Eschaton 01 The Other End of Time

by Frederik Pohl

  "I suppose," she said thoughtfully. "What the hell were you doing in protsy in the first place?"

  "Easy credits… and, well, yes, there was also a girl…"

  She laughed out loud. A couple of the sleepers stirred, and she lowered her voice. "That's the story of your life, isn't it? Was she the one you brought to Uncle Cubby's for Christmas just before your father died?"

  "No, that was a different one," he admitted. "You had a guy there, too. Was he the one you ran off and married?"

  She gave him a sharp look, then smiled. "No. Actually not even close. Well, maybe neither of us is that much different from Jimmy Lin, just a little less outspoken about it." She nestled against him comfortably, then remembered to pull away.

  He turned to look into her face. "What's the matter?"

  She said uncomfortably, "I don't think I smell very good right now."

  "So join the club."

  "Damn it, Dan, I don't want to be in that club! I'd give anything for a bath-or at least for a little more water and somebody to chain Jimmy Lin up while I sponged myself off." She paused to smother a yawn. "Hell. Tell me something, Dan. Do you see any way of ever getting out of here?"

  He gave her a warning look, but only said, "Did you notice how that thing reached right in to where I was standing to grab the stuff?"

  "Meaning they're watching us?" She shuddered involuntarily, looking about. Well, she hadn't really ever doubted that they were being observed, but still-

  On the other hand, getting out of this place was definitely the central concern in her mind, and she couldn't let it go. "So the walls have ears. Right. But do you have any ideas?"

  He considered the question for a moment, then picked his words with care. "I hope so, Pat. There has to be something."

  His tone struck Pat as somber. "But you have thought of what that is?"

  "If you mean something that could help us escape," he said, glancing at the ceiling, "no. Not really. What I'm thinking is that there are all these people back home who don't have any idea they've been watched all this time."

  There was an expression on his face that Pat couldn't identify-stubbornness, worry, concern? Something of all of them, plus a kind of determination she had never before associated with Cousin Dan-Dan. "I have a duty," he said, and stopped there.

  In the silence she leaned back against him, wondering. It had never occurred to her that a cloak-and-dagger spook might be driven by conscience and concern as much as by-well, by whatever misguided adolescent yearning for colorful action might make a person get into that line of work. It was a new feeling for Pat. Not a bad one. It made him a lot easier to be comfortable with…

  Which she was. Comfortable. In spite of everything; comfortable enough to be definitely drowsy. When she yawned, he did, too. "We'll figure something out," he said. "Right now I'm sleepy."

  And so, Pat realized, was she. It occurred to her that it would be nice for them to untangle themselves so they could stretch out, but by the time she had got that far in her thinking she was already asleep with her head on Dannerman's shoulder.

  What woke Pat up was someone talking. The person was intruding on her dream, and she didn't want to let go of it, especially not because of the green-skinned woman playing a musical instrument who was intruding into it. When she opened her eyes she discovered her head was in Dannerman's lap and Jimmy Lin was grinning down at them. She sat up abruptly. "What did you say?" she demanded fuzzily.

  "I was asking Dan what you were doing. Looked like the Jade Woman and Flute bit to me. Of course, Dan claims it didn't happen, but then old Dan's a real gentleman about a lady's honor, isn't he?"

  "Damn you," she said. "Can't you turn off your testosterone for a while now and then? What is it, do you get a kick out of making trouble?"

  His expression changed to belligerency. "Are you talking about the accident? Well, you know what? I'm not sorry we killed the little son of a bitch, even if it didn't take. Sooner or later I'm going to find some way to make him give us straight answers, and if he won't do it I wouldn't mind killing him all over again."

  Dannerman was sitting up straight now, glaring at Lin. Pat was pleased to see that he was getting angry, too, but a little disappointed, too, when she realized that the anger wasn't at Lin's smarmy remarks. "You're an idiot," he said flatly. "If you really wanted to do something like that you're sure making it hard by advertising it ahead of time."

  Lin shrugged and stalked away. Dannerman hesitated, then patted Pat on the head, easing it off his lap. "I've got an idea," he said, and got up without saying what the idea was. What he did was only to head for the stack of miscellaneous supplies Dopey's golems had brought.

