Eschaton 03 Far Shore of Time

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Eschaton 03 Far Shore of Time Page 16

by Frederik Pohl


  When the Doc said something to Pirraghiz she stopped screaming at once and gave him a quick hug of greeting. Then she bent to examine his burned arm and tsk-tsked over it-in her case it was actually a sort of bup-bup sound-before she turned to me. "Wrahrrgherfoozh"-I think that's what she said the Doc's name was-"needs attention! I fear he may lose that arm! I must try to help him!"

  "Well, sure," I said, "but what was all the screaming about?"

  Pirraghiz was already delicately probing the skin around the Doc's-well, shoulder; at least, around the little bony bump where his burned lesser arm joined his torso. Her full attention was on his injuries, and she didn't look up. "I didn't want the Others to know what was happening," she said, still gently working away on him. "So as soon as the machines and I got him neutralized with the mesh, I turned off the scrambler and began to scream-yelling that there were explosions, water was coming in, all that sort of thing. My intention was to make the Others believe we had some kind of a terrible accident," she explained. "Then, as you saw, we turned off the communicator and the transit machine. Is that all right?"

  It was a hell of a lot better than all right. I wished I had thought of it myself. What I said was an inadequate, "Thank you."

  She spared me a quick glance. "Yes. But, Dannerman, what do we do now?"

  That was what I needed to figure out.

  It was great to be back on Earth again, but I was still a long way from Arlington.

  I took a moment to get a better idea of what I had to work with. The Horch fighting machines had been surgically efficient in their assault. As far as I could tell, none of the fittings of the sub had been damaged, but I didn't see much that was helpful. There had been two Beloved Leader warriors on the sub, both now dead. There had been four Horch fighting machines, three of which were now scrap; the Bashfuls had put up a pretty good fight before they died. Beert's personal robot seemed unharmed. So did the Dopey, who had stopped his terrified whining and was staring from one to the other of us as Pirraghiz and I talked.

  There was something I needed to know about that Dopey. So, watching him, what I said to Pirraghiz was, "The first thing we do is kill the Dopey, so he can't make any trouble."

  Pirraghiz stiffened in surprise. The Dopey didn't. He just kept looking back and forth at the two of us, with an occasional frightened glance at Beert. Even his tail plume didn't change color. So either he was a wonderful actor, or he didn't understand the Horch language we were speaking.

  As Pirraghiz began to object I said, "Cancel that." I pointed to the wounded Doc. "Can he drive this thing?"

  She gave me a strange look, but then she mewed at the Doc and he mewed back. "Yes, he can. Wrahrrgherfoozh is engineer for this vessel. He can operate any part of it, but he wants to know where to drive to."

  Another good question. If I can see some kind of a map, I'll tell him.

  More mewing. Then, "The locators are turned off, Danner-man," she reported. "They are part of the communication system." While I was absorbing the notion that we were somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, and blind, she added, "However, Wrahrrgherfoozh says it is possible for him to alter the system to receive only and not to transmit. But that will take some time."

  That lifted a huge weight from my soul. "Tell him to do it, then!"

  "He is badly hurt, Dannerman. I do not think we can save that arm."

  That was when Beert spoke up. He had been quietly talking to his Christmas tree, and he said, "Dan. I have used my machine to work on many devices of the Others. Perhaps it can help."

  I looked at Pirraghiz. "Can it?" And when she nodded, "Then tell them to get on with it! I mean, please."

  The Christmas tree scuttled over to the board, Pirraghiz explained to the Doc what was going on, and I had my first chance to say anything to Beert. He was standing silent, his head darting this way and that, his arms slumped by his side. He looked dejected.

  I said, "Beert? Listen, I'm sorry that I got you into this."

  He turned the head toward me, but all he said was, "Yes."

  There was nothing to be done for the dead warriors. The one surviving fighting machine was poking at the ruins of the other three, but it didn't look like they were going to be repairable for a good long time. If ever.

  By then the Dopey had managed to collect himself. He fixed his little kitten eyes on me and spoke up. "Sprechen-sie Deutsch?" he asked. He was looking at me. "Panamayoo Paruski? Parlezvous-"

  I cut him off, "Try English."

