Death Wave (15 page)

“She can have it,” Jordan replied. “Aditi's people have no intention of hiding it from her. We're here to help the human race.”

“Just like that?” Rudaki countered. “No strings? You want nothing in return?”

“I want the World Council to begin taking steps to protect the solar system from the death wave—”

“Which won't be a problem for two thousand years.”

“And to protect the other worlds that are endangered by the approaching radiation.”

“Worlds that we know nothing about. Our searches for intelligent life among the stars have revealed nothing—except for your aliens of New Earth.”

“The intelligent species on those planets are preindustrial. They haven't achieved the level of technology that can create the kind of signatures you've been looking for. No radio or telephone. Not even telegraph signals.”

Rudaki shook his head in disbelief.

“I can get the astronomers of New Earth to show you their evidence,” Jordan said, feeling a bit desperate. “Those worlds are out there, believe me. Those intelligent creatures are in danger of extinction!”

Rudaki sank back in his chair and almost smiled. “You are very passionate about this, I'll give you that much.”

“This isn't a game,” Jordan snapped. “It's not some intellectual exercise. Lives are at stake. Whole civilizations!”

“And just how do you intend to make Halleck do what you want?”

Jordan hesitated. Then, “I don't know. The only course I can imagine is to go public with the story. Tell the truth to the people and let them decide.”

“You tried that once and it frightened Halleck very badly.”

“And she's separated me from my wife.” Jordan didn't give voice to the fear that he felt. What are they doing to Aditi? What do they want of her?

With a dejected shake of his head, Rudaki said, “You can't fight Halleck. She's too powerful.”

“I've got to try,” said Jordan. “Perhaps … perhaps you might help me?”

“Me?” Rudaki looked shocked. “I'm an old academic who was dragooned onto the Council by the global lottery Halleck initiated. She won't even let me resign!”

“You want to resign?”

“I've put in enough time on the Council. Look around this room! My work in astrophysics is moribund. I can't even go to New Earth and join my daughter.”

And I can't even be with my wife, Jordan thought.

*   *   *

In her apartment deep inside the communications complex, Aditi was again speaking to Adri on New Earth.

“They are eager to learn how our communications technology works. Could you set up a meeting with our best technicians? I think that would help to ease their fears about us … and it would encourage them to allow Jordan and me to be together again.”

She glanced at the digital clock set into the wall beneath the holographic viewer and saw that it was well past one
A.M
. No wonder I feel sleepy.

To Adri's inert image, she said, “I know that you can't reply for more than an hour. I'm going to sleep now. I hope your response will be waiting for me when I wake up.”

But as she arose tiredly from the couch on which she'd been sitting, she heard a rap on the apartment's door.

Puzzled, alarmed, she flicked her eyes to the screen that showed who was at her door. It was a robot, bearing a tray of bottles and glasses.

“Go away,” she called. “I'm retiring for the night.”

Castiglione stepped into the screen's view, smiling softly.

“Aditi, I brought you a nightcap.”

“I don't drink alcoholic beverages,” she said, stretching the truth slightly. “And I'm preparing to go to sleep.”

The door slid open and Castiglione stepped into the room, his smile turning brighter.

“Our security people are worried about you,” he said. “You've turned off all their surveillance devices. They can't see what you're up to.”

“I want my privacy,” Aditi said.

Castiglione nodded. “That's fine. But we must make certain that you're all right.”

“You can see that I am. Now please go.”

Instead, Castiglione turned and beckoned to the robot, which trundled in from the hall.

“I thought we might share a nightcap before retiring.”

Aditi drew herself up to her full height, barely as tall as Castiglione's shoulder. “I don't want a nightcap. I want to go to sleep.”

His smile turning almost into a leer, Castiglione asked, “Alone?”

Aditi slapped his face as hard as she could. “Get out!”

Castiglione looked shocked. Aditi could see the white imprint of her fingers on his reddened cheek.

“Out,” Aditi repeated.

Without another word, Castiglione turned and left the room, the robot rolling along behind him. Aditi slid the door shut and leaned against it. But he can come in here any time he wants to, she thought. Any time he wants to.

 

BARCELONA, EL PRAT AIRPORT

The flight to London was scheduled to take off at seven a.m. As he stepped out of the chauffeured car at the terminal's curb, Jordan half expected a squad of police or security agents to descend on him any moment.

He had slept at Rudaki's house, and the professor had provided him with a handsome traveler's check to cover his expenses.

“Old-fashioned, using paper,” Rudaki had said as he handed Jordan the check. “But it's not traceable by their usual means.”

“This is terribly good of you,” Jordan said.

“I'm afraid that's all I can do for you.” With a crooked little smile, the professor had said, “The money comes from a fund that's available to members of the World Council. In a sense, your trip will be financed by Anita Halleck.” His smile fading, he had added, “I hope she won't be able to trace it.”

Jordan appreciated the irony of that as he left the chauffeured car Rudaki had provided him and headed straight to the airport's money exchange booth.

Now he forced himself to sit and wait for the plane to London to take off. He was booked on a London-to-Chicago flight later in the day.

What's happened to Aditi? he asked himself, over and over again. Is she all right?

*   *   *

Aditi was also sitting tensely, on the living room sofa in the apartment where she'd spent the night, watching Adri's lean, aged face in the holographic viewer.

“I have set up a lecture-demonstration by the leader of our communications department,” the old man was saying. “If you can get your communications technicians to provide me with a time that would be convenient for them, we can begin their education.”

Adri's image froze and Aditi realized he was waiting for her response.

She nodded, knowing he wouldn't see her reaction for an hour. “One further thing, Adri,” she said, lowering her voice even though she knew all the surveillance devices in the apartment had been disabled. “Can you help to get me out of this complex? I want to be free. I want to find Jordan and be with him.”

