Eschaton 2 - THE SIEGE OF ETERNITY

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Back in her own familiar environment, and especially with that hideous spidery thing out of the base of her skull, the recently debugged Pat Adcock felt kilograms lighter and kilometers happier. If there was any little fly in the ointment, it was simply that there were too many of her.

That was a major management problem for the Dannerman Astrophysical Observatory. When the four of them finally presented themselves to the staff Pat expected an exciting time. The whole situation was totally bizarre even to herself, and at least she had had the time to try to get used to it. What the innocents at the Observatory might make of it she could not imagine, but certainly they would be baffled and confused and excited and-

They weren't. Well, they'd been glued to their screens, like everybody else in the world, and they knew all about how the bunch of them had been abducted to some galactically distant penal colony and what happened there. When Pat explained the dress code that they could use to tell them apart Janice, the receptionist, giggled. ("It's just that I never thought yellow was your color, uh, Patrice," she explained.) And Pete Schneyman, who had been in charge of the Observatory during her enforced absence, asked stiffly, "Which one is going to be the director?"

All four of them opened their mouths, but Pat was the first to speak. "We all are," she said. "We're going to take turns being physically present here, but there'll only be one of us at a time. We drew lots, and Pat One will go first."

"It sounds like a pretty lousy arrangement to me," the ex-temporary director observed.

It sounded that way to Pat, too. She thought about it all the way home-alone, for a change; Pat Five had an appointment with her doctor, and Patrice with a beauty parlor. Then, when she arrived in front of her apartment house and got out of her Bureau-supplied limo with its Bureau-supplied armed driver and its Bureau-supplied personal guard, she found two men waiting on the sidewalk, bundled up against the snow.

They didn't look to her as though they were there by accident. They didn't look that way to the bodyguard, either. "Wait a minute, please," the bodyguard said to her, even before the men moved toward the car.

The driver leaped out to join her, his hands on his gun. For a moment Pat thought there was going to be a firefight right before her eyes, but the shorter of the men was holding up some sort of document. The two Bureau agents studied it, asked a few questions and muttered among themselves. Then the bodyguard turned to Pat. "He's a diplomat," she said. "From China. He says he just needs to talk to you for a minute."

Pat hesitated, but the two Bureau operatives had their guns in their hands now, and the waiting men showed no signs of hostility. Indeed, they had no violent intentions. "Dr. Patrice Adcock?" the smaller one said. "My associate has a summons for you. Thank you. That's all."

They turned and walked away, leaving Pat holding a thick sheaf of folded paper. The man was a simple process server. And when Pat looked at the paper she discovered that she had been served with a suit. Commander James Peng-tsu Lin, plaintiff, was demanding of Dr. Patrice Adcock, defendant, that she proceed forthwith to the People's Republic of China so that the child she was carrying could be born as a citizen of his father's country.

She thought of telling them they had served the wrong, i.e., the nonpregnant, Dr. Pat Adcock, but what was the point? She sighed. "Thank you," she said politely to the Chinese. And to her bodyguards, "It's all right. Let's go upstairs."

There were too many of her for the apartment on the upper East Side, too. It had been comfortably roomy for Dr. Patrice Adcock, but with four Dr. Patrice Adcocks living there it was pretty damn cramped.

The Pats had done the best they could to resolve the difficulties. They'd drawn lots for sleeping quarters, and Pat considered she had done well on that draw. She hadn't got her "own" bedroom, no. That was the one with the canopied bed and the hot tub, and it had gone to Pat Five as a courtesy to approaching motherhood. The two guest rooms had gone to Patrice and Pat One. Pat herself had the never-used maid's room. Small, yes; remote from the rest of the apartment, sure; but the maid's room not only had its own private little bath, it had a full-function screen monitor. The original purpose of that, Pat supposed, was so that the maid could do her meal planning and record-keeping without interfering with her employers.

But it worked.

So the fact that Pat couldn't be in the Observatory didn't mean that she couldn't do astronomy. As soon as she was out of the boots and heavy cold-weather slacks she made herself a cup of mint tea, sat down at her workspace and began digging into this crazy eschaton thing.

The Bureau had exerted pressure where it was needed. As a result some university library had messengered her its file copy of the Frank Tipler book, The Physics of Immortality. She opened it gingerly, for the book was packed in its own custom-built casing, with a note pasted to the front cover that said it was in delicate condition and should be handled with extreme care.

