Voyagers III - Star Brothers

by Ben Bova

  Dr. Lucacs’s tawny eyes were glittering. “He spent several years aboard the alien spacecraft,” she whispered, almost to herself.

  “That’s right. He was frozen up there in space, and when they brought him back to Earth it was another ten years or more before they figured out how to thaw him and bring him back to life.”

  “And no other human being has ever been thawed successfully and revived.”

  “Because he ain’t human,” Baker insisted. “While he was in that alien spaceship, I think they grew a clone of him or something. He’s just not human. A human being can’t do the things he can do!”

  “He won’t let me examine him,” Dr. Lucacs said.

  “ ’Course not. Then you’d find out what he really is.”

  “But I have all his medical records from the Vanguard Research Labs, where he was revived, fifteen years ago. They are the records of a normal human being.”

  “Faked.”

  “They match his earlier records, from the years before he went into space.”

  “Faked, I tell you.”

  She looked doubtful. “Why would…”

  “Don’t be a naive fool!” Baker snapped. “He’s the property of Vanguard Industries, the most powerful corporation on this planet, for god’s sake! He married the corporation president…”

  “Ms. Camerata? I didn’t know that.”

  “Don’t you see? He’s secretly controlling the biggest corporation on Earth. Through her. He killed off her first husband and set himself up in his place. He paid off An Linh with Global Communications and stuck me with this bloody IIA.”

  She looked surprised. “But I thought that you were the chairman of International Investment Agency.”

  “Sure I am!” Baker made a sound halfway between a laugh and a snort. “It’s like being the mascot of a rugby team. You get treated well and everybody admires you. But they don’t take you very seriously, do they?”

  Dr. Lucacs looked uncomfortable.

  His voice rising as he reached for the cognac bottle again, Baker went on, “Sure, they made me chairman of their bloody IIA. And all the big multinational corporations send their flunkies to sit ’round our table. But who runs the IIA? Actually runs it? Jo Camerata, that’s who! Vanguard Industries, that’s who! And who runs Vanguard? Stoner, the bloody alien freak. Her husband.”

  The scientist leaned back in her chair and tried to sort out all this new information.

  “You’ll never get to Stoner,” Baker predicted. “He’s better protected than the bloody Pope.”

  “I’ve interviewed almost everyone who knew him when he was first revived,” she mused, as if reviewing the options left for her next move. “Most of the medical team has died over the past fifteen years.”

  “You bet they have!”

  Dr. Lucacs raised her brows. Baker smiled a crooked, knowing smile and poured more cognac for himself.

  “Ms. Camerata won’t see me,” she said.

  “ ’Course not.”

  “There is only one other person that I know of. A Professor Markov, of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. And he’s very elderly.”

  “Better get to him right away, then,” said Baker. “Before Stoner finds out you’re after him.”

  Her beautiful eyes widened. “You don’t think…?”

  Baker’s smile turned cruel. “All those medical blokes kicked off, didn’t they? You don’t think those were all natural deaths, do you?”

  Yendelela Obiri staggered to a halt along the forest trail and doubled over from the nausea. She was close to complete exhaustion, her khaki slacks and shirt soaked with sweat, her head swimming with the strange double vision of the biochips.

  Gasping in the thin mountain air, she almost sank to her knees. Almost. But when she closed her eyes she saw what Koku saw, heard and smelled and felt what the young gorilla was experiencing.

  Koku was being chased. Hunters were pursuing him. And the young male was too inexperienced, too tame, to realize what danger he was in.

  “You are not alone,” Yendelela muttered, knowing that Koku could hear her through the biochips implanted in their brains. “Lela is near, Koku. Lela is coming.”

  Fighting down the bile burning in her throat, she adjusted the straps of her heavy backpack and staggered up the steep wooded slope, pushing through brush and nettles that flailed at her from both sides of the narrow mountain trail. The sun was warm, but the cool mountain breeze chilled the perspiration that beaded on her dark, intent face.

  Her teachers, back at the university, had been doubtful about allowing Lela to do a field mission with a male gorilla. Even Professor Yeboa, who had been her advisor, her sponsor, her secret love, had expressed doubts.

  “The hills can be dangerous for a city girl,” Yeboa had said. He had smiled, as he always did when he reminded Lela of her urban upbringing.

  “City streets can be dangerous, too,” she had retorted, also smiling. “I am not afraid.”

  The aim of the project was to repopulate the area that had been set aside as a safe reserve for the mountain gorilla. Over the past half century the gorillas had been driven nearly to extinction, but now at last an ecologically viable tract of uplands had been set aside for them, thanks to Nkona. Three female gorillas had already been placed in the reserve by other students and rangers, waiting for a male to complete a viable group. Lela’s task was to guide Koku to the females, using the biochips to help control the young male.

  Lela had even met the Great Soul of Africa, Dhouni Nkona himself. He had come to the university to see personally how they were rearing the infant gorillas from the zoo population and teaching them to survive in the wild.

  As a graduate student, Lela had been concentrating on theoretical studies of ecological change and environmental protection. But once she looked into those fathomless eyes of Nkona she was swept up in an irresistible frenzy of dedication.

