Eschaton 1 – The Other End of Time

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Patrice

One thing you could say about Dan Dannerman-Patrice thought as they approached the stark metal structures of the compound-was that he reacted fast. Conquering the wilderness was out; rescuing their other "copies"-if any-was in.

Dopey would not allow them to enter near their old cell; too far to travel in Horch territory, too dangerous. So they traveled a quarter of the way around the compound perimeter before he paused and pointed to a passage. "There," he said. "This way will be safest-though we must be alert and ready for attack at every moment!"

Everyone stopped, while Dannerman conferred with the little creature. Patrice was glad enough for the chance to sit down. All this activity after all those weeks of confinement was tiring. She glanced up at the sky and shivered. That alien sun was setting; those enemy stars were popping out in all their incredible number, and the breeze had turned cold. She touched the butt of the thirty-shot weapon in its holster under her arm and wondered what it would be like to fire at something that would probably be doing its best to kill her. She was not ready for this kind of adventure-

But, ready or not, it was time to move on. Dannerman finished his conversation with Dopey and turned to give his orders. "Two of the Docs will go first. Then the rest of us, spread out, all but Rosaleen-"

"I can walk!" she protested.

"Sure. When you have to you will, but for now one of the Docs will carry you at the back. And, everybody, quiet. Dopey says the Horch machines are not particularly sensitive to sound, but we'll take no chances. All clear? Then let's go."

Patrice shivered again. This time it was excitement, not cold. The last time she had taken part in an invasion of enemy territory she had been ten years old, playing Good Guys and Bad Guys with the Abwyth kids from next door. She was out of practice. She hadn't had a real gun in her hand then, either; probably wouldn't be holding one, ready for action, now, if it weren't for the fact that right in front of her Dan and Jimmy Lin had their guns out. So did Pat, by her side; for them it seemed to be deadly serious.

It didn't seem that way to Patrice. It seemed like just another children's game. Behind the two Docs in single file at the head of the procession and the five humans who were capable-well, more or less capable-of firing their guns were the other Docs. One carried their spare weapons. Then there was another Doc that carried Rosaleen in one of its assorted arms, and the last one carrying Dopey himself. It was a regular circus parade. And why were they in it? Because Dan Dannerman had said so, and what an exasperating man he was. First he warned them all against getting into other people's fights. Then he reversed himself without notice. Now he was-and all the others with him- suddenly a warrior on the side of the Beloved Leaders against the Horch. Patrice gazed darkly at the back of his neck. In a way, she didn't envy Pat for her lover; in some ways Dan was a most unsatisfactory man. Lovers were supposed to communicate. Not Dan Dannerman; you never knew what he was going to be doing next.

But in another way, of course, she envied Pat very much indeed.

She hoped the Doc who was striding ahead of them knew where he was going. Patrice didn't. Nothing looked familiar, except in the way that one patch of desolation looked pretty much like all the others. She had long since stopped wondering about the strange objects they were passing. There was one period, not long after they entered the compound, that she didn't like to think about. First there was a hint of something foul in the air. It became a definite stench-growing, then horribly intense, then gradually fading again-that could be nothing but dead things. She never quite saw the corpses, whatever species they were, but there was no doubt of what she was smelling, and no doubt that there had been a lot of killing somewhere nearby. But after that there was nothing but their slow march, and nothing happening…

Then something did happen.

