The Siege of Eternity

"Yes, well, I don't remember that quantum stuff all that well, either, and it's been a lot longer for me than for you. So I asked Pete, and he began talking about the Big Bang. First there was nothing, then particles began to be generated spontaneously-"

"I do know about the Big Bang," Pat said.

"Of course you do. But that spontaneous generation of particles goes on all the time, only they don't last: they appear and disappear in tiny fractions of picoseconds. But sometimes they don't. Sometimes they last for a long time-like our universe."

Pat frowned, trying to remember those long-ago graduate-school classes. "You think that's how the Scarecrows do it? Making things out of virtual particles?"

"Pete does. Well, at least he thinks that's possibly how they do it."

"But the virtual particles always come in pairs, particles and antiparticles, and they annihilate each other. What would they do with the antiparticles?"

Rosaleen sighed. "Yes," she admitted, "Pete said that was where the problem was. But Pat-I wish I could be there and help them figure it all out."

"Um," Pat said, just as the phone rang. She pushed the phone button. "All right, what is it?"

But what it was was a woman in a nurse's uniform. For one scary second Pat thought it was the hospital she had just left, with something terribly wrong with Pat Five.

But it wasn't. Different nurse, different hospital, and the person she was calling about was Janice DuPage. Who had got herself in the way of a drive-by shooters' car-

"Janice has been shot?" Pax asked, uncomprehending.

"No, no. She was hit by the car; it was being chased by police and it seems to have run onto the sidewalk where she was walking." The nurse was peering in bewilderment into her own screen, no doubt catching sight of Pat One in the background, and realizing, for the first time, who she was talking to. "She asked us to call."

"Is she-?"

The nurse shook her head. "She'll be all right. She's got, let me see, a fractured right tibia and a good many lacerations and abrasions. She had head injuries, but the skull is intact and it seems to be only a minor concussion. But the woman she was with"-the nurse consulted her screen-"Maureen Capobianco, that is. She's still in surgery. I'm afraid the prognosis for her isn't as good."

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

By the time the Docs were successfully debugged-and by the longer time it took for Dr. Marsha Evergood to be convinced that they were fit to travel-it was too late for Dannerman to catch the night courier flight home. When he called Anita Berman to tell her he'd be late the tracker found her waiting for him at the Observatory. She sounded excited. She didn't complain when he told her his resignation hadn't been accepted. "No, I guess it wouldn't be, would it? We've been watching the news-I even caught a glimpse of you, hon. I think. Anyway, I talked to Zigler again and he's got a new idea. He's thinking about doing your life story."

Dannerman grunted in surprise. "My life story?"

"And with you and me playing our own parts, if the Bureau will let you. And the Pats, too. Which reminds me, Patrice wants to talk to you."

What Patrice wanted to talk about was some papers she needed to get Pat One to sign, and as long as he was staying over, would he mind picking them up from the morning courier plane and taking them out to Camp Smelly? "Just as a favor from one movie star to another," she coaxed. And Dannerman was too dazzled to refuse.

He was still dazzled when he woke the next morning. But the place where he woke was in one of the VIP suites in the deep-down headquarters of the National Bureau of Investigation, where he had cadged a room from the duty officer. A quick breakfast in the canteen sobered him up. Having his life story made into a major production was an intoxicating fantasy. Now he faced reality. The Bureau would never allow it. And besides-Well, something seemed to have changed between Anita Berman and himself. He couldn't blame the woman for wanting to be a star, even if it was happening only because she was riding on someone else's coattails. Namely his. It didn't mean that she didn't love him, he told himself. Certainly she'd put up with any number of broken dates and unexplained advances, when there was no advantage at all in it for her except her affection for Dan Dannerman.

But she did seem to be pushing pretty hard for this.