Voyagers II - The Alien Within (3 page)

Stoner and Dr. Richards strolled casually across the lawn outside his building. The late afternoon sun baked through Stoner’s light open-weave shirt; he reveled in the warmth of it. The breeze from the sea was filled with the fragrance of tropical flowers. Since nine that morning Stoner had endured still another battery of physical examinations. Now he and the psychiatrist were out in the open air.

Like a prisoner taking his compulsory exercise, Stoner thought.

Richards was good, a smooth performer who seemed to be engaged in nothing more than relaxed conversation while he deftly probed his patient’s innermost thoughts. Stoner smiled at him and nodded in the right places, keeping his end of the chatter going. But his eyes were focused on the space between two of the four-story lab buildings; he could see open ground stretching out to a high-wire fence. Beyond the fence was the highway and, beyond that, the beach and the ocean.

What would Richards do if I just sprinted off, ran between the buildings and jumped that fence and raced out to the highway? What would
I
do: flag down a passing car, or keep going into the surf and plunge in?

He thought about swimming in the ocean and remembered nights on Kwajalein when he and Jo had swum in the lagoon.

“Jo Camerata is here, isn’t she?” he suddenly asked Richards.

The psychiatrist blinked in the slanting rays of the sun, his train of questioning derailed.

“Ms. Camerata? Yes, she’s here.”

“She must be pretty important,” Stoner said.

“Would you like to meet her?”

“Of course.”

Richards fingered his mustache. Stoner laughed and told him, “You’re wondering why I never asked about her before this, aren’t you?”

Trying to suppress a troubled frown, Richards said, “You have a way of telling me what I’m thinking.”

Stoner lifted one hand in an apologetic gesture. “You wouldn’t make a good poker player. I can read your face.”

“It seems to me you can read my mind.”

“No, nothing so…” The breath caught in Stoner’s chest. He saw Richards’s searching, inquisitive face, the dark eyes probing him. He saw the laboratory building behind the psychiatrist and the bright blue Hawaiian sky and the grass and graceful palms out by the beach.

But like a double exposure on a piece of film, Stoner also saw another scene, a completely different scene from a different world. A smooth, graceful tower, impossibly slim, incredibly tall, soared endlessly into a softly glowing sky of pale yellow. Stoner craned his neck painfully and still could not see the top of the tower. It rose heavenward against all the laws of gravity and sense, up and up until it was lost to his sight. He was standing at its base, atop a low, gently sloping hill. His feet were shod in metallic boots, and the ground was covered with brilliant orange blades of grass that seemed to shrink away from him and leave the ground where he was standing bare and sandy. He dropped to one knee, and as he did so, the individual blades of grass scurried out of his way, like frightened little creatures with wills of their own.

Stoner smiled at the strange orange blades, trying to see how they managed to move themselves. He put out a hand and saw that it was gloved in the same gleaming silvery metal as his boots. The motile grass backed away from his extended hand. He smiled. “I won’t hurt you. Honestly, I won’t….”

The chanting made him look up. Far across the open orange field, a long procession was winding its way up the slope of the hill toward him. The grass was parting itself, making an open path for the people, a path that led straight to the spot where Stoner was standing. He could not make out the words they were singing, but the tone was mournful, sad. He saw they were carrying a body stretched out on a bier.

“That’s me,” Stoner realized. “It’s my funeral procession.”

He looked up again and saw Richards staring down at him. Stoner realized he was kneeling on the thick green grass of the laboratory lawn, the afternoon sun burning hotly behind the psychiatrist, framing his curly mop of hair with a halo of radiance.

Feeling almost foolish, Stoner got to his feet. A few of the employees walking some distance away were staring at them.

“Your funeral?” Richards asked. He was almost quivering with anticipation, like a hunting dog who had just scented its quarry.

His stomach fluttering, Stoner asked, “What did you say?”

“You said something about a funeral procession.”

“Did I?” he stalled.

“What happened to you? What did you see?”

With a shake of his head, Stoner answered, “I don’t know. I blanked out….”

Richards’s eyes were trying to pry the information out of him. “You went completely out of focus. You looked up at the sky, then you dropped down on your knees and muttered something about a funeral procession.”

Stoner said nothing.

“You were hallucinating,” the psychiatrist said.

“I’ve never done that before.”

