I gave up. I spooned some water out of the drinking jug into one of the cups of dehydrated stew, and ate one of the apples while the stew was soaking. I tugged at the lid to the litter box, thinking it might be some kind of weapon if I could get it off. I couldn’t.
Then I saw that Dopey had begun to move. He levered himself painfully off the table and waddled slowly over to the water jugs. He drank some, then splashed some over himself.
I took him by his frail little arm and said clearly, “I intend to escape. I need you to help me make a plan.”
He grunted without actually answering. I squeezed harder on the arm. “Talk to me!” I demanded.
He wrenched himself free. “If you make a plan,” he said, “you are telling the Horch what to expect. Are you an even greater fool than I thought?”
“But-but that was why I asked in English!”
He sighed. “They listen in, no matter what language we speak. Whether we see them or not, they are observing us at all times.”
I said, “Hell.” Of course it was only an illusion, but I had believed we had at least that much privacy. I shouldn’t have. That was a Bureau trick, too. I’d done it myself: after you’ve interrogated a couple of suspects for a while, you put them together and listen to what they say to each other.
He was talking again. “In any case,” he said gloomily, “there is no hope of escape. We will die here, Agent Dannerman, and the next time I see you we will be at the Eschaton.”
His certainty was bringing out all the stubbornness in me. “If there’s really going to be an Eschaton,” I said.
“But of course there will!”
I shook my head at him. “Pat didn’t think so, and she’s an expert in that subject-“
“An Earth-human expert!” he sneered.
“All the same. Pat said it had been conclusively shown that there wasn’t enough mass in the universe to make it contract again. It will go on expanding forever and never shrink down again to the Big Crunch. So no Eschaton. She said there was no doubt about that at all.”
Dopey made the gagging rattle in his throat that was his version of a contemptuous laugh. “Your primitive beliefs! Both the Beloved Leaders and the Horch are far, far wiser than Dr. Pat Adcock. There is no question.”
He turned his back on me and limped over to gaze without much interest at his purple food. “You don’t seem real happy about it,” I offered.
He put a small chunk of the stuff in his mouth, chewing unenthusiastically-and sloppily; crumbs were falling to the floor. Then, with his mouth full, he said, “You do not understand, Agent Dannerman. I have betrayed the Beloved Leaders. Their judgment will be sure.”
“Oh, maybe not,” I said. “It might go the other way, you know. Maybe the Horch will win, and then you won’t have to face your Beloved Leaders.”
He turned the cat eyes on me mournfully. “Do you think that would be better for me? Or for you, either?” He swallowed the rest of what was in his mouth, then put the remainder of the stuff down. “In any case, Agent Dannerman,” he said, “I think I will find out which it is quite soon.”
Well, he was right about that.
A few sessions later, when the Christmas trees released me for my pee-and-chow break, I discovered Dopey lying next to the table. His plume dragged limply on the floor. One of his kitten eyes was closed to a slit, and the other queerly distended. Neither was looking at me. And his body was cold.
I shouted, but no one came. When one of the crystal robots did eventually appear, it paid no attention to my dead companion. It only hustled me off to my next interrogation, and when I came back to the room his body was gone.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Never mind about the next while. The easy way to describe it is that it was more of the same, but that’s not accurate. It was worse. Not only was I now alone, more alone than I had ever been in my life, but too little sleep for too long was doing me in. My thinking was getting fuzzy. Every time I got to the biological-needs room I fell asleep at once, without bothering to eat, and that was not improving my state.
I can’t say that I was giving up hope, because I hadn’t had all that much hope to begin with, but I was getting too bleary even to think about a future.
And then something did come along.
The Christmas trees’ questions had been getting sillier and more erratic than ever. Sometimes both machines stood silent for a few moments, apparently deep in thought, before coming up with some new asininity.
Then, after a particularly lengthy period of cogitation, Pinkie rolled away from me and stood silently beside Green-glass, whose lenses began to disappear. Both machines seemed to shrink into themselves, retracting whole hordes of their finer needles.
Remember, I was staggeringly weary. By the time it registered with me that the robots were in some sort of standby state, and thus in good condition to be attacked, it was too late to do anything about it. The door opened. Three living Horch came in-the one with the funny accent, the female I had seen before and an unfamiliar male, who wore the same gleaming metal belly helmet as the female.
The female darted her head toward Green-glass, I suppose giving it an order I couldn’t hear. I didn’t have any trouble seeing the results, though. Both Christmas trees sprang into action. They advanced on me and grabbed me, but not as they had done before. This time not all their needles were retracted. They pricked (-me in a hundred places, and they hurt. I yelped in pain and surprise. That didn’t stop them. They investigated most of the parts of my body with their sharp little spikes. Then, without a word, they dropped me to the floor and rolled back to the Horch at the door. There was a low-toned conversation while I was picking myself up, and then the two Horch with the metal belly plates left, the Christmas trees went into standby mode and the one with the embroidered fabric stomacher came toward me. “Bureau Agent James Daniel Dannerman,” he said, “the interrogation is terminated. You have been given to me for disposal.”
It was the first time I had ever been close enough to a live Horch to touch, so I summoned all the energy I had and grabbed him by the throat. “Tell those robots not to interfere! You’re going to take me out of here,” I croaked, as menacingly as I could make it.
He didn’t seem worried. He didn’t need to be. He was a lot stronger than I was. Both of the Christmas trees snapped out of their down mode and sprang forward, but he waved them away. Those ropy arms of his pulled my fingers from his throat without effort.
“Yes, of course,” he said. “Transportation has been arranged.”
He turned and left through the open door; and, carrying me, the green-glass Christmas tree rolled after him.
PART THREE
The Compound
CHAPTER TWELVE
Outside the interrogation room the Christmas tree waited for a moment while the Horch climbed onto a funny-looking kind of three-wheeled velocipede. He flopped onto it on his back, belly up, with his long neck twisting around so he could see where he was going. Then he whizzed away and we followed.
As before, it wasn’t a sight-seeing trip. The machine carried me hugged to its bristly needles, my face pressed so that I could get only gimpses of the scenery, but I recognized it. Dopey was right. The last time I’d seen any of this, it had been shattered and smoking junk, but it was definitely the old Beloved Leaders base, the fires out now and here and there a Christmas tree diligently taking the ruined machinery apart.
The Horch made better time on his tricycle than we did. He was waiting beside it when we arrived and the Christmas tree set me down.
We were at the edge of the built-up base, with that vast, empty, ocher-colored desert in front of us. A different kind of vehicle was parked there, with an alien standing next to it. I recognized the creature as one of the huge, pale, multiarmed ones we called “Docs,” but there was something odd about it. It took me a moment to realize what it was; all the Docs I had seen before wore nothing but a kind of jockstrap, while this one was fully clothed.