by Ben Bova
His son Douglas came up to shake his hand, warily, almost like a stranger. Doug was well into his forties now, but the wound that had opened between them when Stoner had left his first wife, a lifetime ago, had never completely healed.
“I’m glad you could make it, Doug,” he said to his son.
“I wouldn’t have missed it for anything,” said Douglas. “A free vacation in Hawaii for me and my whole family? Who could turn that down?”
Douglas had grown to middle age. His blond hair was thinning, his eyes had lost much of their youthful fire. He had two sons of his own nearing twenty, but the bitterness was still there. Stoner saw it in his eyes, heard it in the tone of his voice. Douglas no longer fought with his father, no longer refused to see him. But the anger seethed just below the surface. And Douglas pointedly avoided Stoner’s younger children, the offspring of his marriage to Jo.
Eleanor was friendlier, more relaxed. She had remarried a genetic surgeon in Christchurch after the death of her first husband, but they had divorced after two years. Now, a dozen years later she had a new husband and seemed at peace with the world. And with her father. Stoner felt immensely grateful for that.
Stoner embraced Elly and her teenaged daughter, shook hands with her son and her new husband, a cargo specialist for Pacific Commerce’s space transport division. He was startled to sense that Elly’s daughter was pregnant. I’ll be a great-grandfather in seven or eight months, he told himself. It seemed strange; he did not feel old enough to be a great-grandfather. I wonder if Elly knows? I’ll have to talk with the girl later on.
Aside from Elly and Doug, the only one among the guests milling around the swimming pool whom Keith had known back in his earlier life, before he had spent eighteen years in frozen suspension, was Claude Appert.
The Frenchman was as dapper as ever despite his seventy-two years. Pure white hair and trim little mustache, jaunty double-breasted blazer of navy blue, pearl gray slacks, Appert was the very picture of the perfectly-dressed Parisian.
“Claude, you’re looking very well.”
“Not so well as you, mon ami. You seem ageless.”
“I’m a year younger than you.”
Appert laughed. “But you cheated! You spent eighteen years sleeping and not aging one minute!”
Stoner shrugged like a Parisian.
“Still,” Appert said, looking closely at Stoner’s face, “you do not seem any older than you did when you first recovered from the freezing. Shave off that black beard of yours and you would look no more than thirty-five or forty.”
“How are you getting along?” Stoner changed the subject.
“The same as always. It is lonely without Nicole, but there are any number of handsome widows who invite me to dinner.”
“Paris is still Paris, then.”
“Ah yes. The one thing that remains constant in this world of change.”
“Things are changing rapidly, aren’t they, Claude? And for the better, I think.”
“But yes! Even the government of France has agreed to stop exporting armaments. And there was hardly a peep of protest from the industrialists. That is how good the economy is, these days.”
Surveying the assembled guests, Stoner realized that one man was missing: Kirill Markov. He hasn’t been in good health, Stoner knew, but Kir would have come no matter what. Unless something really has hit him. Better ask Jo about him.
He went through the motions of the party, and soon found that he was actually enjoying himself. There were tensions, of course, especially with Doug and Elly’s daughter Susan. But it was good to see his two families in the same place, good to see an old and dear friend like Claude, even if Nicole had died. Life goes on, he told his star brother. Life belongs to the living, his star brother replied.
The presence in his mind seemed to enjoy the party, as well. The rituals of the birthday cake were especially fascinating. As he bent to blow out the candles, for a flash of an instant Stoner’s inner vision saw a parallel ritual on the world of his star brother’s birth, where all fifty members of his creche celebrated the day of their awakening every ten years, coming together to unite physically no matter where their individual lives had taken them.
But the vision passed in the flicker of an eye and he was back on the patio by the swimming pool, beneath gently swaying palm trees under a blue Hawaiian sky, surrounded by friends and colleagues and—Stoner looked up sharply from the smoke of the blown-out candles. There was an enemy here. A traitor. A spy.