Abruptly, Richards turned back toward the building where Stoner’s quarters were. “Come on, I want to see what the EEG looks like.”

Stoner caught up with him in two long strides. “You’ve been recording me out here?”

Nodding, Richards said, “Every second. The equipment can monitor you anywhere in the complex—as far as the beach, maybe farther.”

“You implanted sensors inside me?”

“Sprayed them on your skin. The technology’s improved since you took your sleep. You can’t feel them or wash them off, but they’re there.”

Instead of returning to Stoner’s quarters, Richards hurried to a windowless room halfway down the antiseptic-white corridor. To Stoner it looked like a spaceflight control center: banks of monitoring display screens tended by a handful of young men and women in white lab smocks. The lighting in the room was dim, the people monitoring the screens looked like shadowy wraiths condemned to study the flickering green and orange glowing screens until they had atoned for the sins of their earlier lives.

Stoner remembered a similar room, on Kwajalein, where he and others had tensely watched radar screens that showed the approach of the alien spacecraft. That room had been cramped, hot, sweaty with fear and anticipation. This room was cool, spacious, relaxed, and so quiet that Stoner could hear the hum of electricity that fed the display screens.

No one bothered to turn around or look up as they came in. Richards went straight to the nearest unoccupied station and slid into the empty chair there. He touched the keyboard, and a convoluted set of ragged lines spread themselves across the screen.

For several moments he studied the display, touching the keyboard to bring up new data, then staring intently at the screen. Finally he gave a heavy sigh, punched a single button, and the screen went dark.

“What is it?” Stoner asked in a whisper as Richards got up from the chair. Whispering seemed the proper tone in this quiet, darkened chamber.

“What…Oh, nothing,” the psychiatrist answered. “The EEG seems normal enough.”

But even in the shadowy lighting Stoner could see that Richards was not telling the truth. His eyes avoided Stoner’s.

“Nothing unusual?” he asked.

“I’m not a psychotech,” Richards evaded. “Maybe somebody who’s more expert than I will be able to see something in the EEG that I missed.”

A single word pronounced itself in Stoner’s mind, a word that seemed to flow from Richards’s mind to his own.

Schizophrenia.

Jo leaned back in her softly yielding leather chair and studied the faces of the two men. Healy looked distressed, like a freckle-faced little boy who had been caught doing something naughty. But Richards looked really troubled, a man with a frightening weight on his shoulders.

She had spent an hour in the office by herself, combing the walls, the ceiling, the furniture, the computer and phones, the windows and draperies, searching for bugs that might have been planted by an ambitious young rival such as the public relations director, or a suspicious board member, or an agent for a competing company, or by her husband. She remembered enough of her MIT training to feel that she could clean her own nest, but it bothered her that she had found nothing. Nothing at all.

Still, she had to have this showdown with Healy. It suddenly struck her that maybe her chief scientist was actually disloyal to her. Maybe he was the leak in her security.

She reset the office’s colors to cool greens and blues, and selected just a hint of salt tang for the room scent. She lowered the air temperature several degrees: she was blazing hot enough. Then she waited, in a plain gray blouseless business suit adorned only by her corporate logo pin. The two of them arrived at her outer office exactly on time. Jo did not keep them waiting; she had her secretary usher them in immediately.

“I learned yesterday that Stoner has not slept since he’s been revived,” she said once the two men had taken chairs facing her.

Richards flicked a glance at Healy, who looked thoroughly miserable.

“I learned that information from the chairman of the board,” Jo went on. “Why didn’t I learn it from you?”

Healy replied, “We haven’t put it into any of our reports yet….”

“I know that,” she snapped.

“We’re still not sure of the significance of it,” he said, squirming in his chair.

“A man doesn’t sleep for five straight nights and you’re not sure that it’s significant?” Jo kept her voice low and icy calm.

“We…we’re studying it,” Healy said weakly.

“And how did the chairman of the board find out about it?”

Healy spread his hands. “I don’t know! Somebody in the lab must have talked….”

“Did you know that there was a disturbance at the outer fence last night?”

“A disturbance?”

“Security thinks somebody tried to break into the labs. World Liberation Movement terrorists, perhaps.”

“How would they…”

She silenced him by raising one finger. “How many people are working with Stoner now?”

