The Far Shore of Time e-3

by Pohl Frederik

  I blinked at that. “You let her operate on him?”

  “I had no choice, Dannerman. It was clear that she knew what she was doing, and the medical attention was urgently needed. Then she came with us to care for him on the trip.”

  “But I thought you were the medical one-“

  “Only for dealing with your species, Dannerman. I have been given no skills for my own.”

  Beert had been standing behind me, listening. Now his neck snaked over my shoulder and his little head twisted to peer side-wise into mine. “May I speak now, Dan?” he asked, sounding sorrowful but resigned. “I do not complain, but can you tell me what place we have arrived at? And for what purpose?”

  It was a tall order, but I did my best to pass on to him-adding apologies every few sentences-what Hilda and Patrice had explained to me: We were at a research facility devoted to analyzing the technology of the Others, where he and the Docs would be-I took a moment over the choice of words-would be cared for, I said. I didn’t want to say “imprisoned.”

  The hard part of answering his question was when it came to purpose. I didn’t know what the Bureau had in mind for him, and didn’t much like my suspicions. While I was stumbling over that, the deputy director stuck his nose down the hatch. “What’s going on?” he demanded suspiciously. “Come on out of there! Bring those-things-out with you.”

  That sounded like a good idea. The stink was getting to me. Been and the Docs followed me up the ladder agilely enough and in a moment we were all standing uneasily on the slippery, rounded deck of the sub, which had not been intended for anybody to stand on. I could see Patrice standing down below, a few feet from the big wheeled dolly the sub was resting on. The plump black woman was beside her, and Patrice’s mouth was open in wonder as she saw Beert. Pell nudged me, pointing to the exterior ladder. “Get them down there!” he ordered. And when I added a few sentences to the Horch translation of his order, trying to reassure them, Pell demanded, even more suspiciously than before: “What are you saying to them?”

  “I’m telling them what you said,” I informed him.

  “All right,” he grumbled, “but I want you to translate every damn word both ways, do you hear me? Now move it, all of you.

  When we were all on the ground he hadn’t finished giving orders. “You!” he barked at me. “Go see the doctor.”

  He was pointing to the black woman standing with Patrice. Pell did not choose to mention what I was supposed to see her about. Before I could ask, he was already stalking away, barking orders at everyone in sight. When I got there, Beert and the Docs trailing after, Patrice’s eyes were all on Beert, but she hadn’t forgotten her manners. “This is Colonel Marsha Evergood, Dan. She’s a neurosurgeon.”

  I shook her hand. “I hear you have a side specialty in amputating Doc limbs,” I said.

  She acknowledged the remark with a grin. “It happens I’m the world’s greatest expert on Doc anatomy, Agent Dannerman. I didn’t plan it that way, but I’ve debugged one and autopsied another. Now will you hold still for a minute?”

  She didn’t wait for an answer. She reached under my babushka to run her fingers over the thing behind my right ear. Marcus Pell came up behind me as she felt and peered and poked. “Well?” he demanded testily.

  The doctor withdrew her hand and gave me a friendly pat on the shoulder. She pursed her lips, considering. “I can’t say for sure without X rays and an ultrasound and maybe a little exploratory surgery, but I’d say it’s architecturally similar to the Scarecrow bugs. If so, it has probably invaded a lot of tissue. I doubt I could remove it without risking serious brain damage.”

  “Hey,” I squawked, pulling away. Pell didn’t even look at me.

  “So you think he’s transmitting everything he sees?” he asked.

  Marsha Evergood shrugged, so I answered for her. “No! I’m not transmitting anything! It’s nothing like that. It isn’t a spy bug! It’s made by the Horch, not the, uh, Scarecrows, and all it does is give me their language.”

  He gave me a glance that time, but didn’t respond. The doctor patted my hand reassuringly. I thought what she was trying to tell me was that she wasn’t going to turn me into a slobbering idiot with her scalpels, no matter what Marcus Pell wanted. At least I hoped so.

