Voyagers III - Star Brothers (20 page)

Stoner tapped his temple. “Whatever was in that ship is up here.”

“But will you be able to get it out of him?”

Smiling, “We’re brothers, Jo. More than brothers, really, but that’s the closest word in our language to express it. When we set the design parameters for the ship we’re building at Delphi base, the guidance system was part of the design. It’s being incubated now, most likely.”

Jo stared into his eyes. “Sometimes…when you first woke from the freezing you were so different—almost inhuman. But then…”

“It’s the real me, Jo. Keith Stoner, the same man I always was. Except that I have a star brother within me. But that doesn’t change the original me.”

“Oh no?” Jo glanced up at Ilona and Janos, sitting forward of them in the plane’s cabin like a pair of bewildered school-children.

“I can do things that no one could do before,” Stoner admitted. “But that doesn’t change my personality. I’m still me and nobody else.”

“Plus your friend.”

“My brother.”

“You could rule the world, Keith. If you wanted to.”

For a moment he did not answer. Then, “No one should rule the world. No one person, no one group, no one nation. The human race has got to be able to rule itself. Otherwise all you get is a tyrant who’d be in constant fear of rebellion. Constant bloodshed. Constant pain.”

“And you think people like Nkona and de Sagres can bring the world to that condition?”

“They’re doing it, Jo. Slowly, but they’re moving us in the proper direction. If they’re not stopped, men and women like that will help the human race to take the next step forward.”

Jo stared into his eyes, as if trying to see who was truly there.

“The step up to nanotechnology—it’s a test, Jo. A test. Other races on other worlds have tried it and failed. Wiped themselves out. Overpopulated to the point of total ecological collapse. Destroyed themselves in wars. We’ve got to make sure that the human race discovers nanotechnology in the right way and develops it wisely, usefully. Not for power. Not for weapons. Humanely. Then we’ll be ready to meet the other races that have succeeded, that have passed this test and become truly intelligent, truly adult.”

She leaned her head on the padded chair back. “Keith—don’t you ever get tired of it? The struggle? It’s been fifteen years, for god’s sake! When do we rest, when do we get to enjoy life?”

Reaching out, Stoner touched her chin lightly and turned her face toward his. He kissed her.

“With the power comes the responsibility, Jo. I can’t stop, not until it’s finished.”

Jo sighed. “
The Red Shoes
,” she said.

Grinning, Stoner said, “Well, at least that’s better than
Macbeth
.”

Li-Po Hsen could see that Vic Tomasso was almost breathless. “Yes, yes, they’ll be here in another hour and a half!”

Hsen was sitting up tensely in the comfortable lounge chair on his rooftop patio. The magnificent harbor of Hong Kong was spread out for his view, busy with boats and barges that practically covered the crescent of water from one shore to the other. Beyond lay the crowded white skyscrapers of Kowloon and the softly blue mountains of China itself. The woman who had been pouring tea for him had backed away, startled, when Hsen had bolted upright in the chair.

“You told me they would be in Moscow for at least another day!” he said to the image on the phone screen, his voice murderously cold.

“They changed their plans.” Tomasso looked thoroughly frightened. “They’ll be landing at Hilo and coming up to the house. I just got the word. I’m taking all kinds of chances calling you like this!”

Hsen forced himself to regain his inner calm. He closed his eyes for a moment, then said softly, “You have done well. Now go about your regular business as usual. Do not contact me unless they change their plans once again.”

Tomasso nodded eagerly and cut the connection.

Before the screen went totally dark Hsen was tapping out the number of his security chief. When her sallow face appeared on the screen he swiftly told her that Stoner and his wife would be at their home within two hours.

“Is your team prepared to strike?” Hsen asked.

“Within six hours,” she replied.

“Then strike! Now!”

“It will be done.”

IT was just after midnight. Jo and Stoner slept together in their own bed for the first time in days, warm and moist from making love. Above them moonlit clouds scudded past the bright twinkling stars.

Outside the house, microscopically small diode lasers swept their invisible beams across the grounds. Heat and motion detectors watched patiently from every corner of the sprawling buildings. Two armed watchmen slowly padded back and forth along special walkways cunningly built into the roof to look as if they had been part of the architect’s original line.

Half a mile down the only road leading to the house, dozens more Vanguard employees slept in a gate house that was part fortress, part armory, and part command center. Three security personnel—two of them women—sat by the fifteen display screens that monitored every square inch of the grounds and the house’s exterior. They stayed alert because they never knew when one of their superiors would suddenly pop in to the monitoring center to check up on them. Once in a while Ms. Camerata herself showed up. God help the person who looked drowsy.

There was no other access to the house except that one road past the gate house. Like a medieval castle, the house was built on a bluff by the sea, protected on three sides by steep cliffs that plunged down to heavy pounding surf. Still, there were sensors planted in the cliff walls. And antipersonnel mines.

