Voyagers I (24 page)

Stoner sat alone in the corner booth, feet up on the opposite bench, a half-empty bottle of champagne sitting in a plastic bucket on the table.

Some big night, he said to himself. You sure are having a wild time, old buddy.

The club was filling up with the after-dinner crowd. Somebody had put blaring disco music on the stereo, and people had to shout to hear themselves over it. A few people came over to Stoner’s table from time to time, but he quickly and firmly shooed them away.

Maybe I ought to go over to McDermott’s trailer and see if she’s really there, Stoner thought. But what if she is? Then what do you do? Drag her off by the hair of her head?

He yanked the bottle from its icy water and poured his plastic glass full. The champagne looked pretty flat. California stuff, he guessed, peering at the label. Christ, not even that: New York State. He dunked the bottle back into its bucket so hard that some of the ice water splashed on him. Blinking, Stoner swung his feet to the floor.

Hell, I can’t even get drunk when I want to.

The front door of the club banged open so hard that the crash made everyone jump. Stoner saw Schmidt standing framed in the doorway, shoulders hunched and head lowered as if he were going to ram a wall.

For a moment all conversations stopped. The disco music blared inanely on, and Schmidt’s heavy, open-mouthed breathing seemed to match the music’s thumping beat.

Stoner turned back to his champagne. The club filled with talk again. People moved, laughed, drank. But Schmidt, burning eyes fixed on Stoner, pushed his way past the crowd at the bar, heading for the corner booth.

“It’s all your fault,” he said to Stoner.

Stoner looked up at him.

“You can sit there and drink champagne,” Schmidt said, his words only slightly slurred, “and keep us here in this godforsaken hole.”

“What are you talking about?” Stoner asked.

“Sure, you drink champagne and wait for the Nobel Prize while the rest of us rot away!” the young astronomer said, his voice rising.

“Sit down,” Stoner said, “and stop making a fool of yourself.”

“I’ll show you who’s a fool!” Schmidt shouted.

He grabbed Stoner by the shirt and yanked him out of the booth as easily as a child lifts a toy. Stoner felt his shin scrape against the table’s edge and then he was completely off his feet and thrown to the floor.

Everything in the club stopped. Even the music.

“Champagne!” Schmidt screamed, slapping the bottle and its plastic bucket off the table.

“What the hell’s wrong with you?” Stoner bawled, scrambling back to his feet. No one in the club moved, they all stood frozen, wide-eyed, watching the two of them.

Turning on him, Schmidt roared, “It’s all your fault!” and leaped at Stoner, grabbing him by the throat. His thumbs were like steel against Stoner’s windpipe. Stoner gagged, couldn’t breathe.

Instinctively, Stoner locked his hands together and swung both arms hard inside Schmidt’s wrists, ripping the younger man’s hands away from his throat.

“You’re crazy,” he croaked raggedly.

But Schmidt, his eyes afire, screamed back, “You want to steal everything from me.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Stoner saw the club door swing open again and Jo stepped in, hair still glistening wet. Her mouth dropped open as she saw the two men confronting each other.

Schmidt swung at Stoner and he saw the punch coming but he was too surprised and slow to avoid it. The Dutchman’s heavy fist caught him on the cheek and spun him around. He crashed into the booth’s table and sprawled over it. Schmidt was on him before Stoner could turn over, both knees on his back, pounding his head and shoulders with bunched fists.

“Your fault! Your fault!” Schmidt screamed with each blow.

Stoner felt himself starting to black out and knew that Schmidt would go on pounding him to death while all the rest of them watched. By the time they got past their shock it would be too late to help. With raw animal instinct he jammed one foot against the back of the bench and pushed the two of them off the table. They fell heavily to the floor and he broke free of Schmidt’s insane grip.

For an instant the two men crawled away from each other. Stoner saw the younger man’s eyes. He’s crazy! Schmidt’s hair was matted over his face, eyes dilated, mouth hanging open, gasping for breath, snarling at him. Stoner could taste blood in his own mouth and every muscle of his body throbbed with pain.