  “The work you do here is the best that human souls can achieve,” Nkona had told the eager students. He smiled at them, a sparkling bright smile in his deeply black African face. “You know that we must learn to control our behavior, to think before we act, to accept responsibility for the consequences of our actions. We cannot live by exterminating others, that much you have learned in your studies, I know. By saving the gorillas, you help humankind to save itself.”

  “Many oppose what we do,” said one of the students.

  Nkona closed his eyes briefly. Then, “All life is linked together, from the humblest forms to the most grandiose. Thirty-three years ago the human race made its first contact with an alien intelligence, a race from another world, another star. I say to you that our contacts with the life of this world are just as important—no, more important—than our link to other races in space.”

  He turned a full circle to sear each of the students crowded around him with his compelling gaze. “We are all links of the same chain, the chain of life, which extends out to the stars and the farthest reaches of creation. Your struggle to save the gorilla is the struggle to preserve that chain, to keep faith with all the forms of life that share this universe.”

  Theory could never be enough for Lela after that. Aflame with Nkona’s passion, she volunteered eagerly for the biochip operation that would allow her to maintain sensory contact with a selected gorilla. She battled the entire faculty and field staff for the right to work with one of the animals through its difficult transition from the human environment of its childhood to the wild mountain forests where it would live as an adult.

  For nearly two years Lela had trained hard, both physically and mentally. Out of a soft, self-indulgent adolescent cocoon there emerged a leggy, lean-muscled young woman with lustrous brown eyes and a smile that dazzled.

  She was not smiling now. Out here in the thick brush of the forest, with the early morning sunlight just beginning to filter down through the trees, with the sweat of near-exhaustion chilling her, Lela knew that Koku was in danger.

  She should have been the only h
uman being within a hundred square kilometers of the young male gorilla. But she was not. Through Koku’s eyes she saw a band of hunters thrashing through the brush. White men and black, carrying rifles.

  “Run Koku!” she directed. “Run!”

  Startled by her abrupt warning, the big gorilla crashed off through the brush. Lela felt his sudden fear as her own. Looking back through the gorilla’s eyes, she saw the hunters dwindling in the distance until they disappeared altogether in heavy green foliage.

  Lela sighed out a breath of relief. Koku could easily outdistance them in the thick brush. But within minutes he would feel safe and slow down or stop altogether. Lela knew she had to reach Koku before the hunters did.

  CHAPTER 6

  JO dropped the two men off at their hotels, then instructed her chauffeur to drive to Washington National Airport. A Vanguard Industries executive jet was waiting for her there, and shortly after midnight she leaned back in an utterly comfortable leather lounge chair and watched the stately monuments of Washington glide past her window as the plane climbed to its cruising altitude. Once above the normal traffic patterns of commercial airliners, the plane’s wings slid back for supersonic flight and the cabin lights dimmed for sleeping.

  But Jo had no intention of sleeping. Not yet. Hsen and Kruppmann were threatening her. Now she knew why the board of directors had suddenly insisted on a special meeting to review Vanguard’s participation in the IIA. Hsen was making a power play. The sneaky little bastard must have nearly half the board in his pocket already, in addition to Kruppmann, Jo said to herself. While I’ve been helping Keith he’s been maneuvering to acquire leverage on my board.

  She dictated a memo to the computer outlet built into her seat’s armrest: “Check all board members and executive staff to see which of them also sit on the board of Pacific Commerce.” Then she added, “Also, I want a complete list of all Vanguard executives above the level of divisional vice president who have been involved in any transactions whatever with Pacific Commerce.”

  What about Kruppmann? Jo decided that the Swiss banker was more bluster than anything else. He never made waves at board meetings. He would loan money to Vanguard no matter who ran the corporation, as long as Vanguard showed profits. Hsen was the dangerous one. Kruppmann made most of the noise, but Hsen was the kind who knifed you in the dark.

  She nodded to herself. First rule of business: find out who your enemies are, and then keep them as close as possible—until you’re ready to chop their heads off.

  Leaning back in the deep luxurious chair, Jo felt satisfied that she had done all she could do for the moment. She allowed herself to relax and fall asleep.

  Her dreams were troubled. She was in the lobby of an exclusive hotel, carrying heavy suitcases in either hand and trying to get into an elevator. But she could not get the suitcases through the elevator doors before they slid shut and left her behind. No one in the hotel lobby offered to help her. She was frantic, because Keith was somewhere on one of those upper floors and she had to find him before he went away and left her all alone.

  She awoke to a pert young stewardess smiling over her. “We land in half an hour,” she said.

  Jo saw that the sky was aflame with the rising sun. Then, brows knitted, she realized that she had to be looking toward the west. The sun was setting, not rising. Lifting her wrist close to her lips she said softly, “Hawaii.” The watch’s digits quickly shifted from 0328 to 1928. Almost 7:30 p.m., Jo realized.

  The drive from Hilo Airport to her sprawling home in the hills above the city was swift. Keith Stoner was at the front door to greet her, tall and safe and smiling warmly. She had loved him since those ancient days when she had been a student and he a former astronaut. They had worked together on the project to make contact with the alien starship that had appeared near the planet Jupiter. When Stoner had flown out to the starship and remained in it, frozen in the cryogenic cold of deep space, Jo had clawed her way to the top of Vanguard Industries to gain the power to reach the distant spacecraft and return the man she loved to Earth and to life.

