Eschaton 02 The Siege of Eternity Read online

  Morning Report

  To all National Bureau of Investigation units

  Subject: Current terrorist alerts

  Welsh Nationalist Dawid ap Llewellyn, sought in connection with the British Museum firebombing, has been reported in Mexico City, presumed en route to a United States destination. Scotland Yard requests Bureau assistance in apprehending this fugitive.

  The Rocky Mountain Militia Command deadline for amnesty for convicted assassins in federal custody expired at midnight. The threatened release of anthrax agents in the Missoula, Montana, water supply has not occurred, but emergency measures are still in force.

  All standing alerts remain in effect.

  The surgeon had raised her hand. "I said, 'Who volunteered?' It was put to me as an order."

  "Which makes us even more grateful to you, Dr. Evergood," the deputy director said, smiling tolerantly. "What we're here for is a matter that urgently affects the national interest. You probably know some of the background, but I'm going to ask Vice Deputy Fennell to fill in some of the details. Daisy?"

  The vice deputy didn't miss a beat. "You all remember the messages from space that came in two years ago. Many people thought they were a hoax. A few did not. One of those was an astronomer named Dr. Patrice Adcock, head of the Dannerman Observatory in New York City, who believed they came from an abandoned astronomical satellite called Starlab. Dr. Adcock, by the way, is on the premises and you will be seeing her later."

  Hilda suppressed a grin as she translated for herself: what "on the premises" meant, of course, was "in one of our confinement cells." Daisy Fennel was as slick as the deputy director himself; she had come a long way since she was Hilda's own field manager, back when Hilda was a junior agent and the quarry of the moment was the man who had placed a bomb in the Smithsonian. And Daisy hadn't aged very much in the process. She hadn't gained a gram, and, Hilda observed, hadn't touched her sandwiches, either.

  "Dr. Adcock," the V.D. was going on, "discovered some astronomical evidence that an unidentified object had entered our solar system and conjectured that it had dropped a probe which attached itself to the Starlab satellite." She glanced at the man from the Naval Observatory. "Dr. Hou?"

  The astronomer stirred himself. "Yes. At Mr. Pell's request I made a study of that comet-like object. The data are sparse but consistent with what you just described, although I saw no probe being dropped."

  "Neither did Dr. Adcock," Daisy agreed, "but she came to believe that one had been, and that there might be some sort of extraterrestrial technology on Starlab. So she asked the space agency to provide her with a spacecraft to visit the satellite, ostensibly with the purpose of repairing it and putting it back in service; she believed she had the right, under the original contract when Starlab was launched. The space agency was unable to grant her request-"

  The translation of that, Hilda knew, was we leaned on them to slow her down until we found out what the hell she was up to.

  "-because, among other reasons, no American space pilots were available. However, Dr. Adcock recruited two other pilots: one was a Floridian, General Martin Delasquez, the other a Chinese national, Commander James Peng-tsu Lin. She obtained a court order requiring the agency to provide a Clipper spacecraft to carry out the mission. In addition to herself and the two pilots, she had obtained the services of a Ukrainian national, Dr. Rosaleen Artzybachova, an instrument specialist who had helped design Starlab in the first place; Dr. Artzybachova was to go along to study Starlab's present instrumentation."

  The V.D. paused. "At this point," she said, "the Bureau had become aware that Dr. Adcock's purpose was not to repair the satellite, but to see if there was indeed some alien technology now present on It, which she conjectured might be worth a lot of money."

  Marcus Pell held up his hand; now that they were coming to the good part he was taking over. "Which it damn well would be, of course. As well as being of great national interest to this country. So we took a hand. We arranged for one of our agents, James Daniel Dannerman, to go with her. This is not public information, and I caution you all not to discuss it with anyone outside this team. Go on, Daisy."

  "So," she said, "the five of them-Adcock, the two pilots, Artzybachova and our agent-launched to the orbiter and came back. They reported that nothing had changed-no alien technology-and the satellite was not repairable. And that seemed to be the end of it."

