Chapter 29

Calling it a refugee camp was both an exaggeration and an understatement.

It was a clearing in the woods where a dozen huge olive-drab tents had been erected months earlier by the International Red Cross to shelter a medical relief team. Within days the clean, neatly dressed, professional doctors and nurses and technicians were inundated by a flood of miserable, starving, sick and wounded people. They poured into the camp, seeking food and safety from the war that had torn apart their homes and their lives. Mothers carried dead babies in their arms, begging the doctors for help, while other women squatted on ground worn bare by the press of humanity to deliver new babies to a world of starvation and disease. Men carried their aged fathers on their backs for a hundred miles to reach the camp. Children wandered in alone, hungry, crying, skins erupting with festering sores, not knowing where their families were, frightened and confused.

But they found the camp. More and more of them. No matter the flies, the sicknesses, the crowding. The tide rolled in endlessly, overwhelming everything in its path. Now the dead and dying lay side by side in the pitiless sun, jammed together so tightly that the haggard, red-eyed medical workers had learned to step over bodies as normally as they had once learned to walk.

And still they came. The numbers of refugees outran the camp's computer. They poured in, led by rumors of food and shelter and, above all, safety. The food ran out. The water supply, from a respectable stream meandering through the clearing, turned foul from pollution. Helicopters came daily, hovering like impatient birds while the able cleared the landing area of infirm bodies who had collapsed there during the night because there was no other space to lie down.

The worst rat-infested slums of the dirtiest, most crowded

cities in the world were luxurious compared to the camp. The inflow of refugees spilled beyond the limits of the clearing. People slept in the trees, among the bushes, and awoke covered with ants or infested with vermin. There were snakes in the bush, too, and some never woke at all.

Disease swept the camp. Dysentery came first, then cholera and a virulent form of whooping cough. But no matter how many died, more came to replace them. The camp swelled like an unlanced boil, fed by the precarious trickle of supplies helicoptered in from a world as distant and alien to the refugees as another star.

"I was born in a camp like this," An Linh said wearily. "How ironic to die here."

"You're not going to die," Stoner told her. "In another few days you'll be strong enough to leave."

If, he added silently, your wound doesn't get infected again. And if we can get enough food to give us the strength to walk out of here.

They had both tost a great deal of weight. An Linh looked frail now, her face gaunt, hollow-cheeked, her eyes sunken behind dark rings. Stoner's beard was full and black, his tall frame rail thin, his clothes hanging loosely on him. He felt tired, always tired, and his mind was numb with the unending misery that stretched out in every direction around him.

An Linh was lying on a cot under the welcome shade of a soaring, spreading acacia tree at the edge of the clearing. Not a square foot of ground was visible, bodies were packed so tightly, some moving feebly, calling weakly for water or help, most of them as still as death under the relentless sun. Not a breath of air moved in the blistering afternoon. Stoner leaned his head back against the bole of the tree and closed his eyes. He heard the incessant hum of flies. And babies crying. Some squalled bitterly, most were too weak to make much noise. But there were always babies crying.

So this is what war is like, he thought. The battles are over quickly, but the misery goes on forever.

The thrumming beat of a helicopter broke the afternoon stillness. An Linh looked up toward the blazing sky.

"I'll go help clear out the landing area," Stoner said, climbing slowly to his feet. "You stay here and rest."

It was an irony of the camp that a beautiful young woman

was safer there than in any civilized place in the world. There had been thefts and even a few rapes when the camp had first been set up. But the refugees were too weak to molest each other now. They had nothing left to steal. Even the meager supplies of food that the helicopters brought were eaten so quickly that only the flies had time to steal any.

Stoner had been helping in any way he could, despite the growing exhaustion brought on by hunger: assisting the medical teams, digging latrines, chopping trees for firewood to cremate the dead. Regardless of religion or custom, all the dead were burned. Every evening there was a huge pyre. No room in the area for burials. And starving people might dig up buried bodies, regardless of the risk of infection.

Will we die here? Stoner asked himself as he lifted dead and dying bodies from the helicopter pad. They were light as birds, and as frail. Nothing but bones and bloated bellies. And flies. Coated with flies. Stoner thought that the flies on some of the bodies weighed more than the body itself.

An Linh thinks it's ironic to die in the kind of camp where she was born. What do you think, he asked the other presence in his mind, about crossing all those light-years to find this world and die among starving refugees?

He received no answer. Only a sense of patient, unwor-ried, ceaseless observation; like an automated interplanetary probe gathering data regardless of the conditions it encountered.

