Death Wave (10 page)

“You see that broadcast the starman made?” asked Washington. He was the closest to Hamilton's age, only two years older. He didn't look much like his namesake: Wash was short, with curly dark hair and a noticeable beer belly.

“Had to see it,” Ham replied, from his seat on the sofa between Wash and Hank. “He was on every channel.”

“Yeah,” said Hank. “Even on my chat line.”

“How'd he do that?” Jeff wondered, from the recliner he had cranked halfway back.

“You'll hafta ask him, I guess,” Wash said.

“I looked him up on different search engines,” said Hank. “Jordan Kell. Used to be some kind of diplomat. They sent him to places where a war or some sort of violence was breakin' out and he'd try to calm ever'body down.”

“His wife got killed in one of those scrapes,” Wash said.

“I didn't know that,” Ham admitted.

“So now he's married to a pretty little thing from New Earth.”

“Guess they are just like humans, after all.”

With a shrug, Wash said, “They must screw like humans, at least.”

“I don't know,” Jeff said, in his superior oldest-son tone. “Maybe they do it different.”

That led to several minutes of speculation and lewd jokes.

Hamilton almost admitted to his brothers that he'd like to meet this star traveler, face-to-face, see this guy who can close down public bridges just so he and his alien wife can take a look around. Ask him where he gets so high and mighty.

Hank changed the subject. “Hambone, you still lookin' for a job?”

Hamilton hunched his shoulders. “Sort of. Only got a few days until I'm finished with my mandatory service.”

“This outfit I'm workin' for up in Chicago, they use a private security firm.”

“Rent-a-cop?”

“Yeah, but they're damned good. Topflight outfit. And they're lookin' for people.”

“Private security,” Hamilton mused.

“Pay's good, and with your police background you'd be a shoo-in. You oughtta go see them.”

“Maybe I should,” Hamilton agreed.

 

TARRAGONA AIR FORCE BASE

Jordan took a long swallow of cool, tart grapefruit juice.

“Thank you,” he said to Aditi, handing her the empty glass. “I've done quite a lot of talking this morning, haven't I?”

She nodded, smiling. “About an hour's worth. That's not so much. I understand human politicians have spoken for days on end, sometimes.”

He got up from the cushioned bench and stretched his arms over his head while Aditi carried the glass back to the kitchen. Tendons cracked satisfactorily and Jordan felt his back muscles relax.

“I hope what I've said does some good.”

“We'll soon find out.”

“Yes.” Stepping to the room's only window, Jordan admitted, “I'm rather surprised that no one's burst in here and tried to shut me up.”

As if in answer, he saw an unmarked gray sedan screech to a stop down on the street outside. Castiglione bolted out of its rear door.

A small truck pulled up behind the sedan and a dozen men in air force uniforms piled out of it. An officer bustled out of its cab and started waving his arms, directing the men to surround the building.

“The air police are here,” Jordan said as he heard Castiglione thumping up the steps to their quarters.

He knocked once, then opened the door and entered the sitting room. For once, he was not smiling.

“You're a very tricky fellow,” Castiglione said, without preamble.

Jordan shrugged. “I think the people have a right to know the truth.”

Castiglione noticed Aditi in the kitchen. With a slight bow, he said, “I suppose you had something to do with this as well.”

“Something,” she replied, almost saucily.

Turning back to Jordan, Castiglione eased into a grudging smile. “Every broadcast channel all around the world,” he said, nearly admiringly. “How did you do it?”

Jordan quoted, “‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.'”

“Very erudite,” said Castiglione. “I've heard that one before, somewhere.”

“Arthur C. Clarke,” Jordan explained. “Twentieth-century writer and futurist. English, you know.”

Castiglione's face grew serious again. “I'm afraid you've made Anita Halleck very angry.”

“I'm sorry to hear that.”

“I should be angry with you, as well. I've had to run back here from Barcelona on a supersonic military jet. You've upset my plans for the day.”

