Voyagers IV - The Return Read online

  Karim Bakhtiar was a small, intense man with a closely clipped fringe of a beard that was just beginning to show touches of gray. He had learned over the years to curb his tongue when speaking to anyone except a fellow scientist. Even then Bakhtiar was circumspect. Like the rest of the Islamic world, Greater Iran lived under the code of Shari’a law. Although the Qur’an saw no conflict between science and faith and indeed encouraged faithful Muslims to seek knowledge as a means of learning of the glories of Allah, the conservative mullahs who made up the ruling ulema regarded the constant searching of scientists with deep uneasiness. Astronomers were the least suspected: they studied the stars, not people, which was relatively harmless—as long as they did not contradict the revealed truth of Allah’s creation of the world.

  Bakhtiar sat behind his desk, fairly radiating nervous energy. He wore a thoroughly Western business suit of dark blue with a vest tightly buttoned over his lean frame. His shirt was open at the neck. On the left breast of his jacket he had pinned a pair of discreet ribbons, like military decorations: the Order of the Faith and the colors of the International Astronomical Federation.

  Here is a man who’s walking a tightrope, Stoner thought. He immediately liked Bakhtiar.

  After inviting Stoner to sit in the rickety plastic chair before his desk, Bakhtiar said in slightly accented English, “I searched for your name in the astronomical databases.”

  With a tight smile Stoner said, “Try going back to the nineteen eighties.”

  Bakhtiar’s brows rose. “That’s more than a century ago.” But he turned to the keyboard at his side, pecked at it, then stared at his desktop screen.

  Even with his alien powers to influence human minds it took Stoner nearly half an hour to convince Bakhtiar that he was the star voyager whose messages to Earth had been ignored for months.

  “My brother believes you are a fraud, a trick played by pranksters.”

  “That would make his life easier, wouldn’t it?” Stoner replied.

  “And you are causing the aurorae? Deliberately?”

  “I thought it would be a signal that no one could ignore. Apparently I was wrong.”

  Bakhtiar pursed his lips. Then, in a taut, keyed-up voice, he said, “So what you are telling me is that traveling at relativistic velocity moves you from one universe to another universe, a parallel universe?”

  Stoner nodded unhappily. “I’m not enough of a theoretiker to understand the physics involved, but this world that I’ve returned to is somewhat different from the one I left.”

  “Fascinating! You’ve been to the stars? Actually? Really?”

  “Actually,” Stoner replied. “Really.”

  “Which stars? What was it like?” Bakhtiar was bobbing up and down with excitement in his swivel chair. “You must tell me everything!”

  “In time,” Stoner replied calmly. “In due time.”

  He saw disappointment flash through the astronomer. And then something else. Bakhtiar was thinking of his brother, Stoner realized.

  “Can you tell me about your starship, then? What drives it? What is your propulsion source?”

  “Electromagnetic induction,” Stoner answered. Ordinarily he would have been pleased to talk about science to a fellow scientist. But Bakhtiar was asking now for the benefit of his brother, the chief of the Revolutionary Guard.

  “I don’t understand,” Bakhtiar admitted.

  “You think of interstellar space as a vacuum, but in reality it’s drenched with energy,” Stoner explained. “The ship absorbs that energy. When we make the aurora glow we’re actually recharging the ship’s energy storage.”

  They talked for more than an hour, Stoner answering each of Bakhtiar’s questions as fully and honestly as he could, although he carefully avoided any mention of what he’d found among the stars. As he spoke about the starship, he clearly sensed that in the back of Bakhtiar’s mind there was a tendril of thought that realized his brother would kill whole armies to get his hands on this powerful alien technology.

  Stoner could see it in Bakhtiar’s face. His realization, his sudden anguish. I can’t tell my brother about this! Bakhtiar was thinking. I can’t breathe a word of this to anyone.

  And Stoner understood. “You know about the nuclear weapons, don’t you?”

  Bakhtiar twitched as though jabbed by the point of a knife. “Iran renounced nuclear weaponry after the Final Israeli War,” he said in a monotone, as if reciting a lesson learned by rote.

