Voyagers IV - The Return Page 22

“We’d better move fast. Stoner says they’re going to war. Nuclear war.”

  “Stoner,” said Holly. “The star man.”

  “He’s pretty weird.”

  “I like him. He sent you here to me.”

  “Just like that.” Tavalera snapped his fingers. “No ship, no time lag, just pop! and I’m here.”

  Holly sat up beside him, tucking the sheet demurely beneath her armpits. “D’you think you could get him to come here?”

  “Stoner? I dunno. He does pretty much as he damned pleases.”

  “He could help us.”

  “Help us do what?”

  She shrugged again. “Whatever. With the technology he’s got, he can change everything! Golly, if he can zip you from Earth to here in the blink of an eye, if he can let us communicate across the whole blinkin’ solar system with no time lag, what else d’you think he could do?”

  Tavalera thought about it for a silent moment. “Yeah, maybe you’re right.”

  “I mean, he could help us build new habitats and expand our population and mine comets for water and whatever else we need to do!”

  “Maybe.”

  Her fists clenching, Holly said, “All that technology. We could use it to make ourselves safe and rich.” Turning to Tavalera, Holly said, “I want that technology of his!”

  “What in the hell!” Melillo shouted.

  “He’s gone!” said the President.

  Angelique felt a thrill race along her veins. “You can’t hold him,” she said to the men. “You can’t coerce him. You can’t bully him into doing anything he doesn’t want to do.”

  The President sagged back in his high-backed chocolate brown leather chair. “I guess we can’t.”

  “Maybe not,” said Melillo, eyeing Angelique. “Or maybe we can.”

  “How?”

  “We’ve got her,” he said to the President. “Maybe we can pressure him through her.”

  Yanovan strode up from the fireplace across the room to within a few paces of the chief of staff.

  “Now wait a minute,” he said, looking alarmed. “You can’t use her that way. She’s from the Archbishop’s office, for god’s sake! You’ll have the New Morality down on us!”

  Melillo gave the media secretary a disgusted frown. “Don’t be a pansy, Larry. We’ve got to use the assets we have. And the Archbishop will agree with us, once we explain it to him.”

  The President said, “You don’t intend to hurt her, do you?”

  Angelique realized they were talking about her as if she weren’t in the room. As if she were an object, a possession, a chess piece in their game of power.

  Then Melillo smiled at her, and her blood ran cold. “Hurt her? Of course not. Stoner won’t let it come to that, will he, Sister?”

  Angelique found that she couldn’t answer. Couldn’t speak. But in her mind one thought was racing around and around. Stoner won’t let them hurt me. If he cares about me, he won’t let them hurt me. If he cares about me. If he cares about me.

  CHAPTER 15

  A marginally slimmer Archbishop Overmire sat glumly in a powerchair as it rolled down the long, dimly lit tunnel that connected the New Morality’s enormous hospital complex with the other buildings of the sprawling campus. Ahead of him walked half a dozen Secret Service agents in their dark, tight-stretched suits, together with an equal number of New Morality security police in almost exactly the same garb. Behind the Archbishop was another small phalanx of security men and women.

  On one side of the Archbishop’s chair strode Oscar Melillo, the President’s chief of staff. On Overmire’s other side was Sister Angelique. He thought the expression on her face might be how the early Christians appeared when they were being herded into the Colosseum to face hungry lions.

  As they strode along, Melillo leaned slightly toward the Archbishop and said softly, “I’m awfully sorry, Your Eminence, that we had to take you from your hospital room.”

  Overmire looked up at the round-faced chief of staff, thinking how glad he was to have a reason to leave the hospital and its grueling routine of exercise and Spartan meals. But he had no intention of allowing Melillo or anyone else to know that he was grateful for the excuse to return to his office. Power comes from holding others in debt to you, he told himself, not from letting them know they’ve done you a favor.

  “Think nothing of it, Mr. Melillo,” he said, smiling graciously and speaking loudly enough so that his voice echoed off the concrete walls of the tunnel. “When my Lord’s duty summons me, I respond without question.”

