Dannerman swore. "Pat Five? They had that many of you?"
"They had at least that many of me," she corrected. "I don't guarantee the count. But you can call me Five if you want to. What's happening?" And when they had done their best to fill her in she scowled at the Dopey. "You mean the best we can hope for is to stay alive with the bird and the brutes in this wreckage-forever?"
The Dopey craned his neck to peer at her over his plume. "Wreckage? But it will not remain wreckage, Dr. Adcock Five. Once the Horch problem is eliminated we will build it all up again, better than ever, you will see. That will be a job for the bearers, that is what they are good at."
"They seem to be pretty handy gadgets to have around," Dannerman remarked, causing Patrice to give him a sharp look.
What was the matter with the man? Was he losing his mind… or thinking about something he didn't want to discuss? She wondered which.
"Oh, yes, highly intelligent," Dopey was agreeing. "Unfortunately their people foolishly declined to cooperate with the Beloved Leaders. They resisted quite violently, in fact. Ultimately it was necessary to dispatch most of their race directly to the eschaton. These specimens have been preserved; they are quite tractable now, since they were amended to remove their violent natures. Of course, they are no longer capable of acting on their own very much, but they are very good at following orders." Dopey's mind didn't seem to be on what he was saying; he was twisting in all directions to peer down the various approaches. "You've all got your weapons ready? We could be attacked at any time."
Patrice exhaled softly. Amended, she repeated to herself. Quite tractable.
She looked around at the others to see if they were thinking what she was. She couldn't tell. Dannerman had gone off to talk to Martin and Rosaleen, the others simply looked grim. Whether it was because, like herself, they were considering the possibility that the Beloved Leaders might have some similar plans for the human race she did not know.
"Damn," Pat said ruefully. "You know, I was almost getting to like the little shit."
Pat Five looked at her curiously. "For God's sake, why?"
Lamely, "Well… he brought us food. And other things. We would have starved without him."
Pat Five said in disgust, "Oh, Pat, what's the matter with you? You don't really understand what kind of people they are, do you? Tell me something. When you see the supermarket fish clerk checking the pumps in the lobster tank, do you think she does it because she wants the lobsters to be happy?" She glared at Pat, then abruptly added, "Why didn't you ever ask me how I got pregnant?"
Uncomfortably, "I did wonder, I mean about the implants."
"Right, the implants," said Pat Five, nodding. "The implants made a real problem for the damn birds. When they found out about them they just took the things right out, and, honey, that was not fun. Not for me, even though I was the lucky one; I survived the operation. Dan Three told me that the first two of us they tried didn't. Of course, they didn't bother with anesthesia… And then they killed Dan, too. I think it was something about studying how the human body reacted to pain; he was screaming so loud I bet he could be heard all over the compound."
Patrice shuddered, but there was something else she wanted to know. As delicately as possible, she began, "Who was the- ah-the-?"
"The father?" Pat Five shrugged morosely. "Rosaleen thought it was Jimmy, one of the Jimmys, but I don't know. I'm not sure I ever met the gent." She glanced casually at the surviving Jimmy, who was standing suddenly thunderstruck. "All I know for sure is they had sperm they'd collected-I don't know whose-and so they did it to me by artificial insemination, you see. Looked like they just didn't want us to have any fun at all."
"Hey!" said Jimmy Lin, finding his voice at last. "I mean- hey!"
Pat Five scowled at him. "What are you getting excited about? I'm not going to ask for child support."
"It isn't that," he protested. "I just-you know-I mean, I feel sort of responsible if it was my, uh, sperm-"
Pat Five looked at him thoughtfully, then softened. "Well, don't worry about it. Listen, I think being pregnant had its advantage. I'm pretty sure that's why they kept me alive when the Horch started shooting and the birds terminated all the others.
They'd gone to a lot of trouble to knock me up; I guess they didn't want to waste all that work." She glanced at Dopey, nervously making his rounds of the guard posts. "There were two of those goddam birds arguing about it in the examining room," she said, nodding toward the shattered partitions at the far end of their space, "while a couple of the goons held me down. I was sure I'd had it. But then the birds walked off and the goons just dropped me and went away. And I've been here alone ever since."
Patrice couldn't stand still another minute. Pat Five's tale of horrors was more than she could handle. She moved toward the broken partitions. "Over here?" she asked. "Is that where they were doing it?"
"Don't go wandering away from your post!" Jimmy Lin ordered, and Pat Five chimed in:
"I wouldn't go there at all if I were you-"
But that came too late. Patrice had reached the partitions and peered through them. She couldn't see clearly in the minimal light that filtered in from outside, but that, Patrice thought, the contents of her stomach trying to rise up through her throat, was a good thing. There were bodies there. A Dannerman. A Jimmy Lin. Another of those half-absorbed corpses, caught incompletely flushed away when the power died, that was facedown but, she thought, probably had been another Jimmy Lin. The stench of decay was awful. She retreated to the others, holding her hand over her face.
Pat Five laughed-not unkindly. "I warned you," she said. "I've been living with that for days. The birds said it was all right, you know; they just sent them on early to the eschaton."
"So they told you about the eschaton?" Pat asked.
"That Tipler business, sure. They were asking a lot of questions about it just before they terminated the guys- Is something the matter?"
Pat and Patrice were exchanging glances. "You remembered the name!" Pat cried.
"Of course I remembered the name. Frank Tipler. Tulane University. He wrote a book. I also remembered that old what's-his-face told us it was a lot of crap, since the Hubble Constant showed that the universe wasn't ever going to collapse again anyway.
"I've been wondering about that myself," Patrice said, and Pat put in:
"Dan says it doesn't matter if it's true. What matters is that the Horch and the Beloved Leaders act as if they believe it's true, and-"
She stopped there, blinking; they were all blinking, as suddenly the lights were on. And from across the space Dopey chortled: "We have the power! Now we can serve the Beloved Leaders again!"
CHAPTER FORTY
Patrice
The return of the lighting made things clearer but didn't make them better; the place was still a ruin. An eye-hurting flicker told Patrice that, in spite of damage, just beside her one of those magic mirror walls was trying to reconstitute itself near the "examining room": bright mirror surface leaping from floor to ceiling, then crackling and turning dark again, over and over. "Stand back, Patrice!" Rosaleen warned urgently, but there was no danger there; Patrice was already hastily backing away. At the tachyon terminal Dopey was babbling in excitement as a Doc was doing something to its controls. Patrice couldn't see what, exactly, but she couldn't even see the controls, for that matter. Whatever they were, they were invisible to her. But Dopey was in ecstasy-delight, certainly; fear, too. "This is our most dangerous time," he called, then, joyously: "See, here are some weapons! Take them! Be ready! The machines will surely detect this energy, and they-oh, hurry!" But he was talking to the Doc again, not to the humans, who were quick to seize the trombone like things as the Doc lifted them out of the cavernous interior of the terminal, then closed the door for the next batch.