The Siege of Eternity e-2

by Pohl Frederik

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  By the time the Docs were successfully debugged-and by the longer time it took for Dr. Marsha Evergood to be convinced that they were fit to travel-it was too late for Dannerman to catch the night courier flight home. When he called Anita Berman to tell her he'd be late the tracker found her waiting for him at the Observatory. She sounded excited. She didn't complain when he told her his resignation hadn't been accepted. "No, I guess it wouldn't be, would it? We've been watching the news-I even caught a glimpse of you, hon. I think. Anyway, I talked to Zigler again and he's got a new idea. He's thinking about doing your life story."

  Dannerman grunted in surprise. "My life story?"

  "And with you and me playing our own parts, if the Bureau will let you. And the Pats, too. Which reminds me, Patrice wants to talk to you."

  What Patrice wanted to talk about was some papers she needed to get Pat One to sign, and as long as he was staying over, would he mind picking them up from the morning courier plane and taking them out to Camp Smelly? "Just as a favor from one movie star to another," she coaxed. And Dannerman was too dazzled to refuse.

  He was still dazzled when he woke the next morning. But the place where he woke was in one of the VIP suites in the deep-down headquarters of the National Bureau of Investigation, where he had cadged a room from the duty officer. A quick breakfast in the canteen sobered him up. Having his life story made into a major production was an intoxicating fantasy. Now he faced reality. The Bureau would never allow it. And besides-Well, something seemed to have changed between Anita Berman and himself. He couldn't blame the woman for wanting to be a star, even if it was happening only because she was riding on someone else's coattails. Namely his. It didn't mean that she didn't love him, he told himself. Certainly she'd put up with any number of broken dates and unexplained advances, when there was no advantage at all in it for her except her affection for Dan Dannerman.

  But she did seem to be pushing pretty hard for this.

  He put it out of his mind and headed for breakfast, where he discovered his luck wasn't all the way out. In the canteen he found an old acquaintance, Sherry Walton, once his contact person when he was with the Scuzzhawks. Over their basically flavorless miso soup and their limp toast Dannerman got a chance to catch up on some of the Bureau gossip. A Chinese submarine had gone lost after being driven off from the Scarecrow landing area, and though it had been found again, the Chinese had shot most of its officers. Activity among the world's terrorist bands seemed to have dwindled to a ten-year low. The deputy director was pressuring the President to denounce the United Nations agreement about sharing the Scarecrow technology. And the Bureau's more sporting staffers were getting up a pool on when the next Scarecrow missile would arrive-a less benign one. "Crap," Dannerman said positively. "If they were going to bomb us, they would have done it already."

  "Maybe they didn't have time," Walton offered, pouring herself another cup of weak coffee.

  "Of course they had time. They sent the food capsule, and the message with it."

  "Ah-ha," she said, nodding, "the message. I was talking to some of the experts about that. Did you notice the second part seemed sort of improvised? Like they'd already sent the capsule and timed the message to arrive when it did, and then they found out we were getting ready to board the Starlab? They could be a really long way away, you know. They can't use that instant-transport gadget of theirs without a terminal, so they probably have to use rockets . . . and what if they've already fired off a rocket, and it just hasn't had time to get here yet?"

  A Space Future for India

  When India signed Part Three of the Non-Proliferation Treaty it carried out all of its obligations, including scrapping all of its missiles and bases and, like most nations around the world, abandoning its fledgling space program. It now seems that was an error. As recent developments have shown, the conquest of space is now urgent. The nations which have retained some sort of rudimentary space capability-the Europeans, the Americans, the Chinese-are now confronted with unparalleled economic opportunities and, very possibly, grave military responsibilities. As the second most populous nation on Earth, we should join them forthwith.