  “Were there any left?” Stoner asked.

  “The Israelis struck us first! We retaliated in self-defense.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “After the war we renounced nuclear weapons and scrapped the few that remained. We saw to it that Greater Iran and all the nations of Islam were cleansed of all such weapons.”

  “But now your nation is building new nukes, at a secret facility near Shar-e Babak.”

  Bakhtiar’s face went white.

  “Your brother told you about it, didn’t he?”

  For a moment Bakhtiar was silent. Then, “He . . . he asks me for scientific advice. He doesn’t altogether trust the state’s scientists.”

  Stoner thought the astronomer looked thoroughly miserable, ashamed.

  But then he blurted, “The Americans are building nuclear weapons! And they despise Islam; they want to destroy us! We must have our own weapons, for our self-defense.”

  Ignoring his outburst, Stoner asked calmly, “Greater Iran is officially an Islamic republic, yet it’s actually ruled by the Council of Mullahs, isn’t it?”

  Bakhtiar’s face twisted into a bitter smile. “That is almost correct. The Council of Mullahs and their ulema can negate laws passed by the parliament if they find that the laws are contrary to Shari’a. Rather like the Supreme Court of the United States can nullify laws passed by your Congress.”

  “The mullahs are ultraconservative in their interpretations of the law,” said Stoner.

  “Extremely.”

  “Yet they’re allowing this nuclear weapons program to go forward?”

  “They don’t even know about it.”

  Stoner felt surprised. “How can that be?”

  Leaning slightly forward over his desk, Bakhtiar lowered his voice and said, “Everyone thinks that the mullahs and their ulema are the final authority in Greater Iran. Even the mullahs themselves think so. But the real power lies with the military command. The mullahs control the people, but the military controls the mullahs.”

  Stoner leaned back in his chair and rubbed his beard, thinking. At last he said, “In the United States the government is controlled by a religious movement.”

  “The New Morality, yes, I know.”

  “But here in Greater Iran the religious movement—”

  “The Light of Allah.”

  “They’re actually controlled by your military?”

  “It’s a delicate balance, but yes,” said Bakhtiar, “my brother and his fellow Revolutionary Guard officers hold the true power.”

  “And they’re building nuclear weapons.”

  “Yes.”

  “So are the Americans, in New Mexico,” Stoner said. “And the Chinese.”

  Bakhtiar’s shoulders slumped. “The fools . . . the utter insane fools . . . I told my brother; I tried to make him see. . . .”

  “It’s only a matter of time before other nations start their own nuclear weapons programs. Each one will act in its own self-defense. Each one will be another step toward disaster.”

  “Proliferation,” Bakhtiar murmured.

  Stoner got up from his chair. “This must be stopped.”

  “But how?”

  “I don’t know. Not yet.” He turned to leave.

  “Wait!” Bakhtiar cried, jumping to his feet. “You . . . all that you’ve told me . . . I think they may be listening. My brother might have bugged my office. He’s like that.”

  With a curt nod, Stoner replied, “He has. But don’t worry about it. You can tell him anything I
told you.”

  “About your starship?” Bakhtiar asked in a hollow voice. “About the technology you have at your fingertips? He’d kill to get his hands on it!”

  Smiling tightly, Stoner said, “I’ve been in that situation before. Don’t worry. I can take care of myself.”

  And he winked out of existence, leaving Bakhtiar standing behind his desk wide-eyed, his mouth agape.

  CHAPTER 14

  Stoner was also in China, in the Forbidden City in Beijing, deep inside that complex of palaces and museums, in an area where neither tourists nor foreign dignitaries were ever allowed.

  He projected himself directly into the bedroom of Ling Po, chairman of China’s National Assembly and head of the New Dao movement, bypassing the guards and soldiers who patrolled the gardens outside and every corridor within the ornate palace.

  Ling Po was deeply asleep, together with two of his women. Stoner woke only the chairman, stroking his mind with a featherlight mental touch while making certain that the women remained sleeping.