Stoner awoke. Ever since he had acquired his star brother he had needed but little sleep. He inhaled the fragrance of the flowers in their room, and the musky lingering odor of their lovemaking. Jo slept on her side, curled slightly facing him. The only time her face looks relaxed is when we’re sleeping together here at home, Stoner said to himself. She feels safe here.

Looking up through the transparent ceiling he thought he saw a shadow flicker past. A plane, this time of night? The house was well away from the normal flight paths out of Hilo Airport, he knew. What would a plane be doing out this way?

But it was gone before he could really worry about it. Stoner listened to the quiet of the house. True silence simply does not exist. Even in an absolutely still room there is some sound, the faint sixty-cycle hum of electrical current, the Brownian motion of air molecules inside the ear, the creak of walls expanding in the sunlight or contracting in shadow, the skittering of a leaf blown across the roof.

Cathy and Rickie were in their own rooms, sleeping soundly. Stoner smiled. He and Jo had expected the kids to want to have dinner with their parents after several days’ absence. But with the true indifference of youth Cathy and Rickie had preferred to eat by the pool and spend the evening swimming and watching the TV on the patio. The fact that their parents were home was reassuring enough to them; they did not want to sit through a stuffy adult dinner.

Ilona Lucacs was sleeping fitfully, Stoner sensed. Although she claimed that direct brain stimulation produced no physical effects, she had been as irritable and shaky as any junkie facing withdrawal. Stoner had tried to reassure her emotionally and had even asked Jo point-blank to help make the Hungarian woman feel at ease. But still Ilona tossed on her bed in the guest wing; perhaps she was not in pain, but she desperately missed the electrical ecstasy that she had become accustomed to.

Zoltan Janos was sleeping poorly too. Stoner could feel the nervous fear emanating from him. He was just beginning to realize that his career, his entire life, had suddenly veered off in an entirely unexpected direction. One minute he’s running a high-powered research operation for the president of his country, the next he’s a fugitive fleeing halfway across the world. And he’s trying to keep all that fear and frustration and anger inside himself, afraid to show his feelings to anyone, distrustful of everyone.

Or is it fear and frustration? Stoner asked himself. He had come along to Hawaii easily enough. Perhaps too easily. Ilona seemed confused, frightened, but Janos…

Suddenly Stoner’s point of view shifted. In his mind’s eye he saw the house from the outside, from above, as if he were flying. The dark bulk of the roof line against the even darker edge of the cliff and the frothing luminescent surf far below. As if gliding through the soft night air in a parasail…

Another shadow flickered across the transparent ceiling. Stoner sat up in the bed, suddenly tense. Too big to be a bird and too low to be a plane.

The softest padding sound of feet racing across the roof. The white-hot agony of a man stabbed to death!

“Jo, get up, we…”

Every alarm in the house shrilled and all the outside lights came on. Stoner dived for the jeans he had tossed onto the chair near the bed.

“Stay here,” he told Jo.

She had already hit the special alarm button built into the ornately carved head of their bed, sending a priority alarm to the gate house down the road. And then dashed for her robe.

“The children!” Jo yelped.

“I’ll take care of them,” Stoner shouted from the door. But she was running behind him, down the hall toward the rooms where Cathy and Rickie’s rooms were.

Glancing out the sliding glass door halfway down the hall, Stoner saw six or seven men in dead black skintight jumpsuits disentangling themselves from the shrouds of parasails. That was the plane I thought I saw, his mind raced. It dropped an assault team on the house.

The children’s bedrooms were at the far end of the hall. Before he could reach them, the door to Rickie’s room burst open and a pair of black-suited men stepped through, levelling snub-nosed submachine guns at Stoner’s gut.

“Stay behind me,” he snapped to Jo.

“Put your hands up,” said one of the men, his voice muffled by a gas mask with big square goggles that made him look somehow like a prehistoric beast. Behind him Stoner saw two more intruders yanking a still half-asleep Rickie out into the hall. The boy wore only a pair of ragged flowered shorts.

“Rickie!” Jo screamed, lunging for her son.

But Stoner held her back as the first intruder cocked his submachine gun at her. Stoner sensed that the men were keyed to the snapping point.

“You don’t want to hurt anyone,” Stoner said, as calmly as he could. “And you certainly don’t want the boy.”

Further down the hall he saw another quartet of gun-bearing intruders hustling Cathy out into the hallway. She was wide-eyed with terror, clutching the flimsy tee shirt she used as a nightgown with white-knuckled hands.

“It’s all right, Cathy,” Stoner called to her. “Don’t be afraid.”

“You come with us!” snapped the man pointing the gun at Stoner from inside his gas mask. His voice sounded hollow, high-pitched, very dangerous.

They half-pushed, half-carried the youngsters out through the sliding doors onto the patio by the swimming pool, Stoner and Jo following as the gunmen directed them. The alarms were still hooting and screeching; Stoner knew that in another minute dozens of Vanguard security guards would come barrelling up to the house and a fire fight would erupt.

