Voyagers III - Star Brothers (7 page)

“Live in Japan!” was Eleanor’s first shocked reaction.

Stoner soothed, “Half an hour away, Elly. Osaka is only half an hour from Christchurch.” With a grin he bantered, “And your new husband can probably get free seats for you on Pacific Commerce spaceplanes.”

Elly was totally surprised and deeply hurt. Stoner felt the anguish that raced through her and reached out to his daughter to soothe her, ease her pain, help her to assess the situation calmly. Humans react with their glands first, he knew. Only afterwards do they examine the problem rationally. It was a survival trait back when we were half-brained apes hunted by leopards. Now it’s a detriment. He felt his star brother’s almost amused agreement.

Once he saw that both women had gotten past the point of hormone-drenched emotion, Stoner left mother and daughter deeply engaged in talk and rejoined the other guests. Jo was off in the dining room, he saw through the open lanai doors, equally deep in earnest conversation with several of her Vanguard executives. There’s no such thing as a social occasion for her, he knew.

The sense of danger tingled along his nerves again, but so faintly that he could do no more than wonder if it was real or imaginary.

Both of Doug’s boys were splashing down the length of the pool, with ten-year-old Rickie matching them stroke for stroke. Stoner smiled. Born and raised on Hawaii, young Richard could swim like a dolphin. At least the youngsters are getting along all right. Swinging his gaze around the patio, he saw Doug sitting at one of the tables the servants had set up, a full champagne bottle in front of him, his wife beside him looking unhappy.

I could change Doug, Stoner told himself. I could open my mind to him and let him see all the pain and sorrow and guilt that I feel. He wouldn’t be able to hate me after that.

But his star brother asked, And what would your son have left in his life, after you do that? He does not hate you, but his anger toward you is the main emotional prop of his existence. Take that away and he might collapse altogether.

For the first time in years Stoner wondered if the alien inside him was truly his brother, or was he being controlled, manipulated by forces he could not understand? He felt a shudder of astonishment within himself. After all these years, still some doubts, some ancient fears?

Stoner nodded grimly to himself. You see how difficult it’s going to be to reveal the truth to the rest of the human race.

His star brother fell silent.

“YOU’VE got a spy on your staff.”

The party had ended hours earlier. The family guests had gone to bed in the far wing of the house, happy with champagne and a birthday dinner of grilled mahi-mahi and New Zealand lamb. The presents had all been opened to the “ooohs” and “aaahs” of the assembled partygoers; their torn wrappings had been dutifully collected by the household robots.

Now it was nearly midnight and Jo and Stoner were undressing for bed.

Jo nodded from the doorway of her closet. “More than one.”

“You know who they are?” Stoner asked.

“Yes, certainly. One of them was here today.”

“I sensed it—a feeling of danger.”

She turned toward him with a weary smile. “Corporate espionage is one of the facts of life in the business world, Keith.”

“This was more than corporate espionage,” he said. “I sensed real danger. Physical danger.”

“I’m well protected,” she said, walking naked across the plush carpet toward the bed. “Really, I’m more concerned that Kirill didn’t show up. He said he would.”

“Maybe I should call Moscow.”

“I spoke to him yesterday. He seemed fine.”

“He would have come, or sent word if something had prevented him…”

“You think he’s ill?”

“He hasn’t been well for a long time. He’s an old man, Jo,” said Stoner, stripping off his undershorts. He sat on the edge of their huge bed and reached for the phone terminal.

“He’s not even eighty yet. That’s not so terribly old. Not nowadays.” But her face betrayed the same anxiety Stoner felt.

Stoner spoke Kirill Markov’s name into the phone and its computer began searching for him. Jo wrapped a glossy silk robe around herself and sat on the bench in front of her mirrored dresser.

Within seconds the phone connected. They saw a heavy-set woman with a white nurse’s cap sitting before a window lit by afternoon sunlight.

Oh god, thought Jo. Something’s happened to Kir.

Stoner spoke swiftly with the nurse in Russian, then disconnected. “He’s had a stroke. I’ve got to go see him.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“What about your staff meeting tomorrow?”

Jo made an impatient gesture. “I can postpone it, or run it from the plane. I’ll decide on that tomorrow morning. If Kirill’s that sick…I want to be there, too.”

She pecked at the phone on her dresser and called the Vanguard airport to make arrangements for a hypersonic jet in the morning.

“Not a happy ending for your party,” Jo said.

Stoner sank back on the pillows. “It was a good party, Jo. Thanks. With all the business pressures on you…getting everybody here and making all the arrangements…well, I appreciate it.”

“My pleasure,” she said, applying a brush vigorously to her thick dark hair. The brush was backed with silver mined from an asteroid by Vanguard’s space metals division.

Still looking at him through the mirror she asked, “Do you think Kir…is he…”

“Will he die?” Stoner closed his eyes for a moment. “The nurse said it was very serious. He’s in intensive care.”