  -Hindustan Times, New Delhi

  There was something new at Camp Smolley. The Bureau guards were still in place, so were the rain-soaked protesters across the road, but now there was also a company of blue-helmeted United Nations troops, fully armed, deployed all around the perimeter, and a detachment of the same at the checkpoints. They were thorough. After they put Dannerman through the electronic search and stripped him of his weapons, all his weapons, they had just begun. Two of them opened the little satchel of documents Dannerman had picked up from the courier flight, talking to each other in Spanish-these particular UN troops were Chileans, it seemed. They turned every page, one turning while the other held a lamp that pulsed blue, green, white, orange-looking for some suspicious kind of fluorescence, Dannerman supposed-before they gave them back to him and let him proceed. Two more guards, one Bureau and the other UN, convoyed him to an office and took their posts outside the door.

  Pat One was waiting impatiently inside. She wore a quarantine gown and quarantine gloves, and there was a transparent visor hanging loose under her chin. She looked tired. "All this damn paper, "she complained when Dannerman handed her the packet. "Couldn't you get us a lawyer that had ever heard about electronics?"

  "I got you a lawyer who's going to make you rich," Dannerman pointed out. And while she was signing he looked around. Half a dozen wall screens were displaying interesting things-a news screen by the door, next to it one that showed one of the Docs disassembling a Scarecrow gadget while half a dozen experts stood by, a third screen that showed the other Doc mewing and gesturing as he drew pictures for another group of experts. Pat One looked up. "Those guys are mostly linguists," she said. "We can't talk to the son of a bitch, you know. They're trying to figure out what they call the deep structure of his language, but all he wants to do is draw pictures."

  "Can't they get Dopey to help? He's supposed to be a real hotshot with languages."

  Pat One shook her head. "He won't help us. He's not even eating, he's so shook up. He won't even tell us what that thing is they're taking apart, he just says the Beloved Leaders are going to punish us all for this."

  Dannerman thought uneasily of his breakfast conversation with Sherry Walton. "Did he say how?"

  "Not him. Maybe the Doc's trying to tell us something about that, only we can't figure out what. Maybe-" She thought for a moment, then shrugged. "I don't know if I'm supposed to let you see this stuff, but, what the hell, you're a spook yourself, aren't you? Wait a minute. This is Priam Makalanos's office, and I don't know all the systems, but-Here."

  She finished playing with the controls on Makalanos's desk, and the pictures on the wall screens changed. They were drawings, done in the Doc's neat draftsmanship. The first one showed the UN Building in New York, then Beijing's Forbidden City, the Arc deTriomphe in Paris, India's Taj Mahal-one after another, the most celebrated sights on Earth. And in all of them there was something that didn't belong there: Scarecrows. Walking around. The pictures weren't photographs, but they were neat and unmistakable drawings of the pumpkin-headed creatures. They were showing Scarecrows present in all the major cities of Earth.

  Dannerman frowned at the pictures and shook his head. "It beats me," he said. "It can't mean what it looks like. If there were that many Scarecrows here, we would have seen some trace of them, wouldn't we?"

  "It beats me, too," Pat One said somberly. "But I'm sure of one thing. It isn't good."

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Lawyer Hecksher got to Pat Adcock's office before Dannerman got there with the signed papers, but he didn't seem to mind waiting. He sat in a corner, carefully rereading his papers and making cryptic pencil-on-pad notes for himself, paying no attention to Pat or his surroundings as she went on with her work.

  It wasn't a long wait. Dannerman had made a qui
ck trip from the airport, and as Pat went out to meet him she found him standing at the reception desk, his Anita Berman on his arm, chatting with Jan-ice DuPage, who was standing uncomfortably on her crutches.

  Pat frowned. She hadn't expected to see Janice there. Then she remembered why. "I thought you were going to your friend's funeral."

  Janice looked put-upon. "It's been postponed. Don't ask me why. Some damn kind of red tape."

  "Too bad," Pat said absently, taking the clutch of documents from Dannerman and leaving him there.

  Mr. Hecksher took the papers from her courteously and spent a good five minutes checking them over. Then he gave her a cheerful smile. "Looks all right. Signed in all the right places. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll start getting them served."

  "Does that mean somebody will have to fly to China and all?"

