Pohl, Frederik - The Siege of Eternity

Hilda Morrisey glanced around, then nodded to the lieutenant colonel, who began issuing orders. The two guards with the paper boxes set them down near a window, while the others shepherded the aliens to the same area, Dopey looking on interestedly but silent.

The Chinese officers looked up, first startled and uneasy as they found themselves in the presence of the weird beings from space, then in revulsion as they caught the scent of them. The senior officer spoke sharply. They began to move farther away, but the two Jimmy Lins didn't follow. They were speaking agitatedly to each other, then one of them hurried across the room to Pat Five, wearing a broad and suspiciously fake smile. "How nice to see you, my dear!" he cried. "And my unborn child, how is he doing?"

Pat Five gave him nothing but a hostile look, but Patrice answered for her. "He isn't yours, he's ours, and he isn't him. He's them. Three of them. She's having triplets."

"Triplets! How very wonderful!"

"Oh, cut it out," Patrice said in disgust. "Really, Jimmy, you don't want these kids, do you?"

He glanced over his shoulder at the PRC officers. "Certainly I want my children! And I want them brought up in their homeland!"

The senior PRC officer snapped a command as Patrice was saying, "Come off it, Jimmy."

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.

Still, Dannerman thought, maybe the Docs did need protection after all. The word was that some of the demonstrators had briefly broken through the massed police battalions around the UN Building complex, before reinforcements managed to get to that point to drive them back. He had seen half a dozen people turned away as they failed the screening for unchecked weapons. Whether the weapons were on their persons from absentmindedness or malicious intent wasn't stated. It didn't matter. Either way, those people would be watching the televised proceedings, if at all, from their cells in one of New York's city jails.

The delegates to the General Assembly were still earnestly wrangling-in several languages, few of which Dannerman understood.

Though Dopey, with his total command of nearly all Earthly tongues, was alertly following it all.

But then the presiding delegate gaveled everyone to silence. "Gentlemen and ladies," he said-in English-"let us begin the questioning. Ask the witness known as 'Dopey' to take the stand."

When the little alien hopped onto the witness stand two thousand people sighed in unison. The interrogator rapped for order, looking pleased as he motioned to the clerk to swear the witness in.

Federal Reserve Inflation Bulletin

The morning recommended price adjustment for inflation is set at 1.06%. Federal Reserve Chairman Walter C. Boettger declined to set an annualized rate, stating, "This unprecedented increase in the rate of inflation is a purely temporary phenomenon which cannot be tolerated. If it continues, a third increase in interest rates must be considered, but I have confidence that the good sense of the American people will assert itself."

When the clerk approached with the Bible he got a curious look from Dopey. The look got curiouser as the clerk rattled off his formula: "Please put your hand on the Bible. Do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?"