Voyagers III - Star Brothers

by Ben Bova

  Does he know how deeply Ilona is addicted? Yes, Stoner decided. And he doesn’t care. Not enough to try to get her off it. She’s easier to manipulate because of it. He’s her pusher, her connection.

  Ilona touched Stoner’s sleeve. Pointing with her other hand, she said, “The lodge—where you will spend the night.”

  Stoner ducked slightly to look out the window on the opposite side of the car. He saw up on the crest of the wooded ridge a long, low stone building with a timber roof. An old hunting lodge, still kept in first-rate condition. At least I won’t have to rough it tonight, he said to himself.

  The lodge was sumptuous. Polished stone floors covered with luxurious carpets, impressive formal dining room with a gleaming long table and high-backed chairs upholstered in leather. There were no animal heads mounted on the wall, as Stoner had half expected. Instead there were heraldic crests with symbols of eagles and lions and boars against fields of blazing red and royal blue.

  “In centuries past,” said Janos, conducting Stoner on an impromptu tour of the lodge, “this was a hunting lodge for the Habsburg emperors and their aristocratic friends. When the empire was broken up, it became a tourist hotel, and then after the Second World War a youth hostel.”

  Stoner pictured hordes of red-shirted Young Communists demolishing the place just as youngsters anywhere would with all their teenaged noise and energy.

  “It was refurbished as part of the great restructuring of Hungarian society,” Janos continued his lecture as the three of them walked through a snug library filled with books from beamed ceiling to bearskin-covered floor. An unused fireplace and stone chimney filled one comer of the room. Stoner saw no logs in its dark and cold emptiness, but a pipe for gas instead.

  As they went from room to room, Janos did all the talking. Ilona was as silent as a freshman attending her first lecture.

  “The government has generously allowed us to use this lodge as our quarters,” Janos concluded, heading toward the broad staircase that led up to the bedrooms.

  “Quarters for your laboratory staff,” Stoner asked.

  Giving a curt nod, Janos said, “Each of us has equal accommodations, from the lowliest maintenance personnel to the laboratory director, we share and share alike.”

  “Very democratic,” said Stoner as they started up the stairs. “I presume you are the laboratory director.”

  “Yes, that is true. That is my room there, in the corner.”

  Stoner guessed that it was somewhat larger than any of the other rooms. Janos came across as the kind of man who considered himself rather more equal than anyone else.

  “And the laboratory is nearby?”

  “Quite close.”

  “Under our feet, actually,” said Ilona.

  Stoner looked at her quizzically.

  Frowning slightly, Janos explained, “The laboratory is underground, below this building, buried quite deeply.”

  “Why underground?”

  “For security,” said Ilona.

  Janos darted an angry glare at her. “It was built originally in the days of the Cold War as a bomb shelter for key members of the government. In case of nuclear attack.”

  “I see,” said Stoner.

  They showed him to a bedroom where his scanty package of clothes had already been placed neatly on the rack at the foot of the bed. After telling him that dinner would be served in precisely two hours, they left him alone.

  Stoner surveyed the bedroom. Comfortable enough. No telephone, though. Jo must be climbing the walls by now, he thought. I’ve got to call her.

  The door was unlocked. At least that’s something, he said to himself. How many times had he been quietly tucked away in some remote location, behind locked doors or surrounded by security police? They always said it was for his own good, which always meant it was for their own purposes.

  Stoner’s star brother pointed out that they did not know what Janos’s true purposes were as yet. Ilona’s explanation about studying him in order to learn more about cryonics might be true, but even if it was it covered a deeper purpose. Biochips, replied Stoner, and the first steps toward nanotechnology.

  The horrifying vision of the dead world flooded Stoner’s mind for an instant. Nanotechnology can lead to that? he asked his star brother. The answer was immediate and implacable: Yes.

  He went down the stairs to the spacious parlor and front hall. No one there. Not a soul. Closing his eyes for a moment, Stoner recalled his tour a few minutes earlier through these rooms. Not a telephone or communications system of any kind down here, he realized. Ilona’s up in her room, juicing herself into paradise; there’s no help to be had from her.

  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 pow
er 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?

  CHAPTER 16

  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.