Eschaton 1 – The Other End of Time

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Patrice

It all evened out in the long run, Patrice thought to herself- wondering if she were going out of her mind: You lose one Pat, you get another to fill the gap. This particular Pat, though, was something special; she had clearly been through hell, even more hell than the rest of them. Her face was haggard, her bearing twitchy. Patrice longed to comfort her.

But reunions had to wait. Dopey had no particular interest in one Pat more or less-his main concern was dispatching one of the Docs to find the standby generator and start it up-and the only interest the new Pat showed in Dopey and his Docs was to stay as far away from them as she could. "First things first," Dannerman ordered. "I want somebody with a gun at every entrance in case one of those things shows up."

Nobody argued, though Patrice would have preferred to fuss over the new Pat, as Rosaleen alone could be spared to do, instead of standing guard, weapon out and ready, where she could see a few dozen meters down a passage. She wasn't doing a very good job of guarding. She couldn't help peering worriedly over her shoulder at the new Pat Adcock. The woman looked really terrible. Extreme fatigue, yes; that figured. Marks of pain and stress on her face, why not? She'd obviously been through a tough time; but there was something else that was nagging at Patrice while her new copy was doing her best to answer questions. And there were lots of questions. "Are there any others?" "Not anymore." "Do you mean the others are dead?" "Christ, yes! Can't you smell them? But listen, do you guys have anything to eat?"

Well, they didn't; Dopey had promised there would be all the food they wanted, once the terminal was working again, so why encumber themselves? (But Pat had observed he'd taken food for himself; probably that didn't count as an encumbrance.) He was fidgeting about, doing his best to ignore the petty human concerns. "Please," he begged in agitation. "It will be some time before the bearer can have the power on line, perhaps as much as an hour. Then all will be well, but now we are still in great danger. Be vigilant! We must not be stopped now, when we are so close- What?" Dannerman was saying something to him, pointing to the new Pat. "Oh, very well," Dopey said impatiently, and glanced at the two remaining Docs. Who at once moved toward the new Pat…

Who shrieked "Keep them away from me!" and turned as though about to run, but Dannerman stopped her.

"It's all right," he soothed. "Honest! I just want you checked over. This one's done it for us before, with Martin and Rosaleen. He's a kind of medical specialist-"

"I know what kind of specialists they are!" But by then the one Doc had her firmly held and the other was gently tapping and probing with its smaller arms, just as they had done with Martin Delasquez. The new Pat whimpered softly throughout the examination, but she didn't resist. The procedure took only a few moments. Then the Docs released her and stepped back, once again motionless in that corpselike standby mode.

"This transcription appears to be well enough," Dopey announced. "There is a certain amount of malnutrition, yes, but that will be mended when we have the terminal going. Otherwise her condition is normal, apart from some exhaustion-allowing, of course, for the fact that she is pregnant."

One conversation stopper after another, Patrice thought; the creature was full of them. She backed away from her sentry post-not so far that she couldn't still see down the short corridor, far enough so that she could look their new recruit in the face. "Are you, uh, all right?" she asked.

The woman stared at her, backing away from Dopey and the Docs. "He says so," she said shortly. And then, "Well, I guess I am. More or less." She was looking from Pat to Patrice; it seemed a time for introductions.

"I'm Patrice; this is Pat. There was another one-well," Patrice said, firmly closing that topic, "there was another one, but she died. What should we call you?"

The newcomer opened her eyes wide at that, but she answered civilly enough. "The others just called me Pat, mostly, because there was usually only one of us alive at a time. But Rosaleen said I was Pat Five, if that helps."

Dannerman swore. "Pat Five? They had that many of you?"

"They had at least that many of me," she corrected. "I don't guarantee the count. But you can call me Five if you want to. What's happening?" And when they had done their best to fill her in she scowled at the Dopey. "You mean the best we can hope for is to stay alive with the bird and the brutes in this wreckage-forever?"

The Dopey craned his neck to peer at her over his plume. "Wreckage? But it will not remain wreckage, Dr. Adcock Five. Once the Horch problem is eliminated we will build it all up again, better than ever, you will see. That will be a job for the bearers, that is what they are good at."

"They seem to be pretty handy gadgets to have around," Dannerman remarked, causing Patrice to give him a sharp look.

What was the matter with the man? Was he losing his mind… or thinking about something he didn't want to discuss? She wondered which.

"Oh, yes, highly intelligent," Dopey was agreeing. "Unfortunately their people foolishly declined to cooperate with the Beloved Leaders. They resisted quite violently, in fact. Ultimately it was necessary to dispatch most of their race directly to the eschaton. These specimens have been preserved; they are quite tractable now, since they were amended to remove their violent natures. Of course, they are no longer capable of acting on their own very much, but they are very good at following orders." Dopey's mind didn't seem to be on what he was saying; he was twisting in all directions to peer down the various approaches. "You've all got your weapons ready? We could be attacked at any time."

