Voyagers III - Star Brothers

by Ben Bova

  Baker shrugged off his puzzlement. He had reached his house and padded up the smooth wooden steps, heading for the kitchen fridge and a cold Foster’s.

  In another week, he thought, the first members of the IIA will start to get their guts torn out by the Horror. And I’ll be up on the Moon, safe as houses, watching the world tear itself apart.

  The medical tests they had done on Stoner were ruthlessly thorough. He thought of the stories he had heard as a youngster of the “experiments” performed by Nazi doctors in concentration camps.

  His captors were extremely wary of him. No human being entered his room after the first few days. Everything was done by robots under remote control. Each morning began with a short cylindrically-shaped robot carrying in a breakfast tray of juice, cereal, and coffee. The machine was spotless and gleaming, obviously new, obviously being used for the first time.

  “Good morning Dr. Stoner,” the robot would say. “I trust you slept well.”

  It was the robot’s own voice, part of its interactive programming. Immediately after breakfast another voice, human, would issue from the speakers set into the ceiling.

  “I slept about the same as usual,” Stoner would reply. “Where are we? What is our geographical location?”

  “I do not have that information,” the sturdy little robot would answer, with complete transistorized honesty.

  The first two days were standard medical tests. Blood samples. Cardiac stress testing on a treadmill carried in by another robot, a taller, many-armed machine of matte-dull carbon fiber composite skin. Its long arms were of stainless steel, jointed and extensible, capable of carrying very heavy loads.

  It was the blood samples that worried Stoner. He felt he could hide his star-gift abilities from his captors well enough; he had been careful not to show them anything except a normal, healthy human being. But analysis of his blood would show that it was infected with myriad particles the size of viruses. His star symbiotes.

  They may think that they’re nothing but viruses, Stoner told himself. But he doubted it. That many strange particles in a blood sample would set their curiosity atwitter. Chemical analyses wouldn’t prove much; the symbiotes were made mostly of organic elements. But if they start photomicrographing the particles they’ll realize right away that they’re something no one on Earth has seen before.

  At the end of the second day of medical tests it seemed to Stoner that the robot left the door unlocked when it rolled noiselessly out of the room. Stoner sat on the edge of his cot for nearly half an hour, considering what he should do. Obviously they were observing him. If the door were left unlocked, it was because they wanted to see what he would do.

  There were no clocks in the room; he had no way of telling what time it was, or even if it was day or night outside. Like a Las Vegas gambling casino, Stoner thought grimly. With a shrug, he got up from the cot, wearing nothing but a pair of briefs, and padded to the door.

  He turned the old-fashioned knob. Sure enough, the door was unlocked. Hesitating only for a heartbeat, he pushed the door wide open.

  A very large robot stood immobile just beyond the arc of the door’s swing. Its base was a pair of heavy, tanklike treads. From there it rose in a single massive column of gleaming chromed metal. Four long arms were clamped to its sides, each of them ending in metal pincers. The dome at the robot’s top was studded with sensors that made it look more like a spider’s many-eyed head than a human’s.

  “You must stay inside your room,” said the robot in a voice that sounded like a top sergeant growling from inside a concrete mixer.

  Stoner smiled at the machine. Obviously meant to frighten people into obedience. Probably built for military security or police patrol work.

  He took a step forward. The robot rolled slightly toward him and raised one arm to block his path.

  “You must stay inside your room.”

  For several long moments man and machine confronted each other, motionless. Stoner tried to probe the robot’s computer brain to see if he could alter its programming enough to get by, but he sensed that the computer was too simple to be influenced by outside forces. There was no way to talk it into bending to Stoner’s desires, as he could do with most human beings.

  “You must stay inside your room,” the robot repeated in exactly the same tone of voice as before.

  Stoner understood that the test had been psychological more than physical. His captors wanted to see how he would react to having his hopes raised and then dashed. Also, they were testing to see if he could somehow get past the simple-minded security robot.

