Survivalist - 12 - The Rebellion (4 page)

“You have a hero complex, Doctor Rourke—putting it plainly,” Dodd began. “I could feel that in the first words you spoke to me over the radio, see that in the reckless manner in which you risked your life to save Eden One, and then to save your friends. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m grateful for that. Without your efforts, we would have been annihilated—”

“Get to the point,” Rourke almost whispered.

“Fine.” Dodd nodded, pacing the rippled, caked mud of the ground. “The point then. Nothing in my contingency plans calls for being met on this planet after the earth has been all but destroyed. And by an ex-CIA agent—”

“Case officer,” Rourke corrected automatically.

“—Who is also a doctor of medicine. Who has one friend who happens to have been a very high ranking KGB agent before she saw the light. Who has fully grown children who are almost as old as he is. Who—”

“I thought you were going to make your point,” Rourke whispered, taking out one of his cigars and putting it between his teeth, rolling it into the left corner of his mouth, chewing down on it.

“I am, sir. My point—nothing warned me about distinguishing between good Nazis and bad Nazis, fighting megalomaniac Russians who are five hundred years old, or taking the advice of one of the only Americans to survive World War III and the burning of the sky. No, sir—I have responsibilities not only to the people of the Eden Project, but to their unborn children. In my ship’s computers, I carry the access for the accumulated knowledge of mankind. In my holds, I carry embryonic life forms of birds and animals and plants—”

“I don’t think plants have embryos, Captain Dodd.” Rourke smiled good-naturedly.

“The point is, I have the capability to return life to the earth. And you ask me to start a war, sir.”

“The war has already been started,” Rourke told him. “I’m asking you to help finish it. You can sit here—I won’t say comfortably because it isn’t that—but you can sit here. And you can bury your heads so you can’t see, can’t hear. You can ignore the situation that exists now and the worsening of the situation to come. I truly believe you are concerned about the welfare of the Eden Project—every man, woman and every child to be. I’m concerned as well. The first child to be born to the Eden Project will be the child Madison carries in her womb now, the child given to her by my son, Michael. In a very real way, that child will be a symbol.” Rourke smiled. “Madison has survived through the generations, and she is a child of the world as it is today. Michael survived through the criogenic sleep

from the era of The Night of The War. The child will be the first child born since life which left the earth has returned, the first child to grow up on this planet in five hundred years who will be able to see birds, smell flowers. And maybe the first child to grow up in peace instead of fear. We can make a beginning here—or we can make the same old mistakes all over again. Somebody said that no man is free while other men are not—something like that. But for centuries, some men were free and most were not. And it’ll be that way again unless we stamp it out—stamp out tyranny right now. I’ve said my piece.” Rourke nodded, lighting his cigar, punctuating his words with the blue-yellow flame. He inhaled smoke into his lungs, then exhaled through his teeth.

“That was beautiful, Herr Doctor,” Mann murmured.

Rourke looked at the colonel, then smiled. “If a Nazi can sound like an idealist, I suppose an ex-CIA man who, ahh, has just killed too many people—well, it’s a’dumb thing to say—”

“Can be an idealist as well?” Dodd supplied.

Rourke smiled, nodded. “Yeah, I guess.”

“What kept you going, Doctor?” Flight officer Lerner asked, his eyes squinted tight as though thinking, or as though staring at some strong light.

“The twentieth century allowed few virtues, Mr. Lerner. If you trusted your fellow man—you could wind up dead. If you vowed that you would never take a human life, there would always be somebody somewhere who would be twice as eager because of that to take your life. But I discovered one virtue—you just don’t give up if something is the right thing and you know that it is. You might die—I guess that’s an excuse to give up trying. But that’s the only one I know of,” and he slid off the tailgate of the Ford. He felt self-conscious, as though climbing down from a soap box. “So—what is it, Captain Dodd?” But he didn’t wait for an answer, but turned to Wolfgang Mann instead. “Whatever,

I’ll help you—and you’ll help these people.” “You just—you just—” Rourke looked at Dodd.

Dodd licked his lips. “You just dismissed—dismissed any decision I could make.”

“I suppose I did. I didn’t intend that. Perhaps you should take a vote. Or make a command decision. I can’t tell you what to do.” Rourke looked at Mann. “But anyway—what I said stands.”

“Doctor?”

And Rourke turned again to look at Dodd. “Yes?”

