Voyagers IV - The Return Page 20

  “Knock knock,” Stoner repeated gravely. “Got it.”

  “Angelique’s working on the White House,” Tavalera said. “She’s running the Archbishop’s office while he’s in the hospital.”

  Stoner nodded. Then he said, “Would you like to get out of this apartment for a while?”

  “Sure!”

  “Then let’s go.”

  Leaving the breakfast dishes on the kitchenette’s slim shelf of a table, Tavalera followed Stoner to the apartment’s front door.

  “It’s locked,” he said.

  “Yes,” Stoner replied. “I know.” He turned the knob and the door opened easily.

  They went down in the elevator to the lobby, where a uniformed security guard eyed them suspiciously. He glanced down at his desktop screen, then pointed at Stoner.

  “Who’re you?”

  “I’m a friend of Mr. Tavalera’s,” Stoner replied genially.

  Glancing at his screen again, the guard muttered, “He’s not allowed to leave the building without a specific order from Bishop Craig’s office.”

  “I know,” Stoner said. “It’s all right.”

  The guard blinked several times. Stoner tugged gently on Tavalera’s arm and the two of them walked past him, through the building’s glass double doors, and out into the morning, leaving the guard frowning with confusion in the lobby.

  It was raining: a fine misty drizzle. Tavalera saw people scuttling along the street in plastic rain parkas or gripping umbrellas. But he wasn’t getting wet. Puzzled, he looked to Stoner and saw that the raindrops were bouncing off an invisible shield that surrounded him. And me, too, Tavalera realized.

  “The taxi stand is on the next corner,” Stoner said, heading that way.

  Following him, Tavalera asked, “Where’re we goin’?”

  “I thought you might like to visit your friends on the Goddard habitat.”

  Tavalera started to say, “But that’s—” Then he caught himself.

  “I think it’d be best if you were safely away from Angelique and her cohorts,” Stoner said. “At least for a little while.”

  They reached the line of automated taxis. Stoner went to the first one and opened the door. He ducked in and Tavalera slid in beside him.

  “Destination please,” said the synthesized voice of the taxi’s computer.

  “Hartsfield Aerospaceport,” said Stoner.

  “We gonna take a rocket?” Tavalera asked, feeling disappointed.

  “No, but when the police check this cab’s log it’ll show that we went to the aerospaceport.”

  They drove in silence through the morning drizzle, out of the New Morality complex and up onto the automated highway that led to the aerospaceport.

  Stoner turned to Tavalera and said with a smile, “When you get there, remember to say ‘knock knock.’ ”

  CHAPTER 10

  And suddenly Tavalera was standing on one of the winding brick walkways that threaded through the greenery of Goddard’s landscaped interior.

  He was on a grass-covered knoll, high enough so that he had a clear view of the habitat’s broad interior. Goddard was a massive cylinder, twenty kilometers long and four in diameter, rotating slowly to produce a feeling of Earth-normal gravity on its landscaped inner surface. Stretching out in all directions around Tavalera was the green countryside, shining in the warm sunlight streaming in through the long, bright windows that ran in strips along the length of the cylinder.

  Tavalera saw gently rolling grassy hills, clumps of trees, little meandering streams spreading out into the hazy distance. Bushes thick with vivid red hibiscus and pale lavender oleanders lined both sides of the curving path that led downhill to a group of low buildings, gleaming white in the sunlight, their roofs made of red tiles. The village overlooked a shimmering blue lake. Farther in the distance Tavalera made out the checkered square fields of recently plowed farmland, with more clusters of white buildings beyond them.

  There was no horizon. Instead, the land simply curved up and up, hills and grass and trees and more little villages dotting the scenery with their paved roads and sparkling streams, up and up on both sides until he was craning his neck looking straight overhead at still more of the tenderly, lovingly cultivated greenery.

  Tears misted his eyes. I’m home, he said to himself, with a rush of gratitude and joy. I thought Earth was my home, but I was wrong. This is home. I’m back home at last.