  Acknowledging defeat, Stoner retreated back inside his room. The robot shut the door. Stoner heard the lock click as distinctly as the slamming of a jail cell’s barred gate.

  The third morning the voice from the ceiling asked, “You slept well?”

  “Yes,” Stoner lied. He had not slept at all. He did not have to. He had spent the night trying to sense the location and number of the people around him. He still had no idea of where he was. If his captors were not going to deal with him face to face, Stoner realized, he would have to go out and contact them, one way or another. And get past the security robot outside his door.

  “No stomach cramps or other discomfort?”

  “Should there have been?”

  The voice did not answer. Stoner realized that they had poisoned his dinner. Not to kill him, just enough to give him obvious symptoms. His star brother had automatically neutralized the poison, broken down its complex molecular structure into simpler, harmless chemical components.

  He wished the voice would say more to him, because it sounded oddly familiar. Even through the low-fidelity ceiling speakers Stoner knew it was a man’s tenor voice, not a woman’s. A voice that he thought he had heard before.

  Two of the tall many-armed robots entered the room that morning.

  “We have established a baseline of your physical profile,” said the voice from the ceiling. “Now we must see how far from that baseline you can be driven and still recuperate. The next few days will be rigorous, but we will try to make them as painless as possible for you.”

  In short, they tortured him.

  They began with electric shocks. One of the robots clamped Stoner into a chair with its many arms while the other applied electrodes to various parts of his naked body. At first Stoner tried to stand the pain without help from the alien symbiotes. But they kept increasing the voltage until he was screaming and his star brother intervened to shut down the white-hot messages of agony that blazed along his nerves.

  He sat in the chair, the stainless steel arms gripping his bare flesh, and watched the electrodes burn away his skin. Saw tendrils of smoke rising from his chest, his stomach, his thighs. Smelled the odor of his own meat roasting.

  “Remarkable,” uttered the voice from the ceiling microphones. “He is able to handle intense physical pain.” It was muffled, indistinct, as if the man had placed a hand over the microphone so that his victim could not hear what he said. Stoner made out the words, though, and even the slightly ragged breathing of the speaker. Was he enjoying what he watched, or did it upset him? Stoner could not tell.

  “Is this necessary?” another voice asked. It was blurred even more, as if the speaker were several meters away from the microphone. “Can’t you…”

  “It is necessary,” snapped the first voice. “We will proceed to the next step.”

  “Without giving him time to recuperate?”

  Do they want me to hear what they’re saying? Stoner wondered.

  “No recuperation time. Not yet. The next test is a combination of physical and psychological pain,” said the man’s voice. “We will see how he reacts to having his manhood threatened.”

  “But that’s inhuman!”

  “We are hardly dealing with a human being here.” The man’s voice was cool, detached. “Don’t be so sentimental. This is an experimental subject, nothing more. You must stop being so squeamish.”

  The o
ther said nothing, but Stoner sensed a turmoil of emotions. And something more: the other person was a woman.

  The robot held Stoner’s legs apart and applied the electrodes to his penis and testicles. Stoner closed his eyes but otherwise gave no reaction. His star brother cut off all sensation, all emotion. It was like being encased in a block of ice, like being frozen again, no longer alive, inert, apart from the world of the living.

  And his star brother told him, You know that whatever physical damage they do will be quickly repaired.

  Sure, Stoner replied silently, his teeth clenched so hard they seemed to be fused together. Wonderful news.

  After what seemed like hours the robots released him and rolled silently out of the room with their equipment. The voices from the ceiling fell silent. Exhausted, Stoner crawled to his cot and pretended to fall asleep.

  They did not feed him. No robot entered with a dinner tray and the following morning there was no breakfast.

  I’ve got to get out of here, he told himself in the dead of night.

  But his star brother soothed his growing anxiety. Not yet. Wait until we can learn who they are—and who they work for.

  So Stoner lay on the cot and waited for the next session. They know that whatever powers we have, we still need energy input. Without food we won’t be able to heal our wounds.

