Hilda looked incredulous. "The golem can do that?"
"One of them can. The other's a kind of biological-medical handyman; he's the one who fixed up the guard last night."
"And he fixed Rosaleen up, too," Dannerman-beard called from across the room. "Between the two of them they can do all kinds of things, if Dopey tells them to."
They sounded like pretty handy gadgets to Hilda. She opened her mouth to say as much to the deputy director, but he wasn't paying any attention to the conversation. He was scowling at the screen, on which Dopey was complaining one more time to his interrogators about how desperately they needed their real food. It clearly was not what Pell wanted to hear from the alien; he got up and headed for the door to the other room.
But as he opened it Dopey caught sight of Hilda just behind Marcus Pell. "Stop now," Dopey said peremptorily, waggling his plumed tail in reproof. "I do not require much rest, but I must have some. I will answer no further questions for the next - " he twiddled his little paws in his belly bag - "twenty-five minutes." He didn't wait for a reply but hopped off his perch on a coffee table and brushed past the deputy director as he entered the library room.
He advanced on Hilda. "My dear Brigadier Morrisey, I appeal to you as a woman. Please relieve our distress! See that the foodstuffs are delivered to us at once!"
Hilda Morrisey was not used to being appealed to as a woman. Actually, she thought it rather quaint, but she shook her head. "I have nothing to say about that, Dopey."
The little alien sighed. "In that event I will sleep for the remainder of the twenty-five minutes." And he squatted down on the floor, under a dictionary stand. As he closed his eyes the great fan of his tail bent forward, covering him from the light, and he was still.
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?"