Eschaton 1 – The Other End of Time

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?"

That got several answers; the habit of talking in chorus was contagious, Pat thought. Jimmy Lin, giggling, said, "You've been abducted by space aliens," and Rosaleen said compassionately, "That's a long story," and Dannerman proposed, "You go first, please? Tell us everything that happened. It might be important. Then we'll tell you everything we know."

Pat Adcock listened to her duplicates talk she discovered a strange feeling in herself. It was pride. She was proud of herself-of her two new selves. They were less than an hour in this bizarre and terrifying new place, and yet they were managing to tell a coherent story. Oh, with repetitions and interruptions, of course-many interruptions- but it showed, she was gratified to think, some real strength of character.

The first thing her two duplicates remembered was waking up; they had been lying on what the first new Pat described as a kind of army cot and the other as a morgue slab. There were aliens all around them, and they weren't just the Dopey and the Docs that stripped them and convoyed them to the cell. "I saw one of the ones they call 'Bashful,' " the other said. "You know, the ones with the big eyes and the dewlaps that cover their faces? He was doing something with a big machine that looked kind of like a refrigerator. What? Oh, I don't know what, but he was making lights go on and off-the lights were in that green jelly stuff, you know? Like we saw on Starlab. A lot of it was like on Starlab." They hadn't observed their surroundings very closely, because as soon as they were awakened they were unceremoniously stripped by the Docs. And their necks hurt, they said, rubbing them reminiscently. "Let me see," Rosaleen ordered, and Jimmy Lin chimed in, "Me, too!"

"Knock it off," Pat said wearily, elbowing him out of the way. She and Rosaleen bent to inspect the nape of the women's necks. "Here?" Pat asked, touching a vertebra.

"Up a little higher. There." Pat and Rosaleen studied the hairline-how neatly trimmed, Pat thought with a twinge of jealousy-but there was nothing to see.

"Maybe you bumped yourselves," Jimmy offered, crowding in to look. But they denied that.

Then, yes, the Dopey and the Docs had gone through their clothing and handed it back to them. "There was a whole pile of other clothes there," one remembered, and the other confirmed it.

"I saw something with a lot of braid on it-it looked like that jacket you're wearing, Martin. All in a heap, with a lot of other stuff. No, they weren't doing anything with it; it looked like they just tossed it there."

"Maybe they're making clean clothes for us," Pat said hopefully.

"Maybe." And then they were marched down a long, busy passage, lined with bizarre things that probably were machines, they thought, to the point where they saw all the rest of the captives. "Wall? No. I didn't see any wall. Not from the outside, not until we were inside here. No, it didn't look like glass. It didn't look like anything at all. All I saw was the bunch of you, playing cards or something, but it didn't look like you saw us… and then we were here and there were these big damn mirrors all around us."

"And those machines?" Rosaleen asked. "What did they look like?"

But she didn't get much of an answer. They had been too full of other questions for close study. One of the devices they passed was making a kind of coffee-percolator sound, one of the new Pats remembered, and the other said another one was giving off heat; but, "Just weird, you know? Like the stuff on Starlab." Then she pleaded, "Our turn now. What is this place?"

Pat took over. "Come over and sit down," she offered. "Want something to eat? Jimmy, make us some of that lousy coffee, anyway."

Pat Adcock, who had been an only child, had never had any experience with this sort of thing. She had never had sisters before, much less identical triplets. She was astonished to discover how much she liked it. There was something warmly pleasing about sitting with the two new versions of herself, the repulsive coffee cooling untasted in their hands, while she took over the job of briefing them.

There was a lot to be told. Pat had not realized just how much she and the other captives had had to learn in all those long days in the cell until she had to summarize it all for the two new Pats: their capture, their imprisonment, their futile attempts at escape-the whole disheartening story. It was bad enough for the original five captives, even worse for the new arrivals… who, Pat thought, not only had the shock of finding themselves in this bizarre new predicament, but also of suddenly being inexplicably part of a perfectly matched set of three.

They took it well, increasing Pat's pride in them. Took it well most of the time, anyway; not counting their outrage when she explained the toilet arrangements to them. They were almost (though not quite) as repelled when she told them that everything they did, all the time, was watched from outside the cell. "They have no right!" one of them exclaimed-barely before the other.

Pat sighed, sparing a quick look at Dannerman, who had written something on a scrap of paper and was holding it covered, impatiently waiting. "They have the power," she said. "I don't know about 'rights.' Except that we don't have any at all." And to Dannerman: "Is that what I think it is?"

"For the new ones," he said, handing it to Pat. She glanced at it: it was what she had expected, a synopsis of the parts of the briefing that were not to be spoken out loud.

She showed the newcomers the technique of managing to read it without ever letting it be exposed to hostile eyes. When the first one read it she said nothing, just looked affronted and unhappy when she passed it to the other. When the other finished she giggled wanly. "Passing notes back and forth," she said, "it's like being in school again."