Between the time Patrice saw the first Doc suddenly turn and begin to run back, squeaking in a shrill soprano, and the time she saw the big silver-colored spidery thing appear from between the orange-colored crystal sphere and the jade pylons and they all began shooting at it, there was only a moment. It was time enough for her to be astonished that the Doc had spoken at all- before that she had never heard one of them make a sound- but then she saw that Dannerman had flung himself to the ground on one side of the corridor, his thirty-shot out and firing, and Jimmy Lin had done the same on the other, and she realized she had to follow their example. It all happened very fast. The Doc was able to run only a few steps before there was this sudden staccato sound, like shrill bees buzzing, bzhit, bzhit, bzhit. Patrice saw nothing that looked like either a projectile or a ray, but she saw the effects, all right, as at once the first Doc's head burst open-spray of orange-red blood and tissue flying out in all directions-and then the Horch machine was skating toward them, fast, on its spidery wheeled legs. The second Doc leaped forward to catch its fellow-too late-and there was more bzhit, bzhit and the whole right side of that one's body exploded, too. But by then everybody was shooting-even Patrice herself, startled at the unexpected recoil from the gun Danner-man had given her and her shots going wild, even Pat, next to her on the ground… even Martin Delasquez, standing wobbly but erect in the middle of the passage, but shooting his heavier gun with two hands. They didn't all miss. Pieces flew off the machine. Two of its legs collapsed and it clattered to the ground; a moment later something inside it flared and crackled and it lay still. And behind her, where he had hidden himself behind the massive trunk of the Doc that had been carrying him, Dopey was crying, "Stop firing! The machines do not respond quickly to sound, but it will attract them if you keep on shooting!"

In the sudden silence both Jimmy Lin and Dannerman jumped to their feet and ran to inspect the wrecked machine. Dannerman gave it only a glance, then turned back, leaving Jimmy to kick at the thing suspiciously; Dannerman ran straight to Patrice and dropped to his knees beside her. "Are you all right?" he demanded.

She rolled over to gaze up at him. "I'm fine," she said, "but I'm Patrice. That's your Pat"-who was already getting up and looking toward them-"over there."

The two Docs that had been given the point were both messily dead, but so was the Horch machine. Dopey was fretting. "I should not have used two of them to draw fire. I can only spare one now, but we must not delay. Have you all got loaded guns?"

Dannerman might or might not have been listening; his expression was unreadable. He was standing over the destroyed machine, his gun in one hand, the other arm around Pat's waist beside him. Patrice was standing nearby, somberly watching them. She did, after all, wish it was she that Dannerman was holding. It wasn't envy, exactly. She didn't feel any real jealousy of Pat-she definitely wanted Pat to have someone to hold her, too; she wanted nothing but good for Pat. But it would have been better, she thought, if Dopey had produced an extra Dan Dannerman or two along with the Pat Adcocks. She turned to look at the others. Rosaleen and Martin were fussing over each other, while Jimmy Lin checked the magazine of his gun, and the three remaining Docs were standing quietly, waiting for orders. That was reassuring, a little bit. They had all got through at least this first firefight-well, all but the two dead Docs.

Dannerman kicked at the dead machine, triangular body now blazing quietly, the long legs crumpled. He turned challengingly to Dopey. "If they're that easy to kill, why couldn't your people handle them?"

Dopey looked defensive. "Because there were so many of them! They kept coming. Every time we thought we had them cleaned up the Horch managed to capture another channel and they sent more of them in and it was all to do over again-and, finally, we had no fighters left to oppose them. Please, let us move on; we are very exposed here."

Dannerman shook his head. "Tell me first, how many more of those things are there?"

"How do I know? A few. Not very many, I think-but, please-

Dannerman disregarded the urging. He had another question: "Are you sure you know where we're going?"

"Out of my own knowledge? No, of course not. How could I? There is so much destruction, I cannot recognize anything. But the bearers do, so please hurry."

Dannerman didn't answer right away. He stood there, with his arm around Pat's waist; he was thinking about something, but Patrice could not guess what. Whatever it was, he did not choose to share it.

Jimmy Lin was losing patience. "Are we going or not?" he demanded.

"Yes, sure," Dannerman said at last, then kissed Pat and took up his place in the procession as Dopey ordained it. With two Docs fewer to deploy, Dopey ordered the one with the weapons to take the point. Then came Dannerman and Jimmy, then Pat and Patrice and Martin; then the other Docs with their passengers, Rosaleen and Dopey himself.

Patrice's heart was still pounding from the excitement of the fight. She had seen shoot-outs on the television news, of course-just before they left there had been the one between the police and the subway terrorists, when the Lenni-Lenape Ghost Dance Revengers tried to blow up Grand Central Terminal, and there had been at least a dozen other battles over the years-but she had never expected to take part in a gunfight herself. She had never imagined someone (well, something) actually trying to kill her! And herself shooting back!

