Pohl, Frederik - The Siege of Eternity

"Vienna," Hilda said firmly.

Grace sulked for a moment, then gave in, and they spent the rest of the meal discussing why Moscow's Dynamo team could beat any Western footballers. And then, back in the Bureau headquarters, Hilda changed back into her uniform while talking on the secure lines to Frankfurt, going over the arrangements Solly had made with the assets in Ukraine. Everything was set for the mission.

But it was wrong. It was the first time one of Hilda's chicks had gone off on a mission without Hilda herself lurking somewhere near. Was there any chance that, even now, the deputy director could be persuaded to dump Solly and let Hilda go where she properly should go, near to the scene of action.

There wasn't. When she reported to the deputy director he scoffed at her. "Take field command? You? Not a chance, Hilda. I've got a job for you here; you're going to take over from Daisy Fennell."

Alarm bells went off in Hilda's head. "Running the damn team meetings?"

"Among other things, yes," Pell said, his tone suddenly frosty. "Things are heating up. I'm locked into all the negotiations with the UN, and that's turning into a full-time job. So I'm turning all the operational stuff over to Daisy for the time being, and you're the best choice to take over her assignments. I don't mean just the team meetings. I mean handling the freaks and keeping an eye on the Starlab bunch. You're the one who knows them best-What? Well, certainly you'll still be in charge of the Ukraine thing, too. If you need help, requisition it. Now, go talk to Daisy; she's got her hands full."

Daisy had her hands full, all right; she was in the middle of some problem with the Catalans and the Basques, and a field manager from Bangladesh was waiting to talk to her about Asian drug gangs. She waved Hilda to a seat while she finished dictating a note to the Spanish police, then leaned back and regarded her. "Congratulations, Hilda," she said. "Let's see, where do we start? You'll need to go out to Camp Smolley today, the freaks are bitching about their food and-well, everything; anyway, the one that looks like a parrot is. But the other two are having troubles, too."

"What kinds of troubles?"

Daisy waved a hand. "They'll tell you all about it when you get there. Then there's the team. Marcus doesn't want to lose momentum with the experts, so he wants a meeting every day-"

"All those people? Every day?"

"You can choose the participants yourself. You probably don't need the astronomer anymore-or do you? It's your call. And probably you can skip today if you have to; there won't be much time before you get back from Smolley. Then-wait a minute."

She frowned as her screen buzzed at her, listened for a moment, then said, "Apologize to him; I'll be with him in five minutes. Ten at the most."

She turned back to Hilda. "Sorry, where was I? Oh. The Starlab people in New York. Guards and surveillance are being handled by your old office; I've instructed them to report to you, but there haven't been any problems. The Chinese are still trying to get their hands on the pregnant one, and the damn Floridians are pissing and moaning about letting their General Delasquez get killed. Or abandoned. Or whatever happened to him up there."

She thought for a moment, then leaned back and smiled. "So what about it, Hilda? How do you like life in the fast track?"

The answer was "very little"; but all Hilda said was, "I'd rather be out in the field."

Daisy said sympathetically, "I felt that way, too, at first, but you get used to it. And there's a time to settle down, isn't there? Listen, while I think of it, my husband and I were wondering if you'd like to come over for dinner-"

Hilda goggled at her. Husband? When had that happened? And what did Daisy want one of those things for?

"-maybe tonight? You've never seen our house, have you? So, about eight? And there's somebody Frank and I would like you to meet."

All the way out to Camp Smolley Hilda was fuming to herself. Time to settle down? Time to turn into another Daisy Fennell? The worst part of it was that she hadn't ducked fast enough. Now she was committed to dinner with Daisy and Frank and Frank's really nice partner in the real-estate business, Richard, who had lost his wife to a mugger two years before and was just the kind of man Hilda ought to get to know.

She swore under her breath. Then, as she drove up to the entrance of the old biowar establishment, it got worse. There was a Police Corps lieutenant directing traffic at the turnoff, impatiently waving Hilda away with the other commuters until he saw her uniform. Then he saluted and allowed her to enter the public road that led to Smolley's access. But when she reached the gated drive to the labs there was half a company of police lining the far side of the road, across from the two-meter berm that surrounded Camp Smolley itself. Nearly a hundred picketers stood behind the police line, shouting and waving banners: Beware the Antichrist from Space! God Is Not Mocked! There Is Only One True Word! And one other small group, shooed away from the other by the police, who had a different crusade on their minds. Their placard read: Free Dopey and the Docs!

10 A.M. Traffic Advisory

No bomb or free-fire zones have been declared in the District or immediate environs.

There is unusual crowd activity at the White House and in the vicinity of the National Bureau of Investigation headquarters in Arlington. At present the situation is orderly, but alternate routes are advisable.

(Consult Maryland and Virginia notices for other areas involved.)

Damn these people! How did they know? The aliens had been moved here under the tightest security the Bureau could provide . . . but here were the protesters.

Naturally the protesters had no hope of getting into the biowar plant itself. Even Brigadier Hilda Morrisey couldn't pass until she parked her car and went through a metal detector, a patdown and a Bureau cadet with a sniffer like a portable vacuum cleaner to make sure there were no traces of banned chemicals on her person. Then they wouldn't let her take her car the remaining half kilometer to the building proper. "There'll be a shuttle van here in a moment, ma'am," the guard officer said. "You can wait inside if you like. Welcome to Camp Smelly."

She didn't like. She did it anyway, sitting with an unwatched news screen for entertainment. It wasn't entertaining; what was on at the moment was an interview with that Colonel What's-his-name Du-something, the French astronaut-or would-be astronaut, because as far as Hilda could tell he had never actually been in space. The interview was in French, but after the first few seconds an English voice-over translated his words. "We will be ready to launch to the so-called Starlab within the next few days," he said. "The American threat? It is pure braggadocio. I am not afraid. They dare not shoot us down; there are no national boundaries in space, and we have as much right to go there as they do."

"Son of a bitch," Hilda said out loud, startling the lieutenant, who had come in to get out of the damp chill. "Oh, not you," she said, waving at the screen. "That son of a bitch. And those sons of bitches across the road, too."

"Oh, don't worry about those people, ma'am," the lieutenant said earnestly. "Do you see that berm out there? Surrounds the whole base, and there isn't only full electronic surveillance, it's mined. Antipersonnel mines. Squirrels and birds won't trigger them-though we got a deer once-but I guarantee none of those creeps will get through. And here comes your van."

^^he never got a chance to tell the man

that what she was worrying about wasn't the protestors breaking into Camp Smolley, it was how they had known enough to be there in the first place. When she got out of the van she was searched again before she was allowed to go through the ostensibly simple wooden door of the ostensible ancient mansion-neither of which had ever fooled anyone-and then had to be searched one more time before she was allowed to pass through the real door, bank-vault thick, ponderously opening on its huge hinges with a hiss of air being admitted to the lowered-pressure anteroom behind it.