The Siege of Eternity

The American radical religious right came in five main flavors. There were the fundamentalists, who believe in the "verbal inerrancy" of the Christian Bible; the born-agains, who claim a personal experience with Christ; the evangelicals, who are either of the above plus a drive to convert others; the pentecostals, who are any of the above plus public demonstrations of ecstasy; and the charismatics, who differ from the others only in that they retain communion in a conventional Protestant or Catholic denomination. Generally speaking, what the fundamentalists thought the government ought to do about the possible space aliens who might have occupied Starlab was, if possible, to kill them, because they were probably the Antichrist. While most of the others thought they were probably angels of some kind and what the government should be doing was arranging for them to be worshipped. What they all agreed on was that everything the government actually was doing was wholly and unforgivably wrong.

She broke off as the sandwiches and salads arrived. Colonel Hilda waved to her to eat, doing so herself. She hadn't realized quite how hungry she was. With her mouth full, she paused long enough to ask: "And now?"

The girl grinned. "I guess you'd say the Bureau's my religion now, ma'am."

Hilda nodded. It was a good answer. It was the kind of answer she might have given herself, and, as a matter of fact, she suddenly real-i/.ed what that puzzling familiarity was all about. Agent Tepp was just about her height, just about her weight, just about her general build; taken all in all, she was not far from a copy of what Colonel Morrisey had been, long before she became a colonel.

She had nothing more to talk about, so she switched the screen over to repeats of the news digests and watched them as she ate her meal. Another good thing about Agent Tepp was that she took the hint and didn't speak, either. When the waiter brought their coffee, she said, "Thanks for keeping me company, Agent Tepp, but I imagine you have duties here-"

Agent Tepp touched a napkin to her lips. "Yes, ma'am. Can I ask you something? If you're going to be on permanent duty here, you'll probably need an aide-"

Hilda didn't let her finish. "What's that about permanent duty? Have you been hearing latrine talk?"

"No, ma'am. It's just logical, I thought. But if I was wrong-"

"I hope to God you were wrong." Hilda thought for a moment. "Still," she said, "I wouldn't mind thinking about having you in my command if you wanted to come to New York."

Tepp looked disappointed. "Thank you, ma'am, but I'd really like to stay at HQ for a while."

"Fine. Now if you'll excuse-Wait a minute."

It was the deputy director on her screen. "Hilda, we need that Ad-cock woman. Get her down to the pit galleries."

So that was where he'd been holed up! Pell didn't wait for an answer. Hilda started to get up just as Agent Tepp was doing the same, saying regretfully, "Thank you for the meal, ma'am. It was a pleasure to talk to you."

Hilda put her hand on the woman's arm. "Maybe you can do me a favor. You look like you're about my size. Do you keep a change of clothes here? Fine, then lend me some clean underwear and find me a shower I can use."

CHAPTER FIVE

Dr. Patrice Adcock hadn't been taken back to her cell. Instead they put her in a quite comfortable bedroom in a little suite that apparently was kept for VIP visitors who couldn't, or didn't choose to, go home to sleep. It had a really comfortable bed, which was a nice change from the iron-hard cot in her old cell. For all the good it did her. First she lay awake, wondering just what the hell was going on now? Another Dannerman? Radioing to Earth from Starlab? When she did at last fall asleep it didn't last, because that Morrisey woman woke her to say the deputy director needed to talk to her. Right now.

So Pat climbed wearily back into her jail uniform. She let herself be conducted to where Marcus Pell and six or seven other people were huddled around screens and little tables littered with coffee cups and the remains of largely uneaten food, and then what was it he asked her? It was, Did Starlab have facilities for something called a 300-digit-prime coordinated-chaos encryption system? Of course she had no idea about that. Whatever it was. Well-less patiently-who would know the answer? Anyone at the Observatory? She thought about that, then shrugged. Maybe, but they would all be asleep now, for God's sake, and anyway the real expert was Rosaleen Artzybachova, who was dead.

And then, the funny thing, they all suddenly looked both surprised and relieved. The deputy director man-was his name Pell?- nodded to the Morrisey woman. That was the end of it. The woman took Pat back to her new home and left her to lie awake an hour or so longer, with all the old questions and a dozen new ones to keep her from sleep.