They went, fearing him and hating him, not hiding their reactions. A massive series of doors closed, sealing the brothers in. Their sole contacts with the outside world were the shimmering monitor screens. Pat spoke to the systems. “All right. Transfer Jael Saunder’s call to this station. Terminal one. Full scrambler lock on the connection. I don’t want anyone else with us. Emphatic. Execute.”
Jael appeared on screen one. She was seething, predictably, furious with both her sons. “I hope you have a good reason to—”
“How about murder?” Todd asked, wasting no valuable time.
“What?” Pat blinked and shook his head, then flared at him. “What murder? Goddard again? You blaming me for that? And what’s all this talk about my guards shooting you?”
“Goddard. Yes. You are to blame.” Todd hesitated, regarding Pat intently. “You don’t know? You honestly don’t know?” He wanted to believe that, more than anything in his life. “I did expect a challenge, or to be shot on sight. The plane I was going to take here was booby-trapped, by Saunder Enterprises techs, Pat. It would have blown me out of the sky. The only reason I’m here is because some Spacer supporters spotted the attempt on my life and provided alternate transport, military style, with weapons and masking scramblers. Just like your private ships carry. You and Mother are getting pretty damned good at assassination prevention measures. Does it go both ways? Prevent it? Or cause it? Is that what we’ve come to, Pat? Murder? My murder? Three hundred and twenty innocent people on the Nairobi shuttle? People Galbraith’s trying to kill with anti-Spacer missiles? Or thousands of people in SE Antarctic Enclave, people supposedly saved for the future? But they’ve been eliminated, down to the very cubicles they should be resting in. I suppose it doesn’t matter, really. I mean, what’s the difference if it’s one or a few thousand? It’s all a body count, right?”
Pat forced a derisive laugh. “You’re mad. That’s the only explanation possible.” Fighting. Still fighting it. Pat Saunder wasn’t a quitter, and he wouldn’t give up easily, not with his honor and his future at stake.
“Second system,” Todd commanded the adjacent screen. “Put me through to ComLink Central. And don’t stall me. I know they’re ready. Connect.” He looked at Pat and at Jael’s iniage. “You want this scrambled, too? I’ll give you time to get your alibis together. The only fair thing to do, for the family.” No reply. Todd shrugged and added on a scrambler lock. The systems refused it. They would respond only to Pat or to one of his clearance-rated “aides.” His face an impending hurricane, Pat gave the order.
Dian appeared on the second screen. Like Jael’s, her image wavered slightly under the influence of the masking circuitry. “Got it, Todd,” she said. She split the screen.
A staticky, machine-created set of shapes and figures formed in the lower frame. A voice, high-pitched yet growling. Imitating its master’s.
“Earth . . . Earth . . . Vahnaj . . . Vahnaj . . . Earth . . . Vahriaj . . .”
A name! Todd grinned, delighting in the present Dian had given him amid so much grief. A name for the alien. Its world’s name? And what they called themselves, most likely, as the intelligent species which had originated on Earth were the Earthmen.
Todd couldn’t hold back the tears. He wiped his face with the backs of his hands, not ashamed of his joy. But this wasn’t the time. He hadn’t wanted this to happen here, under these conditions. Dian had no choice, he knew. Yet the wonderful discovery was tainted, thanks to what his family had done.
Pictures. Machine-made, a little jerky because of the communications difficulties and the astronomical distances involved. A human figure! Spelled out in a rapid-fire series of static blips, compressed, rippling dots and open spaces. No, two human figures! Male and female. Copied from the Voyager plaque, as some idealistic Science Council members wanted to believe? Todd doubted it. Dian and Project Search had sent a similar mode weeks ago. That was probably the image the Vahnaj messenger had picked up and copied. Replaying humanity to itself, but with more clarity than any of the previous signals. Now Todd understood Dian’s excitement. Words, a name, figures . . .
Another picture. Two more figures. Male and female. Not human. Humanoid. Distinct and subtle differences in the images, reproduced side by side. Human and Vahnaj. The average height, calculated against the spectrum wavelength Dian had supplied originally, was a bit taller than that for Homo sapiens. The head was broader, flatter on top, perched upon a very long neck and steeply sloping shoulders. A long torso, abnormally so by human standards. Slender appendages. Three fingers and an opposing thumb, shown in quick extreme close-ups formed of the on-and-off static. The images shifted, ultra-sophisticated, close-ups and side-by-side comparisons of the two species, the machine supplying the contact point for Homo sapiens and Vahnaj to view each other for the first time.
