The Siege of Eternity

Daisy Fennell was glad enough to get out of there; she hadn't been willing to leave while the operation was going on, but the smell of the Doc was getting to her. They found the deputy director outside, snapping orders to his portable screen in Colonel Makalanos's office, but he switched it off when he saw them.

Evergood got right to the point. "The bullet s out, I've stopped the bleeding and now we have to watch for infection. I'm hoping there won't be any. If there are any disease organisms around, they're probably terrestrial ones, and the antibiotics should deal with them. Of course, we'll have to do something about that arm."

"Thanks," he said, and remembered to add, "A fine job, Dr. Evergood."

It was a dismissal, and the surgeon took it that way. Then he turned to Daisy Fennell.

"Jesus, Daisy," he remarked. "You let things go pretty sour, didn't you? Tepp dead, Morrisey close to it. The Dopey and one of the Docs wounded-and we can't get the other one to care for them, because he's dead, too. Well. Let's get the facts. We'll have to have a court of inquiry, but for now, start talking."

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

The bodies had been removed and the blood mopped up-carefully sponged up with sterile plastic pads, actually, at least the thin, pink stuff that had come out of the Docs, because Dr. ben Jayya demanded every atom of it for his endless lab work. Dan Dannerman, on his second wakeup pill, finally got a chance to reassure Anita Herman. When she saw his bandaged head she gasped in shock. He did his best to reassure her. "No, no, I'm fine. It's nothing. Just my car." And had to explain that it was just a little piece that was missing. Reattach it? Well, the Bureau surgeon had talked about that when he got there, he admitted, except that by then they couldn't find enough of it to bother with. Which produced another yelp of horror. "Honestly, it doesn't even hurt," he said, and tried to change the subject. "Have you talked to the people at the Observatory? How are things?"

Things at the Observatory were crazy. Rosaleen Artzybachova was upset; did Dannerman know that the Doc that got killed was the one that had saved her life? And was he sure that Patrice and Pat One were all right? And when-pleadingly-were they going to get out of this lousy place?

"As soon as I can," he promised. "Maybe tomorrow. I don't know. There's doing to be a court of inquiry and they want me to stick around for that. Trouble? No. I'm not in trouble. Nobody thinks Tin to blame; it's Daisy Fennell that's in trouble here, but I have to testify." He cast about for something more cheerful to say, and found it. He grinned at her. "Listen, one good thing. You wanted to know how you could tell us apart? That won't be a problem anymore. I'm Lop-Ear Dannerman now."

She was silent for a moment, thinking about that. Then she sighed. "All right, hon. Tell me one thing. I lave they found out why she did it?"

That was what the whole Bureau was working on at that moment, and their investigation had begun to bear fruit. Tepp's phone call was easily traced, and, since it had been made from a Bureau secure phone, it had been recorded. The receiving party was Mrs. Willa Tepp Borglund, widow lady living by herself in a little house near Roanoke, Virginia; and when the recording was played the conversation was brief and agitated. The actual words between Tepp and her Aunt Billie were trivial enough, but the tones were not. There was an undercurrent of strain and excitement that didn't match the words actually spoken. Well, it was obvious enough to Daisy Fennell. They were talking in code, and the old lady had given her niece the order.

Obvious enough-but too late to be much use.

When the Bureau raided the house of Mrs. Willa Tepp Borglund they found an armory of weapons and an iron-haired, iron-willed old lady who spoke not to them but to her God, praying in whispers every waking moment.

They checked her phones, of course, and found calls to places all over the country. Bureau agents in Wichita and Brooklyn and St. Petersburg and Spokane were pulled away from their smugglers and tax evaders and assembled into raiding parties-two dozen of them in all. It was a massive effort, typical of the wonders the Bureau could accomplish when it put its collective mind to a task.

Of course, it too came a little late.

When Dannerman got to see the deputy director, Pell flicked his screen on and fiddled with the pad until it displayed a picture of a dark-skinned man in a fringed leather jacket, stubbornly silent while he was being questioned by Bureau agents. "I thought you'd like to see," he said grimly. "This guy is one of Willa Borglund's phone chums, runs a souvenir shop in Navajo country. According to his phone records he has been making calls to a Chinese trade commission member at his home. Faxes, mostly, and they're all naturally encoded. But what it looks like to me," he said, sounding somber, "is that the damn nuts are all in touch with each other."