The helicopter hung overhead, high enough to avoid swirling up a dust storm, thundering impatiently, jinking back and forth as Stoner and the few other men who still had enough strength moved the bodies away. The sun burned down, but Stoner barely sweated. There wasn't enough in him to generate perspiration.

Finally an area large enough for the big cargo 'copter was cleared away, and the lumbering metal beast, painted glaringly white with a huge red cross on either side, settled slowly down onto the bare ground. Stoner squinted into the dust storm the whirling rotors swirled up, wondering how long he could keep himself from demanding to the camp director that he--or at least An Linh--be evacuated to wherever the helicopters were coming from. Each day the choppers carried off the most desperate cases to a real hospital somewhere in Tanzania, according to the doctor Stoner had talked with. The medics were practicing triage, sending back

to civilization only those cases who could recover if they received proper medical care.

An Linh qualified, Stoner thought. Under the pitiless logic of triage, though, the medical staff had decided that she had a fair chance of recovering right here at the camp. She would only be evacuated if she got much worse. And Stoner needed no medical attention at all. His slight leg wound had healed satisfactorily. So the camp rules dictated that they stay, while others were evacuated. But starvation and disease could kill them more quickly than the triage classifications could be changed.

Stoner knew he could talk them into letting An Linh go. And himself, if he wanted to. So far he had not tried to exert his influence over the doctors who made the decisions. So far.

The rumbling, whining roar of the helicopter died away, and its whooshing rotor blades slowed to a stop. In earlier days, a swarm of refugees would rush to the 'copter's hatch. Sometimes the crew and the medical personnel had to beat them back angrily. But now hardly anyone was strong enough to exert himself. Stoner sensed, though, a thousand listless eyes at his back, staring emptily at the helicopter.

The hatch popped open and a pair of husky, well-fed young men jumped out. Both black, both in olive-drab fatigues. Stoner started helping them to unload crates of food and medicine. A smaller hatch up at the nose of the chopper swung up, and a lightweight ladder plopped down onto the dusty ground. A half-dozen men and women descended, squinting in the sunlight. They were dressed in whites.

Replacements for some of the medical team, Stoner told himself as he took the first wooden crate from one of the blacks in the hatchway and handed it to the next man in the impromptu supply line. Idly he thought that the wood would help as kindling for tonight's pyre.

One of the young women looked familiar to him. No, not really familiar. He knew he had never seen her before, yet there was something about her. . . .

As she walked past him, he saw the nametag clipped to her shirt pocket: Thompson.

"Elly?" he called.

She stopped and turned toward him. She looked puzzled, totally uncomprehending.

Stoner stepped out of the bucket-brigade line to face her. Yes, he could see the traces of the ten-year-old daughter he had known. Her face was fuller now, rounder. There were lines around the eyes and at the corners of her mouth that looked like tension, or fear, or perhaps even grief. And her hair, long and golden curled when she had been little, was a chestnut brown now and clipped almost as short as a man's.

"Elly, it's me." He had to swallow once before he could add, "Your father."

Her mouth dropped open. Her hands flew to her face. "You? You're . . . It can't be!"

Stoner felt incredibly awkward, like a clumsy teenager on his first date. "I guess I could use a shave," he said lamely.

"Daddy? Are you really . . . ?"

"It's me all right."

"But what are you doing here?" Her voice was the same as he had remembered it, a high-pitched squeak when she was surprised or excited.

He smiled sheepishly. "Actually, I was looking for you."

She burst into tears and flung her arms around his neck. For an instant Stoner thought that he would start crying, too. But then he felt his body stiffen, and a wave of cold dispas-sion flowed through him, like ice crystallizing the water in a test tube that's been suddenly thrust into liquid nitrogen. He felt that other presence in his mind coolly studying mis new event, dissecting the relationship between father and daughter as unemotionally as a technician takes apart the components of a machine.

Damn you! Stoner raged silently. Leave me alone! Let me have my daughter to myself.

But within a couple of heartbeats even the surge of protest died away, and Stoner could examine his daughter as if she were a representative of an alien species.

She sensed it and disengaged, stepped back from him. Brushing at her tear-filled eyes, she said in a choked voice, "It's been ... so long."

"Twenty years," he said. It was like the voice of another creature, an automaton.

"I never thought I'd see you again."

"They brought me back from the dead. I was frozen for eighteen years."

"No one told us you'd been revived."

"I know. I tried to call. ..."

A short, red-faced man in the same kind of white uniform as Elly's strode up to them and barked, "Thompson! There's work to do!"

Stoner put out his hand and touched his daughter's tear-stained cheek. It took an enormous effort of will to lift his arm.