Todd wondered if the messenger had sent the images back home. They wouldn’t have reached there yet. Might not for years. The real Vahnaj. Not their images. Again he wanted to weep at the awesome concept.
The four figures, drawn with signals from a vehicle hurtling toward Saturn’s orbit, moved, squatted in a powwow circle. The preferred Vahnaj conference ritual? They extended hands, representing the living beings behind the images. Touched fingers, five-fingered hands to four-fingered. The mechanical voice spoke as the figures’ mouths appeared to open and close. “Kusta. Vahnaj.”
Dian’s voice cut over the machine’s, explaining. “Kusta equals Talk. Vahnaj equals Earth. Their Earth.”
Machine-voice: “Yes. Earth. Yes. Kusta. Talk. Signal equals Talk. Bel equals Kusta. Sha.” The figures were making gestures, moving again. Demonstrating. Dian had sent signals such as these, too, weeks ago. Apparently the alien machine had had to think it over. And perhaps decide if it wanted to communicate with such a species? In a way, humanity was on probation. As Dian had said, most of the work would be done by the Vahnaj machine. But Project Search had supplied its own share of the key. Pidgin English. Baby talk.
But it was talk—with another species, from another world!
On the screen, the alien figures held something—a fruit or vegetable shape, to human eyes. The human figure also held something. The figures reached out to one another, trading what they held. Again. Lines traced on the crude figures’ faces, both species’. Smiles.
“My God,” Todd whispered, shaken by the discovery. Facial muscles, only so many ways to stretch on a humanoid face. But there were human cultures which didn’t express friendliness and pleasure with that expression. Not many, but a few. Another evolution, light-years away, had matched them, for all the peculiarities of the Vahnaj physique.
Smile. Friend. We come in peace.
No guarantees. But it was one hell of a more convincing proof of peaceful intentions than anything Todd had been able to show anyone previously!
Dian froze the image on the scene of the four figures clasping hands with one another, those smiles on their simplified faces. “There’s more. Kilotons of it. Pouring in now, faster than we can absorb it. To us. To Goddard. To the science institutions’ orbiting telescopes, to ground stations. A flood. The machine’s boosting its gain now, Todd. It’s finally understanding just how backward we are. That is humiliating, but it’s also wonderful. We have so much to learn . . .“
“It’ll revolutionize our communications systems, for a start,” Todd said out of his own field of expertise, touching the tiniest fragment of the significance of the new data.
“She’s lying. It’s a hoax.” Jael. She didn’t really believe what she was saying. Todd detected the cornered-tigress defeat in her tone.
“Keep saying that until the aliens get here, Mother. Eight months, by our current vector calculations. Dian, give me the rest of it. And you two, I can handle the alien. What I can’t handle is politics. In this case, murder.”
The magnificent, enriching aspect of this four-way conversation was over. Now Todd had to deal with the dark side, the maliciousness, the cruelty. Dian gave her signal over
fully, the screen filling with a blizzard of data.
Facsimiles. Readouts. ComLink, calling in debts. Breaking through the locks. Mikhail and Putnam, other loyal ComLink staffers, going around when they couldn’t get through the scramblers. They had been digging everywhere. Just scraping the surface, but there was, as Dian had described the alien signals, a flood, even so. Not all the holes had been plugged. Not all the conspirators had been paid enough to ensure their silence.
Stock transfers. Halmahera—Djailolo’s conqueror— selling stock cheap to Saunder Enterprises. Too cheap to be honest. !Ngai—_Elizabeth Gola’s oppressor—stock sold to Saunder Enterprises. Bloek—Van Eyck’s enemy—stock to Saunder Enterprises. Energy. Transport. Syntha food. Fishing franchises.