  Unconsciously touching the scar on his jaw with the tip of a finger, Melillo said, “If you can’t provide a secure place to hold Sister Angelique, the government has several facilities—”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Overmire interrupted. “The good sister is of our order, and we will provide for her.”

  “If it becomes necessary to . . . um, interrogate her . . . ?” Melillo let his question hang in midair.

  “We have the means to do that,” the Archbishop replied. Then he turned to his other side. “But you intend to be fully cooperative, don’t you, Sister?”

  “Of course, Your Eminence,” said Angelique without hesitation. But she was thinking, Stoner won’t let them harm me. He’ll protect me. And when he does, I’ll be able to get him to help me overcome this pompous fool of an Archbishop.

  Stoner expanded his awareness to search for Sister Angelique.

  She’s a distraction, his wife warned.

  Stoner almost smiled. Neither of them was embodied at the moment. Don’t tell me you’re jealous, he said.

  You haven’t looked into her mind very deeply, have you? Jo asked.

  Have you?

  Yes.

  Without her permission?

  I’m not as fastidious about these things as you are, Jo said. Besides, I didn’t have to go very deep to see that she’s infatuated with you.

  Stoner felt only mildly surprised. She’s infatuated with the idea that she can control Archbishop Overmire and through him gain control of the New Morality.

  It’s more than that, Jo countered. She’s obsessed with the idea that through you she can gain control of the whole world.

  That did astonish Stoner. He admitted, I thought Craig was the ambitious one.

  Sister Angelique is more ambitious, Jo said. But like most primate females, she’s been brought up to find an alpha male and use him to achieve her ambition. Be careful of her.

  Stoner replied, I will be. But at this moment it looks as if she needs my help.

  Jo said nothing, but he sensed her disapproval. And he wondered what else his wife was doing without telling him.

  Like a wave of adulation, Archbishop Overmire’s staff people rose from their desks as he rode in his powerchair past them toward his private office, with Melillo and Angelique trailing a few paces behind him. Overmire smiled and nodded graciously to his people. None of them said a word, but Angelique could feel the warmth of their veneration. She knew that if the Archbishop wished it they would drop to their knees and kiss his ring.

  Once ensconced behind his broad desk, Archbishop Overmire said crisply to his phone computer, “Get Bishop Craig in here immediately.”

  “Immediately, Your Eminence,” the phone replied.

  Without being invited, Melillo took one of the comfortable chairs in front of the desk. Angelique remained standing, clasping her hands in front of her. With a jolt, she realized she was standing as if she were manacled.

  Melillo said, “This man Stoner told the President that you’re going to withdraw the New Morality’s support for the nuclear weapons program.”

  Overmire’s face paled momentarily. “He . . . he showed me what a nuclear war would be like. It was terrible. Soul shattering.”

  “Yes,” Melillo said, his voice hard. “He showed the President what he claimed to be a planet that was blasted down to bedrock by a nuclear war.”

  “He has strange powers.”

  “He knows s
ome good tricks.”

  Overmire stared at the President’s chief of staff. “You don’t believe he’s telling us the truth?”

  “The surest way for us to have a nuclear war is for us to give up our weapons and leave ourselves naked to our enemies,” Melillo said. Angelique realized he had avoided answering the Archbishop’s question.

  Looking troubled, the Archbishop said, “I’ve prayed over this matter while in hospital. I think . . .” He hesitated, drew in a breath, then plunged, “I think he might be right. Nuclear war is too terrible to contemplate.”

  “Sure it is,” Melillo said. “He’s counting on that. He wants us disarmed.”

  Angelique realized that this round-faced man with the scarred jawline was the actual power in the White House. The President is just a figurehead, she thought, a pretty personality that can win elections. Melillo’s the real strength in his administration.

  She spoke up. “Stoner’s trying to get the others to disarm, too. The Iranians. The Chinese.”

  Melillo’s dark brown eyes focused on her. Angelique stared back at him, thinking that the last thing she wanted was to let this man believe she was afraid of him.

  At last Melillo said, “All right, suppose he really is a visitor from the stars. An extraterrestrial. An alien dressed up in human form.”

  “He says he’s human, from Earth,” Angelique countered.

