Eschaton 02 The Siege of Eternity

by Frederik Pohl

  Daisy had her hands full, all right; she was in the middle of some problem with the Catalans and the Basques, and a field manager from Bangladesh was waiting to talk to her about Asian drug gangs. She waved Hilda to a seat while she finished dictating a note to the Spanish police, then leaned back and regarded her. "Congratulations, Hilda," she said. "Let's see, where do we start? You'll need to go out to Camp Smolley today, the freaks are bitching about their food and-well, everything; anyway, the one that looks like a parrot is. But the other two are having troubles, too."

  "What kinds of troubles?"

  Daisy waved a hand. "They'll tell you all about it when you get there. Then there's the team. Marcus doesn't want to lose momentum with the experts, so he wants a meeting every day-"

  "All those people? Every day?"

  "You can choose the participants yourself. You probably don't need the astronomer anymore-or do you? It's your call. And probably you can skip today if you have to; there won't be much time before you get back from Smolley. Then-wait a minute."

  She frowned as her screen buzzed at her, listened for a moment, then said, "Apologize to him; I'll be with him in five minutes. Ten at the most."

  She turned back to Hilda. "Sorry, where was I? Oh. The Starlab people in New York. Guards and surveillance are being handled by your old office; I've instructed them to report to you, but there haven't been any problems. The Chinese are still trying to get their hands on the pregnant one, and the damn Floridians are pissing and moaning about letting their General Delasquez get killed. Or abandoned. Or whatever happened to him up there."

  She thought for a moment, then leaned back and smiled. "So what about it, Hilda? How do you like life in the fast track?"

  The answer was "very little"; but all Hilda said was, "I'd rather be out in the field."

  Daisy said sympathetically, "I felt that way, too, at first, but you get used to it. And there's a time to settle down, isn't there? Listen, while I think of it, my husband and I were wondering if you'd like to come over for dinner-"

  Hilda goggled at her. Husband? When had that happened? And what did Daisy want one of those things for?

  "-maybe tonight? You've never seen our house, have you? So, about eight? And there's somebody Frank and I would like you to meet."

  All the way out to Camp Smolley Hilda was fuming to herself. Time to settle down? Time to turn into another Daisy Fennell? The worst part of it was that she hadn't ducked fast enough. Now she was committed to dinner with Daisy and Frank and Frank's really nice partner in the real-estate business, Richard, who had lost his wife to a mugger two years before and was just the kind of man Hilda ought to get to know.

  She swore under her breath. Then, as she drove up to the entrance of the old biowar establishment, it got worse. There was a Police Corps lieutenant directing traffic at the turnoff, impatiently waving Hilda away with the other commuters until he saw her uniform. Then he saluted and allowed her to enter the public road that led to Smolley's access. But when she reached the gated drive to the labs there was half a company of police lining the far side of the road, across from the two-meter berm that surrounded Camp Smolley itself. Nearly a hundred picketers stood behind the police line, shouting and waving banners: Beware the Antichrist from Space! God Is Not Mocked! There Is Only One True Word! And one other small group, shooed away from the other by the police, who had a different crusade on their minds. Their placard read: Free Dopey and the Docs!

  10 A.M. Traffic Advisory

  No bomb or free-fire zones have been declared in the District or immediate environs.

  There is unusual crowd activity at the White House and in the vicinity of the National Bureau of Investigation headquarters in Arlington. At present the situation is orderly, but alternate routes are advisable.

  (Consult Maryland and Virginia notices for other areas involved.)

  Damn these people! How did they know? The aliens had been moved here under the tightest security the Bureau could provide… but here were the protesters.

  Naturally the protesters had no hope of getting into the biowar plant itself. Even Brigadier Hilda Morrisey couldn't pass until she parked her car and went through a metal detector, a patdown and a Bureau cadet with a sniffer like a portable vacuum cleaner to make sure there were no traces of banned chemicals on her person. Then they wouldn't let her take her car the remaining half kilometer to the building proper. "There'll be a shuttle van here in a moment, ma'am," the guard officer said. "You can wait inside if you like. Welcome to Camp Smelly."

