Voyagers IV - The Return Page 27

  “That’s how you see it, huh?” Holly murmured.

  “Yeah.”

  Up ahead, through the shrubbery that lined the winding path, he could see the lights of the restaurant turning on. It was fully dark now. Tiny fluorescent patches glowed every few meters along the edge of the walkway. Tavalera looked overhead and saw the lights of other villages winking on, other pathways curving between them. He remembered that some wags had started to name constellations from the lights, just as people on Earth millennia ago had created pictures in the sky out of the formations of stars.

  “There’s the Bullseye,” he said, pointing to a set of nested rings that marked a residential complex.

  Holly made a huffing sound. “D’you know that Mal Eberly is puttin’ up an astrology program on his site? Based on the lights?”

  “Sounds like something he’d do,” Tavalera said.

  The restaurant was only a few meters away. He could see the squat little robots lined up to one side of the outdoor tables, waiting for customers to show up.

  “Raoul,” Holly said in a tone that sounded utterly serious to him.

  “Yeah?”

  “You kept sayin’ ‘you’ve’ got to do without Stoner, instead of ‘we’ve’ got to.”

  “Did I?”

  “Yep. Don’t you think you’re part of us? Part of me?”

  He couldn’t see her face in the shadows cast by the tall shrubs, but he heard the apprehension in her voice. She knows, he understood. She’s figured it out.

  “I’ve got to go back,” he said, so low that he could hardly hear it himself.

  She stopped walking. “Back? Earthside?”

  He nodded, then realized that she couldn’t see it in the shadows. “To Earth,” he admitted.

  Holly said nothing for several heartbeats. Then, “Your mother.”

  It was an excuse he could use, but Tavalera couldn’t help but be honest with her. “Not just that, Holly. There’s something going on, something big.”

  “Stoner.”

  “Something’s going to happen; I just know it. I want to be there. I want to help him, if I can.”

  “You want to leave me.” Her voice was dead, hollow.

  “I’ve got to,” Tavalera said. “I’ve just got to.”

  BOOK V

  RAOUL TAVALERA

  You who are without sorrow for the suffering of others,

  You do not deserve to be called human.

  Garden of Roses, by Sa’di,

  thirteenth-century Iranian poet

  CHAPTER 1

  Stoner felt Raoul’s call, rather than heard it. Like a sudden change in his pulse rate, like an abrupt shortage of breath that leaves you gasping, Stoner felt Tavalera’s need for him viscerally—even though he was disembodied when the call reached him.

  Through Tavalera’s mind, he saw that the young man believed he was sitting with a woman at a small table in an outdoor restaurant in the habitat Goddard. Holly Lane, Stoner knew. Goddard’s chief administrator. The woman Tavalera loved. He felt morose; she looked miserable.

  Stoner’s wife told him, Imagine how I’d feel if you said you wanted to leave me.

  As if I could, he replied. They both smiled ethereally, linked to each other by bonds that transcended physical presence.

  The restaurant was called Le Bleu Provence, founded by a Parisian who had been exiled for his mildly heretical and decidedly treasonous insistence that the current faith-based government of France had made a mockery of the Declaration of the Rights of Man.

  “We’ve been through this before,” Holly was saying, toying idly with the stem of her aperitif glass.

  “Yeah,” said Tavalera. His beer was going flat.

  “You said you’d go back Earthside for a visit and then come back here.”

  “I know. But once I got there they wouldn’t let me leave.”

  “So what makes you think—”

  “May I join you?” Keith Stoner stood at their table, his bearded face serious, unsmiling.

  Holly looked up at him, more annoyed at the interruption than anything else. “Where’d you come from?” she snapped.

  Tavalera pushed his chair back and got to his feet. “Holly, this is Keith Stoner, the star voyager. Dr. Stoner, Holly Lane.”

  Stoner extended his hand to Holly. She touched it briefly, almost unwillingly.