*   *   *

Anita Halleck was livid. The chief of her security department stood before her desk like a guilty little schoolboy, his head hanging low, while she fulminated.

“Gone! Escaped from the hotel! How is that possible? How could one man get through your security system and waltz out of that hotel? Didn't you have him under surveillance? Didn't you have a team of agents covering the hotel?”

His voice so low Halleck could barely hear it, the security chief said merely, “He got past our people. We have camera views of him every step of the way, but he beat up two of our people and slipped out of the hotel before my team could stop him.”

“Fire them!” Halleck snapped. “Fire each and every one of them!”

“I'm afraid that's not possible, ma'am. Their employment contracts—”

“I don't care what their contracts say! Get rid of them! Transfer them to Timbuktu or Mars if you can't fire them!”

“Yes, Madame Chairwoman.”

“And find Jordan Kell! Wherever he is, I want him found and brought here to me.”

Licking his lips, the security chief said, “We checked all the taxicab trips throughout the city at that time of night.”

“And?”

“There was one trip where the customer didn't pay his fare; he got out of the cab through the overhead emergency exit and left, just a couple of minutes before midnight.”

“That could be him.”

“Yes'm. I personally analyzed the street map of the area where he left the cab. It's an upscale residential neighborhood.”

“Kell doesn't know anyone in Barcelona,” Halleck said.

“He's met the Council members, hasn't he?”

“Yes.”

“Councilman Rudaki lives a few blocks from where Kell left the cab. Assuming it was Kell. We have voice recordings from his talking to the cab's computer. They're pretty weak but my people are trying to see if they match Kell's speech patterns.”

“Rudaki,” Halleck murmured. “He went to Rudaki's home?”

“It's a possibility.”

“You get a team to his house immediately. Search the premises, cellar to attic.” Turning to her desktop phone console, Halleck commanded, “Get Professor Rudaki and tell him I want to see him here, in my office, immediately.”

 

TREASURE ISLAND

“Just call me Walt,” said the black man.

“Walt,” Nick Motrenko repeated.

The two of them were sitting side by side on a concrete bench on the edge of a pathetically small public park in the middle of a dilapidated public housing project. Nick's home, provided rent-free by the state of California, was one of two thousand identical one-bedroom houses that covered the island, manufactured in a fully automated factory and transported to this island in the bay with hardly a single human being involved.

At the end of the shabby street Nick could see the Bay Bridge and the incessant stream of traffic flowing along, cars and buses and trucks, most of them shiny new, each of them with somewhere to go, some job or duty or rendezvous to fulfill.

Walt was wearing a gray shirt and dark slacks. They looked almost like prison-issue clothes to Nick. Shabby, but not as bad as that crummy bathrobe he'd been wearing the first time they'd met. Somehow his beard looked neater, less scruffy. He must have shaved a day or two ago, Nick thought. Yet he smelled rancid, unwashed.

Nick looked into the black man's red-rimmed eyes and saw a deep discontent there. And something more, something darker. Resentment. That was it, Nick realized. Walt feels the same kind of resentment that I do.

“Walter James Edgerton is the name my parents gave me,” said Walt. “Sounds very genteel, doesn't it? Walter James Edgerton.” Smiling, he seemed to roll the name on his tongue, tasting it like a choice morsel. Then his expression hardened. “That's the name the government knows me by. The name I haven't used since I left prison. You're the first person I've told my full name to in more than ten years, Nick.”

Nick had offered his house to Walt, but the black man had gently refused. “Public housing is filled with sensors. Within minutes of my entering under your roof, the government would identify me and send a team of social workers to gently but firmly bring me back into their system.”

“You've been living on the streets for more than ten years?” Nick asked.

“It's not that difficult,” Walt answered. “People are kind. Most people.”

“Is there anything you need?” Nick asked. He'd already brought Walt an improvised lunch out of his own refrigerator: the two men had shared thin sandwiches and beer on the park bench.

“Where is Rachel this morning?” Walt asked.

Nick shrugged. “She works for the public library in downtown Oakland. That's how we met, in the library where she works.”

“A lovely young woman,” Walt murmured.

“Yeah.” Silently he added,
Hands off,
but he had the feeling it was already too late for that.

Very earnestly, the black man said, “I want you to understand, Nick, that I have never come on to Rachel. I've never tried to get her into my bed.” Then he smiled and added, “Of course, I don't have a bed to call my own.”

Nick nodded, then remembered that he hadn't needed a bed to have sex with Rachel.

“She tells me you're concerned about the star traveler.”

Surprised by the sudden change of subject, Nick said, “Jordan Kell, yeah. Him and his alien wife.”

“What bothers you about him?”

“The government's protecting him. Keeping him away from people who want to interview him.”

“Like you.”

“Yeah. I've applied to interview him for my blog and all I get is excuses.”

Walt nodded slowly. “I suppose everybody wants to interview him.”

“Yeah, but nobody's getting to see him. They've got him hidden away someplace. Ever since that first news break when they returned from New Earth, nobody's even seen him.”

“I understand he was in New Mexico, briefly.”

“Yeah, I heard that, too. But why New Mexico? What was he doing there? What's he up to? Why's the government hiding him?”

For a long moment Walt held his silence. At last he said, “Maybe he wants to stay hidden. Maybe the government is doing what
he
tells
them
to do.”

Nick had never considered that possibility. “You think?”

“Who knows?”

Bitterness simmering inside him, Nick growled, “They're up to something. They're keeping him away from us, him and his alien wife.”

“Or he's keeping himself and his alien wife away from us,” Walt said, his voice a low purr.

“Either way, it's a fucking conspiracy, that's what it is. The government's in contact with aliens, and they won't let us ordinary citizens know what's going on!”