“I’ll commit.” Dodd looked down toward his boots. “I’ll commit. And the responsibility is mine. You can take a few nonessential personnel who might volunteer. It’d be foolish of me to suggest we loan you any weapons.”

Rourke laughed. He was better equipped than the entire Eden Project fleet.

“But we’ll do what we can to help the colonel here in his cause. Without directly, at least, jeopardizing our people.”

“Then allow me,” Mann said suddenly, “to begin our alliance with a gesture of good will. I noted the Herr Doctor’s hands. I understand from our conversation that Doctor Rourke’s son and his friend are injured as well. Allow me to contact the chief medical officer of my legion. In five centuries, not only have our means for making war progressed, but healing too, I think.” And Mann’s face beamed with a smile. “I suppose healing is, after all, what we have been discussing since before dawn.”

John Rourke walked away from the group—he was very tired.

John Rourke had grabbed a few hours sleep—but it was not enough, he knew, his eyes burning more than slightly. His muscles still ached from the ordeal entailed in Paul Rubenstein’s rescue from the helicopter. He walked now, slightly stiff, working the kinks out as he moved his arms, twisted his shoulders under the harness of the double Alessi shoulder rig that carried his twin stainless Detonics Combat Master .45s. Through the ultra dark lenses of his sunglasses, he peered toward the east—the sun was perhaps an hour from its zenith. There was a -chill in the air and he was happy for the warmth of the battered brown leather bomber jacket he wore.

There had been no warmth in the night. Again, Sarah had not slept with him. She had sat up through the night alongside Madison and Annie, keeping the vigil over Michael and Paul Rubenstein. Rourke looked at his hands— and he was amazed. After the initial chill of the aerosol spray Wolfgang Mann’s staff doctor had provided, there had been a sudden warmth where a moment earlier there had been discomfort and even pain. As he had slept, he had awakened often with the strange itching sensation beneath the bandages which swathed his knuckles. When Rourke had finally awakened for good, he had removed the bandages from his hands. In the space of a few hours, what his professional eye gauged as two to three days of

healing had taken place.

Rourke had shaved, then showered and washed his hair in one of the portable units from Eden One’s cargo bay, then taken the duplicate aerosol can Mann’s doctor had provided and resprayed his knuckles. The coolness, then the pleasant warmth.

By the time he had finished a light breakfast of Tang— the astronaut corps really did use it and he smiled remembering the product’s advertising campaign from five centuries ago—and freeze-dried coffee and some dehydrated fruit, the itching had begun again. But he left the new bandages in place this time.

John Rourke had walked to the edge of the camp. There had been no need to race to the impromptu hospital tent where Michael and Paul were. Had a crisis arisen in the brief period Rourke had slept, his wife would have awakened him. He stood now, staring at the mottled skin of Eden One far down the road and beyond it Eden Two. Soon, Eden Three would be landing.

He sat on a large, flat rock, thinking. Little had changed in five centuries. There were still men in the world who would deal in unbridled death and destruction to achieve their ends. Apathy still governed the souls of the good. And he—John Rourke—was still in love with two women. One would not sleep with him because he had used the criogenic chambers to age their children so as a family unit all of them would be able to survive. One he would not sleep with, though he had wanted to for five centuries. But he would not because he was married.

He had long ago determined that there was a certain innate stupidity about humankind—and he had never been so egotistical as to exclude himself from the generalization.

“Dr. Rourke?”

A woman’s voice—not a voice he knew. Rourke turned toward the voice. A pretty girl, her hair more red than auburn, her eyes indeterminate, her face very pale. She

smiled at him. He stood and allowed himself to smile back. “I don’t think I know you—but I’ve met so many people since Eden One and Two landed. Forgive me if we’ve met.”

“No, no—we haven’t met. I’ve seen you from a distance, that’s all and—” she smiled thinly—“you’re the only one not dressed in NASA coveralls or one of those German uniforms.”

He had seen a half dozen of Mann’s men about the camp that morning—engineers, medical personnel. It was clear Wolfgang Mann intended, at least at the present, to live up to his end of the bargain. “Can I help you?” Rourke finally asked her.

“My name is Mona Stankiewicz. I’m the back-up flight officer for Eden One—under Craig Lerner?”

“Right.” Rourke nodded.

“I wanted to talk to you later.”