He’ll kill me! Stoner’s mind shrieked at him. He’ll kill me if I let him.

Schmidt scrambled to his feet as Stoner did. Stoner backed away a short step, and felt the heel of his shoe touch the champagne bottle. The floor was wet where he stood.

Focus, Stoner heard his old instructor hiss at him. Focus your strength and speed.

Snarling, Schmidt rushed. Stoner sidestepped, kicked at his kneecap and sent him sprawling across the slippery mess on the floor.

Schmidt got up immediately, as if he couldn’t feel the pain, as if there were no pain. His face had somehow been gashed along one cheek and blood dripped down his neck, into his collar. White showed all around his eyes and his lips were pulled back to bare his teeth.

Again Schmidt leaped. Stoner tried to avoid him again, but the younger man’s outflung arm caught him neck high and they both went slamming against the club wall. Stoner pushed Schmidt away and tried to get to his feet. Schmidt grabbed the empty champagne bottle and hefted it like a club.

Backing away, knees bent, hands out defensively, Stoner heard his instructor’s voice again: The martial arts are not a game! You are not trying to score points, you are trying to save your life!

Schmidt advanced toward him, brandishing the bottle. A low growl came from his throat. Stoner watched the young man’s feet as he came closer, forcing himself to concentrate on what he must do, calming his breathing rate, putting his body in balance.

Nobody’s going to lift a finger to help, he saw with a strangely detached part of his mind. They either figure this is a private grudge or they’re scared of getting hurt.

Schmidt swung the bottle in a wild overhand sweep. Stoner ducked under it and leaned all his weight into a punch to Schmidt’s diaphragm. Then he grabbed him and spun him into the wall.

Schmidt turned and swung again wildly but Stoner blocked it with a forearm and kicked him through the partition between booths. The wood splintered and screeched as the young astronomer’s body shattered it.

Stoner stood over Schmidt’s prostrate body and let the breath sigh out of him. He saw Jo still standing at the doorway and now Reynaud was beside her, insanely dressed in gray Navy pajamas, with his arm in a light sling. The others in the club were edging toward him now, timidly approaching.

But Schmidt started climbing slowly to his feet, the bottle still firmly in his hand, a grisly smile on his bleeding face. Everyone froze into stillness.

Jesus Christ! Stoner gaped. He’s like Frankenstein’s monster. Nothing stops him.

Schmidt giggled like a schoolboy pulling the wings off a fly and came at Stoner again.

Stoner buried the fear and pain he felt and did what had to be done. Block, kick, punch to the side of the head. Schmidt sagged to his knees. Stoner grasped the wrist of his right hand, yanked the arm out full length and kicked Schmidt’s ribs. The bottle fell from his hand. Ribs cracked audibly. Stoner chopped a vicious knife-edge blow to Schmidt’s neck and he went down on his face.

The crowd surged in closer.

“Don’t get near him!” Stoner panted. “He’s crazy.”

And Schmidt slowly climbed back to his feet. The crowd gasped and backed away. His ribs must be broken from that kick, Stoner knew. What in hell is going to stop him?

His face set in a hideous death’s-head rictus, Schmidt charged again at Stoner, who met him with a front kick to the abdomen and a hammer blow to the shoulder. Schmidt’s collarbone cracked.

Break him down, Stoner told himself. Go for the bones. Chop him down like a fucking tree.

It seemed like an eternity. Stoner worked automatically blank-minded, remorselessly, until Schmidt lay inert on the wooden floor, as still as death.

Reynaud pushed his way through the onlookers with his one good arm, Jo trailing behind him.

“You’ve killed him!” Reynaud cried, sinking to his knees beside Schmidt’s prostrate form.

“I don’t…think so,” Stoner panted. “Hope not. I couldn’t…he went…berserk…”

Jo was staring at him. “You’re hurt.”

“I’m okay,” he said. “Get an ambulance…for the kid. I had to hit him…pretty hard.”