“My regrets,” Jordan said.

Castiglione looked toward Aditi again. “She wants to see you. Both of you. Immediately.”

“I'll be happy to see her again. You may recall that I asked you about speaking with her yesterday.”

“Yes, I remember,” Castiglione replied thinly. Then he smiled again. “Please allow me to offer a quotation for this occasion.”

“By all means,” said Jordan.

“Be careful of what you wish for. You might get it.”

 

WORLD COUNCIL HEADQUARTERS

Anita Halleck appeared cool, unruffled as she sat at her massive curved desk of ebony and brushed chrome. Its surface was clear, Jordan saw. The hallmark of a capable executive, he remembered. Shift the work to your underlings.

Halleck's office was more than commodious: the desk was in one corner, flanked by sweeping windows that looked out on the busy avenues of Barcelona. Four comfortable burgundy leather armchairs were arranged in a shallow semicircle in front of it. An oval conference table took up the far corner of the room; a pair of sumptuous couches were arranged across from it, a curved glass coffee table between them. Jordan thought the recliner in the remaining corner looked like a therapy chair.

Castiglione ushered Jordan and Aditi into the office. No one else. No police or security guards. Yet Jordan felt as if he and his wife were under arrest, facing angry, suspicious, powerful authority.

He sensed a tautness beneath Halleck's outwardly calm appearance, a tightness of the mouth, a hard expression in her eyes.

Instead of inviting them to sit down, Halleck asked, “How did you do that? Commandeering all the video channels all around the world; even the private chat channels.”

Before Jordan could reply, Aditi said, “Our communications engineers will be happy to explain it to you.”

“They will?” Surprised.

With a nod, Aditi replied, “Our policy has always been to answer all your questions completely and honestly. But only the questions you have learned to ask.”

Halleck frowned at that.

“May we sit down?” Jordan asked.

“Of course,” said Halleck, gesturing brusquely to the armchairs.

They sat, Aditi between the two men. Castiglione made a show of looking at his wristwatch. “Should we have tea?” he asked.

“Not for me,” said Jordan. “I'm here to discuss what the World Council plans to do about the death wave.”

Halleck frowned at him. “You're here,” she said firmly, “to hear what we've decided to do about
you
. This business of broadcasting your story all over the world—”

“Plus Selene and the other lunar communities,” Aditi informed her. “And the settlements in the Asteroid Belt and elsewhere.”

“Through the entire solar system,” Castiglione muttered.

“Of course.”

Pointing a finger at Aditi, Halleck asked, “You did this?”

“With help from my people on New Earth.”

Before Halleck could respond to that, Jordan said, “You might as well face the fact that you can't keep us muzzled. I intend to tell the truth to the people of Earth—to all the human beings in the solar system. The problem is too big to be hushed up.”

Halleck glared at him.

“The people have a right to know,” Jordan continued. “They have a right to make their opinions known to the World Council.”

“So you're going to play on their emotions, to try to force the Council to do what you want,” said Halleck.

“I'm going to explain the situation to them, fully and honestly. Then we'll see what they decide.”

The ghost of a smile crept across Halleck's face. “And you think that they'll go into a panic over a problem that won't affect us for two thousand years?”

“I'm hoping,” Jordan said, “that they'll have the decency to try to save intelligent species who will be destroyed by the death wave in another century or two—unless we act to save them.”

“Who are these intelligent species?” Castiglione demanded. “Where are they?”

“Our astronomers can explain that to you,” said Aditi.

Jordan said, “There are at least six intelligent species within five hundred light-years of Earth. All of them appear to be pretechnological in their development. They are intelligent, but they haven't yet developed high technology. No electricity. No space travel. No interstellar communications.”

“Then how do you know of them?”

“Our Predecessors have sent scouts throughout this sector of the galaxy,” Aditi said. “Once they detected the death wave, they began searching for intelligent species that would be endangered.”