  Pat gazed after him, her back propped against the wall, knees hugged to her body. She was thinking about the connotations of being patted on the head. "Pat on the head" was a metaphor for tolerant dismissal and there had been a time, in her rad-fem undergraduate days, when any male who ventured such an act did so at his own peril. But she didn't feel tolerated, and certainly she didn't feel dismissed. What that casual touch had felt like was affection. Maybe even sexual affection. Tentative, yes, but under the circumstances about as forthright as was feasible. Under other circumstances…

  Under other circumstances, Pat told herself wistfully, something nice might come of that; but not under these.

  She shook herself and stood up, curious about what Dan-nerman was doing. He had borrowed Rosaleen's multicolor pen and was busily printing something out on a scrap of wrapping paper from the Starlab booty, shading what he was writing with his other hand. Rosaleen Artzybachova was sitting cross-legged nearby, watching him curiously. When Dannerman saw Pat standing over him he complained, "The damn ink smears on this stuff."

  "That's what wrapping paper is like," she agreed. "What are you writing?"

  He paused to add a word, then covered the sheet with his hand. "You could call it a diary," he said. "We don't have much privacy here, and there are some things I'd just as soon not advertise to the world."

  She frowned. There was something odd about his tone. "So we can't see it?"

  "Oh," he said. "I didn't say that. I guess a few friends could take a look."

  "Like me?" Rosaleen offered. "It's my pen."

  "Why not?" Dannerman said. "Only do it like this, please." He cupped the scrap in two hands and lifted it to his eyes, opening the hands at the thumbs just enough to peer inside. "Can you do that?"

  Rosaleen gave him a baffled look, but did as instructed. "Thank God for radial keratomy," she muttered. And then, "Oh."

  She closed her hands again over the scrap, looking at Dannerman with interest before she passed it to Pat. "You know the drill," she said. "I hope your near vision's in good shape."

  It wasn't, particularly, but when Pat had done as ordered, opening narrow slits between fingers for light, she managed to make out the blurry scrawl:

  If anybody has any useful ideas for escape etc let's share them like this.

  "Oh," Pat said, too. "I see what you mean." By then Martin and Jimmy Lin were clamoring for their own turns, and Dannerman was already writing something else. When he passed it to Pat it said:

  Concealed weapons? I have flex, glass knife in belt. Martin, what's in lapel? Anybody else?

  By then they were all industriously writing little messages of their own, squabbling over their turns at Rosaleen's pen. "Hold it," Rosaleen ordered. "Let's make sure everybody sees everything. How about if we pass them around in alphabetical order-Adcock, Artzybachova, Dannerman, Delasquez, Lin. Then you can dispose of the messages when you're finished with them, Jimmy."

  "How?"

  "I don't know, swallow them, maybe?"

  Lin looked rebellious, but Dannerman said, "Maybe we can burn them up in the cooker?" And when they had all seen the first message he gave it a try; it worked. The crumpled scrap of paper became ash, and he teased it out and ground it into powder with his heel for the floor to remove.

  By the time they had finished taki
ng inventory they had discovered they possessed a remarkable little armory: Dannerman's glass blade, Martin's plastic stiletto, a garroting cord from Jimmy Lin. Even Rosaleen had a pair of knitting-sized needles in her boots; apologetically Pat admitted to being the only one who had entered the Clipper without fallback arms.

  But when they had exchanged all the information they had to offer, secure from the prying outside eyes, the temporary euphoria subsided and she felt let down. It was nice to know that they had some weapons. But what was the good of weapons when they had no plan to use them?

  Passing secret messages around was a kind of pleasure Pat hadn't experienced since high school, but it palled. There was really nothing for them to say, and besides they were all getting hungry again.

  While they were cooking their individual meals Rosaleen was investigating the cooker. "There must be a power source for this thing somewhere," she said puzzledly. "I can't find it. Maybe it's in the base? The rest of it's nothing much but sheet metal."

  "Funny sheet metal," Martin rumbled. "It isn't even warm on the outside."

  "Like a microwave," Pat offered.

