by Ben Bova
“What does Hsen want?”
Tomasso allowed himself a small grin. “Hey, what about what I want?”
Jo gave him a level stare, then replied, “Vic, you’re nothing but a miserable little shit who’s going to get his guts ripped out an inch at a time.”
From the corridor, Baker made a guttural noise that might have been a suppressed laugh. Tomasso’s grin vanished. “You oughtta watch your mouth, Jo.”
“You talk as if you’re in charge here,” Jo said. “But it’s Hsen who’s calling the shots. What if I tell him that I’ll cooperate—but only if he’ll turn you over to me.”
Tomasso frowned.
“Hsen knows you’re a turncoat. Do you think he really trusts you? You’ve thrown away your only card. Now that you’ve helped him take over this base, what’ve you got left to bargain with?”
His face flushing with barely-suppressed anger, Tomasso snarled, “Never mind the big talk. You just call off the troops you’ve got ready to fly here or your old man starts breathing vacuum.”
“Hsen won’t let you kill Keith.”
“Wanna bet? The medics can study his dead body. Be a lot easier than dealing with him alive.”
Baker said, in a complaining tone, “Would one of you mind telling me what this is all about?”
“It’s about a starship,” Jo replied. “That’s what you want to see, isn’t it, Vic? Well come on, then. Let’s go see it.”
She swept past Tomasso, out into the corridor and past Baker, heading for the chamber where the starship was waiting, her finger stroking the razor-sharp edge of her belt buckle.
Li-Po Hsen paced nervously, almost frantically, across the imitation bare wood floor of his private quarters. Tomasso’s reports from Delphi were all good, well-nigh perfect.
The base is securely in my hands, Hsen told himself. Stoner is incapacitated, ready for further examination. The bitch Camerata is my prisoner, and she has called off the counterattack that she had planned.
The only failure had been in the attempt to seize her children, but that is a minor matter. Jo Camerata is cooperating because she knows her husband is at my mercy. I can pick up her brats at any time now.
Hsen’s head nearly swam with excitement. I can control Vanguard Industries! I can have the Hungarian scientists make Stoner reveal all the alien’s secrets, because his wife is in my hands.
He clapped his hands gleefully and skipped right through a hologrammic reproduction of an ancient bronze horse to lean across his bare desk and tap the communications button.
Within a minute his dour-faced security chief entered the sparsely-furnished room.
“I have decided to go to Delphi base,” Hsen told her, “to see this starship for myself.”
The security chief bowed her head, but replied, “That is not part of our plan. It was agreed…”
Hsen snorted disdain. “The base is secure. There is nothing to fear.”
“Sir, we still do not understand the extent of the man Stoner’s powers.”
“He is unconscious at present, is he not?”
“Yes, but…”
“And even when he awakes, he will be made to realize that his wife’s well-being depends on his cooperation.”
“Still, sir, it is my duty to point out that there may be unknown dangers in your personally going to the Vanguard base.”
“Pah! It is my base now. I want to see the bitch and her husband for myself. I want to see this starship the alien has built for them. What kind of general sits quailing in his castle after his troops have conquered the enemy?”
A wise general, thought the security chief. But she dared not speak the words aloud.
Cliff Baker gaped in unabashed awe at the towering vat that bubbled and steamed, almost close enough to reach out and touch.
Vic Tomasso felt an uneasy sense of forces at work beyond his control or even his understanding.
The two men were standing with Jo on the grillwork catwalk that circled the vast underground chamber. The floor was lost in the mists, far below them. Many stories above, high-efficiency suction fans pulled the steam into special ducts where it was used to run turbines before cooling to the point where it condensed into pure potable water.
Jo was reciting woodenly, explaining the starship construction system as if she were a tour guide who had given this lecture a thousand times.
