Voyagers IV - The Return Read online

  “Right,” said Stoner.

  He left the starship and projected his presence into Mayfair’s office. Tavalera was standing in front of the desk; three uniformed security guards were between him and the door. Mayfair stood behind his desk, his expression stone hard.

  “He’s telling you the truth, Dr. Mayfair,” Stoner said, standing by the office’s window. “I’m real and you’d better tell your superiors they’re going to have to deal with me. Or go as extinct as the dinosaurs.”

  Mayfair sagged down on his desk chair, his face going gray as ashes. Tavalera jerked with surprise and the three armed guards who had just entered the room seemed frozen with shock.

  But only for a moment. Their leader pawed at the pistol in the black leather holster at his hip. Both the other men, younger and faster, drew their pistols and leveled them at Stoner.

  Stoner said mildly, “They won’t work, gentlemen, so you might as well put your guns away.”

  Mayfair recovered enough to shout, “Shoot him if he makes any threatening moves! Keep him covered!”

  Stoner smiled at the doctor. “Why would I make a threatening move? And what do you define as threatening?”

  “Stay there by the window! Don’t come any closer!”

  “Don’t be an ass,” Stoner said.

  He took a step toward Mayfair, still behind his desk. One of the guards stretched out his arm and fired his pistol. Or tried to. The trigger would not budge. The other two tried, as well. They got red in the face with strain, but the guns would not fire.

  “I told you the guns won’t work,” Stoner said. “You don’t have any need for them. I’m not going to cause any trouble.”

  Tavalera broke into a grin. “You’ve already caused trouble. You’ve got them all scared shitless.”

  “Scared? Why?” Stoner looked Tavalera over, then asked, “Are you frightened of me?”

  “Hell yes!”

  “Why?”

  Tavalera waved a hand in the air. “You pop in just like a genie. Whoosh! You’re here.”

  “That frightens you.”

  “You bet it does. And you bring me up to your spacecraft just like snapping your fingers.”

  Stoner admitted, “I suppose that did seem strange to you.”

  “Wh . . . who are you?” Mayfair sputtered. “What are you doing here? What do you want?”

  “I am Keith Stoner. I’m here to prevent you from dragging this young man off to a forced interrogation because he told you the truth. I want to save the human race.”

  “Save us?” Mayfair’s brows knit. “Save us from what?”

  “From the nuclear war that’s about to begin. From the total extinction of the entire human race.”

  “What nuclear war?” asked the guard leader.

  “It’s been brewing for decades,” Stoner replied. “And you don’t seem to have the defensive shields that we gave you back before I left for the stars.”

  “You’re crazy!” Mayfair shouted.

  Stoner shook his head. “Anything that you don’t understand—or won’t understand—you label as crazy. Strange attitude for a clinical psychologist.”

  “Is Atlanta going to be bombed?” the guard leader asked, his voice hollow.

  “If we allow the war to start, yes.”

  “You can stop it?”

  “No,” said Stoner. “But you can. I hope.”

  CHAPTER 3

  The guards still held their pistols in their hands, but they had allowed their arms to drop to their sides. Mayfair still sat rigidly behind his desk, his face set in a tight, frightened glare.

  Tavalera stood before the desk, facing Stoner. “There can’t be a nuclear war,” he said. “Nuclear weapons have been banned for nearly half a century.”

  “Forbidden, but not forgotten,” Stoner said gravely. “The truce between the Western nations and the nations of Islam is falling apart. Population pressures are building and your resources are being depleted faster than ever.”

  “But we’ve got fusion energy, natural resources from the asteroids . . .”

  “You’re building a pressure cooker here on this planet. More resources lead to bigger population. Resources from space have delayed the inevitable, but the war is still coming—unless you take steps to prevent it.”

  Mayfair asked in a more subdued voice, “How do you know this?”

  Ignoring his question, Stoner said, “Your government is actually run by your New Morality organization. I’ve got to meet with their leader.”

  “Archbishop Overmire?”

  “Franklin Haverford Overmire, yes, he’s the one.”

