by Ben Bova
With a slightly nervous nod, Jo admitted, “Everybody who can afford the trip is trying to come here to get away from the Horror. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
“Royt as rayn,” said Baker, emphasizing his outback accent. “The bloody plague is starting to wipe out whole cities down there.”
“No one’s found a way of stopping it yet?”
Baker shrugged. “National governments are starting to quarantine incoming people for twenty-four hours.”
“I know. It raises hell with commerce.”
“Sure. And it’s beautiful when somebody who’s quarantined at an airport comes down with the Horror. Talk about riots! Fuckin’ troops have had to fire live ammunition into the mob. They’re killing thousands every day, and not a peep of it gets into the media. Not even in the U.S.! States have declared martial law.”
“It’s…” Jo groped for a word. “…terrible.”
“Not for us, though,” said Baker cheerfully. “We can sit up here and watch the world tear itself apart, safe and sound. Just goes to prove that, rich or poor, it pays to have money.”
Jo felt her nerves tightening. “That’s my Cliff. Always ready with a snide remark.”
He hunched forward, leaning his arms on his thighs, and almost snarled at her, “So what’ve you done to help? Run away to the Moon, that’s what!”
“And you?”
“There’s not much I can do to help, is there? You and your kind won’t vote more money for the medics and you dash up here to avoid the consequences.”
The bastard knows that Keith’s been abducted, Jo said to herself. He knows Cathy was murdered and Hsen’s out to get me. But he doesn’t give a damn. He’s too busy playing his stupid rich-vs.-poor game to care about actual people.
“So—” Baker leaned back in the couch once more, spread his arms again, “—how long d’you intend to stay up here, luv?”
“I’ve got work to do here,” Jo said.
“Sure. Of course.”
Suddenly her temper flared out of control. “You think I don’t? You think all I’ve got to do is sit around here and wait for the plague to die down? You think I’m some kind of latter-day Nero?”
Baker grinned, a lopsided show of pleasure at Jo’s pain. “I don’t see any fiddle, but…”
Jo jumped to her feet. “Come on with me, Cliff. I’ll show you what I’ve got to do! I’ll show you things that’ll wipe that damned smug smile off your face!”
An hour later Baker was sitting beside Jo in a converted lunar bus as it lumbered across the desolate Imbrium plain. Originally capable of taking a dozen tourists out across the lunar surface on journeys of a week or more, the bus now carried only the two passengers plus its normal crew of three. Her security troops were all still at Archimedes, waiting for her signal to board ballistic rockets that would loft them across the airless Mare Imbrium and land them at the secret base within minutes.
Rickie stayed at Archimedes. Jo was offering herself as bait to trap Hsen, and she did not want Rickie to be involved in more violence. So she left him behind, surrounded by dozens of security men and women, as safe as he could be in a world where private armies and mercenary commandos worked at the behest of giant multinational corporations.
She was certain that Vic Tomasso was on his way to the base, leading an assault force for Hsen. Maybe Hsen himself would come to Delphi base. No, she told herself, that would be too much to hope for. Tomasso would be there. That’s enough. For now.
Briefly she wondered if it was smart to go to Delphi herself, to dangle herself as bait for the trap she wanted to spring on her enemies. There’s no other way, she concluded. Hsen can’t pass up the opportunity to get at me. Whether he suspects a trap or not he’ll send Vic to Delphi to take me. She smiled to herself. Besides, I want to be there to see the bastard’s face for myself.
The battle between her and Hsen was coming down to its final moves. There was no room in the solar system now for the two of them. Either he dies or I do, Jo told herself. And he knows that. It’s gone beyond a corporate power struggle, beyond the battle to control most of the world’s wealth and power. It’s a personal war between the two of us. A vendetta.
