Eschaton 2 - THE SIEGE OF ETERNITY

CHAPTER FIVE

Dr. Patrice Adcock hadn't been taken back to her cell. Instead they put her in a quite comfortable bedroom in a little suite that apparently was kept for VIP visitors who couldn't, or didn't choose to, go home to sleep. It had a really comfortable bed, which was a nice change from the iron-hard cot in her old cell. For all the good it did her. First she lay awake, wondering just what the hell was going on now? Another Dannerman? Radioing to Earth from Starlab? When she did at last fall asleep it didn't last, because that Morrisey woman woke her to say the deputy director needed to talk to her. Right now.

So Pat climbed wearily back into her jail uniform. She let herself be conducted to where Marcus Pell and six or seven other people were huddled around screens and little tables littered with coffee cups and the remains of largely uneaten food, and then what was it he asked her? It was, Did Starlab have facilities for something called a 300-digit-prime coordinated-chaos encryption system? Of course she had no idea about that. Whatever it was. Well-less patiently-who would know the answer? Anyone at the Observatory? She thought about that, then shrugged. Maybe, but they would all be asleep now, for God's sake, and anyway the real expert was Rosaleen Artzybachova, who was dead.

And then, the funny thing, they all suddenly looked both surprised and relieved. The deputy director man-was his name Pell?- nodded to the Morrisey woman. That was the end of it. The woman took Pat back to her new home and left her to lie awake an hour or so longer, with all the old questions and a dozen new ones to keep her from sleep.

So when a uniform knocked at her door and opened it a crack she woke at once. "Good morning, ma'am," the woman said civilly. "It's oh-eight-hundred, and you might want to get ready to see the deputy director." Then she closed the door, without saying when the deputy director was likely to arrive. Or why.

But when Pat Adcock came out of her very own private bathroom-another touch of luxury, complete with a full array of toiletries in their original unopened wrappings-she made a pleasing discovery. The guard must have come back while she was in the shower. Pat's own clothes-the ones she had been arrested in-were draped over the foot of the bed, cleaned and ready to put on.

A few minutes later, dressed in something other than that jail uniform after all these long weeks and pleased about that much, anyway, she opened the door. It led into a little sitting room, with comfortable chairs and pictures on the wall and even a fireplace-fake, of course, but a nice touch. A moment later Dannerman came out of his own room to join her, just in time for the guard to roll in a cart loaded with breakfast.

Dannerman gave her an appreciative grin. "Hey, nice outfit. Did you have a good night's sleep?"

She didn't bother to answer that, and after an uncertain moment lie turned his attention to their breakfast. Pat took a while longer to get to it, but when she tasted the fresh, ripe papaya and the cold, sweet juice she dug in as well. It was the best meal she'd had since the police had picked her up at her Observatory.

Her Observatory. She wondered if it was really still hers.

Well, probably the Observatory itself was still running, more or less normally; Uncle Cubby's money was still available to finance its op-rations, and no doubt Pete Schneyman, or one of the other senior scientists, had taken over as acting director in her absence. Gwen Morisaki would be going right on with her Cepheid counts and Kit Papathanassiou with his cosmological studies and all the rest of it, whether she was present or not. Things might even be going better without her because, Pat had to admit, her last few months at the Observatory she'd been a lot more interested in Starlab than in doing science.

The other question that entered her mind was to wonder if she herself were in bankruptcy yet.

How "United" Are the United Nations?

The current imbroglio in the United Nations General Assembly reminds us once more of the worser consequences of the infamous Resolution 1822. Under this, you may recall, the General Assembly decreed that each signatory nation was to elect one delegate to the Assembly by means of popular vote. This well-meaning "reform" was intended to ensure that the people at large, rather than some junta or clique, represented each country in its deliberations; the models for this were the European Community's Council and, more appositely, the United States Senate.

But what has been the effect? Rather than achieving unity, the delegates now represent parochial issues and, worse, political parties. In this "Parliament of Man," with its lamentable tendency toward passing sweeping resolutions that are meant to micromanage purely internal matters throughout the world, our own delegate, Mr. Hiram Singh-who, it will be remembered, was until recently First Lord of the Admiralty in the New Labor Party government-is not least at fault.

Do we really want to import the tawdry political practices of the Americans to govern our planet? We think not. We think it is time for a thoroughgoing reconsideration of this ill-advised measure.