“But you…”

The adrenaline was wearing away and every muscle in Stoner’s body was starting to scream.

“Just get me back to my room,” he mumbled, heading for the door. “I just want to lie down.”

But there were four uniformed shore patrolmen at the door. Stoner collapsed into their arms.

Cavendish woke up slowly, blinking and struggling to clear the fog of sleep from his brain. He shivered with cold. For long moments he had no recollection of why he was sitting slumped against the bole of a big palm tree, legs folded painfully under him, across the tennis courts from the island’s hospital.

Gradually he remembered. He remembered Schmidt and the wild untrue words he had poured into the young man’s ear. Shame burned through him. They’re controlling me, he told himself. They’ve stolen my soul.

He looked out across the tennis courts. It was dark and no one was in sight. Leaning against the tree, he pulled himself up to his feet.

His legs were afire with pins and needles, but his head felt clear. The pain is gone! His hands flew to his face, his scalp, as if they had a will of their own, probing, searching, trying to find from touch if he were deluding himself and the pain was really lurking in there somewhere, hiding, waiting to come back in even more terrifying force.

“It’s gone,” Cavendish whispered shakily to the night shadows. “Truly gone…as completely as if someone had turned off a switch.”

A switch. “Quite,” he said to himself. “A switch that they can turn on again just as easily, whenever they decide they want more from me.”

He pulled his trembling hands away from his head. Despite their tremor, inwardly he felt quite calm. His mind was his own again—at least for a little while.

And with a clarity that comes only when all distracting thoughts have been burned away, Cavendish at last realized what he had to do.

The only person who makes slavery possible, he had once read somewhere, is the slave himself.

And with that brilliant, blazing clarity of vision that had suddenly been granted him, Cavendish saw how he could end his own slavery.

“I know what you want,” he muttered through clenched teeth, “but you can’t make me do it. I’m a man, not one of your bloody trained dogs.”

Very deliberately, he turned his back to the hospital and threaded his way past the trees, through the buildings, across the main street and through the clustered buildings on the other side. The ocean side. It took only a few minutes to span the width of the island and stand on the ocean beach.

The surf boomed closer here. The sea stretched out under gleaming skies. Beyond the scudding clouds the aurorae flickered and laughed at him.

I know what you are, and what’s causing you, Cavendish said silently to the dancing lights. That’s enough. I won’t get to meet you in person, but that’s all right. I’ve had enough for one lifetime.

The ocean surged at his feet, alive, breathing.

Cavendish smiled sadly into the dark waters. “Sophocles long ago heard it,” he quoted. “And it brought into his mind the turbid ebb and flow of human misery.”

There were strong currents in that remorseless ocean, currents that would sweep a man away from land, currents that harbored the planet’s most efficient carnivores.

Cavendish stood at the water’s edge for only a moment. No thought of his past life paraded through his mind. He thought only of the future, a bleak, grim future of pain and slavery to unknown, unknowable masters.

With a crooked smile he muttered, “But while I have the strength, I can end all that.”

He waded into the sea, into the warm engulfing amniotic fluid that would erase his pain forever. Straight into the waves he walked, up to his knees, up to his hips, his shoulders, oblivious to what waited out there hungrily, oblivious to the lights in the sky that made the night brilliant with eerie glowing fire. Sure enough, the current seized him and soon he disappeared from the land.

Stoner sat stiffly in the uncomfortable wooden chair in Tuttle’s small office. Every part of his body ached horribly. His head buzzed from the hours of questioning. And the rattling drone of the air conditioner in the lieutenant commander’s one window was giving Stoner a headache.

Two other officers sat facing Stoner, while Tuttle leaned back in his swivel chair, behind his metal desk. The other two were from Base Security: a young black lieutenant junior grade and a grizzled, ruddy-faced guy who looked much too old to be merely a full lieutenant.

“But why did he attack you?” the j.g. asked for the hundredth time.

Stoner started to shake his head, but the pain made him wince instead. “I told you before,” he replied, “I don’t know.”