That was true enough. The old wood-pulp pages threatened to crack as she turned them, but she was able to read enough to remember the general argument of the book as prissy little Dr. Mukarjee had described it for his class in that ancient graduate-school seminar at Caltech. What Tipler called the "Omega Point" Dopey's people seemed to call the "eschaton." But it was the same thing.

And, of course, it was unbelievable. The only thing going for it was that some pretty powerful beings, somewhere in space, seemed to believe it very much.

On Earth there was still a lot of disbelief around, even about the reality of Dopey and the Docs. For Pat, who had seen-and touched, and even smelled-the aliens from Starlab, there was no question. These were real extraterrestrials, all right. But most of the world had seen only the news broadcasts the Bureau had allowed, and a considerable fraction of that audience skeptically supposed they were nothing but another set of TV morphs.

That didn't bother Pat. What bothered her was the skepticism from her colleagues, notably the fiercely combative arguments that were coming from the Max-Planck Institut fur Extraterristriche Physik. The Germans weren't just skeptical. They were downright libelous.

Part of that particular fountain of hostility, Pat knew, was an old score being settled. The Germans had supplied some useful information which had helped to figure out what was going on on Starlab. They'd asked for information about her mission in return; she had refused to give it to them. Naturally they were going to piss all over anything connected with the Dannerman Astrophysical Observatory; whoever said that scientists were never motivated by petty angers?

Invasion Near? What We Must Do!

This latest alarming communique from the space aliens emphasizes the need for immediate and affirmative action on the proposals of the Albanians in the United Nations. As the Nigerian representative to the UN, Mr. Albert Ngoro, said this morning in New York, "The flight to the Starlab satellite must take place immediately so that we can begin to protect ourselves from a challenge that is sure to come." Mr. Ngoro also added that the flight must be multinational, and that one of our fine Nigerian weapons specialists should be a major member of the crew.

– Daily Times, Lagos, Nigeria

But they had, or seemed to have, a point. What the Germans claimed was that there couldn't possibly be any eschaton, or Omega Point, or grand resurrection, because there wasn't ever going to be a Big Crunch. Everyone knew, they said loftily, that the universe was never going to recollapse, but would simply go on expanding forever.

Well, there was no doubt about it. They did have a point.

Thinking of forever reminded Pat to look at her watch, and what she saw surprised her. It was midafternoon. She had forgotten to eat lunch.

While she was microwaving the handiest thing in the freezer Pat Five came in, looking harried. "Lunch? Yes, maybe so; what've you got there, meatballs? But I'll have to eat fast, because"-pausing to catch a glimpse of herself in the kitchen mirror and frowning-"I've got to go out again as soon as I change. Janice was right, damn her; this isn't my color, is it? I think I'll see what else we've got that might fit me now. Anyway, I've got an appointment with the lawyer the Bureau got me to respond to this suit-"

Tardily Pat remembered the summons. "Wait a minute," she said, in the middle of putting another carton into the microwave for herself. But when she displayed the document Pat Five shrugged it off. "We all got one. I guess they wanted to make sure it got to the right person. Aren't you going to ask me what the doctor said?"

"Of course I am," Pat said remorsefully.

"Well, brace yourself," Pat Five said, spooning Swedish meatballs into her mouth. "What she said was I'm going to have triplets."

"Triplets?"

Pat Five nodded. "That's right. Three of them. All girls, she thinks, but she wants to do another amniocentesis in a couple of weeks. And what've you been doing with your day?"

It took Pat a while to get back to her screen, because long after Pat Five had left she was still thinking about triplets. Three little girls. Genetically her own daughters!-although with the unfortunate genetic contribution of their presumed father, Jimmy Lin. But definitely her own flesh and blood…

She couldn't handle that. It was a relief to turn back to the eschaton file.

If the Ugly Space Aliens were right, one of the Germans had posted, then the quantity astronomers called "omega"-the measure of how much mass the universe contained-had to be more than one. Okay, Pat thought. There was no argument about that; if the universe didn't contain enough mass, the force of gravity would not be strong enough to pull it all back together again. Of course.

Also of course, no one had any good way of measuring omega; you couldn't weigh every star and galaxy, not to mention all the dark and undetectable particles that might add vast amounts of mass to the total; so you had to try to estimate it from other values-values that you could measure. Sort of. Though with considerable difficulty, and with huge error bars. Values like analyzing the ratio between distance and rate of recession, to see if there was any evidence of slowing expansion.

