Death Wave (3 page)

But he didn't really feel like an insect. He felt like a man, a man who had somehow been left behind. A man who was filled with a growing, simmering resentment.

 

TAOS, NEW MEXICO

Once-sleepy Taos was booming, thanks to the government housing construction that was changing the face of the desert. The city's airport was expanding to accommodate the loads of materials and construction workers being ferried in daily from all across the country. Jumpjet cargo carriers lowered themselves on roaring streams of hot exhaust gases along the airfield's perimeter aprons, while bigger jetliners bored in to land on the newly extended runways, then raised their hinged noses to allow trucks full of men and materials to trundle out.

Rocketplanes were still fairly rare at the Taos airport, but the security people who escorted Jordan Kell and his wife had requisitioned one for them. Local workers and travelers gaped at the sleek, swept-wing craft as it took off like an ordinary airplane, then fired its rocket engines to arrow it high above the atmosphere. In little more than a half hour the plane was gliding in for a landing at Chicago's sprawling Banks Aerospaceport.

A blank-faced team of World Council security agents guided them to an unmarked door. Outside, a sleek, low-slung limousine was waiting for Jordan and Aditi, with still more security people positioned around it. The two of them ducked inside, and the limo pulled away from the curb.

It was an air-cushion vehicle, and Jordan felt some alarm when the driver accelerated past the teeming highway traffic in a special lane reserved for government and emergency vehicles.

The security woman driving for them seemed as happy as a fighter jock as she blasted past the wheeled cars at blurring speed. Jordan saw that there were separate lanes for private automobiles, and still others for trucks and buses.

“We don't touch the roadway,” their driver was bragging. “Wheels up, jets blasting, and away we go straight downtown, past all these dawdlers!”

Jordan wondered what would happen if a private car tried to cut into the restricted government lane. Can't happen, he told himself. Those private vehicles are controlled by the traffic management system: everything kept safe and orderly. Humans don't drive their own vehicles anymore—except for this speed-happy would-be jet jockey.

There were no safety belts. The driver assured them that they weren't needed. “This car's equipped with energy screens that'll protect you from anything,” she assured her passengers.

“Really?” asked Jordan. He pushed both hands into the seemingly empty air in front of him and, sure enough, felt a slightly spongy resistance.

“Even a full-speed head-on collision!” the driver enthused.

Trying to put the picture of a high-speed crash out of his mind, Jordan turned to Aditi, who was sitting beside him, looking equally tense.

“It'll be good to see Mitch again.”

“Yes,” she agreed, her eyes flicking at the cars they were passing. “And Paul.”

Mitchell Thornberry and Paul Longyear were the only others who had returned from New Earth with Jordan and Aditi. Jordan's brother, Brandon, and the rest of the eleven scientists had elected to remain and continue their studies of the world that had been constructed by aliens to resemble Earth almost exactly, and peopled with humanlike beings.

Thornberry was a thoroughly Irish robotics engineer, Longyear a Native American biologist. Both had been staggered by what they'd found and learned on the alien-built planet circling the star Sirius. Back on Earth, though, Thornberry had accepted his round-the-clock security detail as a status symbol he had earned; Longyear found it oppressive and fled to the reservation in North Dakota where he'd been born, as far from cities and prying eyes as he could get.

A pair of security agents, wearing dark jackets over white turtleneck shirts, were waiting for them when they pulled up the driveway of the New Ritz Carlton Hotel. Though the hotel was more than two centuries old, its façade looked unchanged to Jordan. The lobby was still an elegant, understated work of art, with a completely automated registration desk, together with a smaller desk manned by human receptionists, for the old-fashioned. Humanform robot bellmen stood in a silent row, ready to carry luggage without expecting a tip.

Still more World Council security agents smoothly whisked Jordan and Aditi up to the hotel suite reserved for them, where they changed for dinner: from the travel bags waiting for them. Jordan pulled on a light blue suit, with a silver and turquoise bolo tie at his throat; Aditi chose a softly flowing dress of coral that complemented her auburn hair nicely.

