Voyagers IV - The Return Read online

  “Huh?”

  Almost as if talking to himself, Stoner said, “We left Earth in A.D. 1985. Most of the time we traveled at relativistic velocities. I know that stretches out time, but now your local calendars read ‘A.D. 2098,’ and that just doesn’t make sense.”

  Blinking with confusion, Tavalera asked, “Are you really Keith Stoner?”

  Stoner cocked his head slightly, as if listening to some inner voice. Then he seemed to recognize Tavalera sitting there and answered, “Yes. I am Keith Stoner.”

  “But the records say you died in 1985.”

  “So they say.”

  “How can . . . ?” Tavalera felt overwhelmed; he didn’t know what question to ask. This is crazy, he thought. It’s all crazy.

  “I know it seems peculiar to you,” Stoner said, as if he could read Tavalera’s mind. “There’s a lot here that I don’t understand myself.”

  “How’d I get onto this spacecraft?”

  “You’ve been in space before,” said Stoner. “You’ve been out at that habitat orbiting Saturn.”

  “I wish I was there now.”

  Slowly, almost wearily, Stoner sat on the edge of a recliner identical to the one Tavalera was on. It hadn’t been there beside him a moment before.

  “I’ve been looking through your historical records,” Stoner said, his face utterly serious. “They don’t jibe with my memory. Something strange is going on.”

  “N . . . No kidding?” Tavalera said.

  “I’m not dead. I wasn’t killed in an automobile accident in 1985. That’s when we left in the starship.”

  “We? Who else is with you?”

  As if he hadn’t heard the question, Stoner went on musing. “Vanguard Industries was a huge multinational corporation, yet the only mention of Vanguard Industries in your records shows it was a two-bit start-up venture that folded in the nineteen nineties.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “And there’s no record of Hubert Humphrey being President of the United States. Or of Indira Gandhi being the first woman elected Secretary-General of the United Nations.”

  “Who?” Tavalera asked.

  His bearded face looking deeply troubled, Stoner went on, “Worst of all, there’s no mention anywhere of the starship that swung through the solar system. Not even of Big Eye: all I could find was references to something called the Hubble Space Telescope.”

  “What starship? When?”

  “It came into the solar system, passed by Jupiter, and then made a flyby of Earth. I went into space and rendezvoused with that starship. I was aboard it for years, frozen cryogenically. Jo got Vanguard Industries to retrieve me and bring me back.”

  “Joe?” Tavalera asked. “Who’s Joe?”

  Stoner almost smiled. “Sorry, I’m going too fast. Jo Camerata. She was head of Vanguard Industries, a big multinational corporation. Later on she and I got married.”

  “She’s your wife?”

  Nodding, “Yes.”

  “And you were frozen on the alien’s starship?”

  Another nod. “I was the first human being to be recovered from cryonic suspension.”

  Tavalera shook his head. “I never heard of that. I mean, I’ve heard of people being frozen and then brought back to life.” He thought of Holly. “But I never heard about an alien starship or you being the first corpsicle to be revived.”

  “I’m not surprised. I couldn’t find a word about it in any of your historical records.” Stoner’s face hardened. “But I see that your government is freezing people convicted of crimes. Dissidents, political opponents. It’s cheaper to keep them frozen than maintain them in prison. Or transport them off-planet.”

  This guy must be crazy, Tavalera thought. Then he realized, But if he is, how the hell did he bring me up to this spacecraft? The whole thing is weird. It’s way beyond weird; it’s—

  “I know it’s unbelievable,” Stoner said. “But we’ve got to get the answers. And quickly. The future of the whole human race depends on this.”

  Tavalera was about to ask what he meant by that, but he found himself back in his office in Atlanta, sitting in the same butterscotch armchair, staring at a blank wall screen, just as if he had never been out of that room.

  CHAPTER 13

  The screen chimed softly and spelled out: INCOMING MESSAGE.

  Tavalera blinked. A surge of panic rushed through him. This can’t be happening! I’m going crazy!

  Holly Lane’s young, eager face filled the wall screen, smiling, beaming at him.

