The Far Shore of Time

The transportation was one of those electric-motored people carriers you see in airports. It was big enough to hold all of us-including the Docs, though just barely. With a couple of Bureau uniformed police ahead of us to clear the way we moved pretty fast out of the loading area, through the halls of Camp Smolley. Hilda wasn’t on the vehicle and didn’t need to be; her box’s wheels kept up easily as she rolled along behind us. Behind her still half a dozen more guards were following, half-trotting to keep up; most of them wore the blue UN berets. All the way the two Docs were mewing to each other, taking a lively interest in the rooms they passed, the fire extinguishers on the walls, the water fountains, the ceiling-mounted TV screens at every intersection that were all displaying the scene in the loading dock, though no human beings were present in the halls to watch them because everybody who could get there was there already. Beert was darting his head in every direction, too, and full of questions. I couldn’t tell him much. I’d never been in Camp Smolley before either.

I knew right away when we got to the rooms they had reserved for my friends, though, because two people were standing in front of one of the doors. One was a blue-beret guard, looking uneasy, and the huge figure next to him was unmistakably a Doc. I was astonished to see him there, but Pirraghiz saw him at the same moment I did and her reaction was a lot more violent. She screamed something and leaped off the carrier-I thought she was going to overturn the thing-and flung herself into the other one’s arms, the two of them mewing at high volume at each other. I got off, too, turning to Hilda. “Oh, right,” I said, memory returning at last. “There were a couple of Docs with the bunch that escaped from the prison planet, the escape party, weren’t there?”

“Two of them. The other one’s dead,” she said shortly. “This one we call Meow; he’s been helping out figuring how the Scarecrow stuff works-can’t talk so anybody can understand him, but he’s good at drawing pictures. Tell your Horch friend this is where he’s going to live for a while.”

For a while. When I looked inside I hoped that “for a while” would be really brief, because the room they wanted him in was not attractive. It was a damn jail cell, is what it was. It had bars on its one window, and a lidless open toilet, and a washstand, and a narrow cot. That was all.

Hilda was watching my face. “Tell him it’s only temporary,” she suggested.

I looked at her. “Yeah, sure,” I said. I did tell Been: that. What I didn’t tell him was how long “only temporary” was likely to be in government practice. I glossed it over as fast as I could, and tried to explain to him how the toilet worked, and offered to get more blankets for his cot if he wanted them, and promised I would see him as often as I could-I didn’t then realize how intensive the questioning was that lay ahead of us, and therefore how often that would be.

Beert listened in silence, head hung low, ropy arms wrapped around his belly for protection. All he said, his voice low-pitched and somber, was, “What about food, Dan?”

That took me aback. “Oh, hell,” I said. “Right. Food.” I hadn’t given that little problem any thought at all.

So I asked Hilda for help. She wasn’t, much. “There’s plenty for the Docs and the Dopeys,” she told me. “The Scarecrows sent some food down for them-that’s how they sneaked their subs along. I don’t know about the Horch. What does he eat?”

I turned to Pirraghiz for help. That took a little doing, because all three of the Docs were still excitedly mewing to each other. Wrahrrgherfoozh and the one they called Meow were hugging each other at that moment-by no means with the same passion as Pirraghiz had shown, but you can do a lot of hugging with six arms apiece, even if one of them is only a stump. When I got Pirraghiz’s attention and explained the problem, she looked remorseful. “I did not think, Dannerman,” she said sadly. “Let me ask the others.” They chattered back and forth for a moment, then she shook her massive head at me. “I am not sure,” she said. “Perhaps I can do for Djabeertapritch what I did for you in the nest of the Two Eights-get samples of all the foods your species eats, and see what among them resembles the foods of the Horch.”

“I understand Meow has food of his own,” I said, pointing at the other Doc. “Maybe some of that can be used, or the food for the Dopeys.”

She looked puzzled. “Perhaps,” she said, “but why do you call him that? It is Mrrranthoghrow.”

I stared at her, slack-jawed. “Mrrranthoghrow?”