He blinked at her. "What? Oh, sure. What's on your mind?"
"Well, you told me that after college protsy they drafted you into the army-all right, the protsy-"
"Had to be the protsy, Pat. They had snappier uniforms and no thirty-kilometer hikes."
"Then what?"
He chewed reflectively for a moment. "Well, when they called me up it turned out they didn't need any more people in uniforms. They needed undercover ops. They thought I'd do just fine mingling with the white-collar criminals and the yuppy terrorists. I objected. I said I didn't want to spy on my old friends, so they said, sure, we can give you something else. And they did." He shook his head wryly. "They ordered me to infiltrate one of the ultra light plane gangs in Orange County-you know, like the Deadly Force and the Scuzzhawks? The gangs that had been taking over little towns and scaring the hell out of the citizens? It meant wearing the same leathers for three or four weeks at a time and never taking a bath-not all that different from here, you know? Except that there were occupational hazards. The reason they needed gang infiltrators so badly was that they were having a pretty high attrition rate with the agents that managed to get in at all. All kinds of casualties: one plane crash, two ODs-and one guy who was found washing up with the surf. It didn't take me long to call in and say that, after all, I thought investigating tax frauds and radical-chic terrorists was more along my line of work."
Jimmy Lin had settled down nearby, listening intently. Pat gave him a glance, then grinned at Dannerman. "I think you made the right pick. I can't really imagine you as a Scuzzhawk. But, look, that was eight or ten years ago, at least? And you didn't quit when your hitch ran out?"
He said simply, "I found out I kind of liked it." Fascinated, Pat persisted. "What else did you do?" "Whatever they told me to do, pretty much. That outfit I used to work for in New York before I came to you-that was drugs. And I did a lot of antiterrorist stuff, too: the Free Bavarian movement, the Spanish guys that blew up Nelson's column in London, all that."
"And you'd go in and make friends with them, and then the end result of all these adventures was you put somebody in jail."
Dannerman gave her an injured look. "Only the bad guys."
Pat looked at him wonderingly. "Dan-Dan," she said, "you know what I think about you? I think you didn't keep on being a spook for the money. I think you did it because you want to protect people. You're a kindergarten teacher, you know that? Jose pees on Elvira's milk and cookies, so you give Jose a good swat-but you're doing it for his sake as much as for hers."
Dannerman looked as though he was getting hot under the collar. "Somebody has to keep the peace. Do you have any better way of doing it?"
"No," she said, studying him analytically. "I don't. Actually, I think it's kind of sweet." He shrugged. "You weren't that kindly a kid, you know. What happened? Do they teach compassion in the spy school?"
"Not exactly. We did take a course in sensitivity training, but basically it was to teach us how to manipulate people." He looked at Jimmy. "Of course," Dannerman said, "I'm not the only one with experience in this area, am I?" Lin was silent, waiting, watching Dannerman's face while the bowl of goulash was cooling on his outstretched thighs. "I mean," Dannerman went on, "you knew I was an agent. You had to find out from somewhere."
Lin sighed. "If you're asking if I'm a professional spook like you, the answer's no. But, yes, I did know. They told me at the consulate, first thing, as soon as I got back from Houston. That's why I started cozying up to you." He glanced penitently at Pat. "See, Pat," he said, almost pleading, "I want to go home, I mean without getting arrested. They've got a warrant out for me at Jiuquan. It's a chickenshit political charge, but they're serious about it; jail's involved, and, trust me, you don't want to be in a Chinese jail. They told me I could square it by performing a little service for the state. So, I ask you, what could I do?"
Pat didn't answer that. Instead, she asked, "What's this Jewchoon place you're talking about?"
"Jiuquan," Dannerman corrected. "It's the Chinese space center, like our Cape and Huntsville and Houston all rolled into one." Then, to Lin, "Tell you what. Let's change the subject, all right? No hard feelings. We all did what we had to do… and look how much good it's done any of us."
Time passed. Pat was interested to discover that time kept right on passing, even when there really weren't any events to mark the passage. Oh, there were a few slow, but visible, processes of change. All three of the men were developing tacky-looking beards, and Pat's own axillary growth was no longer scratchy stubble.
But very little happened. Once or twice Dopey put in a brief appearance, not talkative, seeming harried. Sporadically someone would have a notion and commit it to paper to be passed around, but none of the ideas seemed to go anywhere. Sleeping, eating, defecating took up just so much of their time, and the rest hung heavy. Pat was mildly pleased to discover that she could beat any of the others but Rosaleen at chess, once Rosaleen had made a wrapping-paper board, and while she and Dannerman were playing their hundredth game Jimmy Lin was attempting to fabricate a deck of playing cards out of more scraps of the paper towels. "At least I might have a chance to win something at poker now and then," he said sulkily.
Pat rocked back on her heels as a thought struck her. "It's your move," Dannerman said.
"Wait a minute. Give me the pen and a piece of paper, will you, Jimmy? Something just occurred to me."
And she began to print: Would it do any good if we tried to get Dopey into a game of something? She was just about to hand it to Dannerman when Jimmy called: "Hey, looks like Dopey's coming back!"
Indeed the mirror wall was turning milky again. Caught with the scrap of paper in her hand, Pat stared about, looking for a place to hide it. There wasn't any. Desperately she popped it in her mouth and began to chew.
She forgot to swallow when she saw what was happening. Dopey was indeed entering through the wall, but he wasn't alone. He was leading two other human beings through the wall.
"Hey!" Jimmy Lin shouted in delight. "Naked women!"
So they were, being shepherded into the cell by a pair of Docs, looking terrified and angry at the same time. Each of them was rubbing the back of her neck with one hand as she clutched her bundle of clothing with the other. "You said," Dopey explained, "that you required additional breeding stock."
They looked very familiar to Pat Adcock. She swallowed the lump of paper as she stared at them, clutching Dannerman's arm. "Sweet Jesus," she gasped. "They're both me!"
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Pat
It was frightening, it was unbelievable, but Pat had to face up to the fact that it was true. These two women were indeed herself. They were two precisely identical copies of Dr. Patrice Ad-cock-oh, a lot cleaner, yes, and a lot less frayed-looking, but in every other way exactly herself. Their voices were the same. Their appearance was the same. The way they were hurrying into their clothes-Dannerman politely looking away, Martin impolitely observing, Jimmy Lin frankly ogling-was just the way she had done it when she first got clothing again. And when she asked, "Where the hell did you two come from?" what they answered was just what she would have said:
"Starlab." They said it in chorus, too, and then stopped short to stare at each other-to stare at everything around them. "Jesus," one of them began, a half-second before the other, who paused to let the first one finish with the flip side of Pat's question. It wasn't "Where did you come from?" but "Where in God's name are we?"
That got several answers; the habit of talking in chorus was contagious, Pat thought. Jimmy Lin, giggling, said, "You've been abducted by space aliens," and Rosaleen said compassionately, "That's a long story," and Dannerman proposed, "You go first, please? Tell us everything that happened. It might be important. Then we'll tell you everything we know."