Voyagers III - Star Brothers by Ben Bova Read Free Book Online Page A

almost to herself.
    “That’s right. He was frozen up there in space, and when they brought him back to Earth it was another ten years or more before they figured out how to thaw him and bring him back to life.”
    “And no other human being has ever been thawed successfully and revived.”
    “Because he ain’t human,” Baker insisted. “While he was in that alien spaceship, I think they grew a clone of him or something. He’s just not human. A human being can’t do the things he can do!”
    “He won’t let me examine him,” Dr. Lucacs said.
    “ ’Course not. Then you’d find out what he really is.”
    “But I have all his medical records from the Vanguard Research Labs, where he was revived, fifteen years ago. They are the records of a normal human being.”
    “Faked.”
    “They match his earlier records, from the years before he went into space.”
    “Faked, I tell you.”
    She looked doubtful. “Why would…”
    “Don’t be a naive fool!” Baker snapped. “He’s the property of Vanguard Industries, the most powerful corporation on this planet, for god’s sake! He married the corporation president…”
    “Ms. Camerata? I didn’t know that.”
    “Don’t you see? He’s secretly controlling the biggest corporation on Earth. Through her. He killed off her first husband and set himself up in his place. He paid off An Linh with Global Communications and stuck me with this bloody IIA.”
    She looked surprised. “But I thought that you were the chairman of International Investment Agency.”
    “Sure I am!” Baker made a sound halfway between a laugh and a snort. “It’s like being the mascot of a rugby team. You get treated well and everybody admires you. But they don’t take you very seriously, do they?”
    Dr. Lucacs looked uncomfortable.
    His voice rising as he reached for the cognac bottle again, Baker went on, “Sure, they made me chairman of their bloody IIA. And all the big multinational corporations send their flunkies to sit ’round our table. But who runs the IIA? Actually runs it? Jo Camerata, that’s who! Vanguard Industries, that’s who! And who runs Vanguard? Stoner, the bloody alien freak. Her husband.”
    The scientist leaned back in her chair and tried to sort out all this new information.
    “You’ll never get to Stoner,” Baker predicted. “He’s better protected than the bloody Pope.”
    “I’ve interviewed almost everyone who knew him when he was first revived,” she mused, as if reviewing the options left for her next move. “Most of the medical team has died over the past fifteen years.”
    “You bet they have!”
    Dr. Lucacs raised her brows. Baker smiled a crooked, knowing smile and poured more cognac for himself.
    “Ms. Camerata won’t see me,” she said.
    “ ’Course not.”
    “There is only one other person that I know of. A Professor Markov, of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. And he’s very elderly.”
    “Better get to him right away, then,” said Baker. “Before Stoner finds out you’re after him.”
    Her beautiful eyes widened. “You don’t think…?”
    Baker’s smile turned cruel. “All those medical blokes kicked off, didn’t they? You don’t think those were all natural deaths, do you?”
     
    Yendelela Obiri staggered to a halt along the forest trail and doubled over from the nausea. She was close to complete exhaustion, her khaki slacks and shirt soaked with sweat, her head swimming with the strange double vision of the biochips.
    Gasping in the thin mountain air, she almost sank to her knees. Almost. But when she closed her eyes she saw what Koku saw, heard and smelled and felt what the young gorilla was experiencing.
    Koku was being chased. Hunters were pursuing him. And the young male was too inexperienced, too tame, to realize what danger he was in.
    “You are not alone,” Yendelela muttered, knowing that Koku could hear her through the biochips implanted in their brains. “Lela is near, Koku. Lela is coming.”
    Fighting