  Rosaleen shook her head. "It's not a microwave. Those vegetables Jimmy put in were foil-wrapped, and it didn't spark. I don't exactly know what-oh, hell!" Tardily they all smelled the scorching as the container of beef stew inside began to burn.

  "Damn," Dannerman said. "I had my mouth all set for that stew." But it was powdery ashes before they could lever it out, and in the long run Martin simply picked the cooker up and shook them out of it for the floor to dispose of.

  It was Martin, then, who noticed another curiosity. "Look here," he said, pushing at the device. "The wheels don't roll anymore."

  Pat looked and discovered that they weren't actual wheels, anyway; they were just metal balls. When she pushed at the gadget hard enough it slid sluggishly over the rubbery floor, but the wheels weren't turning. "But it rolled easily enough when Dopey pushed it in," she said, perplexed.

  "Maybe," Rosaleen said thoughtfully. "Or maybe they never did turn. I think we've got another piece of that far-out technology we were looking for here."

  "For all the good it will do us," Martin said grumpily.

  Dannerman and Pat took their food over to sit against the wall. Dannerman was deep in thought-probably, Pat supposed, about ways of getting them out of their prison cell. She hoped so, anyway. She was just getting used to the fact that her own cousin was a gumshoe; the annoyance was fading, curiosity was beginning to assert itself. She said, "Feeling talkative, Dan?"

  He blinked at her. "What? Oh, sure. What's on your mind?"

  "Well, you told me that after college protsy they drafted you into the army-all right, the protsy-"

  "Had to be the protsy, Pat. They had snappier uniforms and no thirty-kilometer hikes."

  "Then what?"

  He chewed reflectively for a moment. "Well, when they called me up it turned out they didn't need any more people in uniforms. They needed undercover ops. They thought I'd do just fine mingling with the white-collar criminals and the yuppy terrorists. I objected. I said I didn't want to spy on my old friends, so they said, sure, we can give you something else. And they did." He shook his head wryly. "They ordered me to infiltrate one of the ultra light plane gangs in Orange County-you know, like the Deadly Force and the Scuzzhawks? The gangs that had been taking over little towns and scaring the hell out of the citizens? It meant wearing the same leathers for three or four weeks at a time and never taking a bath-not all that different from here, you know? Except that there were occupational hazards. The reason they needed gang infiltrators so badly was that they were having a pretty high attrition rate with the agents that managed to get in at all. All kinds of casualties: one plane crash, two ODs-and one guy who was found washing up with the surf. It didn't take me long to call in and say that, after all, I thought investigating tax frauds and radical-chic terrorists was more along my line of work."

  Jimmy Lin had settled down nearby, listening intently. Pat gave him a glance, then grinned at Dannerman. "I think you made the right pick. I can't really imagine you as a Scuzzhawk. But, look, that was eight or ten years ago, at least? And you didn't quit when your hitch ran out?"

  He said simply, "I found out I kind of liked it." Fascinated, Pat persisted. "What else did you do?" "Whatever they told me to do, pretty much. That outfit I used to work for in New York before I came to you-that was drugs. And I did a lot of antiterrorist stuff, too: the Free Bavarian movement, the Spanish guys that blew up Nelson's column in London, all that."

  "And you'd go in and make friends with them, and then the end result of all these adventures was you put somebody in jail."

  Dannerman gave her an injured look. "Only the bad guys."

  Pat looked at him wonderingly. "Dan-Dan," she said, "you know what I think about you? I think you didn't keep on being a spook for the money. I think you did it because you want to protect people. You're a kindergarten teacher, you know that? Jose pees on Elvira's milk and cookies, so you give Jose a good swat-but you're doing it for his sake as much as for hers."

  Dannerman looked as though he was getting hot under the collar. "Somebody has to keep the peace. Do you have any better way of doing it?"

  "No," she said, studying him analytically. "I don't. Actually, I think it's kind of sweet." He shrugged. "You weren't that kindly a kid, you know. What happened? Do they teach compassion in the spy school?"