“He said something about it being your fault,” the older officer chimed in. “What was he talking about?”

Around the same bush again, Stoner thought, giving them the same answers he had given dozens of times already: I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.

But in his mind he saw again Schmidt’s crazed face, felt the insane inhuman strength of the man, the total mindlessness of his attack. And Stoner realized, It wasn’t an accident. It couldn’t have been just blind chance. He was out to get me. He wanted to kill me.

“Where could he have gotten the drugs?” asked the lieutenant.

His black junior said, “We got the report on what he was on: PCP. Angel dust. Enough to stoke a regiment.”

“Where could he have gotten that?” Tuttle asked, his round face a picture of concern.

Stoner laughed. “You guys aren’t serious, are you? This island’s a floating junk paradise. Take a walk down the street any night, there’s enough pot in the air to fly you home.”

“Angel dust is a lot more serious than marijuana,” the older lieutenant said sternly.

“There’s a lot of pill popping going on around here,” Stoner said. “You guys must be aware of that.”

“But not angel dust,” the black lieutenant said.

Stoner shrugged and lapsed into silence.

“What reason would Schmidt have for attacking you?” Tuttle asked.

“None that I know of,” said Stoner.

“You’d never argued over anything before?”

“We’d hardly ever talked to each other before,” Stoner said.

Their questions continued and Stoner continued to fend them off with ignorance, but inwardly he began to realize: Schmidt came after me for a reason, and not just because he was bombed out of his skull. He wanted
me
. He wanted to put me out of the way. Why? Because somebody told him that’s the surest way to end this project and get everybody sent home again.

Tuttle called in an aide and had sandwiches brought in. The questioning continued as they ate.

Finally Stoner stood up. “Look…we’ve been over the same ground now dozens of times. I’ve told you everything I know—which isn’t much, I admit. But I’ve got work to do and I don’t see any point in going on with these questions.”

Tuttle said, “This is a serious matter, you know.”

Feeling every muscle in his body groaning, Stoner answered, “I know. I’m the guy that got jumped on. But if you people put some effort into finding out where Schmidt got the drugs, you might get somewhere. I’ve told you everything I know.”

He turned and went to the door. No one stopped him, so he left the office, went outside into the painfully bright sunlight and walked toward the building that housed the Swamp.

Then he remembered that his office had been moved to the computer building. Head still buzzing, his insides churning, Stoner went to his new office.

He was sliding cardboard boxes full of photographs into the empty bookshelves of the new office when Markov rapped once on the open door and came into the room, grinning, hands behind his back.

“You are coming up in the world, Comrade Stoner. Congratulations.”

Wiping sweat from his forehead, Stoner said, “Thanks. It
is
more luxurious than the Swamp.”

“Do you think this new office is a reward for your intellectual abilities,” Markov asked, “or for your prowess as a fighter?”

Stoner’s insides went cold. “That’s not funny, Kirill. I might have killed that kid.”

“Yes, I know.” Markov’s own face was somber. “But I am glad that it’s him in the hospital today, and not you.”

“How is he? Have you heard…?”

“He’ll be all right. He is young and healthy. His bones will knit quickly.”

Stoner dropped down into his desk chair. “They woke me up at eight this morning and brought me down to Tuttle’s office. I’ve been answering questions all goddamned day.”

Markov remained standing, hands still behind his back, nodding sympathetically.

“What’re you hiding behind your back?” Stoner finally asked.

“Oh.” Markov suddenly looked almost embarrassed. “It’s nothing. A gift of sorts. For your new office.”

“A gift?”

“A symbol, really. Emblematic of the problem that has brought us together and led to our friendship. A symbol that is truly representative of where we are and what we are faced with.”

“What are you talking about?” Stoner asked, intrigued despite himself.

Markov was warming up, more like his cheerful self. “I had thought of bringing you champagne and caviar, to celebrate your new office. But what good are they? Merely food for the belly. I bring you a lasting gift for the mind. Besides, I couldn’t afford to buy champagne and caviar.”