– Financial Times, London

The economic fact was that she had hocked just about everything she owned to raise the money for her flight to the orbiter. Money shouldn't have been any problem at all. The government should have financed or provided the whole thing. But the government hadn't. So she'd had to find the money herself. It came to serious money, too, enough to bribe the Floridian authorities who controlled the launch pads at the Cape, to hire pilots, to fight the Feds' lawyers through the courts until, reluctantly, they did give in and provide a launch vehicle for her.

And then she had managed to get that Clipper launched with the five of them in it. And then-

And then it all went to hell. "Dan-Dan?" she said tentatively.

He looked up warily from his eggs Benedict. "Yeah?"

She said slowly, trying to think it through as she spoke, "You know what's funny, Dan? I can remember the flight up to orbit; I can remember the flight back. But all I can remember of what we saw in Starlab was that everything was just the way it was left when the satellite was abandoned. There wasn't anything there that wasn't on the specs. Nothing had changed."

"Nothing had."

"Well, I know that. I remember remembering that, when we were on our way back. But I don't remember seeing it. Do you know what I mean?

He frowned. "Well, that's the way it was for me, too. It's funny, now that you mention it."

"Do you think your Bureau people know why that is?"

But he was shaking his head. "Not those turkeys. They don't know any more than we do."

When the door opened again, the man who came in was the deputy director, Marcus Pell. He was followed by one of the uniformed cops. "Coffee for you too, sir?" the cop suggested.

"Coffee my ass. It might be breakfast time for you, but for me its lust the tail end of a long, long night. Get us a bottle of Jim Beam and some glasses." He turned to Pat. "You were right, Dr. Adcock." He caught her off-balance. "What was I right about?" "Alien technology. The man said so himself. The orbiter's loaded with it… among other things. No"-he held up his hand-"I don't know exactly whose technology, or how it got there. We're having to be careful about communicating. You know all about that, Dr. Ad-cock; that's what we got you out of bed for."

"Was I actually any help?" she asked curiously. "It didn't look that way."

He gave her a judicious look, punctuated by a yawn "Sorry. Well, you were and you weren't. What you did was remind us of Dr. Artzybachova."

"But she's dead!"

He shook his head, looking amused. "Not anymore. She's alive and well on your Starlab. Or one of her is. There are a lot of duplicate people around, wouldn't you say? So we sent her a narrow-beam query. She didn't have anything that could make a really secure link, but we worked out a code."

Dannerman was asking the deputy director questions, but Pat hardly heard. She was trying to get used to the idea of Rosie Artzybachova alive again. Then she remembered to ask a question,. "Why are you making such a big secret out of it?"

He grinned at her. "You're asking me that? The lady that bet the ranch on finding extraterrestrial technology? Because if any part of what this man is saying is true, then there's a lot of stuff there that we want, and maybe we want to keep it for ourselves-ah, about time," he finished, as the door opened, and two of the uniforms came in. Silently they set down the whiskey, some mixers, glasses, ice, even a tray of hastily slapped-together hors d'oeuvres, glanced at the deputy director for permission to leave again, and did.

Pell poured himself two fingers of whiskey, disdaining the ice and the mixers. "Help yourselves," he invited.

Pat shook her head. "I didn't know prisoners were allowed to have liquor," she said.

He gave her a friendly smile-no, she thought, not really a smile of any kind of friendship; it was the kind of smile you manufactured to make somebody think you were being friendly when you wanted to soften them up. This was a complex and totally controlled man. "You're thinking about those federal charges against you. Bribery, filing false flight plans-all chickenshit, of course. You can forget them.

They're dropped. And as for you, Dannerman"-he shrugged-"your suspension is lifted, too. You're back on duty, with full pay restored."

Incoming dispatch.

Spanish Federal Police, Madrid.

To Director U.S. National Bureau of Investigation.

Most secret.

Humint indicates probable major action by Catalan separatist forces in connection with the Iberian games, to be held in Barcelona this spring. Internal source states a large shipment of weaponry and explosive devices is expected from American sympathizers, probably channeled through Basque underground. Urgently request cooperation in dealing with this terrorist threat, in particular in identifying and embargoing arms shipment.

Dannerman looked wary, fingering his collar. "What about this?"

"Well," the deputy director said, "that's a whole other thing, isn't it? Are you sure you want it taken off?"

Dannerman's expression changed, now mostly puzzled. "Why wouldn't I?"

