The Siege of Eternity

the morning. The advantage of that was that you got the chance to jump right into the shower without waiting in line. Time was when one real bathroom and a closet-sized half bath for guests seemed perfectly adequate in the apartment, but that was before the new Pats and the Ukrainian visitor had come to share it.

On the third morning of the regime she missed her turn. Rosaleen had wakened earlier still, and was first in the shower-and the old lady did like to take long, long showers. While Pat Five had already preempted the half bath and showed no sign of coming out of it, either.

Grumpily Pat joined Patrice in the kitchen, putting together coffee and some sort of breakfast. Patrice inclined her head toward the half bath where Pat Five remained closeted. "Morning sickness again, I guess," she said. "Poor baby."

"Yeah, poor baby," Pat said, pouring herself a cup of coffee and taking it into the living room to drink in solitude.

But that was denied her, too, because there was a knock on the door. It was the Bureau guard who had remained outside all night long, and he was letting in a pair of uniformed people Pat couldn't identify. "They're from the United Nations. They claim they have official business with all of you," he said, but keeping one hand on his gun anyway.

The taller of the two pulled out a sheaf of blue folders. "Subpoenas from the United Nations," he said.

Pat giggled. "We already have them," she informed the man, but he shook his head.

"Not these. There's going to be a special committee-of-the-whole session of the General Assembly to look into the Starlab mission, and you're all ordered to testify."

Patrice looked incredulous. "All of us?"

"All of you and about twenty others," the UN man said. "They're even subpoenaing the space people. So brace yourselves for a long day."

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Hilda did her best to argue, so did the deputy director, but the director herself was adamant. "Forget the legal crap," she ordered. "It doesn't matter if they aren't human beings. It doesn't matter if you think you can get a tame judge to void the subpoenas. The General Assembly wants those freaks there to testify, so they will. Or the one that talks will, anyway. We don't want to piss the UN off any more than they already are."

"But-" Hilda began, and didn't finish. The director firmly overruled her.

"That's what the President says, and that's what we're going to do."

Outside, Hilda complained to Marcus Pell, "This screws everything up. We've been keeping the ETs closed up and ignorant. Dopey doesn't even know anything about the Scarecrow message yet. So how are we going to keep it that way if he's up in New York and the damn General Assembly people start asking him questions?"

"You can't," the deputy director said flatly, and held up a hand to preempt argument. "Go get the damn things and take them up there. I'll order a plane for you. Get."

She got, seething. They had gone to a lot of trouble to isolate Dopey and the Docs. There had been plenty of argument about that, too. That doctor from Walter Reed, Marsha Evergood, had been bitter in opposition to Hilda's decree. She wanted the medical Doc to keep up with his faith healing or laying on of hands or whatever it was that he did, and wasn't content that she was to be allowed to bring a few of the transportable cases to Camp Smolley for his ministrations. But Hilda had the authority, and what she said was what happened. The technical Doc kept on pouring out his meticulous scale drawings and Dopey continued to complain, and everything was going fine. Until now.

Colonel Makalanos wasn't pleased, either, but he didn't have the rank to complain. "Yes, Brigadier," he said, "I can get them ready in ten minutes. But that means-"

"Yes," she said, "that means we're going to have to tell Dopey some of the things we've kept from him. I'll do that now. You get the van ready."

Although the Bureau had provided Hilda Morrisey with a plane to get her parade of freaks up to the UN hearings, it wasn't one of the Bureau's deluxe jets. It was a damn courier aircraft. It had few amenities, not even coffee, and it wasn't big enough for the sixteen of them.

The problem wasn't the human passengers-Hilda herself, Pat One, and her semi attached Dannerman, along with Colonel Makalanos and Hilda's new aide, Merla Tepp. It was the aliens-Dopey and the two Docs-and the eight, count 'em, eight guards the Bureau had deemed necessary to keep them in order. And the aircraft really stank, because just after takeoff one of the Docs had had to move his bowels. The creature wouldn't fit in the tiny airplane toilets so he had blandly relieved himself on the box of shredded paper included for his use.