  Anyway, whatever decision he might have wanted to make got deferred by another call on his attention. The duty crew had been carrying bits and pieces of loose equipment-including my sack of Horch goodies-out of the sub. They were stacking it all on the floor next to a Bureau van, but they came to a stop. The officer in charge hurried over, looking worried. “Deputy Director? I don’t think we can lift the big cadaver without more men, and we’d better get it into refrigeration pretty fast.”

  For a moment it occurred to me to volunteer the Docs for the job, which they could have handled easily, but Pell was already gone to sort this new problem out. Anyway, I wasn’t in a mood to do him any favors, and I had something else I wanted to do. I beckoned Pirraghiz and Beert to come forward. “Patrice,” I said, “I’d like you to meet my two best friends.”

  She stumbled over their names, but gamely stuck her hand out. Being a considerate person, Pirraghiz barely touched Patrice’s hand with her enormous, taloned fist, but Beert wrapped one snaky arm around it. He kept his eyes on her but slid his head up close to mine, whispering. When I answered Patrice spoke up. “What were you saying?” she demanded.

  “Oh, well,” I said, trying to think of a lie, deciding to tell her the truth, “he, uh, wanted to know if you were the human female I was talking about back in his nest.”

  “And you said?”

  I shrugged and stuck with the truth. “I said, more or less.”

  “Ah,” she said, nodding. “More or less.” Then she added, in a tone of friendly curiosity, “Tell me something, Dan. Why do you wriggle your arms and neck that way when you talk to your friends?”

  She caught me by surprise. “Do I? I never noticed it. Maybe I’m just sort of copying the way Beert talks.”

  “You ought to try to stop it. It looks pretty dumb.” And the look she was giving me that time had no suggestion of kissing in it.

  By then the cleanup crew had loaded the casualties onto a couple of waiting gurneys-and a hand truck for the dead Doc-and Marcus Pell was peremptorily calling my name again. “Those robot machine things in the sub,” he said, sounding harried. “The crew’s afraid to touch them. Can you make them come out?”

  I shook my head. “No, but Beert can. Give me a minute.” Beert and I climbed back onto the deck, and he called his orders down through the hatch. Both the robots immediately came to life. I wasn’t sure how the Christmas tree was going to manage the two ladders, up and down, but it simply extruded four or five more branches and whisked itself along, the fighter robot following briskly.

  “Tell them to get in the van,” Pell ordered when they were down. I opened my mouth to ask why, but he didn’t give me a chance. “Do it!” he barked. And while they were doing it, impassive as ever, he climbed onto a crate. “Listen up, all of you!” he called. Those high-ranking workmen stopped what they were doing and turned toward him. “You will not, repeat not, ever under any circumstances mention to anyone at all the fact that you have seen any of this Horch technology. The Scarecrow stuff is different; that’s covered by the treaty, and in a minute we’ll let the UN people and everybody else in this project in to see it. Nothing about the Horch! Understand me? This is a national security matter, and violation carries a death penalty. Plus,” he added savagely, “I will make you pray for the firing squad long before the sentence is carried out.” He met the eyes of everybody in the loading area, then jumped down and turned to me. “Tell your Horch friend to get in the van, too,” he ordered.

  That was pushing it a step too far. I didn’t know what Pell was up to, but I didn’t feel like going along with it. I said, “No.”

  Pell looked as astonished as though a waiter had turned down his request for a clean spoon. “What the hell d
o you mean, no? That’s an order!”

  “No,” I said again. “Beert stays with me. I promised him.”

  The deputy director’s expression changed. He didn’t look angrier; he looked as though he had suddenly turned to ice. “I don’t give a shit what you promised that thing, Dannerman! I want him out of here before anybody else sees him. Do you want me to put you under arrest right now?”

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Hilda’s life-support box rolling toward me dangerously, but I ignored her. I said, “Well, Deputy Director, if that’s what you want to do, I guess I can’t stop you. I ought to remind you, though, that I’m the only one who can speak to these people. I don’t see how I could do that for you if you put me in a detention cell.” He stood silent for a moment, swallowing what I had said to him. It looked as though it might choke him. I went on, “Anyway, what’s the point? Why do you want this stuff taken away?”

