Voyagers III - Star Brothers (25 page)

With a withering look, the major hollered back, “They’re scared! They’re afraid of catching it, of course. It’s fatal. And extremely painful. There’s no cure, no vaccine. Nobody wants to die.”

“But the Army has sent out orders to prevent anyone from leaving the city?”

“The Surgeon General, actually. We’re in a state of emergency. The governors of every state in the Union have called out the National Guard to help control road traffic and keep order.”

“So you’re turning back the desperately frightened people who want to get away from the Horror?”

“That’s my job. We can’t allow them to spread the plague into the countryside. The whole nation will be affected.”

“But can’t these people find alternate roads, side roads, to get out into the countryside?”

“Sure they can! That’s what makes this job so frustrating. We can’t put up roadblocks across every back road in the area. We don’t have the manpower or the time!”

“So that means…” The reporter gasped. A sudden pain in her stomach, like a hot knife twisting. She recovered, knowing that the lapse could be edited out of the tape. “That means that just because five cases of the Horror have been reported in Chicago, the entire city of four million inhabitants is under quara…”

The pain struck again, more viciously. She doubled over, clutching her middle. The microphone pin slipped from her lapel to the grass, but still picked up her awful retching screams of pain.

The major bellowed in a voice of command, “Medic! Get a medic up here on the double.”

The reporter writhed on the ground, blood bubbling from her mouth, eyes wild with agony. The cameraman bent over her and got every last second of her death throes on tape.

THERE was no way around the robot that stood guard outside his door. His captors were too clever to face him; not even the squat serving robot appeared anymore. They had stopped feeding him.

I should have made them release me when I had the chance, Stoner thought ruefully. Now I’m stuck here.

We want to find out who they are working for, his star brother reminded him.

I know who they are, he replied.

The voices he had heard from the overhead speakers belonged to Janos and Ilona Lucacs. Stoner was certain of it. The man who had coldly stated that he intended to amputate Stoner’s fingers to see if he could grow them back—that was Zoltan Janos.

Yes, said his star brother. But if he is no longer working for the president of Hungary, for whom is he working? Who built this laboratory? Why is he experimenting on us?

Ilona was with Janos, too. How did they leave Hawaii? How did they get away from Jo? Lying quietly on his cot in the dead of night, Stoner tried to expand his awareness past the locked door of his room, past the stupid hulking robot that stood guard outside, beyond the glimpse of hallway he had seen.

Ilona, are you there? he called silently. Can you sense my presence?

No response. He waited in the darkness, pretending to be asleep, but every sense in his body was straining to touch another human mind. He could feel the presence of many people, more than twelve of them, but dimly, too far away to reach and examine or control. This building is big, he realized. It must have been an army barracks or a dormitory at one time.

And he was trapped in it. None of the humans would dare come close enough for him even to begin to manipulate their minds. They hid away from him and sent their robots by day, controlling them remotely, and then turned them off so that Stoner had no chance to tinker with the machines mentally once their human controllers were finished with them. The only robot he could reach at night was the guard outside his door.

The damned stupid robot on the other side of that door! The perfect security guard, too inhuman to need a cup of coffee or to stretch its legs or move a millimeter from its assigned post. Its electronic brain was an old-fashioned hard-wired computer with limited program capacity, not one of the complex decision-capable neural networks that Stoner could manipulate. The damned machine was too moronic to be controlled or maneuvered or even to blink its electro-optical eyes…

Stoner almost bolted upright in the cot. Only rigid self-control kept him from moving. The robot can see! Maybe I can use its eyes.

Slowing his breathing, forcing himself to relax and concentrate all his mental energies, Stoner probed for the simple electrical patterns of the robot’s computer.

And there it was, even simpler and less complicated than the brain patterns of a faithful dog. Stoner carefully traced his way through the command paths of the computer’s programming. With enough time, he thought, maybe I could learn to control this beastie.

Time. That’s the one thing I don’t have. I’ve got to get out of here. And soon.

For the moment, though, he had to satisfy himself with nothing more than a look through the robot’s eyes at the hallway outside his room.

There was not much to be seen.

The robot had four electro-optical sensors mounted in the bulbous projection at its top, four eyes in its head. Stoner saw the door to his own room, a scant two feet away. Without needing to move the robot’s head he could see along the corridor in which it stood. It was a surprisingly wide hallway, and Stoner noticed that it was carpeted like the hall of a hotel. But the carpeting was faded, threadbare. There were even patches of fungus here and there.

