Voyagers IV - The Return Read online

  He got to his feet and went to the connecting door. “Go to sleep,” he whispered.

  Angelique felt a soft, warm, comforting fog envelop her. Every muscle of her body relaxed. Her eyes fluttered shut.

  But just before she sank into the dark oblivion of sleep she told herself, He doesn’t want me. He looks at me as if I’m some sort of a specimen in a zoo.

  Her last conscious thought was, He’s disgusted by me!

  CHAPTER 10

  In the morning Angelique felt refreshed and strong. But smoldering with hurt and angry resentment.

  Vasquez’s rumpled bed was empty. The old woman was nowhere in sight. Angelique saw the scrapbook lying on the table, closed, all the photos and letters and other pieces out of sight. He must have pasted them all back in place while I was sleeping, she thought.

  She sat up in bed, still fully dressed. The memory of Stoner’s rejection made her cheeks flush hotly. She got to her feet and went to the bathroom. She showered quickly, but not even the jets of hot water could wash away the pain and humiliation she felt. Grimacing with distaste, she dressed in the same clothes she had worn the previous day. She had nothing else to wear.

  As she stepped out of the bathroom she heard Vasquez’s thin, cackling laughter through the slightly ajar door that connected to Stoner’s room.

  She went to the door and, opening it, saw Vasquez sitting in her powerchair, Stoner on the edge of one of the beds, a breakfast of sticky buns and coffee on the table between them.

  Stoner looked up and smiled at her. “Good morning! You’re just in time for breakfast.”

  “Good morning,” Angelique murmured. She pulled up the only other chair in the room and sat next to the old woman.

  “Morning,” said Vasquez cheerfully as she chewed on a bun.

  “How do you feel?” Angelique asked her.

  “Fine. Wonderful. Haven’t felt this good since I was ninety.” She giggled at her own joke.

  Nanomachines, Angelique thought. He’s rebuilt her heart with nanomachines.

  “And guess what?” Vasquez asked brightly. “I’m going to the Moon! I’m going to be accepted as a candidate for citizenship in Selene!”

  Angelique looked sharply at Stoner as Vasquez bubbled on, “He just picked up the phone right there between the beds and talked to Douglas Stavenger himself, up in Selene. Got me approved as an immigrant inside of ten minutes!”

  Forcing a thin smile, Angelique said, “Dr. Stoner can be very persuasive.”

  Stoner fixed his gaze on her. “And you, Angelique? Have you decided where you want to go?”

  She lifted her chin a notch. “Yes. I’m returning to Archbishop Overmire.”

  Stoner’s expression hardened. “You were a prisoner under interrogation when I took you out of there.”

  “Yes, I know. But the Archbishop will want to see me now, I’m sure. I have a lot to tell him.”

  “All right,” Stoner said slowly. “I’ll take you back after I put Yolanda here on the rocket for Selene.”

  “You don’t have to do that. I won’t tell them about her and her scrapbook.”

  Vasquez’s chin lifted a notch at the mention of her scrapbook.

  “I didn’t think you would, Angelique,” Stoner half-lied. “I just think it would be better if I went with you.”

  “No need for that,” Angelique said flatly. “I can get back to the New Morality headquarters by myself. I won’t need any help from you.”

  Stoner felt some misgivings as he waited outside the motel’s lobby with Angelique for the autotaxi she had phoned for. It was a cloudy morning, chilly and threatening rain.

  “You’re sure this is what you want to do?” he asked her.

  “Positive,” she snapped.

  “They didn’t treat you all that well yesterday.”

  “It’s different now.”

  Stoner watched her intently. He saw anger in her sculpted face, the anger of rejection. And he heard his wife telling him:

  She’s in love with you, Keith. And you rejected her.

  She doesn’t have any romantic feelings for me, he replied. It’s power that she’s after.

  He could sense Jo shaking her head. After all these years, you still don’t understand, do you?

  Understand what? he asked.