  "China, no. We'll serve that one on their ambassador here, that's what ambassadors are for. But I think we'd better serve the Europeans in person-oh, I see what's on your mind," he added, beaming at her. "You're worried about the costs. Don't worry. It'll all be on the bill when we settle."

  "And if we don't settle?" Pat asked.

  He looked surprised. "But we will. Did you read the texts you signed? Part of the court submission is a request for an estoppal, ordering them to make no changes in the artifacts already on hand because of the risk of damaging the Observatory's property." Pat frowned. "They're not going to do that, are they?" "Exactly, my dear! They're going to want this little problem to go away, and the easiest way to do it is to throw money at us. Oh, I think we'll have an offer to settle within a week; the only question is how much we're willing to take. We should discuss that, of course. I was originally thinking of a hundred million dollars, adjusted for current inflation, with an additional royalty on all commercial devices based on the discovered technology, but-" He paused, listening. "What's that?"

  Pat had heard it too, raised voices from outside. She went to the door and looked out. Pete Schneyman was standing there, looking thunderstruck. "We're invaded," he announced. "It's the Feds. They've taken Janice away, and now they want to question all of us."

  Ls soon as Lawyer Hecksher saw what was going on he patted the nearest Pat on the shoulder, and said benevolently, "I'll take care of this."

  But he didn't. He went away with the agent in charge and didn't come back. There were at least a dozen new Bureau agents, tough ones. They were full of questions, though what they were questioning everybody about, exactly, they would not say. The first thing they did was to shuttle everybody in the Observatory up to its top floor, with Bureau agents making sure they stayed there. Phones rang unanswered, computer screens beeped impatiently for inputs that didn't come. The Observatory staff milled in the top-floor file rooms and hallways while they were taken, half a dozen at a time, down to the middle floor for interviews.

  When it came Pat's turn she was conducted to her own office, where a middle-aged woman had preempted her desk. Now, that was too much! Scowling, she asserted herself: "I protest this unwarranted-"

  "Yes, yes," the agent said without patience. "Have a seat. What I want to know is what Janice DuPage has been doing in the last three weeks."

  "What happened three weeks ago?" Pat demanded.

  "That's when the three weeks I'm asking about began. Just answer the questions, Ms. Adcock. Have you noticed anything unusual about the subject's behavior in that period?"

  Pat thought. "You mean, outside of getting run over by a car?"

  "Yes."

  "Not really. Of course, she was in the hospital for some of that time, and I was away sometimes, too. What do you mean by unusual, anyway?"

  "By unusual I mean anything that isn't usual," the agent explained. "Start with Tuesday, the twenty-fourth-"

  "Oh, right!" Pat said, enlightenment coming. "That was the day that Scarecrow spacecraft scared us all half to death."

  "That day, yes. Well?"

  And so it went, day by day. The questions were thorough, but Pat was pretty sure that the agent wasn't getting anything useful-wasn't getting anything from her that she hadn't already heard from the previous interviewees.

  When she was released she was told she could go home. She didn't, though. She went down to the lower floor, where the people the agents had finished with were congregating in the conference room.

  Then Dannerman came in, looking worried. "I came as soon as I got your call," he told Pat One. "And I talked to Jilly Hohman-she's the agent in charge here."

  "So what's it all about?" Pat One demanded.

  He looked even more worried. "It's that friend of Janices. They did a routine autopsy on her . . . and they found a bug."

  "A bug? In Janice's friend? But-but she was never out in space," said Pat, and Dannerman nodded somberly.

  "That's the problem," he said. "She never was."

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  The news about the bug in the cruise passenger's head caught Hilda Morrisey on the wing. She was halfway to Arlington. For a moment she thought of pulling rank, ordering the pilot to take her back to the scene of this unwelcome new glitch in New York. Reason prevailed. The New York Bureau people were dealing with it, and most of them had recently been her own people. She could leave that to them. Anyway, she could get a better picture at headquarters.

  The picture refused to come clear. When all the questioning was done, nobody at the Dannerman Astrophysical Observatory had any useful information about the late Maureen Capobianco. Neither did any of her friends and family once the Bureau had tracked them down. Nor did the X rays find a bug in any of them. It wasn't until they got a passenger list from the operators of her cruise ship that the Bureau struck pay dirt.