  He started walking down the curving pathway toward the village. Toward Holly.

  Stoner saw all that Tavalera’s eyes beheld. He felt the rush of emotions that surged through the younger man. And within himself Stoner felt the pangs of guilt.

  His wife spoke to him in his mind.

  Did you have to do that? Jo asked him. He sensed that she wasn’t angry with him, not even displeased, so much as disappointed, unconvinced that her husband’s action was truly necessary.

  Yes, he replied. I’m pretty sure that I did.

  Pretty sure? Jo demanded. You’re putting him through a lot.

  Stoner shrugged mentally. I really don’t know what else I can do.

  You’re testing him.

  That’s right.

  Stoner could sense Jo shaking her head. I just hope he doesn’t end up hating you when he finds out what you’re doing.

  Sister Angelique was in Archbishop Overmire’s office, sitting at his broad desk of teak and brushed chrome. And learning that Shakespeare was right: uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

  “What do you mean he disappeared?” she said to the Archbishop’s chief of security.

  The image on her wall screen showed a man of middle years, his face taut and tanned, his sandy brown hair cropped short. He wore a suede jacket that fitted his wide shoulders perfectly, like a military uniform. He looked distinctly uneasy.

  “We’re checking into it, Sister.”

  Feeling slightly overwhelmed in the Archbishop’s massive padded chair, Angelique said, “But he can’t simply disappear. That’s—” She caught herself as she realized that with Stoner virtually nothing was impossible.

  “The surveillance cameras show him eating breakfast. He looks up all of a sudden and—”

  “Show me the imagery,” Angelique commanded impatiently.

  The security chief nodded and the wall screen next to his image brightened to show Tavalera at breakfast. He suddenly looked up, nearly dropped his spoon, then got to his feet.

  “There’s no sound,” she said.

  “I know. We’re working on that. Some sort of a glitch.”

  No, she replied silently. Not a glitch. The star man. Stoner.

  She watched Tavalera go to the front door, which opened by itself, and then leave the locked apartment. Cameras picked him up in the elevator and then the lobby cameras showed him walking right past the uniformed guard there and out into the gray, drizzly morning.

  “He took a taxi to Hartsfield,” the security chief said. “That’s where we lost him.”

  “What do you mean you lost him?”

  Looking even more uncomfortable, the security chief said, “The taxi’s camera shows him getting in. Then the imagery blurs out. When the cab stops at Hartsfield he isn’t in it.”

  “I see,” said Angelique. She almost laughed at the irony of it. I do not see, she told herself. None of us can see anything that Stoner doesn’t want us to see.

  “Somebody must have tampered with the cameras,” the security chief was saying. Angelique barely heard him. “We’re checking into it. There must be a saboteur in the loop, somewhere. We’ll find him.”

  It took an effort for her to focus her attention back on the man.

  “We’ll turn that building upside down,” the security chief was promising. “We’ll find whoever is responsible for this and when we do I’ll personally—”

  “You’ll do nothing,” Angelique said. “Drop your investigation. You’re dealing with matters that are much too sensitive for your office.”

  The security c
hief’s face reddened. “But if somebody’s tampering with our surveillance systems . . .”

  “The Archbishop will personally deal with this,” Angelique said. “It’s not your responsibility and no one will hold you to blame.”

  The man looked unconvinced. “I’ll have the technicians check out those cameras.”

  Angelique nodded, thinking, They won’t find anything wrong with them.

  She cut the connection and leaned back in the overly large chair. Stoner, she said to herself. I barely thought about using Tavalera to control him and he makes Raoul disappear. He knows what I’m thinking! Like a god, he can see into my soul.

  “It’s a gift,” said Keith Stoner, standing off to one side of the Archbishop’s desk.

  RICK

  “And who the bloody hell are you?”

  Rick Stoner smiled easily at the colonel, much as his father would have. “I’m an observer,” he said.

