The Complete Aliens Omnibus Page 23

  It was here that he had written Cyberantics, his children’s book about a cybernetic ant named Ari, based on an ant he had actually constructed himself. In fact, Ari was in the room with him now, perched on a small box on the mantel. The ant could see Stan as he hesitated a moment at the door.

  The chimes rang again. He arose and went to answer the summons. The front door creaked in his hand, almost as if it were reluctant to open. Stan peered out, his nearsighted eyes blinking behind his thick glasses.

  A young woman stood under the porch light and the first thing Stan noticed was the sheen of copper on her dark chestnut-red hair. She was tall and slender, and had masses of hair pushed back and tied behind her neck with a white ribbon. She wore a dark belted trench coat, severely cut, but not severe enough to hide the fact that she had a very good figure. Her face was oval and attractive, lightly made up. An old scar, now almost completely faded but visible even in the darkness of the porch, ran from the outside corner of her left eye to the corner of her full lips. It looked like an old dueling scar, such as they had once sported in places like Heidelberg some centuries earlier. Could it really be a dueling scar? Did people still fight duels? Some accident, perhaps. But then why hadn’t she had it surgically removed? One thing was certain; the scar seemed to enhance her beauty, just as ancient people believed that scarification increased a woman’s charm.

  “Dr. Myakovsky?” the woman said. “I am Julie Lish. I have a matter of considerable importance to discuss with you. May I come in?”

  Stan had been staring at her hard, as if she were a lab specimen. Now he came back to himself with a start.

  “Oh certainly; please. Come in.”

  He escorted Julie Lish inside and led her through the gloomy hallway to the well-lighted room where he had been staring into the flames of a dying fire. He picked up a poker now and stirred the fire up, then indicated a pair of matching armchairs just a comfortable distance from the flames. She took one and he seated himself in the other, then quickly got up again.

  “May I get you something to drink?”

  She smiled at him, amused by his bumbling eagerness. “You don’t even know what I’ve come for.”

  “It doesn’t really matter… I mean, whatever it is, you are a guest in my house. Perhaps I could bring you a fruit drink? I’m afraid I have no alcohol to mix with it. Alcohol has an adverse effect on my can—my condition.”

  “A glass of fruit juice would be nice,” Julie said. “I am well aware that you do not drink, Dr. Myakovsky.”

  Stan had already begun pouring from a pitcher on a sideboard near the two armchairs. He looked up.

  “Well aware? Why?”

  “I’ve made it a point to find out about you,” Julie said. “I am always careful to research my future partners.”

  Stan stared at her, his lips slightly parted, trying to make sense out of all this. Was she laughing at him? Girls were such unfathomable creatures! Although he was fascinated by them, Stan had always kept his distance, conscious that he was not the athletic, glib, casual sort of man that women liked. And here was this beautiful and exotic creature already talking about becoming partners with him?

  “Please explain,” Stan said, with what he hoped was dignity. “You say you’ve studied me?”

  “Probably better than you’ve studied yourself,” Julie stated. “For example, I know about your first date. You were fifteen.”

  “Do you know what was special about it?” Stan asked.

  “I do indeed,” Julie replied. “You never showed up for it. You got cold feet at the last moment. And that, Doctor, could be said to characterize all your dealings with the opposite sex.”

  Stan remembered the incident. He wondered if he had revealed it in some memoir he might have published at the invitation of a computer magazine. How else could she have found out? And what did she want to know that sort of thing for, anyhow?

  “I don’t get this.” Stan looked at her. “What have you come here for? What do you want?”

  “Stan,” Julie said, “I’ll make it short and sweet. I’m a thief. A good one. No, I’m a lot better than just good. I’m one of the best who ever lived. Unfortunately I can’t bring you press clippings. Really good thieves don’t get written up. You’ll just have to take my word for it.”

  “All right, let’s say I accept it,” Stan said. “So?”

  “I’ve made a lot of money in some of my enterprises,” Julie went on, “but not as much as I’d have liked. Stan, I want to be rich.”

  Stan laughed without humor. “I suppose a lot of people want that.”

  “Certainly, but they don’t have my qualifications. Or my desire.”

  Stan acknowledged this. “I take it you have some ideas on how to realize that goal?”

  She nodded. “I have thought of a way you and I could make a fortune.”

  “A fortune,” Stan mused. “How much is that in dollars?”

  “Don’t laugh at me,” Julie said. “I don’t know exactly how much it would be. But it would come to millions of dollars, perhaps even billions, and we’d neither of us lack for anything ever again.”

  “Nothing?” Stan asked, looking at her and thinking how pretty she was.

  “We’d have it all,” she told him. “That’s worth something, isn’t it?”

  She slipped off the severe trench coat. Beneath it she wore a nylon, military-style jumpsuit. The tight-fitting clothes set off her well-shaped bosom and fine shoulders to advantage. Stan thought she looked great. He wondered if Julie was one of the things he’d also have if he made a deal with her. He liked the idea but kept that thought to himself as well. Although he was extremely susceptible to beauty, he had cultivated a brusque manner around women so they would never think he was coming on to them and then reject him. He had had a lot of rejection in his life, and he wasn’t going to have any more if he could avoid it.