  But he was not the same man that she had known eighteen years earlier. Frozen in the cryogenic cold of space aboard the alien starship, he had somehow been changed. It was strange. Keith seemed more human than he had been earlier, more attuned to life than the self-contained, solitary scientist she had once known. He could open his emotions to her and love her as he had never been able to do before. Yet he was somehow beyond human, endowed with abilities that no human being had ever known, burning with the urgency of a demon-driven fanatic—or a saint.

  But he loved her. Loved her as she loved him. For Jo, nothing else mattered.

  Now she felt his strong arms around her and relaxed for the first time since she had left their home, four days earlier.

  “I thought you’d stay the night in Washington,” he said, smiling down at her.

  Jo said, “The party was pretty much of a bore. I decided I’d be much happier at home.”

  “I’m much happier, too.”

  They walked arm in arm into the house while the chauffeur handed Jo’s overnight bag and briefcase to one of the squat, many-armed household robots.

  Stoner stopped at the foot of the stairs that led up to the master bedroom suite. On their right was the spacious living room; straight ahead along the corridor was the kitchen.

  “You must be still on Eastern time,” he said. “Do you want some dinner or some breakfast?”

  “I’m not hungry at all,” Jo replied.

  He pursed his lips slightly. “You know, the best way to adapt to a change in time zones is to go to bed and sleep until you’ve caught up with the local time.”

  She grinned up at him. “Sleep?”

  “There’s iced champagne waiting in the bedroom.” He grinned back at her.

  “How about a nice long shower first?” she suggested as they started up the steps.

  “Sounds good to me.”

  Hours later Stoner lay on his back gazing up at the stars. Jo was curled next to him on the waterbed, warm and breathing in the slow regular rhythm of sleep. All of Stoner’s childhood friends were in their places in the night sky: Orion and the Twins, the Bull, the glittering cluster of the Pleiades. A slim crescent Moon hung in the darkness like a scimitar, with the red jewel of Mars nearby.

  There was no ceiling to their bedroom, only a bubble of energy that kept out the weather and served as a soundproof barrier. Yet it was completely transparent; like having the bedroom outdoors. Flowered hangings both inside and outside the room filled the dark night air with the fragrance of orange blossoms and magnolias, completing the illusion of being out in a sighing, whispering garden.

  The energy screens that had ended humankind’s nightmare fear of nuclear holocaust could also serve more romantic purposes, Stoner mused. A gift from the stars. From my star brother.

  He felt no need of sleep. Instead, as he watched the stately motion of the stars arcing across the dark sky he murmured the command that turned on the record player, keeping it so low that only he could hear it. The muted, moody opening of Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas Brasileiras No. 8 filled the room faintly, violins and cellos dark and sensuous.

  The best invention the human race has ever made, Stoner thought. The symphony orchestra. And so typically human: a hundred virtuosos voluntarily submerging their individuality to produce something that no one of them could produce alone.

  A meteor flashed across the night sky, silent and bright for the span of an eyeblink. Stoner sank back on his pillows and clasped his hands behind his head, content to lie beside his sleeping wife and wait for the dawn while the orchestra played for him.

  Jo murmured drowsily, “Go to sleep.”

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I didn’t think it was loud enough to bother you.”

  “Big day tomorrow.”

  “I know. My surprise party.”

  She bolted up to a sitting position, suddenly wide awake. “Who told you?”

 
; “You did.” He laughed softly. In the shadowy darkness, Jo’s naked body was washed by the pale moonlight, her skin glowing warm. He could not see the expression on her face, so he reached up and pushed back her shining dark hair.

  “The household staff has been fussing and making phone calls for a month or more. You cut short your stay in Washington to come home in time for tomorrow. And you just told me tomorrow’s going to be a big day.”

  Jo leaned over him. “You’re the only one in this house who knows how to keep a secret.”

  “I have no secrets from you, Jo. You know that, don’t you?”

  Nodding, she began to tell him of her conversation in the limousine with Hsen and Kruppmann. Stoner listened patiently, quietly until she finished.

  “About what I expected,” he said at last. “They’re not interested in the global picture. They only see their own needs.”

  “Their own selfish interests.”

  “They just don’t understand what’s going on. Maybe they don’t want to understand. They want the power to control events, to keep themselves at the top of the heap. They don’t understand that it’s not a zero-sum game anymore. The world’s economy is completely interlinked; it’s not even just a global economy, not if you consider the Moon and the asteroids and the factories in Earth orbit. If the Third World gets richer, we all get richer. That’s what they don’t see.”

  “They’re willing to commit murder,” Jo said.

  Stoner gave a bitter little laugh. “If they’re willing to bankroll wars and insurrections, what’s the murder of one man to them?”

  “But it’s you they want to kill!”

  “They don’t know who I am,” Stoner said, “and it won’t be easy for them to find out. Especially when I have such an excellent Mata Hari in their camp.”