"Only school was never like this," the other one agreed, and Pat marveled: they were thinking the same thoughts she had thought. Well, they would, wouldn't they? Being the same person… except for being a lot cleaner.

Which made her think of something. She glanced at the other captives, all of whom had edged close to listen in, and lowered her voice. "Listen," she said. "They left you your perfume, didn't they? Could one of you spare me a couple of drops?"

They could, and Jimmy Lin stepped closer, inhaling. "Ah," he said, "that's really fine. I'd almost forgotten what a woman was supposed to smell like."

Pat gave him a look of disgust. "Shoo," she ordered, and then, more politely, "All the rest of you, could you just leave us alone for a bit? So we can get used to this?"

The other three considerately took themselves over to the cooker, but Lin looked rebellious. "Who are you to give me orders, Ice Queen? Maybe these other ladies appreciate a little male attention."

"We don't," one of the others said briefly. "Get lost." When he moved sulkily away she stared after him. "What's the matter with him?"

"He's horny."

"Well, sure he's horny. He's always been horny, but he didn't use to act like that."

"Ah, no," Pat said, remembering. "Not quite as forthright, anyway. But that was then. You were his boss then. Now that doesn't matter anymore."

The other Pat was staring after Jimmy, who was now sulkily demanding his share of what was coming out of the cooker. "Speaking of that kind of thing… well," she said, now almost whispering, "excuse me for asking, but I don't suppose anybody's actually getting any, are they?"

"In this goldfish bowl? I wish."

"Because," the other went on, "I couldn't help seeing the way Dan-Dan looks at you, you know? Is something new going on with you two?"

Pat had to think about that one. "I wouldn't be surprised," she said finally, surprising herself. "He's not really a bad guy when you get to know him… I mean, not counting that he's a goddamn spy."

That took explanation, too. Everything did, not helped by the fact that the new arrivals not only looked the same but talked at the same time, with the same words, and then stopped and stared at each other. "Hell," Rosaleen said at last. "We've got to do something about telling you apart. Let's start by naming you. You"-the original-"you're Pat. And you"-the one nearest her-"you can be Patricia-"

"It's Patrice, actually," the two new ones said together.

"All right, Patrice. And you're Patsy."

The third one looked rebellious. "The hell you say! Nobody ever calls me Patsy!"

"Oh, come on," the Patrice said soothingly. "It's not so bad and Rosie's right about needing names."

The Patsy scowled. "So why don't you be Patsy, then?" Then she surrendered: "Oh, well, I guess it makes no difference, but you owe me."

"Fine," Rosaleen said, smiling for the first time. "That's settled: Pat, Patrice and Patsy. Now, hold still." She was pulling out her multicolor pen. "Just so the rest of us can know which of you is which I'm going to put a little beauty spot on your foreheads."

"Hey!" both of them protested at once.

Rosaleen overruled them. "It's just for now; it'll wear off by the time we think of something better. Let's see. We'll do blue for you, Pat, just to be fair. Red for Patrice; and I'll do green for Patsy." And then, mimicking Dopey: "Are there any questions?"

She was talking to the Pats, but it was Jimmy Lin who spoke up. "I have one. Which of you is going to be the lucky girl who gets me?"

Pat opened her mouth to chastise him, and then closed it again. What was the point? Better just to ignore him, she thought, and, hostess like, was about to ask her new best friends if they were ready to eat again when something happened. It sounded like a distant crump of a blast-thunder? an explosion?-and a moment later that constant, featureless white light from overhead dimmed and reddened. It only lasted for a second. Then it was bright again.

"What the hell was that?" Patsy asked.

Nobody had an answer. Patrice asked, "Does that happen a lot?" and Pat shook her head.

"Never before," she said. "It sounded like something blew up."

Rosaleen Artzybachova said, "Did you feel the floor shake?"

Dannerman thought he had; none of the others were sure. But there wasn't any doubt that something had happened, and, though they chewed the subject over the next half hour or so, all they could agree on was that they didn't like it.

Except for Jimmy Lin. Who said, grinning weakly, "How about that? Just talking about sex I can make the earth move for you."

Whatever it was, it didn't happen again. By their second day-well, by the time they woke up from their second sleep after their arrival-the two new Pat Adcocks were at least no longer speaking in chorus. Nurture had triumphed over nature. There hadn't been many differences in their experience, and those only small ones. Patsy had burned her hand trying to learn how to use the cooker; Jimmy Lin had been a little too forthright when he managed to get Patrice alone-well, not "alone," but at least a couple of meters from any of the others, enough for him to deem the privacy adequate-and it had wound up in a screaming match. Things like that. But however little the differences had been, they were enough to set each of them off on somewhat different trains of thought.