Documents, with Patrick Saunder’s recognizable, written signature. More stock changing hands. And property. A lot of valuable property. Property in lands where slavery had been reinstituted to serve tyrants. Property in countries ruled by oppressive governments and murderous warlords, countries which Protectors of Earth was trying to reform. Saunder Enterprises, secretly profiting off the blood of these millions.
“That’s enough,” Jael said tonelessly.
“There’s more, Mrs. Saunder,” Dian countered, rigidly correct. “A very great deal more. Todd and I worked together on this—him going to the Enclave, me putting ComLink’s people on these hidden stats. And this is just the surface.”
Pat yelled, “Wait! Just wait! I didn’t sign those!” He pointed at the documents on the screen. “What the hell? Are you trying to frame me, Todd? Do you know what this’ll do to . . .”
“To the election? To the campaign? Face it, Pat, in a few hours, if Galbraith and the others get what they deserve, Goddard and the Moon are going to start lobbing missiles back at Earth. You won’t have a world to govern. No, I’m not trying to frame you. These things are real. All we did was turn over the rocks and find out where they were hidden. Some of them.”
Todd moved toward his brother and took him by the shoulders, holding Pat tightly, searching those eyes. “Tell me. Straight. Please. You didn’t know?”
There was an endless moment of stillness. Then, together, like automatons, they turned toward Jael’s image. A telltale dot was flashing on Dian’s monitor. She was recording what was happening in the sealed room. Jael made no move to override her, contemptuous.
“Yes,” Jael said. “He doesn’t know. Why should he? There was no need.” The voice was velvet, despite the years of bitterness in the words. “Patrick always let me handle the dirty details. He says I have a gift for it. And I do.”
Pat staggered to the screen, looming over it, shouting at her impotently. “My God! Forged documents? You forged my name to those deeds and properties? You sold me out to those murdering bastards! Todd was right. My God. My God. I’ve been promising the world I’d free it from those chains. And behind my back you’re putting more chains on! Don’t you realize what you’ve done? You’re fomenting rebellion, plunging those countries back into the Chaos. You can’t buy lives this way. I believe in Earth First, in the party’s principles—”
“So do I!” Jael declared with fierce pride. She smiled lovingly at him, amused by his outrage. “That’s exactly why we needed these things, to give you power. That’s the answer to Earth’s misery, Patrick. You know it. You have to compromise along the way in order to get the power to do the just things in the future. Power. I’ve told you that a thousand times. It’s the only way to make sure they’ll never tear us down.”
“And if you have to turn off cryo cubicles in the Enclave, killing people, that’s a compromise, too, Mother?’ Todd was in the Antarctic again, cold, cold clear through to that part of his being the new mysticism termed the soul.
Jael’s round face tightened. “Do you know what the revival-rate potentials are for those silly cryo systems? Maybe you’ve forgotten. I haven’t. There were ten volunteers in Protectors of Earth’s experiment. One of them came out whole. Three others revived, then died within six months—healthy volunteers, not a thing wrong with them until they got in those cubicles. The others never revived at all. Anomalies. Diseases, the testers said. They had a live reviver and half the governments and Third Millennium fanatics in the world clamored for them to go ahead. They waved money at them, and the P.O.E. was eager to take it. There’s your wonderful cryogenic ‘hope for the future.’ But they paid well.”
“And the dictators and generals are still paying, aren’t they, Mother? Only now they’re paying directly to Saunder Enterprises, with a few bribes along the way to a corrupt Human Rights Committee.” Todd couldn’t bring himself to approach the screen, shuddering, staring at her image. “They pay, and you arrange for certain people to die. I put my hand through what should have been Elizabeth Gola. I could have done the same with . . . what? A thousand people? Two thousand? Three? God knows how many you’ve condenmed to death with a com call to the Enclave, a change in some tyrant’s ledgers over to Saunder Enterprises. How many? Okay. Probably only the capital punishment opponents would howl about the criminals dying. You’d likely do that for free and consider it good riddance. I remember how you think on the subject. But Gola? Van Eyck? Bustamonte? Goddard supporters, Earth First opponents, Pat’s business rivals—trumped-up trials, phony charges, ship ‘em to the Enclave and pull the plug. Neat. They’re never coming back. And you know damned well that a lot of them wouldn’t have gone there without a fight if they hadn’t believed they had a chance to come back to life someday. You and the dictators and P.O.E. tricked the dissidents and the rebels, and the people who loved them. We killed them. Saunder Enterprises killed them. And we covered it all up so that Pat can become Chairman of Protectors of Earth. My God, Pat. My God, indeed!”