  We can go for several days, his star brother assured him. There is enough stored fat in the body to keep going that long without input.

  The lock clicked and Stoner sat up on the cot. The tall many-armed robots came through the door. One of them pushed a gurney, the other a table full of electrical equipment.

  “Today,” said the voice from the ceiling, “we test the electrical patterns of your brain.”

  The robots strapped Stoner down on the gurney and attached electrodes to his head. In the weirdly distorted reflection from their stainless steel arms he saw his naked body, ugly red burn marks scattered about his chest, abdomen, groin.

  For hours they mapped the currents flickering in his brain. His star brother remained silent as they sent tickling probes into various lobes of the brain. Stoner tried to stay completely relaxed as the electrical currents stimulated specific groups of neurons. He saw colors bursting before his eyes, heard the rushing roar of the sea, tasted bacon and then the cold metallic tang of the oxygen fed into his pressure-suit helmet. He could feel the suit encompassing him and for a fleeting moment, as in a dream that shifted like the melting scenery on a rain-streaked window pane, he was back in space helping to construct the mammoth telescope that had first detected the approaching alien starship.

  The telescope glittered in the hard unfiltered sunlight, a gleaming spiderwork of bright metal against the cold black background of infinity. Stoner reached out to touch it.

  And it was gone, replaced by an absurd childhood memory of trying to maintain his balance on a two-wheel bike.

  Blinding white pain! Stoner could not breathe, he felt his heart stop, then start up again with thumping spasms that rocked his whole body.

  “Again,” he heard, as if from a trillion miles away.

  The blast that shockwaved through his skull was beyond pain. Even his star brother was stunned momentarily, but then swiftly shut down the pain centers in his brain.

  “There, did you see it? That blip in the EEG?”

  Another powerful bolt of agony exploded inside Stoner’s head, but this time he and the alien within him were ready. He knew exactly what they were doing to him: electrical shock treatments. Christ! Next they’ll start lobotomies!

  His star brother slowed Stoner’s heartbeat and breathing rate. His whole body, rigid with the electrical shocks, spine arched, fingers and toes clenched so hard that tendons were popping, it all relaxed as if Stoner had slipped off into a deep and restful sleep. Or death.

  But he heard the voices from the ceiling speaker.

  “You’ve gone too far!”

  “Not at all. Look at that EEG; have you ever seen anything like it before?”

  No response.

  “A normal brain would show a scrambled set of jagged peaks and troughs. His curves are as gentle as a sleeping baby’s. It’s fantastic!”

  “Hasn’t he had enough for today?”

  “I want to try a couple more shocks, just to see if we can break him out of the shell he’s gone into.”

  “You’ll kill him!”

  “I doubt that we could kill him if we tried.”

  “May I remind you that the purpose of these experiments is to determine why he survived cryonic immersion and thawing, not to chop him up into bloody little scraps!”

  “Interesting choice of words, Doctor.”

  “What? Why do you say that?”

  “Because tomorrow I’m going to see if he can regenerate significant parts of his body. We’ll start by amputating a finger.”

  “God! You can’t be serious!”

  “Never more serious. And don’t try to interfere. I’m in charge here, and I’m going to find out what makes that man tick if I have to take him apart like an old windup clock.”

  The words would have struck fear into Stoner’s battered consciousness if his star brother had allowed a man’s normal hormonal reactions. Instead he lay there on the gurney perfectly still, utterly relaxed, seemingly unconscious or in a deep coma.

  But his mind was racing. I know those voices! I know who they are!

  Vic Tomasso paced nervously back and forth across the length of the balcony. His apartment was two floors below the penthouse of one of the tallest residential towers in Hilo. On a normal weekend afternoon he would have been sitting out in the sunshine, improving his tan while alternately watching the professional football games on TV and the women frolicking on the golden sandy beach in their minuscule swim suits.

  This was not a normal weekend.