Stoner sat up straighter and placed both his hands on the polished surface of his broad, empty desk. “Okay, I’m bracing myself for this terrific symbol.”

With a flourish, Markov produced from behind his back a large, brown, shaggy coconut.

Stoner stared, then laughed.

“No, no, no!” Markov said, his face almost serious. “It is truly a symbol, as I said. It is symbolic of this island, isn’t it? And if you try to open it, you’ll find that—and this is an American idiom, I believe—it is a tough nut to crack!”

Stoner raised his hands in mock surrender. “You’re right, friend. When you’re right, you’re right.”

“A tautology,” Markov replied. “Another thing about this symbol: it is a world traveler. The coconut can float across the entire Pacific Ocean, I am told, and germinate on shores far from its place of origin.”

“Like our visitor,” Stoner realized, his grin dissolving.

“Exactly.”

“You’re a deep thinker,” Stoner said. He took the coconut from Markov’s hands and placed it on his bare desktop, next to the telephone. “I’ll keep it here, to remind me of what we’re up against.”

“Good. One more symbolism: Once you
have
cracked open a coconut, it contains milk and meat to sustain life.”

“But the trick is to crack it open.”

“Not easy.”

“Unless you have the proper tools…and the skill.”

Markov nodded.

“Thanks, Kirill,” Stoner said. “You’ve cheered me up. It’s been a pretty somber day.”

“Yes. They still haven’t found Cavendish, you know.”

“Cavendish?” Stoner tensed.

Blinking, Markov asked, “You haven’t heard?”

“Heard what?”

“Dr. Cavendish has disappeared. They presume he has drowned. There is no trace of him on the island, and the Navy has sent out search patrols…”

Stoner sagged back in his chair. As if to reinforce Markov’s revelation, a helicopter thundered by; the building vibrated to the roar of its engines.

“Cavendish,” Stoner repeated. “My god…”

Markov tugged at his beard. “Are you all right? Your face has gone white.”

Looking up at the Russian, Stoner said, “Cavendish was an agent…a spy…”

“No,” Markov said.

“He told me himself. A double agent. He worked for your side, the KGB—but he really was working for British Intelligence.”

Markov’s mouth dropped open in a silent gasp of amazement.

“He told me himself,” Stoner repeated. “Both sides were leaning on him.”

“And now he’s disappeared,” Markov whispered. “Dead, no doubt.”

Stoner mused aloud, “Schmidt tries to kill me last night, and Cavendish disappears. The same night.” He looked up at Markov. “Kirill, what does it add up to?”

The Russian just stared back at him, wordlessly.

“Do you think your people are out to prevent me from making the rendezvous flight?”

“I…” Markov hesitated. “I think perhaps that might be true,” he said, his voice barely audible.

“Jesus Christ.”

Markov shook himself, like a man trying to throw off a bad dream. “Let me check into it. Let me see what I can learn.” He got to his feet.

But Stoner put out a restraining hand. “Maybe you ought to stay out of it, Kirill. You could get yourself into real trouble if you put yourself in the middle of this.”

“I am already in the middle of this,” Markov said with iron in his voice. “They have tried to kill my friend.”

“And they’ve already killed Cavendish.”

“Perhaps so.”

Stoner stood up and came around the desk. “Stay out of it, Kirill. Don’t get yourself in trouble.”

Markov laughed. “We are all in trouble, my friend. Every last one of us.”

Into the hot afternoon sunshine Markov strode, unblinking, unseeing. Down the main street, his back to the radio telescope antennas, past squat blockhouse office buildings, past the BOQ, the hotel, the trailer park. He turned into the area where the bungalows stood and marched straight to his own house.

“Maria Kirtchatovska!” he bellowed as he slammed the front door shut behind him.

She came out of the kitchen, a sizzling saucepan in one hand. “What are you doing home?”

“Put that down and come here,” Markov said, pointing to the sofa.

She scowled at him, but went back into the kitchen and reappeared a moment later, wiping her hands on a towel.