  That was a break. A checker recognized two of the names on the list as his own neighbors. When the Bureau's people descended on them they were startled but cooperative . . . and the X rays told the story. They, too, were bugged. Both of them. So, when they were tracked down, were the members of a bridge club from Baltimore who had treated themselves to the cruise, all twenty-six of them. So was a barman from the cruise ship, furloughed to his mother's home in the District itself.

  So was every last one they could find of the ship's 826 passengers and 651 crew members.

  That wasn't all. Hilda Morrisey got the news first and brought it to the deputy director. "There were these six Ecuadorians from a fishing boat that had been near the splash site. They had it, too."

  "Shit," Marcus Pell said dismally. "It's an epidemic. We should have anticipated this, Hilda; it's what the Doc was trying to tell us, with those pictures."

  "I guess we thought he meant actual Scarecrows were coming."

  "I guess we did." He sighed. "All right. Take off for Camp Smelly, Hilda. See if you can get anything out of that damn Dopey."

  She stood up to go, then turned. Pell had not seemed all that surprised to hear about the Ecuadorians. "Is there anything else?"

  He hesitated, then shrugged. "Keep it under your hat, but yes. We got a report from an asset in Vietnam. The Chinese are rounding up the whole crew of that submarine that went missing. The one where they executed the captain and the engineering officer?" He grimaced. "You know how they execute criminals, one bullet in the back of the neck-so the organs won't be spoiled for transplant. Well, the shot hit a bug."

  "Jesus." A thought struck her. "I thought we had our own asset in the Chinese Navy, how come we had to get this from the Viets?"

  "They shot our asset, too."

  In the back of Brigadier Hilda Morrisey's mind she had been thinking of this as a good time for another recreational evening-a long soak, a light meal, the new dress with the skirt slits that made the best of her still very good legs, the address of a new bar that was highly recommended for good-looking men. It wasn't much to ask. She was fully entitled to it because, for God's sake, she was human.

  But here she was at Camp Smolley again, and what was in the back of Brigadier Morrisey's mind stayed where it was. The camp was in an uproar. Da
isy Fennell was there, giving Colonel Makalanos a hard time for imagined failings at getting more information out of the Docs. All three of the freaks were back at the biowar station, and security precautions were doubled. There was an armed guard at the door of the interrogation room, where the two Docs were vociferously mewing at Dopey. Whatever they were saying, they seemed to think it was urgent, but the little turkey was adamantly refusing to respond, his cat eyes squeezed shut, his little paws thrust firmly into that coppery belly bag. In a corner of the room Dannerman was having an agitated, low-voiced conversation with a woman; it wasn't until Hilda recognized the woman as Anita Herman that she knew which Dannerman it was. The linguistics team was on hand, doing their best to get a clue as to the Docs' language, but if they were making any progress at all, Hilda couldn't see how. It didn't seem that way to her.

  Her first target was Dannerman. As she approached, Anita Berman was in the process of jumping up and delivering a final, scathing remark: "I don't care about the money, I don't care about the part, what I care about is getting you out of this crazy life you're leading!" She flounced away, leaving Dannerman peering after her. The funny thing was, he was actually looking pleased.

  "What's that all about?" Hilda asked.

  He shook his head. "Something I was worried about, that's all. Listen, is it true about all these bugs being found?"

  "Damn straight it's true, but that isn't what I wanted to ask you. Have you had a chance to talk to Dopey about that drawing the Doc made?"

  The fond smile evaporated from his face. "Uh, yes," he said reluctantly. "He said-well, he didn't say anything for sure, only maybe-"

  "Damn you! Maybe what?"

  He swallowed. "He said he didn't know anything really, but, after all, the Horch captured everything the Scarecrows had on that planet. Including the transit machine-the one that made copies of us? So if they wanted more copies of me, or anything else, there wouldn't be anything in the world that could stop them."