Voyagers II - The Alien Within Read online

  Nillson shook his head. “This news is much too big to keep quiet for long.”

  The florid-faced heart transplant recipient nodded gravely. “The first man to be brought back from the dead. By God, the reporters will swarm all over him.”

  “And our competitors,” the treasurer repeated.

  “We’ll move him to a more remote site as soon as the medical tests are finished,” Jo said.

  “That might be a very good idea,” her husband agreed.

  Jo touched the memo pad on her keyboard. The computer would automatically highlight the previous ten lines of conversation when it printed up the transcript of this meeting.

  The discussion moved on to other topics: Vanguard’s pharmaceutical processing plant in orbit was conspicuously over budget; Avtech Corporation had hired away two of Vanguard’s plant managers, one in Karachi and one in Rio: the corporation’s interdivisional communications codes were being changed as a routine security precaution; terrorists from the World Liberation Movement had bombed the biotechnology factory in Sydney, nobody killed but half a million dollars’ worth of damage to the organ-cloning production line; the European division’s construction unit had run into unexpected snags in its contracts to build airports and civil improvements in Bulgaria (“Damned Commie bureaucrats want their bribes increased,” groused one board member); angry crowds had staged a violent demonstration at the former corporate headquarters in Greenwich, insisting that Vanguard had developed a cure for cancer that it was keeping secret (“I only wish,” Nillson murmured, drawing a big dollar sign on his scratch pad); the airline division was being sued in the World Court for its refusal to fly its scheduled routes into the countries involved in the Central African War.

  In all, the corporation’s profits for this quarter would be down some 8 to 10 percent, even though total sales volume from all its divisions appeared to be nearly 12 percent higher than the same quarter the previous year.

  “Too much money being spent unproductively,” Nillson said mildly.

  The public relations director turned her most feminine smile on the board chairman. “And we don’t really have any new products to show, to take the attention off the lower profits. Not unless we make a major effort on the frozen astronaut.”

  “It’s too early for that,” Jo snapped.

  “Then the media’s going to ask why our profits are down, and why R and D isn’t producing.”

  Research and development was Jo’s special area. She realized that the public relations director was openly challenging her.

  Very sweetly, Jo said, “When you get old enough to be stricken by a terminal disease—like maybe cancer or a sudden stroke—you’ll be willing to spend everything you have for the products of our unproductive R and D. Maybe you’ll even want to have yourself frozen for a few years, until the medical people can work out a cure for whatever is killing you. Then the money we’ve spent on our cryonics and other R and D programs will seem like a good investment to you.”

  The Oriental girl’s lips pressed into a colorless line. But before she could answer Jo, Nillson said, “R and D has been very important to this corporation’s growth, we all know that. But we must keep a careful watch on expenses. No one in this organization has a blank check.”

  Murmurs of assent spread around the table.

  Jo smiled at her husband and realized that the woman was making a brazen play for him—and he seemed willing to see how well she could do. Looking around the table, Jo saw at least three people who would soon have a vital personal interest in being frozen until a terminal illness could be reversed. If it came to a real fight with the public relations director, Jo knew she would win.

  But it won’t come to that, she told herself. I’ll have the little bitch out of here without anyone in this room knowing what happened to her. Or caring.

  The meeting finally ended, and Jo started back toward her office. Nillson fell in beside her, and together they walked along the glass-walled corridor back to her executive suite.

  They made a striking couple. She was dark fire, a long-legged beauty with the deep suntan, midnight-black hair, and stunning figure of a classic Mediterranean enchantress. He was pallid ice, taller than she, lean and spare, cold where she was fiery, wan where she was vibrant, a pale distant frosty Northern Lights compared to the blazing intensity of the tropical sun.

  “You’re not going back to your office?” Jo asked as they strode in unison down the corridor.

  “I want to ask you something.”

  “Where we can’t be overheard,” she realized.

  He dipped his chin slightly in acknowledgment. Offices can be bugged. Secretaries can be bribed. A busy corridor connecting the president’s suite with the offices of the chairman of the board and the board’s meeting room could be more private than any sanctum sanctorum.

  “Did Healy tell you that he doesn’t sleep?”

  Jo looked up sharply at her husband. His face was perfectly controlled, no hint of any emotion whatsoever.

  “What did you say?”

  “He doesn’t sleep,” Nillson repeated. “Your man Stoner has not slept at all in the four days since he has been revived.”

  Jo said nothing. There was no need. Nillson knew full well that the scientist had not told her. Her thoughts swirled wildly. Keith doesn’t sleep! Why? What’s gone wrong? And why did that sonofabitch Healy tell my husband instead of me?

  CHAPTER 5

  Stoner and Dr. Richards strolled casually across the lawn outside his building. The late afternoon sun baked through Stoner’s light open-weave shirt; he reveled in the warmth of it. The breeze from the sea was filled with the fragrance of tropical flowers. Since nine that morning Stoner had endured still another battery of physical examinations. Now he and the psychiatrist were out in the open air.

  Like a prisoner taking his compulsory exercise, Stoner thought.