Turning those thoughts over and over in her mind, Jo rode in the plushly furnished, windowless van toward Delphi base. How Nunzio would have been shocked to see a woman involved in a vendetta. Women were not supposed to fight. They could goad their men to fury, they could nourish the generations-long hatreds that set grandson against grandson, they could recite with bitter tears who murdered whom, but they were not expected to do the actual fighting. They stayed at home while the men slaughtered each other, tending to the wounded, keening dirges at the funerals, nursing the acid poison of vengeance all their lives.
Nunzio was dead, though. Murdered. Like Cathy. Killed without mercy or reason because Hsen wants my power and Keith’s abilities. Is Keith dead too? She shook her head. Probably not. I just hope he keeps out of the picture until I’ve finished with Hsen. I don’t want him trying to make me forgive the murdering bastard.
She closed her eyes and said to herself, Stay out of my way, Keith. Don’t try to stop my revenge. If you force me to choose between you and Cathy, it’ll destroy everything we’ve had together.
As soon as their spacecraft landed, a new team of security people replaced the burlap hood over Stoner’s head with a sophisticated black blindfold and a pair of soundproof earphones. Stoner had a brief glimpse of the interior of a spaceport hangar and the solemn faces of strangers clustered around him and then the blindfold cut off all light from his eyes.
Blind and deaf, he was led to another vehicle, strong hands guiding him and then half-boosting him up a ladder and through a low hatch. Someone checked the handcuffs that still pinned his wrists behind his back; apparently satisfied that they were tight enough, the person pushed Stoner down onto a seat and fastened a safety harness across his lap and shoulders.
Stoner knew they were on the Moon. He recognized the gentle lunar gravity, and his star brother immediately helped him compensate his Earth-trained muscles to the lower pull. Then he felt the push of acceleration, like a rocket liftoff but much softer, almost ethereal. Before he could take a breath the acceleration died away and he felt weightless as the rocket craft soared across the airless lunar surface.
His physical senses cut off, Stoner probed with his mind to find out who else was in the rocket vehicle and where they were heading. He sensed Janos and Ilona, but they were the only ones among the eighteen people aboard whom he recognized. The others were all men, all strangers, except…
He felt the tingle of discovery: the same sensation he had felt at his birthday party. The same man was aboard this rocket, the traitor from Jo’s headquarters. Stoner concentrated on his mind and found that Vic Tomasso knew where they were going and why.
They were heading for Delphi base, out in the bleak and empty Mare Imbrium where he and Jo were constructing the starship. Jo was already on her way there and they meant to trap her there.
Why are they taking me there? Probing deeper, he found the answer in Tomasso’s mind. Li-Po Hsen planned to keep Stoner at the isolated base so that Janos could continue his experiments until he uncovered the secrets of Stoner’s abilities. Hsen wanted those abilities for himself. Above all, he wanted immortality.
Stoner felt his teeth clenching together so hard that his jaws hurt. Hsen wants immortality for himself and death for Jo. He sees himself as a new Genghis Khan, absolute ruler of all the world, immortal and all-powerful. He wants to be a god.
CHAPTER 32
“WE’VE been thrashing around this bush long enough,” muttered the blond leader of the hunters. “That damned gorilla is always ahead of us.”
Lela sat on the damp ground and watched silently as the men shrugged out of their rifle straps and backpacks. The last slanting rays of the setting sun made the tree trunks glow almost orange while gray threatening clouds scudded so close that some of the taller trees up alon
g the ridge crest were lost in their misty billows.
There was no dry wood to be found, so the men lit a tin of paraffin and tamped down their miniature cooking grill over its blue flame. One of the blacks started a pot of water boiling while the others laid out their sleeping bags.
The blond leader came over to Lela, who was sitting as far away from the men as she could, her back resting against the moss-covered trunk of a Hagenia tree. It had been a punishing day, climbing the steep, heavily wooded slope up past the ten-thousand-foot height, close to the territory where Koku’s three females waited for him. Her chest hurt from exertion in the thin air.