  She didn't like. She did it anyway, sitting with an unwatched news screen for entertainment. It wasn't entertaining; what was on at the moment was an interview with that Colonel What's-his-name Du-something, the French astronaut-or would-be astronaut, because as far as Hilda could tell he had never actually been in space. The interview was in French, but after the first few seconds an English voice-over translated his words. "We will be ready to launch to the so-called Starlab within the next few days," he said. "The American threat? It is pure braggadocio. I am not afraid. They dare not shoot us down; there are no national boundaries in space, and we have as much right to go there as they do."

  "Son of a bitch," Hilda said out loud, startling the lieutenant, who had come in to get out of the damp chill. "Oh, not you," she said, waving at the screen. "That son of a bitch. And those sons of bitches across the road, too."

  "Oh, don't worry about those people, ma'am," the lieutenant said earnestly. "Do you see that berm out there? Surrounds the whole base, and there isn't only full electronic surveillance, it's mined. Antipersonnel mines. Squirrels and birds won't trigger them-though we got a deer once-but I guarantee none of those creeps will get through. And here comes your van."

  ^^he never got a chance to tell the man

  that what she was worrying about wasn't the protestors breaking into Camp Smolley, it was how they had known enough to be there in the first place. When she got out of the van she was searched again before she was allowed to go through the ostensibly simple wooden door of the ostensible ancient mansion-neither of which had ever fooled anyone-and then had to be searched one more time before she was allowed to pass through the real door, bank-vault thick, ponderously opening on its huge hinges with a hiss of air being admitted to the lowered-pressure anteroom behind it.

  None of that was really necessary, of course. No one thought there was any real need for Category Five containment for Dopey and the two Docs. If the things had brought any horrible alien plagues to Earth with them there had been plenty of opportunities to spread the disease before they ever saw Camp Smolley. But the director had decreed Category Five containment.

  Hilda would have done the same. Not for any epidemiological need, but just to cover your butt for the congressional inquiry that sooner or later was sure to come.

  Hilda's heavy uniform coat was taken away from her and then she was allowed into the wing where the aliens were housed. The warmth was wonderful, after the damp cold of outdoors, but suddenly Camp Smelly began to deserve its old nickname. The stench of alien metabolism was startling. In one room the two Docs were kept, one characteristically standing immobile, the other very uncharacteristically lying on a pallet on the floor, with two or three medics hovering around. The cadet who was guiding her explained, "It's diarrhea, Brigadier Morrisey. They were trying to get some minerals into their diet. They think it was the soluble calcium and iron that did it. Now Captain Terman's waiting for you in the laboratory."

  There were two more armed guards in front of the laboratory door, but they stepped aside to let Hilda and the cadet enter. The stink of the laboratory was different from the one that came from the sick Doc, but not a lot more pleasant; it seemed to come from an opened canister. Captain Terman stood there, watching a medic carefully measure out spoonfuls of what looked like lavender slime. The stuff had orange-and-black lumps in it, and it smelled like a brewery.

  Charity-at a Price!

  When the High Governor's office announced that our
brothers to the North were graciously willing to remove the "device" that was implanted in the brain of our brave astronaut, General Martin Delasquez, they were polite about it. They did not mention that the Yankee authorities have presented a rather large bill for the "costs" of these services.

  If our information is correct, the only "services" the Washington government will contribute is the provision of a room for the operation to take place in. The actual surgery will not be done, in fact cannot be done, by any North American. It will be performed by the very "Doc" creature which General Delasquez himself did so much to bring to us. So once again we Floridians learn that "gifts" from the North are never without a price.

  – El Diario, Miami, Florida

  The captain was an elderly man, even more past his proper age-in-grade than Hilda had been, and he waited until the canister had been capped before he turned to greet her. "Sorry I couldn't meet you myself, ma'am," he said, not really sounding very sorry at all, "but they're very strict about how much of this we can give them at a serving. Has the cadet told you what we do here?"