  Ling Po woke slowly, cracked his eyes open slightly, stretched, and yawned. Then he saw Stoner standing over him and leaped out of bed as if he’d been scalded by boiling water. Naked, hairless, looking like a scrawny plucked chicken, he screamed for his bodyguards.

  “They can’t hear you,” Stoner said in flawless Mandarin. “No one can except me.”

  Ling Po turned and pounded on his bedside phone console, to no avail. Then he yanked open the night table drawer and pulled out an automatic pistol. Stoner had to suppress his urge to laugh at the sight of this skinny, bony, bald naked man struggling to cock the pistol and point it at him with wildly shaking hands.

  “The gun won’t fire,” Stoner said. Heedless, Ling Po strained to pull the trigger anyway until sweat broke out across his bald pate.

  Even with the considerable mental powers that the alien’s technology had given Stoner, it took nearly a quarter of an hour before Ling Po calmed down enough to speak with reasonable composure to this man who had abruptly materialized in his bedroom. While Stoner assured the chairman that he meant no harm, Ling Po finally gave up trying to fire the useless pistol and threw it onto the bed.

  “You recognize my face, don’t you?” Stoner asked calmly. “I’m the star traveler. I beamed my message to you and you completely ignored it.”

  Still totally naked, Ling Po plopped himself down on a corner of the rumpled bed.

  “You wouldn’t answer my message,” Stoner continued, sweetly reasonable, “so I decided to speak to you in person.”

  “You are the star devil,” Ling Po said almost sullenly. “I believe it.”

  Stoner smiled. “Good. Now we can talk man-to-man.”

  “What do you want? Why have you come here?”

  “You’re heading toward a nuclear war that could wipe out the human race.”

  Like most politicians, Ling Po’s first reaction was to deny Stoner’s accusation.

  “Let’s be truthful with one another,” Stoner said mildly, standing before the bed with his arms folded across his chest. “Nuclear war is coming unless we take the necessary steps to prevent it.”

  The Chinese leader’s pointed chin rose a notch. “The Americans are building nuclear weapons.”

  “So are the Iranians,” added Stoner. “And others will follow.”

  “You see? China cannot afford to stand defenseless against our enemies.”

  “Why are they your enemies?”

  Ling Po blinked at the question. He started to get to his feet but sagged back on the silk bedcovers again. “Because we have failed,” he said, his voice low and miserable.

  “Failed?”

  Stoner could sense that the man was struggling within himself. Gently, he encouraged Ling Po to reveal the full truth.

  “For many decades we have toiled with the problem of population growth. China set an example, we thought, by passing laws limiting family size. For a while the Europeans also restrained their growth. But only for a short while. The Muslims and Slavs—the poorest among them—have sent Europe’s birthrate rising once more.”

  “I see,” Stoner murmured.

  “Today the world’s population is soaring again. Twelve billion today. In a few years it will be twenty billion. The global economy is strained to the utmost, devouring the Earth’s natural resources at an unsustainable rate.”

  “And the resources you import from space haven’t helped,” Stoner said. “The power satellites, raw materials from the asteroids.”

  Ling Po shook his head. “They have only aggravated the problem. More resources lead to more population growth. Their religious leaders tell them it is sinful to control family size and their political leaders tell them we have access to limitless resources from space. But those resources are not limitless; nothing is limitless except the constant growth of population!”

  Stoner saw the anguish in the man’s face, heard it in his tone.

  “The other nations will not restrict their growth. Many of them say it is against their god’s wishes to do so. They demand more and more resources, constantly more and more. Soon there will be war over Canada’s freshwater, over Vietnam’s rice bowl, over the Saharan energy farms.”

  “Nuclear war,” Stoner muttered.

  “China can survive such a war,” Ling Po said. “China can suffer hundreds of millions of casualties and still survive.”

  “On a world blanketed with radioactive clouds?” Stoner asked grimly. “Can you survive a nuclear winter that destroys crops and turns the world dark for years?”

  “Underground,” Ling Po answered. “We are preparing mammoth underground cities, learning from the cities on the Moon such as Selene. We will stay underground as long as we have to. China will survive.”