For that investigations in a great many areas were under way- though what a pity it was, Pat thought, that they were so prone to giving contradictory results.

Taking one consideration with another, the consensus among Earthly astronomers was that the results that gave an omega of less than 1 were probably more trustworthy than the ones that didn't. That was what the Germans were contending, and for all of her professional career Pat had shared that view.

But not everyone did. And among those who did not were, apparently, those fantastic creatures whose images had appeared on the world's TV screens two years before: the monstrous "Horch," with their snaky long dinosaur necks and their brutal faces, and the even uglier scarecrow-bodied "Beloved Leaders." They could be wrong, too, Pat told herself. But they were obviously a lot more technically advanced than human beings. So maybe they knew…

And maybe it was true that, at some unimaginable time in the future, she and everyone else she knew-and everyone she hadn't ever known or even heard of, as well-would be reborn in this improbable (but possibly real) eschatological Heaven.

Medical report

Gross morphology of extraterrestrials: "Docs."

Classified.

The physical measurements of "Doc A" are: Height, 246 cm, weight 185 kg, resting pulse 27, resting respiration 16.

For "Doc B:" Height 233 cm, weight 181 kg, resting pulse 25, resting respiration 16.

Both specimens are vertebrates and apparently mammalian. They possess the arms-legs-head primate architecture, except that they have two additional, smaller "arms" on each side. Instead of hair they possess a chitinous white growth on face, axillae and genitals. It has not been possible to obtain X rays or blood samples. However, stool, urine and saliva samples have been obtained which are currently under study. Curiously, few microorganisms have been observed even in the excreta.

It is desirable that additional studies be carried out, but the subjects do not respond to our efforts to secure their cooperation.

When the doorbell rang it was the live-in guard who responded, peered through the spyhole, opened the door. It was a permitted visitor. In fact, it was Dan Dannerman, escorted there by his own guard.

As the guards retired to wherever the guards went when they stayed out of the way, Pat looked him over. "Which one are you?" she asked.

He grinned wryly. "I'm the stay-at-home one. And you?"

"The same. That is," she added, "the one that still thinks you're a shit, Dan."

He didn't protest, and Pat felt quick sting of remorse. She tried to be more friendly. "I thought you were off with your girlfriend," she said, more sociably.

"I was, but now I've got a job to do. That's what I want to talk to you about." He hesitated, and then said without preamble, "It's about Rosaleen Artzybachova. She's in trouble. Her life is in danger." Then he noticed the expression on her face. "What's the matter?" he demanded.

"We buried Rosaleen months ago," she said.

"Christ, Pat, pay attention. I'm talking about the other Rosaleen."

"I know who you're talking about. But when you tell me her life is in danger it's just kind of funny."

He looked at her with disapproval. "I thought you and Artzybachova were friends."

"We were. Are. What about it?"

"She needs help. There are terrorists who are trying to kidnap her, for what she knows about that alien technology you were so hot for. Do you want to help her or not?"

"Help her how?"

He looked uneasy, but said, "I've been ordered to go to Kiev to take care of things there. It'd make it a lot easier if you came along."

Medical report

Gross morphology of extraterrestrial: "Dopey."

Classified.

The physical measurements of "Dopey" are: Height, 54 cm, weight (including clothing and metallic pouch, which he refused to remove), 17.6 kg, pulse ranging from 33 to 70, respiration ranging from 22 to 40. The cause of the variations in pulse and respiration are not known, and do not seem to relate to changes in stress or emotional state.

The subject, which speaks English, is extremely recalcitrant and states that it will not cooperate in further studies unless demands are met, which, it says, it has already communicated to relevant authorities.

Stool samples have been obtained and are currently under analysis. Preliminary reports have not yet been received.

"Why?"

"She's scared, Pat. She knows the terrorists want her, and she's not letting anybody near her that she doesn't know."

"She knows you," Pat said, stalling for time.

"Actually," Dannerman said, "she doesn't, or at least not very well. It's the other Dannerman she really knows, not me. But she and you have been friends for years. What's the matter? Are you afraid?"

And she naturally had to assure him that she certainly wasn't afraid, and in the process didn't notice that he hadn't said what "things" he was going to take care of.