“The nanomachines are as small as viruses, but they are machines, not living creatures. Each one is programmed to do its specific task and no other. They can assemble individual atoms and fit them together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. What they’re doing now is taking the raw elements that are being fed into the vat in the gaseous stage through the hosing at the lowest level and picking out individual atoms to place them exactly where they need to be to build the ship.”
“Individual atoms?” Tomasso asked, his voice somewhere between incredulity and astonishment.
Without changing the tone of her voice or the frozen expression on her face, Jo replied, “Yes. Individual atoms of aluminum, titanium, silicon. Quite a bit of silver. Some gold. Mostly carbon atoms for the ship’s structure. The starship will be almost pure diamond, except for the guidance system and life support equipment.”
Baker muttered, “It must be worth…”
“It costs less than a lunar shuttle,” Jo said, with a little force. “The nanomachines are incredibly cheap; once you have a few master assemblers, they create all the other machines out of simple raw materials like carbon and silicon. Then the raw input for the ship itself is the same stuff, plus a bit of metal. Literally dirt cheap; we scoop most of it from the top few centimeters of the soil outside.”
But as she spoke Jo was furiously thinking of how she could get out of this trap, how she could overcome Tomasso and the dozen or so military types who now controlled the base, how she could save Keith. No plan of action came to her mind. For once in her life she accepted the ancient wisdom of patience. The burning hatred still seethed in her heart. Every part of her wanted to tear Tomasso’s flesh into bloody ribbons. But now her ancient blood counseled patience, so Jo kept her passions frozen within her and waited for the proper moment to strike.
For nearly an hour the three of them paced slowly around the catwalk, peering into the bubbling, frothing vat. Jo could make out a graceful curve of crystalline material through the steaming brew, but little more.
“And this ship is big enough to leave the solar system and go out to the stars?” Tomasso asked.
Jo replied, “This is only the propulsion and guidance unit. The living quarters and life support sections have already been completed. They’re waiting in underground hangars, not far from here.”
“What kind of propulsion does it use?” Baker asked.
“It taps magnetic fields when it’s close enough to planets that have them,” Jo said. “Don’t ask me how, the physicists are still trying to figure it out. For the long-distance jumps between stars it scoops in hydrogen from the interstellar plasma to feed a fusion engine.”
“And it can go from one star to another, all that distance…”
With a single nod, Jo said, “The nanomachines constantly maintain all the ship’s systems. Keith told me they can even repair the erosion that micrometeors cause when they strike the hull.”
Tomasso was about to ask another question, but his wrist communicator chimed softly. He held the unit to his ear for a moment. Jo saw his face go from surprise to pleasure.
“Hsen is coming over,” he announced. With a wry smile, “You’ll have a chance to show him your starship, Jo.”
Jo kept her face expressionless. But her heart leaped within her. The murderer is coming here! And she knew exactly what she had to do. Kill the bastard. Throw him over the railing and let him drop fifteen stories to the concrete floor. Slice his throat open with the dagger built into my belt buckle. Jam my thumbs into his eyes and then kick his balls into his throat.
She clenched her hands to keep them from shaking with
anticipation.
My babies are safe; he can’t get to them now. I’ll kill him. What happens to me afterward doesn’t matter. What happens to Keith doesn’t matter. I’ll kill the sonofabitch with my bare hands.
Stoner, meanwhile, was still pretending to be unconscious while his mind explored the underground base. Reaching, probing, he sensed Jo with Tomasso and Baker, felt the fury of her mind blazing like a bonfire in the night. He recognized Matthews and many of the base’s staff cooped together in the automated cafeteria. Delicately stealing along the silent underground corridors he realized that there were twelve professional soldiers present, half of them in the base’s communications center, the others divided between the life support center and the docking facility.
Why the docking facility? Another rocket was on its way to the base, he found with a feathery touch on the mind of one of the orientals. Li-Po Hsen himself was coming to view his new conquest firsthand.
Stoner filed that information and pressed onward. Zoltan Janos was busily setting up equipment in one of the laboratories, getting ready to resume his experiments on Stoner. Where is Ilona?
