It was a short question, but it had a long
answer and not a cheery one. The Floridian pilot Pat had hired for her mission, General Martin Delasquez, had stayed behind to cover the rest of them while they escaped. Escaped from what? Well, there was a sort of a war going on. A big one. How big? Well, as far as they could tell, it seemed to involve the whole damn universe.
Vice Deputy Fennell sighed. "How weird is this going to get? Let's get back to the beginning, from where you all entered Starlab."
If what these people were saying was true-and Pat realized that she didn't have any choice anymore about believing them-they had been through a hell of an ordeal. Taken captive on Starlab by the creature they called Dopey and his Docs-by them, but not for them; they were only subject races, doing their masters' bidding.
And who were these masters? Why, all the newcomers agreed, the whole thing had been organized by that scarecrow creature from the space messages, a race of superbeings who chose to be called "Beloved Leaders," though why anyone should love them Pat could not imagine. Certainly their human captives had no reason to. They had been kept penned for weeks in a cell no larger than the airborne drawing room they were in, but without any of its amenities-without any amenities at all, even toilets!
That struck Pat as nasty. Then she heard a good deal nastier.
At least the original band of captives had been allowed to live intact, as a sort of control group of humans to be studied. But the aliens had other studies in mind as well, and those had been far worse. The aliens had made additional copies of their captives for anatomical research. Nearly all of those unfortunates had died during the experimentation, generally, Pat Five said, in considerable pain. She herself had been lucky. She had been the one who was chosen, pretty much at random, to become pregnant so the aliens could discover how human beings produced their young. Romance was not involved, nor even actual sexual intercourse. She had been artificially inseminated with sperm-from, she thought, one of the Jimmy Lins, though she couldn't be positive even of that-and so she alone of that group had survived.
Backgrounder
NBI contacts file
DELASQUEZ, Martin, Maj. Gen. Florida Air Guard
General Delasquez qualified for astronaut training in the U.S. NASA program, but never went into space due to the defunding of the program. When the State of Florida declared itself sovereign in its own territory, Delasquez became part of its Air Guard, rising to the rank of major general. He was attached to the Florida mission to the United Nations, stationed in New York City, when Dr. Patrice Adcock (see backgrounder file) hired him as copilot on her mission to Starlab. He returned with the others and was subsequently found to be bugged.
He was then hired by Eurospace as a consultant on Starlab when they proposed to fly their own mission to the satellite, in which capacity he served for some months at the Eurospace facility in Kourou, Guyana.
Delasquez is said to be well connected politically in Florida's Cuban-American circles. A second Delasquez is said to have died while with the others in captivity by the Scarecrows.
It did not seem to Pat that Pat Five had been all that lucky.
She tried to imagine what it might be like to be a laboratory specimen, with an unwanted new life growing inside her. Then she stopped trying to imagine it. It was more painful than she could bear.
CHAPTER NINE
Hilda Morrisey had a good imagination, too. She needed it in her work, but she also needed to be able to turn it off when it was troublesome. Which Vice Deputy Daisy Fennell evidently could not; the woman, listening with openmouthed horror, had completely lost control of the debriefing. Hilda quelled the uneasy stirrings in her own belly and spoke up. "Let's get back to business. One at a time, now. Go back to when you woke up in this place with the mirrors all around you. What happened next?"-pointing to the one who called herself Patrice.
Who shook her head. "I wasn't there. Patsy and I came along later-"
And then there was a whole confusing other story about this "Patsy"-still another copy of Dr. Adcock-and how she'd been electrocuted by some still other kind of alien monster that looked like a hippopotamus but delivered lethal electrical shocks. Only that didn't happen in the mirrored cell, it happened later on, after they'd all been taken out of the city-or the base, or the encampment or whatever you chose to call it-where they'd first arrived, and then been dumped out in the woods somewhere, because the other guys, the other^ variety of would-be universe-conquerors they called the "Horch," were fighting against the ones they called the Beloved Leaders—
Well, it went on like that. Hilda couldn't keep them from interrupting and correcting each other, not even with the help of the recovered Daisy Fennell. The two of them were trying to untangle the question of Horch vs. Beloved Leaders when the deputy director came in. He waved them to go on and listened for a moment, frowning silently. He didn't stay silent. That lasted only until one of the Pats said, "-so the Horch took over the helmets, you know, the things we could see things in, they showed us the Beloved Leaders destroying planets-"
"Hold it," the deputy director said. "Beloved what? Who loves them?"
"It's what the slave races call those scarecrow things," Daisy Fennell explained. "Remember? In the first transmission from space?"
"Beloved Leaders, my ass! Can't we just call them aliens?"
Hilda coughed. "There are a whole bunch of different aliens, sir."
He scowled and thought for a moment. "Scarecrows, then. That's what they look like, right? So who's fighting who in this war?"
"Basically it's those two, the Horch and the, ah, Scarecrows," Hilda said. "What they want is control of this eschaton thing."
"Which is what?"
Hilda gamely opened her mouth to try to respond, but one of the Pats saved her. "Remember what you asked us to look up, Mr. Pell? About this man Tipler? He wrote a book, back around 1995. It seems he thought at the end of the universe we'd all be born again and live forever."
The deputy director was staring at her. "You mean the Scarecrows got hold of the book by this guy Tipler?"
"Oh, no," one of the other Pats put in. "They thought it up by themselves. It wasn't until Dopey told us about it that we thought of Tipler."
"The little turkey told you?" Marcus Pell scratched his chin. "Well," he said, "maybe we should get it from the horse's mouth. Let's get them in here."
The first people in the room were a pair of armed guards. Not just armed, as everyone was these days-especially if they were in the Police Corps. These tough-looking individuals carried serious rapid-fire carbines. They took up stations beside the door just as the creatures they were guarding against came in.
Hilda smelled them before she saw them, but she wasn't prepared for what she saw. One of the big, pale creatures was carrying a selection of bowls and pitchers in various arms. The other was carrying the turkey-creature, Dopey. Who was spooning granulated sugar out of a bowl and complaining about the quality of it between mouthfuls. He was addressing the guards as they herded the golems into one corner of the salon. "Why do you treat the bearers as though they were dangerous animals?" he demanded, hopping down to the floor. "They are entirely obedient; it is their natures. Make them understand, please, Dr. Adcock, Agent Dannerman." He took one more spoonful of sugar, then handed the bowl to the Doc, dusting his hands on his belly bag. "Also make them understand that this simple sugar is not adequate for my diet. The bearer indicates it will not poison us, but why can we not have the proper food we brought from your Starlab?"
Astonishing Event!
Second Doktor-nauk R. V. Artzybachova Arrives in Kiev.