IT was lunchtime in Sydney Cliff Baker sat half sprawled in the imitation wicker chair at a corner table in his favorite restaurant, the oh-so-posh and totally phony Bombay Room atop the tallest skyscraper in Australia Fake Hindus with bogus turbans waited on the tables with feigned humility and fraudulent politeness Wog-waiters, Baker called them phony as a virgin in a cathouse Bowing and scraping and speaking in whispers Not a robot in sight But you paid for all the servility, the prices were even higher than the room's altitude
From his corner table Baker could see the magnificent harbor with its graceful old bridge and the breathtaking opera house. But his attention was riveted, instead, on his luncheon companion.
She was a Magyar beauty, with honey-colored hair, high cheekbones, a heart-shaped face with slightly asian eyes the color of a lioness's. Flawless skin. Delightful bosom straining the buttons of her manmshly tailored blouse.
Baker was halfway drunk, not an unusual condition for him in the early afternoon. He had started their luncheon with three whiskeys, then consumed most of the wine that the servile, bowing wog-waiters had poured for them. Now the restaurant was nearly empty and the turbaned crew stood clustered near the kitchen door, whispering among themselves as they waited for the last luncheon customers to leave. The dishes had been cleared from their table by still other dark-skinned fakes in turbans, but Baker had called for a bottle of cognac and two snifters. His glass was now empty Temporarily.
He had been a ruggedly handsome man fifteen years ago, with golden blond hair and a lean muscular body. Now his face sagged and there were pouches beneath his blue eyes. He was going to bloat, and even his hair looked a thinning, unhealthy graying blond.
"So you want to know about Stoner, do you. That's what this is all about?"
The woman nodded, holding her snifter in both hands, where it caught a glint of afternoon sunlight.
"Dr. Ilona Lucacs," muttered Baker. "Doctor of what?"
"Neurophysiology," she said, in a voice that was almost sultry. "At the
"And what's your interest in Stoner?"
Dr. Lucacs was clearly uncomfortable, but she forced a smile. Luscious lips, thought Baker.
"My interest is purely scientific," she said, with the trace of an exotic accent. "My research is in the area of cryonics, freezing people at the point of death so that they can be re-
vived later, when medical science has learned how to cure the ailment that is killing them."
"Ahhh," said Baker, reaching for the cognac bottle. "So Stoner's still the only one to make it out of the deep freeze, eh?"
"So far as I have been able to determine, no other human being has ever been revived successfully from cryonic suspension."
Baker splashed five centimeters of golden brown liquid into his snifter and downed half of it in one gulp. "Then An Lmh's mother is still on ice," he muttered.
"I beg your pardon?" Dr. Lucacs leaned forward slightly, a motion that roused Baker's heart rate.
"An old friend of mine," explained Baker. "Her mother was dying of cancer so she had the old lady frozen--god, must be twenty-five years or more."
"Would this be Ms. An Lmh Laguerre?"
"You've met her?"
"I interviewed her a few weeks ago, in Paris."
"How is she?"
"Very successful. She is a vice president of Global Communications."
"So I heard. Haven't seen her in more than ten years. She was a close friend of mine, back then. A very close friend."
Dr. Lucacs caught his meaning. "She is married now, and has two children. She appears to be quite happy with her life."
Baker grunted "Global's a subsidiary of Vanguard Industries, isn't it?"
"I wouldn't know."
"It is. She's working for Vanguard, same as me."
"You did know Dr. Stoner fifteen years ago "
But Baker was muttering, "We all work for Vanguard, dearie. You, me, An Lmh, everybody They own us all."
Ignoring his implications, Dr. Lucacs tried to get the conversation back on subject. "How well did you know Dr. Stoner?"
"Not well. But too well, if you get my meaning."
"I'm sorry?" She shook her head.
Baker gulped the rest of the cognac in his glass, then leaned his head back as if inspecting the high ceiling with its slowly-turning fans.
"I knew him well enough to damned near get killed," he said, bitter anger in his voice. "I knew him well enough to get kidnapped and tortured. Too damned well."
She said nothing, but glanced at the purse in her lap where a miniaturized tape recorder was hidden.
"You don't know about Stoner, not really." Baker hunched forward in his chair, leaning both arms heavily on the table and bringing his face close enough to hers so that she could smell the liquor on his breath.