“Directly?” Healy’s little-boy face pulled itself into a momentary frown of concentration. “There’s Dr. Richards, here, and the medical team that’s monitoring him…that makes seven—no, nine people.”

“And indirectly?”

“There’s the commissary crew, they prepare his meals and bring them to his room. And the data processing people, the electronics maintenance people, the—”

“Stop,” Jo commanded. “I want the monitoring crew cut down to three people, one for each shift. Send me the files on the people who’re working there now and I’ll select the three I want. They will bring his meals to him when they start their shifts. All data processing will be done by our branch in Geneva, I’ll clear a satellite channel for you. If there’s any need for electronic repairs or maintenance, do it yourself.”

“But I—”

“This is a burden on you, I understand,” Jo said, her voice still steel-edged. “But security is absolutely imperative. The fewer people who are involved, the easier it will be to maintain security.”

“But the whole board of directors knows about him!” Healy bleated.

“That can’t be helped. They recognize his importance to the corporation, though. If they’re smart, they’ll stay quiet.” She smiled, almost to herself. “At least long enough to grab as much Vanguard stock as they can without pushing the price sky high.”

Healy looked unconvinced. Richards, on the other hand, was watching Jo intently.

She went on, “You’ve got to understand what we’ve got here. The man has been brought back from the dead. The technique for reviving him is worth billions—hundreds of billions. Do you have any idea how many people will want to have themselves frozen when they discover they have an inoperable cancer, or they’re waiting for a replacement heart?”

“Yes, I know.”

“If he’s not sleeping, then there’s something wrong, something not normal.
We can’t allow that information to leak outside these walls
.”

Healy nodded. Then, in a near whisper, he said, “But it was only the chairman of the board. He’s entitled to know, isn’t he? After all, he’s the company’s top man. And your own husband.”

Jo stared at him for a long moment before replying. “If somebody’s leaking information to him, out of channels, without your knowledge or mine, who else might they be talking to?”

“But I don’t think—”

“I do! Now get back to your office and implement the procedures I just outlined. I want those personnel files on my screen within fifteen minutes.”

Healy’s face went white, as if Jo had slapped him. Dumbly he pushed himself out of his chair. Richards got to his feet beside him.

Jo let them get as far as her door before calling, “Dr. Richards, I almost forgot. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about Stoner. Could you come back here a moment, please?”

Richards turned back toward her. Healy hesitated, then opened the door and stepped out.

Jo indicated the chair nearest her own.

Sitting in it, Richards said, “If he wasn’t your enemy before we came in here, he certainly is now.”

Raising an eyebrow at him, Jo asked, “You think so? I’m not sure he has the guts.”

The psychiatrist shrugged. “You emasculated him.”

She laughed. “And you’re assuming he had some balls when he came in here.”

Richards smiled and ran a finger across his mustache.

“What do you make of Stoner’s not sleeping?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t seem to be affecting him physically. Of course, I never saw him before he was frozen, so it’s a little difficult for me to say.” His eyes shifted away from her.

Jo said, “What else?”

“I’m not sure what to make of it,” the psychiatrist said. “He had a hallucinatory session yesterday. It was brief, but for a minute or so he was totally out of reality.”

Jo felt her breath catch in her throat.

“It may be just the lack of sleep catching up with him. But there’s a definite problem, and until we know what it is and what’s causing it…”

“What does he
do
all night?”

“He reads. He sits around his room and reads everything that I give him. He’s devoured half the books in my library—in less than a week.”

“You’re not giving him books about recent history or current affairs, are you?” Jo asked.

“No. I still think that he has to be introduced to the modern world gradually. But he’s certainly catching up on the classics! He’s like a student doing all his required reading for English lit. High school and college, all at once.”

“What does he say about his not sleeping?”

Richards grimaced good-naturedly. “I asked him about it, and he said he’d been sleeping for eighteen years so he didn’t feel the need for sleep now.”

Jo nodded. “That sounds like him. He’s good at covering himself.”

“There’s something more.”

“What?”

“He’s shown no interest in sex. Doesn’t mention it at all. No nocturnal emissions. He doesn’t even seem to pay any attention to the women who’ve been on the monitoring team. And there are a couple of very pretty ones. No come-ons, no joking with them, no preening for them.”