  “Tell me your idea,” he said.

  Julie reached into a small purse she carried, took out a package, and handed it to him.

  Stan looked at her questioningly.

  “Do you know what this is? Open it and find out.”

  The package was wrapped in thick manila paper and was held together with tape. He tried to pull the paper off, but there was no place for his fingers to take hold. He went to his desk and found the paper knife, and managed to saw through the tape. Then he slit the paper carefully and opened the package. Within was a plastic box. Inside it, padded with foam rubber, was a stoppered test tube.

  Stan held it up to the light. It was a heavy viscous liquid, with bluish lights in it. He unstopped the tube and sniffed. The aroma was unmistakable.

  “Royal jelly,” he said.

  She nodded. “Do you know what this stuff is worth?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do. It is one of the most valuable substances in the galaxy.”

  She nodded. “And the stuff is in even shorter supply now that we’ve got the aliens on the run. That’s part of what makes it so expensive. And it’s a monopoly. The big bionational research companies have it all tied up. They’ve got places out on other planets where they get the stuff from the aliens. It’s all a closed transaction.”

  “Which is all well-known,” Stan said. “Tell me something new.”

  “Suppose I tell you that I know where we can lay our hands on an entire shipload of the stuff. At least a hundred tons. What about that?”

  “Who does it belong to?”

  “Whoever gets it.”

  “Who did it used to belong to?”

  “A freelance honey-collecting expedition. But it came up lost, and has never been heard of again.”

  “So what makes you think they struck it rich?”

  “Before vanishing, they sent out one signal by subspace radio. It was intercepted by a certain Bio-Pharm official. He never got around to using it. I guess he was going to take it to the grave with him, but I persuaded him otherwise.”

  Stan didn’t ask her how she had managed this. At that mo
ment her face looked quite sinister. But it was no less beautiful because of that.

  “So you know where it is?”

  “I know approximately.”

  Stan studied her for a while and pursed his lips thoughtfully. Then he said, “And you think it’s as simple as walking in and taking it?”

  “Flying in,” she corrected.

  “There might be objections to our appropriating this cargo,” Stan said.

  “So what? It’s not illegal. Salvage rights belong to whoever gets them. The stuff’s ours if we can get it.”

  “And we’re dead if we don’t.”

  Julie shrugged. “It’s a lot of money, so there’s going to be a lot of risk. I don’t know about you, Stan, but I’m tired of being small-time. Just once I want to go for all the marbles. Don’t you feel that way sometimes?”

  Stan could feel the pains of his condition eating away at him through the haze of the medication. He knew he was sick as hell.

  But he also knew he was still alive.

  “I think I’m ready for a big one, too,” he said slowly. “But there’s still a difficulty. Where there’s royal jelly, there’ll be aliens. How are we going to get through them?”

  “The same way your ant, Ari, got through the enemy ant nest, Stan. That’s how.”

  Stan stared at her. “You know about Ari?”

  “Of course. I told you I researched you. And I read Cyberantics.”

  “You think I could make a cybernetic or robotic alien and he could get through an alien ant nest?”

  “I know you’ve been working on such a robot,” Julie said. “Why don’t we find out if it works?”

  She looked at him challengingly, and Stan felt his heart lift. At last something was happening to him, an adventure with a beautiful woman.

  “Then there’s the question of a ship,” he said.

  “You have one.”

  “Had. The government just seized it.”

  She looked at him levelly. “Let’s worry about getting the ship later. What we need even worse is a spaceship pilot who’s willing to do something illegal.”

  “I can think of one man…”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Just someone I know. Julie, you flatter me by coming to me with this partnership offer. But evidently you don’t know my full situation.”

  “I don’t? Tell me, then.”

  “Julie, I used to be quite a wealthy man. One of the youngest millionaires on the Forbes list. I have several key patents in bioengineering, and the plans for my cybernetic ant, Ari, are a standard for the field of medical miniaturization.”

  “I know all this, Stan.”

  “Sure. But did you also know that all that has changed? Did you know the government has put a lien on my assets? It seems that Bio-Pharm, one of the biggest of the international pharmaceutical houses, has filed suit against me for patent infringement. What a laugh. They stole most of their processes from me! But it’s not easy to prove, and in the meantime they’ve got me on the run. I don’t own a damned thing anymore—nothing except this house and Ari.” He lifted up the cybernetic ant to show to Julie. “I even have to beg my grocer to extend me credit so I can go on eating!”

  Julie looked at him without sympathy. “I know all that, Stan. It’s tough, isn’t it?”

  He thought he detected a tone of irony in her voice. “You’re damned right it’s tough!”

  “Granted. But so what?”

  He stared at her, uncomprehending. “Did you actually come here to insult me?”

  “There’s nothing insulting in what I’m saying. I came here to make a deal with you. What I find is you sitting around feeling sorry for yourself. I’m offering you something you can do about it.”

  “It’s not just that I’m broke,” Stan said. “There’s also… my condition.”