  He could feel the searing heat of Jo’s suspicions of him. Hell, even if he had been totally innocent it would be natural for her to cast a distrustful eye at the man she thought she had planted in Hsen’s camp. But Jo glowered at him like the burning end of a red-hot branding iron. Even though she tried to control herself and not reveal her inner thoughts, the fury and suspicion that seethed within her glowed hot as hellfire.

  He had volunteered to an interrogation under truth drugs. “I might remember something Hsen or his people said that my conscious mind doesn’t recall,” he had said to Jo. She had nodded and approved the interrogation. Tomasso dutifully reported to the security office and was interrogated by a team that included the physician whom he had been sleeping with for the past four months. She believed that Vic truly loved her. The drug she injected into his bloodstream was nothing more than a mild tranquilizer. Vic passed the test easily.

  Still, the pressure was mounting. Jo would not be satisfied until she found the traitors in her midst. He knew that she had people backtracking every phone call he had made over the past several weeks, trying to trace every move he had made. Tomasso worried about that last call he had made to Hsen, telling him that Stoner was returning early from Moscow. The number he had actually called was another apartment in Hilo; a “girlfriend” who in reality was an employee of Pacific Commerce’s intelligence operations. The call had been relayed to Hsen in Hong Kong from her phone.

  That should be safe enough, Tomasso told himself, pacing endlessly across the balcony. Safe enough.

  But Jo was like an avenging angel, fiery sword in hand, searching for dragons to slay. Tomasso felt like a very small dragon; more like a defenseless lizard.

  If I run, that’ll prove to her that I was in on the operation. Prove to her that I’ve been working for Hsen.

  Pace the length of the balcony, reach the end and turn back again.

  But if I stay she’ll grab me sooner or later. Even if she doesn’t get any real evidence against me. She suspects and that’ll be enough for her. She’ll have her own Italian bodyguards grab me and squirt real truth serum into my veins. Or worse.

  The far end o
f the balcony. Turn around and pace the other way. Ignore the beach, the sunlight and surfers and palm trees. Tomasso was looking inward, trying to discern his own future.

  She’ll make me talk and once I do I’m a dead man. But if I run to Hsen he’ll figure I’ve outlived my usefulness to him. I’m dead either way!

  There was only one way out, one bargaining chip remaining with which to buy his life. He had been holding it back, carefully keeping it to himself until the right moment. His ace in the hole.

  Well, Tomasso said to himself, if you don’t use it now you might not live to use it later.

  Nodding to himself, convinced he had no other path to safety, he drove to a shopping mall in downtown Hilo and picked out a public telephone at random. Pecking out the same “girlfriend”’s number, once he connected with her answering machine he spoke the code phrase that automatically transferred his call to Hsen’s office in Hong Kong.

  Hsen was not there, said the Chinese beauty whose face appeared on the tiny phone screen. She looked too perfect, too flawless, to be anything but a computer graphic.

  “Tell Hsen that Vanguard Industries has a secret operation going on the Moon, a special base called Delphi, far out on the Mare Imbrium.”

  The simulated woman smiled blandly and waited for more information.

  “Nobody on the board of directors knows about it,” Tomasso went on, nervous, glancing out toward the balcony, as if expecting Jo herself to suddenly materialize there, desperately hoping he had not been followed by anyone. “Ms. Camerata and her husband…they’re building a starship there. A ship that will be able to fly out of the solar system. I think they intend to send it back to the planet that the alien ship came from.”

  Lela Obiri spent every night in dread. Out in the forest, wrapped in her sleeping bag against the chill damp darkness, listening to the hootings and growls floating through the night, she slept fitfully if at all. Gradually she had grown accustomed to the natural sounds of the forest, and during the day she had come to love this emerald world with its mottled sunlight and clean sparkling streams. The thick foliage of the forest closed in like a green womb, surrounding her, enfolding her in its leafy arms. Each day she walked through this primeval universe, the only human being in a new Eden, alone with brilliant flashing birds and scampering chattering monkeys.