Jo sighed. “Poor Kir.”

“He’s never been in very good physical shape.”

“Still…eighty years old.”

“I know. It doesn’t seem so old, does it? Hell, I’m seventy-one, if you go by the calendar.”

“Thank god the calendar doesn’t matter for you!”

God? Stoner asked himself. His star brother said nothing.

Jo silently brushed her hair, her eyes watching Stoner’s naked body on the bed. “You know, Claude said to me that you don’t look any older now than you did fifteen years ago, when we first revived you.”

“Yeah, he told me the same thing.”

“Your beard doesn’t have a single gray hair in it,” Jo said.

“Well, neither do you.”

She turned on the bench to face him. “Keith, I’ve been dyeing my hair for years! If I stopped, it would grow out as silver as Claude’s.”

“It might look good that way,” he said.

“Oh no! I’m not ready to be an old lady yet. And I’m sure as hell not going to allow anybody at the office the slightest excuse to think I’m getting decrepit.”

Putting the brush down, Jo stood up, slipped off her robe, and came to the bed.

Stoner grinned at her. “You sure as hell don’t look decrepit to me.”

For fifteen years he had seen her almost every day. But now he looked more intently. Now he realized with a pang of sudden fear that she was well into her middle years. Jo was in the prime of health, her body taut and still totally desirable; not an ounce of fat to be seen, not a sag or a slump. But as he slid his hands across her hips and pulled her to him he saw that there were lines in her face he had not bothered to notice before.

“We’re both getting older,” he said softly.

But she replied, “No, Keith. I’m getting older, but you’re not. You don’t seem to be aging at all.”

“I could give you the same thing I’ve got,” he said, in a whisper. “Then you wouldn’t age either.”

Jo shook her head. “And make me understand everybody so thoroughly that I couldn’t hate them? Make me a saint, the way you are? A hell of a businesswoman I’d be, then!”

“Jo…”

“I decided a long time ago, Keith,” she said stubbornly. “I’ll stay just the way I am, aging and all. I
like
my emotions. I
need
to be able to get angry enough to swat some sonofabitch who needs swatting!”

Stoner knew it was hopeless to argue with her. They had been through all this many times before. But deep within him, he felt sad that Jo refused his star gift. She’s not ready for it yet, he told himself. Someday, but not yet. His star brother asked, If this woman who knows you so intimately refuses the gift, how can you expect the rest of the human race to accept it, when the time comes?

Stoner had no answer.

Markov was dying.

The Russian was in a private room in the best hospital in Moscow, surrounded by the most advanced medical technology and human care that it was possible to give. Still he was dying.

It was a small room, dark and cool with the blinds drawn over the only window. Utterly quiet except for the faint humming of the electronic monitors. Their screens showed the ragged glowing lines of an old man’s struggling heartbeat, respiration rate, brain wave activity. There were no wires attached to Markov’s body, but he was held in the grip of the medical sensors as firmly as a fly enmeshed in a spider’s web.

“He looks so feeble!” Jo whispered.

She sat on the only chair in the narrow room, neither noticing nor caring that her long suede coat dragged on the scuffed floor tiles. Stoner stood beside her, an obvious American in his denim jacket and jeans.

Markov’s ragged white beard was nothing but a wisp now. His cheeks were sunken; the skin of his face looked brittle, spiderwebbed with wrinkles and the fine red network of capillaries. His large dark eyes, which could flash from somber to hopelessly romantic in an instant, were closed. Even his eyebrows are snow-white, Stoner realized. And his hair is almost entirely gone.

Stoner remembered awakening from a sleep of eighteen years in a room such as this. But his body had been young and strong. Markov’s body, beneath the thin sheet covering him, was frail and pitifully thin.

Stoner stood by the bedside, feeling totally helpless, watching his old friend slowly slip away, sensing the growing weariness of his heart, the fragility of blood vessels stiff and clogged with age, the desperate panic of electricity flickering through his damaged brain.

If only…

Stoner choked off that line of thought. There’s no point to it. I’m standing here in the middle of all the marvels that modern human beings can create, watching my friend die, as helpless as a Neanderthal in an Ice Age cave.

Jo sat by the bed, holding Markov’s hand. For years the Russian had harmlessly pursued her with beautifully romantic speeches that hid the bashfulness of an overgrown boy. They had become friends, rather than lovers, and now Jo wept as she felt the old man’s fingers growing cold.

Markov’s eyes opened slowly. He tried to smile, but the stroke that had paralyzed half his body turned the effort into a grisly rictus. He tried to speak, but all that came out was a tortured groan.

Jo pressed his dying hand to her cheek and sobbed openly.

Stoner did not touch the Russian physically. Instead he reached into Markov’s mind.

—I’m here, old friend.

—Keith? It is you?