Out in the glaring lights on the patio he saw the body of one of the security guards who had been patrolling the roof. And more of the black-suited intruders clustered around a large bag of equipment that had been para-dropped with them.

For an instant he wondered where the two Hungarians were, then he saw them being led at gunpoint out onto the far end of the patio. Nunzio and the other house servants were nowhere in sight.

Stoner said to the nearest gunman, “It’s me you want, not the others, isn’t it?”

The gunman nodded slowly.

“So let them go and I’ll go with you.”

“Your family comes along,” the gunman said in his muffled voice.

“That’s not really necessary,” Stoner said, taking a step toward the man. “You don’t even need the guns. I’m willing to come along with you. There’s no need to threaten anyone.”

The submachine gun wavered in his grip.

“You’re afraid that the security guards will be here before you’re ready to leave and you’ll have a fight on your hands,” Stoner said softly, calmly, soothingly. “That won’t happen. I’ll go with you voluntarily.”

He was close enough to reach the man’s gun. Inside him, Stoner’s mind was racing. If I can get to the others who’re holding Rickie and Cathy I can talk our way out of this before the security team starts shooting up everything.

“Why don’t you tell your men to hand the children over to their mother. Everybody will be a lot safer that way.”

The man slowly nodded. It was impossible to see his expression inside the gas mask, but he turned almost like an automaton and gestured to the intruders holding Rickie and Cathy with one hand, his other hand holding the submachine gun pointed down to the ground.

Jo, meanwhile, was in a frenzy of shock, rage, and terror. In the pocket of her robe was a slim metallic rod that controlled the household robots. She watched in horror as Keith spoke gently to the bastards who had grabbed her children. Cathy looked so terrified, her face white as death. Rickie looked scared too but Cathy must feel naked and totally helpless in the clutches of strange horrible men, Jo knew.

There were eight household robots programmed to do cleaning chores and serve at table. With extensible arms operated by tiny but powerful servomotors they could even be used as lifeguards, capable of reaching into any spot in the pool and hauling out even a two-hundred-pound swimmer.

They also had built into their domed heads small but powerful lasers that could spit out pulses of light with the energy of a high-velocity bullet.

While Keith talked, Jo acted. They’re not going to steal my babies! I’ll kill them! All of them!

With her forefinger and thumb Jo manipulated the slipring control of the robot command rod. The eight squat machines trundled out onto the patio from both ends, their metal skins glinting in the powerful security lights.

“You are surrounded,” said a preprogrammed voice tape. “A security team will arrive momentarily. Give yourselves up
now
!”

The man that Stoner had been talking to jerked around, his gun snapping toward the nearest robot. One of the other intruders laughed shakily.

Jo pressed the tip of the control rod. Each robot selected a target and fired. Eight of the intruders spasmed and smashed to the ground as pulses of laser light hit their heads and shattered bone and brain.

Before Stoner could move, all the other intruders blasted away at the robots. Who fired back at the intruders.

Jo felt herself flung to the ground. Keith had knocked her down and now he was dashing toward the men holding their children.

The one that Keith had been talking to dropped to one knee and pointed his submachine gun at Cathy. One of the men who had been holding her was already sprawled on the ground, the other had turned to fire at the robots approaching him.

“I’ll kill her!” the intruder screamed.

Jo hesitated half a heartbeat, then turned off the robots. Too late. Three separate laser beams smashed the man’s head to pulp. His spine arched and his throat poured out a bloody shriek. His hands twitched and the submachine gun fired a burst that flung Cathy completely off her feet and sent her reeling, tottering over the edge of the swimming pool and into the water.

Jo screamed and raced to the pool.

Stoner raised his hands high. “Come on, you stupid bastards!” he shouted. “You want me, come on and take me before we all get killed!”

The remaining intruders rushed to Stoner and pushed him toward the lumpy bag of equipment that still lay in the far corner of the patio. The robots stood inert, half of them torn apart by bullets, their innards flickering and hissing faintly with electrical sparks.

Jo stared down into the lighted pool where her daughter floated face down, her hair spreading on the bloody water, her body torn nearly in half.

“Cathy!” she screamed. “Cathy!”

She felt Rickie’s arms slide around her waist and the two of them collapsed sobbing at the edge of the pool.

Stoner watched, his insides frozen by his star brother, his mind numb with shock, as the intruders strapped a personal rocket unit on his back. In the distance, despite the horror that was trying to overwhelm him, Stoner heard the sounds of approaching cars. The security team was racing up the road.

Too late. The intruders roared off on their backpack rockets, controlling Stoner’s backpack remotely. As in a nightmare, Stoner saw the brilliantly-lit blood-soaked patio receding, racing away from him, bodies sprawled helter skelter like toys thrown away by a careless child, his daughter’s body floating in the reddening pool, his wife and son clinging to each other in helpless grief.