. Aloud, he asked, “But why was I told to come here? Why did my contact in New York give me a ticket for Sri Lanka and instructions to find this place?”
“Because I told him to,” Temujin said. “This is the headquarters from which I direct the World Liberation Movement.”
“You direct…?”
Sliding a powerful arm around Baker’s shoulders, Temujin said jovially, “Come, let me show you.”
He led Baker toward a massive, ornately carved pillar that supported the arch connecting the room with the hallway. It slid away as they approached, revealing an elevator shaft. The elevator door opened automatically, and Temujin gestured Baker inside.
It’s like a bloody “Arabian Nights,” Baker thought, brought up-to-date by this daffy giant gook. Temujin, he calls himself. A gay egomaniac. Mad as a hatter. No, two hatters, considering the blooming size of him.
An hour later, Baker was making drastic revisions in his estimation of Temujin’s sanity. The elevator led down to a deep underground chamber studded with display screens and computer consoles. It was a large room, but every square centimeter of space on its walls was covered by green-glowing screens. There were no other lights, nor any need for them. The eerie light from the screens was enough. They hummed like a hive of busy insects and occasionally beeped when new information came up. Baker felt sweat trickling under his chin and along his ribs. The hardworking computers generated enough heat to make the room feel oppressive.
“My situation room,” Temujin explained as Baker gaped at the screens lining the walls. “The location and status of every World Liberation Movement unit is tracked here. Some of the units—like that one, up in the right-hand corner—are merely single men, working alone. As you were, when you were in Hawaii, Mr. Baker. Most of the others are teams of people. Some of the teams are quite large.”
Baker spent the hour studying the screens, absorbing the information on them, while Temujin kept up a patter of self-congratulatory explanations.
“You’ve more teams in central Africa than anywhere else,” he said at last.
Temujin nodded eagerly. “That’s where the action is. There’s a war going on there, you know.”
“I’ve heard,” Baker said dryly.
“The World Liberation Movement has been able to capture the governments of four of the warring nations. And their armies. What started as a fight over food resources has been turned into a battle for control of an entire continent!”
“All of Africa?”
“Of course!” Temujin boasted. “Slowly but surely our side is winning the war in central Africa. Chad is almost taken, and the campaign for Kenya has begun. After Kenya comes Tanzania, and then the other southern nations will come over to our side.”
“South Africa?”
Temujin smiled grimly. “With all their neighbors joining the World Liberation Movement, how long do you think it will take before the blacks of South Africa join us?”
“What about the north?” he heard himself ask. “Algeria, Libya, Egypt, and the rest?”
“In time, Mr. Baker,” said Temujin, the greenish glow from the screens casting a weird light on his hairless face. “In time. Our agents are already burrowing into the governments there. Soon enough we may be able to proclaim a Pan-Arabic union that stretches from Pakistan to Morocco, from the Hindu Kush to Gibraltar, all loyal to the World Liberation Movement.”
“And what then?”
“Asia, Mr. Baker. My own homeland. And once we have the industrial power of China, India, and Japan behind us, Europe and the Americas will fall to us at last.”
For the first time, Baker saw in his mind’s eye the slaughter of millions. Men, women, and children. White men. White women. White children. It couldn’t be helped. It was as inevitable as the centuries of exploitation that the whites had foisted on the rest of the world.
But he said, “Australia will join the Movement peacefully, willingly. I’ll see to that.”
Temujin looked suddenly thoughtful. “That would be a great help to us, Mr. Baker. It would be a significant achievement.”
“Then let me return to Australia and start the Movement there.”
Raising one finger, Temujin said, “Yes. I will. After you have performed one task for me—or rather, for the Movement.”
“What task?”
“The woman you were with in Hawaii, and then in Paris…”
“An Linh?”
“Miss Laguerre, yes. She is with the astronaut, Stoner.”
“She’s alive?” Baker felt a thrill of hope race through him.
“Not only alive, but accompanying Stoner. They were nearly killed in a village in Chad, but our people have reliably reported them in a refugee camp near the border between Zaire and Kenya.”
“What are they doing in Africa?”
“You can ask them that when you see them,�
� said Temujin. “I want you to find them and bring them to me. It is especially important that Stoner be delivered to our hands. Do you understand that, Mr. Baker? Especially important!”
From the windows of his penthouse apartment, Everett Nillson could see all of Boston spread out before him: the airport and the harbor, the clustered towers of the downtown financial district and the stately row houses of Back Bay, the gleaming golden dome of the state capitol and spire of the Old North Church, where lanterns had once been placed to alert Paul Revere.
A miniature city, Nillson thought, gazing down upon it. Founded by religious bigots, seething with rebellion, steeped for two centuries in greed and petty corruption and racial tensions. Yet still a vital, vigorous city, an exciting place to be. Far better than New York, that dying, sprawling dinosaur where danger lurks on every street. Boston was a livable city.
No, he corrected himself, a buyable city. A man of means could control Boston through a few key politicians and civic leaders. Money and flattery, and the skill to use them both to best effect, could deliver a city such as Boston into a clever man’s grasp. New York was too big to buy outright, the best you could do was to carve out a fiefdom. Boston you could own entire.
“Excuse me, sir.”
He turned from the windows at the soft sound of his servant’s voice. She was a lovely thing, not quite nineteen, with limpid doe’s eyes and the lithe, tempting figure of an artist’s model. Something about her brown eyes and dark hair had reminded him of Jo when he had first seen her. But she had none of his wife’s spirit—or intelligence. She was a placid animal, part purring cat, part innocent child.
“What is it?” he snapped.
Her eyes widened. Nillson enjoyed seeing a flash of fear in her.
“Mr. Madigan is here.”
“Good. Send him in. No interruptions.”
“Yes, sir.”
She walked quickly past the long sectional sofa, skirted the sunken area around the fireplace, and opened the door to let Madigan in. She gave Nillson a fleeting, half-worried smile and then closed the door, leaving the two men alone.