"He's not human. He can see right through you and make you do things you don't want to do. I saw him make a bloke go blind, just while we were sitting at the dinner table. Made his eyes bleed, for chrissakes! Drove him dotty." His words were blurring together now, coming out in a half-drunken rush, frenzied, urgent. "He turned the owner of Vanguard Industries into a basket case just by saying a few words to him. He never sleeps! He spent months with An Lmh in Africa and never touched her--for sex, I mean. I think he can walk through walls if he wants to. He's not human, not human at all!"
Dr. Lucacs's tawny eyes were glittering. "He spent several years aboard the alien spacecraft," she whispered, 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 Lmh 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? fo 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, know ing 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 bio chips
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 down the bile burning in her throat, she adjusted the straps of her heavy backpack and staggered up the steep wooded slope, pushing through brush and nettles that flailed at her from both sides of the narrow mountain trail The sun
was warm, but the cool mountain breeze chilled the perspiration that beaded on her dark, intent face
Her teachers, back at the university, had been doubtful about allowing Lela to do a field mission with a male gorilla Even Professor Yeboa, who had been her advisor, her sponsor, her secret love, had expressed doubts
"The hills can be dangerous for a city girl," Yeboa had said He had smiled, as he always did when he reminded Lela of her urban upbringing
"City streets can be dangerous, too," she had retorted, also smiling "I am not afraid "
The aim of the project was to repopulate the area that had been set aside as a safe reserve for the mountain gorilla Over the past half century the gorillas had been driven nearly to extinction, but now at last an ecologically viable tract of uplands had been set aside for them, thanks to Nkona Three female gorillas had already been placed in the reserve by other students and rangers, waiting for a male to complete a viable group Lela's task was to guide Koku to the females, using the biochips to help control the young male
Lela had even met the Great Soul of Africa, Dhouni Nkona himself He had come to the university to see personally how they were rearing the infant gorillas from the zoo population and teaching them to survive in the wild
As a graduate student, Lela had been concentrating on theoretical studies of ecological change and environmental protection But once she looked into those fathomless eyes of Nkona she was swept up in an irresistible frenzy of dedication
"The work you do here is the best that human souls can achieve," Nkona had told the eager students He smiled at them, a sparkling bright smile in his deeply black African face "You know that we must learn to control our behavior, to think before we act, to accept responsibility for the consequences of our actions We cannot live by exterminating others, that much you have learned in your studies, I know By saving the gorillas, you help humankind to save itself "
"Many oppose what we do," said one of the students
Nkona closed his eyes briefly Then, "All life is linked together, from the humblest forms to the most grandiose Thirty-three years ago the human race made its first contact with an alien intelligence, a race from another world, another star I say to you that our contacts with the life of this world are just as important--no, more important--than our link to other races in space "
He turned a full circle to sear each of the students crowded around him with his compelling gaze "We are all links of the same chain, the chain of life, which extends out to the stars and the farthest reaches of creation Your struggle to save the gorilla is the struggle to preserve that chain, to keep faith with all the forms of life that share this universe "
Theory could never be enough for Lela after that Aflame with Nkona's passion, she volunteered eagerly for the biochip operation that would allow her to maintain sensory contact with a selected gorilla She battled the entire faculty and field staff for the right to work with one of the animals through its difficult transition from the human environment of its childhood to the wild mountain forests where it would live as an adult
For nearly two years Lela had trained hard, both physically and mentally Out of a soft, self-indulgent adolescent cocoon there emerged a leggy, lean-muscled young woman with lustrous brown eyes and a smile that dazzled
She was not smiling now Out here in the thick brush of the forest, with the early morning sunlight just beginning to filter down through the trees, with the sweat of near-exhaustion chilling her, Lela knew that Koku was in danger
She should have been the only human being within a hundred square kilometers of the young male gorilla But she was not Through Koku's eyes she saw a band of hunters thrashing through the brush White men and black, carrying rifles
"Run Koku'" she directed "Run'"
Startled by her abrupt warning, the big gorilla crashed off through the brush Lela felt his sudden fear as her own Look-
ing back through the gorilla's eyes, she saw the hunters dwindling in the distance until they disappeared altogether in heavy green foliage
Lela sighed out a breath of relief Koku could easily outdistance them in the thick brush But within minutes he would feel safe and slow down or stop altogether Lela knew she had to reach Koku before the hunters did.