“They want me to ask you some questions, Beert,” I told him.
His neck had swerved to the two armed guards in UN blue helmets. “Yes, I supposed that they would,” he said absently, and then asked, “Those persons with the blue metal on their heads, are they your cousins?”
“Something like that,” I said, but that was all the chitchat we were allowed. And before we could get down to business the translators were on my case again for verbatim translations of everything we had said.
When the debriefers’ questions began he stayed dejected, but answered civilly enough. It wasn’t a very useful interview, though. The first things the debriefers wanted to know about were weaponry, and Beert complained that he had had no experience in that area. “My robot may have more of that data,” he said, “but I think not much.” And then when I translated that, Hilda cleared her throat.
“Since we don’t have one of his robots to ask,” she said warningly, “let’s go on to some other subject.”
I took the hint. When, disappointed, the interrogators switched to questions about other kinds of Horch technology, Beert complained several times that his robot was the one to be asked of such matters, but I simply didn’t translate. Technology wasn’t a productive area anyway; even when Beert had answers, the terms he used meant nothing to me. Or to the debriefers.
That didn’t stop them from asking, though. They were entitled to a full hour, they said. They claimed every minute of it, although the need for sleep was catching up with me and I was yawning long before Hilda announced time was up and hustled me out of the room.
For once the linguists didn’t follow. That puzzled me, but when I asked Hilda she said, “You don’t need to take them to bed with you, do you?”
“Bed?” I had almost given up on the hope of being allowed to go to bed.
“Bed, Danno,” she confirmed. “You’ll need your rest. You’ve got a long day ahead of you tomorrow.” Then she added approvingly, “You did good in there, Danno. Just remember: Scarecrow stuff, tell them everything. What you saw and did, tell them everything. The Horch stuff at Arlington, you don’t tell them anything about it at all.”
“Um,” I said, meaning, you’ve told me all this before and I’m too tired to hear it again. Then I said, “Can’t you do better for Beert than that dump? Remember, we owe him-“
“I do remember,” she said crossly. “We’ll do the best we can. Give it a rest.”
I stopped, turned and peered into her one-way glass, which made her recoil a little. “What the hell are you up to now, Danno?” she demanded.
“I’m trying to see if you still have a heart.”
“As much as I ever did,” she snapped. “Back off, Danno. You have to get over this nasty little curiosity about what I look like inside this box. I can see out, but you can’t see in, and that’s the way I want it. Now go to bed. You’re going to have a full day tomorrow.”
When the door closed behind me, I looked around. My room wasn’t much better than Beert’s, except that it did have a TV set and washstand, and there was a lid on the toilet. I thought about turning on the TV to catch a little news before I went to sleep, but I lay down to think about it, and then I didn’t want to get up again. I wondered what Pat was doing just then. Then I wondered what Patrice was doing. Then I wondered what it was that was niggling for attention at the edges of my mind. Then I fell asleep, and when I woke up I had forgotten that there was anything like that at all.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
I knew my new life with the Bureau was not going to be any bed of roses. I found out just how tough it was going to be as soon as I was awake. I was eating the breakfast an orderly had delivered-a lot less pleasing than the last human breakfast I had had, with its room-temperature eggs and not-quite-crisp bacon- when my TV screen beeped at me and displayed my schedule for the day:
0700 Reveille
0800-0915 Debriefing, solo
0915-1000 Break and medical
1000-1130 Debriefing with Horch
1130-1430 Lunch
1430-1500 Debriefing, submarine, with Docs
1500-1715 Translation, technical, with Docs
1715-1730 Break and medical
1730-1930 Debriefing, solo
1930-2100 Dinner
2100-2200 Debriefing, submarine, with Docs
2200-2230 Administrative conference
2230 Medical, and retire for night
It looked pretty formidable, apart from that one surprising exception. When Hilda came to hustle me over to Debriefing, solo I said gratefully, “I guess you do have a heart, Hilda. Thanks for that long lunch hour.”
“Oh, that,” she said, turning slightly to see if we were alone. We weren’t. She was silent for a moment, then said in a lowered tone, “Yes. Well, I’ll explain about that part when we come to it.”
That was the Hilda I knew. There was going to be a catch to her generosity. And, of course, there was.
We got through Debriefing, solo, with its million questions about Beert’s lab and Horch technology in general, and Break and Medical-five minutes for me to go to the bathroom, ten more for a couple of medics to peer down my throat and squirt something nasty-tasting into it so I wouldn’t lose my voice-and Debriefing with Horch, where they asked the same sort of questions of Beert, with me translating. And, of course, wherever we went, our entourage trailed along.
The linguists did their best to stay out of the way, but we now had an additional group keeping us company, mostly United Nations MPs. They didn’t wear blue berets like the technicians, they wore blue helmets, and they were everywhere, watching everything, muttering reports into their pocket screens, acting suspicious of everything that was done with the Scarecrow stuff. (Suspicious of the Bureau! How very strange. I couldn’t think why.)
But they didn’t stay with us when the questioning of Beert was over. Hilda shooed them off. “Agent Dannerman must have his time for relaxation,” she said firmly, and they went. As soon as they were out of sight she turned to me. “We’re going,” she said briefly. “Bring your Horch friend along.”
“What-“ I started to ask, but didn’t bother finishing. Hilda wasn’t answering questions just then. I sighed and told Beert to come along, and when he asked what I would have asked, I just shook my head. A couple of Bureau cops were waiting for us, and they led the way to an outside door. A van was waiting for us there; and when it had taken us to the chopper pad, a helicopter was waiting for the van.
Then I guessed.
“We’re going to Arlington, aren’t we?” I asked Hilda.
And all she said was, “Where else?”
Well, we did get lunch there, such as it was. It amounted to no more than the trademark Bureau sandwiches and coffee for me, and a few scraps of what looked like stewed rhubarb for Beert, all that Pirraghiz had been able to sort out in the time available. We weren’t given much time to enjoy it, either.
The Bureau’s forensic laboratory was built to do whatever might be needed in any Bureau operation-everything from dissecting a spray bomb full of radionuclides in its containment ovens to analyzing the toxins in an assassin’s needle-tipped umbrella or picking apart the linings in a smuggler’s suitcase. The place they gave us to eat in smelled of ancient ashes and acids, but nothing was going on there at the moment but our lunch. Nor was much happening in most of the lab chambers we passed on the way in, but when Hilda informed us lunchtime was over and escorted us to a locked wing of the lab, there was plenty. At three or four work stations technicians-all Bureau people, not a single blue UN beret in sight-were delicately prizing apart pieces of the wrecked Scarecrow fighters. At a couple of other benches the objects being examined were the bits and pieces I had stolen from Beert and Pirraghiz-her books, his instruments. Beert snorted sadly as he saw them, but Hilda didn’t let us linger. “Keep moving,” she ordered. “We’re going to see the live ones.”
The Bureau wasn’t taking any chances with the live ones. The room the fighting machine and the Christmas tree were in was steel-walled. A couple of senior Bureau technicians were waiting for us, gathered around a monitor screen that let them see inside. There a pair of Bureau sharpshooters were covering the machines from separate angles in case either of them made some sudden hostile move. They weren’t making any, apart from an occasional twitch.
That made Hilda ask why they were doing that, and when I asked Beert he said somberly, “They are simply running routine systems checks, to be sure everything is functioning in case of need. There is nothing to fear.”