Eschaton 3 - THE FAR SHORE OF TIME

CHAPTER TWO

When I woke up I was lying on a hard, glassy floor. My head felt as though someone had taken a baseball bat to it.

I kept my eyes prudently closed for a moment. I listened, trying to figure out where I was and what I was doing there. All I heard was an occasional skritchy-tinkly sound, like an incomplete set of cheap wind chimes, and now and then a faint whir that sounded a little like skate wheels on a hard floor.

That told me nothing useful, so I took the plunge. I opened my eyes and scrambled to my feet. That made my headache worse, but was the least of my immediate worries. I was in serious trouble.

The room I found myself in was smallish and square, with shiny walls that looked as though they were made of some sort of pale yellow porcelain. There was nothing on the walls-no windows, no decorations-only a couple of doors, both securely closed.

I was not alone in the room.

Two bizarre machines were hovering over a small chest, made out of the same primrose chinaware as the walls. They weren't the spidery Horch fighting machines I'd seen before. What they looked like, more than anything else, was a pair of squat, crystalline Christmas trees. They had spiky glass branches coming off a central trunk, and twigs off the branches, and needles off the twigs-yes, and littler needles coming off the needles, too. For all I knew there were still littler needles than those as well, but I didn't see them. Each of the machines was topped off by a sort of glassy globe, where the angel should have been on a proper Christmas tree, and these were faceted and glittery, like the rotating mirror spheres people rent to cast little spangles of light around a dance floor. One of the things was a pale green, the other a rosy pink. It seemed to me-that was hope speaking, not wisdom-that they looked pretty fragile. Whatever they were up to, I thought, I would have something to say about, because one swift kick would shatter a quorum of their glassy needles.

I was quite wrong about that, of course.

They evidently took notice of the fact that I was awake. The green one did something queer with some of its needles. Clusters of them rearranged themselves, fusing into colorless, faintly glowing lenses pointing in my direction, while the other extended a branch toward something I couldn't see inside the porcelain box.

I must have made a sudden move, because there was a quick, new pang from my head. I reached up to touch the part that hurt and made an unpleasant discovery. Something that didn't belong there was just behind my ear. It was ribbed and hard-surfaced, and faintly warm to the touch, like my own flesh. It seemed to be embedded in my skin. It hadn't been there before, and I didn't like it.

That was when the littler one-its needles were like slivers of shell-pink glass-rolled up close to my face, waving its nearest sprig of needles under my nose.

Then it really surprised me. It spoke to me. It said, "You will be asked questions. Answer them quickly and accurately."

That put a different face on things.

I know it sounds peculiar, but when the machine said that to me it actually made me feel a bit better. Interrogation was something I understood, having done plenty of it myself. I spoke right up. I said, "My name is James Daniel Dannerman. I am a citizen of the United States of America and a senior agent of the American National Bureau of Investigation. I have been a captive of the Beloved Leaders, who are your enemies as well as my own-"

The Christmas tree unhurriedly stuffed a fist of needles into my mouth to shut me up, and the needles weren't fragile at all. They were curiously warm. They didn't hurt, but it was like being gagged with a mouthful of steel wool. It said, "You have not been asked those questions. Answer only the questions you have been asked."

I'm not sure what I tried to say in response. With that glassy bird's nest stuffed in my mouth it only came out as "wumf," but it made the thing remove the needles from my mouth and speak again.

"You will now supply information," the machine said, "concerning the conspecific persons you identify as 'Scuzzhawks.' Did their poor personal hygiene and use of psychoactive materials adversely affect their mortality and reproduction rates?"