“We’re talking now, aren’t we?” i}

“Well, yes.” She smiled. “But, well, with Eden Three coming in—well, I just saw you out here and I didn’t have to get together with Captain Dodd for a few minutes.”

“Can I help you with something then?” Rourke asked her again, lighting one of the thin, dark tobacco cigars in the blue-yellow flame of his Zippo.

“I needed to tell you about something. But I can’t now. But later? After Eden Three lands?”

“I’m not in charge here, Miss—ahh—Miss Stankiewicz. Captain Dodd is the overall commander for the Eden Project.” Rourke exhaled a stream of gray cigar smoke through his nostrils, watching it dissipate. “If there’s a problem,” he continued, “Dodd is the man you should confer with.”

“But you’re the only man I can tell, Doctor—please! After Eden Three is down?”

“If it’s that important—why not tell me now if you feel you have to?” Rourke asked her.

“It, ahh, it would take too long. There’s a lot—a lot to

explain, Dr. Rourke. And then after I tell you, if you feel the best thing is to tell Captain Dodd—well, well, then I’ll do that.” She looked at her watch, then smiled embarrassedly. “I’m late now—I’ll look for you after Eden Three lands?”

Rourke nodded, his voice almost a whisper. “If that’s what you want, then.”

And the girl smiled, then turned and ran off.

Rourke stared after her for a time, smoking his cigar. His schedule was “loose”—Kurinami and Natalia were already airborne in the Soviet choppers, as were two of the Germans under the command of Wolfgang Mann in their own machines. Rourke had not yet had the opportunity to weigh the relative merits of the Soviet and German machines against each other. He had told Natalia before she had taken off, “Watch for Karamatsov’s men of course— but keep an eye on Mann’s people. I think we can trust them—but I don’t know that we can.”

Rourke stood up from the rock on which he had again seated himself, then started back toward camp. More of the Germans had trickled in but they seemed, like their international counterparts from Eden One and Eden Two, only obsessed with giving themselves terminal neck injuries by staring skyward at the helicopter guards and vying for the first glimpse of Eden Three.

Rourke moved through the camp, returning the nods and smiles from Eden personnel, walking toward the tent in which Michael and Paul were recovering from then-injuries. He glanced upward—Natalia’s helicopter hovered virtually overhead. Rourke had memorized its fuselage number. Rourke knocked on the tent pole and waited. The flap opened. Sarah. She smiled at him, her gray-green eyes holding a warmth in them that Rourke felt happy to see again.

“Hi.”

“Hi—you look tired. But you look pretty.”

“The tired part I’ll agree with. Come on in,” and she held open the tent flap for him and Rourke stepped through and inside. The walls and ceiling of the classic shaped military tent diffused yellow light in the darkness, the darkness otherwise unbroken except for a single Coleman lamp which burned on the table set between the two beds.

“Father Rourke.” Madison smiled, looking up at him from where she knelt on the tent floor beside Michael’s cot. Michael appeared to be asleep. “He rests well. The wonderful medicine of the German doctor—it seems to be working.”

Sarah, beside him now, whispered, “It’s working on both of them.”

“Don’t talk about me as though I weren’t here.” Rourke looked toward the voice, into the shadows on the opposite side of the table. Paul Rubenstein—awake. On the tent floor, curled up in a sleeping bag, seeming impossibly small, Rourke saw his daughter, Annie. “She’s asleep,” Paul whispered to him.

“You’re supposed to be asleep.” Rourke laughed.

“Look,” Sarah began, her voice low. “I’m going to find something to eat. Madison hasn’t eaten since yesterday afternoon and neither have I.”

“Didn’t anybody bring you anything? I made certain someone would. I’ll—”

“One of the Eden people did,” Sarah interrupted, “but I was changing one of Paul’s bandages and Madison wasn’t hungry. So Annie ate it all.”

“Wonderful—what a kid.” Rourke grinned. “I’ll keep an eye on things here. Give Madison an airing too.”

“All right,” and Sarah turned to speak to the blond-haired girl who was her de facto daughter-in-law. “Come on—buy you breakfast.”

“Buy?”

“Never mind—come on,” and Sarah reached down to

Madison and took the younger woman’s hand and helped her to stand. Rourke noted that Madison looked stiff from lack of movement. The girl brushed her blond hair back from her face and smiled. “John,” Sarah began. “We’ll be ten minutes—that OK?” “It’s fine, Sarah.”