The blond sagged wearily to the ground next to Lela. His voice too low for the others to hear, he said, “Now listen carefully. I know about the biochips. I know you’re telling the gorilla to keep away from us. You’ve got to stop that.”
“So you can kill him?” Lela wanted to sneer at the blond, but she was surprised to find that her voice was as much of a near-whisper as his.
“That’s right. We’re not leaving until we’ve done the job we’ve been paid to do. And the three females too.”
“There is a team of students and rangers patrolling the territory where the females have been placed.”
“We’ll get past them without any trouble, never you fear.”
“And kill them all.”
“Just the apes. We’re not here to kill people.”
“And what about me?” Lela asked, struggling to keep her voice from trembling.
The blond glanced at the other four men, gathered around the minuscule fire.
“I’ll make a deal with you,” he said. “You stop telling the gorilla to stay away from us, and I’ll see to it that you get back to your people safely.”
“You want me to trade Koku’s life for my own.”
“Let us kill the damned ape and get it over with!”
Lela said nothing.
“They’re going to rape you, y’know. A nice little gang bang before they kill you. I can protect you.”
“Leave me alive to identify you afterward?”
“We’ll be long gone from here by the time you get back to your friends. A chopper will pick us up once we send the signal.”
She shook her head.
“For god’s sake,” the blond hissed, “are the gorillas more important to you than your own life?”
“I could ask you the same question.”
“I’m offering to let you live if you’ll stop protecting the damned animal.”
Again Lela went silent. She did not know what to say. She did not believe him, no matter how sincere he sounded. The others would never let her live. They would strip her and rape her and then kill her. And him too, if he tried to stop them.
With a huffing sigh that almost sounded like a gorilla’s grunt, the blond hauled himself up to his feet. “Think it over,” he said, his voice still low. But now there was menace in it. “Once you’re dead, y’know, we’ll be able to track the ape down without much trouble.”
Lela believed that. She knew it was true.
It was all coming together, like the threads of an ancient tapestry, thought Li-Po Hsen. Individually, each strand means little. But weave them together properly and a beautiful picture emerges. He sank back in his softly yielding recliner chair and twined all the threads together in his mind.
Stoner. The former astronaut. The man who had visited de Sagres and the other Great Souls. Stoner, the only man to survive being frozen, the only one to be reawakened after a sleep of years. The only man to defeat death itself.
From the Hungarian scientists Hsen had learned that Stoner carried within him the alien creature who had built the starship. Within his mind was all the knowledge of the alien technology, secrets that could span the unthinkable gulfs between the stars, secrets that had already provided fusion energy and invisible screens that protected cities from nuclear bombs. How much more did Stoner and the alien within him carry inside his skull? Immortality was merely one of the gifts he possessed!
From Tomasso he had learned that Stoner was building a new starship at the Vanguard base out on Mare Imbrium. All the secrets of the aliens were within Stoner’s mind! Hsen knew he could not rest until he had all that knowledge for himself.
With such knowledge a man could become absolute ruler of the Earth, he knew. Emperor of emperors! The entire world would kneel at my feet!
But Stoner would never willingly share that knowledge. That is why, Hsen told himself, it is vitally important to have the bitch Camerata in my grasp. If I can control her I can control him.
He knew from the Hungarians and from the stories that Cliff Baker drunkenly reeled off that Stoner had impressive powers. But the Hungarians have learned to protect themselves against his mental abilities. And I will remain safely shielded from him.
Hsen smiled happily. It was all coming together at last. Nothing could stop him now, as long as he remained safely here in his protected headquarters while his trusted employees dangled Tomasso like a piece of bait.
Jo Camerata will snap up Tomasso, and I will have her. With her in my grasp I will have control of Stoner.
For good measure, Hsen thought, I should take the bitch’s son. And the artificial womb in which she is trying to reproduce her daughter.
He laughed aloud. With her children in my grasp, I can even get her to bed with me, if I desire her. It was a pleasant thought. He closed his eyes and sank deeper into his enfolding chair, picturing Jo Camerata naked and helpless before him.