  He switched at once, gazing at me intently. "I must ask, why are you here? Do you have any understanding of what fate awaits you for daring to bring a filthy Horch into a vessel of the Beloved Leaders?"

  "They have to catch us first," I said. It was oddly pleasing to be speaking my own language again, even with this creature.

  "But they surely will," he said reasonably. "Then it will be terrible for you. You have only one chance to avoid the worst of the punishment, and that is to destroy the Horch and his machine with that projectile weapon of yours. At once. And then-"

  "Forget it," I said.

  But-

  I put it more strongly. "What I mean is, shut up. I'll talk to you later, but if you don't keep quiet now, I will turn you over to the filthy Horch."

  That didn't stop him, either. I turned my back on his arguments and spoke in his own language to Beert: "Do you think you could get your fighter to scare him? Not kill him. Just make him be quiet."

  Beert's head lifted to gaze at me. "Then you don't really want him killed?"

  "Of course I don't, Beert. What use is he dead? I want him alive to be interrogated. Do you think I would actually murder an unarmed person?"

  He gazed at me in silence for a moment. Then he said, "I was not sure."

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  It didn't take the Doc and the Christmas tree as long as I feared to get some of the systems running, and then the wall over the controls blossomed into a display. A golden dot marked our position. There weren't any other dots nearby, which I thought was good, and at the top of the picture was an irregular mass which I took to be the coast.

  I grunted at him as I tried to figure out what to do. Back in those New Jersey summers with Uncle Cubby, my parents had sometimes taken me out for a fishing trip in Uncle Cubby's seldom-used cabin cruiser. I wished I had paid more attention to the charts. What I saw looked nothing like any coastline I remembered.

  Then I saw one of the problems. I was accustomed to maps in which up was always north. Evidently the Beloved Leaders had no such prejudice. I guessed the land had to be east, and-once I craned my neck to peer at it sidewise and got the Doc to widen the view-it made sense. Island that forked at one end, like an alligator's opened jaws, narrow body of water behind it and then the mainland-"Long Island," I announced. "Great! That water over on the left has to be New York Bay. That's where we want to go! Tell the Doc, Pirraghiz!"

  She didn't move right away. She was looking at me puzzledly again. So was Beert, and I realized I had used the English names for what I saw, since the Horch language didn't have any. When I explained to them that "New York Bay" was one of the busiest harbors on Earth, and we would have no trouble making contact there, Beert swung his neck around closer to me. "First answer a question for me, Dan. What will you do when you get there?"

  "Call the Bureau," I said promptly. "See if they can get this sub under wraps before the Others can see what we're doing-"

  I stopped there; what I had just said didn't sound right to me. Before I could figure out what it was, Beert went on. "And then?"

  To tell the truth, I hadn't thought much about that "then." Especially about what then would mean for him and Pirraghiz. "Why," I said, "I guess we'll let the Bureau figure out what to do next."

  "What you mean," he said meditatively, "is that you will turn this vehicle, and us, over to your human spy organization. Who will question us, and no doubt do their best to copy its technology, both Others and Horch."

  "I guess that's about the
size of it," I admitted.

  He sighed-that shrill Horch whistle of released breath that meant resignation. He didn't say anything. He just nodded to Pirraghiz, who spoke to Wrahrrgherfoozh.

  The Doc touched only a few dots on the board, but I felt the results at once. The submarine was turning and beginning to accelerate. The picture on the wall whirled to a new orientation, and we were beginning to go home.

  That felt good. It felt like things were going to work out after all. It even felt as though I were going to get that steak before long, and sleep that night in a real bed… and maybe even see Pat…

  But we weren't there yet.

  The air fresheners had removed a certain amount of the stench from the sub, and things were quieting down. Cowed by the Horch fighting machine looming over him, the Dopey was still muttering-but softly, and to himself. Pirraghiz and the other Doc were in close conversation with each other. It looked as though they had left the navigation to Beert's Christmas tree. Beert himself was standing by the control board, gazing at the changing display that showed where we were moving. I didn't think he was seeing it, though. His neck was waving a slow sine, as though he were deep in thought.