  The colonel wore the pale blue uniform of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force, with a Union Jack shoulder patch showing that he was from the United Kingdom.

  His thick red hair and bristling moustache convinced Rick that he was Scottish. Rick had chosen to wear a similar uniform, but without any insignia of rank or indication of nationality.

  “An observer?” the colonel demanded, scowling with puzzled anger. “I didna receive any notice of an observer comin’ here. And how did you get past the bloody guards?”

  They were almost touching noses in the middle of the Peacekeepers’ command center, a metal igloo crammed with electronics consoles that had been deposited by cargo helicopter on this barren mountaintop in the wild Hindu Kush mountains of northeastern Afghanistan, not far from the Khyber Pass, where armies had fought for dominance since long before the time of Alexander the Great.

  The command center felt uncomfortably warm, almost stifling, from the humming heat of the electronics equipment and the press of human bodies crowded together. Remote operator consoles were ringed around the perimeter of the circular chamber, each manned by a blue-uniformed man or woman in control of a robotic fighting machine. Some of the operators glanced over their shoulders at their colonel’s loud confrontation with the stranger. Most stayed bent over their screens, earphones clipped over their hair, pin microphones at their lips.

  “It’s perfectly all right,” Rick said amiably. “I’m here to observe how your units conduct themselves.”

  The colonel’s irritated expression gradually eased into a sort of confused befuddlement. “Observer, eh?” he muttered darkly. “Ye’d think those politicians up in headquarters would know enough to send me notice aforehand. You might’ve gotten yerself shot by the guards.”

  Rick, who had projected himself directly into the middle of the field command center, smiled gently. “I’m only here to see how your brigade is dealing with the terrorists.”

  The colonel h’mmphed. “Terrorists? They’re nothing better than drug smugglers. Poppies. Opium. Our orders are to cut off their route through the Pass and into India.”

  Nodding, Rick asked, “Do you conduct raids on their manufacturing operations?”

  “When we’re allowed to,” the colonel answered. “We get coordinates from the recon satellites, but before we can go out after ’em, we have to get permission from headquarters. Most times they’ve folded up shop and moved elsewhere by the time we get there.”

  For the rest of the morning the colonel showed Rick every aspect of his command center, from the communications consoles that linked with surveillance satellites to the remote-control units for the infantry robots that did whatever actual fighting that needed to be done.

  Warming to his task of host, the colonel even took Rick outside the dome of the command center, past the rifle-carrying guards that Rick had casually bypassed, to a larger metal prefabricated structure that housed the brigade’s maintenance and repair center.

  “Bloody mechanical beasties spend more time in here than out in th’ field,” the colonel grumbled as they entered the clanging, rumbling repair shop. Laser welders flashed; men and women in coveralls stained by machine oil and perspiration seemed to be scurrying everywhere.

  The colonel led Rick to one of the robotic soldiers, a blocky pile of metal that towered over them, nearly three meters tall. It stood on four legs that ended in round paw-like feet.

  “Can these machines maneuver in the mountains out there?” he asked.

  “Ay, and they can fight damned well, too. Studded with weapons, they are, from antipersonnel lasers to rocket-propelled grenades.”

  With that, he walked to a tool bench and picked up a palm-sized controller. One click and half a dozen weapons sprang out from recesses in the robot’s bulky body. Rick instinctively flinched back a step.

  The colonel laughed. “Do na be afraid, lad. It’s not loaded nor powered up.”

  Laughing uneasily back at him, Rick said, “It’s impressive, even unloaded.”

  “Ay,” said the colonel. Then his expression sobered. “Too bad we’re not allowed to use ’em properly.”

  “Not allowed? What do you mean?”

  The colonel tugged at his fierce red moustache, then answered, “We should be goin’ into the hills and diggin’ out these drug plantations. Burn ’em out. The science boffins claim they have sprays that’ll make the poppies harmless. Something genetic that’ll stop the plants from producing the opium chemicals.”

  Surprised by the news, Rick asked, “So why don’t you do that? You could end the drug trade that way.”

