She hoped Merla Tepp had learned something from the exchange. The woman was clearly nervous, but that was not surprising in the presence of one of those bizarre freaks. Anyway, she controlled it well, at least until they reached the Docs' room. The great, pale golems were standing statue like as usual, a medic attendant sitting quietly in a corner of the room taking notes on their behavior-not that there was any behavior to note, Hilda thought. Then, as Tepp got her first good look at them, a flash of pure horror escaped her control for a moment.
Even Dopey noticed it, as he was trying to get up on his platform. Panting, he piped up, "Do not fear, Cadet Tepp. They will not harm you. The bearers are-were-a highly civilized, intelligent race. It is a pity that it was necessary to modify them, but now they can do nothing without orders. Please, will you help me up there? I am very fatigued."
Tepp hesitated. Annoyed, Hilda picked the little turkey up herself. She was surprised to find how light he was, and how hot his body.
He didn't speak, merely gazed at the nearest Doc. Who touched his white-foam "beard" ruminatively for a moment, then moved swiftly to the side of the attendant. Gently, but irresistibly, he took the notepad from the man and began to draw.
Tepp made a small, worried sound, then said tightly, "Excuse me, please, Brigadier." She fled. Hilda was annoyed. The smell was getting to her, of course, but she was not going to let it interfere with her job. And neither should Tepp. Hilda crowded over beside the Doc, watching in satisfaction as the creature swiftly began to draw a recognizable diagram of the recorder.
Twenty minutes later Hilda, clutching the first batch of drawings, found Merla Tepp waiting for her in the cold outside air.
Hilda gave her a curious look. "Are you all right?"
"Certainly, Brigadier. I'm sorry. It's just I thought I was starting my period."
Hilda looked her over more carefully, with dawning suspicion. She leaned forward and sniffed Tepp's lips. The odor was definite. "Do you always vomit when you're having your period?"
"No, Brigadier. I'm in excellent health. I think I may have eaten something-"
"I think," Hilda said sharply, "that you just can't stand touching the little freak. Is that it?"
Tepp was clearly shamefaced. "I'm uncomfortable, yes. I'm sorry."
"Sorry isn't good enough," Hilda said, meditating.
"Oh, please, ma'am, no!" Tepp begged, fully aware of what might be coming next. "I do dislike them, yes, but it doesn't interfere with my duties."
"What do you call what just happened?"
"I give you my word it won't happen again. Please, Brigadier! It means so much to me to have the chance to work with you-"
"Get in and drive," Hilda said, cutting the conversation short.
In a way she wasn't displeased. It wasn't entirely a bad thing for an American to loathe and despise aliens of any kind. But to take this one on as her aide?
That was going to take further thought. On the way back to the Bureau Hilda devoted herself to catching up on the news on the car's* screen. The UN was making trouble again; a speaker at a convention of police chiefs noted an encouraging drop in the number of terrorist actions in the past few weeks; nothing important, really. But she stayed with it, and did not speak again to Cadet Tepp.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
"Come on," Dannerman said to Pat Adcock, half-pulling her out of the car. They stood silent in the packed snow, while the hooded figure in the parka kept them covered with an assault rifle. It was a weapon Dannerman knew well-well enough to suppress any thought of resistance. "Just stand still," Vassili was whispering nervously. "Do not startle her; she is quite young, and may do something foolish."
Her? She? But when the person with the rifle stood up and waved them forward Dannerman saw that it was a woman, all right, in fact no more than a girl, long hair spilling out from beneath the hood of her parka. And suddenly she was not alone. A larger figure, definitely a man, definitely also carrying a rifle, came out of the door to join her. He said something peremptory in Ukrainian. Beside Dannerman the man named Vassili groaned, objected, surrendered. "He says to you must immediately take off your outer garments."
"Here?" Pat cried in surprise. "We'll freeze!"
"But," said Bogdan, his English worsening with strain, "must do it, get weapons of you." And suddenly he had them covered with a gun of his own.