Twelve tourists just happened to meet in the lobby of the Vanguard Hotel shortly after Jo and Cliff Baker left Archimedes. Dressed in brightly colored coveralls that were decorated with jeweled clips and patterned scarves of lunar fauxsilk, all twelve of them crowded into one of the lobby’s elevators.
On the Moon, status was indicated by how many floors down one lived. While a penthouse indicated wealth and perhaps power on Earth, the most preferable quarters on the Moon were those furthest from the airless surface, where hard radiation and micrometeoroids constantly churned the lunar dust.
The hotel ran five levels down, but one of the tourists pulled a palm-sized electronic black box from her coverall pocket and applied it to the elevator’s control board. With a barely-discernible click, the elevator plunged past the normal five floors, past the basement level where much of the life support equipment for Archimedes base was housed, and down to the sub-basement level that held nothing but the private quarters of the president of Vanguard Corporation.
When the elevator doors at last slid open, the twelve men and women leaped out, weapons in hands, balanced on the balls of their booted feet, ready to spray nontoxic gas from the nozzles of innocent-looking cosmetics cans.
The corridor in which they found themselves was empty.
Their leader, a solidly-built graying man with square shoulders, frowned slightly. No guards in the corridor, not even a robot. Nothing but the tiny red eyes of security cameras set up near the ceiling, and they had been short-circuited moments earlier.
These Vanguard people must be damned cocky about their security, the leader of the attack force thought.
With silent gestures he motioned eight of his force to the left, where the living quarters were, the remaining three to the other end of the corridor, where the makeshift laboratory had been established to hold the artificial womb and its associated apparatus. He himself went with the main body. There was bound to be resistance where they kept the boy.
The woman applied her electronic box to the lock of the living quarters’ main door. It popped open and they poured through…
Into an empty room. Bare walls. No furniture. Nothing but an absolutely empty room.
“We’ve been screwed,” the leader muttered.
Those were his last words. The air was pumped out of the room, out of the corridor, out of the entire sub-basement level. When a team of Vanguard security personnel came down to clean up, armored and helmeted, with robots leading their wa
y, they found all twelve mercenaries piled in a jumble at the elevator door, their faces blue, tongues swollen in their gaping mouths, their eyes staring, their hands clawing desperately at the elevator door.
Half a mile away, Rickie played ping-pong with a Vanguard robot in the rec room of Archimedes’s maintenance department office. Connected to all levels of the underground center by utilities tunnels, the maintenance facility was spacious enough to house several visitors from the security department with ease.
Rickie watched with fascination as the plastic ball arched lazily over the net. Ping-pong in low gravity was a very different game than it was on Earth: more deliberate, like slow motion. Through the open door of the rec room Rickie could see the jumble of equipment where his sister was slowly growing to the point where she would be a baby again.
Rickie paid no attention to the artificial womb. He and the squat little robot were tied, fifteen-all, and he was bending all his energies on winning his game.
The ballistic rocket in which Stoner rode with Vic Tomasso, the two Hungarian scientists, and an assault team of Pacific Commerce commandos did not at all resemble the sleek, slim boosters of Earth. On the airless Moon, the vehicle needed no streamlining. It was round and flat, like a saucer, with six awkward-looking legs sticking out and downward from its rim.
As it began its descent toward Delphi base, Tomasso slid into the seat to the right of the command pilot and buckled the light harness straps over his shoulders. The rocket had only one port, an oblong window of lunar glassteel that curved across the entire cockpit.
Vic still wore his sand-colored Vanguard coveralls, the front open low enough to show several strands of gold necklaces resting on his hairy chest. He slipped a communications headset over his thick curly hair and then, stabbing a forefinger at the comm console master switch, Tomasso said into the pinhead microphone:
“Security override. Access code one-one-eight-three-two, yellow.”