Eschaton 2 - THE SIEGE OF ETERNITY

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Back on the ground, Hilda Morrisey discovered that Kourou had changed. While she and her shipmates were looting the old Starlab the population of the Eurospace complex had exploded. Planes were landing every hour, bringing in more and more people. The planes weren't just any old commercial jobs, either; these were official government aircraft, from forty or fifty different governments, and every one of them was packed with lawyers and high officials and whatever that government could scare up in the way of scientists and engineers to squabble over the loot as it came off the LuftBuran.

That wasn't Hilda's worry. She had done everything she was supposed to do on the orbiter-had prevented any of the others from pocketing any odd little bits of alien technology, had kept a sharp eye for dirty tricks. She had done her job, and now all she wanted was a bath and some clean clothes and a fast plane back to Arlington… but Marcus Pell turned out to have other ideas for her.

The deputy director's plane had deposited him and fifteen others on Kourou's landing strip before the LuftBuran touched down. It seemed to Hilda that he had brought enough manpower with him to do everything that still needed to be done, but Pell didn't agree. "You're one of our best agents, Hilda," he told her benignly. "You've had a chance to get to know some of these people. You can talk to them. So talk. Circulate. Find out whatever you can. Leave the bargaining to us. Rest? You can rest later." He paused, his nose wrinkling. "You'd better clean your teeth first, though."

^^o Brigadier Morrisey did clean her

teeth-again; and rinsed her mouth four or five more times, too, until she was certain that her breath no longer showed any trace of her unfortunate spacesickness. Then she bathed the rest of her as well.

That, however, she was not able to do in the little room the base housing officer had assigned her during training, because that was now occupied by a pair of high-ranking diplomats from Sierra Leone. At that point Merla Tepp earned her pay. She had made friends among members of the spaceport's permanent party while her brigadier was away and had been able to borrow a key to their barracks. Which had showers.

Cleaner, "So where do I sleep?" Hilda asked her aide, putting on a little of Tepp's makeup before a mirror in the washroom.

Tepp seemed preoccupied with something. "Sleep?" she repeated. "Oh, sleep. On the deputy directors plane. I've staked out a couch in the lounge for you; I'll have to sleep on the floor right next to it, if you don't mind." No surprise there. Kourou had run out of facilities for the influx. Now the LuftBuran's longest landing strip, having served its main purpose when the spacecraft came down, was packed nose to tail with aircraft that had been kept on as emergency housing. The Argentinians were the best off, Tepp explained. They didn't need an aircraft to sleep in. They had the luxury of a battle cruiser steaming in circles offshore, with their people helicoptering back and forth. Other countries had ships on their way to join the bedroom fleet. Some of the more important newcomers had rooms or even suites in the hotels of the old town of Kourou itself, a few kilometers down the coast. They commuted. Most of the influx were less fortunate. They were doubling and tripling up in rooms that didn't have air-conditioning against the steamy equatorial heat, and might not even have windows, because they hadn't ever been intended for sleeping in the first place.

It was nearly dark now, the Sun gone over the hills to the west with a sliver of a Moon following its descent. Out over the ocean there were quick illuminations of lightning, though too far away for the thunder to be heard. Over the spaceport itself there were patches of stars. They were obscured by the lights beating down on the little mounds of goods removed from the lander, but Hilda made out the familiar outline of Orion, queerly lying on his side because of their latitude. There was a constant bzzt-bzzt of insects frying themselves on the electrified mesh over the lights. Even so, people were slapping at bugs on their necks and arms.

That didn't stop any of them from doing what they were here to do. The bickering was intense and Marcus Pell was in the thick of it, backing up the President's personal representative. Starlab was American property, the President's man was announcing, and so everything on it was American property as well. Nonsense, said everyone else. The goods were treasure trove, belonging to whoever found them and, besides, the United Nations had declared them the common property of all.

Of course, there was no real chance that the lander's cargo was going to be delivered to the UN Building. It would be divided among the world's powers. The bickering here was over how many pieces it would be divided into, and who would get the pieces. Hilda eavesdropped on a group of Germans and Poles arguing about whether the Slavic countries of Europe were entitled to any consideration at all, but really ought to consider themselves part of Eurospace-"We have had enough experience of being part of your space," one of the Poles was saying in German rudimentary enough for Hilda to follow. A few minutes later some Australians and New Zealanders were complaining that the damn Pommies still thought they were a major power, for God's sake. She wandered past the Canadian delegation, speaking urgently among themselves until they caught a glimpse of her uniform. Then they became freezingly silent-still no doubt pissed off because their country hadn't got anything out of letting the U.S. use their landing strip in the first place.

Then she caught a glimpse of Merla Tepp, standing by herself and gazing somberly at something Hilda couldn't quite see. When she got closer she saw that it was the Doc, placidly silent and still wearing his incongruous, metallic old-lady head shawl, with another like it held in one of its lesser arms-stolid and stunned, brother to the ox, some old words came to Hilda's mind. If the Doc was at all aware of the ferocious arguments going on all around, he gave no sign.