  Richards was good, a smooth performer who seemed to be engaged in nothing more than relaxed conversation while he deftly probed his patient’s innermost thoughts. Stoner smiled at him and nodded in the right places, keeping his end of the chatter going. But his eyes were focused on the space between two of the four-story lab buildings; he could see open ground stretching out to a high-wire fence. Beyond the fence was the highway and, beyond that, the beach and the ocean.

  What would Richards do if I just sprinted off, ran between the buildings and jumped that fence and raced out to the highway? What would I do: flag down a passing car, or keep going into the surf and plunge in?

  He thought about swimming in the ocean and remembered nights on Kwajalein when he and Jo had swum in the lagoon.

  “Jo Camerata is here, isn’t she?” he suddenly asked Richards.

  The psychiatrist blinked in the slanting rays of the sun, his train of questioning derailed.

  “Ms. Camerata? Yes, she’s here.”

  “She must be pretty important,” Stoner said.

  “Would you like to meet her?”

  “Of course.”

  Richards fingered his mustache. Stoner laughed and told him, “You’re wondering why I never asked about her before this, aren’t you?”

  Trying to suppress a troubled frown, Richards said, “You have a way of telling me what I’m thinking.”

  Stoner lifted one hand in an apologetic gesture. “You wouldn’t make a good poker player. I can read your face.”

  “It seems to me you can read my mind.”

  “No, nothing so…” The breath caught in Stoner’s chest. He saw Richards’s searching, inquisitive face, the dark eyes probing him. He saw the laboratory building behind the psychiatrist and the bright blue Hawaiian sky and the grass and graceful palms out by the beach.

  But like a double exposure on a piece of film, Stoner also saw another scene, a completely different scene from a different world. A smooth, graceful tower, impossibly slim, incredibly tall, soared endlessly into a softly glowing sky of pale yellow. Stoner craned his neck painfully and still could not see the
top of the tower. It rose heavenward against all the laws of gravity and sense, up and up until it was lost to his sight. He was standing at its base, atop a low, gently sloping hill. His feet were shod in metallic boots, and the ground was covered with brilliant orange blades of grass that seemed to shrink away from him and leave the ground where he was standing bare and sandy. He dropped to one knee, and as he did so, the individual blades of grass scurried out of his way, like frightened little creatures with wills of their own.

  Stoner smiled at the strange orange blades, trying to see how they managed to move themselves. He put out a hand and saw that it was gloved in the same gleaming silvery metal as his boots. The motile grass backed away from his extended hand. He smiled. “I won’t hurt you. Honestly, I won’t….”

  The chanting made him look up. Far across the open orange field, a long procession was winding its way up the slope of the hill toward him. The grass was parting itself, making an open path for the people, a path that led straight to the spot where Stoner was standing. He could not make out the words they were singing, but the tone was mournful, sad. He saw they were carrying a body stretched out on a bier.

  “That’s me,” Stoner realized. “It’s my funeral procession.”

  He looked up again and saw Richards staring down at him. Stoner realized he was kneeling on the thick green grass of the laboratory lawn, the afternoon sun burning hotly behind the psychiatrist, framing his curly mop of hair with a halo of radiance.

  Feeling almost foolish, Stoner got to his feet. A few of the employees walking some distance away were staring at them.

  “Your funeral?” Richards asked. He was almost quivering with anticipation, like a hunting dog who had just scented its quarry.

  His stomach fluttering, Stoner asked, “What did you say?”

  “You said something about a funeral procession.”

  “Did I?” he stalled.

  “What happened to you? What did you see?”

  With a shake of his head, Stoner answered, “I don’t know. I blanked out….”

  Richards’s eyes were trying to pry the information out of him. “You went completely out of focus. You looked up at the sky, then you dropped down on your knees and muttered something about a funeral procession.”

  Stoner said nothing.

  “You were hallucinating,” the psychiatrist said.

  “I’ve never done that before.”

  Abruptly, Richards turned back toward the building where Stoner’s quarters were. “Come on, I want to see what the EEG looks like.”

  Stoner caught up with him in two long strides. “You’ve been recording me out here?”

  Nodding, Richards said, “Every second. The equipment can monitor you anywhere in the complex—as far as the beach, maybe farther.”

  “You implanted sensors inside me?”

  “Sprayed them on your skin. The technology’s improved since you took your sleep. You can’t feel them or wash them off, but they’re there.”

  Instead of returning to Stoner’s quarters, Richards hurried to a windowless room halfway down the antiseptic-white corridor. To Stoner it looked like a spaceflight control center: banks of monitoring display screens tended by a handful of young men and women in white lab smocks. The lighting in the room was dim, the people monitoring the screens looked like shadowy wraiths condemned to study the flickering green and orange glowing screens until they had atoned for the sins of their earlier lives.

  Stoner remembered a similar room, on Kwajalein, where he and others had tensely watched radar screens that showed the approach of the alien spacecraft. That room had been cramped, hot, sweaty with fear and anticipation. This room was cool, spacious, relaxed, and so quiet that Stoner could hear the hum of electricity that fed the display screens.

  No one bothered to turn around or look up as they came in. Richards went straight to the nearest unoccupied station and slid into the empty chair there. He touched the keyboard, and a convoluted set of ragged lines spread themselves across the screen.

