I shook my head. “No, but Beert can. Give me a minute.” Beert and I climbed back onto the deck, and he called his orders down through the hatch. Both the robots immediately came to life. I wasn’t sure how the Christmas tree was going to manage the two ladders, up and down, but it simply extruded four or five more branches and whisked itself along, the fighter robot following briskly.
“Tell them to get in the van,” Pell ordered when they were down. I opened my mouth to ask why, but he didn’t give me a chance. “Do it!” he barked. And while they were doing it, impassive as ever, he climbed onto a crate. “Listen up, all of you!” he called. Those high-ranking workmen stopped what they were doing and turned toward him. “You will not, repeat not, ever under any circumstances mention to anyone at all the fact that you have seen any of this Horch technology. The Scarecrow stuff is different; that’s covered by the treaty, and in a minute we’ll let the UN people and everybody else in this project in to see it. Nothing about the Horch! Understand me? This is a national security matter, and violation carries a death penalty. Plus,” he added savagely, “I will make you pray for the firing squad long before the sentence is carried out.” He met the eyes of everybody in the loading area, then jumped down and turned to me. “Tell your Horch friend to get in the van, too,” he ordered.
That was pushing it a step too far. I didn’t know what Pell was up to, but I didn’t feel like going along with it. I said, “No.”
Pell looked as astonished as though a waiter had turned down his request for a clean spoon. “What the hell do you mean, no? That’s an order!”
“No,” I said again. “Beert stays with me. I promised him.”
The deputy director’s expression changed. He didn’t look angrier; he looked as though he had suddenly turned to ice. “I don’t give a shit what you promised that thing, Dannerman! I want him out of here before anybody else sees him. Do you want me to put you under arrest right now?”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Hilda’s life-support box rolling toward me dangerously, but I ignored her. I said, “Well, Deputy Director, if that’s what you want to do, I guess I can’t stop you. I ought to remind you, though, that I’m the only one who can speak to these people. I don’t see how I could do that for you if you put me in a detention cell.” He stood silent for a moment, swallowing what I had said to him. It looked as though it might choke him. I went on, “Anyway, what’s the point? Why do you want this stuff taken away?”
He glanced at Hilda, standing silently by, but didn’t say anything until he had finished processing the situation in his head. When he had made up his mind all he said was, “The Horch can stay. Just keep your mouth shut about the equipment.”
I could feel Hilda’s warning eyes on me in spite of her oneway glass. I persisted anyway, “Yes, but why?”
“Security,” he snapped.
That puzzled me. “I don’t see the problem. Isn’t this place secure from the Scarecrows?”
Pell had regained his composure. When he answered it was as though our little head-to-head had never happened. “It’s secure from the Scarecrows, sure-I hope. That’s not the problem. Camp Smolley is full of UN personnel and I don’t want them nosing around the Horch materiel. It’s bad enough we have to share the Scarecrow technology with them.”
That was even more of a puzzle. “Why are you worrying about the UN? I thought the Scarecrows were the enemy.”
Pell gave me the kind of look a kindergarten teacher might give to a child who hadn’t covered his coughs and sneezes. “They’re the present enemy, Dannerman. Who knows who our friends are going to be when this is over? Remember what country pays your salary, and keep your priorities straight!”
That was the end of the discussion. Pell turned away and gestured to the van driver, who started up and drove away through a smaller door to the outside.
Then, paying no further attention to me, Pell called to the guard at the inside door: “Open up! Let’s let the rest of the team come in and see what we’ve got!”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
I don’t know how many people had been waiting impatiently on the other side of those doors, maybe a hundred or more. They came pouring in, full of indignation at being kept outside, even more full of astonishment when they saw what was waiting for them. The ones in front stopped short, goggling, until the ones behind pushed them forward. There was a curious sort of collective sigh. Then some rushed toward the sub and a dozen or so zeroed in on Marcus Pell, full of complaints and accusations. A tall woman in a sari got to him first. “I must protest this unnecessary delay, Deputy Director Pell!” she snapped sternly. “Under the terms of the UN covenant we are entitled to immediate access to every item of Scarecrow technology, without delay!” And a man, in the uniform of some army I didn’t recognize but wearing a blue United Nations beret, backed her up: “I have already filed a protest because your people did not allow UN observers to be present when this submarine was landed!”
Pell wasn’t fazed. He’d had plenty of practice in dealing with indignant foreigners who were pissed off at something the Bureau had done. He spread his hands benignly. “I understand your concerns, Major Korman, Doctor Tal, but these are exceptional circumstances. The Scarecrows don’t know we have captured this sub, and they mustn’t find out. So we have had to take unusual security precautions-“
He didn’t stop there, but I stopped listening. I had a nearer problem. Several dozen of the new people had circled my little group, staring in fascination at their first sight of a real, live Horch. A couple of them were cameramen, shooting from every angle, and when Beert saw the lenses pointing at him he couldn’t help flinching away. Pirraghiz and the wounded Doc, Wrahrrgherfoozh, saw what was happening and moved to surround Beert protectively, but the audience was all raucously shouting questions: Did they speak English? What happened to the big one’s arm? How come the other Doc was wearing clothes? Were they dangerous?
I tried to reassure Beert and Pirraghiz and at the same time keep the more adventurous of the spectators from reaching out to touch Beert, but it was Hilda, the expert in crowd control, who rescued us. She produced four Bureau police to surround us and then-she must have turned up the gain on her internal microphone-she thundered at the people:
“Don’t come too close! There’s a risk of communicable diseases.” With the help of the police, that made them fall back a little. She added, more civilly, “When they’ve been examined you will have your proper access to them, and before that we’ll arrange for Agent Dannerman to meet with you in the auditorium to tell his story.”
She didn’t give me a chance to react to that. While the police were moving the spectators away she came up close to me and, said softly, “I’d go easy on telling Marcus to go screw himself if I were you, Danno. You’re not making any friends for yourself that way.”
She was telling me what I knew already. I shrugged. “I already have all the friends I need.”
She was silent for a moment. Then she said, “Maybe you do. It’s a good thing for you that I’m one of them.” And then, with a change of tone, “Anyway, here comes our transportation.”
The transportation was one of those electric-motored people carriers you see in airports. It was big enough to hold all of us-including the Docs, though just barely. With a couple of Bureau uniformed police ahead of us to clear the way we moved pretty fast out of the loading area, through the halls of Camp Smolley. Hilda wasn’t on the vehicle and didn’t need to be; her box’s wheels kept up easily as she rolled along behind us. Behind her still half a dozen more guards were following, half-trotting to keep up; most of them wore the blue UN berets. All the way the two Docs were mewing to each other, taking a lively interest in the rooms they passed, the fire extinguishers on the walls, the water fountains, the ceiling-mounted TV screens at every intersection that were all displaying the scene in the loading dock, though no human beings were present in the halls to watch them because everybody who could get there was there already. Beert was darting his head in every direction, too, and full of questions. I couldn’t tell him much. I’d never been in Camp Smolley before either.