  “Raoul! I got your message!” She seemed bursting with joy. “It’s so good to hear from you! I thought . . . well, what I thought doesn’t matter now, does it? Why didn’t you call me earlier? How are you?”

  Her words tumbled out in a bewildering rush. With the communications lag imposed by distance, it was customary for one person to talk while the other listened, but Holly was babbling away as if she hadn’t spoken to anyone in years.

  Tavalera sat there, staring stupidly at her image on the screen, his mind in a whirl. One minute I’m on his spaceship and the next I’m back here. It’s impossible. I must be cracking up. He started to tremble uncontrollably: his hands, his entire body, shook like a dust mote in a hurricane.

  Holly kept talking, smiling, laughing happily. Dimly Tavalera saw that the digital clock readout in the lower corner of the screen indicated three and a half hours had passed since he had sent his message to her. Three and a half hours! What happened? How did it happen? What’s happening to me?

  “I’ll check with the science people, Raoul,” Holly was prattling on, “but I really don’t think they would rig up a fake message to send Earthside. They’re too busy studying the bugs on Titan and those nanomachines in the rings. Maybe somebody else pulled off the joke, but I really don’t think it was anybody here in Goddard. I’ll ask Professor Wilmot to put together a little team of people to look into it. He doesn’t have much to do these days and . . .”

  Through the whirlwind of emotions swirling through him, Tavalera faintly understood that Holly was happy to hear from him. She’s just running on and on because she thought I’d forgotten about her, but now she knows I haven’t and she’s happy as a kid on Christmas, and how did he get me into his spacecraft and then back here again? How? How?

  “So what’s it like, being back home?” Holly asked. “How’s your mom and all your old friends? Is the greenhouse flooding as bad as the news nets make it look? When will you be coming back here? Or do you want me to come to Earth? My term’ll be over in another seven months. I can come then, if you want me to.”

  Holly’s uninterrupted monologue abruptly stopped. Her bright, eager expression faded a bit. Now she looked uneasy, almost worried.

  “You do want to come back, don’t you? I mean, I could come visit you Earthside and then we’d go back together, right? Please tell me what you want to do.”

  She lapsed into silence. Tavalera sat there for several long moments, his thoughts tumbling wildly. I was on his spacecraft, he kept telling himself. I talked with him. He’s real. He’s alive.

  But so is Holly. Tavalera saw the anxious expression on her face, the hope in her eyes. With all his heart he wanted to tell her how much he wished he were with her, how much he loved her.

  But he heard his own strangled voice grate, “I . . . I can’t talk . . . can’t . . .”

  The wall screen went blank. Holly’s face disappeared. Tavalera just sat there, sagging in the armchair, mouth hanging open, heart racing. Then Sister Angelique’s dark, almond-eyed face appeared on the screen, frowning with concern.

  “Mr. Tavalera, what’s wrong? Are you all right?”

  He tried to speak, tried to shake his head. But the thundering of his pulse in his ears drowned out everything. It was like hammer blows battering him.

  He saw the room’s ceiling slide past his glassy eyes, and then everything went black.

  CHAPTER 14

  Tavalera heard a soft beeping s
ound and for a panicked instant thought he was back in Stoner’s spacecraft. He tried to open his eyes; they were gummy, but the lids slowly separated. Everything seemed blurred, misty. He was flat on his back and unable to move.

  “He’s coming out of it,” a woman’s voice said.

  “Call Sister Angelique,” said another voice, deeper, a man’s.

  Tavalera blinked several times. His eyes still felt sticky, but he could make out a soft white ceiling above him. Turning his head slightly, he saw a bank of monitoring instruments lining the wall, fuzzy, blurred. I’m in a bed, he realized. This must be a hospital.

  “Stimulant?” asked the woman’s voice.

  “Inject.”

  Tavalera felt nothing, but his vision cleared. The room came into focus. Two medics in white smocks were standing by his bed.

  The man gave him a professional smile. “Back among us now, eh?” He had a full beard, pepper-and-salt.