  "Not exactly. We did take a course in sensitivity training, but basically it was to teach us how to manipulate people." He looked at Jimmy. "Of course," Dannerman said, "I'm not the only one with experience in this area, am I?" Lin was silent, waiting, watching Dannerman's face while the bowl of goulash was cooling on his outstretched thighs. "I mean," Dannerman went on, "you knew I was an agent. You had to find out from somewhere."

  Lin sighed. "If you're asking if I'm a professional spook like you, the answer's no. But, yes, I did know. They told me at the consulate, first thing, as soon as I got back from Houston. That's why I started cozying up to you." He glanced penitently at Pat. "See, Pat," he said, almost pleading, "I want to go home, I mean without getting arrested. They've got a warrant out for me at Jiuquan. It's a chickenshit political charge, but they're serious about it; jail's involved, and, trust me, you don't want to be in a Chinese jail. They told me I could square it by performing a little service for the state. So, I ask you, what could I do?"

  Pat didn't answer that. Instead, she asked, "What's this Jewchoon place you're talking about?"

  "Jiuquan," Dannerman corrected. "It's the Chinese space center, like our Cape and Huntsville and Houston all rolled into one." Then, to Lin, "Tell you what. Let's change the subject, all right? No hard feelings. We all did what we had to do… and look how much good it's done any of us."

  Time passed. Pat was interested to discover that time kept right on passing, even when there really weren't any events to mark the passage. Oh, there were a few slow, but visible, processes of change. All three of the men were developing tacky-looking beards, and Pat's own axillary growth was no longer scratchy stubble.

  But very little happened. Once or twice Dopey put in a brief appearance, not talkative, seeming harried. Sporadically someone would have a notion and commit it to paper to be passed around, but none of the ideas seemed to go anywhere. Sleeping, eating, defecating took up just so much of their time, and the rest hung heavy. Pat was mildly pleased to discover that she could beat any of the others but Rosaleen at chess, once Rosaleen had made a wrapping-paper board, and while she and Dannerman were playing their hundredth game Jimmy Lin was attempting to fabricate a deck of playing cards out of more scraps of the paper towels. "At least I might have a chance to win something at poker now and then," he said sulkily.

  Pat rocked back on her heels as a thought struck her. "It's your move," Dannerman said.

  "Wait a minute. Give me the pen and a piece of paper, will you, Jimmy? Something just occurred to me."

  And she began to pr
int: Would it do any good if we tried to get Dopey into a game of something? She was just about to hand it to Dannerman when Jimmy called: "Hey, looks like Dopey's coming back!"

  Indeed the mirror wall was turning milky again. Caught with the scrap of paper in her hand, Pat stared about, looking for a place to hide it. There wasn't any. Desperately she popped it in her mouth and began to chew.

  She forgot to swallow when she saw what was happening. Dopey was indeed entering through the wall, but he wasn't alone. He was leading two other human beings through the wall.

  "Hey!" Jimmy Lin shouted in delight. "Naked women!"

  So they were, being shepherded into the cell by a pair of Docs, looking terrified and angry at the same time. Each of them was rubbing the back of her neck with one hand as she clutched her bundle of clothing with the other. "You said," Dopey explained, "that you required additional breeding stock."

  They looked very familiar to Pat Adcock. She swallowed the lump of paper as she stared at them, clutching Dannerman's arm. "Sweet Jesus," she gasped. "They're both me!"

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Pat

  It was frightening, it was unbelievable, but Pat had to face up to the fact that it was true. These two women were indeed herself. They were two precisely identical copies of Dr. Patrice Ad-cock-oh, a lot cleaner, yes, and a lot less frayed-looking, but in every other way exactly herself. Their voices were the same. Their appearance was the same. The way they were hurrying into their clothes-Dannerman politely looking away, Martin impolitely observing, Jimmy Lin frankly ogling-was just the way she had done it when she first got clothing again. And when she asked, "Where the hell did you two come from?" what they answered was just what she would have said:

  "Starlab." They said it in chorus, too, and then stopped short to stare at each other-to stare at everything around them. "Jesus," one of them began, a half-second before the other, who paused to let the first one finish with the flip side of Pat's question. It wasn't "Where did you come from?" but "Where in God's name are we?"