Pell's glass was empty; he refilled it, but this time with soda and ice and just enough whiskey to tint it lightly. "You know what you two have inside your skulls," he said. "Did it ever occur to you that some people might want to get their hands on those things? Even if they had to kill you in the process?"

Pat Adcock felt a sudden chill. "What people?"

"Why, Dr. Adcock," the man said cozily, "I would say just about anybody. Including some of our own people right here in the Bureau, I wouldn't be surprised. But don't worry about that; the President himself forbade any surgical attempts. So maybe you'd like to keep enjoying our hospitality for a while, don't you think? Or, if you'd rather go out into the world again, we'll supply you with as much protection as we can, same as we've done with Danno here, but there would certainly be a risk."

"Damn it," Dannerman said with feeling. "I knew I was being followed."

"Of course you did," Pell said, smiling that warm-hearted, empty smile again. "One way of looking at it, you were bait. If someone wanted to snatch you, we'd pick him up before he could get very far."

Dannerman was looking at him with distaste. "That's assuming they wanted to kidnap me alive. But if they were going to have to kill me anyhow-"

"You're not thinking it through," Pell said reprovingly. He reached out and tapped Dannerman's collar. "That thing is tough plastic and metal. As long as you had that on your neck nobody could whack your head off and hustle it away before we got to them. So what would be the point of killing you on the street? No, we figured you were pretty safe… and, of course, there were other reasons for having you wear the collar. There was always the possibility that you were dirty after all, wasn't there? Colonel Morrisey was pretty sure you weren't. But some people had other opinions, and we had to cover all the bases."

Dannerman said doggedly, "I want it off."

"Yes, I thought you would. Well, when Hilda comes back I'll have her take you down to the shop and they'll remove it… Excuse me." There had been an inaudible signal; Pell lifted his phone to his ear. He listened for quite a long time, spoke briefly-Pat couldn't make out a word-and listened again. When he was through he looked up at them.

"Well," he said, sounding pleasantly surprised, "sometimes you get lucky when you least expect it. The Cape's socked in-thunderstorms, high winds; the weather's going to persist for a couple of days at least. So they can't land there. That's good; the last thing we want is to get the Floridians involved in this."

"So where will they land?"

"That's the question, isn't it? They're working on it. Meanwhile, the President has warned everybody, especially the damn Europeans, that Starlab is U.S. property and anyone who attempts to board it risks being shot at."

Pat stared at him blankly. "Shot at? What with?"

Pell said comfortably, "I always knew some of those old Star Wars orbiters might come in useful someday. There are two of them that still have some navigation capacity. They're in the wrong part of the orbit, but the guys in Houston are working on moving them into position even as we speak. Of course the Europeans and the Chinese and so on know that. So we can leave it alone for a while, and right now the first thing we're going to do is to get that party of nine down- and there are some surprises there. They're not all human, you see."

"Not all human?"

"That's what Dannerman says, yes. He said a lot of other stuff, too-until we told him to shut up, even in code, and report in full once he's landed." He hesitated. "One thing, though. You're an astronomer, Dr. Adcock. Have you ever heard of somebody named Frank Tipler?"

"Tipler?" She frowned. "I think I might've heard the name-"

"He was some kind of astronomer, too. Late twentieth century. We retrieved all we could find about him from the bank, but the only interesting thing was that he wrote a book once about how Heaven was astronomically real."

"Oh, right," Pat said, tracking down a faint recollection. "I remember hearing something about him-maybe in grad school? It sounded pretty silly to me. What does Tipler have to do with all this?"

"That's what I'd like to know. Dannerman-the other Dannerman, I mean-said we should look him up. If I get you access to the network, can you do the Bureau a favor and see what you can find?"

• or Dr. Patrice Adcock the worst thing

about jail was having nothing to do-this woman who had never before in her life found herself with nothing to do. Now things were looking up. She wasn't in jail anymore and, better still, she had a job to do that she was good at.

It took Pat an impatient half hour's waiting to get access to Bureau's databank-no, not the classified databank, of course, but to the one that accessed most of the country's libraries. Then it took a while longer to get used to the Bureau's procedures. She found the American Men of Science entry for Dr. Frank Tipler quickly and began sorting through some of the sources cited. She hardly noticed when Dannerman was back, collarless and occasionally touching his now bare neck to remind himself of the change. That Colonel Hilda Morrisey came in with him.

"New orders, Dr. Adcock," Morrisey said cheerfully. "We're all going for a little ride tonight. The people from Starlab are coming down, and we're going to meet them."