The security team waiting in the hallway led Jordan and Aditi to a private dining room that the World Council had reserved for this little reunion, then stayed discreetly outside. The walls of the room were comfortably decorated with three-dimensional digital viewers that were programmed to show picturesque scenes from many spots on Earth, plus views from the Moon and planets, as well as art displays from the world's most prestigious museums, public and private.

Thornberry himself was standing by the side table laden with bottles and finger foods as Jordan and Aditi stepped in. He was a solidly built man, just about Jordan's own height but thicker, heavier in the torso and limbs. The quizzical little smile that had once lit his face was gone now, replaced by a more sober, almost puzzled expression.

“Ah, there you are!” Thornberry said heartily as he turned to greet them.

Jordan blinked at the man. On New Earth, Mitch had always worn comfortable, casual clothes—almost to the point of sloppiness. Now he was wearing a perfectly fitted plum-colored velour jacket, precisely pressed white slacks, and a crisp pale blue long-sleeved shirt.

As he grasped Thornberry's extended hand, Jordan said, “Mitch, you're a fashion plate.”

“It's these adaptable fabrics, don't ya know. They adjust to fit you. Make anybody look good.”

“Well, you look like a million international dollars.”

“Make it a hundred million,” Thornberry said, his beefy face smiling broadly. “More like three hundred million, in fact.”

“You are a wealthy man?” asked Aditi.

“Thanks to you, m'dear. And your technology. Those grand and lovely energy screens your people invented. I filed a patent application for 'em as soon as we started back for Earth, don't you know. By the time we got home I was
rich
! No more academic life for me. B'god, university presidents are coming to
me
to beg for money!”

Jordan laughed.

“You know, they're using energy screens to dome over whole cities to protect 'em from the weather,” Thornberry nattered on. “And reinforcing dams and levees. We're even working on developing 'em for propulsion!”

Jordan said, “I had no idea.”

“It's been a busy three weeks, let me tell you,” said Thornberry. “Imagine me, a wealthy nob.”

“Has it been only three weeks since we returned?” Jordan mused. “It seems much longer.”

“Three weeks tomorrow,” Thornberry confirmed.

Nodding, Jordan said, “The World Council meeting is tomorrow morning.”

“That it is,” said Thornberry, sobering. He gestured toward the dining table. “Come on now, let's eat. Or would you rather have a drink first?”

“A little sherry. Amontillado, if they have it.” Turning to Aditi, Jordan joked, “I haven't had a sip of amontillado in more than a hundred and fifty years.”

“Paul's not here yet,” Aditi pointed out.

“He can't make it,” said Thornberry. “Some sort of family commitment. It'll be just the three of us.”

Jordan felt his brows knit. With his Native American heritage, Paul Longyear had been especially sensitive about meeting an alien race. Despite all that Aditi's people could do, the biologist remained suspicious of their motives. And once he had returned to Earth, the constant security bodyguards of the World Council had unnerved him.

“Too bad. I was looking forward to seeing him again,” Jordan said.

“You'll have to settle for just me.”

“Good enough,” said Jordan.

Dinner was exceptionally delicious, Jordan thought. Fine wine and excellent food. Robot waiters catered to their every whim. Yet the world beyond their dining room weighed on Jordan.

“The entire planet's geography has changed,” he commented between bites of roast lamb.

“That it has,” said Thornberry. “Sea level's still rising.”

Shaking his head, Jordan murmured, “I thought they had stabilized the global climate.”

“So did everybody. Fusion energy finally replaced fossil fuels.” Thornberry's beefy face darkened into a scowl. “But it was already too late. The Greenland and Antarctic ice caps are melting down. Nothing we can do to stop 'em. Too much heat stored in the oceans.”

Aditi glanced back and forth at their somber expressions. Trying to brighten things, she suggested, “Perhaps we should go to North Dakota to visit Paul.”

“Perhaps,” Jordan conceded.

“I'm not sure he'd want to be visited,” said Thornberry. “All this security the World Council has attached to us has upset him.”