—Yes.

—I knew you would come…to see me off…

—I’d rather be a million miles away, and have you healthy.

—But we are here.

Stoner nodded uneasily. He felt the pain that racked his old friend’s body, the terror of imminent death that flooded his mind.

—Keith, is there an afterlife?

The question surprised Stoner. —I don’t know. I don’t think so.

—Maria is waiting for me, angry that I’ve taken so long to join her.

—You haven’t lost your sense of humor.

—Only my life.

—Is there anything I can do for you? Anything at all?

—A new body, perhaps?

—We could have you frozen. Jo’s corporation has the facilities and…

—No. No freezing for me. It is time for me to leave, dear friend. Time to let go.

—But…

—No hope of resurrection. This old wreck of a body would not survive the freezing process. I looked into that more than a year ago.

—Oh. I see.

—My will. You…I named you executor. You don’t mind?

—No. Of course not. I’ll take care of everything.

—No one has ever come out of freezing. Only you. Of all the bodies frozen, only you have been revived.

—That is true.

—Why? What happened on that alien ship? What did they do to you?

Stoner closed his eyes and bowed his head. Markov’s pulse was weakening, his heart was failing rapidly. In another few seconds the monitors would start to wail and a frantic team of nurses and doctors would burst into the room and try to keep him alive for a few agonized hours longer.

With one part of his mind Stoner kept the monitors from showing Markov’s worsening condition. They hummed to themselves and repeated the measurements that they had made a few seconds earlier, despite the Russian’s rapidly deteriorating condition.

As he did so, Stoner gave Markov a mental image of what had happened on the alien starship. No other person on Earth knew about it, except Jo. And Markov would take the story to the grave with him.

The starship was a sarcophagus. It bore the dead body of an alien who had chosen to be set adrift on the sea of space in the chance that his craft might one day reach a world that harbored intelligent life. His message was simply: You are not alone. There are other intelligences among the vast desert of stars. Take my body, study it, learn from it. Study my ship and learn from it, also.

And there was more. Far more.

The alien was roughly human in shape: two arms with four-fingered hands, although its four short legs ended in soft hoofs. Head and face only slightly different from ours. But the alien was not alone.

Within its body dwelled tens of billions of incredibly tiny objects. Machines. Each of them less than a millionth of a millimeter in size. Specialized machines that coursed through the alien’s bloodstream and permeated every part of his body. Machines to repair organic damage. Machines to protect against invading viruses and cancerous growths. Machines that could make more of themselves. Machines that could think, when linked with an intelligent brain.

Each of them as small as a virus, they served as an intelligent symbiote to the alien, protecting it against disease and injury, enhancing its mind.

When the alien chose to die, the machines acquiesced. They would not control the will of their host. But they did suggest the sarcophagus to be sent out among the stars. And they helped direct its design so that it would not merely drift aimlessly, but would purposefully seek out worlds that might harbor life and intelligence.

—I have a star brother inside me. During the years that I remained frozen on the alien’s spacecraft, before the craft was recaptured and brought into Earth orbit, the ship’s automated systems transferred those billions of nanometer devices to my body.

—That is why…that is why…

—That is why I survived freezing. They repaired the ruptures in my cells while I was being thawed. That is why I can do the things I can do. That is why I haven’t aged in the past fifteen years.

—I understand now. I understand.

A feeling almost of guilt coursed through Stoner. His star brother understood and did not interfere.

—Kir…if I had known, if I had any inkling that this would happen…

—How could you? It hit me like an automobile crash.

—But I could’ve transferred some of the devices to you. All it would have taken would have been a simple blood exchange. They reproduce in microseconds. They might have repaired your body, made you young and strong again.

—No. My time has come.

—It still might not be too late. Let me try.

—No! Let me die now.

—You’re only saying that because of the pain and the fear. Your body is tired of fighting; your brain is soaked with the chemicals of exhaustion. We might be able to reverse all that, if you’ll let us try.

Stoner sensed shock, outright terror surging through his friend’s mind.

—Kir, we can save you. Let us try…

—To be invaded by alien
—things
? To become something not human? No, never! I can’t. I can’t!

—But, Kir…

—You can stand it, Keith, being not human. But I…never. I could never stand it.

Stoner sensed his friend shuddering. You don’t understand, he pleaded with the Russian. It’s not being inhuman. It’s being more than human, Kir. More than human. The next step in our evolution.

But it was too late. Stoner felt the Russian’s life ebb away, like a candle blown out by a dark wind. For a long moment he simply stood by the bed, staring at the unseeing eyes of his old friend. He killed himself, Stoner realized. He let himself die rather than accept the help I was offering.

Then a surge of blackest grief and guilt overwhelmed him. No. I killed him. I tried to force him to accept something he wasn’t prepared to deal with. He allowed himself to die rather than facing it. I killed him. I killed my best friend.