Eschaton 3 - THE FAR SHORE OF TIME

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

I don't know how many people had been waiting impatiently on the other side of those doors, maybe a hundred or more. They came pouring in, full of indignation at being kept outside, even more full of astonishment when they saw what was waiting for them. The ones in front stopped short, goggling, until the ones behind pushed them forward. There was a curious sort of collective sigh. Then some rushed toward the sub and a dozen or so zeroed in on Marcus Pell, full of complaints and accusations. A tall woman in a sari got to him first. "I must protest this unnecessary delay, Deputy Director Pell!" she snapped sternly. "Under the terms of the UN covenant we are entitled to immediate access to every item of Scarecrow technology, without delay!" And a man, in the uniform of some army I didn't recognize but wearing a blue United Nations beret, backed her up: "I have already filed a protest because your people did not allow UN observers to be present when this submarine was landed!"

Pell wasn't fazed. He'd had plenty of practice in dealing with indignant foreigners who were pissed off at something the Bureau had done. He spread his hands benignly. "I understand your concerns, Major Korman, Doctor Tal, but these are exceptional circumstances. The Scarecrows don't know we have captured this sub, and they mustn't find out. So we have had to take unusual security precautions-"

He didn't stop there, but I stopped listening. I had a nearer problem. Several dozen of the new people had circled my little group, staring in fascination at their first sight of a real, live Horch. A couple of them were cameramen, shooting from every angle, and when Beert saw the lenses pointing at him he couldn't help flinching away. Pirraghiz and the wounded Doc, Wrahrrgherfoozh, saw what was happening and moved to surround Beert protectively, but the audience was all raucously shouting questions: Did they speak English? What happened to the big one's arm? How come the other Doc was wearing clothes? Were they dangerous?

I tried to reassure Beert and Pirraghiz and at the same time keep the more adventurous of the spectators from reaching out to touch Beert, but it was Hilda, the expert in crowd control, who rescued us. She produced four Bureau police to surround us and then-she must have turned up the gain on her internal microphone-she thundered at the people:

"Don't come too close! There's a risk of communicable diseases." With the help of the police, that made them fall back a little. She added, more civilly, "When they've been examined you will have your proper access to them, and before that we'll arrange for Agent Dannerman to meet with you in the auditorium to tell his story."

She didn't give me a chance to react to that. While the police were moving the spectators away she came up close to me and, said softly, "I'd go easy on telling Marcus to go screw himself if I were you, Danno. You're not making any friends for yourself that way."

She was telling me what I knew already. I shrugged. "I already have all the friends I need."

She was silent for a moment. Then she said, "Maybe you do. It's a good thing for you that I'm one of them." And then, with a change of tone, "Anyway, here comes our transportation."

The transportation was one of those electric-motored people carriers you see in airports. It was big enough to hold all of us-including the Docs, though just barely. With a couple of Bureau uniformed police ahead of us to clear the way we moved pretty fast out of the loading area, through the halls of Camp Smolley. Hilda wasn't on the vehicle and didn't need to be; her box's wheels kept up easily as she rolled along behind us. Behind her still half a dozen more guards were following, half-trotting to keep up; most of them wore the blue UN berets. All the way the two Docs were mewing to each other, taking a lively interest in the rooms they passed, the fire extinguishers on the walls, the water fountains, the ceiling-mounted TV screens at every intersection that were all displaying the scene in the loading dock, though no human beings were present in the halls to watch them because everybody who could get there was there already. Beert was darting his head in every direction, too, and full of questions. I couldn't tell him much. I'd never been in Camp Smolley before either.

I knew right away when we got to the rooms they had reserved for my friends, though, because two people were standing in front of one of the doors. One was a blue-beret guard, looking uneasy, and the huge figure next to him was unmistakably a Doc. I was astonished to see him there, but Pirraghiz saw him at the same moment I did and her reaction was a lot more violent. She screamed something and leaped off the carrier-I thought she was going to overturn the thing-and flung herself into the other one's arms, the two of them mewing at high volume at each other. I got off, too, turning to Hilda. "Oh, right," I said, memory returning at last. "There were a couple of Docs with the bunch that escaped from the prison planet, the escape party, weren't there?"

"Two of them. The other one's dead," she said shortly. "This one we call Meow; he's been helping out figuring how the Scarecrow stuff works-can't talk so anybody can understand him, but he's good at drawing pictures. Tell your Horch friend this is where he's going to live for a while."

For a while. When I looked inside I hoped that "for a while" would be really brief, because the room they wanted him in was not attractive. It was a damn jail cell, is what it was. It had bars on its one window, and a lidless open toilet, and a washstand, and a narrow cot. That was all.

