Voyagers IV - The Return Read online

  “But this is an official request from the government of the Goddard habitat,” she was saying—almost yelling—into the phone clipped to her ear. “We’ll provide the transportation. All we need is clearance from you to—”

  She stopped and listened to the voice in her phone, her face fuming, her fists planted belligerently on her hips.

  “She’s a sixty-eight-year-old woman,” Holly shouted. “She’s retired. Why in the name of justice and mercy can’t she get a transportation permit? It’s not gonna cost you anything. We’ll provide—”

  She listened for another few moments, steaming, then yanked the phone from her ear. For a moment Tavalera thought she was going to throw it into the lake that shimmered off to the left of the path they were on.

  “They won’t do it!” she snapped. “They just will not allow your mother to leave! No reason; they just say it can’t be done.”

  Tavalera realized he had expected such a response to his request.

  “They looked up my record and saw that I’m missing,” he said. “That bothers them. They want me to be where they put me.”

  “Bunch of nitpicking peabrains,” Holly muttered.

  “I guess I can’t blame ’em,” he said, jamming his hands into his pockets as he resumed walking slowly up the path.

  “Can’t blame them?” Holly was outraged.

  Hunching his shoulders against her wrath, he explained, “Well, look, they’re supposed to have me in a secure facility in Atlanta, working with the New Morality people on Stoner. But they can’t find me. Now you call up and ask them to let my mom immigrate here to Goddard. Must’ve started alarm bells ringing on all their computers.”

  Holly scowled up at him. “My god, what is it back there, a police state?”

  “Kinda. They’re very nice about it. They let you do pretty much what you want—as long as you don’t stray outside the lines.”

  Holly shook her head.

  “I mean, they told everybody to stay indoors from sundown to sunrise for a week at a stretch,” Tavalera tried to explain. “And everybody did! They did what they were told, nice as pie. Just about all of ’em. They’ve been trained to be good, obedient citizens.”

  “Lordy lord,” Holly grumbled. “I thought things were bad here when they tried to regiment us. That’s why I ran for office, y’know.”

  “I remember,” Tavalera said. “I was here when you did. And you won.”

  She put on a smile as she walked beside him. “Well, look, we’ll figure out something. I’ll go higher in their chain of command. We’ll get your mother out here sooner or later.”

  “Yeah,” Tavalera said glumly. “I know.” But he was thinking, They’re not going to let Mom go. As long as they’ve got her, they know I’ll have to go back to her. They’re holding her as a hostage until they get me back in their hands.

  Sister Angelique wasn’t in pain. She was in agony.

  Archbishop Overmire had called a security team to take her to what he called an interview with one of the New Morality’s psychologists. Angelique had heard, more than once, about dissidents or subversives who had been sent to psychologists for readjusting their mental attitudes.

  They brought her to a bare little office in a subbasement of the hospital, where a kindly looking middle-aged woman in a white coat and her two younger assistants, both of them women, were waiting for Angelique. The two assistants were smiling, as if trying to reassure her. Their teeth were white and gleamingly perfect.

  The middle-aged woman identified herself as a clinical psychologist.

  “I don’t understand why I need to talk to a psychologist,” Angelique said, glancing around at the sterile metal furniture and the rows of stark white cabinets lining one wall of the little room. Gray metal boxes of electronics equipment sat on top of them. The room had an antiseptic odor to it, a strange muffled feeling to the air, as if the walls were thickly insulated with soundproofing.

  “We need to probe your memory,” the psychologist said briskly. Her blond hair was pulled back into a smooth knot; her ice blue eyes regarded Angelique without a trace of warmth in them. “Including your unconscious memories,” she added.

  The psychologist gestured to a metal chair in the center of the small chamber and Angelique hesitantly sat down on it. The two young assistants, both also blond but much leaner than the psychologist, moved behind Angelique, where she couldn’t see them unless she turned around in the chair.

  Before she could turn, they came up on either side of her and strapped her wrists to the cold metal arms of the chair.

  “Don’t be alarmed,” said the psychologist. “The restraints are for your own protection. Sometimes the electrical stimuli cause the patient to spasm violently.” She smiled, and Angelique thought of a snake. “We wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself, would we?”

  The assistants knelt on the bare concrete floor and fastened another pair of cuffs to Angelique’s ankles.

  Then the psychologist turned to the wall phone and said simply, “We’re ready here.” The phone’s minuscule screen remained blank, but a voice answered, “Very well.”

  While the psychologist began taking various metal implements from the cabinets and arranging them carefully on a tray, Angelique started to recite the Twenty-third Psalm to herself, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not . . .”

  Then she heard the door behind her open and footsteps click across the bare floor.

  Dr. Gerald Mayfair stepped before her, a white lab coat over his crisply starched pale blue shirt and carefully knotted lavender tie. His light brown eyes seemed to Angelique to be glittering at her. She felt like a very small mouse trapped by a very large cat.

  “You may feel some discomfort,” Mayfair said. Then he turned to the psychologist and nodded. “Proceed.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Stoner felt the jolt of Angelique’s agony.

  “They’re torturing her!”

