The deputy director glared around the room, looking for someone to blame. Then he shrugged. "You're in charge," he snapped at Hilda, and hurried out of the room-on his way, Hilda supposed, to find a secure screen so he could check in with headquarters.
Being in charge was nice, Hilda thought, but it would have been even nicer if she knew what she was supposed to do. For starters she nodded at the guards and interrogators. "You can all take ten," she said. As they left gratefully she peered at Dopey. "Is that the way the thing sleeps?"
Patrice answered for all of them. "I don't know. We never saw him sleep before."
"Urn," Hilda said, and then got down to business. "All right. Tell me what you've found out so far," she ordered, looking at her own Dannerman.
He looked rebellious. "Christ, Hilda! They've been talking for hours! It's all on the tapes, anyway."
It was a reasonable answer, so she tried a different tack. "Then let's get to something they haven't talked about. Don't you have any questions that haven't been answered yet?"
Pat spoke up for him. "Well, I do," she said, sounding tentative, turning to the other Pats. "You said something about another one of us who died?"
The two other Pats looked at each other. Patrice sighed. "Yes, that was Patsy. We were swimming and these other creatures-they looked sort of like seals-"
"More like a hippopotamus," Pat One corrected.
"Anyway, they had some kind of electric shockers. Like electric eels, I guess. And they lived in the water and- Well, things went sour, and one of them killed Patsy. Do we have to talk about this now? It was bad."
"I'm afraid you do," Hilda informed her-not cruelly, but not particularly sympathetically, either. Making people talk about things they didn't want to talk about was basic to her job description. "You have to talk about everything. Now, these animals with the electric shockers-"
"They weren't animals," Dannerman-beard corrected her. "They were fellow prisoners, just like us."
"Anyway, all that's on the tapes already," Patrice said. "There were lots of different kinds of-people-from different planets there and- Oh, hi!" she said, turning to greet Pat Five as she entered.
"Hi," Pat Five said, looking belligerent. She spotted the table with the coffee cups and headed toward it.
"Come on," Pat One coaxed. "Don't keep us in suspense. What did the doctors find out?"
"They found out I was pregnant," Pat Five said, pouring a cup and adding four or five spoonfuls of sugar. "They wanted me to go into a hospital here for observation. I told them screw that. There are plenty of hospitals in New York and I want to go home. And then I want to get back to work."
"So do I," said Patrice eagerly. "I was thinking about it all the time we were in that damn cell…" Then her face fell. "Oh, hell," she said. "I didn't think. How in the world are we ever going to sort that out?"
"Sort what out?" Hilda demanded.
Pat-the real Pat-answered for them all. "Sort out which of us is going to run the Observatory, of course." They were all silent for a moment, then she added gloomily, "I don't think it'll be me, anyway."
Patrice gave her a curious look. "Why not you?"
Canada's Rights in "Starlab" Technology Unquestionable.
We must not forget that Canada has a special interest in the Starlab venture, since it was on Canadian soil that the first returnees from Scarecrow captivity reached the Earth.
– Globe and Mail, Toronto
She glanced bitterly at Hilda. "Because these people tell me I'm goddam prey, that's why. I've got this damn lump of something in my head, and according to them somebody's likely to grab me and saw my head off to get at it."
"Oh," Patrice said, nodding, "you mean the bug. I've got one, too."
Hilda snapped to attention. "You do?"
"Sure. So did Patsy-the one of us who died. And, of course, all the ones who went back to Earth-you two"-nodding at the Earthly Pat and Dannerman-"and Jimmy Lin, and Martin, and Rosie. It's a spy thing."
Dannerman, frowning, opened his mouth, but Hilda was in command. "Tell me exactly what you mean, 'spy thing,' " she demanded.
And was astonished to hear the answer. The bugs in the head were little transmitters-well, no surprise there; everyone had guessed that much. But these weren't simple sound-only bugs. You put on a kind of helmet that acted as a receiver, Patrice said, "And then you were the other person. The other you. I saw that jail cell you were in, Pat. Through your eyes. Just like I was there."
The bearded Dannerman confirmed what she said. "I was in your head once when you were waking up with a hangover, Dan. And Martin said he was at Kourou, and Jimmy Lin was back in the Chinese space center; in fact I think one time when our Jimmy was listening in the one of him that was in China was getting laid. He said it was just like being there. You could see, hear, taste, smell, feel-it was virtual-reality stuff, only better than anything I've ever seen."
Then they were all talking at once, waking Dopey. "You people are very noisy," he complained, peering out from under his great plume, but no one paid attention to him.
"You mean," Pat said shakily, "you could feel and see everything I did? Everything?"
"Well, just when we had the helmet on," Pat One said consolingly. "And we could only receive ourselves-Patrice and Patsy and I could tune in on you, Dan-Dan on the other Dan and so on. Dopey had a way of tuning in on everybody-that's why they put the bugs in your heads in the first place. But he never let us do that."
Pat was shaking her head. "Thank God I wasn't doing anything very interesting," she said. "But now I really do want to get this damn thing out."
"Even if it kills you?" Dannerman asked.
Dopey yawned a little cat yawn. "You people concern yourselves over such trivial things," he complained. "Why should that procedure kill you? The device no longer serves any useful purpose, since you have destroyed the relay channel on your Starlab. My medically trained bearer can remove it without harm to you."
Pat sat up, openmouthed. "You're sure?"
"Of course I am sure. Was it not he who installed the devices in the first place?"
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Dannerman knew what going to hospital was all about, because he'd done it. More than once. You went to hospitals when, for instance, the knee-breakers of the Mad King Ludwigs or the Scuzzhawk enforcers had found out you were a narc, and consequently had beaten the pee out of you. Then, when you got to the hospital, the basic thing you felt was just gratitude that you'd made it there. All you hoped for was that maybe these people could make everything stop hurting.
This time was different. Dannerman had never before gone into a hospital when there was actually nothing wrong with him at all, and when the reason he was there was to let somebody chop holes into parts of his head where neurosurgeons hesitated to cut. Where, if they made one little slip, pow!, your brain was tapioca.
What made it worse-not that Dannerman required that it be made -was that the somebody who was about to stab him in the worse spinal cord wasn't even a human being. It was a two-meter-tall golem, with a lot more arms than seemed reasonable, from some preposterous part of outer space. The damn thing wasn't even looking at Dannerman as it stood impassive in the lurching Bureau van. It wasn't looking at anything. It seemed to be in a standing-up coma. And it smelled terrible.
The party had waited until after dark to make the trip to Walter Reed. Darkness wasn't perfect security. It wouldn't stop any professional snoop from switching on his IR scanner that turned any scene into broad, full-color daylight. But it might save them from being observed by some chance-met news reporter or simple civilian gawker who might just happen to be passing by the freight entrance when their little procession of cars slid through the door to the loading dock, and the door descended behind them.
Walter Reed was meant as a veterans' hospital, but it happened to be really handy to the nation's capital. Presidents and congressmen noticed that right away, and so it became the sort of general all-purpose low-cost medical facility for the nation's top brass. What it didn't have many of anymore was military veterans, because there hadn't been that many wars lately. Now it was mainly the Federal Police Corps which supplied the bodies to fill those ready beds. The Bureau's casualties didn't mingle with shot-up street cops. The Bureau had its own little section, where security was easy to maintain.