“It is rather unnerving,” said Jordan, “having these security people surrounding us wherever we go.”

Thornberry's beefy face broke into a smile. “It's not that bad.” Gesturing to the room around them, he said, “This is a lot grander than sitting in the public dining room, don't you think?”

“You're getting spoiled,” Jordan half-joked.

“We're important people, Jordan, m'lad. And you, Aditi, you're an alien from another star. Of course they're guarding us, protecting us.”

Jordan nodded. But he said, “It's still rather unsettling.”

As dessert was being served, their conversation finally turned to the next day's meeting.

His face utterly serious, Thornberry asked, “You're going to tell them about the death wave?”

“They already know. It's all in the report I submitted to the Council.”

Waving a thick-fingered hand, Thornberry warned, “Ahh, they're politicians. They don't read, they have aides do their reading for them.”

Jordan looked into his friend's sky-blue eyes and saw a great sadness there. “You don't think they'll act?”

“On a threat that's two thousand years away? Get real, Jordan. They'll put it off, sweep it under the rug, kick the can down the road and hope it gets lost.”

Aditi spoke up. “But there are other intelligent species much closer to the death wave. We've got to help them.”

Thornberry huffed. “Don't count on it, m'dear. Don't count on politicians rising to the challenge.”

 

WORLD COUNCIL HEADQUARTERS

Twenty-one men and women sat around the Council table, representing every power group on Earth and beyond. They made a colorful lot, some wearing Western suits and dresses, others in Eastern saris and robes, kimonos, caftans, even one woman in a flowered sarong. Hardly a gray hair among them; they were all youthful and vigorous, no matter what their ages, thanks to rejuvenation therapies.

Three of the members were not physically present, but joined the meeting as holographic images. Douglas Stavenger, of the lunar nation of Selene, was the more prominent of them. He had served two ten-year terms as chairman of the Council. Seated beside him, also in holographic representation, was George Ambrose, the oversized, red-thatched leader of the rock rats—that loose coalition of miners and explorers scattered through the Asteroid Belt. On Stavenger's other side sat the representative from the habitat in orbit around the planet Saturn.

Like Stavenger, Ambrose and the delegate from Saturn were on the Moon. It took nearly three seconds for electronic signals to go from Earth to the Moon and back again. That was awkward, but bearable. It took upwards of a full hour for signals to reach the Belt and return, and more than twice as long to span the distance to Saturn. That made real-time conversations impossible, so Ambrose and the woman from Saturn traveled to the Moon for Council meetings.

Anita Halleck sat at the head of the long, polished table and watched her fellow World Council members chatting and gesticulating among themselves. Like monkeys, she thought. Jabbering monkeys.

The digital clock on the screen built into the tabletop before her showed exactly three
P.M
. Halleck tapped her manicured fingernail on the gleaming surface only once; their talking stopped immediately. All heads turned to her.

“I'm glad that you all could attend this meeting,” she began, her voice a warm contralto. “We have before us only one agenda item: the report from the head of our expedition to Sirius C.”

“New Earth,” added the representative from Sub-Saharan Africa, in a deep-chested rumble.

“Yes,” said Halleck, without smiling. “The so-called New Earth.”

Pressing a pad on the keyboard beneath her tabletop screen, Halleck looked toward the double doors at the head of the room as she said, “Please welcome the leader of our Sirius expedition, Mr. Jordan Kell.”

Everyone around the table turned as the double doors swung silently open and Jordan stepped through. He was wearing a collarless navy blue blazer and light gray slacks. And holding the hand of his slim, lovely, red-haired young wife, who wore a simple knee-length frock of golden yellow.

The entire Council rose to its feet as Jordan and Aditi walked the length of the table and stopped at the two empty chairs on Halleck's right. No applause, not a word from any Council member, but their hushed respect for Jordan Kell—and their curiosity about his wife—was palpable.

Everyone sat down except Kell, Aditi, and Halleck.

“Mr. Kell,” said Halleck, “we have all read your report, of course, but the entire World Council is eager to hear what you have to say.”