  He glanced at Hilda, standing silently by, but didn’t say anything until he had finished processing the situation in his head. When he had made up his mind all he said was, “The Horch can stay. Just keep your mouth shut about the equipment.”

  I could feel Hilda’s warning eyes on me in spite of her oneway glass. I persisted anyway, “Yes, but why?”

  “Security,” he snapped.

  That puzzled me. “I don’t see the problem. Isn’t this place secure from the Scarecrows?”

  Pell had regained his composure. When he answered it was as though our little head-to-head had never happened. “It’s secure from the Scarecrows, sure-I hope. That’s not the problem. Camp Smolley is full of UN personnel and I don’t want them nosing around the Horch materiel. It’s bad enough we have to share the Scarecrow technology with them.”

  That was even more of a puzzle. “Why are you worrying about the UN? I thought the Scarecrows were the enemy.”

  Pell gave me the kind of look a kindergarten teacher might give to a child who hadn’t covered his coughs and sneezes. “They’re the present enemy, Dannerman. Who knows who our friends are going to be when this is over? Remember what country pays your salary, and keep your priorities straight!”

  That was the end of the discussion. Pell turned away and gestured to the van driver, who started up and drove away through a smaller door to the outside.

  Then, paying no further attention to me, Pell called to the guard at the inside door: “Open up! Let’s let the rest of the team come in and see what we’ve got!”

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  I don’t know how many people had been waiting impatiently on the other side of those doors, maybe a hundred or more. They came pouring in, full of indignation at being kept outside, even more full of astonishment when they saw what was waiting for them. The ones in front stopped short, goggling, until the ones behind pushed them forward. There was a curious sort of collective sigh. Then some rushed toward the sub and a dozen or so zeroed in on Marcus Pell, full of complaints and accusations. A tall woman in a sari got to him first. “I must protest this unnecessary delay, Deputy Director Pell!” she snapped sternly. “Under the terms of the UN covenant we are entitled to immediate access to every item of Scarecrow technology, without delay!” And a man, in the uniform of some army I didn’t recognize but wearing a blue United Nations beret, backed her up: “I have already filed a protest because your people did not allow UN observers to be present when this submarine was landed!”

  Pell wasn’t fazed. He’d had plenty of practice in dealing with indignant foreigners who were pissed off at something the Bureau had done. He spread his hands benignly. “I understand your concerns, Major Korman, Doctor Tal, but these are exceptional circumstances. The Scarecrows don’t know we have captured this sub, and they mustn’t find out. So we have had to take unusual security precautions-“

  He didn’t stop there, but I stopped listening. I had a nearer problem. Several dozen of the new people had circled my little group, staring in fascination at their first sight of a real, live Horch. A couple of them were cameramen, shooting from every angle, and when Beert saw the lenses pointing at him he couldn’t help flinching away. Pirraghiz and the wounded Doc, Wrahrrgherfoozh, saw what was happening and moved to surround Beert protectively, but the audience was all raucously shouting questions: Did they speak English? What happened to the big one’s arm? How come the other Doc was wearing clothes? Were they dangerous?

  I tried to reassure Beert and Pirraghiz and at the same time keep the more adventurous of the spectators from reaching out to touch Beert, but it was Hilda, the expert in crowd control, who rescued us. She produced four Bureau police to surround us and then-she must have turned up the gain on her internal microphone-she thundered at the people:

  “Don’t come too close! There’s a risk of communicable diseases.” With the help of the police, that made them fall back a little. She added, more civilly, “When they’ve been examined you will have your proper access to them, and before that we’ll arrange for Agent Dannerman to meet with you in the auditorium to tell his story.”

  She didn’t give me a chance to react to that. While the police were moving the spectators away she came up close to me and, said softly, “I’d go easy on telling Marcus to go screw himself if I were you, Danno. You’re not making any friends for yourself that way.”

  She was telling me what I knew already. I shrugged. “I already have all the friends I need.”