The funny thing was that she wasn't frightened. It had something to do with having a chance to do some shooting herself; it was certainly far better to be taking action, any kind of action, than just having things happen to her. She rehearsed every moment of the fight critically, looking for things she might have done wrong. She resolved to be ready for the weapon's recoil next time-if there was a next time. She wouldn't miss, she vowed…

And almost fired her gun in reflex when the lead Doc suddenly stopped, glanced around, then down at the ground.

Then it moved on a few more meters to an intersection and simply stood there, waiting.

Dannerman and Jimmy Lin were the first ones on the spot, and they both recoiled. "Oh, Christ," Jimmy moaned. "Makes me want to puke!" It did Patrice, too, as soon as she saw what they were looking at. It was a corpse-not human, not a Dopey or a Doc-or, more accurately, it was about half of a corpse.

"It's a Bashful," Patrice said, recognizing it: one of the ones she and Patsy had seen before being brought to the cell.

"It looks like that other Dopey did, after we killed him," Lin said in disgust. Apparently the built-in waste-disposal system in the flooring had been in the process of disposing of this bit of waste when the power went off.

"Yes," said Dopey, climbing down from his bearer and puffing toward them, "it is one of our fighters, mercilessly murdered by die abominable Horch machines. And, see, he has his weapon with him."

"This thing?" Dannerman asked, picking up the shiny object that lay next to the corpse. He handled it cautiously, Jimmy Lin and Martin fidgeting as close to him as they could stand, both obviously yearning to get their own hands on the thing. Patrice had no such desire. She didn't want to touch it at all; it looked deadly. Clearly it was not designed for a human being. It didn't have a stock; it had a belly plate of some dark red substance that looked rubbery; it didn't have a trigger, but a pair of metal loops, like the finger holes on a pair of scissors. And it didn't have sights.

When Jimmy Lin pointed that out Dopey said impatiently, "Sights? Why would it have sights? Such things are not necessary. When it is aimed there is a beam of green radiation, like a pocket torch-"

"You mean a flashlight?"

"Yes, are they not the same thing? That green ray is not the particle flux itself, only a beam of light to help you guide it, but what you touch with the beam of light will be destroyed by the particle flux. To fire it? Nothing is easier. You put your fingers in those loops and draw them together; the closer they are drawn, the more energy the particle beam carries."

"Like this?" Jimmy Lin asked, experimenting.

Dopey closed his eyes in silent despair. "Yes, exactly like that," he said, obviously restraining himself, "and if there had been any power for the weapon you would have killed Dr. Artzybachova. Please, all of you! I know you are not experienced with this weapon, but you must take care!"

To Patsy's surprise, Dannerman had another of those off-the-main-point questions. "So why are you bothering with us amateurs? Why don't you make more of your trained fighters?"

Dopey looked evasive. "Yes, that would be better in some ways, perhaps," he agreed. "But-"

"But you can't do it, right?"

Dopey hesitated for a moment. "That is true," he said at last. "At this moment. Once we have restored the power-once we have access to the damaged terminals-then it is quite possible that we could do so. But please, let us not waste time-"

Dannerman held his ground. "That's the other thing. So we get the power on, and we kill the rest of the Horch machines for you-"

"For all of us, Agent Dannerman! Your lives are also at risk!"

"Whatever you say. Then what?"

"Why, then we attempt to restore the damaged terminals. If we cannot, we simply wait for the Beloved Leaders to restore communication. Is that not obvious? Now I must insist-"

"Which will be when?"

"Oh, Agent Dannerman, why do you choose this time to ask foolish questions? It will happen when it happens. First the Beloved Leaders must send another physical spacecraft with a new tachyon terminal dedicated to the proper channel. How long will that take to get here? I do not know how long. Since such a spacecraft cannot exceed the speed of light, perhaps very long. But, you see," he added reasonably, "the length of time does not matter. If we grow too old to be serviceable we will simply generate new copies of ourselves to replace us. That will be no problem."

"No problem?" Dannerman repeated, mildly enough.

"Not at all. And we can repeat it as often as necessary. In that way we can continue to carry on our duties here for centuries if that is necessary. Now no more questions! We must go!"