Dr. Marsha Evergood was waiting for them on the dock. She glanced at the pair of aliens, the Doc and the Dopey, with a mixture of skepticism and dislike but said nothing as she led them into an elevator. They made a considerable procession, with the aliens, the three bugged humans and Colonel Hilda Morrisey. The Bureau's advance party had done its job. No one else was in sight. Not in the halls behind the freight dock, not in the elevator, which was manually operated by a uniformed Bureau cadet, not in the short stretch of hallway that led them to an operating theater.
It was a real operating theater this time, Dannerman saw. The difference between it and the Bureaus Pit of Pain were that this one had actual surgical machinery, some of the pieces faintly whispering and chuckling to themselves, and the glass wall to the gallery was ordinary glass. There was nobody watching in those seats, either.
Dr. Evergood planted herself at the head of the operating table and peered at the Doc. "How do you want to do this?" she asked the room in general.
The Doc didn't answer. It simply stood impassively, while Dopey methodically picked up surgical instruments and put them down again in disdain. "So very primitive." He sighed. "Still, we will do the best we can."
The best we can. That didn't really sound good enough to Danner-man. Involuntary little choking sounds that came from Patrice and Pat showed that they felt the same way.
There were four or five operating-room attendants in the room, meticulously scrubbed and masked. Though all Dannerman could see of them was their eyes, he was pretty sure that what he saw in those eyes was horror, as the weird little being from space touched their sterile racks with his unwashed fingers. What had become of asepsis? Why, for that matter, were Dannerman and Hilda and the two Pats allowed to enter in their inevitably germ-laden clothes, exhaling their germ-laden breaths, maskless, into the pure air of the operating room?
Dr. Evergood and Dopey talked for a moment in low tones. Then Dopey raised his voice. "Anesthesia?" he said. "No, of course not, we will have no need for your anesthesia."
"Hey," Pat said faintly.
Dopey turned to peer at her. "Have I alarmed you? But there is no reason to fear, this bearer is quite competent. You will experience little or no pain." He paused for a moment for some of that silent communion with the Doc. Then, "He is prepared to commence. Who wishes to be first?"
Dannerman glanced at Pat and Patrice. Both of them were gazing at him. "Me?" he said.
Dopey took it as an offer. "Then very well," he said. "If you will simply lie on that structure over there, Agent Dannerman? Facedown, if you please. Yes, that is fine. Do you Dr. Adcocks wish to watch? If not, you may wait outside, but I think you will find it interesting-oh, what are you doing to Agent Dannerman now?"
Dannerman felt something being draped over the back of his head as the nurses sprang to action. "They're masking the area," Dr. Ever-good said.
"No, no, that is not necessary. One other thing, Agent Dannerman. Do you wish your actual memories restored in place of the simulations we imposed on you? That would take a bit longer, but if you wish-no? Very well. Then we can begin."
And they did. Or Dannerman supposed that they did, though all he experienced was the Doc's light touch at the base of his skull, then a sharp sting in the same place…
And then Dopey was saying, "You may get up now, Agent Dannerman. Which of you Dr. Adcocks wishes to be next?" And next to the operating table Dr. Evergood was incredulously holding some coppery thing in the folds of a surgical cloth, and the two Pats were looking astonished and-well, yes, there was no other word for it- looking terrified.
One of the nurses took Dannerman's arm and led him away to the recovery room. Once outside the operating theater he pulled his mask off, gazing at Dannerman in wonder. But all he said was, "Holy shit."
The recovery room wasn't actually much of a recovery room, but then it didn't have to be. As far as Dannerman could tell, he didn't really have anything to recover from. What the room was in the normal course of events was an upper-floor solarium for the use of ambulatory patients. On this day the ambulatory patients were out of luck, because the deputy director had preempted the space.
Dannerman was surprised to see that there were two people in it already: the other Dannerman and the Pat from space-not the Patrice or the Pat who had just come from the Bureau's cells, who were still in the operating room; and not the pregnant Pat Five. It took Dannerman a moment to figure out that this had to be the one called Pat One; he was still having trouble keeping them all straight.
The nurse gazed from one to another of them unbelievingly, then shook his head. "We'll want you for tests and X rays," he said, "but you can just wait here now." And he left, still shaking his head, as Pat said:
"Are you all right?"
"I guess so," Dannerman said, rubbing the back of his neck. "Don't ask me what happened. I was asleep."
"Let me see," she ordered. Dannerman bowed his neck while the others studied the place where there should have been a wad of surgical packing, but wasn't.
They were still doing it when Patrice came in, rubbing the back of her own neck in the same way. She did have some answers, though. She had been watching while the Doc removed Danner-man's bug. "But I couldn't see much," she apologized. "It looked like the Doc used a couple of the scalpels to open up the back of your neck, Dannerman, but then he just reached in with the fingers of one of his little arms and fiddled around for a while. It didn't take long. Then he pulled this little metal thing out of you and handed it to Dr. Evergood. I didn't even see how he closed the incision up."
"Let me look," Dannerman pleaded. Obediently the Pat bent her head, but there was nothing much to see. A pair of faint pink lines surrounded her spinal cord just below the hairline. That was all there was, and even those were fading as he looked at them.
The door opened again. Dannerman looked up, but the Pat who came in wasn't the remaining one with the bug. It was the pregnant one, Pat Five, just back from an examination by the hospital's obstetrical staff and looking hostile.
The thought of Pat Adcock, any Pat Adcock, being pregnant was almost as bizarre for Dannerman as his own bug, or the freaks who had implanted it. It didn't seem to strike the other Pats that way. They were quick to find her a chair and perch on either side of it. "Tell," one of them demanded.
Pat Five shrugged. "They said I'm a healthy middle-aged primapara," she said. "They wanted to do ultrasound and all that stuff, but I wouldn't let them; I want to get back to my-our-own doctor."
"Right on," agreed Patrice. "But what about-" She glanced at the Dannermans, and lowered her voice before she asked her question.
They had, Dannerman supposed, got into some of the more intimate aspects of pregnancy. He didn't listen in. What he did, though, was put on a pretense of eavesdropping, not because he particularly wanted to hear how the pregnant one was doing with such matters as morning sickness and bladder control, but so that he would not have to make conversation with that other Dan Dannerman sitting there, as uncomfortable as himself.
Federal Reserve Inflation Bulletin
The morning recommended price adjustment for inflation is set at 0.74%, reflecting an annualized rate of 532%. Federal Reserve Chairman Walter C. Boettger expressed alarm at the increase, which, he said in a prepared statement, "is entirely due to public hysteria at recent events, does not fairly represent the nation's economic realities and which, if continued, will necessitate adjustments in the interest rate."