  “But you can’t just walk in and see the Archbishop,” said Mayfair. “Not even I can do that.”

  Smiling tightly, Stoner replied, “I could. But I’d rather he was prepared to meet with me and have a serious discussion. A very serious discussion.”

  Mayfair fell silent.

  “Can you arrange such a meeting for me?” Stoner asked.

  Obviously struggling within himself, Mayfair said, “I . . . it’s impossible. . . . No one can . . .”

  Stoner crossed his arms over his chest.

  Mayfair was perspiring visibly, beads of sweat dotting his forehead and upper lip. “I don’t have access to the Archbishop. I truly don’t.”

  “Then who does?”

  “Bishop Craig,” Mayfair said almost in a whimper. “I could bring you to Bishop Craig.”

  With a satisfied nod, “Then let’s go see Bishop Craig.”

  Almost like a puppet being hauled to its feet by invisible strings, Mayfair rose from his chair and stepped hesitantly around his desk. To the empty air he called, “Phone, alert Bishop Craig. We’re coming to his office. We’ll arrive in about ten minutes.”

  Stoner crooked a finger at Tavalera. “You’d better come along, too.”

  Tavalera watched Mayfair totter to the door of his office, past the three stone-silent security guards, and out into the anteroom. Stoner walked beside him, towering almost a full head taller than Mayfair. He’s controlling the doc, Tavalera realized. He’s making Mayfair do what he wants.

  Is he controlling me? No, Tavalera thought. I want to go along on this. I want to see Bishop Craig. And Archbishop Overmire. Tavalera had no doubt at all that Stoner would get his meeting with the Archbishop.

  Zebulon Josephus Craig was a small man, slim and diminutive, almost elfin. His pate had been totally bald since he’d been forty, and his skin was as dark as milk chocolate. Bishop Craig was always as neat and sharp as a pin. Clerical suits that looked drab and ordinary on other men seemed to fit him so perfectly that he looked like an ecclesiastical fashion plate. His colleagues often called him Dapper Dan, although never to his face.

  He was an energetic man who obviously enjoyed the smaller pleasures of life: good companionship, a job well done. Beneath his charming, accommodating exterior, though, beat a coldly calculating driving ambition. He wanted to become the New Morality’s next Archbishop. He wanted the power to choose Presidents and Senators. He wanted to run the nation, and much of the world, the way it should be run.

  Archbishop Overmire was an old and ailing man, Craig estimated. The Archbishop had vowed never to accept the rejuvenation treatments or other antiaging therapies of the secular scientists. Artificial hearts and replacement organs. Stem cell therapy. Telomerase injections. They were forbidden to the ordinary faithful, and their Archbishop would not partake of them, either, even though he knew that lesser souls had done so in secret. None of that for the leader of the New Morality! The Archbishop promised he would live out the natural span of years that God had allotted him, and no more.

  The Archbishop could not possibly last for much longer, thought Bishop Craig. The game now was to position himself to be elected the next Archbishop.

  Craig used his charm and his coolly detached intelligence to move ahead of his rival bishops in the unannounced, never-admitted race to become the next Archbishop of the New Morality movement. The thought had occ
urred to him more than once that an enterprising man might not even have to wait until God called Overmire to Him. The current Archbishop could retire or be found physically unable to continue carrying his heavy burdens.

  Meanwhile, Bishop Craig kept on his course, winning approval for his relentless campaigns to root out evil, to bring all Believers into one harmonious mind-set, to enforce submission to God’s will and stamp out every form of doubt and noncomformity wherever he found it.

  Outwardly Bishop Craig was a pleasant, chipper, friendly man. He treated his staff well. He had legions of friends and supporters. He liked to laugh.

  But he was not laughing as he stared at the image of the uniformed security guard on the wall screen to the left of his desk.

  “Yessir,” the guard was saying. “He got Dr. Mayfair to lead him up to your office, sir. They’re on their way now.”

  Craig shook his head. “Mayfair knows better than that. My staff won’t allow anyone to walk in here without an appointment, without an agenda that I have personally approved.”