Patrice exhaled softly. Amended, she repeated to herself. Quite tractable.

She looked around at the others to see if they were thinking what she was. She couldn't tell. Dannerman had gone off to talk to Martin and Rosaleen, the others simply looked grim. Whether it was because, like herself, they were considering the possibility that the Beloved Leaders might have some similar plans for the human race she did not know.

"Damn," Pat said ruefully. "You know, I was almost getting to like the little shit."

Pat Five looked at her curiously. "For God's sake, why?"

Lamely, "Well… he brought us food. And other things. We would have starved without him."

Pat Five said in disgust, "Oh, Pat, what's the matter with you? You don't really understand what kind of people they are, do you? Tell me something. When you see the supermarket fish clerk checking the pumps in the lobster tank, do you think she does it because she wants the lobsters to be happy?" She glared at Pat, then abruptly added, "Why didn't you ever ask me how I got pregnant?"

Uncomfortably, "I did wonder, I mean about the implants."

"Right, the implants," said Pat Five, nodding. "The implants made a real problem for the damn birds. When they found out about them they just took the things right out, and, honey, that was not fun. Not for me, even though I was the lucky one; I survived the operation. Dan Three told me that the first two of us they tried didn't. Of course, they didn't bother with anesthesia… And then they killed Dan, too. I think it was something about studying how the human body reacted to pain; he was screaming so loud I bet he could be heard all over the compound."

Patrice shuddered, but there was something else she wanted to know. As delicately as possible, she began, "Who was the- ah-the-?"

"The father?" Pat Five shrugged morosely. "Rosaleen thought it was Jimmy, one of the Jimmys, but I don't know. I'm not sure I ever met the gent." She glanced casually at the surviving Jimmy, who was standing suddenly thunderstruck. "All I know for sure is they had sperm they'd collected-I don't know whose-and so they did it to me by artificial insemination, you see. Looked like they just didn't want us to have any fun at all."

"Hey!" said Jimmy Lin, finding his voice at last. "I mean- hey!"

Pat Five scowled at him. "What are you getting excited about? I'm not going to ask for child support."

"It isn't that," he protested. "I just-you know-I mean, I feel sort of responsible if it was my, uh, sperm-"

Pat Five looked at him thoughtfully, then softened. "Well, don't worry about it. Listen, I think being pregnant had its advantage. I'm pretty sure that's why they kept me alive when the Horch started shooting and the birds terminated all the others.

They'd gone to a lot of trouble to knock me up; I guess they didn't want to waste all that work." She glanced at Dopey, nervously making his rounds of the guard posts. "There were two of those goddam birds arguing about it in the examining room," she said, nodding toward the shattered partitions at the far end of their space, "while a couple of the goons held me down. I was sure I'd had it. But then the birds walked off and the goons just dropped me and went away. And I've been here alone ever since."

Patrice couldn't stand still another minute. Pat Five's tale of horrors was more than she could handle. She moved toward the broken partitions. "Over here?" she asked. "Is that where they were doing it?"

"Don't go wandering away from your post!" Jimmy Lin ordered, and Pat Five chimed in:

"I wouldn't go there at all if I were you-"

But that came too late. Patrice had reached the partitions and peered through them. She couldn't see clearly in the minimal light that filtered in from outside, but that, Patrice thought, the contents of her stomach trying to rise up through her throat, was a good thing. There were bodies there. A Dannerman. A Jimmy Lin. Another of those half-absorbed corpses, caught incompletely flushed away when the power died, that was facedown but, she thought, probably had been another Jimmy Lin. The stench of decay was awful. She retreated to the others, holding her hand over her face.

Pat Five laughed-not unkindly. "I warned you," she said. "I've been living with that for days. The birds said it was all right, you know; they just sent them on early to the eschaton."

"So they told you about the eschaton?" Pat asked.

"That Tipler business, sure. They were asking a lot of questions about it just before they terminated the guys- Is something the matter?"

Pat and Patrice were exchanging glances. "You remembered the name!" Pat cried.

"Of course I remembered the name. Frank Tipler. Tulane University. He wrote a book. I also remembered that old what's-his-face told us it was a lot of crap, since the Hubble Constant showed that the universe wasn't ever going to collapse again anyway.

"I've been wondering about that myself," Patrice said, and Pat put in:

"Dan says it doesn't matter if it's true. What matters is that the Horch and the Beloved Leaders act as if they believe it's true, and-"

She stopped there, blinking; they were all blinking, as suddenly the lights were on. And from across the space Dopey chortled: "We have the power! Now we can serve the Beloved Leaders again!"