  “Tell me about it,” Julie said.

  Stan shrugged. “There’s not much to say. Melanoma. I’ve got six months. Maybe a little longer if I want to lie in a hospital bed and breath pure oxygen.”

  “You look like you’re moving around pretty good just now,” Julie said.

  “Oh yeah, sure. But that’s just now. This stuff is the only thing that keeps me going.” He took out a vial of Xeno-Zip and showed it to her.

  “I know all about that stuff,” Julie said. “It’s my job to keep track of precious substances that come in small packages. And this is the only stuff that does you any good?”

  “That’s right,” Stan said. “It’s expensive even for a rich man. For someone whose assets have been seized… Well, I’ll run out soon, and I don’t know what happens then.”

  “Tough,” Julie said, with no pity in her voice. “So this stuff won’t cure you?”

  Stan shook his head. “Some doctors have theorized that if I could obtain absolute unadulterated royal jelly fresh from an alien hive, before any by-products were added, and before it had time to lose any of its potency, it might buy me more time. But it’s impossible to get.”

  “Except by going to the source,” Julie said.

  “Yes, that’s right,” Stan repeated slowly. “Except by going to the source. To a place where the aliens actually produce it.”

  “That’s the sort of place I had in mind for us to go,” Julie said. “Like I told you, I know where there’s a shipload of the stuff.”

  He stared at her, his eyebrows raised. Then his head slumped and he looked sad and worn. “No, no. It’s quite impossible. Even if you knew of such a place—”

  “That’s exactly what I do know,” Julie said.

  “You know a place where an alien queen produces royal jelly?”

  She patted the sleek leather pouch that she carried at her side. “I’ve got the coordinates right in here, Stan. They’re a part of my contribution to this venture.”

  “Where’d you get that information?”

  She smiled. She was so lovely when she smiled. “Like I told you, I was good friends with a Bio-Pharm executive. We were a little more than good friends, actually. Well, when he died—he was quite old, you understand—when he died, he decided that that particular secret shouldn’t go to the grave with him.”

  “So what is your idea?” Stan asked. “Do you think we can just go there and get it?”

  “That’s about what I had in mind,” Julie said.

  “The Bio-Pharm people might have something to say about it.”

  “I figured we could sneak in, grab the shipload, and get out before they spotted us.”

  “You think it would be as easy as that?”

  She shook her head. “I never said it would be easy.”

  “Or within the law.”

  She shrugged impatiently. “There’s nothing illegal about salvage. Why don’t you think of it as your counterclaim to their lawsuit?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They’re suing you for patent infringement. Wrongly, you say. Well, prove you mean it. Go in there and take what is yours—then take them to court the way they’re taking you.”

  Stan thought for a long while, then he began to smile. “You know, I think I’d like that.”

  “Now you’re talking!”

  “But wait a minute, there are still a lot of problems. We don’t have a ship. My alien robot has never had a field test. And I don’t have any money.”

  “We can do something about all that,” Julie said. “But there really isn’t much time. Not for you and not for me. If we’re going to do this, we’ll have to start real soon. And once we begin, there’s no turning back.”

  “I understand,” Stan said.

  Julie leaned forward and took Stan’s face in her cool hands. He felt something like an electric shock pass through him. Looking at her, he thought he’d never seen anyone so beautiful and so brave. Yes, and maybe a little crazy, too, but what did that matter?

  “I want you to think about it, Stan,” Julie said. “Give me your answer tomorrow night over dinner. If you don’t want to do it, fine, no hard feelings. But i
f you do—listen to me carefully.”

  “I’m listening,” Stan said. In fact, he was barely breathing.

  “If you do decide to do it, then no more crap about something being difficult or you being sick or any of that. If you’re going to do it, simply decide to do it, and we’ll go on from there.”

  “That sounds pretty good to me,” Stan said. “Julie, where’d you learn all this stuff?”

  “From my teacher, Shen Hui.”

  “He must have been a pretty wise old egg.”

  “It didn’t prevent him from dying,” Julie said. “But while he lived, he really lived. Till tomorrow, Stan.”

  “Where are you going?” Stan said in alarm as she stood up.

  “I’m sure you’ve got a spare bedroom here,” Julie said. “I’m going to take a shower and change, and then look over your library and lab. Then I want to get some sleep.”

  “Oh, fine. I was afraid you were leaving.”

  She shook her head. “Play your cards right and I’ll never leave again.”

  3

  Julie had always been unusual. She’d never known her parents. Her earliest memories were of an international orphanage in Shanghai. This was the place from which Shen Hui bought her, when she was still a very little girl. He had been very good to her, treating her like a favored child rather than a slave. But she was still a slave and she knew it, and it rankled. Shen Hui taught her independence of spirit as well as how to be a good thief. It was inevitable that she would try out her need for liberty on him, the one who was holding her.

  She was devious about it, just as he had taught her. She put aside money from jobs she did for him. And she studied and learned so she would know all she needed when she was ready to cut loose from him. And then came the question of finding the right time. It seemed to take forever, and the right moment never seemed to come.