They didn't freeze, though Dannerman's teeth were chattering by the time he had been patted down and his carry gun and radio transmitter removed. Then they were allowed into the house that stood all by itself on the desolate hill.
It was warm there. In fact, the house was a pleasant and wholly unanticipated oasis of comfort. They came in through a kitchen, complete with every device modern domestic technology had to offer; they entered a living room with a huge picture window and a wall screen, as well as two or three expensive exercise machines scattered among the pieces of also expensive furniture. The furniture was not in the least modern. It was the sort of thing one might have found in a home of nobility in czarist times, with a huge samovar on a table and an icon of some tortured saint hanging above it. Another man and another woman were there, chattering worriedly in Ukrainian to Bogdan and Vassili. There also was Dr. Rosaleen Artzybachova, looking not a bit different than the way she had appeared when Dannerman first saw her, in the office of the T. Cuthbert Dannerman Astrophysical Observatory in New York City. She was smiling. She clapped her hands and spoke sharply in Ukrainian. Then she advanced on Pat and Dannerman, hands outstretched. "This is a pleasure I had not expected," she said, kissing Pat, hesitating only a moment, then kissing Dannerman as well. "This is better than our cell on that planet, isn't it? Wait-" as Pat opened her mouth to speak. "Before we talk, there is a custom I want to observe-when I am in my home, you see," she added, half-apologetically, "I become very Ukrainian."
She beamed at the woman who had resignedly hurried into the kitchen, and was returning with a tray. Which contained-
"Bread and salt," Rosaleen said proudly. "It is what we do to welcome friends. And who could be closer friends than we, who lived in such proximity for so long? Eat a little, please. Then we can talk."
"No," Pat said suddenly.
Rosaleen paused with the tray in her hand to look at her. "No?" she repeated.
"No, we are not the ones who were in captivity with you, Rosaleen. We're the ones who were returned to Earth. And Dan is still a spook for the Bureau."
"Yes," Rosaleen said placidly. "I am aware of that." She set the tray down before them and retired to sit down. "Excuse, please, the fact that I am quite old and still a bit tired."
"You don't understand!" Pat said. "We aren't here just because we're your friends! We're here because this man has been ordered-"
Prison Cells from Space?
A source close to Sen. Eric Wintczak (D-IL) reports that the National Bureau of Investigation has identified a number of extraterrestrial technologies which it proposes to adapt for use in its own system. One is a sort of energy-field containment device to hold prisoners in an escape-proof cell while jailers and others can pass freely in and out, another is a way of using devices similar to the implants taken from the returnees to tap into the actual thoughts of the subject-a sort of mind control with unimaginable consequences for civil liberties.
-Washington (DC) Times-Post
But Rosaleen raised her hand to stop her. "My friends have told me about his orders, Pat, dear. They were given to him by some higher-up spook by the name of Brigadier Hilda Morrisey in the National Bureau of Investigations headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. This Brigadier Morrisey is afraid that I will give information away that the United States wishes to keep for itself, and so she has ordered young Dannerman here to come to my home and kill me." She sighed, shaking her ancient head. "I was going to ask you about that. But won't you for God's sake please sit down and eat some of the damn bread and salt first?"
Pat Adcock did as she was told. She didn't do it right away. She had expected a lot more
to happen after what she had said-something drastic, maybe. Certainly something. At least some kind of startled outburst from Rosaleen, perhaps some violent action from one of the zek children. What she had not expected was to discover that everyone present knew more about Dannerman's mission than she had.
"Eat," Rosaleen repeated testily, and so she ate. The bread was heavy, dark chunks cut from a round loaf; the salt wasn't the sort of thing you shook onto your French fries in America, but coarse crystals. It occurred to Pat that maybe there was something in the salt or the bread, some mood-altering chemical, maybe something like the date-rape stuff she had been warned against in college, something that would turn them into mere putty in the hands of these young Ukrainian zealots. But Dannerman seemed to have no such fears. He was chewing doggedly away on the tough bread, and she could read nothing from his expression. Nor did Rosaleen's guards reveal anything, except perhaps mild annoyance at the ritual. Then Rosaleen sighed.