  Women. Human emotions. She wants power, yes, certainly. But she’s in love with you. Which makes her dangerous.

  If it’s power she’s after, why does she want to go back to Overmire?

  Because if she can’t have you, she’ll go to the next most powerful man she knows.

  But why?

  To tell him how to get rid of you, Jo said coldly.

  Stoner felt some surprise at that. Get rid of me?

  She can’t have you for herself, so she’s going to do her damnedest to make certain no one else gets you.

  He finally understood. She wants to help Overmire get rid of me. That’s good, then.

  That’s good?

  Yes. It means she doesn’t want to help Overmire learn how to use me for his own benefit.

  His own benefit, Jo scoffed. The man runs all of North America and has his tentacles stretched across the world. He doesn’t need you.

  Yes, but he needs to make certain I don’t threaten his power.

  Power, Jo said silently, and Stoner could sense the loathing in her thoughts. It’s all about power, isn’t it?

  It’s always about power, he said.

  Once Angelique ducked into the autotaxi and headed back toward Atlanta, Stoner returned to Yolanda Vasquez’s motel room. The old woman was sitting in her powerchair, looking fresh and vigorous, her wispy white hair glistening from her shower. She clutched the scrapbook to her frail chest.

  “You read my scrapbook, didn’t you?” she said as soon as he closed the door. She didn’t look angry or even disappointed, Stoner thought.

  “Yes, we did.”

  “I meant those writings for my great-grandniece, up in the rock rats’ habitat at Ceres.”

  “I apologize for intruding on your privacy,” he said. “But what you wrote was very enlightening to me. I was having a difficult time understanding how a democracy can slide into virtual dictatorship.”

  “Nothing virtual about it,” Vasquez said. “You’ll find out when you try to get me through the spaceport.”

  Hartsfield Aerospaceport was immense, thundering with the constant roar of jet airliners and rocket vehicles landing and taking off. Stoner parked the rented sports sedan at the terminal’s curb, then pulled Vasquez’s powerchair out of the trunk, unfolded it, and helped her settle into it comfortably.

  A police robot trundled up to them. “No parking or waiting is allowed at curbside, sir.”

  “Yes, I know,” said Stoner.

  “Vehicles left unattended will be towed,” said the robot’s synthesized voice.

  Stoner smiled at the stubby little machine, even though he knew it was not programmed to recognize facial expressions. All it knew was the parking regulations and violations thereof.

  “Let’s go,” he said to Vasquez. She gave him a questioning look.

  “Vehicles left unattended will be towed,” the robot repeated. Somehow it sounded annoyed.

  To Vasquez, Stoner said, “They’ll tow the car and eventually return it to the rental company. They’ll be glad to get it back.” He grinned down at her. “Although I imagine there’ll be some head-scratching over the time their car’s been away.”

  Vasquez chuckled as she toggled the powerchair into the terminal. Walking alongside her, Stoner thought she looked much stronger than she had the day before. The nanomachines had rebuilt her heart and were now going through her system searching for other needed repairs.

  Vasquez kept her mouth shut and let Stoner do all the talking as they moved from ticket counter to security inspection and finally to the terminal gate where the Moon-bound rocket launcher sat on its tail, a squat, truncated cone built of pure diamond in Selene’s lunar manufacturing centers.

>   He walked her into the Clippership’s passenger compartment and watched her switch from the powerchair to an aisle seat without any assistance from him.

  “I’ll have the flight attendants stow your chair for you,” he said, leaning over her, “although I don’t think you’ll need it once you’re on the Moon.”

  Vasquez looked up at him, suddenly troubled. “But what’ll I do once I’m there? I don’t have any money, no pension, nothing.”

  Stoner said, “Stavenger told me they need elementary school teachers.”

  “They do?”

  “Selene’s population is growing and they have more children than they can deal with. They need schoolteachers, nurses, day-care people. Governments here on Earth make it tough for their citizens to emigrate to Selene. There’s even a shortage of babysitters, from what he tells me.”