  “He says a lot of things. Did it ever occur to you that he wants us disarmed so that his alien race can take over our planet? Did it ever occur to you that our nukes are the only things standing between us and invasion by extraterrestrials?”

  “I don’t believe that!” Angelique blurted.

  Melillo turned to the Archbishop, who was looking at him intently.

  “At the very least,” Melillo continued, “this Stoner character wants to make big changes in the way we live. Big changes. The nukes are just his first step, I guarantee. Next thing you know he’ll want to dismantle the New Morality and take over the government.”

  Maybe he should, Angelique thought. But she stopped herself from saying it aloud.

  The Archbishop asked, “Do you actually think he wants to make himself our ruler?”

  “Why not? Why else is he here?”

  “The Antichrist,” Overmire whispered.

  “Could be,” said Melillo.

  Angelique objected, “No, he couldn’t—”

  But the two men paid her no attention. “We’ve got to stop him,” Archbishop Overmire said with a determination Angelique hadn’t heard from him until now.

  Melillo turned to Angelique. “And you’re going to be the bait for our trap.”

  She looked pleadingly to the Archbishop, but Overmire spread his hands and said piously, “God’s will be done.”

  Angelique suddenly realized she was powerless. And frightened.

  “But what about the nuclear weapons?” the Archbishop asked.

  Melillo said, “There’s an old dictum: use ’em or lose ’em.”

  “We should attack our enemies?”

  “Before they hit us,” Melillo answered.

  “Only their nuclear facilities,” said the Archbishop. “I won’t countenance more casualties than absolutely necessary.”

  “Of course. I agree fully.”

  “Good.” The Archbishop nodded at Melillo, dismissing him.

  Melillo nodded back and grinned at the Archbishop. They understood each other, Angelique saw. They agree on what they want to do.

  As the President’s chief of staff went to the door to leave the office, the Archbishop’s phone announced, “Bishop Craig is here, Your Eminence.”

  “Send him in,” said the Archbishop heartily.

  Craig brushed past Melillo in the doorway and came straight up to the Archbishop’s desk. For the first time Angelique saw how small the bishop looked, how unimportant.

  “It’s good to see you out of the hospital, Your Eminence,” he said with a toothy smile pasted onto his dark face.

  “Yes,” said Overmire coldly. “While in hospital I watched the security vids of you two discussing my future.”

  Craig shot a glance at Angelique. She felt her insides go hollow. He knows! she thought. And the bishop thought his office was safe.

  “Your Eminence,” Craig answered, “please allow me to explain—”

  “No explanation is necessary, my good man,” said the Archbishop almost jovially. “Ambition is a worthy urge. The good Lord knows I’ve had enough of it in my own soul.”

  Craig sank into one of the chairs before the desk. “I never intended to—”

  “I understand fully,” the Archbishop said. “In fact, I intend to reward your ambition. I am promoting you to chief chaplain of all our military missions overseas. Your new headquarters will be in Jakarta, Indonesia.”

  Craig’s mouth dropped open.

  “You will assume your new position immediately, Bishop. I hope you enjoy the climate in Indonesia. Good-bye. And God be with you.”

  “But . . . but . . .”

  “Good-bye,” Overmire said with steel in his voice.

  Craig pushed himself up from the chair and stumbled toward the door, but not before he shot a black look at Angelique.

  She stood there, stunned, and watched him leave.

  “I’m afraid he thinks you’ve schemed against him, Sister,” the Archbishop said, smiling as if he was enjoying the discord. “The reality is quite different, though, isn’t it?”

  Angelique had trouble finding her voice. When she did, it came out like a frightened little girl’s. “Your Eminence, I only wanted—”

  “You wanted to move me aside and control the New Morality through Bishop Craig, I understand,” said the Archbishop. Then his face and his tone hardened. “But that’s not going to happen. I’m not as old and sick as you would like to believe, Sister. I’ve dealt with ambitious pipsqueaks like Craig before. And with Delilahs such as you, too.”