  She looked inquiringly at the deputy director, who nodded. "That's when it got hairy," he said. "Dr. Artzybachova was ill when they landed, I guess because of the stress of the trip-she was, actually, a very old lady. She returned to her home, near the city of Kiev, Ukraine, and died shortly thereafter."

  He paused to look around the table. "I caution you again that what you are about to hear is highly classified, and not under any circumstances to be discussed except within this team.

  Starlab, one of the largest and best of the world's astronomical satellites, was the property of the T. Cuthbert Dannerman Astrophysical Observatory. It was designed to house visiting astronomers for weeks or months at a time, in the days when passenger launches to Low Earth Orbit were merely very expensive, not preposterous. Then it was called the Dannerman Orbiting Astrolab-the DOA for short- until the last scientist to use the place, a condensed-matter physicist named Manfred Lefrik, had the bad judgment to die there. By the time the automatic monitors reported to Earth what had happened it was far too late to save his life and, in view of the declining interest in space exploration, not worth the trouble to send up a ship to rescue his body. What the Observatory did, however, was to rename the satellite "Starlab," because they thought "DOA" sounded too apt. Still, some people preferred to call it the Starcophagus.

  "There is an organization of Ukrainian nationalists who think Ukraine should be ruling Russia, the way it used to like a thousand years ago, instead of the other way around, the way they claim it is now-I don't know enough about Russian-Ukrainian history to get the details straight. And don't want to, actually. Anyway, this group wants to take over Russia, and they're willing to use terrorist tactics to make it happen.

  "Of course, that's a local matter. Normally the Bureau wouldn't consider it an American concern. But, like a lot of these cockamamie terrorist groups, they've got cells here and they get a lot of their financing from Ukrainian-Americans. So the Russians asked us to lend a hand. And one of our assets in place in the Chicago cell passed on a report that the Ukrainians had autopsied the old lady… and found something weird.

  "Take a look at your screens."

  It wasn't necessary to do anything to comply. The pop-up screens were rising again at every place, and what they displayed was a sort of X ray of a human skull. Where skull joined spine there was a fuzzy object the size of a hazelnut.

  "This is a slice of a PET scan," Pell said. "It shows the thing the Ukrainians found in Dr. Artzybachova's head. And this other one"- click-"comes from the head of our agent, Dan Dannerman. There's one just like it in Dr. Patrice Adcock's head-and, we think, though we can't get at them to check, in the heads of Commander Lin and General Delasquez as well. Nothing like it has ever been found in the heads of anybody else we've examined, just in the people that went to Starlab and came back."

  He paused there, gazing amiably around the table, until Senator Piombero couldn't contain herself any longer. "Well, what is it, Marcus? Some kind of a tumor?"

  The D.D. shook his head. "No, it's not a tumor. We have a copy of the Ukrainian report on the object they took from Dr. Artzybachova's body. It's metal. It does not resemble any human artifact. It appears to have been implanted in them while they were on the orbiter." He paused, giving the group a sort of half smile-not so much a smile as the grimace of somebody who had bitten into something really foul. "Now we come to Operation Ananias. There seems to be a lot of lying going on. Both Dannerman and Dr. Adcock deny that anything of the sort happened. The Floridians haven't been very cooperative, but we've established that General Delasquez denies it, too; we haven't been
able to get much out of the Chinese about Commander Lin.

  "But what it is, definitely, is a piece of that extraterrestrial technology that Dr. Adcock went looking for. We want to find out why one of our senior agents is lying to us, not to mention that we damn well need to know exactly what the implant thing is." He glanced at his watch, seemed about to add something but changed his mind. "There's more, but let's leave it at that for the moment. Now we should go to the interrogation theater so you can get a look at Dannerman and Dr. Adcock yourselves."

  CHAPTER TWO

  With all twelve of them in it at once the elevator was pretty crowded. Conversation wasn't easy, but that didn't stop Senator Piombero. "What I'm wondering, Marcus," she said, leaning past the man Hilda couldn't quite remember to get the D.D.'s attention, "is, why don't you just take the thing out of your agent's head? I mean surgically? I certainly wouldn't want anything like that in my own head."