All his senses tingled with alarm.
Certainly not Doug, no matter how deeply his bitterness ran. No one in the family. Elly’s new husband? Stoner looked at the man with fresh interest, but he turned away immediately to speak to one of the other guests.
One of Jo’s people? That would be more logical. And much more dangerous. Perhaps it was corporate secrets he was after. It was definitely a man, that much Stoner sensed. But which man?
The sense of danger slowly faded. Although Stoner stayed taut-nerved and wary for the rest of the party, he could learn no more. Maybe I’m getting paranoid in my old age, he thought. How much could a corporate spy find out at a birthday party? But that’s not the real problem, he knew. There’s a spy in Jo’s inner staff. I’ll have to warn her about it.
He pulled his granddaughter Susan to one corner of the patio and, still keeping an eye on the crowd of guests eating birthday cake and drinking champagne, he let her tell him about her boyfriend and how much in love they were and how afraid she was to tell her mother.
“He’s Japanese,” Susan confessed, struggling to hold back tears. “He wants to marry me and take me to Osaka, where he lives.” Susan looked very much like her mother: chestnut hair, round face so young, so vulnerable. With a pang, Stoner recalled that he had never spent a day with his own daughter when she had been a troubled teenager.
“How did you meet him?” Stoner asked.
“At the university in Sydney.”
“He’s a freshman too?”
“Yes.”
“And do you expect your parents to keep on supporting you once you’ve married him?”
With a shake of her head, “We’ll take turns working. One of us will work for a year while the other goes to classes. It’ll take longer for us to get our degrees that way, but we’ll manage.”
“And the baby?”
The tears threatened to overflow. But Susan kept her voice level as she answered, “We’ve talked about it and we’ve decided to abort it. Neither one of us is ready for parenthood yet.”
Stoner felt a sigh go through him. Deep inside his mind the alien presence there felt an immeasurable sadness at the thought of deliberately ending a life. Life is so rare, so precious! But Stoner replied silently, Not on this planet. Despite our best teachings, human life is still held cheap. Jo was right: it’s the most abundant thing we have.
Yet all he said to his granddaughter was, “Why did you allow yourself to get pregnant, in the first place?”
“We didn’t plan to! It just happened. You were young once, weren’t you?”
Despite himself, he laughed. “A thousand years ago, it seems.”
Still wary of the danger that he had sensed, Stoner went with Susan and pulled her mother away from the crowd. With him standing between the two women, Susan told her mother about the man she wanted to marry.
“Live in Japan!” was Eleanor’s first shocked reaction.
Stoner soothed, “Half an hour away, Elly. Osaka is only half an hour from Christchurch.” With a grin he bantered, “And your new husband can probably get free seats for you on Pacific Commerce spaceplanes.”
Elly was totally surprised and deeply hurt. Stoner felt the anguish that raced through her and reached out to his daughter to soothe her, ease her pain, help her to assess the situation calmly. Humans react with their glands first, he knew. Only afterwards do they examine the problem rationally. It was a survival trait back when we were half-brained apes hunted by leopards. Now it’s a det
riment. He felt his star brother’s almost amused agreement.
Once he saw that both women had gotten past the point of hormone-drenched emotion, Stoner left mother and daughter deeply engaged in talk and rejoined the other guests. Jo was off in the dining room, he saw through the open lanai doors, equally deep in earnest conversation with several of her Vanguard executives. There’s no such thing as a social occasion for her, he knew.
The sense of danger tingled along his nerves again, but so faintly that he could do no more than wonder if it was real or imaginary.
Both of Doug’s boys were splashing down the length of the pool, with ten-year-old Rickie matching them stroke for stroke. Stoner smiled. Born and raised on Hawaii, young Richard could swim like a dolphin. At least the youngsters are getting along all right. Swinging his gaze around the patio, he saw Doug sitting at one of the tables the servants had set up, a full champagne bottle in front of him, his wife beside him looking unhappy.
