Death Wave (19 page)

“Almost,” Nordquist conceded. “We're working on adding the few we don't have yet.”

“Kell and Longyear,” the operator said.

“Twenty-four/seven. I want to find them. Call me immediately when you do.”

“On the Moon?”

“Yes. Immediately.”

“You're sure Kell's out there?”

“I have a pretty strong hunch that he is. Or will be, sooner or later.”

“What the hell's the star traveler doing out in the middle of nowhere?”

“That's what I want to find out,” said Nordquist.

 

NORTH DAKOTA

The pickup truck turned off the interstate and started up a secondary road.

“This is the way to the reservation?” Jordan asked.

Longyear nodded. “Back road. Not the main entrance.”

Jordan thought: Paul rode to the airport in his uncle's truck and stayed in it while he sent his uncle to find me.

“You think they're scanning the area with satellites?” he asked Longyear.

The biologist replied, “Could be. No sense aiding and abetting them.”

“That's a term the police use about criminals.”

His expression bleak, Longyear said, “That's how you're being treated, isn't it? Like a criminal.”

“I suppose so,” Jordan admitted.

The road was reasonably straight as it cut through a heavily wooded area.

“I didn't realize there were forests in this region. I thought it was all treeless prairie,” said Jordan.

“The Great American Desert,” said Longyear. “That's what Pike and the other early white explorers called it. Not a tree for hundreds of miles.”

“Plenty of trees now.”

Waving a hand, Longyear said, “This has all been planted in the past century or so. Climate change has actually helped this area: more rain, warmer winters.”

Jordan's personal phone buzzed. Automatically, he pulled it from his trousers pocket, then hesitated.

“Might be the government,” he muttered. “The World Council or the police, trying to track me.”

Longyear smiled grimly. “You're starting to think like a criminal.”

“A fugitive,” Jordan corrected. Then he looked at the phone's screen to see who was calling.

Aditi!

Without an instant's hesitation he clicked the phone on. “Aditi? Is it you?”

“Jordan.” Her lovely face beamed at him.

“You're all right?”

“I'm fine. Forgive me for calling you like this. I didn't call earlier because I was afraid Halleck's security people would trace the call and find out where you are.”

Feeling torn between seeing his wife for the first time in days and fearing that the security forces would locate him, Jordan merely repeated, “You're all right?”

Aditi smiled, almost mischievously. “I heard that you had gotten away from the security guards. Apparently Halleck is very angry that you broke free.”

“Darling, I'm afraid we should cut this call short.”

“No need,” she said, her smile warming. “I contacted Adri and he's connected us. Neither the World Council nor anyone else on Earth can intercept this call.”

Jordan's jaw sagged open. Recovering, he asked, “You mean this call is being relayed through New Earth? Eight light-years away?”

“No, but we're using a frequency that no one on Earth even knows about. Completely private, only you and me. Isn't that wonderful?”

“It's wonderful to see your face, Aditi. To hear your voice.”

“And to see you, Jordan.”

“Where are you?”

“Still in Barcelona. They're keeping me in an underground complex, not far from the World Council's headquarters.”

As the truck rolled through the young forest, Jordan and Aditi told each other what they had been going through for the past few days.

“They've scanned your brain?” Jordan asked.

“Yes. Adri has arranged for our communications people to educate the technicians here on Earth, but Dr. Frankenheimer still wants to study the communicator in my brain.”

“And you're cooperating?”

“I don't have much choice. But it's been painless, and the poor man is really excited to be learning so much.”

“I imagine he is,” Jordan said, thinking that everyone he and Aditi had met since returning to Earth was trying to gain new knowledge from them. No, not knowledge, he realized. Power.

He asked Aditi, “How can I contact you, dear?”

Her expression sobered. “I'm afraid you can't, not unless you want to have the security police locate you. I'm using the frequency that my implanted communicator operates on.”

“And Castiglione and the others don't know it?”

“No. They can't detect it.”