"All right," she said, "now that we've all had a chance to settle down, would you like to explain yourself, Dan?"
He swallowed the last chunk of the bread. Then he said, "Sure. But I want you to do something first. Will you ask your friends to put their guns down? Better still, give them all to you-you do know how to use them, don't you?"
"Why should we do that?" the one named Vassili demanded suspiciously.
Dannerman shrugged. Rosaleen studied him for a moment, then spoke. "Let's do as he says, Vass. Give me yours and pile the rest of them in front of me."
Vassili looked rebellious, then complied. Pat, trying to guess what Dannerman had in mind, had a sudden thought. "Be careful! He's got a bomb-bugger, too!"
Dannerman gave her a curious look, but slowly, carefully, tugged at the waistband of his trousers, revealing the little holster. "That's right. I want you to take this one, too, and give it to Rosaleen. Then we should all back away and give her a clear field of fire."
"And at whom should I fire, Dan?" Rosaleen asked, sounding amused.
"Why, that's up to you. You see, you're right. I did get orders from Hilda Morrisey, and they were to keep whatever information you have about Scarecrow technology from falling into the hands of the Greater Ukraine terrorists. The guys," he amplified, "who already stole the bug that was in the other Rosaleen. They think you can help them take it apart."
"Me? I can't."
Dannerman nodded. "I don't think you could, either. But they don't know that."
"So you were going to shoot me with that thing?"
"That was one of Hilda's options," Dannerman admitted. "It wasn't mine. I was pretty sure you'd agree to be rescued. That radio you took away from me? It's to call a plane to pick us up. Then the three of us, you and me and Pat, will fly to Vienna and then to the States. The Bureau can keep you safe there."
"Safer than I am here with my friends?" Rosaleen asked skeptically.
"Well, yes. A lot safer. You see, at least one of your friends is a terrorist."
Of course, that really hit the fan. All four of the zek children were shouting at once-mostly in Ukrainian, but Pat didn't need a translator to get the gist. The big one, Vassili, was standing up and pleading with Rosaleen.
But Rosaleen was shaking her head. "Stay where you are, Vass, please," she said. "I see now why Dan wanted me to have all the guns-assuming, of course, that he's telling the truth."
"Afraid so," Dannerman said. "Figure it out for yourself, Rosaleen. How did they know what my orders were?"
Steam gun. This hand weapon, colloquially known as the "bomb-bugger," contains reservoirs for two hypergolic liquids which, when mixed, produce a rapid evolution of steam, propelling a droplet of liquid at a muzzle velocity high enough to wound or kill an opponent. Since the weapon contains no nitrogenous chemicals and no metal parts, it is a favored handgun for concealment. The colloquial name derives from the bombardier beetle, an Asian insect which uses a similar system to stun and capture its prey.
"You tell me."
"Because the damn terrorists have managed to get inside information from the Bureau. I don't know how. But they have, and that's how the Greater Ukraine guys knew."
"But these are my friends!" Rosaleen protested. "I trust them, and anyway that doesn't make sense. They've had all the time they need to kidnap me if they're terrorists."
"Oh, not all of them," Dannerman said. "I think only one. Which one? I don't know that, but probably you do. Which is the one who told you about my orders?"
And every eye in the room turned on little Marisa, who began to cry. "But we never would have hurtyou," she managed to get out between sobs, and Rosaleen put down the gun to take the young woman in her arms.
"My dear," she said, patting her back. "I am sure that is what you intended, but can you speak for all the others? You must tell us all you know."
"They were coming for you tonight," Marisa said. "They waited until now because they wanted to take gospodin Dannerman as well, as a hostage. I was supposed to-well, I wouldn't actually have shot any of you, I swear that. But I was to make sure no one resisted."
