Death Wave (37 page)

Thornberry instantly recognized what she wanted. “I'm afraid it's too late for me to withdraw Jordan's nomination, you know.”

“I understand,” said Halleck. “But you don't have to give him your support, do you? He'll be nominated, but without your support he'll have a difficult time winning the election.”

His brows furrowing, Thornberry said, “Jordan's a friend. We've been through a lot together.”

“But you'll be too busy setting up your FTL business to spend much time—or money—on the election campaign, won't you?”

For several heartbeats Thornberry did not reply. At last he said, in a low voice, “I suppose so.”

The two of them chatted on as the shadows of dusk enveloped the patio. Thornberry understood why she wanted this meeting face-to-face, with no witnesses. She's handing me a fortune! With no competition! But the price is to hang Jordan out to dry.

Ah well, he told himself, maybe Jordan can get himself elected without my help.

Halleck watched the expression on his face as the evening darkened. How transparent he is, she thought. I've got him now. He won't dream of helping Kell and his alien wife, even if they find a way to return to Earth. Mitchell Thornberry is on my side now.

 

 … NOR IRON BARS A CAGE

Gazing at Aditi, sitting up in the hotel room bed, Jordan echoed her words, “‘You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.'”

“It's from your Bible,” she said.

“Yes, I know. But I don't see how it applies to us.”

Still smiling at him, Aditi said, “Halleck can't prevent you from broadcasting your message.”

Realizing her meaning, Jordan said, “Ah, you mean you can use Adri's help to get me on the air.”

“Yes. It doesn't matter where we are. I can contact Adri and—”

He interrupted, “The last time we did that it frightened Halleck so badly that she separated us and put us under protective custody.”

“She can't do that now. Can she?”

“I wouldn't want to push her too hard. There's no telling what she can or can't do.”

Aditi's expression grew more serious. Then, “What if, instead of taking over all the communications systems in the solar system, we simply contacted Mr. Otero and you spoke over his network. That's what the two of you planned to do anyway, isn't it?”

Jordan broke into a grin. “That's right. I could broadcast from here, over the Otero Network.”

“But we'd still have our honeymoon, wouldn't we?”

“We will indeed!”

*   *   *

Nick Motrenko asked, “So what's going to happen to us?”

The court-appointed public defender looked as if he were handling soiled diapers. He was a youngish New Englander, spare and hollow-cheeked, with a Phi Beta Kappa key decorating the lapel of his dark gray suit.

Nick was sitting across the table from him, in a bare little conference room in the Boston lockup, with Rachel and Dee Dee on either side of him. Rachel looked worried, Dee Dee sullen.

“The three of you spilled your guts under interrogation,” the attorney said, almost accusingly.

“They put something in the water,” Nick replied angrily. “Made us talk. Like I was drugged.”

“That's not legal, is it?” Dee Dee asked.

“They can't use anything you said in court, but the information is valuable in their investigation. Who's this man Walt?”

Rachel said, “He's a guru, like a holy man.”

With a gloomy shake of his head, the public defender said, “Inciting you to attempt murder: some holy man.” Turning to Nick he asked, “Where's he live? How can I get in contact with him?”

Nick stared blankly at the lawyer. “I don't know. He doesn't have a real address.”

“He's a wanderer,” said Rachel.

The attorney gave her a disapproving frown. “If you could help the police track him down, it'll go easier on you at your trial.”

“Well, we can't,” said Nick.

“I suppose if the police psychotechnicians couldn't get it out of you under interrogation you really don't know how to find him.”

“He contacted us,” Rachel said.

The attorney shook his head again.

“So what happens now?” Nick asked.

“You'll go to trial, be found guilty of attempted murder, and be sent to the freezers.”

“Freezers?” Rachel asked.

Looking annoyed at having to explain something so commonplace, the attorney said, “The state's official policy is that a crime such as yours—attempted murder—is caused by a mental or emotional defect that science doesn't know how to cure. So they freeze your body until science eventually comes up with a cure. That way the state doesn't have to feed you or house you. For just a few cents' worth of electricity per year they can keep you frozen indefinitely.”