  The guard shrugged his broad shoulders. “They’re on their way to your office, sir. With this Tavalera guy tagging along.”

  “Tavalera? Who on Earth is Tavalera?”

  “I’ll shoot you his dossier, sir.”

  “Do that.” Craig cut the connection and the wall screen returned to its default mode, showing a reproduction of Giotto’s crucifixion scene. An eyeblink later it was replaced by the ID photo and personnel file of one Raoul Raymond Tavalera.

  Bishop Craig scanned Tavalera’s file, noting that the young man had spent time aboard the Goddard habitat. Craig’s eyes narrowed at that. We sent those hotheads and dissidents all the way out to Saturn and yet here’s one of them come back to stir up trouble. I’ll have to deal with him.

  Then Craig saw that Sister Angelique had taken over Tavalera’s case and was employing him as part of her investigation into this Stoner business.

  Stoner. He claims he’s been out to the stars. More likely he’s escaped from some asylum. And he’s on his way to my office, according to Mayfair’s security guard.

  Craig leaned back in his desk chair and thought, I’ll have to deal with Stoner, as well as Tavalera. Deal with them both. Sternly.

  APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA

  BY YOLANDA VASQUEZ

  They say that God must love the common man, because He made so many of them. Perhaps so, but it seems to me that God’s wrath is directed at the poor and defenseless much more cruelly than at the wealthy and powerful. When the greenhouse floods struck, for instance, rich people could flee out of harm’s way. They complained, of course; they wailed bitterly that they had to abandon their homes, their livelihoods, their possessions. But they escaped with their lives. Their children survived.

  In Bangladesh, millions drowned when the mighty rivers overflowed. In Brazil and Venezuela and elsewhere in South America, torrential rains caused mud slides that swept away the shantytowns that the wretched poor had built out of packing crates and cardboard on the steep hillsides overlooking the gleaming cities of the rich.

  Even in the United States, it was the poor, trapped by poverty and ignorance in urban ghettoes and migrant crop pickers’ barracks, who stayed and suffered and died. Some trusted to their God to save them. Many climbed to their rooftops as the waters rose and waved piteously to the news media helicopters circling above them. Some of them huddled together in the rain like dumb animals waiting for a miracle to save them.

  Almost all of them died.

  Of course, the greenhouse floods and the other climate catastrophes that struck the world played right into the hands of the New Morality and all those other authoritarian regimes in other lands.

  With millions of families displaced when coastal cities flooded and the global electric power grid collapsed, people wanted—desperately needed—roofs over their heads, food in their bellies, jobs, order, and safety. Above all, they wanted safety. In America the New Morality provided all that for the wretched refugees. All you had to do was ask them for their help—and then do what they told you.

  It took me a long time to understand what was happening in the schools. Ages, in fact. It all came at us a little bit at a time, like Eliot said about the fog creeping in on little cat’s feet. I think it was Eliot. It was all so long ago. T. S. Eliot. I remember when I was a student and we joked that the T. S. stood for “Tough Shoes.”

  Kids don’t read Eliot anymore. They don’t even read Dr. Seuss.

  It was years and years before I realized what was happening. It wasn’t the fault of the New Morality, but they capitalized on it. Oh yes, they took smiling advantage of it and used it for their own purposes.

  “It,” in this case, was the slow, patient, inevitable dumbing down of the schools. Not merely the students, but the teachers, the administrators, all of us. We let them make things easier. The path to hell again.

  The overarching goal of education was to achieve equality. Overreacting to the centuries of racism’s evils, we broke our hearts to achieve equality. Brilliant little Johnny is no better than the intellectually challenged Gloria. We mustn’t let Tamiko lord it over Duwayne just because he’s autistic. So what if Erwin has attention deficit disorder or Ernestine is a Down’s syndrome victim? We can’t hurt their feelings by putting them in separate facilities with specialists to look after them. They deserve to be mainstreamed and attend school with everybody else. So does Millicent, who can’t read at all, and Alejandro, who constantly disrupts the class with his outbursts of anger and violence. Mainstream them. Mainstream them all.