Hilda was watching my face. "Tell him it's only temporary," she suggested.

I looked at her. "Yeah, sure," I said. I did tell Been: that. What I didn't tell him was how long "only temporary" was likely to be in government practice. I glossed it over as fast as I could, and tried to explain to him how the toilet worked, and offered to get more blankets for his cot if he wanted them, and promised I would see him as often as I could-I didn't then realize how intensive the questioning was that lay ahead of us, and therefore how often that would be.

Beert listened in silence, head hung low, ropy arms wrapped around his belly for protection. All he said, his voice low-pitched and somber, was, "What about food, Dan?"

That took me aback. "Oh, hell," I said. "Right. Food." I hadn't given that little problem any thought at all.

So I asked Hilda for help. She wasn't, much. "There's plenty for the Docs and the Dopeys," she told me. "The Scarecrows sent some food down for them-that's how they sneaked their subs along. I don't know about the Horch. What does he eat?"

I turned to Pirraghiz for help. That took a little doing, because all three of the Docs were still excitedly mewing to each other. Wrahrrgherfoozh and the one they called Meow were hugging each other at that moment-by no means with the same passion as Pirraghiz had shown, but you can do a lot of hugging with six arms apiece, even if one of them is only a stump. When I got Pirraghiz's attention and explained the problem, she looked remorseful. "I did not think, Dannerman," she said sadly. "Let me ask the others." They chattered back and forth for a moment, then she shook her massive head at me. "I am not sure," she said. "Perhaps I can do for Djabeertapritch what I did for you in the nest of the Two Eights-get samples of all the foods your species eats, and see what among them resembles the foods of the Horch."

"I understand Meow has food of his own," I said, pointing at the other Doc. "Maybe some of that can be used, or the food for the Dopeys."

She looked puzzled. "Perhaps," she said, "but why do you call him that? It is Mrrranthoghrow."

I stared at her, slack-jawed. "Mrrranthoghrow?"

"Exactly he," she said happily. You would not think that a six-armed creature with a face like a bearded full moon could look coquettish, but she managed it. "He is a copy of the one we knew in the Two Eights, of course, but it is Mrrranthoghrow whom the Others copied for this mission and he remembers me well from earlier times. But you surprise me, Dannerman. Did you think I would be so affectionate with a total stranger?"

Next stop for me was my press conference-well, there was certainly no press there, but that was what it felt like to the person in the hot seat. I climbed up onto the platform, before the hundreds of staring eyes, and gave them a sketchy outline of my adventures with the Horch. Then I opened the floor for questions. That was a mistake. There were about a million of them, and all the time I was searching the hundred or more faces in the room for Patrice.

When I found her, squeezed into almost the last row, I managed an inconspicuous wave. She waved back, all right, but there was something about her that seemed wrong.

I took me a moment to figure that out. It was the clothes and the hairdo. Patrice had been wearing a pretty pants suit; this one was in Bureau coveralls. All right, she could have changed her clothes-not very likely, but possible-but she hadn't had time to let her hair grow into a long ponytail.

There was only one possible explanation. The woman I was looking at wasn't Patrice. She had to be Pat! The real Pat. And sitting beside her was a man who looked a lot like me, except that he wore a mustache, and I realized I was looking at the other me, Danny M., the man who was married to Pat.

That did not help my concentration.

When the deputy director, sitting behind me on the platform, saw that I was stumbling through the next couple of questions, he took pity on me-or, more likely, was afraid that I was getting tired enough to say something he didn't want said. He got up and preempted the mike. "No more questions, please," he said. "Agent Dannerman has had a very exhausting time. We must see that he is fed, and allowed to rest. As he is debriefed over the next few days the records and transcripts will be made available to all of you, under the terms of the UN agreement. Please leave now."

There was a rumble of discontent from the audience at that, but they left-or I guess they did; Pell had me by the arm and escorted me backstage before I could see. Hilda was waiting there amid the tangle of ropes and discarded pieces of sets. "Nice job, Danno," she informed me. "The way you duck the questions you don't want to answer, you'll make a good administrator someday."

The deputy director gave her an opaque look, but all he said was, "Have you got a schedule for Dannerman yet?"

"Working on it, Marcus. He's got to eat first, though."

He looked surprised, as though that sort of pampering had never crossed his mind. Then he looked resigned. "Take care of it," he ordered, and left without another word-to catch up on his harassing of somebody else, no doubt.

I looked at Hilda. I hadn't realized I was hungry until she put it in my mind, but I was. "You mentioned food?"