  According to the flow charts, the National Bureau of Investigation is part of the nation's federalized police force, but it keeps itself clear of the street cops. Those are the thin blue line-though noticeably thickened since the passage of the police draft laws-that does its best to keep the peace-loving citizen from the muggers and murderers. The street cops share a headquarters with the Department of Defense in the old Pentagon. The NBI's headquarters is a few kilometers away, in suburban Arlington, and it has a different mission. Its quarry is the transnational crooks and druggers and terrorists. It has inherited its ID files from the old FBI, and its habits from the old CLA. Although it chooses its agents from the police draftees, the ones it picks are the cream of the crop, and they know it.

  – Inside the Beltway: "The NBI."

  "That is one option, yes," he agreed. "Unfortunately-Well, that's your department, Dr. Evergood."

  "It's not that easy," the surgeon said obstinately. "I've studied both subjects. Of course, the implants can be removed. But they are much more complex than they appear on your screens. Each of the implants has a large number of fine processes that do not show up well in those images but reach deeply into many areas of the brain. My opinion is that removing them might well kill the patients, and at the least would almost certainly cause severe loss of much brain function. I wouldn't like to take that kind of a risk if I didn't have to."

  Watching Senator Piombero, Hilda suspected the woman wouldn't be satisfied with that. She wasn't. She gave the surgeon a narrow-eyed look, then turned to the deputy director. "Maybe we can get a second opinion," she suggested.

  He looked surprised. "Of course, Senator. If that's what you wish. But Dr. Evergood is perhaps the best in the world at this kind of work. We've been grateful to her in the past for what she's been able to do for some of our own people. Truly amazing results."

  Hilda repressed a shudder, because she'd seen some of those truly amazing results: mummified corpses in life-support capsules, looking at the world through electronic lenses and getting around in overgrown wheelchairs. She did not want to think of her Dan Dannerman like that.

  "So you see," the deputy director said sunnily as the elevator door opened. "Now if you'll go to your right we'll go into the Pit of Pain."

  The senator persisted. "Well, then, couldn't you, ah, secure the device the Ukrainians removed from the instrument person?"

  Pell looked surprised. "Oh, didn't I say? They don't have it anymore. The silly buggers let somebody else steal it."

  Hilda Morrisey knew the Pit of Pain well. She had watched many an interrogation from one of those seats, had often enough been the interrogator down in the pit herself, when the subjects were bombers, tax evaders, smugglers, all the kinds of nasties that the Bureau had to deal with. It had never been like this before, though. The problem had never concerned ridiculous alien creatures from Mars or some other preposterous place. More important still, the sweaty person being interrogated had never before been one of her own.

  As the Ananias team took its seats in one corner of the stands Hilda saw that Senior Agent Dannerman was already sitting on one of the straight-backed chairs. He didn't seem to be doing much sweating. In fact, she noted with a faint, hidden grin of approval, he looked pretty much as though he were asleep.

  Daisy Fennell said chattily, "It's all right to talk up here; they can't hear us. Now if you're all ready?" She looked at the D.D. He nodded; she spoke into the microphone at her place; down in the pit the door opened and the interrogator came in. Hilda didn't know the interrogator, who was female, young, good-looking in a severely no-nonsense kind of way-probably new to the Bureau headquarters. She placed a hand on Dannerman's shoulder and said, "Wake up. I need to ask you some questions."

  If Dannerman had been asleep at all, he woke quickly and completely. He glanced knowingly toward the one-way mirror, yawning, before he said, "Is there any coffee around?"

  "No," the interrogator said concisely, seating herself across the table from him. She plunged right in. "Agent Dannerman, you are accused of filing false reports to the Bureau."

  "Yes, I know that; I didn't do it. By the way, I have to pee."

  The interrogator ignored that. "When you returned from the Star-lab orbiter you reported-"

  "I know what I reported. Pee, remember? I have to do it."

