Eschaton 2 - THE SIEGE OF ETERNITY

CHAPTER NINETEEN

"Come on," Dannerman said to Pat Adcock, half-pulling her out of the car. They stood silent in the packed snow, while the hooded figure in the parka kept them covered with an assault rifle. It was a weapon Dannerman knew well-well enough to suppress any thought of resistance. "Just stand still," Vassili was whispering nervously. "Do not startle her; she is quite young, and may do something foolish."

Her? She? But when the person with the rifle stood up and waved them forward Dannerman saw that it was a woman, all right, in fact no more than a girl, long hair spilling out from beneath the hood of her parka. And suddenly she was not alone. A larger figure, definitely a man, definitely also carrying a rifle, came out of the door to join her. He said something peremptory in Ukrainian. Beside Dannerman the man named Vassili groaned, objected, surrendered. "He says to you must immediately take off your outer garments."

"Here?" Pat cried in surprise. "We'll freeze!"

"But," said Bogdan, his English worsening with strain, "must do it, get weapons of you." And suddenly he had them covered with a gun of his own.

They didn't freeze, though Dannerman's teeth were chattering by the time he had been patted down and his carry gun and radio transmitter removed. Then they were allowed into the house that stood all by itself on the desolate hill.

It was warm there. In fact, the house was a pleasant and wholly unanticipated oasis of comfort. They came in through a kitchen, complete with every device modern domestic technology had to offer; they entered a living room with a huge picture window and a wall screen, as well as two or three expensive exercise machines scattered among the pieces of also expensive furniture. The furniture was not in the least modern. It was the sort of thing one might have found in a home of nobility in czarist times, with a huge samovar on a table and an icon of some tortured saint hanging above it. Another man and another woman were there, chattering worriedly in Ukrainian to Bogdan and Vassili. There also was Dr. Rosaleen Artzybachova, looking not a bit different than the way she had appeared when Danner-man first saw her, in the office of the T. Cuthbert Dannerman Astrophysical Observatory in New York City. She was smiling. She clapped her hands and spoke sharply in Ukrainian. Then she advanced on Pat and Dannerman, hands outstretched. "This is a pleasure I had not expected," she said, kissing Pat, hesitating only a moment, then kissing Dannerman as well. "This is better than our cell on that planet, isn't it? Wait-" as Pat opened her mouth to speak. "Before we talk, there is a custom I want to observe-when I am in my home, you see," she added, half-apologetically, "I become very Ukrainian."

She beamed at the woman who had resignedly hurried into the kitchen, and was returning with a tray. Which contained-

"Bread and salt," Rosaleen said proudly. "It is what we do to welcome friends. And who could be closer friends than we, who lived in such proximity for so long? Eat a little, please. Then we can talk."

"No," Pat said suddenly.

Rosaleen paused with the tray in her hand to look at her. "No?" she repeated.

"No, we are not the ones who were in captivity with you, Rosaleen. We're the ones who were returned to Earth. And Dan is still a spook for the Bureau."

"Yes," Rosaleen said placidly. "I am aware of that." She set the tray down before them and retired to sit down. "Excuse, please, the fact that I am quite old and still a bit tired."

"You don't understand!" Pat said. "We aren't here just because we're your friends! We're here because this man has been ordered-"

Prison Cells from Space?

A source close to Sen. Eric Wintczak (D-IL) reports that the National Bureau of Investigation has identified a number of extraterrestrial technologies which it proposes to adapt for use in its own system. One is a sort of energy-field containment device to hold prisoners in an escape-proof cell while jailers and others can pass freely in and out, another is a way of using devices similar to the implants taken from the returnees to tap into the actual thoughts of the subject-a sort of mind control with unimaginable consequences for civil liberties.

– Washington (DC) Times-Post

But Rosaleen raised her hand to stop her. "My friends have told me about his orders, Pat, dear. They were given to him by some higher-up spook by the name of Brigadier Hilda Morrisey in the National Bureau of Investigations headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. This Brigadier Morrisey is afraid that I will give information away that the United States wishes to keep for itself, and so she has ordered young Dannerman here to come to my home and kill me." She sighed, shaking her ancient head. "I was going to ask you about that. But won't you for God's sake please sit down and eat some of the damn bread and salt first?"

Pat Adcock did as she was told. She didn't do it right away. She had expected a lot more to happen after what she had said-something drastic, maybe. Certainly something. At least some kind of startled outburst from Rosaleen, perhaps some violent action from one of the zek children. What she had not expected was to discover that everyone present knew more about Dannerman's mission than she had.