“Indefinitely?” Rachel asked, her voice quavering.

“Like someone who has an incurable disease,” the attorney said. “You stay frozen until they find a cure.”

Dee Dee said, in a disgusted tone, “And they haven't found a cure. Bodies have been in the freezers for a century. More.”

“You mean we might never get out?” Nick asked.

“Nobody has,” Dee Dee said.

“You've got to get us out of that!” Rachel demanded, shuddering. “You can't let them freeze us!”

The attorney folded his hands on the tabletop and gave her a hard look. “Look,” he said. “I'm a public defender. That means my job is first and foremost to defend the public against breaches of the law.”

“But we're not criminals,” Nick protested.

“You tried to kill a man, for Christ's sake! With millions of eyewitnesses watching! I'll try to get the best deal for you that I can, but you're going into the freezers, like it or not.”

Rachel broke into sobs.

“Unless…” said the attorney.

Nick grasped at the word. “Unless?”

“Unless you cooperate with the authorities. Tell them where you got the gun. Who helped you. That sort of thing.”

With a glance at Dee Dee, Nick told the attorney, “It was all my idea. I know this starman is working for the aliens. They oughtta give me a medal for trying to save the human race.”

“You're not going to get a medal,” said the attorney. “You're going to get a drawer in the freezer facility.”

“But what about the news media? I want to talk to them, tell them my story. We're going to be invaded by the aliens!”

The public defender shook his head. “No news coverage. That would just stir up other nitwits to try the same thing. We've got to protect the public.”

“So we get frozen,” said Dee Dee.

Nick stared blankly at him, seemingly in shock. “No news coverage?” he asked, his voice pleading. “I don't get to tell my story?”

“You've had your fifteen minutes of being famous,” said the public defender. “Your time's up.”

*   *   *

Carlos Otero was having dinner alone in his home in Concord when the hologram viewer in his dining room lit up to show Jordan Kell.

He was somewhat surprised, but once Kell explained that they could do more interviews despite the World Council's interdiction on broadcasts from habitat
Gandhi,
he asked, “You can do this?”

“Yes, thanks to her.” Jordan gestured to Aditi, sitting beside him.

Otero broke into a wide, beaming smile. “This is going to drive Halleck up the wall!”

Aditi asked, “It won't get you in trouble, will it?”

With a shake of his head, Otero replied, “It shouldn't. We're not breaking any laws, just evading the blackout she's clamped on the habitat.” He broke into hearty laughter. “My god! You'll be able to campaign for election to the World Council from where you are. She'll go crazy!”

Jordan forced a small return smile. He wondered what Halleck's reaction would be when he started making broadcasts. She won't go crazy, he thought. But she'll get very, very angry.

 

BROADCAST

“So it's up to you,” Jordan said earnestly, looking squarely into Aditi's handheld phone, propped up on the coffee table in front of him, “to decide what we human beings should do to help the people who will be wiped out unless we act to save them.”

In the three-dimensional viewer across their hotel room he saw himself sitting in front of a backdrop of the swirling star clouds of the Milky Way galaxy.

“The people of these other worlds do not look human, of course, but they are intelligent, and they have as much a right to life as you and I. We can't just sit here idly and let them die. That would be inhuman.”

The holographic scene changed from Jordan's intent face to a view of a planet in space, with two large moons hanging nearby.

“This is one of the worlds in danger,” Jordan said. “It orbits a faint red star nearly two hundred light-years from Earth. That means that it will take four hundred years for a spacecraft traveling at fifty percent of light speed to reach it.”

The view shifted again. Now it showed greenly forested mountains with sparkling streams tumbling down their flanks. And in the distance, graceful towers that resembled minarets.

