That explained the new aroma. It didn’t explain the fact that the second person out of the sub was a portly black woman in a stained white smock, whom I’d never seen before. The deputy director didn’t give me a chance to ask questions. “You heard what the lieutenant said, Dannerman,” he snapped. “Get in there and straighten the freaks out!”
As soon as I lowered myself inside, Beert and Pirraghiz came clamoring around me for news and explanations. “Give me a minute,” I begged-in Horch, of course-while I looked around. Part of the stink came from three Bureau-issue body bags stacked one on top of the other-four body bags, actually; two bags had been put together to hold a larger carcass. That would be the dead Doc; the other bags would be holding the bodies of the two dead Scarecrow warriors. Another component of the stench was a couple of drying puddles of vomit on the floor, just under the perch where the ship’s Dopey was fastidiously shielding his face with his fan and squawking his own raucous complaints at me-in English, this time. The sergeant who had been airsick gave me an aggrieved look and said faintly, “He’s been going on like that the whole time. They all have.”
They all still were. The surviving Doc was holding up his ruined arm, now neatly bandaged and a lot shorter than it had been, and mewing earnestly to Pirraghiz. The only things capable of speech or action that weren’t demanding attention at once were the two machines, Beert’s Christmas tree and the surviving robot fighter. They stood totally silent and unmoving in a corner of the sub’s cabin. I appreciated that.
I raised a hand and said loudly, in English: “Shut up.” Then in Horch, “I’m sorry if you had a rough trip, but it’s over now. Pirraghiz? What happened to your friend?”
She was standing next to him, with one big hand on his shoulder for comforting. “At the other nest-the first place they took us to, I don’t know where it was-the human female amputated most of his stump,” she told me. “She did an excellent job, I think.”
I blinked at that. “You let her operate on him?”
“I had no choice, Dannerman. It was clear that she knew what she was doing, and the medical attention was urgently needed. Then she came with us to care for him on the trip.”
“But I thought you were the medical one-“
“Only for dealing with your species, Dannerman. I have been given no skills for my own.”
Beert had been standing behind me, listening. Now his neck snaked over my shoulder and his little head twisted to peer side-wise into mine. “May I speak now, Dan?” he asked, sounding sorrowful but resigned. “I do not complain, but can you tell me what place we have arrived at? And for what purpose?”
It was a tall order, but I did my best to pass on to him- adding apologies every few sentences-what Hilda and Patrice had explained to me: We were at a research facility devoted to analyzing the technology of the Others, where he and the Docs would be-I took a moment over the choice of words-would be cared for, I said. I didn’t want to say “imprisoned.”
The hard part of answering his question was when it came to purpose. I didn’t know what the Bureau had in mind for him, and didn’t much like my suspicions. While I was stumbling over that, the deputy director stuck his nose down the hatch. “What’s going on?” he demanded suspiciously. “Come on out of there! Bring those-things-out with you.”
That sounded like a good idea. The stink was getting to me. Been and the Docs followed me up the ladder agilely enough and in a moment we were all standing uneasily on the slippery, rounded deck of the sub, which had not been intended for anybody to stand on. I could see Patrice standing down below, a few feet from the big wheeled dolly the sub was resting on. The plump black woman was beside her, and Patrice’s mouth was open in wonder as she saw Beert. Pell nudged me, pointing to the exterior ladder. “Get them down there!” he ordered. And when I added a few sentences to the Horch translation of his order, trying to reassure them, Pell demanded, even more suspiciously than before: “What are you saying to them?”
“I’m telling them what you said,” I informed him.
“All right,” he grumbled, “but I want you to translate every damn word both ways, do you hear me? Now move it, all of you.
When we were all on the ground he hadn’t finished giving orders. “You!” he barked at me. “Go see the doctor.”
He was pointing to the black woman standing with Patrice. Pell did not choose to mention what I was supposed to see her about. Before I could ask, he was already stalking away, barking orders at everyone in sight. When I got there, Beert and the Docs trailing after, Patrice’s eyes were all on Beert, but she hadn’t forgotten her manners. “This is Colonel Marsha Evergood, Dan. She’s a neurosurgeon.”
I shook her hand. “I hear you have a side specialty in amputating Doc limbs,” I said.
She acknowledged the remark with a grin. “It happens I’m the world’s greatest expert on Doc anatomy, Agent Dannerman. I didn’t plan it that way, but I’ve debugged one and autopsied another. Now will you hold still for a minute?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. She reached under my babushka to run her fingers over the thing behind my right ear. Marcus Pell came up behind me as she felt and peered and poked. “Well?” he demanded testily.
The doctor withdrew her hand and gave me a friendly pat on the shoulder. She pursed her lips, considering. “I can’t say for sure without X rays and an ultrasound and maybe a little exploratory surgery, but I’d say it’s architecturally similar to the Scarecrow bugs. If so, it has probably invaded a lot of tissue. I doubt I could remove it without risking serious brain damage.”
“Hey,” I squawked, pulling away. Pell didn’t even look at me.
“So you think he’s transmitting everything he sees?” he asked.
Marsha Evergood shrugged, so I answered for her. “No! I’m not transmitting anything! It’s nothing like that. It isn’t a spy bug! It’s made by the Horch, not the, uh, Scarecrows, and all it does is give me their language.”
He gave me a glance that time, but didn’t respond. The doctor patted my hand reassuringly. I thought what she was trying to tell me was that she wasn’t going to turn me into a slobbering idiot with her scalpels, no matter what Marcus Pell wanted. At least I hoped so.
Anyway, whatever decision he might have wanted to make got deferred by another call on his attention. The duty crew had been carrying bits and pieces of loose equipment-including my sack of Horch goodies-out of the sub. They were stacking it all on the floor next to a Bureau van, but they came to a stop. The officer in charge hurried over, looking worried. “Deputy Director? I don’t think we can lift the big cadaver without more men, and we’d better get it into refrigeration pretty fast.”
For a moment it occurred to me to volunteer the Docs for the job, which they could have handled easily, but Pell was already gone to sort this new problem out. Anyway, I wasn’t in a mood to do him any favors, and I had something else I wanted to do. I beckoned Pirraghiz and Beert to come forward. “Patrice,” I said, “I’d like you to meet my two best friends.”
She stumbled over their names, but gamely stuck her hand out. Being a considerate person, Pirraghiz barely touched Patrice’s hand with her enormous, taloned fist, but Beert wrapped one snaky arm around it. He kept his eyes on her but slid his head up close to mine, whispering. When I answered Patrice spoke up. “What were you saying?” she demanded.
“Oh, well,” I said, trying to think of a lie, deciding to tell her the truth, “he, uh, wanted to know if you were the human female I was talking about back in his nest.”
“And you said?”
I shrugged and stuck with the truth. “I said, more or less.”
“Ah,” she said, nodding. “More or less.” Then she added, in a tone of friendly curiosity, “Tell me something, Dan. Why do you wriggle your arms and neck that way when you talk to your friends?”
She caught me by surprise. “Do I? I never noticed it. Maybe I’m just sort of copying the way Beert talks.”
“You ought to try to stop it. It looks pretty dumb.” And the look she was giving me that time had no suggestion of kissing in it.
By then the cleanup crew had loaded the casualties onto a couple of waiting gurneys-and a hand truck for the dead Doc-and Marcus Pell was peremptorily calling my name again. “Those robot machine things in the sub,” he said, sounding harried. “The crew’s afraid to touch them. Can you make them come out?”