  For several moments he studied the display, touching the keyboard to bring up new data, then staring intently at the screen. Finally he gave a heavy sigh, punched a single button, and the screen went dark.

  “What is it?” Stoner asked in a whisper as Richards got up from the chair. Whispering seemed the proper tone in this quiet, darkened chamber.

  “What…Oh, nothing,” the psychiatrist answered. “The EEG seems normal enough.”

  But even in the shadowy lighting Stoner could see that Richards was not telling the truth. His eyes avoided Stoner’s.

  “Nothing unusual?” he asked.

  “I’m not a psychotech,” Richards evaded. “Maybe somebody who’s more expert than I will be able to see something in the EEG that I missed.”

  A single word pronounced itself in Stoner’s mind, a word that seemed to flow from Richards’s mind to his own.

  Schizophrenia.

  CHAPTER 6

  Jo leaned back in her softly yielding leather chair and studied the faces of the two men. Healy looked distressed, like a freckle-faced little boy who had been caught doing something naughty. But Richards looked really troubled, a man with a frightening weight on his shoulders.

  She had spent an hour in the office by herself, combing the walls, the ceiling, the furniture, the computer and phones, the windows and draperies, searching for bugs that might have been planted by an ambitious young rival such as the public relations director, or a suspicious board member, or an agent for a competing company, or by her husband. She remembered enough of her MIT training to feel that she could clean her own nest, but it bothered her that she had found nothing. Nothing at all.

  Still, she had to have this showdown with Healy. It suddenly struck her that maybe her chief scientist was actually disloyal to her. Maybe he was the leak in her security.

  She reset the office’s colors to cool greens and blues, and selected just a hint of salt tang for the room scent. She lowered the air temperature several degrees: she was blazing hot enough. Then she waited, in a plain gray blouseless business suit adorned only by her corporate logo pin. The two of them arrived at her outer office exactly on time. Jo did not keep them waiting; she had her secretary usher them in immediately.

  “I learned yesterday that Stoner has not slept since he’s been revived,” she said once the two men had taken chairs facing her.

  Richards flicked a glance at Healy, who looked thoroughly miserable.

  “I learned that information from the chairman of the board,” Jo went on. “Why didn’t I learn it from you?”

  Healy replied, “We haven’t put it into any of our reports yet….”

  “I know that,” she snapped.

  “We’re still not sure of the significance of it,” he said, squirming in his chair.

  “A man doesn’t sleep for five straight nights and you’re not sure that it’s significant?” Jo kept her voice low and icy calm.

  “We…we’re studying it,” Healy said weakly.

  “And how did the chairman of the board find out about it?”

  Healy spread his hands. “I don’t know! Somebody in the lab must have talked….”

  “Did you know that there was a disturbance at the outer fence last night?”

  “A disturbance?”

  “Security thinks somebody tried to break into the labs. World Liberation Movement terrorists, perhaps.”

  “How would they…”

  She silenced him by raising one finger. “How many people are working with Stoner now?”

  “Directly?” Healy’s little-boy face pulled itself into a momentary frown of concentration. “There’s Dr. Richards, here, and the medical team that’s monitoring him…that makes seven—no, nine people.”

  “And indirectly?”

  “There’s the commissary crew, they prepare his meals and bring them to his room. And the data processing people, the electronics maintenance people, the—”

  “Stop,” Jo commanded. “I want the
monitoring crew cut down to three people, one for each shift. Send me the files on the people who’re working there now and I’ll select the three I want. They will bring his meals to him when they start their shifts. All data processing will be done by our branch in Geneva, I’ll clear a satellite channel for you. If there’s any need for electronic repairs or maintenance, do it yourself.”

  “But I—”

  “This is a burden on you, I understand,” Jo said, her voice still steel-edged. “But security is absolutely imperative. The fewer people who are involved, the easier it will be to maintain security.”

  “But the whole board of directors knows about him!” Healy bleated.

  “That can’t be helped. They recognize his importance to the corporation, though. If they’re smart, they’ll stay quiet.” She smiled, almost to herself. “At least long enough to grab as much Vanguard stock as they can without pushing the price sky high.”

  Healy looked unconvinced. Richards, on the other hand, was watching Jo intently.

  She went on, “You’ve got to understand what we’ve got here. The man has been brought back from the dead. The technique for reviving him is worth billions—hundreds of billions. Do you have any idea how many people will want to have themselves frozen when they discover they have an inoperable cancer, or they’re waiting for a replacement heart?”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “If he’s not sleeping, then there’s something wrong, something not normal. We can’t allow that information to leak outside these walls.”

  Healy nodded. Then, in a near whisper, he said, “But it was only the chairman of the board. He’s entitled to know, isn’t he? After all, he’s the company’s top man. And your own husband.”

  Jo stared at him for a long moment before replying. “If somebody’s leaking information to him, out of channels, without your knowledge or mine, who else might they be talking to?”

  “But I don’t think—”

  “I do! Now get back to your office and implement the procedures I just outlined. I want those personnel files on my screen within fifteen minutes.”