Death Wave (30 page)

There was no horizon: the land
curved
up and up until Aditi was staring overhead at more green fields and villages hanging effortlessly above her.

The young guide said, “Nearly a quarter of a million souls reside in this habitat. They live and work in this man-made world.”

“And they make babies,” Castiglione added, almost sneering.

Their guide's facial expression hardened. “It is very important to maintain our population at a sustainable level. Births are strictly controlled, to balance deaths. We have no population boom here. We are not ignorant savages.”

“Of course,” said Castiglione, in a more conciliatory tone.

The guide led them to a trio of brightly colored minibuses, parked next to the flowering hedges. Gesturing the six of them aboard the closest bus, he explained, “We will now go to the town in which you will live. It is not very far.”

*   *   *

Nick Motrenko stared at his laptop screen. He read the message again:

The Otero Network invites you to a news conference to be held in Boston, Massachusetts, to interview Mr. Jordan Kell, the star traveler.

If you are interested in participating in the interview, please contact Douglas McKinley at …

Nick put through the call immediately. The next thing he did was to call Walt. Despite his disdain for worldly goods, Walt carried a phone wherever he went, like ordinary people did.

“In Boston, eh?” Walt asked. “I would have thought they'd do it in New York, or maybe Barcelona.”

“It'll be in Boston!” Nick replied, excited. “Live! I'll be in the same room with him!”

Walt did not mention that it was his connection to the World Council bureaucracy that won Nick the invitation. Instead, he asked, “Can you bring anyone with you?”

Nick was surprised at that. Walt wants to see the starman for himself, he guessed.

“Two, besides me.”

Walt nodded happily. “Good. You'll bring Rachel, of course. And Dee Dee.”

“Dee Dee?”

“And the little item she purloined from the police department's warehouse.”

 

CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS

It's been a long day, Jordan said to himself as he walked tiredly to the lavatory of his suite in Otero's home. I hope it's been a productive one.

It worried him that he hadn't heard from Aditi the night before. What's happened to her? Why didn't she call?

As he reached for his toothbrush, though, he started thinking about how Mitch Thornberry could help him to get Aditi free of Halleck's so-called protective custody.

Thanks to Carlos, I've shown that I can appear on global video whenever I want to. There's no point in Halleck keeping Aditi and me separated. But will that be enough to actually get her to release Aditi? Is there more than logic involved here?

Of course there is, he realized. There's Halleck's ego. And her sense of power.

A politician's power depends on what he—or she—can make other people do. Halleck thinks that by controlling Aditi she can control me. I've just shown her that she's wrong. How will she react?

And how will she react to Mitch getting me nominated for a seat on the Council? That will bring things to a boil, no question. But if I win a Council seat, she won't be able to keep Aditi and me separated.

As he returned to the bedroom, the holographic viewer on the far wall glowed to life, and there was Aditi, sitting in a room that looked unfamiliar to him. His wife smiled at him.

“Hello, Jordan.”

“Aditi! Dearest. How are you?
Where
are you?”

Swiftly, Aditi explained her trip to habitat
Gandhi
.

Jordan sank onto the padded bench at the foot of his bed. “Four hundred thousand kilometers away,” he muttered.

“Once we were more than eight light-years apart,” Aditi reminded him.

“That was before we met. I have no intention of staying separated from you any longer than I have to.”

“Castiglione claims you're going to be invited to join me, here.”

“Then Halleck will have us both under her control.”

“You won't come?”

Jordan clenched both his fists. With cold, deliberate anger rising inside him, he said, “I'll come. But not to stay there. I'll come to take you away with me.”

*   *   *

First thing the next morning, in Chicago, Hamilton Cree reported to his new boss.

The innocuously named Unicorn Recovery Agency was housed on the twenty-seventh floor of one of Chicago's many combined business-residential towers. Cree's apartment was on the fortieth floor of the same building: only a one-room studio, but it was new and almost luxurious, compared to the dump he had been renting in Albuquerque.