  She was silent for a moment. Then she said, “Maybe you do. It’s a good thing for you that I’m one of them.” And then, with a change of tone, “Anyway, here comes our transportation.”

  The transportation was one of those electric-motored people carriers you see in airports. It was big enough to hold all of us-including the Docs, though just barely. With a couple of Bureau uniformed police ahead of us to clear the way we moved pretty fast out of the loading area, through the halls of Camp Smolley. Hilda wasn’t on the vehicle and didn’t need to be; her box’s wheels kept up easily as she rolled along behind us. Behind her still half a dozen more guards were following, half-trotting to keep up; most of them wore the blue UN berets. All the way the two Docs were mewing to each other, taking a lively interest in the rooms they passed, the fire extinguishers on the walls, the water fountains, the ceiling-mounted TV screens at every intersection that were all displaying the scene in the loading dock, though no human beings were present in the halls to watch them because everybody who could get there was there already. Beert was darting his head in every direction, too, and full of questions. I couldn’t tell him much. I’d never been in Camp Smolley before either.

  I knew right away when we got to the rooms they had reserved for my friends, though, because two people were standing in front of one of the doors. One was a blue-beret guard, looking uneasy, and the huge figure next to him was unmistakably a Doc. I was astonished to see him there, but Pirraghiz saw him at the same moment I did and her reaction was a lot more violent. She screamed something and leaped off the carrier-I thought she was going to overturn the thing-and flung herself into the other one’s arms, the two of them mewing at high volume at each other. I got off, too, turning to Hilda. “Oh, right,” I said, memory returning at last. “There were a couple of Docs with the bunch that escaped from the prison planet, the escape party, weren’t there?”

  “Two of them. The other one’s dead,” she said shortly. “This one we call Meow; he’s been helping out figuring how the Scarecrow stuff works-can’t talk so anybody can understand him, but he’s good at drawing pictures. Tell your Horch friend this is where he’s going to live for a while.”

  For a while. When I looked inside I hoped that “for a while” would be really brief, because the room they wanted him in was not attractive. It was a damn jail cell, is what it was. It had bars on its one window, and a lidless open toilet, and a washstand, and a narrow cot. That was all.

  Hilda was watching my face. “Tell him it’s only temporary,” she suggested.

  I looked at her. “Yeah, sure,” I said. I did tell Been: that. Wh
at I didn’t tell him was how long “only temporary” was likely to be in government practice. I glossed it over as fast as I could, and tried to explain to him how the toilet worked, and offered to get more blankets for his cot if he wanted them, and promised I would see him as often as I could-I didn’t then realize how intensive the questioning was that lay ahead of us, and therefore how often that would be.

  Beert listened in silence, head hung low, ropy arms wrapped around his belly for protection. All he said, his voice low-pitched and somber, was, “What about food, Dan?”

  That took me aback. “Oh, hell,” I said. “Right. Food.” I hadn’t given that little problem any thought at all.

  So I asked Hilda for help. She wasn’t, much. “There’s plenty for the Docs and the Dopeys,” she told me. “The Scarecrows sent some food down for them-that’s how they sneaked their subs along. I don’t know about the Horch. What does he eat?”

  I turned to Pirraghiz for help. That took a little doing, because all three of the Docs were still excitedly mewing to each other. Wrahrrgherfoozh and the one they called Meow were hugging each other at that moment-by no means with the same passion as Pirraghiz had shown, but you can do a lot of hugging with six arms apiece, even if one of them is only a stump. When I got Pirraghiz’s attention and explained the problem, she looked remorseful. “I did not think, Dannerman,” she said sadly. “Let me ask the others.” They chattered back and forth for a moment, then she shook her massive head at me. “I am not sure,” she said. “Perhaps I can do for Djabeertapritch what I did for you in the nest of the Two Eights-get samples of all the foods your species eats, and see what among them resembles the foods of the Horch.”

  “I understand Meow has food of his own,” I said, pointing at the other Doc. “Maybe some of that can be used, or the food for the Dopeys.”

  She looked puzzled. “Perhaps,” she said, “but why do you call him that? It is Mrrranthoghrow.”