  Vasquez stared up at him. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  She blinked tears away, then suddenly wrapped her thin arms around Stoner’s neck.

  “Thank you,” she whispered into his ear. “Thank you for getting me out of this prison.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Angelique felt almost as powerful as Stoner himself as she made her way through the security guards at the New Morality’s headquarters complex. When she left the autotaxi at the complex’s main gate, the guards on duty directed her to the small, low-roofed building marked, VISITOR’S ENTRANCE.

  It was a security checkpoint, of course. The young, bushy-haired guard at the desk just inside the door grinned up at the sight of the slim, beautiful young woman, despite her dark religious garb. But his grin faded as she presented her ID chip and he looked up her official dossier.

  “Attached to the Archbishop’s staff,” he muttered, looking at her with new respect. Then the computer beeped and he returned his attention to the screen.

  “Hold on,” he said, his expression changing again. Now he looked suspicious.

  While Angelique fidgeted impatiently before his desk, the guard turned in his wheeled chair toward the open doorway that led deeper into the building and called, “Captain, you’d better look at this.”

  The guard captain came up, a wiry sandy-haired man in his thirties. His uniform bristled with merit decorations and award ribbons. The hash marks on his sleeves showed he had been in the security forces since he was a teenager.

  Bending over the younger guard’s shoulder, he said crisply to the computer, “Display security specification.”

  The two men read the screen, then looked at each other. The captain straightened and said, “Sister Angelique, we’re instructed to take you directly to Archbishop Overmire.”

  Angelique let out a breath that she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “That’s fine,” she said softly. “That’s perfect.”

  Two uniformed security guards drove Angelique in a quiet, unmarked electric minivan to the Archbishop’s vicarage. They went with her as one of the female staff workers led them to a small conference room off the Archbishop’s office. The woman ushered Angelique inside and instructed her to wait.

  “It may be a little while,” she said sweetly in a semiwhisper. “The Archbishop is a very busy man.”

  Angelique nodded and sat in one of the padded swivel chairs that lined the oval conference table. The woman left the room and closed the door. Angelique didn’t hear a lock click, but she thought that her two security escorts were probably stationed on the other side of the door. The room was austere: blank wall screens, the polished conference table, and its set of eight chairs. Nothing more.

  Angelique resigned herself to wait. But as she sank back into the chair she suddenly thought that Dr. Mayfair or one of the other inquisitors might come through that door and drag her back down to that interrogation room again.

  No, she told herself. They wouldn’t. But still she trembled.

  For more than half an hour she waited, rehearsing in her mind what she would tell the Archbishop. Get rid of Stoner. Get him out of the picture. Make him—

  One of the wall screens slid aside and Archbishop Overmire stepped ponderously into the conference room, his fleshy face set in a suspicious scowl.

  Angelique rose to her feet as the Archbishop settled his bulk into the chair at the head of the table, then motioned with one hand for her to sit down.

  “You got away from him?” Overmire asked without preamble.

  “He let me go,” said Angelique. “His only interest was to get me away from the inquisitors.”

  The Archbishop studied her face for a few moments. “We’re learning about him. He cares about you enough to snatch you away from our interrogation team.”

  But not enough to love me, Angelique added silently. He thinks about me the way I would think about a chimpanzee in a laboratory.

  “And although he can transport himself wherever he chooses,” the Archbishop continued, “he apparently cannot take anyone along with him. He had to walk you out of the hospital. Past all our security people, I admit, but he didn’t just whisk you into thin air, did he?”

  “No, Your Eminence, he did not.”

  “What else have you learned about him?” the Archbishop asked, leaning slightly toward her.

  Angelique thought swiftly, then answered, “Although he claims that he wants to save the human race, I believe he’s a great danger to us.”

  “As do I,” Overmire agreed.

  “If he reveals himself to the general public they will fall to their knees at the sight of his powers and worship him as a god,” she said.