  “And all those who don’t?” Stoner demanded. “The billions who are killed? What of them?”

  Ling Po had no answer.

  CHAPTER 15

  Aboard the starship, Cathy felt anticipation bubbling inside her as she and her brother prepared to visit Earth. She had dressed herself in a simple shirt and light tan slacks, with stylish boots. Her honey-colored hair was pulled back off her face in a shoulder-length ponytail that bobbed with every movement she made.

  They were in Cathy’s quarters. She had adjusted the starship’s décor so that the room appeared to be a comfortable lounge, with plush royal blue carpeting and deeply upholstered armchairs. Cathy had seen such a room in a magazine she had picked up on the ship’s scanner. But the windows in her room looked out not on an exurban home’s swimming pool but on the blue-swathed planet Earth, glowing against the star-flecked blackness of infinite space.

  “So where’re you going?” Rick asked. He was wearing light blue coveralls that looked like a military uniform, although completely unadorned by insignia or marks of rank.

  “Egypt,” Cathy said. “I’ve always wanted to see the royal tombs.”

  “Hunting for buried treasure?” he teased.

  “Hunting for human history,” Cathy replied. “What about you?”

  “The Khyber Pass.”

  “The Khyber Pass?”

  With a knowing grin, Rick explained, “Plenty of history there, too. Plus a contingent of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force.”

  “That’s why you’re in uniform!”

  “Yep.”

  “Blending in with natives,” Cathy said, laughing. Then, “It’s exciting, isn’t it? Going to Earth!”

  “Calm yourself,” Rick said. “It’s not like we haven’t been down there before.”

  “I know, but that was different. We were just sightseeing then, and Mom was with us.”

  With a sardonic grin, Rick said, “And what’re we doing now? Just because we’re going out on our own doesn’t mean we’re anything more than sightseers.”

  She shook her head, making the ponytail sway. “Dad wants us to see what’s really going on. We can help him.”

  “Help him do what?”

  “Save them!”
she answered. “Save the human race.”

  Rick huffed impatiently. Cathy had been his big sister when they’d lived on Earth. But when those thugs had invaded their home in Hawaii to kidnap their father Cathy had been cut down by the blast of an automatic rifle during the fight. Once she had been born again she became Rick’s younger sister; he always remembered that he was now the senior of the two—even though they were both more than a century old.

  “Save the human race?” he scoffed. “Why bother? I don’t think they deserve to be saved. I don’t think they want to be saved.”

  “Don’t say that!” Cathy objected. “They deserve to be helped. We can’t stand by and let them blow themselves away.”

  “I know that’s what Dad thinks,” said Rick. “But I wonder. They sure don’t behave as though they want to be saved.”

  Cathy started out of the room. Taking a superior tone, she told her brother, “Well, you’re going to have the chance of seeing them for yourself, firsthand.”

  “Big thrill.”

  They stepped out of the room and into what seemed like empty space. Hovering in the starlit dark, protected by a shell of energy, they looked out at the ponderous bulk of the planet.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Cathy murmured.

  Rick said nothing, but he nodded slowly. Earth hung before their eyes, a huge curving sphere half in sunlight. The daylit side of the planet glowed, oceans heartbreakingly blue, clouds purest white, continents wrinkled brown with swaths of green. On the night side they could see the lights of cities and highways interlinked like living creatures stretching tendrils out to one another.

  “Oh, Rick,” Cathy breathed, “we can’t let them kill themselves. We can’t let them destroy their world.”

  “It’s not up to us, Cath,” he countered. “We can’t stop them from wiping themselves out.”

  “We’ve got to try,” Cathy replied.

  Deeper inside the starship, Stoner and Jo watched their children prepare to leave.

  “Are you sure they’ll be all right?” Jo asked her husband.

  He slid an arm around her shoulders and pulled her to him. “Yes, of course.” Before she could respond, he added, “You can monitor them. Keep your eye on them. If they get into something they can’t handle you can pull them back here.”