  When he saw me looking at him he turned his head toward me. "I have reasoned out," he announced, "that your order to kill the little one was a ruse of some kind, not an actual intention."

  "That's right, Beert. It was a trick," I admitted. "We Bureau agents are full of tricks, but listen, Beert, I don't mean to trick you. When we get to the Bureau they will know how much we all owe to you and Pirraghiz, because I'll damn sure make sure they understand."

  "I will be grateful for that," he said sadly.

  And made me feel like a rat. Or, more accurately, made me feel that he was feeling the way I had when the Horch machines were working me over. Alone. Depressed. Pretty near hopeless. And all of it my fault.

  There wasn't anything I could do about it, though. I tried to take his mind off it by changing the subject. "Listen, Beert, I've been meaning to ask you. What did Kofeeshtetch mean about the nexus thing helping the Eschaton?"

  It didn't cheer him up. He gave me a three-snake shrug. "Perhaps it is something to be used when the Eschaton comes."

  "Yeah, but," I said, "nothing physical is going to survive to the Eschaton, is it? Isn't everything supposed to go back into a kind of a point at the Big Crunch? So how would they get it there without its turning into a mess of quarks or something?"

  He shrugged again. "I do not know. The cousins have not yet shared that kind of knowledge with me."

  Pirraghiz didn't know, either. Neither did the wounded Doc. If the Dopey knew, he wasn't telling. I added that to the lengthening list of questions I was not likely to get answers to any time soon.

  Anyway, other things were beginning to jostle for attention in my mind.

  Like Pat. Very much like Pat. I was deeply, excitingly aware that every minute that passed was getting me closer and closer to the minute when I could actually see and touch her again.

  And although that was fine, it wasn't all fine. Another itchy little needle of reality was beginning to force itself upon me.

  Pat already had a Dan Dannerman. What was she going to do with me?

  As we approached New York's Lower Bay I got one more of those nasty little stabs of reality.

  Pirraghiz assured me that the other Doc had assured her that, yes, it would be possible to bring the sub close enough to the surface to be awash, and yes, there was a hatch that I could use to get out of, and then-

  Well, then what should I do? Wave to a passing Staten Island ferry and hitch a ride to shore? Use a flashlight-if I could find anything like a flashlight-to send a message in Morse code-if I could remember the Morse code-to-

  Well, to whom?

  And what about security?

  The sub's display was really great stuff. I could see the wide-open mouth of the bay, Coney Island on one side, Sandy Hook on the other; I could see little splotches that had to be Ellis Island and Liberty Island; I could even see the long old piers that stuck out into the Hudson from every side. And I could also see objects moving around that I supposed were tankers and cruise liners and excursion boats, and what was I going to be doing about them? Not to mention any U.S. Coast Guard stuff that might be patrolling against just such a Horch sub as ourselves; no doubt the human race had figured out that the Beloved Leaders had sneaked in underwater vessels that had given them the opportunity to kidnap and bug a lot of mariners.

  According to Wrahrrgherfoozh, the Horch stealth capabilities were a lot more effective than any primitive human sonars. But I didn't want to take the chance of being depth-bombed by some jumpy lieutenant in a Coast Guard corvette.

  I studied the display. "Change of plan," I said.

  Both Beert and Pirraghiz turned to me, Pirraghiz's expression wondering, Beert's merely resigned.

  "I don't think we'd better get into all that traffic," I told them. "Better if we can find some quiet bay somewhere along the shore. Show me what's down-here."

  I put my finger on the barrier island that began around the Highlands and went south. Why did I pick there? I don't know. Maybe I thought we might just pull in at Uncle Cubby's old boat dock and knock on his door.

  I didn't think it long. Uncle Cubby was long dead. I had no idea who owned his house, and didn't want to investigate. "There's a bay," I said, pointing between the Sea Bright barrier island and the shore. "Let's take a look."