  For the first time the interrogator looked uncertain. "I think that can wait until we finish here. You reported-"

  "Well, if you think it can wait," Dannerman said agreeably, "but it doesn't feel that way to me. I think it'd be better if you took me to the men's room. Or else I can just go in my pants."

  The interrogator didn't scowl at him. Didn't look at the mirror, either, just got up, walked stiffly to the door and summoned a male guard to escort Dannerman to the toilet. The deputy director was frowning. Hilda wasn't; in fact, she was feeling a faint glow of pride; her agent, faithful to his training, was controlling the interrogation. He was a good boy…

  Except, she reminded herself glumly, that he wasn't.

  When Dannerman was back in his chair he was more cooperative; he'd made his point. Yes, he'd gone to Starlab looking for traces of alien presence. No, there hadn't been any. Yes, he was sure of that; he'd said so about a hundred times now, hadn't he? Yes (as the interrogator activated the table's pop-up screen and he glanced at it), he had seen that X-ray before. He was willing to take the Bureau's word that it was of his own head, but what that object was he had no idea.

  "And you're aware that one just like it was found in Dr. Rosaleen Artzybachova's skull on autopsy, and that it is definitely a piece of alien technology."

  "So you tell me," he agreed.

  "Do you think the Bureau's lying to you?"

  Agent Dannerman has one personal trait that comes in useful to the NBI. He was born rich, grew up among rich people and thus had entry to circles the average NBI agent couldn't penetrate. The late T. Cuthbert Dannerman, who was his uncle on his father's side, not only endowed the Dannerman Astrophysical Observatory but had enough left over to bequeath a tidy little fortune to his two surviving relatives, one of whom was Dan. Unfortunately for Dan, he was in deep cover abroad when the will was probated. By the time he got his hands on the money the world's rampant inflation had shrunk it to chump change.

  "I hope not, but you think I'm lying to you and I'm not. Hell, friend, you ought to know that by now; your shrinks have tested me a thousand times, and I always came up clean."

  In the spectator seats Hilda, and most of the others, looked at the pair of Bureau shrinks, who shrugged and nodded reluctantly.

  "I don't know why that is," the interrogator agreed. "What it looks like is that you've found some way of beating the tests."

  "Now, how could I do that?" Dannerman asked. "They shot me so full of drugs I was out of my head for weeks."

  The interrogator paused. Then she said, "There is a way of settling this once and for all."

  Dr. Patrice Dannerman Ely Metcalf Adcock attained her position as head of the Dannerman Astrophysical Observatory by virtue of her training as an astron
omer, and also because she was the niece by marriage of the late T. Cuthbert Dannerman, whose money had funded the Observatory in the first place. Patrice Adcock was luckier in her inheritance than her cousin by marriage, Dan Dannerman; she was able to transfer her legacy to inflation-proof investments as soon as she received it. But two divorces depleted her cash… which was why she seized on the chance of riches from the Starlab orbiter.

  "Yes, I know what that is. You want to cut my head open so you can get a good look at that thing."

  "That's right. There's a release form right in front of you, if you'll just sign it-"

  "No, I can't do that," Dannerman said apologetically. "I wish I could help. But I hear that the operation could turn me into a vegetable."

  "Maybe could. No one knows for sure. Not until they open you up and get a look."

  "I'm sorry. That's not good enough. I'm not signing."

  "You don't have a choice," she said. "The deputy director is ordering you to sign the release."

  "Well, that's different," Dannerman said cheerfully. "Let him give it to me in writing, and then let me give a copy of it to my lawyer… and then we'll see."

  That was enough for the deputy director.

  "I think we've heard enough from Agent Dannerman," he said to the room in general, then spoke into his microphone.

  As the interrogator, hearing, terminated the interrogation and took Dannerman out of the Pit, Dr. Marsha Evergood raised her hand. "Mr. Pell, you understand I can't undertake the operation without his consent."

  Pell said heartily, "Naturally. No one in the Bureau would ask you to, Dr. Evergood."

  " But if he won't sign-"

  "I give you my word that you won't have to pick up a scalpel until you have his signature on the release form. Now they'll be bringing Dr. Adcock in."