“All right, then,” Jordan said. “But could you please call me at least once every day?”

“Of course,” Aditi answered. “Every hour, if I could.”

“I miss you, darling.”

“And I miss you, Jordan. I hope we can be together soon.”

Unconsciously, he nodded. “I'll be working on that. And waiting for your next call.”

“I love you, Jordan.”

Suddenly realizing that Longyear and his uncle could hear everything the two of them said, Jordan lowered his voice slightly. “I love you, too, Aditi. And I'll be with you as soon as I possibly can.”

“That will be good.”

“It'll be wonderful.”

“Yes.”

“Good-bye.”

“Au revoir.
”

The phone screen went dark. Jordan stared at it for several silent moments, smiling as he wondered how much French she had picked up.

Longyear pointed to a roadside sign that flashed by. “Five more miles and we'll be at the reservation.”

“Good,” said Jordan as he slipped the phone back into his pocket. But he was wondering about his wife being held a captive back in Barcelona. With Castiglione.

*   *   *

Mitchell Thornberry was trying to smile at the three-dimensional image of Anita Halleck hovering across the desk from him. It looked as if the World Council chairwoman was sitting in his office.

Smile, he told himself. Be a jolly old elf.

Halleck was smiling, too: a thin, patently forced curve of her lips. “I see you've got your video feed working again,” she was saying.

“That I have,” said Thornberry.

“Was Kell in your office the last time we spoke?”

Thornberry hesitated. He had heard of the voice analyzers and scanners that security people used to determine if someone was lying or not.

“Why do you ask?” he replied.

“Kell is a fugitive. We're trying to find him.”

“Is he a criminal, then?”

“We want to keep him in protective custody. For his own safety. There's already been one attempt on his life.”

Thornberry forced his smile wider. “Well then, if you can't find him, with all the fine resources you have at your beck and call, then I imagine the crackbrain killers can't find him, either.”

“You think so? That's rather naive, isn't it?”

More seriously, Thornberry said, “I'm going to appeal to the International Court of Justice to enjoin you from holding Jordan in custody. It's not right. It's an infringement on his freedom.”

“You'd rather see him assassinated by some fanatic?”

“I'd rather see him free.”

Halleck said, “Aiding a fugitive is a criminal offense, you know.”

“Tell that to me lawyers,” Thornberry snapped.

“If you know where he is, it would be best if you tell me.”

“And how should I know where he is?”

Halleck let her distaste show on her face. “Mr. Thornberry, you have become quite wealthy from alien technology. But you're not so powerful that the World Council can't freeze your assets and examine your dealings, down to the smallest detail.”

“You can tell that to me lawyers, as well,” Thornberry said, snapping his fingers to cut off the phone connection.

Halleck's image disappeared and Thornberry said to himself, I'd better speak to me lawyers, m'self, by God.

 

KTBR

“You're the starman,” said Lester Youngeagle, outright awe clear in his voice, his face, his eyes.

Station KTBR was housed in a modest plastic-walled building, shaped like a bright white mound hugging the earth. Tornadoes were a frequent threat, Longyear had explained to Jordan as they drove up to it, and the building's aerodynamic design allowed the wind to slip by it without much resistance.

“No windows,” he had pointed out as his uncle parked the truck. “Nothing for the wind to grab hold of.”

“Who thought up the design?” Jordan had asked.

With a hint of pride in his voice, Longyear had replied, “Our people have designed hogans this way for millennia. We know how to live with tornadoes, better than the whites with their bricks and frame houses.”

Once they entered the building, the young female receptionist had summoned Youngeagle. He can't be much more than twenty, Jordan thought as he shook hands with the young man. Youngeagle was not quite Jordan's height, but stocky, thickset, with skin the color of burnt tobacco leaf, wide-set deeply brown eyes and jet black hair hanging down to his collar. He was wearing a white shirt, its sleeves rolled up past his elbows, and well-faded jeans.

“I saw that broadcast you did a coupla days ago,” Youngeagle said, once they had shaken hands. “Every damned station on Earth! Wow! How'd you do that?”