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  It wasn't a bay. It was the mouth of a river that I had forgotten about, but that was just as good.

  Slowly and carefully the Christmas tree piloted us upstream on this nice, wide river with no boats visible anywhere on its surface. I never took my eyes off the display. Not far ahead I saw something that stretched clear across the river, which worried me for a moment. A dam? So we'd have to go back and try again?

  But it was a bridge. And off to one side of it was a system of docks with small objects moored to them: a boat basin,

  "That'll do," I said, hoping I was right.

  In fact, it did very well. The Christmas tree brought us to the surface, the robot opened the hatch and I climbed out into a cold, wet-but Earthly!-drizzle.

  I saw lights up on the road. I found a little driveway that led up to them, and when I was at street level, there, right across the road, was a large and lighted seafood restaurant.

  When I was inside the cashier gave me a thoroughly funny look-reasonably enough; I was tattered, unwashed and long unshaven-but she pointed me to a telephone anyway. There was a scattering of diners in the place, curiously, most of them in uniform. They were staring at me, too. I turned my back on them.

  Naturally I had no encryption facilities. I didn't even have a payment card, and the restaurant's smells of good, hot human food were driving me crazy. But I managed to get a collect call through to the Bureau in Arlington.

  The duty officer must have thought I was crazy, too, but she listened as I talked: "This is Senior Agent James Daniel Danner-man calling. I'm the one that-ah"-I tried to figure out how to put it-"the one you haven't seen for quite a while because I've been away. A long way away. Relay this information immediately to Colonel Hilda Morrisey or Deputy Director Marcus Pell. I require immediate pickup and a full squad to take charge of important assets."

  There was a moment's silence while she thought that over. "I thought Brigadier Morrisey was dead," she said doubtfully.

  I don't know which shook me up more, Hilda dead or Hilda a brigadier. But I didn't have time to think about it. "Tell somebody in authority at once," I ordered, and got the restaurant cashier to tell me where I was so I could pass it along. "And most of all," I finished, "tell them no shooting."

  I guess she did pass the word along, because in about twenty minutes half the helicopters in the world seemed to be jockeying to land in the restaurant parking lot, and I could hear sirens coming toward us from the highway.

  It's amazing what the Bureau can do whe
n it puts its mind to it. Although the gaggle of Bureau people who popped out of the first two choppers claimed to be from the New York office, I didn't know a soul among them. But they knew me. "Jesus, Dannerman, how the hell many of you guys are there, anyway?" one of them asked wonderingly, and didn't wait for an answer. "Never mind. Let's get some damage control going here."

  They did. Faster than I would have believed possible, the next few choppers of federal police and the co-opted local cops had the place sealed off. They blocked the bridge at both ends, with roadblocks on our side to keep anybody from getting near the boat basin. A couple of uniformed noncoms were going from table to table in the restaurant to tell the late diners that everything was all right, they just couldn't leave just yet because (showing a lot of imagination) there was a boat down there with a leaky fuel tank and they didn't want anybody hurt in a possible explosion. They were erecting screens around the sub itself, and a Bureau colonel named Makalanos, this one by then already up from Arlington, was on the phone to arrange for a Navy submarine to tow the Horch ship to a secure place, underwater.

  It was this Colonel Makalanos who got back into the sub with me.

  I don't know what he had expected to find, but his eyes popped when he saw the Dopey, the Docs, the Horch machines… and Beert. "Mother of God," he whispered, and then pulled himself together. "Tell the Meows and those other things what's going on, Dannerman," he ordered. "They'll all go with the sub, and I'll put a couple of guards on board, too. You? No, not you, Dannerman. I'm taking you straight to Arlington so you can explain all this to the deputy director."

  I don't know what Beert had expected, either. He didn't say. He just listened while I told him what the colonel wanted, his neck down around his midsection, his head tipped upward to regard me sorrowfully. "I'll come back to you as soon as I can," I promised. "Just don't let the machines do anything, all right?"

  He didn't answer that. He had stopped looking at me and was staring at the four husky Bureau people who were climbing in, their weapons at the ready.

 

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