  BOOK IV

  FRANKLIN HAVERFORD OVERMIRE

  When the existence of the Church is threatened, she is released from the commandments of morality. With unity as the end, the use of every means is sanctified, even cunning, treachery, violence, simony, prison, death. For all order is for the sake of the community, and the individual must be sacrificed to the common good.

  Dietrich of Nieheim,

  Bishop of Verden,

  A.D. 1411

  CHAPTER 1

  Archbishop Overmire spent the evening in prayer, as he often did. He felt very close to God, and was absolutely certain that God had chosen him to lead the people to His grace.

  He felt completely sure about Bishop Craig. Ambition was good only up to a point. Besides, Craig didn’t have the nerve or the intelligence to head the New Morality. None of them did. Why, the man even thought that nuclear holocaust was God’s chosen way of bringing this world to its end. Nonsense! God would have informed me, the Archbishop told himself as he knelt before the crucifix in his private chapel. God would have sent me a sign, an unmistakable sign.

  Stoner. The star man. Could he be God’s sign? No, the Archbishop answered himself. He himself insists that he’s only a man. But so did our Lord and Savior, at first. Has Stoner offered any evidence of his origin? No. Has he performed any miracles? Made the blind see? Cured the lame? Healed the sick? No, nothing like that. All he seems concerned with is the threat of nuclear war.

  But he does apparently have control of a technology that’s beyond anything our scientists can understand. That is something we must have. We must make certain that it doesn’t fall into the hands of the Chinese or those damnable Muslim jihadists.

  Stoner claims he’s American by birth, yet he shows no loyalty to the United States. Nor to Christianity, for that matter. Melillo fears he’s an alien, the leader of an extraterrestrial invasion. I can’t believe that. God would have warned me. He would have allowed our scientists to find the extraterrestrials long before this.

  No, Stoner is exactly what he says he is: a
human being with access to extraordinary technology. Technology that we must have. Technology that mustn’t fall into the wrong hands.

  Overmire bowed his head and asked God to show him what to do. Lead me into the path of righteousness, he prayed. Show me Thy way, O Lord.

  That young woman. Sister Angelique. She is ambitious, too. Dangerously so. She has the intelligence and ruthlessness to be a threat. She has the evil desire to supplant me as head of God’s New Morality. A woman, in charge of God’s chosen order! Nonsense.

  And, he thought, she’s been in contact with Stoner. We’ll have to find out everything she knows about him. We’ll have to pull every scrap of information she has out of her mind, whether she cooperates or not. Everything she knows, even her deepest subconscious thoughts. That’s where Satan lodges his blackest evils.

  We can get to Stoner through her, the Archbishop thought. A tendril of doubt wormed its way to his consciousness: What if he has no concern about her? What if he doesn’t care what we do to her? We’d be putting her through all that for nothing.

  Manfully the Archbishop pushed the doubt out of his mind. We’ll do what we must do. If she is harmed it will be Stoner’s fault for not aiding her, not ours. God’s plan for her will be holy martyrdom.

  God’s will be done.

  CHAPTER 2

  Stoner felt his contact with Sister Angelique fading away. It wasn’t broken completely, but the energy level had suddenly become quite faint.

  Her mind’s in a turmoil, he realized. Something’s interfering with her mental patterns.

  Or someone, Jo suggested.

  Yes, Stoner realized. It’s deliberate. They’ve moved her to a heavily shielded location and they’re probing her mind with powerful electrical pulses.

  You mean they’re torturing her, said his wife.

  Raoul Tavalera was watching the obvious signs of growing frustration on Holly Lane’s face. Normally Holly was as cheerful as a sparrow, but now her bright brown eyes looked troubled, angry, and narrow lines of irritation creased the space between her brows.

  Tavalera was walking with Holly along one of the tree-lined bricked paths that curved up the gentle slope of the hills above the village in which Goddard’s administrative offices were based. It was a bright sunny afternoon, as every afternoon was inside the massive habitat. Sunshine streamed in through the long solar windows that stretched the length of the giant cylinder. It never rains here, Tavalera remembered. The grounds are watered from below, through drip hoses threaded beneath the greenery. Never a cloud in the sky, although Holly’s face looked like a thunderstorm brewing up.