“I was making dinner for us,” she said.

“Sit down.”

“I haven’t told anyone about your temper tantrum last night…”

“Dr. Cavendish is dead,” Markov snapped, feeling fury racing along his veins. “Drowned, most likely.”

She sat heavily on the sofa. “Drowned?”

Still standing, Markov added, “And young Schmidt went berserk with a drug overdose last night and tried to kill Stoner. Do you see any connection between these two events?”

Maria looked away from him without answering.

Looming over her, Markov said, “That…machine you were using last night. It had something to do with Cavendish, didn’t it? Or was it Schmidt?”

“Kir, we agreed long ago that there are certain parts of my work that we would never discuss.”

He was tempted to raise his hand and slap her. “That agreement is finished. I should have ended it when you ruined that young student’s life. Now you’ve murdered Cavendish, haven’t you?”

“No!”

“Don’t lie to me, Maria Kirtchatovska! The man was a KGB informant and now he is dead. You killed him, with that infernal machine.”

She shook her head stubbornly. “The device was a communications system, a sort of radio…”

“Nonsense! You communicate with Moscow by those silly letters you send each week in the supply plane. I know that much. Somehow your machine killed Cavendish.”

“It couldn’t have…”

“I saw the look on your face when I caught you at it! You weren’t communicating anything except pain and death! Don’t try to deny it.”

“Kirill, I…” Maria ran a hand through her short-cropped hair, suddenly agitated, tearful. “What could I do? I have to follow my orders. What else could I do?”

“Murder. Torture. You’ve been involved in it all along, haven’t you? All these years.”

She was crying, tears leaking down her broad cheeks. “No. Not until now. And I didn’t want to. I had to. It was the only way to survive…”

“And all these years I closed my eyes to it. I
knew
that all the whispered stories were true, but I kept telling myself, ‘Not my Maria. She wouldn’t do such things. She’s only in the cryptographic section. She’s not involved in arrests and interrogations and assassinations…’”

“I’m not!” she wailed. “Not until this…this
…thing
came upon us.”

“You never had anyone arrested? You were never involved in interrogations? Murders?”

“No! Not directly.”

He threw up his hands and paced across the room. “Pah! Not directly. Your hands are clean—almost. Disgusting. Disgusting! To think that I’ve lived with you all these years and kept my eyes closed.”

Her chin went up. “I’ve kept my eyes closed to your adventures. If you…”

“My adventures!” He wheeled around to face her. “I was making
love
, woman! I was seeking beauty and kindness and joy! I wasn’t giving electric shock treatments to some poor wretch in the basement of a prison hospital.”

“I never…” Maria’s voice faded away into sobs.

“It’s over,” Markov said sternly. “Do you hear me? It’s ended. Finished. I won’t share my life with a torturer and murderess.”

“What do you mean?”

“Either you leave the KGB or you leave me. Take your choice.”

Her eyes went wide. “I can’t resign! They don’t allow it.”

“Retire, resign, transfer to another job. Otherwise I’ll never live with you again. Never! I couldn’t!”

“But, Kir, if you try to leave me there’ll be questions, an investigation…”

“Tell them you’ve thrown me out because of my escapades. They’ll believe that.”

“I don’t want to leave you,” she said. “I don’t want you to leave me.”

“Then you must quit your job.”

“I can’t…”

He went to the sofa and sat beside her. She had stopped crying, but the tears had left fat streaks down her face.

“Is it true that you didn’t want to do what you did? That they forced you into it?”

“They ordered me and I obeyed,” she said. “I had no choice.”

“They ordered you to do what? To kill Stoner?”

She gave a little gasp of surprise. “Not…they want to prevent Stoner from flying the rendezvous mission. They want him stopped—any way possible.”

“But our government is co-operating with the Americans on this!” Markov said. “Zworkin, Academician Bulacheff, the General Secretary himself…”

Maria shook her head stubbornly. “I only know what my orders are. They want Stoner stopped.”