  He said it aloud, coalescing his energy pattern into his physical body. Jo appeared beside him, looking equally grim.

  “It’s a trap,” she said. “She’s the bait and you’re the prey.”

  Nodding, Stoner said, “I know, but I can’t let her suffer like that.”

  His wife smiled at him. “Of course you can’t.”

  Dimly Angelique heard the psychologist say, “She’s fainted again.”

  “Or she’s faking,” Mayfair’s cold voice replied. “The readouts don’t look like unconsciousness to me.”

  Angelique sat strapped into the metal chair, her head slumped down on her breast, her entire body thrumming with the pain of the electrical shocks. They kept asking about Stoner, and she had told them all she knew, twice, three times. She would tell them anything, everything, if they would only stop the pain. She would make up tales for them, say anything they wanted to hear, if they would only stop the pain.

  “Turn up the voltage,” Mayfair said.

  The psychologist hesitated. “That could do permanent damage.”

  “What of it? If she comes out of this a vegetable we can use her on clinical trials.”

  Angelique felt a hand grip her shoulder gently. And the pain eased away like a wave gently washing up on a beach. She opened her eyes, lifted her head.

  And saw Mayfair and the psychologist standing rooted to the floor, their mouths agape, their eyes round and staring.

  “You want to turn up the voltage?” Stoner’s voice! She twisted around in the chair and saw that yes, it was Keith Stoner grasping her shoulder, his eyes focused hard on Mayfair, his bearded face set in a fierce scowl.

  “You’re a sadist, aren’t you?” Stoner said to Mayfair, his voice low, flat, hard.

  “How did you . . .?”

  “Turn up the voltage,” Stoner hissed.

  Mayfair twitched and shuddered; then his arms flailed out and his legs spasmed. Screaming, he jibbered his way across the little chamber, banging into the cabinets, howling like a beast in pain until he collapsed onto the concrete floor, twitching an
d blubbering.

  The psychologist cringed away from Stoner, who took his hand from Angelique’s shoulder and advanced toward her.

  “Shall I increase the voltage for you, too?” he growled.

  “No! Please! I was only doing what he told me to.”

  “Nuremberg,” Stoner muttered. “They were only following orders, too.”

  The two young assistants huddled in the corner, clutching at each other, sobbing with terror.

  “Unstrap her,” Stoner ordered. They jumped to obey.

  Turning back to Angelique, Stoner asked, “Can you stand up? Can you walk?”

  “I . . . don’t know,” Angelique answered. Her legs felt totally strengthless, as if their muscles had turned to slush.

  Stoner reached out his hand to her. She grasped it and felt power surging along her nerves. She got to her feet; she felt shaky for a moment; then the weakness ebbed away.

  “Come on,” Stoner said. “We’re getting out of here.” As he reached the door he looked over his shoulder and commanded the three cowering women, “Stay here. Don’t make me hurt you the way you’ve hurt this prisoner of yours.”

  Then he looked down at Mayfair, still twitching uncontrollably on the concrete floor, barely conscious. “Learn well,” Stoner muttered.

  There were two uniformed security guards in the corridor, lounging by a small desk where a woman in a nurse’s white uniform was chatting with them. They looked up.

  “It’s all right,” Stoner said to them. “No need to accompany us.”

  They looked at each other but made no move to hinder Stoner and Angelique.

  As he reached the elevator doors at the end of the short corridor, Stoner turned back toward them. “You might want to check on Dr. Mayfair and his assistants,” he said over his shoulder. Then the elevator doors slid open and the two of them stepped in. Stoner leaned on the button marked: LOBBY LEVEL.

  When the elevator doors slid open again he saw that they were a long way from the lobby. A long, wide corridor stretched before them, with nurses and orderlies in white and pale green uniforms striding purposefully in both directions, some of them guiding powerchairs in which patients sat huddled in gray blankets while doctors wearing white smocks over their street clothes stepped briskly past them, many doctors talking to the empty air. Clip-on phones, Stoner realized. They’re allowed to use phones.

  Stoner glanced at a small wall screen, which immediately lit up and showed a map. The hospital’s lobby was marked in bright red.

  “Did you turn that on?” Angelique asked, her voice slightly breathless.

  Stoner nodded. “This way,” he said, taking her gently by the elbow.

  There were security checkpoints spaced along the corridor at every few cross hallways, small desks with uniformed guards sitting behind them, either looking bored or chatting with hospital personnel.

  “You there!” called the guard at the first checkpoint they came to. “Where’s your badge? And I need to see authorization papers for both of you.”

  Before the young man was halfway out of his chair Stoner went to the desk and said softly, “We’re here by mistake. We’re leaving now, so please don’t make a fuss.”

  The guard frowned at them as he stood up. He was a lanky youngster, a few centimeters taller than Stoner.

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

  The guard looked down at his desktop screen. It broke into electronic hash.

  “Dandrification,” he muttered. “The computer’s crashed again.”

  “Does that happen often?” Stoner asked solicitously.

  “Now and then,” the guard said, sinking back into his chair again.

  “It’ll clear up in a few moments,” said Stoner.

  “I guess.”

