The Siege of Eternity

He looked at her, then turned to obey his keeper's order. But as he left he whispered, "I can't."

Hilda Morrisey, standing by the door, watched curiously for a moment, then turned and rapped on the door. When the UN guard opened they spoke briefly, then Hilda conferred for a moment with her lieutenant colonel before waving Dan over. "I don't think you've met. Dan, this is Priam Makalanos, who's helping me with the freaks; Priam, Dan Dannerman. You'll take orders from Colonel Makalanos while I'm up at the Security Council chamber, Dan," she finished, and rapped again on the door.

Warily Dannerman shook the lieutenant colonel's hand, expecting, but wincing from, the punishing grip. "What orders are those, Colonel?" he asked.

"None, I hope. These guys aren't giving us any trouble now, for a change."

He was gesturing at the aliens. They not only weren't causing trouble, they weren't doing anything at all. The two Docs stood silent and impassive while Dopey, curled in the arm of one of them, appeared to be asleep, his great fantail overspreading his body.

Dannerman had expected that as soon as they arrived they'd be conducted into the General Assembly auditorium, but that wasn't the way it was. Colonel Makalanos explained to him that the reason Hilda had left was that some sort of procedural fight was going on.

The Security Council was meeting independently of the General Assembly in its own wing of the building, and a fierce battle was going on in the General Assembly itself over who was to be summoned before them for questioning, and who was to be allowed to ask the questions.

Meanwhile, they waited. Dannerman restlessly prowled the lounge, taking note of the pictures on the wall (Trygve Lie, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, half a dozen other figures prominent in the history of the UN), the little barlike cubicle which contained a coffee machine (unfortunately not in use), the rack of ancient magazines. He became aware of the eyes of the other Dannerman on him, and gave his twin a guardedly friendly hello-another personal problem that he couldn't see a good way of dealing with. The other Dannerman returned it in the same tone.

He was spared the necessity of making conversation when two men in the uniforms of the Free State of Florida entered. One of them was General Martin Delasquez, who had been one of the pilots Pat Adcock persuaded to fly them to Starlab in the first place.

Rosaleen caught sight of General Delasquez coming in and hurried over to him. "Martin!" she cried affectionately. "I thought you were dead! It's so wonderful to see you again-"

And then, when the general gave her a frosty look, her expression clouded. "Oh, hell, you're the other one, aren't you?" Shaking her head, she went over to sit before a low table and began tearing up bits of paper. "Anyone for a game of chess?" she asked.

When at last they were brought into the General Assembly Hall Dannerman blinked at the size of the audience.

Dannerman had had the experience of being debriefed, or made to testify, often enough before. At least the Bureau's interrogations had been more or less private. Even in the Pit of Pain there had seldom been more than a few dozen watchers, but this was on a whole other scale. The General Assembly Hall was packed, all 194 nations fully represented in their individual stations, and the visitors' gallery solidly filled as well. There were easily two thousand people in the auditorium, muttering and whispering to each other as the thirteen "witnesses" trudged to the raised dais and took their seats on spindly-legged gilt chairs. Dannerman counted heads: there were four Patrice Adcocks, two Dan Dannermans, two Jimmy Lins, one each of Rosaleen Artzybachova, Martin Delasquez and Dopey, now alert and looking curiously around the room. That wasn't even counting the guards in dress uniform and riot guns, standing behind each chair to "protect" them. The guards wore UN blue helmets, but their uniforms were of the U.S. Marines.

And then, to complete the roster, the pair of Docs, their moss-bearded faces impassive, their half dozen arms moving placidly. Those things weren't real witnesses, of course. They couldn't be, in any practical sense, since they never spoke. Nor, also of course, were they seated on the frail gilt chairs. They weren't seated at all. They stood remote and still at one end of the row of witnesses, and each one of the Docs had not one but three Marine guards standing tensely over it.

Dannerman did not think the Marines were there to protect the Docs. They weren't watching the audience at all. They were all precisely focused on the immense, multiarmed creatures from space, and that was the way their weapons were pointing.