What all the Pats had, and kept, was a preference for each other's company. They ate together. When one of them had to use the toilet the other two stood protectively before her, glaring the three males down. They slept nestled next to each other, woke at the same time, whispered to each other. Within the small group of captives they had become a separate subunit. It was, Pat thought, a little reassuring to have two companions whom she could trust absolutely, since they were herself.

The other four were not as pleased. Dannerman and Rosaleen embarked on a chess marathon, doggedly ignoring the three Pat Adcocks. Martin Delasquez hardly spoke to anyone, retreating into sleep, or pretended sleep, for hour upon hour, while Jimmy Lin went the other way. He was hyperactive, Pat thought. He seemed hardly to sleep at all. He kibitzed the chess players, tried unsuccessfully to get Martin to play some other game with him and, of course, did his best to talk sex with any or all of the three Pats. If they were worried about getting pregnant, he offered, the revered ancient Peng-tsu had the answers for that, too. "We could do approaching the Fragrant Bamboo, for instance," he said. "That's doing it standing up, you know? And Peng-tsu says you can't get pregnant that way. You don't believe that? All right, then there's always the Jade Girl and the Flute, or The White Tiger Leaps-that one," he said, with a wink, "I don't want to tell you about, but any time you like I could show you." All that sort of talk had long since become pretty stale for Pat, but the two new ones were more tolerant. They let him talk. Anyway, Pat thought, that was better than Jimmy's other main occupation, which was feverishly writing out notes with ideas for doing something-going on a hunger strike, capturing Dopey and torturing him until he did whatever they wanted- maybe using some of the concealed weapons they still possessed, maybe by dunking his limbs or tail into the cooker. Pat wondered if the man was going insane. When he passed around the suggestion for cooking Dopey's plume, on the grounds that that was bound to hurt but unlikely to kill the creature, he was almost trembling with excitement; but then, a few hours later, he was talking enthusiastically about some of his ancestor's other sexual proposals… when the wall clouded and Dopey came in.

As always, he was bombarded with questions as soon as he appeared: "Why were you gone so long?" from Jimmy Lin; "What was that explosion?" from Dannerman.

One answer did for both of them. "There was an incident," Dopey admitted, his fingers working nervously, his bright tail dimmed and still. "It caused some problems for a time, but it has been dealt with. Now I have some news for you-"

Pat wasn't letting him get away with that. "What kind of incident?" she insisted.

He hesitated, staring around at them with those great eyes. Then he spoke to Dannerman. "In your previous life you were assigned to dealing with 'terrorists,' is that not correct? That is, with criminal persons who performed violent and destructive acts? Yes. Well, it is something of that sort here. I can say no more about it, except that the criminals have been, ah, neutralized."

"Neutralized how?" Jimmy asked suspiciously, but Rosaleen overrode him-probably, Pat thought, because she didn't think they would like to hear the answer.

"Never mind that," she said. "What he means is, are these the same 'criminals' who were interfering with your communications?"

"Yes, precisely. The terrorists."

"I see. And perhaps the same ones who transmitted the message that described you people as destroying the universe?"

For a moment Pat thought that Dopey was going to relapse into his trance state again; it seemed to be a troubling question. But then he made a breathy sound-almost a sigh-and said, "Yes. They are the same. Through trickery and violence they managed to infiltrate the link to your Starlab for a brief time. Of course, I observed their transmission at once and was able to jam the rest of it."

"But then they did it again," Dannerman offered.

Dopey said mournfully, "Indeed. This time I failed to observe it, as they had caused the death of one of me. But my replacement dealt with them. No," he added, waggling his head against the next burst of questions, "that is all I may say on that subject. But I have received new instructions for you. I am instructed to accelerate your program, and so a device is being prepared which will give you more complete information-"

"Device? What kind of device?" Rosaleen demanded.

"It will be explained when it is ready," he said severely. "Please do not interrupt. I have further instructions. I am directed to provide you with whatever additional materiel from your Star-lab you require-except, of course, anything that can be used as a weapon."

"Why are you being nice to us?" Martin asked suspiciously.

"I do not make these decisions. I simply carry out instructions. If there is anything in particular you wish, simply inform me, now or later. Otherwise I will use my own discretion."

"We don't have room for anything else in here!" Pat put in.

"Yes. That has been anticipated. Other accommodations are being prepared for you." He paused, eyes closed, fingers busy in the muff. It looked to Pat as though he was getting ready to leave, with a million questions unanswered; Rosaleen evidently thought the same, because she spoke up.

"Tell me one more thing. Are you going to bring any more of us here?"

"More copies of you here? I know of no such plans. It is possible, however, that there will be other human beings. Two additional human missions to Starlab are currently being proposed, and of course if they reach the orbiter they, too, will be copied for study. Now I must go."

He turned, then paused to look back at Jimmy Lin. "One more thing. Please do not give any more thought to the plan of capturing and torturing me. I do not think you could succeed, but if you did it would be very unpleasant for me, and it would do you no good at all."