He found her in one of the cubicles that served as quarters for the staff. There was a man with her; a stranger.
For several moments Stoner explored their minds, learning what he could without pressing hard enough for them to realize he was present. Then, realizing that he had no better choice, he called to the Hungarian scientist.
—Ilona. Ilona, can you hear me?
She stiffened with surprise, sitting on the bed. Paulino, primly ensconced on the room’s only chair on the other side of the room, saw her face go pale.
“What is it?” he asked.
She silenced him with an upraised hand while replying aloud, “Yes, I can hear you.”
—I need your help.
“There’s nothing I can do.”
Paulino saw that she was talking to thin air. His mother would have recognized a religious vision; his father would have twirled a finger against his temple. Paulino, however, had grown accustomed to electronics miracles and immediately assumed that Ilona was speaking to someone through a miniature communications device planted somewhere on her person.
“Who is it?” Paulino asked, getting up from his chair and crossing the room to sit beside Ilona on the bed. “Is it someone who can help us?”
And he heard in his mind:—Perhaps we can help each other.
CHAPTER 35
IT was night in the rugged mountains of the Fossey Preserve, along the border of Rwanda and the Congolese Republic.
Lela sat in a tight knot as far from the fire as she could, knees pulled up to her chin, thin black arms circling her legs. The blond had asked her for the final time if she would call Koku to them. She had refused.
Now the men were sharing liquor from a metal flask, laughing and eying her. The silvery flask gleamed in the firelight as they tilted it back. Lela could see their Adam’s apples bobbing as they swallowed.
“I’m first,” said the redhead. “I found her, so I go first.” He had not shaved in the several days since he had discovered her; his rust-colored beard looked shaggy and vermin-infested.
Lela tried to block out their coarse jokes as the men swilled the liquor. All but the blond, who sat some distance away from the others, on the far side of the fire, his face looking tired and grim.
“Call the damned ape and save yourself!” he had hissed at her, only a few moments earlier. Now he sat staring at her the way an angry teacher would stare at a child who has gotten into mischief and must be punished.
The irony was that Lela could sense Koku. The young gorilla was near, very near. Lela wanted to command him to go away, to race as fast as he could to the territory where the females waited, protected by rangers and university students. But she could not. Her mind was filled with the terror of death staring her in the face, wearing the mask of a morose blond Englishman.
And the ordeal the others would put her through before they killed her. I could run, Lela thought. In the night I could probably get away from them.
But in the following day, she knew, they would track her down and find her. She would only be postponing the inevitable. Worse, Koku would probably seek her, linked by the biochips implanted in their skulls, and when the hunters found Lela they would also find the gorilla.
No, Lela told herself, hugging her shins tightly to keep from shaking like a wind-blown leaf, once I am dead Koku will go his own way. He will stay clear of these hunters. He knows enough to be afraid of them now. At least I have taught him that much.
Koku felt the swirl of emotions in Lela’s mind. The young gorilla knew she was very near, and her growing terror filled him with a nameless fear. He could not build a sleeping nest. He could not sleep.
But he could not run away, either. His eyes saw nothing to be afraid of. His nose smelled the thin smoke of a campfire, but he felt no danger from that. The only sounds he heard were the normal hoots and shrills of the night. Yet Lela was afraid, and because she was, Koku felt fear also.
Fearful yet uncertain, wanting to run away yet unable to leave Lela, Koku paced back and forth on his knuckles, three hundred pounds of gorilla trying to deal with complexities that his brain had no way of unravelling.
But then a white-hot shriek of fright scalded his brain. Even without the biochip he heard Lela’s scream. He charged off through the brush toward her.
The four men were all over Lela, their hands tearing at her clothing, gripping her flesh. She could smell their foul breaths and feel their fingers clutching at her. She screamed and struggled, and they laughed as they stripped her.
Twisting her arms painfully they pushed her to the ground. The redhead gripped her ankles and spread her legs apart.