  “Orders from higher up,” the colonel said darkly. “The big brass doesn’t want to end the drug trade. Too much money involved, if you ask me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “End the war and ye’d have to disband the troops. Better to keep things simmerin’ along, long as our casualties stay low. That way there’s always a need for th’ Peacekeepers.”

  Rick felt shocked. “But that’s . . . it’s wrong.”

  “Ay,” said the colonel. Then, his nose wrinkling with disgust, he added, “Besides, there’s always bribery, y’know.”

  CHAPTER 11

  The President of the United States was giving an informal address to a few hundred corporate executives assembled on the South Lawn of the White House’s beautifully tended grounds. The event was the highlight of the annual Christian Business Executives meeting, which had filled four of downtown Washington’s biggest and grandest hotels with businessmen and -women from all across the nation. This special little luncheon was only for the topmost members of the organization, however, the crème de la crème, the true movers and shakers of American business.

  “. . . and although the international situation is still quite serious,” the President was saying from the little podium that had been set up at the head of the rows of tables, “I can say with confidence that we are clearly winning the conflicts in Latin America and Indonesia. A few more years of effort and sacrifice should see the terrorist elements driven out of those war-torn areas for good.”

  The assembled executives rose as one organism and applauded lustily. The President smiled and nodded to the few he knew personally, up in the front row. He recognized the heads of three aerospace corporations, two agribusiness combines, and a scattering of electrical utility corporations. All solid supporters of his re-election campaign.

  The President stepped back from the podium, with its blast-proof glassteel shields. Secret Service guards and U.S. Marines with laser handguns beneath their colorful dress uniforms formed a phalanx around him as the executives jostled one another good-naturedly to line up for photo opportunities with the President.

  After a seemingly endless round of posing and handshaking, the President at last ducked back inside the cool and quietly busy West Wing corridor that led to the familiar security of his Oval Office.

  As he stepped into the lavatory to strip off his jacket and bulletproof vest and change into a fresh shirt, the President called out, “They really liked what I had to say, didn
’t they?”

  “Of course they did,” said the head of his speechwriting team. “You delivered it magnificently.”

  Striding to his old-fashioned dark mahogany desk as he pulled on a dark blue jacket, the President cast a mock frown at his chaplain. “Reverend, I thought we agreed that your blessing wouldn’t be longer than my speech.”

  The black-garbed minister stiffened with surprise. “But it wasn’t, Mr. President!”

  Chuckling at him, the President said, “Almost, Reverend. Almost.”

  All the others in the Oval Office laughed politely. Even the chaplain allowed himself to chuckle softly.

  “All right,” the President said. “What’s next?”

  His appointments secretary answered, “The Canadian ambassador.”

  The news secretary added, “Camera crews, no direct quotes.”

  Nodding, the President asked, “Why’m I seeing the Canadian ambassador?”

  “About the water deal,” said his chief of staff impatiently. With a hard, demanding expression on his face he added, “And it wouldn’t hurt if you let him understand that our troops will be detaching from Indonesia before the year is out.”

  The President looked puzzled. “What’s that got to do with Canada?”

  “The army will be freed up to move north if we don’t get the concessions we need.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Right.”

  “And you could bring up the matter of migrant workers,” the chief of staff added. “There’s at least half a million American citizens working in the Canadian wheat belt and we want them treated properly, not like a bunch of Okies.”

  “Okies?”

  “Migrant workers.”

  “But that’s what they are, aren’t they?”

  “That’s not the point,” the chief of staff said, his voice edgy with impatience. “We want our people treated with respect.”

  “And they should be free to set up their own churches,” the chaplain said.

  “On Canadian soil?”

  “God does not recognize national boundaries,” the chaplain replied loftily.

  “H’m. Okay.”

  The appointments secretary cleared her throat to get everyone’s attention, then announced, “I’ve had to slip in a meeting with Archbishop Overmire at four o’clock.”