  One of the robots placed a chair behind Stoner and held it while he sat down, then trundled away with the faintest whirr of its electric motors.

  Before Stoner could speak a word, Holly complained, “You claim there’s gonna be a nuclear war on Earth and he”—she pointed at Tavalera—“he wants to rush back there.”

  “To help stop it from happening!” Tavalera exclaimed.

  Holly shot him a bitterly unhappy look.

  Stoner said mildly, “It’s a tough decision to make.”

  She glared at him.

  “Ms. Lane . . . may I call you Holly?” Stoner asked.

  “Why not.”

  “It’s difficult for you to accept, I know,” Stoner said. “You love Raoul and you want him to be with you.”

  “He says he loves me,” she muttered.

  “And I do!” Tavalera replied.

  “And he does,” Stoner echoed. “But I’m afraid Raoul’s gotten himself tangled in something bigger.” Before Holly could respond, he went on, “The survival of the human race.”

  “We can survive here on this habitat just fine,” Holly said. “Let those nutsos blast themselves down to quarks; we’ll still be here.”

  “You can let twelve billion human beings die without lifting a finger to help save them?”

  She looked unflinchingly into Stoner’s gray eyes. “Nothin’ I can do about it.”

  “But perhaps there is something that Raoul can do.”

  “Like what?”

  Stoner hiked his dark brows. “I’ve got to admit that I don’t know yet. But I’d appreciate his help.”

  “You’re both crazy.”

  “Maybe so,” Tavalera said. “But it’s something I’ve got to do, Holly. Can’t you understand that?”

  “No.”

  Shaking his head ever so slightly, Stoner said, “I could quote you chapter and verse about how some men feel impelled to go out and face the dangers that they feel are threatening their homes, their families. It’s like a genetic imperative.”

  “Raoul’s home and family are right here!” Holly snapped. “He doesn’t have to go back Earthside. Let them blow themselves to hell!”

  “I can’t,” Tavalera said, almost pleading. “I just can’t, Holly.”

  Stoner looked at Holly through Tavalera’s eyes and saw the root of the problem. Holly Lane was a newborn, a woman who had been preserved cryonically after being declared clinically dead of an inoperable cancer. After years of storage in a liquid nitrogen dewar at Selene she had at last been cured, her tumor eradicated by a team of lunar biomedical specialists using beams of antiprotons. But once her body was revived she had no memories of her earlier life. A newborn in a young adult’s body, Holly had to learn to speak, to walk, to take care of herself all over again.

  She has no memories of Earth, Stoner realized. It means nothing to her.

  But Tavalera was different. Tavalera had friends and family and a whole childhood of memories. Earth was his emotional home.

  With a sigh, Stoner said to them, “This is a decision you’ll have to make for yourselves. All I can tell you is that I’d welcome your help, Raoul. There’s a lot to be done back on Earth and I could use all the help I can get.”

  “What do you plan to do?” Tavalera asked.

  “I wish I knew,” Stoner said almost wistfully. “I really wish I knew.”

  CATHY

  Cathy spent several days in Cairo, visiting the great pyramids, walking the city’s crowded streets, thronged with jostling crowds.

  And thinking about Mina. She’s intelligent; she’s had a decent education; she’s got a good job: she could have a br
ight future ahead of her. Yet all she wants is to be married and have children. It didn’t make sense to Cathy.

  It’s their upbringing, her mother said in Cathy’s mind. Like their religion: they’re trained from childhood, brainwashed into believing that’s the way life should be.

  How can we change that? Cathy asked silently as she strolled along a row of shops. The sidewalk was crowded, and the sun felt oppressively hot despite the energy shell that protected her.

  You can’t change it, Jo replied with some bitterness. It would take generations to get them to see otherwise.

  I wonder, Cathy thought.

  Besides, Jo added, your father doesn’t want us to interfere with their way of life too much. He wants them to find the answers for themselves.

  But we could help them, couldn’t we? At least a little bit? Cathy asked. Guide them along the way?