“These views were taken from robotic spacecraft that surveyed this planet many centuries ago. The people who live here have not yet discovered electricity or even steam power. But they have built a civilization that exists in harmony with their environment.”

The scene shifted to show the city more closely. Its streets were busy with traffic. Creatures that looked curiously like oversized salamanders walked on their hind legs, dressed in colorful draperies. Four-legged reptilian animals pulled wagons. The city looked to Jordan's eyes like a medieval community, prosperous and busy.

“They have no idea that the death wave is hurtling toward them at the speed of light. If we sent a rescue mission to this world, it would barely get there before the death wave kills every living thing on it.”

Jordan saw his own face once more in the viewer. “If we don't act, and act soon, those people will be totally destroyed by the death wave. And so will the intelligent creatures of five other worlds.

“Can we let them die? Or should we use our strength and our courage to save them? It's up to you to decide.”

*   *   *

Anita Halleck slapped her hands together with a vicious crack and her holographic viewer went dark.

Turning to Gilda Nordquist, sitting off to one side of her desk, Halleck said, “We're going to have to get rid of that alien bitch.”

“Kill her?” Nordquist asked, slightly alarmed.

“Freeze her, kill her, send her to the other end of the galaxy—as long as she's with Kell he can thumb his nose at us.”

Nordquist hesitated for a moment, then said, “But they're protected by a private security team. And then there's
Gandhi
's own security forces.”

“Which are a joke.”

“Yes, but you can't get at her while they're in the habitat. You can't just invade a sovereign territory.”

Halleck's frown slowly morphed into a vicious smile. “Then we'll simply have to end our isolation of
Gandhi
and allow Kell and his wife to return to Earth.”

Nordquist nodded. “Plenty of would-be assassins here.”

“Talk to Rudy Castiglione. He's got a score to settle with the two of them.”

*   *   *

Nick Motrenko watched Kell's appearance over the 3-D viewer in the jail's common room, with Rachel and Dee Dee sitting on either side of him.

The three of them were treated almost like royalty by the other inmates. In a makeshift community of felons, where social rank was decided by the seriousness of one's crime, attempted murderers were practically like royalty. The jailhouse population of sneak thieves, con artists, burglars, strong-arm bullies, and rapists treated Nick and his two women with some deference. It helped that almost all the inmates were young, hardly anyone much older than Nick himself. Modern society had weeded out the habitual criminals, the professionals and psychotics, and tucked them away in freezers. Now the police concentrated on catching petty crooks before they graduated to more serious crimes.

Once Kell's show was finished, Rachel asked Nick, “Do you believe him? I mean, about that world being in danger?”

Dee Dee said, “Looked pretty real.”

“It could've all been faked,” Nick said. “They can make anything look real.”

A tall, thatch-haired young man with a strong jaw and pale green eyes leaned into their conversation. “Looked real to me.”

Nick was about to tell him to butt out when the youngster said, “I used to work in graphics and special effects. It'd take a helluva lot of effort to make a scene look so real. I mean, even the trees in the background were all different, no two alike.”

“How'd you get in here?” Nick demanded.

The kid actually blushed. “I was faking alibis for guys arrested for burglaries. Showed them miles away from the scene of the crime.”

“And?” Dee Dee asked.

He shrugged. “I got careless. Let a couple details slip and the police experts spotted 'em. So here I am.”

“Are they going to freeze you?” asked Rachel, real concern in her voice.

“Nah. I'm going to a reeducation center in Montana. Two years. Once I get out I won't be allowed to come back here to New England. I'll have to start my life all over.”

“That's not so bad,” said Dee Dee.

“Better than freezing,” he agreed.

Nick said, “So you think this guy Kell is telling the truth?”

Another shrug. “From the looks of what he showed, he's either telling the truth or he's got damned better special graphics than I can do.”

*   *   *

Carlos Otero was surprised by the call. He was in his office, going over the audience demographics of Kell's broadcast with his staff directors, when his phone announced that the chairwoman of the World Council wished to speak with him.