"It's Patrice, actually," the two new ones said together.
"All right, Patrice. And you're Patsy."
The third one looked rebellious. "The hell you say! Nobody ever calls me Patsy!"
"Oh, come on," the Patrice said soothingly. "It's not so bad and Rosie's right about needing names."
The Patsy scowled. "So why don't you be Patsy, then?" Then she surrendered: "Oh, well, I guess it makes no difference, but you owe me."
"Fine," Rosaleen said, smiling for the first time. "That's settled: Pat, Patrice and Patsy. Now, hold still." She was pulling out her multicolor pen. "Just so the rest of us can know which of you is which I'm going to put a little beauty spot on your foreheads."
"Hey!" both of them protested at once.
Rosaleen overruled them. "It's just for now; it'll wear off by the time we think of something better. Let's see. We'll do blue for you, Pat, just to be fair. Red for Patrice; and I'll do green for Patsy." And then, mimicking Dopey: "Are there any questions?"
She was talking to the Pats, but it was Jimmy Lin who spoke up. "I have one. Which of you is going to be the lucky girl who gets me?"
Pat opened her mouth to chastise him, and then closed it again. What was the point? Better just to ignore him, she thought, and, hostess like, was about to ask her new best friends if they were ready to eat again when something happened. It sounded like a distant crump of a blast-thunder? an explosion?-and a moment later that constant, featureless white light from overhead dimmed and reddened. It only lasted for a second. Then it was bright again.
"What the hell was that?" Patsy asked.
Nobody had an answer. Patrice asked, "Does that happen a lot?" and Pat shook her head.
"Never before," she said. "It sounded like something blew up."
Rosaleen Artzybachova said, "Did you feel the floor shake?"
Dannerman thought he had; none of the others were sure. But there wasn't any doubt that something had happened, and, though they chewed the subject over the next half hour or so, all they could agree on was that they didn't like it.
Except for Jimmy Lin. Who said, grinning weakly, "How about that? Just talking about sex I can make the earth move for you."
Whatever it was, it didn't happen again. By their second day-well, by the time they woke up from their second sleep after their arrival-the two new Pat Adcocks were at least no longer speaking in chorus. Nurture had triumphed over nature. There hadn't been many differences in their experience, and those only small ones. Patsy had burned her hand trying to learn how to use the cooker; Jimmy Lin had been a little too forthright when he managed to get Patrice alone-well, not "alone," but at least a couple of meters from any of the others, enough for him to deem the privacy adequate-and it had wound up in a screaming match. Things like that. But however little the differences had been, they were enough to set each of them off on somewhat different trains of thought.
What all the Pats had, and kept, was a preference for each other's company. They ate together. When one of them had to use the toilet the other two stood protectively before her, glaring the three males down. They slept nestled next to each other, woke at the same time, whispered to each other. Within the small group of captives they had become a separate subunit. It was, Pat thought, a little reassuring to have two companions whom she could trust absolutely, since they were herself.
The other four were not as pleased. Dannerman and Rosaleen embarked on a chess marathon, doggedly ignoring the three Pat Adcocks. Martin Delasquez hardly spoke to anyone, retreating into sleep, or pretended sleep, for hour upon hour, while Jimmy Lin went the other way. He was hyperactive, Pat thought. He seemed hardly to sleep at all. He kibitzed the chess players, tried unsuccessfully to get Martin to play some other game with him and, of course, did his best to talk sex with any or all of the three Pats. If they were worried about getting pregnant, he offered, the revered ancient Peng-tsu had the answers for that, too. "We could do approaching the Fragrant Bamboo, for instance," he said. "That's doing it standing up, you know? And Peng-tsu says you can't get pregnant that way. You don't believe that? All right, then there's always the Jade Girl and the Flute, or The White Tiger Leaps-that one," he said, with a wink, "I don't want to tell you about, but any time you like I could show you." All that sort of talk had long since become pretty stale for Pat, but the two new ones were more tolerant. They let him talk. Anyway, Pat thought, that was better than Jimmy's other main occupation, which was feverishly writing out notes with ideas for doing something-going on a hunger strike, capturing Dopey and torturing him until he did whatever they wanted- maybe using some of the concealed weapons they still possessed, maybe by dunking his limbs or tail into the cooker. Pat wondered if the man was going insane. When he passed around the suggestion for cooking Dopey's plume, on the grounds that that was bound to hurt but unlikely to kill the creature, he was almost trembling with excitement; but then, a few hours later, he was talking enthusiastically about some of his ancestor's other sexual proposals… when the wall clouded and Dopey came in.
As always, he was bombarded with questions as soon as he appeared: "Why were you gone so long?" from Jimmy Lin; "What was that explosion?" from Dannerman.
One answer did for both of them. "There was an incident," Dopey admitted, his fingers working nervously, his bright tail dimmed and still. "It caused some problems for a time, but it has been dealt with. Now I have some news for you-"
Pat wasn't letting him get away with that. "What kind of incident?" she insisted.
He hesitated, staring around at them with those great eyes. Then he spoke to Dannerman. "In your previous life you were assigned to dealing with 'terrorists,' is that not correct? That is, with criminal persons who performed violent and destructive acts? Yes. Well, it is something of that sort here. I can say no more about it, except that the criminals have been, ah, neutralized."
"Neutralized how?" Jimmy asked suspiciously, but Rosaleen overrode him-probably, Pat thought, because she didn't think they would like to hear the answer.
"Never mind that," she said. "What he means is, are these the same 'criminals' who were interfering with your communications?"
"Yes, precisely. The terrorists."
"I see. And perhaps the same ones who transmitted the message that described you people as destroying the universe?"
For a moment Pat thought that Dopey was going to relapse into his trance state again; it seemed to be a troubling question. But then he made a breathy sound-almost a sigh-and said, "Yes. They are the same. Through trickery and violence they managed to infiltrate the link to your Starlab for a brief time. Of course, I observed their transmission at once and was able to jam the rest of it."
"But then they did it again," Dannerman offered.
Dopey said mournfully, "Indeed. This time I failed to observe it, as they had caused the death of one of me. But my replacement dealt with them. No," he added, waggling his head against the next burst of questions, "that is all I may say on that subject. But I have received new instructions for you. I am instructed to accelerate your program, and so a device is being prepared which will give you more complete information-"
"Device? What kind of device?" Rosaleen demanded.
"It will be explained when it is ready," he said severely. "Please do not interrupt. I have further instructions. I am directed to provide you with whatever additional materiel from your Star-lab you require-except, of course, anything that can be used as a weapon."
"Why are you being nice to us?" Martin asked suspiciously.
"I do not make these decisions. I simply carry out instructions. If there is anything in particular you wish, simply inform me, now or later. Otherwise I will use my own discretion."