  Stoner took Angelique’s arm again and they headed past the checkpoint and the addled security guard.

  Angelique stared up at Stoner in wonder.

  They passed four security checkpoints in much the same way as they threaded through the hospital’s busy maze of corridors. At the fifth one Stoner noticed a patient in a powerchair trundling along behind them. He slowed their pace to let the chair pass them. A very old woman sat in it, little more than wrinkled skin and brittle bones, her wispy dead-white hair floating like a halo.

  Instead of passing them, she stopped the chair.

  “Where’re you heading?” she asked. Her voice was a brittle rasp; it reminded Angelique of a kitchen blender crushing ice cubes.

  “We’re leaving,” Stoner said. And he resumed walking along the corridor.

  Angelique started off beside him, and the old woman nudged the powerchair’s control stud to keep up with them. Angelique saw that the woman clutched an oversized paper book to her emaciated bosom.

  “Take me with you!” she begged in a scratchy whisper.

  Before Angelique could reply, the woman went on, “I want to get out of here, too. They just stuck me in here to die. I want to get out!”

  Stoner looked down at her sternly.

  “We can’t,” Angelique began to say. “We’re only—”

  But then Stoner’s expression eased. Smiling, he said, “Come with us, then. But don’t say a word to anyone. Let me do the talking.”

  CHAPTER 4

  “He just walked out of the hospital with her?” Archbishop Overmire felt more astonished than angry.

  His security chief stood uneasily before the Archbishop’s broad desk. “Apparently so, Your Eminence. He took Sister Angelique and walked past every checkpoint in the hospital. The guards in the front lobby say they think the two of them got into a taxi, with another patient in a wheelchair. We’re looking into the cab company’s files.”

  “Another patient?” Overmire demanded. “Who?”

  The security chief pulled a phone from the breast pocket of his uniform and worked its keyboard with a thumb. “Uh . . . her name is Yolanda Vasquez. Terminal patient. Age a hundred and seven.”

  “A hundred and seven? What’s her relationship to Sister Angelique? Or Stoner? Where does she fit into this?”

  Licking his lips, the security chief said, “We’re looking into it, Your Eminence.”

  Overmire felt his face tighten into a frown. “But how did he get into the interrogation room, in the first place?”

  The security chief waved one hand weakly. “According to the three staff women he just . . . appeared. Like he popped out of thin air.”

  “And Dr. Mayfair? What does he say about this?”

  “Nothing, sir. He seems to be in some sort of a coma. The medics said he’s catatonic.”

  The Archbishop thought about that for a moment while the security chief fidgeted and shifted from one foot to the other. Despite his military-like tan uniform with its epaulettes and badges of rank, the man looked like a nervous little student brought to face the school’s principal.

  “Sit down, man. Sit down.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Overmire steepled his fingers and touched them to his fleshy lips. At last he said, “So he simply appeared in the room out of nowhere, did he?”

  “Yessir. According to the reports. Dr. Mayfair was in no condition to talk intelligibly, but the three women all confirm that he . . . he just was there all of a sudden.”

  “I understand. He’s done the same thing elsewhere.”

  “It’s kind of spooky,” said the security chief.

  But Overmire was musing, “He came in that way, but he walked out like a normal, ordinary person.”

  “Right past Lord knows how many of my guards,” the security chief muttered. “He just walked right past them, and they let him do it.”

  “He had the woman with him at that point.”

  “Sister Angelique Duprie, yes, sir. And somewhere along the line he picked up this old lady, Vasquez.”

  “What do we know about her?”

  Working his pocket phone’s keyboard again, the security chief replied, “Retired schoolteacher. No criminal record
. No security file. She seems to have been a model citizen all her life.”

  “Until she met Stoner,” the Archbishop mused. “Then she escapes from the hospital with him.”

  “Yessir. And Sister Angelique.”

  The Archbishop smiled inwardly. To his security chief he said, “He appeared magically, but he walked out with the two women through the whole hospital building and left in a taxi. What does that tell you?”

  The security chief’s face furrowed with concentration.

  Before he could come up with a reply, the Archbishop said triumphantly, “He can pop in and out like a genie from the Arabian Nights, but he can’t take someone else with him!”

  The chief blinked several times, digesting the idea.

  “Do you see what that means?” Overmire crowed. “It’s a weakness, a chink in his armor! He can travel instantly wherever he wants to go, but he can’t bring one of us along with him. He has to move normally when he’s taking an ordinary person along with him.”

  “But he can talk his way past my guards, make them let him go right past them. Somehow.”

  “Yes, yes. But as long as he’s with one of us he has to move like an ordinary human being. No instantaneous travel.”

  “I suppose so.” The security chief sounded unconvinced.

  Speaking to his phone, the Archbishop said, “Get me the head of the National Science Foundation. I want him here in my office as quickly as he can get here. This is an emergency!”

  Bertram Feingold was philosophic about life. When they hand you a lemon, he always said, make lemonade. In a nation that revered prayer much more than research, a nation that banned much of biotechnology and all of nanotechnology, Feingold had made his slow, patient way to the top of the National Science Foundation by dint of avoiding conflicts and keeping his nose clean.