“Alien technology,” Jordan said. “It's one of the gifts we can offer to the people of Earth.”

As he led Jordan, Longyear, and Uncle Twelvetoes down the building's central corridor, Youngeagle asked, “So what brings you here? What can I do for you?”

Jordan said, “Anything you do for me might get you in trouble with the World Council. As far as they're concerned, I'm a fugitive.”

“So you're hiding out here, on the reservation.”

“That's right.”

They passed a big, open studio, dark and empty. Four 3-D cameras stood idle in the middle of the floor. Each corner of the area was decorated differently: a library, a news desk, an angle of smart screens showing weather maps that reached up to the lights hanging from the ceiling, and what looked to Jordan like a fake classroom. A scattering of lights came on automatically as they entered the area.

“We do most of our broadcasts from one of these sets or another,” Youngeagle explained as he led them to the library set.

“You're not broadcasting now?” Jordan asked.

“Network feed. We'll go on the air again with the local news at six.”

Gesturing to the sofa and armchairs in the library corner, Youngeagle said, “This is the most comfortable spot in the building.”

Jordan and Longyear took the sofa, Youngeagle one of the upholstered chairs. Twelvetoes remained standing, off to one side.

Leaning forward intently, Youngeagle asked, “So what can I do for you?”

“Can you put me in touch with the people who run the major news networks?”

Youngeagle flinched backward slightly. “I wish I could. I wish I knew some of those birds. But I'm only the general manager of a small station out in the wilderness.”

“Oh,” said Jordan. “I see.”

With a forlorn little shake of his head, Youngeagle said, “Just about the only person I know in the New York end of the business is a gal I met at a conference last year. Her name's Vera something … Vera Griffin, that's it.”

“She's with the news media?”

“The Otero Network. She's only a junior manager in Otero's control center, but she's bright and ambitious.”

“Well,” he said to Youngeagle, “she'll have to do.”

Turning to Longyear, sitting beside him, Jordan said, “It's a start.”

 

NORDQUIST AND STAVENGER

Gilda Nordquist rode a commercial rocket to the Moon, sitting amidst the tourists and schoolchildren who were on their way to Selene or the more adult attractions of the Hell Crater entertainment complex.

The man seated beside her was an astronomer, heading for the Farside Observatory. He tried to engage Nordquist in conversation, but she quieted him soon enough with her flat, monosyllabic responses. Men, she thought. Always on the prowl.

Commercial flights did not coast to the Moon; that would mean taking several days to reach their destination. Instead, they accelerated at less than half a
g—
half the gravitational force experienced on the Earth's surface—halfway to the Moon, then reversed and slowed their approach so that they landed on the lunar surface in a matter of hours, not days. The passengers experienced zero gravity only for the few minutes of the turnaround.

Still, Nordquist was dismayed that two of the children and several adults moaned and gagged while briefly weightless. At least no one upchucked, she thought gratefully, recalling the sickening smell of vomit from earlier flights to orbital zero-
g
facilities. The astronomer beside her took zero-
g
in stride. He must be a veteran traveler, she thought.

To her surprise, Douglas Stavenger himself was waiting for her at the end of the flexible passageway that connected the spacecraft's hatch to the air lock of Selene's Armstrong Spaceport, smiling warmly, wearing a plain gray set of coveralls, much like most of the other permanent Luniks.

She walked carefully in the light lunar gravity, not wanting to stumble and make a fool of herself. Once she reached him, Stavenger extended his arm and she took it gratefully.

“You've never been to the Moon before, have you?” he asked—solicitously, it seemed to her.

“This is my first time,” she admitted.

“You're doing fine.” And he led her slowly into the terminal's main area.

Stavenger was beginning to look his age, she thought. Even with his body teeming with nanomachines, there were crinkles in the corners of his eyes and his once-dark hair was peppered with gray. She saw that she was several centimeters taller than he, but he still was handsome and broad-shouldered.