Jo fell silent. As driven as Keith had been in his earlier life, he had still found time for sex. Not love, perhaps, but in bed he could unloose all the fiery passion that he had held in check through his tight-lipped, tension-filled days.

Richards asked, “You two were…close, weren’t you?”

“We were lovers, for a short while.” An image of herself as a star-struck student madly in love with the moody, brooding scientist-astronaut almost made Jo blush. What a fool, she scolded herself. What a fool!

“You were with him during the project to make contact with the alien spacecraft?”

“Yes, at Kwajalein. And I went with him to Tyuratam.”

“And he flew off to rendezvous with the spacecraft and didn’t come back.”

“He
chose
not to come back,” Jo said, her mind filling with the memory of it. “He chose to let himself freeze in the spacecraft with the dead alien’s body instead of returning safely to Earth.”

Richards said nothing, and Jo finally realized that he was asking the questions, not she.

She smiled at him. “Your first name is Gene, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” He smiled back.

“You realize that we’re going to have to move him from here. Too many prying eyes—and blabbing mouths.”

“I was wondering if you would come to that conclusion.”

“Will you go with him, Gene?”

“If you want me to.”

“I
need
you to,” Jo said urgently. “Gene, I need your loyalty. I need a man I can trust.”

“You can trust me,” he said.

She leaned forward and put her hand on his bare arm. “Can I, Gene? Not as employer and employee, but as friends? I need a friend. Desperately.”

“Your husband…”

“We don’t see eye to eye on this. For the first time since I’ve known him, he’s opposing me. Not openly. Not yet. But I don’t think I can count on him, not on this project.”

Richards said nothing. Jo pulled her hand away.

He reached out to take it in his. “You have a reputation, you know.”

With a grin, she admitted, “I suppose I do.”

“I don’t want to get in trouble with the chairman of the board.”

“I don’t blame you.”

“I’m still a married man.”

“I’ve seen your file. You’ve been separated for six months now. Divorce proceedings started last week.”

Richards gazed at her for a long, silent moment. Jo could see the mental calculations going on behind his bright brown eyes.

“Where will you take him?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I haven’t decided yet. I have a house in Maine that’s pretty secluded. Perhaps there.” It was a deliberate ploy. If her people in Maine discovered a sudden new surveillance of the house in the next few days, she would know that Richards could not be trusted.

The psychiatrist let go of her hand. “I’ll go with him, wherever it is,” he said. “He’s my patient, after all. And—I’d like to be your friend.”

Jo smiled at him. “Thank you, Gene. You won’t regret it.”

“I’m going strictly on a professional basis, as Stoner’s doctor. Any personal relationship between you and me…well, let’s just allow nature to take its own course, shall we?”

“Go with the flow,” Jo agreed, thinking silently, He’s enough of a male to want to think that he’ll pick the time and place. The male ego! How wonderfully predictable!

“And what happens to Healy?” Richards asked.

Jo looked into the psychiatrist’s eyes, wondering, Is he asking out of loyalty or out of ambition? Is he trying to show me that he’s loyal to Healy or that he wants the chief scientist’s job?

“He’ll stay here,” she answered. “He’s a competent administrator, even though I can’t trust him with anything really sensitive.”

“I see.” Richards tugged at his mustache for a moment, then, “Can I ask you one more question? It’s personal.”

“Go ahead.”

“Stoner has barely mentioned you, and he hasn’t shown any burning desire to see you.”

Jo felt ice chilling her blood. “I know that.”

“Yes. But you haven’t asked to see him, either. Why not?”

“I see the videotapes.”

“But you haven’t tried to meet him.”

“Would you allow it?”

“I think he could handle it. It might even help to bring whatever he’s suppressing up to the surface. But can
you
handle it?”

She finally saw the point he was driving toward. “You mean because we were lovers once, do I still have a feeling about him?”

Richards nodded.

“That was eighteen years ago,” Jo said. “I was a kid, a student, and he was a very handsome, very glamorous, very important man.”

“But you were in love with him then, weren’t you?”

She hesitated, wondering what she should say. Then, “Frankly, I was using him to get ahead in what was then a highly male-dominated field. He wasn’t very deeply attached to me, and I certainly wasn’t madly in love with him.”

It was a lie, and she thought she could see in Richards’s eyes that he didn’t believe her.

But he said, “I see.”

They both let it go at that.