  Besides, mainstreaming is cheaper than building and staffing special facilities for our “special needs” children.

  Equality of outcome, that was our aim. Everyone was to be treated equally; every student would finish school the equal to every other student. And what was the easiest way to achieve equality? Teach to the lowest common denominator. Make certain that every student got exactly what every other student received. No fast lane for the so-called bright ones. That wouldn’t be equal! The mainstream spewed them out equally, year after year.

  Self-esteem. We tried to teach the kids to have pride in themselves. It took me years to figure out that for a youngster to have pride in herself she had to be able to accomplish things, achieve something to be proud of. But somehow we left that part out of the curricula. We stopped teaching T. S. Eliot because he was too difficult to understand. Shakespeare, too. And Hemingway, well, he used foul language and openly depicted sex!

  So we taught less and less of the things that made the kids feel unhappy with themselves and spent more and more classroom time on teaching them self-esteem. Trying to drum arithmetic into their skulls only made them feel bad, so we eased off on the math. And the spelling. And the reading assignments. And homework. Nobody liked homework, especially the parents.

  We taught them self-esteem. By golly, we did.

  And then there were the pressure groups. Parents didn’t want their kids exposed to political beliefs that went against their own politics. So we stopped teaching civics. When an activist group decided that the Declaration of Independence was a subversive document, with its ringing call for overthrowing a government that was deemed oppressive, we stopped teaching about the American Revolution altogether. Besides, Jefferson and Washington and the rest of the Founding Fathers were slaveholders, weren’t they?

  Darwin. When I first started teaching we were forbidden by the state legislature to use the world “evolution” in class. Then we stopped teaching biology altogether. And physics. And chemistry. Instead we taught general science, including “alternative” concepts such as intelligent design and astrology. It was a lot easier on the children, and we teachers didn’t have to defend ourselves against righteous parents who got blue in the face over “godless secularist ideas.”

  We went along with it. The kids were happier; the pressure groups were happier. A few die-hard scientists and university academics warned that we were turning out a generati
on of ignoramuses, but they were happy ignoramuses and we could keep our jobs and avoid all the painful conflicts.

  There were some kids who managed to get ahead anyway. Bright youngsters. A few, a precious few. A handful of schools managed to cater to those budding geniuses who thirsted for real knowledge. The country needed a certain number of engineers and scientists, after all. But they were always distrusted, carefully watched, their work closely controlled by the government and the New Morality. Schools like MIT and Caltech were necessary but kept under surveillance with a combination of jealousy and suspicion. The powers that be needed scientists and engineers, but they never trusted them.

  I knew it was wrong. I suspect most of the other teachers had their misgivings, too. But you couldn’t buck the tide, not if you wanted to keep your job. Not if you wanted to live in the community you were teaching in. Nobody wanted to be branded a pariah, a heretic.

  So we ambled along down that sloping path to hell. And taught self-esteem to kids who knew less and less about more and more.

  CHAPTER 4

  Tavalera marveled at how Stoner smoothly, effortlessly, moved through Bishop Craig’s staff. Receptionists, aides, security guards, executive assistants—Stoner simply spoke to them for a few moments and they allowed him to pass. They all seemed to be in a daze, Tavalera thought. It’s like he hypnotizes them.

  He was standing with Stoner and Dr. Mayfair in an anteroom on the top floor of one of the buildings that adjoined the hospital. Through the sweeping floor-to-ceiling windows Tavalera could see the complex of New Morality buildings sprawling outside, with elevated walkways connecting the glass towers. Far below, parking lots stretched in all directions, the cars and busses looking like miniature toys from this distance. Helicopters and ungainly-looking tilt-rotors landed and took off from rooftops. Beyond them the sky was bright blue, with puffy white clouds sailing by on a strong wind.

  “I’m sure you could adjust the bishop’s schedule,” Stoner was saying softly to a perplexed-looking young man in a dark clerical suit. He was sitting behind a desk that stood before a door bearing a small gold-plated plaque inscribed: BISHOP Z. J. CRAIG.