Gonna be easy for me to get to work, he told himself, with a grin. Short commute. Just drop down the elevator chute.

His boss was a retired veteran of the Defense Intelligence Agency, a short, surly-looking Hispanic with mahogany skin, his black, tightly curled hair hanging down to his collar. Despite his lack of height, his shoulders were heavy and wide, like a professional football player. It made him look like a small, truculent rhinoceros, Cree thought, although the man's nose was little more than a perforated wart.

The office was modest and spare. The only decoration was a nameplate on the desk:
COLONEL TÓMAS PALOMA
, with a tiny outline of a dove after the name. Cree understood enough Spanish to know that
paloma
was a slang term for prostitute, but he didn't let a smile crack his sober expression as he stood stiffly before the desk.

“You don't have a jacket?” Paloma asked, his tone just a bit above a snarl. Paloma was in a three-piece business suit, dark gray with silver pinstripes.

Standing before the desk in his shirtsleeves, Cree answered, “Yessir. It's at my desk.”

Paloma nodded. “Good. See that you're properly dressed at all times. We run a tight ship here.”

Cree suppressed a groan. “Yessir.”

Gesturing to the hard wooden chair in front of his desk, Paloma said, “Sit down.” With a glance at his desktop computer screen, he continued, “You have a very good record with the NMHP.”

Cree said nothing.

“You actually met this star traveler, Jordan Kell?”

“I didn't really meet him. I was on a security detail when he visited the Rio Grande Gorge, above Taos.”

“But you'd recognize him if you saw him again?”

With a nod, “Yes, I would. And his wife, too.”

Paloma studied Cree's face for several heartbeats, then made up his mind. “Good. We're putting together a security team to protect Kell. You'll be on it.”

“Thanks.”

The trace of a smile flickered across Paloma's dark face. “Twenty-four/seven. Where he goest, thou goest.
Comprende?
”

“Yo comprende,”
said Cree.

Paloma's frown could have soured milk. “I hope you're better at security than you are at Spanish.”

*   *   *

Vera Griffin felt as if she were in some vid production of a spy thriller. She left the network offices after a morning of wrestling with McKinley and his public relations staff and headed off by herself to her lunch date with Castiglione.

McKinley, of course, wanted to handle all the interviews with Jordan Kell with his own staff. He did not want Griffin involved at all.

“This is the PR department's territory,” he exclaimed, just about every ten minutes during their stormy meeting, while his six staffers—three women and three men, all in bright colors—nodded their heads in metronome unison.

And each time Griffin answered in her little girl voice, “Mr. Otero himself has told me to stay with Mr. Kell and oversee all the arrangements you make.”

Her little girl voice had helped her through many stormy confrontations in the past. But McKinley wasn't buying it.

“
I
run the PR department, not you.”

“Of course you do, Mr. McKinley. But, you see, I'm in the midst of negotiating an agreement with the other three multinational networks for Mr. Kell's future appearances to be shared by us all.”

In the end, McKinley had reluctantly agreed to give Griffin a veto power over all the interviews his people set up for Jordan Kell. And he also okayed the two dozen bloggers and chat hosts that Vera had added to the list of network news anchors.

“Amateurs,” he had groused.

“Self-employed interviewers,” Griffin had countered.

McKinley and his staff had finally left Griffin's tiny office, muttering among themselves.

Now, as she walked into the restaurant for her lunch with Castiglione, her wrist phone tingled her arm.

It was Castiglione, his handsome face looking sad, almost desolate. “I can't make it to lunch with you, sweet one. My duties have taken me into space. I'm aboard a habitat in the L5 location.”

Griffin almost felt relieved. Rudy's fun, but he's going to dump me sooner or later, she told herself as she watched his face in the minuscule phone screen, nattering away about how important his work was.

Then he said, “But I need you to do a favor for me, if you can. I need to speak to Jordan Kell as quickly as you can arrange it.”