Tepp held half a sandwich in one hand, and that reminded Hilda that her recently emptied stomach was ready for refilling. "Where'd you get it, Tepp?" she demanded.

Tepp blinked at her, then came back to alertness. "There's a chow line giving them out, ma'am, but it's only this kind of thing. You're entitled to get a decent meal in the deputy director's aircraft."

"I don't want a decent meal. I want one of those. Where's this chow line?"

"Right outside the general mess. But you've got to queue up."

For a moment Hilda considered requisitioning Tepps's remaining half sandwich away from her, but decided against it-not out of any particular consideration for Tepp, but because a chow line was as good a place as any to listen in on talk.

The trouble with doing that was that some of the people at the end of the line were talking to each other in Japanese, others in what seemed to be Pakistani. Hilda wished for the presence of that ugly, but gifted, little turkey, Dopey, as a translator, then caught sight of Jimmy Lin and his two minders coming along to join the line. "Here!" she called, waving. "I've saved you a place!"

That got them all dirty looks from the Pakistanis just behind her, but they didn't push it any farther than that. The minders paid no attention, since there was an irritated-sounding discussion going on between them-in Chinese. They weren't paying much attention to their charge, either, and, after one searching glance, none at all to Hilda Morrisey.

Low-voiced and with one eye on the minders, Hilda asked Lin cordially, "How's it going?"

Lin looked weary and tired. "How would I know? All I know is I want to go home."

"You'll feel better after you get something to eat."

"Eat this slop? Christ, Morrisey, I used to feed my gardener better than this. We were supposed to have our own meals on a submarine, and sleep there, too, but the damn thing never showed up."

That was interesting. "What submarine are you talking about?" she asked, keeping her voice idly conversational.

But that was more than the minders were willing to put up with.

One of them broke off their discussion to say something sharp to Lin, who hung his head. "He says I shouldn't be talking to you, so leave me alone," he told Hilda; and that was die end of conversation on the chow line.

It was pretty nearly the end of arguing, too. Everything that could profitably be said in Kourou had been said already. The next step depended on what happened at the United Nations, and only God knew when there would be any decisions there. Gossip said the General Assembly was pulling an all-nighter. Most of the people in Kourou were drifting away toward whatever beds they had been able to find. And Hilda, she abruptly realized, was bone-tired.

The deputy director's airplane was performing a function it had never been designed for. It was meant as luxury transportation for a privileged few, not as a boardinghouse. The overextended galley stewards did their best. They managed to provide a hot meal for everybody, but it was a long way from epicurean. Sleeping on the plane was no pleasure, either. There just weren't enough blankets to go around. Hilda's rank earned her one for her very own, though it wasn't much of a blanket. The thing had started life as a lap robe and covered very little of Hilda herself. Merla Tepp didn't have that much rank. On the floor beside Hilda's couch she made do with somebody's abandoned trench coat thrown over her.

It didn't keep Tepp awake, though. It didn't even keep her from snoring.

At first Hilda almost enjoyed the sound, which was associated in her mind with enjoyable nights of male bedmates, but it quickly got stale. Tepp wasn't male. They hadn't been making love. The noise was only noise, after all, and it was keeping her awake. She reached over to poke Tepp. The woman muttered something incomprehensible without waking, then turned over on her side. The snoring stopped.

Hilda, however, did not go immediately to sleep. Too much had been happening; her mind was racing with the memories of her first venture into space, and the way her familiar world was being remade, without her consent, by these bizarre creatures from other worlds.

Now that they had actual samples of extraterrestrial machines, and the expertise of the Doc to dissect them, the reverse engineering could start. And what then?

It was one thing to contemplate the possible uses of adding Scarecrow technology to the Bureau's already formidable capacities. That could be very fine. Capturing and bugging terrorists and dopers and turning them loose to be unwitting spies; new weapons; instant transportation anywhere by means of these portals… why, the Bureau would have more power than any organization before in the world's history…

Except that the damn UN had forced itself into the act, and those same abilities would be given to their enemies.

That thought made her scowl up at the dimly lit ceiling. There had to be some way of keeping a competitive advantage for the Bureau. Well, and for the rest of the United States, too, but the important thing was to keep the NBI several steps ahead of everybody else in the world. Was old man Krieg, the UN American delegate, skillful enough to make that happen? Probably not. Probably the Bureau would have to protect itself, as it always had…

A new sound from Merla Tepp made her turn her head and look down. It wasn't a snore this time. It was more like a sob. Astonished, she saw that Tepp's face was damp with tears.

Now, what was that all about? Was Tepp, too, worrying about the future? But then Tepp turned restlessly, still asleep, and the snoring started again.

That was insupportable. Hilda was confident there was no way she could ever get to sleep with that racket going on half a meter from her ears…but then she did.

What woke her was the deputy director's voice snapping through the aircraft's PA system. "Wake up and get going, everybody! The UN has agreed upon a plan and distribution of the items will start in thirty minutes."