  “Who . . . who’re you?” Tavalera’s tongue felt thick, swollen. “What happened to me?”

  “You collapsed in your office this morning,” said the doctor.

  The woman looked up at the panel of monitors on the wall. “Life signs approaching normal,” she said, sounding almost disappointed about it. She was a hefty-looking blonde, with thick arms and a hard cast to her face.

  The doctor made a chuckling laugh and pointed at Tavalera with a stubby finger. “You’ll be fine. Just lay there and rest. We’ll keep you under observation overnight. Try to relax and get a good night’s sleep.”

  They both started toward the door.

  “Wait,” he called after them weakly. “What’s happening to me? What’s wrong with me?”

  They ignored his questions and walked out of the narrow room, leaving Tavalera alone on the bed. He tried to sit up, but his head started spinning and he plopped back on the pillows again. He saw that there was a cuff around his left biceps, with a vial of clear liquid attached to it, blinking silently. It felt warm against his skin. He tried to read the label on the dispenser, but it was medical jargon he didn’t understand.

  Try to relax and get a good night’s sleep, he repeated silently. Yeah. Great.

  Tavalera waited several minutes, then slowly, slowly tried to sit up once again. He felt woozy, but he made it to a sitting position. A monitor alarm began chiming, its light flashing red.

  “Please remain in your bed,” demanded a computer’s synthesized voice. “Do not try to get out of your bed.”

  How far can I get? Tavalera asked himself. Then he realized he was wearing a flimsy pale green hospital gown, tied loosely in the back. It hung on him, several sizes too big. Where’d they put my clothes?

  He pulled the bedsheet back off his hairy legs and half-slid to the floor. Leaning heavily on the bed, he tried to straighten up. The floor tiles felt pleasantly warm to his bare feet.

  “Please remain in your bed,” the computer repeated. “Do not try to get out of your bed.”

  “Bullshit,” Tavalera muttered. “Where’s the clothes closet?”

  The beefy woman medic who’d been in the room moments earlier burst in again. “What do you think you’re doing?” She was clearly angry, her heavyset face florid, her eyes ablaze.

  “I’m okay,” he said. “I wanna go home.”

  She wrapped her muscular arms around him and pushed him back against the bed. “You get in that bed and stay there! Doctor’s orders!”

  “I don’t want—”

  Sister Angelique stepped through the open doorway, her eyes widening at the sight of Tavalera struggling with the medic.

  “Tell them I’m okay,” Tavalera pleaded to Angelique.

  She smiled coolly at him. “It would be better if you got back in bed, Mr. Tavalera. It’s for your own good.”

  He pulled free of the woman’s grasp and leaned back on the edge of the bed, puffing from the exertion. The medic glared at Tavalera and he glared back.

  “He’ll be all right,” said Sister Angelique to the woman. “Could you kindly give us some privacy? I need to talk with him.”

  Still glowering at Tavalera, the medic said gruffly, “He’s supposed to stay in bed. Doctor’s orders.”

  “He will,” Angelique said softly. To Tavalera she added, “Won’t you, Raoul? For me?”

  Feeling outmaneuvered, Tavalera hoisted himself back onto the bed and sat with his back barely touching the pillows. The bed rose with a soft whirring sound and adjusted itself to his position. The medic made a single curt nod, then left the room and shut the door behind her.

  There was no chair in the narrow room, so Sister Angelique remained standing. “You gave us quite a fright this morning,” she said.

  “Scared myself,” Tavalera admitted.

  “What happened, Raoul? You don’t mind me being so familiar, do you?”

  “It’s okay.”

  “So what happened? What made you collapse that way?”

  “I’m not sure I know,” he said.

  Angelique studied him with her cool dark eyes for a long moment. Then she said, “You transmitted your message to the chief administrator of the Goddard habitat, which is all to the good.”

  “Holly Lane,” Tavalera murmured.

  Frowning slightly, Angelique continued, “The security cameras show that you sat in your chair for three hours, not moving, hardly breathing. As if you were catatonic, almost. Then the return message came in from Goddard and you collapsed.”

  “I saw Stoner,” he blurted.