“Of course, Rudy,” she said. He gave her his contact number and clicked off.

He's in an orbital habitat with Kell's wife, Griffin thought as she absently allowed the maître d' to lead her to a table for two, far in the rear of the restaurant. I wonder how Kell will react to that.

“Luncheon for one,” the maître d' murmured as he held out a chair for her.

And Griffin wondered what it would be like to have lunch with Jordan Kell.

 

INVITATIONS

It was as if they were sitting in the same room, thanks to the three-dimensional communications link. Mitchell Thornberry was in his office in Chicago, however, while Anita Halleck was reclining in a therapy chair in her home outside Barcelona.

It was just past six
P.M.
in Chicago. Through his office window, Thornberry could see sailboats cutting through the waves of a choppy Lake Michigan. It had rained earlier in the afternoon, and off on the horizon thunderclouds were rearing their ominous dark heads against a graying sky.

Thornberry had peeled off his jacket and pulled his tie loose. He had been thinking about tugging his shirt out from his trousers when the phone announced that the chairwoman of the World Council was calling.

“It's good of you to answer my call so quickly, Ms. Halleck,” Thornberry said, with a gruff good cheer that he did not really feel. Be nice to the lady, he told himself. Don't twist her knickers. “Why, it must be after midnight where you are.”

Halleck smiled minimally. “The trouble with the World Council is that its business encompasses the whole world—and all its time zones.”

“Well, I appreciate your calling,” Thornberry reiterated.

“My assistant told me that you were inquiring about Mrs. Kell.”

“Aditi,” Thornberry said. “Yes. According to Jordan, you're keeping her in protective custody, against her will.”

There was a slight lag in their communications link, while the messages went up to a relay satellite in geosynchronous orbit and then back to the ground again. Halleck felt her chair's welcome heat and massage on her back as she smiled perfunctorily at the camera on the wall across her room.

“‘Against her will' is putting it rather strongly,” she said. “She's working quite willingly with a team of our scientists.”

“And where would that be?” Thornberry asked.

“At a facility where she's safe from attack by fanatics and loonies.”

“But she'd rather be with her husband, you know.”

“Of course. That's only natural.”

Thornberry realized what Halleck was doing: Agree with everything, but give nothing, not a millimeter.

“Must she be kept separated from him?” he asked.

“No, not at all. As a matter of fact, we are extending an invitation to Mr. Kell to join his wife at our secure facility.”

“Are you now?”

“Yes indeed. We have no desire to keep them separated,” Halleck said, with near-perfect sincerity.

“Well, I didn't know that,” said Thornberry.

Halleck went on, “So you see, Mr. Thornberry, it's up to Mr. Kell himself to end this separation. All he has to do is to accept our invitation.”

“Would you be willing to allow Aditi to join Jordan where he is now? He's perfectly safe, and I understand that a private security team is being put together for him.”

“I'm afraid that would be rather impractical. After all, Mrs. Kell is working with a team of dedicated scientists. It would be far better if he came to where she is.”

“At your facility.”

“At our facility.”

“And just where might that be?”

Halleck hesitated a heartbeat longer than the communications lag required. Then, “I'm sorry, Mr. Thornberry, but I can't tell you the location. Even the Council's chairwoman has to obey the security regulations.”

Thornberry puffed out a sigh. “But you've invited Jordan to come to your facility and be with Aditi again.”

“I believe he's being invited right now, as we speak.”

“Is he now.”

A hint of a smile curling her lips, Halleck said slowly, “You know, Mr. Thornberry, the work that Mrs. Kell and our scientists are doing should be of some interest to you.”

“Really?”

“They're working on a technology that the aliens use: faster-than-light communications. That could make a profitable product line for you, eventually.”

Thornberry immediately realized, She's trying to bribe me!

He said, “I suppose it could.”

“I'm sure the Council could grant you licensing rights, once we've got the technology in hand.”