Jordan added, “Life in the universe is commonplace, apparently. But intelligence is very rare. It's our duty to help intelligent creatures to survive the death wave.”

“Our duty,” Halleck echoed.

“Our moral obligation,” Jordan insisted. But he did not tell her the rest of it. He did not tell Halleck and Castiglione that most intelligent civilizations destroy themselves, one way or the other. He did not tell them that intelligence often leads to a dead end.

 

BOSTON

Carlos Otero was accustomed to getting what he wanted. He believed himself to be a self-made man, starting soon after graduating Harvard with nothing more than the local communications company that his father and uncles had bequeathed him. From that small beginning he had built the Otero Network, a news and entertainment empire that reached halfway across the solar system.

And yet, Otero said to himself, this man Kell had taken over all his broadcast centers, even the one all the way out in the habitats orbiting the planet Saturn, commandeered them all to tell his tale of impending doom.

Otero admired the man's daring, but feared his abilities. Standing at the floor-to-ceiling window of his office, on the top floor of Boston's tallest tower, Otero scowled unhappily at the city spread at his feet.

He was a solidly built man in the prime of life, his luxuriant hair and full mustache handsomely dark, his body well muscled. He generally won at any game he played, from golf to arm wrestling—even when he played against people who did not owe their living to him. He had a bright, flashing smile and used it often, especially with willing, eager women.

But this morning he stood alone in his office, unsmiling, hands clasped behind his back, brooding over the report his head of engineering had sent him.

Otero had asked his top engineer a simple question: How did this man Kell manage to take over all the broadcast facilities in the solar system?

The answer unsettled Otero badly. We don't know, his top engineer had reported. We simply cannot determine how Kell took command of the entire Otero Network, and all the other broadcast facilities from Mercury to Saturn, as well.

That kind of power is dangerous, Otero knew. If he can step in and take over all our communications, where does that leave us? Where does that leave me? Impotent. Helpless.

On the other hand, he thought, if we can somehow get Kell to work with us, for us, what a coup that would be! The star traveler, exclusively on Otero Network! I could give him carte blanche, let him tell his story about the wave of radiation or whatever it is that's approaching us. I could make him an interplanetary media star.

And his wife, an alien from another star. What a sensation I could make of her!

Abruptly, Otero turned away from the window and strode to his desk. “Get me Anita Halleck,” he commanded his voice-activated phone.

He loathed the chairwoman of the World Council. They had butted heads more than once, usually over matters of communications policy and freedom of speech. Halleck wanted to control the solar system's communications—for the good of the people, she maintained. For her own power, Otero knew.

But now, this Jordan Kell, this man who has returned from the stars, he is a threat to us both. Until I can figure out how to use him against Halleck, I'll have to work with the bitch to see to it that neither Kell nor anyone else can usurp my network again.

*   *   *

In Barcelona, Anita Halleck smiled thinly at Jordan Kell and the human-looking alien sitting beside him.

“You understand, of course, that it's no trivial matter to build starships and send teams out to these civilizations that you claim are endangered.”

Jordan nodded politely. “Not trivial, but well within the capabilities of the World Council, I should think.”

“You realize, I presume,” Halleck said evenly, “that our resources are already stretched close to the limit on damming the meltwater flow from Greenland. If the Gulf Stream is diverted, Western Europe's climate will become Siberian.”

“Including the British Isles,” Castiglione added, almost vindictively.

Jordan nodded. “Still, we must build the starships and save those alien worlds. It would be inhuman to stand by and let them die.”

“What you don't seem to understand,” said Halleck, “is that we have our own problems to deal with. You can't expect us to go out on an interstellar crusade.”

Sitting on Aditi's other side, Castiglione asked, “Why the urgency? You say that the death wave won't reach their worlds for centuries.”

“And won't reach our vicinity for two thousand years,” Halleck added.

Jordan stifled the reply that immediately leapt to his mind. He refrained from telling them what he thought of their kick-the-can-down-the-road attitude.