  Angelique’s eyes flashed wide. “Keith Stoner? The man who claims he’s been to the stars?”

  “I was on his spacecraft . . . somehow.”

  “You never left your office. The cameras show you were there the whole time.”

  “I was on his spacecraft. He’s alive. He talked to me, told me he was puzzled, that our history records don’t match what he remembers from his earlier life.”

  “That’s not possible, Raoul.”

  “I know it’s not!” he wailed. “But it happened to me. I was there! And then I was back again.”

  “A hallucination,” she said almost in a whisper. “But why? What’s happened to you, Raoul?”

  “I don’t know! It was all so real, but . . . it couldn’t have been. I must be going nutty!”

  Sister Angelique made a little clucking sound with her tongue. “I don’t think so,” she said, trying to sound reassuring. “It’s too much of a coincidence, you sending a message out to Saturn orbit and then Stoner suddenly appearing to you.”

  “But you said I was alone in the office all the time.”

  “That’s what the cameras show.”

  “Then I must have dreamed the whole thing. It must’ve been some kind of crazy dream.”

  Sister Angelique looked down at him thoughtfully. “We’ll have to see about that, Raoul. We’ll see.”

  CHAPTER 15

  When he woke up the next morning Tavalera figured that they must have put a sedative in the meager dinner a nurse had brought to him on a plastic tray. I went out like a light, he thought. No dreams, nothing.

  Now, sitting up on the self-adjusting bed, he listened to the monitors beeping softly. No way to tell what time it is, he realized. There were no windows in the narrow room, no clock. Must be morning, he reasoned. I got a good sleep and now it’s gotta be morning.

  As if in answer to his surmise, a young nurse pushed the door open, followed by a flat-topped robot bearing a breakfast tray covered with plastic domes. Tavalera smelled sausages and coffee.

  “You must have friends in high places. Juice, eggs, soy sausages, and hot coffee,” the nurse announced as she lifted the tray from the robot to Tavalera’s lap. “That’s a lot better than the usual breakfast around here.”

  She wasn’t exactly pretty, Tavalera thought: her nose was hooked and her complexion blotchy. But she was a big improvement over the woman who’d tried to wrestle him back to bed the previous day.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  She gave him a
smile and said, “You’re scheduled for brain scans at ten thirty.”

  It was a full morning. A pair of strapping male orderlies popped into his room the instant he finished his coffee and bustled him into a powered wheelchair. They’re watching me, Tavalera guessed. They can see every breath I take.

  They controlled the powerchair with a handheld remote unit and led him through a bewildering maze of corridors, one orderly striding along beside the powerchair, the other—with the remote—behind Tavalera. He got the feeling they were guards and they were with him to make certain he went where they wanted him to. Not that I’m going anywhere in this hospital gown, he told himself, picturing himself running out onto the streets with his butt hanging out and the two strong-arm orderlies chasing him.

  The brain scans were painless. They brought him to a room that looked like a laboratory and sat him in an oversized metal chair, then placed a crown of electrodes on his head. He thought of the stimulator his mother used.

  “Good thing you keep your hair short,” said the technician running the lab. “If it’s too bushy we have to shave it down.”

  As he adjusted the equipment that filled the lab the technician kept chattering: “We had one guy in here with hair like Samson, all the way down to his waist. He screamed like we were crucifying him when we had to cut it off. And the women—they cry and weep. We get some really interesting scans from ’em when they’re all wrought up like that.”

  Tavalera said nothing. The equipment hummed; the technician nattered on. He saw a display screen that showed what looked like a human brain, with colors flashing on and off in various parts of it.

  “Is that me?” he asked.

  “No talking, please,” said the technician. Then he added, “Yeah, it’s you.”

  From the brain scan the orderlies took him to a full-body scanner, and from there to a big open room filled with gym equipment. People were jogging on treadmills, working on weight machines, pedaling stationary bikes. Despite its clean carpeting and indirect lighting, the room smelled of perspiration.

  The orderlies clicked a monitor to his left biceps, then told Tavalera to run on one of the treadmills.