CHAPTER TWENTY
Hilda Morrisey put the team meeting off as late as possible, because it had been one of those days. It wasn't just trying to deal with that temperamental freak, Dopey, or getting rid of the battalion of time-wasters who managed to track her down with one damn request or another. (The worst was the psychologist from Harvard who demanded-damn well demanded-that she give him access to the four Pats, or at least to the two Dannermans, because they were absolutely essential to his ongoing twin studies-and had both the Massachusetts senators insisting that she help the man any way she could.) There was still no word from Danno in Ukraine, either. And the deputy director was in a towering rage . . . and now each last member of the Ananias team was insisting on making demands of their own. Marsha Evergood: "You must let me borrow the medical Doc to see what he can do with some of our terminal cases." The astronomer: "If you want me to find the Scarecrow comet-thing you must make every large optical telescope in the country concentrate on checking for possible objects." The man from State: "We must know how to respond to this note from the Albanians by tonight-"
They all had one "must" after another, and, of course, they all had to take time to explain why their particular urgency was more urgent than anybody else's. Even the ones whose problems Hilda could do nothing about. The Albanian note was the deputy director's concern, not hers, but it wound up in her lap because the man from State hadn't been able to reach Marcus Pell.
That wasn't surprising. The note from Albania was one of the two things that were making Pell crazy because it was clearly the tip of the iceberg; every damn pip-squeak country in the United Nations was demanding a share in whatever came out of Starlab, under threat of using their collective veto to make sure none of the big nations got any either.
Well, some good, old-fashioned political horse-trading would eventually settle that. It could probably be handled with a bunch of promises, which might or might not have to be kept. But what about the other thing that fed the deputy director's fury? It wasn't a thing, exactly; it was Senator Alicia Piombero, who had most injudiciously spoken off the record to somebody who had turned around and put it on the record; and so the day's crop of news stories. NBI's New Spy Machine. Tomorrow's Prisons in the Bureau. How Scarecrow Machines Threaten American Liberties.
It didn't surprise Hilda that Senator Piombero chose to miss that afternoon's meeting of the team. She wished they all had; and when at last she was able to adjourn it she breathed a sigh of relief. She checked herself out and headed for home; because this was the evening she had resolved to take for herself, in order to deal with something quite personal and not very far from urgent.
Medical Report For Bureau Eyes Only
Agents assigned to Walter Reed Hospital report that the "medical Doc" has effected a number of apparent remissions in terminally ill patients. (Copies of charts are appended.) Some patients resisted receiving this "therapy" as an apparent "laying o
n of hands," but blood work and gross physical studies indicate real changes. It is suggested that the "Doc" secretes some form of metabolically active biochemicals, administered through small penetrations from the talons in his smaller arms. Attempts to secure samples of these chemicals, if any, have been unsuccessful. The cure rate, however, is significant, especially in intractable cases of immune deficiency, carcinomas and most antibiotic-resistant infectious diseases. His major failures have been on patients who already have had surgical intervention, for example cardiac-bypass procedures.
Brigadier Morrisey was not really off duty very often-she generally kept herself on call, and certainly kept informed of what was happening in her personal turf in the Bureau. But when she was off duty, she was all the way off. When she got out of her swirl tub she stood before the full-length mirror in her bath and studied herself critically for several minutes before beginning to dress. First came the underthings that no one in the Bureau would ever have imagined her wearing, the negligible panty-belt and the pushup half-bra that didn't really need to do much pushing. (But, at Hilda Morrisey's well-concealed age, she took all the help she could get.) The blouse was windowed silk, the kind that opened its mesh revealingly when the wearer was warm, as she had every hope she would be in the bar she had chosen for the evening. The skirt was mid-thigh length, not a practical choice for a Washington winter, but she had a long thermal coat to get her to and from her car.
The pickup bar she had selected was more than twenty kilometers from her little apartment. It was over the Maryland line, but conveniently close to the Outer Belt. Hilda was as careful about choosing a territory for hunting purposes as about dressing for the occasion. Most important, it had to be a place where she had never, or almost never, been before and where she thus was not known. And it had to have, in the background files of the local police, a reputation as a law-abiding and reasonably orderly singles bar. It didn't have to be fancy. Hilda had no prejudices about the economic status of her sexual partners. But it had to be fight-free and clean.
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