  "I can see what you do here," Hilda said, looking around. "Show me what else you do, then I want to talk to Dopey."

  What they were doing was a lot. Through a plate-glass window she got a look at a sterile-environment biology lab. Everyone inside wore clean suits and face masks; one woman was starting a centrifuge, two men were titrating drops of something into Petri dishes of something else; three other people, including Dr. ben Jayya, were clustered around a screen with dancing curves of red and blue and green- doing what Hilda could not guess. (But didn't think she needed to, since this was the sort of thing Camp Smolley was supposed to be best at.) In another room there was a long table that contained half a dozen objects, mostly metal. They were not any kind of objects Hilda had ever seen before; with a shock, she realized these were some of the things the rocket had brought back from Starlab. Inside a containment hood two technicians were carefully dismantling a six-sided gold-colored object the size of a hatbox. "Dopey says it's a recording unit," Captain Terman told her. "Wait a minute, I'll give you a better look."

  He turned on a wall screen, and she was looking down into something that didn't look like any recording unit she had ever seen. No revolving spool, no drive heads; what was coming out of the machine, layer by layer, was a succession of flat, thin hexagonal things that looked more like filter paper than any mechanical device, but in half a dozen different colors, some of them faintly glowing. "We have three of these," Captain Terman said with satisfaction, "so we figured we could try to take one apart. That other stuff? Junk, mostly. That long green thing looks like a crowbar. If you ask me, that's what it is. There's no internal mechanism at all. Do you want to see Dopey now?

  "Probably. What's he doing?"

  "Being debriefed, of course. Wait a minute, I'll show you." The captain touched the controls again, and Dopey appeared. The little alien was perched glumly on a chair, surrounded by his debriefers. His cat whiskers were drooping and his fan had turned leaden gray. He was talking in a low monotone, and when Hilda tried to make out what he was saying she frowned. "Is that Spanish he's talking? Why?"

  The captain looked unhappy. "He said he was tired of speaking English, and both Herrera and Ortiz are bilingual. He was quite insistent. He's not easy to get along with, ma'am." He looked aggrieved. "You know that belly bag of his?"

  It wasn't the most sensible question anyone could ask; Hilda was looking right at the thing. "What about it?"

  "Well, the lab people want it for study. Only he won't let us take it."

  "The last man to try that," Hilda said, remembering the flight back from Calgary, "nearly got electrocuted."

  "Yes, ma'am. They know that, but they think they could use insulated tongs or something. Funny thing is, it doesn't seem to shock him, you know? I can't figure that part out. Anyway, he complains that our tests-they've been going over it with radiation counters and things-the tests are depleting its power reserve, and he can't live without it."

  "Do we have any idea whether that's true?"

  "No, ma'am. Only one way to find out, though-take it away from him and see if he dies. But I can't do that without orders."

  Hilda nodded, eyeing the man. She wasn't going to be the one to get him off the hook; if someone ever gave that order, it wouldn't be Hilda Morrisey. "We'll let that go for a while. Let's go see him."

  As soon as Dopey saw Hilda he pushed his way past his debriefers and scurried over to her. "Colonel Morrisey, you must help me!-what?" He paused to listen to something one of the debriefers said in Spanish, then apologized. "Oh, it is now Brigadier Morrisey, my congratulations. Please make these people understand that we are starving! We must return to the Starlab and get more of our food."

  "You have food," Captain Terman said quickly, glancing at Hilda.

  "It is not food! It is certainly not our food-a teaspoon of that at a time, that's all you give us-and that other stuff will kill us. You see what happened to my poor bearer!"

  "It is only diarrhea," the captain said. "The medics say he'll be better as soon as he gets it out of his system."