Doors were spaced along one side of the broad hallway, all of them closed. The walls were cracked here and there; faint squares of lighter plaster showed where pictures had once hung. Dim bare bulbs glowed feebly from the ceiling, casting pools of grayish light along the mildewed carpet. The other wall of the hallway showed windows, boarded up. At the farthest point, where the hall should have ended, rough planks and slabs of plywood had been nailed up, as if the wall had crumbled away.

Stoner felt puzzled. It looked like an old hotel that had been abandoned. He wished the robot had electrochemical sniffers; he was certain he would smell the tang of salt sea air.

All the doors along the corridor were tightly closed, and the robot would not budge from its assigned post to investigate them. Ilona Lucacs was somewhere in this building, Stoner knew. Lying on a sagging ancient hotel bed, plugged in to her pleasure machine, oblivious to all the world.

She was his one hope. An addict who was in love with the man who was systematically torturing him.

For more than an hour Stoner wandered mentally through the programmed pathways in the robot’s computer brain, learning slowly how he might override its commands and take control of the machine. It would take many hours of exertion.

Sleep, said his star brother.

No, we need to be able to move this hunk of tin!

In a few hours they will begin their experiments again. We will need all the strength we have. Sleep now, rest, prepare.

Stoner knew his star brother was right. Still, he wanted to learn how to control the robot. Before they started hacking off his fingers.

“With all due respect for her long years of fine service to this corporation,” said Amanda Tilley from her seat across the circular table from Jo, “and with great sorrow for the loss of her daughter and kidnapping of her husband, I move that the board ask Ms. Camerata for her resignation.”

Jo sat up rigidly in her chair. Since she had been elected chairman of the board she had insisted that the directors meet around a circular table. They had called it “Queen Jo’s Round Table” at first, realizing that it was her way to stop the power games that the directors played. By emphasizing equality among the board, she also emphasized her own mastery of its members.

But now there was a motion on the table that would end her presidency of Vanguard Industries and chairmanship of the board. Jo studied Amanda Tilley: the woman was bone thin, her hair as white as cream, clipped short and neatly coiffed, her paisley frock conservative yet feminine. Her eyes shifted away from Jo’s gaze uneasily. Her mouth was a tight, tense line in her drawn face.

How like Hsen to use a board member who had been one of Jo’s most faithful supporters. And to use Cathy’s murder as the excuse to push me out. Jo held on to her blazing temper. Self-control had never been more vitally important. The subtle little oriental bastard had not dared to show up for the board meeting, not even in hologrammic projection.

Glancing around the table, Jo saw that none of the directors were surprised by Tilley’s motion. Twenty-two men and women, nearly two dozen business people who sat on the boards of the world’s most powerful corporations. Their clothes were quietly elegant; the women in one-of-a-kind frocks or day suits, the men in hand-tailored suits of gray or dark blue. Jo herself wore a sheath of black and beige feather print design; it clung to her figure just enough to be suggestive without being blatant. On the table before each member rested a computer keyboard with flat display screen built into the table top, and a gleaming stainless steel pitcher that held a pint of each director’s preferred drink.

Some of the directors looked embarrassed at Tilley’s motion, some distressed, others wire-taut. Sir Harold Epping was clearly angered. But no one was surprised.

“A motion that I resign has been put before the board,” Jo said, mainly for the tape that was automatically recording the board meeting. “Is there a second?”

She turned her gaze toward Wilhelm Kruppmann and, sure enough, he muttered, “Second.”

“Discussion?” asked Jo.

Several board members squirmed in their chairs. One of the older men cleared his throat, but then said nothing.

Molten hot anger seethed through Jo’s every fiber. She deliberately waited for a long moment, waited while the other board members glanced at one another like guilty school-children, waited while she fought for control over her fury.

At last she said, in a voice that was calm, quiet, and steel-hard, “I suppose I should open the discussion with a statement of my own. I have no intention of resigning the presidency of this corporation or the chairmanship of this board.”

Several of the members nodded; a few even smiled, relieved.

“I believe,” Jo continued, “that this attempt to use the murder of my daughter and the abduction of my husband as an excuse to remove me from office is a contemptible tactic, a return to the sexist maneuvering that was outlawed by the World Court decades ago.”

That made almost all of them sit up: the threat of a discrimination suit in the World Court. No director in his or her right mind would want that.

“Moreover, we all know that this illegal sexist garbage is nothing but a front for the man who wants to take over this corporation. Amanda, I’m certain you don’t realize it, but you are being
used
by Li-Po Hsen.”

Tilley’s mouth dropped open. “I never…this is something…Jo, you mustn’t believe…” she sputtered.