"Right next door," she said, rolling away. I followed her down a steep ramp, through a doorway, and came out in a little room- I suppose a dressing room at one time, now set up with a table and four chairs. Three of the chairs were occupied already: the Pat in the Bureau coveralls, that other Dannerman and old Rosaleen Artzybachova. "I thought you'd like company while you ate," Hilda said indulgently. Then, less indulgent: "You've got forty-five minutes."

As she left us I fixed my gaze on the Pat. "Patrice?" I guessed, very unsure of myself in more ways than one. She shook her head.

"No, Patrice went back to the Observatory to work on the Threat Watch," she said. "I'm Pat-Pat One-but won't I do for now?"

The food was typical Bureau on-duty fare: platters of sandwich materials, a big bowl of salad, coffee, fruit for dessert. I was hungry again and I ate, but I wasn't paying much attention to it. I had never had the experience of sitting down at a table with myself before.

They began at once to tell me all the news that I hadn't heard from Patrice, what a commotion they'd made when they got back, how this Dan and this Pat had been put in charge of their Dopey and Meow-"His name is actually Mrrranthoghrow," I told them, and they practiced that for a while without a lot of success-and thus assigned to Camp Smolley. And all the while I kept looking at the two of them, and trying to figure out just what I was feeling.

Odd. That was how I was feeling. Not uncomfortable, exactly. Just odd. I guess it showed, because the other Dan grinned at me, then looked serious and said, "Weird, right? But you'll get used to it."

And Pat said sympathetically. "We all did."

"Except in my case," Rosaleen put in, "because I didn't have anything of that sort to get used to. When I returned I learned that the other of me had died while we were away. That was more than simply a bizarre feeling, Dan. It was quite distressing. But as Dan says-as Dan M. says-one gets used to it."

Then Pat-Pat One-began to show me pictures of Pat Five's triplets; they looked like rather ordinary little girls to me, somewhat Asian-looking. As was to be expected, considering that what got Pat Five pregnant was some of the Beloved Leaders' experimentation with sperm from their copy of Jimmy Lin. Who had managed to secure visitation rights, after a lot of high-level and acrimonious diplomatic discussion between the United States and the People's Republic, and was surprisingly turning out to be a fondly besotted new father. And Pat Five was doing fine, too, except that the drugs she was taking to enhance her milk flow-three babies sucking away six times a day each!-had made her breasts so sensitive that she complained of being horny all the time. And how busy Patrice and P. J. were at the Observatory, with the Threat Watch using up so much of their resources, and the Observatory's scientific staff constantly pissing and moaning I because they weren't getting enough observing time to do any real science since the world's telescopes were kept busy hunting comets that might be a threat.

All the time, out of the corner of my eye, I was watching Pat, my true love whom I had been missing so urgently, for so long. And what I was thinking was how much she looked like Patrice, with all of Patrice's mannerisms and every bit of Patrice's looks. I cleared my throat. "Will she be coming back soon, do you think?"

That made them all look at each other. "I don't know," Dan M. said at last.

And Pat bit her lip, and then leaned toward me confidentially. "I guess you know," she said, "back in the prison planet Patrice, well, had a kind of crush on you-that is, you, I mean"-pointing a forefinger at each of us Dan Dannermans.

I blinked at that. "She did?"

Rosaleen was laughing, a dry old chuckle. "Of course she did, Dan, as did we all," she said kindly. "Do not let it make you conceited. You were simply the only worthwhile man for many light-years in any direction. What did you expect?" She gave me a demure look. "Perhaps I should confess that I even had some sorts of foolish old-woman thoughts about you myself."

"You did?" That was astonishing, too, but in a different way.

"Patrice didn't exactly get over it, either," Pat went on. "So when she heard you were here-well, look, I'm telling tales out of school, but we're all kind of family here, aren't we? And now you've just kind of hurt her feelings, you know."

That baffled me. "What did I do?"

"Something you said, I'm not sure what. Did you say she was just a copy of me? Because we're all a little bit sensitive about that."

Well, I hadn't done that. Not exactly, anyway. What I had done was to admit to her that I'd told Pirraghiz she was "more or less" the woman in my dreams, but what was so bad about that? It was true, wasn't it?

They all kept talking, mostly Dan M. telling me about the religious nut who had wormed her way into Hilda's confidence and repaid it by shooting her and three or four other people. I listened and responded. But I was still mulling over the Patrice problem when Hilda herself rolled in.

"Finished, Danno?" she asked. "You better be. Wipe the crumbs off your face, because family time is over and the debriefers are waiting to get at you."