I could change Doug, Stoner told himself. I could open my mind to him and let him see all the pain and sorrow and guilt that I feel. He wouldn’t be able to hate me after that.
But his star brother asked, And what would your son have left in his life, after you do that? He does not hate you, but his anger toward you is the main emotional prop of his existence. Take that away and he might collapse altogether.
For the first time in years Stoner wondered if the alien inside him was truly his brother, or was he being controlled, manipulated by forces he could not understand? He felt a shudder of astonishment within himself. After all these years, still some doubts, some ancient fears?
Stoner nodded grimly to himself. You see how difficult it’s going to be to reveal the truth to the rest of the human race.
His star brother fell silent.
BOOK II
It should be for you a sacred day when one of your people dies. You must then keep his soul as I shall teach you…for if this soul is kept, it will increase in you your concern and love for your neighbor.
CHAPTER 8
“YOU’VE got a spy on your staff.”
The party had ended hours earlier. The family guests had gone to bed in the far wing of the house, happy with champagne and a birthday dinner of grilled mahi-mahi and New Zealand lamb. The presents had all been opened to the “ooohs” and “aaahs” of the assembled partygoers; their torn wrappings had been dutifully collected by the household robots.
Now it was nearly midnight and Jo and Stoner were undressing for bed.
Jo nodded from the doorway of her closet. “More than one.”
“You know who they are?” Stoner asked.
“Yes, certainly. One of them was here today.”
“I sensed it—a feeling of danger.”
She turned toward him with a weary smile. “Corporate espionage is one of the facts of life in the business world, Keith.”
“This was more than corporate espionage,” he said. “I sensed real danger. Physical danger.”
“I’m well protected,” she said, walking naked across the plush carpet toward the bed. “Really, I’m more concerned that Kirill didn’t show up. He said he would.”
“Maybe I should call Moscow.”
“I spoke to him yesterday. He seemed fine.”
“He would have come, or sent word if something had prevented him…”
“You think he’s ill?”
“He hasn’t been well for a long time. He’s an old man, Jo,” said Stoner, stripping off his undershorts. He sat on the edge of their huge bed and reached for the phone terminal.
“He’s not even eighty yet. That’s not so terribly old. Not nowadays.” But her face betrayed the same anxiety Stoner felt.
Stoner spoke Kirill Markov’s name into the phone and its computer began searching for him. Jo wrapped a glossy silk robe around herself and sat on the bench in front of her mirrored dresser.
Within seconds the phone connected. They saw a heavy-set woman with a white nurse’s cap sitting before a window lit by afternoon sunlight.
Oh god, thought Jo. Something’s happened to Kir.
Stoner spoke swiftly with the nurse in Russian, then disconnected. “He’s had a stroke. I’ve got to go see him.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“What about your staff meeting tomorrow?”
Jo made an impatient gesture. “I can postpone it, or run it from the plane. I’ll decide on that tomorrow morning. If Kirill’s that sick…I want to be there, too.”
She pecked at the phone on her dresser and called the Vanguard airport to make arrangements for a hypersonic jet in the morning.
“Not a happy ending for your party,” Jo said.
Stoner sank back on the pillows. “It was a good party, Jo. Thanks. With all the business pressures on you…getting everybody here and making all the arrangements…well, I appreciate it.”
“My pleasure,” she said, applying a brush vigorously to her thick dark hair. The brush was backed with silver mined from an asteroid by Vanguard’s space metals division.
Still looking at him through the mirror she asked, “Do you think Kir…is he…”
“Will he die?” Stoner closed his eyes for a moment. “The nurse said it was very serious. He’s in intensive care.”
Jo sighed. “Poor Kir.”
“He’s never been in very good physical shape.”
“Still…eighty years old.”
“I know. It doesn’t seem so old, does it? Hell, I’m seventy-one, if you go by the calendar.”