But Jo had already swung her blazing eyes to Kruppmann. “Isn’t that right, Wilhelm?”

She caught the Swiss banker as he was nervously gulping at a glass of sparkling water. He sputtered and his face reddened.

Before he could reply, Jo said, “Hsen wants to take over Vanguard, he’s wanted to do it for years, and now he’s using this pretext to try to get me out of his way. He’s saying to you that I’m just an emotional woman, and the tragedy that’s happened to my family has made me unfit to be your president. Well it’s not true, and I refuse to stand aside and allow Hsen to…to gain control of this corporation
—especially when he’s the one who had my daughter murdered and my husband kidnapped!
”

A shock wave went around the table. Jo smiled to herself. She had almost said that Hsen was trying to rape the corporation, but realized at the last instant that it would be too female a word to use.

“That is a very serious accusation,” Kruppmann said, his voice quavering. “Where is your proof?”

“You are my proof, Wilhelm.” Jo sprang the trap. “In the anteroom through the double doors is a team from my security division, ready to apply truth serum under medically supervised conditions. Will you submit to their examination?”

Kruppmann’s face went white. “Now you accuse
me
?”

“You’re damned right I do! You’ve been in this with Hsen from the beginning.”

“I absolutely refuse to permit your Gestapo robots to interrogate me! You have no right…”

Jo cut him short. “As a member of this board you have agreed to periodic medical examinations. As president of the corporation and chairman of the board, I’m calling for an examination now.”

Kruppmann looked wildly around the table, seeking support and finding none.

“This is illegal!” he blustered. “A violation of my rights!”

“Your rights,” Jo mimicked, almost snarling. “You knew that Hsen was going to attack my home, my family, didn’t you?”

Kruppmann’s response was a strangled guttural growl. The other directors were staring at him, unconsciously leaning away from him, faces aghast. Amanda Tilley’s eyes were wide, her blue-veined hands clenched before her chin.

“Didn’t you?” Jo repeated, her voice hot enough to melt steel.

Kruppmann crumpled. His face sagged and he made a helpless gesture, eyes darting around the table as if for help. He looked like a man who suddenly realized he was going to be hauled before a firing squad.

“I didn’t know…” he said in a tortured whisper. “I had no idea…”

Jo smiled grimly at him. Her scheme had worked. The pitcher of sparkling water on the table before Kruppmann had been laced with enough scopolamine to reduce his willpower almost to zero.

“Tell the board what you do know,” she said softly. “Tell us of your own volition.”

The Swiss banker began blubbering. The board members listened in growing horror as he hesitantly told them of Hsen’s determination to take over Vanguard and to break up the International Investment Agency.

“What about my husband?” Jo demanded.

“That too,” Kruppmann confessed. “Hsen wanted to capture Stoner to find out how he survived freezing. The man wants to live forever.”

“Where is he now?”

Kruppmann heaved his massive shoulders. “I don’t know. China, somewhere in China, I think. He knows you are after him. He has gone into hiding.”

Jo pursed her lips and decided to let Kruppmann off the hook. He could be monitored electronically and by human surveillance teams. He was her best lead to Hsen’s whereabouts.

“Very well,” she said, her voice turned to ice. “Now we should return to the business of the board.”

Amanda Tilley got unsteadily to her feet. “I would like to withdraw my motion,” she said, her voice trembling.

The entire board clapped their hands loudly. All except Kruppmann, who sat dazedly, staring into emptiness. Jo accepted their applause with a tight smile. The cowardly bastards are too scared to throw me out now, she knew. But at least they’ve given me a free hand to deal with Hsen—whether they realize it or not. Now, with the board solidly behind me,
now
we start the moves to take over Pacific Commerce. And kill the murdering sonofabitch.

The voice from the ceiling speaker said almost casually, “We will not use an anesthetic, since we want to determine how well you are able to control the pain.”

One of the many-armed robots had clamped Stoner’s left hand in a grip of steel inches above a small table that was covered with absorbent surgical sheeting. Two of its other arms held Stoner’s shoulders against the back of the chair on which he had been seated. A fourth steel-fingered hand pinned Stoner’s right arm tightly against his side.

“If our sensors show you are in great pain,” the voice went on, “naturally we will immediately inject you with a local anesthetic.”

“Naturally,” said Stoner through gritted teeth. Even though his star brother was controlling his fear, slowing the chemical secretions that produced the bodily sensations of terror, Stoner’s mind still knew full well that in a few moments they were going to amputate one of his fingers.