Eschaton 2 - THE SIEGE OF ETERNITY

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Lawyer Hecksher got to Pat Adcock's office before Dannerman got there with the signed papers, but he didn't seem to mind waiting. He sat in a corner, carefully rereading his papers and making cryptic pencil-on-pad notes for himself, paying no attention to Pat or his surroundings as she went on with her work.

It wasn't a long wait. Dannerman had made a quick trip from the airport, and as Pat went out to meet him she found him standing at the reception desk, his Anita Berman on his arm, chatting with Jan-ice DuPage, who was standing uncomfortably on her crutches.

Pat frowned. She hadn't expected to see Janice there. Then she remembered why. "I thought you were going to your friend's funeral."

Janice looked put-upon. "It's been postponed. Don't ask me why. Some damn kind of red tape."

"Too bad," Pat said absently, taking the clutch of documents from Dannerman and leaving him there.

Mr. Hecksher took the papers from her courteously and spent a good five minutes checking them over. Then he gave her a cheerful smile. "Looks all right. Signed in all the right places. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll start getting them served."

"Does that mean somebody will have to fly to China and all?"

"China, no. We'll serve that one on their ambassador here, that's what ambassadors are for. But I think we'd better serve the Europeans in person-oh, I see what's on your mind," he added, beaming at her. "You're worried about the costs. Don't worry. It'll all be on the bill when we settle."

"And if we don't settle?" Pat asked.

He looked surprised. "But we will. Did you read the texts you signed? Part of the court submission is a request for an estoppal, ordering them to make no changes in the artifacts already on hand because of the risk of damaging the Observatory's property." Pat frowned. "They're not going to do that, are they?" "Exactly, my dear! They're going to want this little problem to go away, and the easiest way to do it is to throw money at us. Oh, I think we'll have an offer to settle within a week; the only question is how much we're willing to take. We should discuss that, of course. I was originally thinking of a hundred million dollars, adjusted for current inflation, with an additional royalty on all commercial devices based on the discovered technology, but-" He paused, listening. "What's that?"

Pat had heard it too, raised voices from outside. She went to the door and looked out. Pete Schneyman was standing there, looking thunderstruck. "We're invaded," he announced. "It's the Feds. They've taken Janice away, and now they want to question all of us."

Ls soon as Lawyer Hecksher saw what was going on he patted the nearest Pat on the shoulder, and said benevolently, "I'll take care of this."

But he didn't. He went away with the agent in charge and didn't come back. There were at least a dozen new Bureau agents, tough ones. They were full of questions, though what they were questioning everybody about, exactly, they would not say. The first thing they did was to shuttle everybody in the Observatory up to its top floor, with Bureau agents making sure they stayed there. Phones rang unanswered, computer screens beeped impatiently for inputs that didn't come. The Observatory staff milled in the top-floor file rooms and hallways while they were taken, half a dozen at a time, down to the middle floor for interviews.

When it came Pat's turn she was conducted to her own office, where a middle-aged woman had preempted her desk. Now, that was too much! Scowling, she asserted herself: "I protest this unwarranted-"

"Yes, yes," the agent said without patience. "Have a seat. What I want to know is what Janice DuPage has been doing in the last three weeks."

"What happened three weeks ago?" Pat demanded.

"That's when the three weeks I'm asking about began. Just answer the questions, Ms. Adcock. Have you noticed anything unusual about the subject's behavior in that period?"

Pat thought. "You mean, outside of getting run over by a car?"

"Yes."

"Not really. Of course, she was in the hospital for some of that time, and I was away sometimes, too. What do you mean by unusual, anyway?"

"By unusual I mean anything that isn't usual," the agent explained. "Start with Tuesday, the twenty-fourth-"

"Oh, right!" Pat said, enlightenment coming. "That was the day that Scarecrow spacecraft scared us all half to death."

"That day, yes. Well?"

And so it went, day by day. The questions were thorough, but Pat was pretty sure that the agent wasn't getting anything useful-wasn't getting anything from her that she hadn't already heard from the previous interviewees.

When she was released she was told she could go home. She didn't, though. She went down to the lower floor, where the people the agents had finished with were congregating in the conference room.

Then Dannerman came in, looking worried. "I came as soon as I got your call," he told Pat One. "And I talked to Jilly Hohman-she's the agent in charge here."

"So what's it all about?" Pat One demanded.

He looked even more worried. "It's that friend of Janices. They did a routine autopsy on her… and they found a bug."

"A bug? In Janice's friend? But-but she was never out in space," said Pat, and Dannerman nodded somberly.

"That's the problem," he said. "She never was."