"I'll talk with you tonight, Elly," he said as gently as he could. "I have work to do, too. I'll see you tonight."

A tumult of emotions raced across her features. Finally she nodded, lips pressed tight, and turned to follow the angry-faced man. Stoner went back to the brigade unloading supplies from the helicopter.

Late that evening, so late that the nightly pyre had burned down to embers glowering redly against the darkness, Stoner finished telling his story to his daughter. He had located her in the main medical tent after the evening meal and brought her to An Linh's cot, leading her by the hand as they picked their way through the bodies packed so thickly on the bare ground. An Linh lay on her cot beneath the big acacia tree. Stoner and his daughter sat on the ground beside her, Stoner leaning his back against the tree's rough solidity, Eleanor squatting cross-legged the way she used to do when she was a child.

Elly listened in silence as the light from the pyre faded. Stoner spoke as unemotionally as a computer, relating the facts of his return to life the way a chalkdust-dry instructor would report on the major events of the Industrial Revolution to a classroom full of freshmen. As the firelight dimmed and shadows darkened his daughter's face, Stoner could no longer see her reaction to his tale. But he felt her stiffen when he mentioned the village where he and An Linh had nearly been killed.

"And you believe," Elly asked, her own voice sounding strangely wooden, dead, "that the village was attacked because of you?"

"I know it sounds crazy, but that's what I think," Stoner replied.

"I agree," said An Linh, sitting up on her cot. "There was no other reason to attack the village. It was not in a battle zone. It had no strategic value, except to challenge the Peace Enforcers."

"Who responded just the way the attackers must have known they would react," Stoner added. "Within a few minutes they obliterated the attacking force."

"Yes, that's the way they work," Elly said, her voice still coldly distant. "Their mission is to prevent aggression by destroying the aggressors. If they are too late to prevent an attack, they will still annihilate the attackers after the fact."

"They did that," Stoner said fervently.

An Linh asked, "But that's only part of their mission, isn't it? The Peace Enforcers seemed to be teaching the villagers how to become self-sufficient."

"The solar power system, yes," Stoner agreed, remembering. "And the new agricultural methods they were learning."

"And birth control," An Linh added. "That's the key to everything the IFF is trying to accomplish, isn't it? You can't raise people's standard of living if they outpopulate their resources. Isn't that right, Eleanor?"

But instead of answering, Stoner's daughter asked him, "What was the name of the village? You haven't told me its name."

The tone of her voice sent a chill of apprehension through Stoner. In the darkness, it was like the creaking of a door that should have been locked. Or the click that might be the cocking of a pistol aimed at your heart.

"Katai," An Linh answered. "The village was called Katai.'

Stoner heard his daughter's breath catch. Then silence. The moments stretched agonizingly. In the darkness he could not see her face. Only the distant glowing ashes of the pyre. Elly seemed to have turned to stone, not moving, not even breathing. Stoner heard a baby crying weakly, off in the distance, and the incessant background hum of insects.

"What's wrong, Elly?" he asked. "Why is the name of the village so important?"

For a few moments more she remained silent. Then she took in a deep breath and answered, "My husband, Wally . . . was killed a few weeks ago . . . flying a helicopter into a village in Chad. ..."

"Katai," said Stoner.

"Katai," Elly echoed.

Stoner closed his eyes and saw again the helicopter fluttering through the air, the streaking missile lancing toward it,

the explosion and the human body hurled out and falling thousands of feet to the ground.

"He was killed because of you," Elly said, her voice suddenly trembling. "Because of you!"

Stoner had no response.

Elly scrambled to her feet in the darkness. She did not raise her voice, but the pain and anger in it were all the sharper because she was not shouting. "Because of you!" she repeated. "You not only robbed me of a father and a mother, you've robbed me of my husband, too! You've taken everything away from me!"

She turned and fled into the darkness.

Stoner sat where he was, his back against the tree, unable to move.

"Go after her!" An Linh urged.

He shook his head. "I can't. I never could. . . ."

"Don't leave her alone like this! She needs you. She needs someone to comfort her."

"She hates me."

"No, she doesn't. She may think she does, but she really doesn't."

"I'm responsible for her husband's death."

An Linh swung her legs off the cot and stood up shakily. "She shouldn't be alone."

"She is alone," Stoner muttered. "You're all alone, every one of you."

With a disappointed shake of her head, An Linh started off in the same direction Elly had gone, leaving Stoner sitting there in the darkness.

She has every right to despise me, he told himself. I stepped out of her life and left her without a father when she was just ten years old. She blames her mother's death on me. And now, when I suddenly reappear, it costs the life of her husband.