  Her mother replied, It’s a fine line between guidance and control.

  Cathy walked into a covered arcade, out of the blazing sunlight. The crowds here were even thicker than out on the street. The shops were very upscale, posh, appealing to the tourist trade. The tourists were pushy, loud, and short-tempered from lugging their packages from store to store.

  On and on Cathy walked, beyond the arcade, past the rows of glittering shops and the bustling crowds of tourists. She kept to the shaded side of the street as much as she could, her mind still working on the problem of Mina. She’s a microcosm of the world’s population problem, Cathy thought. If an intelligent, educated woman can’t see beyond having six or seven babies, how will the world’s population problem ever be solved?

  Not even her mother had an answer for her.

  Cathy realized that the temperature had become somewhat cooler. The sun had dipped below the skyline, she saw. Looking around, she realized that she had walked far from the city’s thronged market district. The street she was on was quiet, almost empty. Evening shadows were stretching across the pavement. The buildings here were low, two and three stories, small shops already shuttered. Up ahead was an open area: it looked to her as if a building had been demolished and the site left to rubble-strewn weeds.

  Behind you, Jo warned.

  Cathy glanced over her shoulder to see a trio of young men in shabby T-shirts and baggy trousers ambling along the street, their eyes fixed on her.

  I’ll pull you out, her mother said.

  Not yet, said Cathy. I want to see what they want.

  They want you!

  Oh, Mother, don’t be so ancient.

  Cathy kept on walking, but now she could hear the soft padding of their sneakers on the uneven pavement behind her. Then one of the men—boys, really—whistled. Another one snickered.

  She kept to her steady walking pace, and within a few steps they pulled even with her.

  “Hello, pretty,” said one of them in heavily accented English. They all had ragged beards and bad teeth.

  Cathy said nothing, kept walking.

  “You American?”

  Jo said, I’m bringing you up!

  Not yet.

  “American girls not virgins,” said the one on her left.

  “American girls all whores,” the one on her right added, grinning widely. Cathy could smell his breath. Tobacco. And other things.

  The third one skipped a few paces ahead of her and flicked a knife out of his pant pocket.

  “Come on, whore,” he said.

  Cathy glanced at the knife for an instant and it suddenly began to glow white-hot. The young tough dropped it with a yowl of agony. The other two tried to grab her but screamed as electric shocks spasmed their bodies.

  Cathy looked at the three of them, writhing in pain.

  All right, Mom, she said mentally. Now.

  She disappeared like an electric light winking off, leaving the three would-be rapists staring goggle-eyed.

  Back on the starship, Jo asked her daughter, “You’re all right?”

  “I’m fine, Mom,” Cathy replied, her expression utterly serious. “And I know what we have to do.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes. But Dad’s going to hate it. A lot.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Angelique had a plan. It was vague, but the more she thought about it, the more the details became clear to her.

  Stoner fears our nuclear weapons, she thought. He wants us to get rid of them. Very well, I’ll invite him to witness their dismantling. An accident will happen. I doubt that even a star voyager could live through the megaton blast.

  That was the core of her plan. But she could see problems with it. How can we prevent the blast from killing others? After all, Stoner wouldn’t be foolish enough to witness the dismantling by himself. There would have to be other people present: technicians, news anchors. Perhaps even the Archbishop himself.

  That possibility shook her. Of course the Archbishop should be there. He would want to be there; he’d insist on being at the center of attention, showing the star voyager that the New Morality was leading the way to a new world, free of nuclear weapons and the hellish threat of Armageddon.

  Sister Angelique turned the plan over in her mind, time and again, all through her long working day. It wasn’t until later that night, as she lay down on her narrow bed, that she realized she was planning murder.

  The realization troubled her. Briefly. She closed her eyes and told herself that Archbishop Overmire had been perfectly willing to sacrifice her in order to deal with Stoner. Well, she would help the Archbishop become a holy martyr.