  "And what if I get it, too?" Dopey bristled his whiskers at them. "I do not like to complain, Brigadier Morrisey, but these people simply do not know me. Can you not have one of the Dr. Adcocks come here? Or even an Agent Dannerman? Someone with whom I have been through adversity, who appreciates the sacrifices I have made? Who would surely not allow these people to give us such foul food?"

  Hilda was losing patience. "Shut up about the food for a while," she commanded.

  "But I cannot! It is not as though I am asking you for something on my own behalf alone, Brigadier Morrisey! If you go to the Starlab orbiter, there is more than food there, there are wonderful things. Things that will be of great value to you! I have given Captain Terman a complete inventory-"

  She turned to the captain, who looked defensive. "He gave us some kind of a list, sure but it's gibberish. I didn't bother passing it along, because who can make sense out of 'quantum pseudo-rationalizer' and things like that?"

  "It is not my fault that your language does not contain terms for truly advanced technology," Dopey said.

  "I want that list," Hilda ordered crisply. "Do we at least know what the things look like? When we do go back to Starlab, we'll want to know what's what."

  "I could ask him to describe them all," the captain said doubtfully.

  "Describe? But why do I not have my bearer simply draw pictures of them for you?" Dopey said eagerly.

  "I thought he was sick."

  "It is the medical one who is sick. Do you see what your diet is doing to us? Oh, please, Brigadier Morrisey! Give us proper food! And arrange a flight to Starlab so that we can get more!" And added as an afterthought, "And, please, please, do instruct one of the Dr. Ad-cocks to come here so I will have the company of at least one person who understands me!"

  Before Hilda left Camp Smolley the captain had managed to turn up drawing materials and she had the satisfaction of seeing the uninfected golem begin to turn out meticulous sketches of strange-looking machines. "I want these copied and couriered to me every day," she ordered. "This isn't satisfactory performance, Captain! Why haven't you done this before?"

  Mr. Sanjit Rao: "Will the delegate from the Estonian Republic yield?"

  Mme. P.T. Padrylys: "No, I will not yield to the delegate from Sri Lanka. The Estonian Republic cannot allow this inquiry by a few large powers to the exclusion of the smaller nations, whose right to the fruits of any technology arising from interplanetary activities is clearly delineated in General Assembly Resolutions 2357, 3102 and 3103, and on this subject I have a right to be heard."

  The President: "The delegate from the Estonian Republic has indeed a right to be heard. However, her time has expired, and if we don't get on with this hearing, we will be here all day."

  – Proceedings of the General Assembly

  He looked hangdog. "There's been so much to do," he complain
ed. "You didn't even hear about the war stories he was telling-"

  "War stories?"

  "Stories you wouldn't believe, ma'am. We've got them all recorded if you want to hear them-"

  She did want to hear them. She was running late, would have to go directly home to change for Daisy's damn dinner party, but she waited an extra ten minutes while one of the techs produced the chip with the interrogation records on it, and then she got out of there. There would certainly have to be a lot of changes at Camp Smolley, she thought as she drove back onto the road.

  When she could switch the car to automatic she popped the chip into the car's player…

  The man had been right. The stories were hard to believe. They weren't war as Hilda Morrisey knew war. They were stories of annihilation, of whole planets destroyed by dropping asteroids onto them, even of whole solar systems wiped out by making a sun go nova. The people of those planets weren't human, of course. But they were, so Dopey had said, quite intelligent, quite civilized, quite advanced cultures which had simply refused to accept the Scarecrows as their masters.

  So there was an actual war going on, and it was universe wide.

  She sighed and turned off the player. Not one word of it sounded plausible to her. It was the kind of children's fantasy you came across on the television when you were idly hunting for something worth watching… and immediately moved to the next channel. It couldn't be true. The astronomers had been definite about that. The universe was not going to recollapse in the first place. And if it did, it surely would not bring about the miraculous rebirth of everyone who had ever lived… a category which, for Hilda, included a fair number of people whose deaths she had personally helped to bring about, and certainly did not wish ever to meet again.