But something forced him to get to his feet and start out toward the lighted tents where the medical staff lived. I didn't kill her husband. He's a casualty in a war that I've got to stop. I've seen enough of death. Now it's time to find those who are responsible for all this misery and make them stop.

Stepping over the bodies of the sick and the dying, Stoner realized that he had remained in the camp too long. He had

seen all that he had come to see, and then had been overwhelmed by the sense of helplessness that pervaded the camp. What can one man do? He felt his jaws clenching in a determined grimace as he approached the medical tent. I'm going to find out what one man can do. Starting right now.

The Stirling generator that provided electricity for the medical team whined annoyingly as Stoner came up to the tent. A radio somewhere was playing music that he did not recognize, a thumping, irregular beat overlain by screeching electronic strings. The harsh lights made him squint. The tent was nearly empty. The surgical table stood bare, unattended. Beyond it stood rows of metal cabinets, and beyond them a dozen cots neatly spaced. Four of the Red Cross workers were sleeping, sprawled exhausted on their cots despite the noise from the radio. The others were nowhere in sight. Elly and An Linh sat side by side, arms around each other, on the farthermost cot.

"What do you want here?"

Stoner turned and saw that it was the little red-faced martinet who had come in with Elly earlier that day. His white coveralls were soiled now, no longer fresh and crisp. The heat and toil had taken the starch out of them. And made his ill-humored disposition even testier. Stoner saw that his nametag said DeVreis. Apparently he was the new leader.

"Well, what are you doing here?" he repeated, his voice rising.

"I want permission to be evacuated in the next flight out," Stoner said. "Myself and Ms. Laguerre."

"Impossible! Evac flights are restricted to refugees who will die unless they are taken to hospital facilities."

"I know that. Neither of us is a refugee."

"Then there's nothing I can do." He spoke English with an accent that might have been German. Or Dutch.

Stoner looked into his angry eyes. Already the pain and futility of the camp were reflected in them.

"We must be permitted to leave," he said softly. "I can do much more good outside this camp than inside it."

"Good?" DeVreis snapped. "What good can you do?"

"Perhaps I can end this war."

"End me ... What nonsense! Who do you think you are?"

"That doesn't matter," Stoner said, stepping closer to

him. "What matters is that you've got to give us permission to leave."

"I can't. . . ."

Stoner laid a hand on the little man's shoulder. Gently. Like a father speaking to a son. "I'll carry two refugees with me, if you like. But we've got to leave. You can understand that, can't you?"

DeVreis hesitated. "Yes, I see. But . . ."

"You'll do it, then. You'll give us permission to leave."

The angry scowl left the little man's face. He almost smiled. Stoner felt his body relax as he replied, "Of course. On the next flight."

"Thank you."

"I'll go and make out the necessary papers."

Stoner watched him walk slowly out of the tent, heading for the other lighted tent where the camp's records, such as they were, were kept.

Then he skirted around the surgical table, walked past the rows of cots, and stopped before An Linh and his daughter. Both of them were in tears.

"Elly, I'm sorry about your husband. If there were something I could do to bring him back, I would."

She looked up at him, tears streaking her cheeks, and he remembered that same face streaked with tears on the day he told her and her brother that he was leaving their home, leaving their mother, leaving them. Inside him, Stoner knew that he should be feeling pain, or at least sorrow. But he felt nothing. It was as if he had been anesthetized.

Eleanor finally found her voice. "It seems that you're the only one who can come back from the dead."

He shook his head. "No, Elly. I'm merely the first one."

Her head drooped again. He looked at An Linh, also tearful.

"We're leaving tomorrow, Elly," Stoner said. "An Linh and I. We're going out on the evacuation helicopter."

An Linh gasped. "But how . . . ?"

"I want you to leave, too, Elly. As soon as your tour of duty is finished. Get back to your children in New Zealand. Start your life over again. You're young enough to build a good life for yourself--and for them. I know I'm not much of a father, but that's my advice to you."

Eleanor said nothing, but her head bobbed in what might have been a nod of agreement.

"And call Douglas for me. I couldn't locate him. Tell him that I tried. Tell him . . ."He hesitated, knowing that what he had to say was actually a lie. "Tell him that I love him. I love you both, Elly."

It was as much as he could do. Inwardly, he knew that there was no love in him, no emotion at all. Or if there were, it was frozen as thoroughly as his body had been frozen through all the long years.

Turning to An Linh, he said, "I'll take you as far as the hospital. Then I'll have to leave you and go on."