  God’s will be done, she told herself just before she lapsed into a tranquil sleep, undisturbed by troubling dreams.

  It was at the annual Founder’s Day banquet that the crucial piece of Angelique’s plan fell into place.

  The banquet was held in Washington, D.C., as usual, in the ornate old rock pile of a building that had once housed the National Museum of Natural History. Now it was a combination of religious shrine, visitor’s center, and recruitment station for the New Morality, Inc.

  In the grand, high-roofed entrance lobby where exhibits of elephants and extinct mastodons had awed visitors in the past, Angelique looked out upon a sea of dining tables, each covered with a spanking white tablecloth and gleaming disposable dinnerware. Men in tuxedos and women in bejeweled evening gowns were streaming in for an evening of good food and self-congratulatory speeches. Angelique, who had lived under her vow of poverty all her adult life, wrinkled her nose at them; the crowd looked to her like a mix of penguins and peacocks.

  As Archbishop Overmire and his retinue of bishops (minus Bishop Craig, who was in Jakarta) marched in hierarchical order to their seats at the head table, followed by dignitaries led by the President of the United States, the final pieces of the idea finally clicked in Angelique’s head. Impatiently she sat at her assigned table far off to the right of the speakers; she could hardly wait for the long evening to draw to its droning conclusion.

  She noted that Archbishop Overmire had regained the few pounds he had lost in the hospital and then some. Despite the most inventive tailoring of his dark clerical suit, he still looked like a bloated black whale.

  At last the final cliché had been uttered, the last standing ovation given, and the assembled diners began to file out of the hall, buzzing with muted conversations. A collection of the biggest donors was lining up to shake hands with the President and the Archbishop, of course. It wasn’t enough for most people to see and listen to the great and famous; they still had the simian’s urge to touch the alphas.

  It was approaching midnight when the Archbishop finally broke free and headed for the elevator that would whisk him to his private apartment on the former museum’s top floor, accompanied by a small phalanx of assistants and security guards. Angelique fell in with the cluster of dark-suited men. One of the security guards eyed her questioningly when she squeezed into the elevator, but his chief recognized her with a nod and a smile.

  Once they reached the unmarked double doors of his apartment, the Archbis
hop turned to the small group of men with a weary smile. “I thank you all and hope you enjoyed the banquet.”

  Lots of nodding and murmured agreement.

  “It’s been a long evening. I’m very tired.” He pulled a white silk handkerchief from his jacket and mopped his brow.

  More murmurs and the group moved away, drifting back toward the elevator. The Archbishop opened his door. Angelique followed him into the apartment’s sitting room and closed the door behind her.

  The Archbishop turned toward her with a slight frown on his jowly face. “I won’t need any assistance, thank you, Sister.”

  “Your Eminence, I must speak with you for a few minutes.”

  “I really am very tired,” he repeated with steel in his tone.

  “It’s about the star voyager,” Angelique said hurriedly. “I know how to get rid of him.”

  Archbishop Overmire blinked at her several times. At last he sank into the nearest armchair and gestured for her to sit next to him.

  Without waiting for him to give her permission to speak, Angelique blurted, “You must call for an international meeting of the world’s religious and political leaders.”

  “Must I?” Overmire replied, his voice dripping acid.

  “The Holy Disciples, the Light of Allah, the New Dao, and the Red Chrysanthemum,” Angelique said eagerly. “And the heads of state for all the governments on Earth.”

  “But why—”

  “The reason for the meeting will be to discuss ways to ease international tensions and increase brotherhood across the world. Global food distribution, energy prices, climate stabilization, all the topics that contribute to international tensions.”

  Overmire’s frown deepened. “Population growth?”

  “Population growth also,” said Angelique with a nod. “Of course.”

  “But not family planning. We can’t allow any discussions that might lead to contraception and abortion.”

  “Certainly, Your Eminence. I understand.”

  “An international conference,” the Archbishop muttered. “To ease global tensions.” He allowed the beginnings of a smile to curve his heavy lips.