“Thank god the calendar doesn’t matter for you!”
God? Stoner asked himself. His star brother said nothing.
Jo silently brushed her hair, her eyes watching Stoner’s naked body on the bed. “You know, Claude said to me that you don’t look any older now than you did fifteen years ago, when we first revived you.”
“Yeah, he told me the same thing.”
“Your beard doesn’t have a single gray hair in it,” Jo said.
“Well, neither do you.”
She turned on the bench to face him. “Keith, I’ve been dyeing my hair for years! If I stopped, it would grow out as silver as Claude’s.”
“It might look good that way,” he said.
“Oh no! I’m not ready to be an old lady yet. And I’m sure as hell not going to allow anybody at the office the slightest excuse to think I’m getting decrepit.”
Putting the brush down, Jo stood up, slipped off her robe, and came to the bed.
Stoner grinned at her. “You sure as hell don’t look decrepit to me.”
For fifteen years he had seen her almost every day. But now he looked more intently. Now he realized with a pang of sudden fear that she was well into her middle years. Jo was in the prime of health, her body taut and still totally desirable; not an ounce of fat to be seen, not a sag or a slump. But as he slid his hands across her hips and pulled her to him he saw that there were lines in her face he had not bothered to notice before.
“We’re both getting older,” he said softly.
But she replied, “No, Keith. I’m getting older, but you’re not. You don’t seem to be aging at all.”
“I could give you the same thing I’ve got,” he said, in a whisper. “Then you wouldn’t age either.”
Jo shook her head. “And make me understand everybody so thoroughly that I couldn’t hate them? Make me a saint, the way you are? A hell of a businesswoman I’d be, then!”
“Jo…”
“I decided a long time ago, Keith,” she said stubbornly. “I’ll stay just the way I am, aging and all. I like my emotions. I need to be able to get angry enough to swat some sonofabitch who needs swatting!”
Stoner knew it was hopeless to argue with her. They had been through all this many times before. But deep within him, he felt sad that Jo refused his star gift. She’s not ready for it yet, he told himself. Someday, but not yet. His star brother asked, If this woman who knows you so intimately refuses the gift, how can you expect the rest of the hu
man race to accept it, when the time comes?
Stoner had no answer.
Markov was dying.
The Russian was in a private room in the best hospital in Moscow, surrounded by the most advanced medical technology and human care that it was possible to give. Still he was dying.
It was a small room, dark and cool with the blinds drawn over the only window. Utterly quiet except for the faint humming of the electronic monitors. Their screens showed the ragged glowing lines of an old man’s struggling heartbeat, respiration rate, brain wave activity. There were no wires attached to Markov’s body, but he was held in the grip of the medical sensors as firmly as a fly enmeshed in a spider’s web.
“He looks so feeble!” Jo whispered.
She sat on the only chair in the narrow room, neither noticing nor caring that her long suede coat dragged on the scuffed floor tiles. Stoner stood beside her, an obvious American in his denim jacket and jeans.
Markov’s ragged white beard was nothing but a wisp now. His cheeks were sunken; the skin of his face looked brittle, spiderwebbed with wrinkles and the fine red network of capillaries. His large dark eyes, which could flash from somber to hopelessly romantic in an instant, were closed. Even his eyebrows are snow-white, Stoner realized. And his hair is almost entirely gone.
Stoner remembered awakening from a sleep of eighteen years in a room such as this. But his body had been young and strong. Markov’s body, beneath the thin sheet covering him, was frail and pitifully thin.
Stoner stood by the bedside, feeling totally helpless, watching his old friend slowly slip away, sensing the growing weariness of his heart, the fragility of blood vessels stiff and clogged with age, the desperate panic of electricity flickering through his damaged brain.
If only…
Stoner choked off that line of thought. There’s no point to it. I’m standing here in the middle of all the marvels that modern human beings can create, watching my friend die, as helpless as a Neanderthal in an Ice Age cave.