For an old hand like Hilda thirty minutes was all the time in the world. She was down the wheeled steps of the plane in less than twenty, and she had even managed to browbeat the sleepy stewards into coffee and a couple of sweet rolls. Of course, that meant she was still wearing the slept-in clothes of the day before and she hadn't even attempted a turn at the aircraft's inadequate showers, but she was awake and ready. It was still dark in Kourou, though there was a faint early glow on the eastern horizon, and it was not yet unbearably hot.

The UN's decision had been to divide the objects from Starlab into four packets. One would go to the United States, on behalf of the whole Western Hemisphere, one to China for the mainland Asian powers, one to the Europeans, one to Australia to be shared with Japan, New Zealand, the island nations of the South Pacific and the countries of Indochina. Possession did not, however, confer ownership. So the UN's edict said firmly; research would be done under multinational supervision, with the resulting data to be made public as soon as obtained.

It was a tribute to die histrionic abilities of the experts and diplomats on the scene that not one of them was laughing out loud. Data to be made public! Hilda had no doubt that when the Bureau's technicians produced data the part that would be made public would be strictly limited, and the most valuable data would stay within the Bureau forever.

The best part was that the UN resolution clearly said the Doc was to be in charge of any real investigation… and, Hilda thought comfortably, she knew who was in charge of the Doc. She made her way to where he was being peacefully led out from the shelter in which he had spent the night by his armed guards. Had anyone bothered to tell him what he was supposed to be doing? That did not seem likely. The creature did not even seem curious as, under everyone's watchful eyes, the lucky nationals began removing the bits they had been awarded. He simply stood immobile in rest mode, still wearing the one coppery babushka with the other still held firmly in his lowest-left hand.

United Nations Security Council Resolution 4408

Under the powers vested in the Security Council by the Charter of the United Nations, as amended, the Secretary General is ordered to execute the following instructions:

1. The artifacts of alien origin are to be divided into four parts, in a manner to be chosen by the Secretary General, each part to be deposited in an appropriate research facility in one of the four specified regions of the world.

2. All investigations into the nature and functions of these artifacts are to be conducted in the presence of a representative of the United Nations and of each of the nations party to said region.

3. Investigations are to be limited to noninvasive procedures until further notice. It is contemplated that the individual identified as "Doc" is to be present when any dismantling is undertaken, provided the individual is physically able to undertake supervision of said artifacts.

– By Order of the Security Council

But that caused a minor fracas, as one of the Indians announced that the extra babushka was definite Scarecrow technology and, as no one else had claimed it, it should be awarded to China for India to share.

Colonel duValier laughed at that. "You want to try to take it away from him?" he sneered.

"Of course it must be taken from him," the Indian replied indignantly. And, when no one volunteered for the job, she reached for it herself.

Well, Hilda could have told the woman that that was a mistake, but by the time Hilda opened her mouth to warn her it was too late. The Doc's eyes sprang open; one of his great upper limbs pushed the Indian delegate out of the way- not violently, but not gently, either. The woman went flying. The Doc didn't look after her. He turned and plodded away in the direction of the parked American aircraft. His armed guards raised their weapons in bafflement, but someone shouted, "For Christ's sake, don't shoot the thing!" The Doc paid no attention to that threat, either, simply strode along with the one metal scarf on his head and the other still clutched in one arm.

"So," the deputy director said pleasantly, to no one in particular, "I guess that settles that."

It did, of course-though, of course, everyone around began arguing vociferously. Hilda didn't wait to take part in the renewed bickering. She hurried after the Doc, now stolidly climbing the steps into the deputy director's jet.

By the time she got inside the Doc was in the lounge, and he was no longer in standby mode. He had commandeered some of the aircraft's monogrammed notepaper and was busily filling pages of it with his meticulous drawings. The crew was passing them around interestedly until one of them caught sight of Hilda, with the deputy director behind her. Then they passed them over to higher authority.

Hilda puzzled over them. The first sketch showed the two Docs together, both wearing shawls over their heads. The second one showed both Docs in what was recognizably a hospital room, one of them doing something surgical to the head of the other. A human woman, actually a quite good likeness of Dr. Marsha Evergood, was standing by. And in the last drawing the former surgeon Doc was himself being operated on, and Dr. Evergood was doing the surgery.

The deputy director looked up at Hilda. "I think," he said judiciously, "that he's trying to tell us he wants to go back to Walter Reed Hospital."

"Well, yes," she said, suddenly thoughtful. "But what's this one here?"

She was pointing to a drawing that showed a human being next to a very peculiar creature. It wasn't a Scarecrow, nor was it any of the Seven Ugly Space Dwarfs. It looked a little bit like some ancient dinosaur, one of the long-necked, long-tailed ones that they called apatosaurus, but it was standing on two legs, and its rubbery neck was hovering menacingly over the human.

"Yes, well," Marcus Pell said, sounding unhappy, "I was wondering about that myself. The man looks kind of like Dan Dannerman, doesn't he?"

"He does. And that other thing-could it one of those things Dopey calls a Horch?"