"Eat," Rosaleen repeated testily, and so she ate. The bread was heavy, dark chunks cut from a round loaf; the salt wasn't the sort of thing you shook onto your French fries in America, but coarse crystals. It occurred to Pat that maybe there was something in the salt or the bread, some mood-altering chemical, maybe something like the date-rape stuff she had been warned against in college, something that would turn them into mere putty in the hands of these young Ukrainian zealots. But Dannerman seemed to have no such fears. He was chewing doggedly away on the tough bread, and she could read nothing from his expression. Nor did Rosaleen's guards reveal anything, except perhaps mild annoyance at the ritual. Then Rosaleen sighed.

"All right," she said, "now that we've all had a chance to settle down, would you like to explain yourself, Dan?"

He swallowed the last chunk of the bread. Then he said, "Sure. But I want you to do something first. Will you ask your friends to put their guns down? Better still, give them all to you-you do know how to use them, don't you?"

"Why should we do that?" the one named Vassili demanded suspiciously.

Dannerman shrugged. Rosaleen studied him for a moment, then spoke. "Let's do as he says, Vass. Give me yours and pile the rest of them in front of me."

Vassili looked rebellious, then complied. Pat, trying to guess what Dannerman had in mind, had a sudden thought. "Be careful! He's got a bomb-bugger, too!"

Dannerman gave her a curious look, but slowly, carefully, tugged at the waistband of his trousers, revealing the little holster. "That's right. I want you to take this one, too, and give it to Rosaleen. Then we should all back away and give her a clear field of fire."

"And at whom should I fire, Dan?" Rosaleen asked, sounding amused.

"Why, that's up to you. You see, you're right. I did get orders from Hilda Morrisey, and they were to keep whatever information you have about Scarecrow technology from falling into the hands of the Greater Ukraine terrorists. The guys," he amplified, "who already stole the bug that was in the other Rosaleen. They think you can help them take it apart."

"Me? I can't."

Dannerman nodded. "I don't think you could, either. But they don't know that."

"So you were going to shoot me with that thing?"

"That was one of Hilda's options," Dannerman admitted. "It wasn't mine. I was pretty sure you'd agree to be rescued. That radio you took away from me? It's to call a plane to pick us up. Then the three of us, you and me and Pat, will fly to Vienna and then to the States. The Bureau can keep you safe there."

"Safer than I am here with my friends?" Rosaleen asked skeptically.

"Well, yes. A lot safer. You see, at least one of your friends is a terrorist."

Of course, that really hit the fan. All four of the zek children were shouting at once-mostly in Ukrainian, but Pat didn't need a translator to get the gist. The big one, Vassili, was standing up and pleading with Rosaleen.

But Rosaleen was shaking her head. "Stay where you are, Vass, please," she said. "I see now why Dan wanted me to have all the guns-assuming, of course, that he's telling the truth."

"Afraid so," Dannerman said. "Figure it out for yourself, Rosaleen. How did they know what my orders were?"

Steam gun. This hand weapon, colloquially known as the "bomb-bugger," contains reservoirs for two hypergolic liquids which, when mixed, produce a rapid evolution of steam, propelling a droplet of liquid at a muzzle velocity high enough to wound or kill an opponent. Since the weapon contains no nitrogenous chemicals and no metal parts, it is a favored handgun for concealment. The colloquial name derives from the bombardier beetle, an Asian insect which uses a similar system to stun and capture its prey.

"You tell me."

"Because the damn terrorists have managed to get inside information from the Bureau. I don't know how. But they have, and that's how the Greater Ukraine guys knew."

"But these are my friends!" Rosaleen protested. "I trust them, and anyway that doesn't make sense. They've had all the time they need to kidnap me if they're terrorists."

"Oh, not all of them," Dannerman said. "I think only one. Which one? I don't know that, but probably you do. Which is the one who told you about my orders?"

And every eye in the room turned on little Marisa, who began to cry. "But we never would have hurtyou," she managed to get out between sobs, and Rosaleen put down the gun to take the young woman in her arms.

"My dear," she said, patting her back. "I am sure that is what you intended, but can you speak for all the others? You must tell us all you know."

"They were coming for you tonight," Marisa said. "They waited until now because they wanted to take gospodin Dannerman as well, as a hostage. I was supposed to-well, I wouldn't actually have shot any of you, I swear that. But I was to make sure no one resisted."