A thundering roar. A blur of black smashed into the redhead and sent him sprawling, tumbling right into the campfire. He howled with pain and tried to get up but could not. The fire licked at the backs of his legs as he shrieked and yowled.
Koku’s backhand slap knocked the two blacks away, and the other white man cowered and scrambled away, scuttling backwards, his eyes so wide Lela could see white all around the pupils.
Koku stood on his hind legs and roared at the men, slapping his palms against his stomach. It sounded like a huge drumbeat of doom.
“Koku, no!” shouted Lela. “Get away! Get away!”
She knew that the gorilla had done his worst. He could push strangers away from Lela, and his push could snap frail human bones. But he was not aggressive. Having moved the strangers away from Lela, Koku roared and threatened. But he could never attack.
The blond knew it. While his redheaded friend roasted in his own fire, his back broken, while Lela shouted and pleaded with Koku to run back into the safety of the trees, the blond calmly got to his feet, automatic rifle in his hands, and put the gun to his shoulder.
“Don’t!” Lela’s scream was lost in the roar of gunfire.
The burst of bullets stitched Koku’s chest. He staggered backwards a few steps, then sank to his haunches. Lela saw blood gush from his mouth and he pitched forward. Lela crawled to him, sobbing. The gorilla reached out a massive hand toward her, but then his eyes froze and he went still. A final sigh, so much like a human, and Koku was dead.
Gasping, panting, crying, Lela sat frozen on the ground. The redhead and both blacks lay very still, bones broken, skin ripped open. The other white was on his hands and knees, eyes squeezed shut now, rocking back and forth like an autistic child.
Koku lay less than a meter from Lela. She crawled to him and lay her head on his hairy back, the bloody bullet holes already matting. She sobbed, crying as she had when her baby brother had died of fever so many years ago.
Through tear-filled eyes she looked up at the blond. He had slung the rifle over his shoulder and was picking up his backpack. Without a word, without looking back at her or the creature he had murdered, he walked off into the shadows of the forest.
Lela knew where he was head
ing. She stopped crying. Her entire body shook, but now it was not from fear. Pulling the tatters of her blouse around her, she got to her feet and went toward the sleeping bags. The redhead was muttering incoherently, his legs black and smoking in the fire, his hands twitching uselessly. She walked around him, reached the sleeping bags, and picked up one of the leather cases that held an automatic rifle.
Sliding the gun out of its protective casing, she briefly looked it over, found the safety, and clicked it off. Then she worked the bolt as she had been taught to on hunting rifles.
Planting the plastic stock firmly on her hip, she shot the two blacks first. The blast shook her slim body and bellowed through the night like a stuttering lion. The blacks’ bodies jerked and rolled as the bullets plowed through them.
Traitors, thought Lela. Thieves and murderers.
The redhead’s eyes followed Lela as she stepped slightly toward him, then fired the gun again at the white who still hunched on hands and knees. He was knocked over sideways, gouts of blood and dust churned up by the bullets.
Lela looked down at the redhead. His face was contorting fiercely. He was trying to move but could not, his back broken.
She relaxed her grip on the rifle, let its muzzle point downward. “The jackals can deal with you,” she said to him.
Then she put together a backpack, took a fresh, fully loaded rifle, and started after the blond.
Stoner knew the layout of Delphi base better than anyone else there, since he had directed its design and construction.
Strapped in the stiff-backed chair, still pretending unconsciousness, he instructed Ilona Lucacs and Paulino. The young Latin also had a fair knowledge of the base’s layout; at least he knew where pressure suits were kept, and how to work inside a suit.
While Paulino and Ilona crept stealthily along a deserted corridor toward a set of lockers where the suits were, Stoner mentally examined the TV camera that was watching him. Probing the electromagnetic fields it generated, he traced the pattern of the picture it was sending back to the bored, half-asleep oriental who sat at the monitoring desk in the base communications center.