  “The Antichrist.”

  She nodded. “Whether he wishes it or not, he will shatter everything that you have toiled all your life to achieve. The people will adore him as their new savior.”

  The Archbishop’s face darkened. “Our worst fears come true.”

  Angelique could read the expression on his face almost as if she could hear his thoughts. Stoner will destroy us. Destroy me, the Archbishop was saying to himself. All the years I’ve labored to reach the pinnacle of power, all the toil and care I’ve lavished on my flock, teaching them the way to salvation, leading them on the path of righteousness, controlling them so that they don’t fall into evil ways—this one man, this star voyager, he could destroy it all.

  “Therefore,” she went on, “we must get rid of him, somehow.”

  “Somehow? How?”

  Angelique saw the anxiety in his eyes, his need to find a way to deal with this terrifying threat.

  And more. She saw the man who casually had turned her over to torturers, who was willing to do whatever was necessary, anything, in order to keep his power, to maintain his absolute grip on the New Morality’s apparatus, his control over the people.

  “Let me deal with him, Your Eminence,” she said, hiding her anger, her growing disgust with the man. “Give me a free hand to deal with him as your personal representative.”

  “And what will you do?”

  Angelique had no idea. But she saw that she could use the threat of the star voyager to bend Overmire to her will.

  “He fears our nuclear weapons,” she blurted impulsively. “I will use them to destroy him.”

  Even as she spoke the words she realized that this was indeed the way to destroy Stoner.

  CHAPTER 12

  “Could you get Stoner to come here?” Holly asked Raoul Tavalera.

  It was nearly sunset in Goddard. The long windows that admitted sunshine into the massive habitat were slowly closing. Holly and Tavalera were walking from her office to a restaurant on the other side of the village, at the edge of the lake.

  “Come here?” he asked. “I dunno. He does pretty much what he wants to.”

  “He could be awful helpful to us,” she said. “Now that we’ve voted out the ZPG regulation, women’re having babies. Sooner or later we’ll need to expand, build another habitat.”

  “And go out and get more resources to support them,” Tavalera added.

  “Water,” she agreed. “Ores to use for building
materials.”

  “You want Stoner to help,” he said.

  “Surely do. If he would.”

  Tavalera stooped down to pick up a pebble from the edge of the bricked walkway. “But you could build a new habitat on your own, without his help.”

  “Be a damn sight easier with him than without him.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  He tossed the pebble into the air, caught it again in his palm. “You got any idea where this little stone came from, originally?”

  Looking puzzled, Holly answered, “An asteroid, prob’ly. That’s where most of our construction materials came from.”

  He nodded. “Now we’re a long way from the Belt. A long trip to get resources.”

  “That’s why Stoner’d be so helpful,” she said.

  His long, normally morose expression grew even gloomier than usual. “But don’t you think it’d be better if you could build new habitats on your own, without his help? I mean, you shouldn’t hafta depend on Stoner and his magic tricks.”

  With night coming on swiftly, she had to look hard to see his eyes. “What’s th’ matter, Raoul? Don’t you want to let Stoner help us?”

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea to depend on him, that’s all. You oughtta be able to do it for yourself.”

  “You don’t want to ask him, is that it?”

  He shook his head. “No, that’s not it.”

  “Then what?”

  “I don’t think he’d help you.”

  “Why not?”

  Tavalera didn’t quite know how to phrase it. For several paces along the winding pathway he was silent, thinking, arranging his words.

  “So?” Holly prompted.

  “I’ve seen Stoner close up. Seen him at work.”

  “You think he won’t want to help us?”

  Feeling miserable about dashing her hopes, he said, “I think he won’t want you to become dependent on him. I think he’d figure it’s better if you work things out for yourselves.”

  Holly looked away from him. Tavalera walked along with her, wishing he hadn’t told her what he truly felt, knowing he had to tell her something more, something worse.