Pat, his voice rising, that power to move worlds—or his own family? “You did kill them, Mother. The staffers have to get their orders from somewhere. What . . . what have you done?” Jael had convinced him, where Todd alone might have failed.
“I made sure the Saunders will survive.” No remorse. Her head was held high. Jael Hartman Saunder, throwing away a fortune and an elitist family, and replacing what she had lost with her love for Ward Saunder and her children—and her unquenchable thirst for enough power to make them all invulnerable. “We’re here. We’re on top. And we’re going to stay this way. We’ll always be here, from now on. A Saunder, hand on the reins, taking Earth where it ought to go,” Jael said. Serene, strong, the woman who had made kings and presidents grovel, and pay to have their enemies “eliminated” secretly.
“You tried to kill me, Mother. Twice,” Todd reminded her.
For a fraction of a second, lad’s cool demeanor trembled. “I’m sorry I had to do that, Todd. But you just wouldn’t listen. I did warn you. And I made sure you were out of the way. I thought that would teach you . . .”
“Scare me off? I don’t scare off, Mother. I’m a Saunder, too. A man died in that firebombing. A good man, decent, intelligent. Other people suffered terribly, are still suffering. All the burn treatments and get-well wishes you send won’t wipe that out. You hurt them, would have hurt me if you could have.”
“I regret their being caught. I truly do. But it’s your fault. You should have quashed this thing about the aliens, at least until Patrick—”
Pat hammered on the console. “Goddammit! There isn’t going to be any election for me now, Mother! Can’t you get that through your head? You killed all chance for me to reach the Chairmanship when you killed those people. It’s over. Done!” He jerked around, suddenly seizing on something Todd had said earlier. “The Nairobi shuttle? What . . . ?”
“Yes. Gib Owens, a Goddard courier, was on board, in disguise. They sabotaged the plane to get him. A ‘regrettable accident.’ He’d delivered a message from Mari and Kevin, about the Enclave and a lot of missing funds. I dug a bit, and that’s when those planes almost shot me out of the sky.” Todd looked at Jael. “I had a scrambler lock with me on that wild ride. I listened in on their com. That
’s how I know they were part of your bunch of killers, part of the bunch that destroyed that plane.” Jael frowned, disgusted at the ineptitude of her hirelings. “Who were the dead pilots, the dupes? More pests somebody wanted removed? Did you let CNAU find them, or is CNAU Enforcement in your pocket, too? How far does this conspiracy run? Galbraith, obviously. He’s looked the other way for you on a lot of things, hasn’t he? And now you’re looking the other way while he kills your daughter . . .”
Jael tensed against that accusation. “If Mariette would just . . .”
“Mother, Galbraith’s going to destroy Goddard if he can, he and the rest of Earth First’s fanatics and what’s-in-it-for-me specialists. And Pat helped them, blinding Earth’s people, telling them Goddard was their enemy.”
“We’re not responsible for that stupid old man,” lad said harshly. “I told Galbraith it was quite unnecessary to fire those missiles. We could simply starve Goddard into seeing things our way.”
“Or poison them? Like that contaminated-food shipment to Lunar Base?” Pat made a strangling sound when Todd mentioned that unknown plot, racked by new horror.
Jael shrugged. “It’s done.”
“No, it’s not. It’s just beginning. You bought off P.O.E.’s earlier investigation into the missile attacks, and Riccardi and the anti-Spacers kept it up. Well, Riccardi’s dead. And Galbraith and his co-conspirators will make one final attempt. They’re in so deep they can’t get out any other way. They hope to be tyrants of what’s left after the holocaust. If Goddard goes, though, it’ll take us with it. You and Pat didn’t learn anything from Dad. You should have come up to orbit more often when we were rebuilding the satellites after the wars. Found out what missiles can do. Full potential. It’s years later, and the weapons are a great deal meaner. We’ll all pay—you, me, Pat, Carissa, the baby . . .”
Tomorrow’s Heritage Page 40
