Voyagers II - The Alien Within Read Free Page B

pale blue that they seemed nearly colorless. His skin was so fair that strangers often assumed he was an albino. He was slow in speech and in movements, which led many an unwary adversary into believing Nillson’s mind worked slowly, too. It did not.
    He smiled across the polished mahogany table at his wife, his prized ornament, knowing that he had won her away from several of the other men seated in this plush, paneled boardroom. He had a long, bony, unhandsome face and a smile that looked more pained than pleasured. His hands were big, powerful, with lumpy, irregular knuckles and long, thick fingers. If it weren’t for the perfectly fitted gray summer-weight suit and opulently decorated silk shirt he wore, he could easily have been mistaken for a farmer or a merchant seaman.
    Jo smiled back at him, as much to discomfit some of the men seated around the table as to please her husband. She had dressed herself for this meeting in a demure starched white blouse with a high collar and a navy-blue knee-length skirt. Her only jewelry was a choker of black pearls, a diamond-studded pin shaped in Vanguard Industries’ stylized V, and the plain platinum wedding band that Nillson had given her.
    As chairman of the board, Nillson called the meeting to order. The room fell silent.
    He let the silence hang for a long moment. All eyes were focused on him. Pungent smoke from several cigars and a half-dozen cigarettes wafted up to the ceiling vents. Nillson fixed his gaze on the computer screen set into the table top before him.
    Finally, in his surprisingly deep, rich baritone he said, “The first item on our agenda this morning is a report on the cryonic project.” He looked up at his wife. “Darling, if you will be so kind.”
    Jo said, “I have a videotaped presentation from Dr. Healy and several of his staff members….”
    “But he’s actually awake and doing well?” asked one of the older board members, a heavyset, red-faced man who had received a heart transplant several years earlier.
    “Yes,” Jo said, not allowing herself to smile. “He is alive and as healthy as he was eighteen years ago. As far as the medical tests can ascertain, he has not suffered any detectable damage from being frozen.”
    She touched a button on the keypad in front of her with a manicured finger. The overhead lights dimmed slightly, and the wall to her left became a three-dimensional video screen. Everyone around the table turned to see.
    Keith Stoner stood before them, life-sized and naked.
    “This is when he first woke up,” Jo told them.
    One of the women board members whispered something. Jo could not catch the words, but the tone was carnal.
    Stoner’s image was quickly replaced by Healy’s. The corporation’s chief scientist began to explain, with charts and graphs, that Stoner’s physical condition was so close to his condition as recorded eighteen years ago that the differences were undetectable. Then Richards, the psychiatrist, appeared and said that although Stoner’s reactions appeared normal, he needed further study to “get deeper into the subject.”
    A male voice rumbled in the semidarkness, “The shrink’s gay, is that it?”
    “Maybe he’s fallen in love with his patient,” someone replied.
    A few scattered laughs, most of them self-conscious.
    The screen now showed Richards and Stoner strolling together along the grounds behind the building where Stoner was being kept. No walls or fences were in sight, only brightly flowering shrubs of hibiscus and oleander, which hid the lasers and electronic sensors of the security system. The area looked like a university quadrangle, bounded by multistory glass-and-chrome laboratory buildings. But no stranger or lab employee could get within a hundred yards of the carefully screened area where Richards and Stoner walked.
    While the board members eavesdropped on their conversation, Jo sank back in her chair and studied Keith Stoner’s handsome face. He had not changed at all.