She mulled that over for a moment, then sighed. All she said was, “Let’s get on with it.”
When we were inside the chamber the sharpshooters came to attention. “You have to stay out of our line of fire, Brigadier,” one of them warned.
“Yes, yes,” she said testily, but she obediently rolled to one corner of the room and let the technicians take over.
They knew what they wanted. Evidently they had studied everything I had said in debriefing about what the Christmas trees were capable of, and one by one they asked to have the machine put through its paces: extend branches down to the tiniest twiglets, display its recording lenses, speak. One of the techs was recording every move while the other gave me orders. Which I passed on to Beert to repeat, until he got tired of that and sulkily told the Christmas tree, “Do as Dan orders.” Then it went a little faster … but still interminable.
When they had seen everything the Christmas tree could do-at least twice-they turned to the fighting machine. That made the sharpshooters more nervous, but the machine obediently turned, moved and displayed its weaponry for a good twenty minutes. Then the technicians paused, looking at each other. “We’d like to see it fire its weapons,” one of them said. “Do you think we could take it out to the range?”
“You damn well could not,” Hilda barked from her corner. “Neither of these things is leaving this room.”
The tech sighed. “All right, but we need to know its effective killing distance, firing rate, all that sort of thing.”
But when I asked Beert those questions all I got from him was some violent neck-twisting. “Do not forget, Dan,” he said obstinately, “I came late to this world of high technology. I know nothing of weapons.”
I wasn’t sure I believed him. I didn’t want to call my old friend a liar, though, so I simply translated his words with a straight face. The way I looked at it, Beert was entitled to an occasional lie when his conscience didn’t want him to tell the truth. After all, he had given me pretty much the same kind of slack when I was in his nest.
When it was time to leave I was surprised to see that we’d had an audience. Marcus Pell was standing outside the cell, watching the machines on the monitor. He gave me a quick look. “I remind you, Agent Dannerman, that none of this is to be spoken of to anyone, especially those UN people. This is a Bureau matter. The only person outside the Bureau who knows anything about it is the President of the United States.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, a little surprised that he had bothered to take the President into his confidence.
Inside the cell the machines were twitching slightly again, and he jerked a thumb at them. “Do they have to be doing that?”
“Beert says it’s just systems checks,” I told him, though I knew he had been told that before.
“Well, I don’t like it,” the deputy director said. “Can’t he turn them off?”
When I put the question to Beert it seemed to bother him. He studied my face at close range for a moment before he said glumly, “Yes, Dan, I could do that. Why should I?”
“Because they scare the hell out of some of the people here.”
“I do not mind that that is so, Dan. Do you remember that I am alone on this planet? These machines are the only security I have.”
“It isn’t much, Beert,” I told him. “First suspicious move either of them makes, the guards will destroy it.”
“Even so,” he said flatly, closing the discussion. So I told the deputy director:
“He can’t do it.”
He didn’t believe me. “So what was all that palaver about?” he demanded.
“He was telling me all the reasons he couldn’t do it. I didn’t understand most of it.”
He gave me one of those deputy director looks. “Do you know what I think, Dannerman?” he asked. “I think your pal isn’t being entirely frank with us. Maybe he needs a little encouragement.”
I didn’t like the way his mind was going. “If you’re talking about beating the piss out of him, that’s against Bureau policy, isn’t it?”
“Only against human beings, Dannerman. Nobody ever said anything about space freaks.”
It was impossible for me to tell how serious he was. So I reminded him that not only was Beert a good friend to whom we owed a debt, but we knew so little of his anatomy that torture might kill him. He sniffed, meaning I did not know what. “Time’s up,” he said. “You’re needed back at Camp Smolley.” And that was all he said.
On the way back we had to wait for the dolly to lift Hilda into the chopper. I took advantage of the moment of privacy to try to get back on the sort of fellowship I owed Beert. I tried to tell him I knew how he must be feeling, but he didn’t let me get very far.
“Do you indeed, Dan?” he asked angrily, but then collected himself. “I suppose you do. Do not concern yourself about it. This is my personal worry, not yours.”
“What worry do you mean?”
He waved both arms and neck unhappily. “It is simply that I feel I may have made a mistake. I think I will never see my Greatmother again … and that may be as well, for I think she would not approve.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Between the 1730-1930 Debriefing, solo and the 2100-2200 Debriefing, submarine, with Docs there was an hour and a half marked for dinner. This time it was real. Hilda not only gave me all that time for a leisurely meal, she let me have it in the little apartment belonging to Pat and Dan M., and she left us alone for it.
It wasn’t exactly a home-cooked meal. It seemed they didn’t do much cooking, because both of them worked for a living. Dan-that Dan-was in charge of Camp Smolley’s resident aliens, their Dopey and Mrrranthoghrow; he told me that right now the job mostly amounted to monitoring all the Dopey’s contacts to keep him from learning anything about the captured sub and Beert. It wasn’t a demanding job. The Dopey’s contacts were few; he had been well and truly interrogated long since, and there weren’t many questions left to ask him.
Dan M. was waiting for me when I got to the apartment. He offered me a drink, and I took it gladly-it was the first I’d been allowed since I got back. “Pat’ll be along in a minute,” he told me, as he poured the Canadian and ginger ale-naturally he didn’t have to ask what I preferred. As I was holding the copper-mesh babushka out of the way with one hand in order to lift the glass to my lips, he gave me a disapproving look. “Why don’t you take that thing off?” he asked. “We aren’t going to be talking any military secrets here, are we?”
“Well, Hilda said-“ I began, and then reconsidered. Hilda, after all, wasn’t there, and the thing certainly was a damned nuisance. I slipped it off and set it down on the floor next to my chair.
“Better?” he asked. “Fine. Now you can look over the menu and see what you like.” He scrolled the screen for me, offering comments. The gazpacho was more or less all right, but they made it with canned tomatoes; the soup of the day, though generally canned, was better. He didn’t recommend any of the fish, but the steaks were pretty good. So I studied the menu with care, not so much because I was having trouble making up my mind as because I was feeling a little uneasy. It was the first time the other Dan and I had been alone together.
It didn’t seem to be bothering him much-well, he’d had the practice. He freshened my drink without being asked, and politely offered to show me around the apartment. I said no. I could see the workroom and bathroom from where I sat; the kitchen was only a little appendage off the main room, and I had no interest in visiting the bedroom he and Pat shared. I don’t mean that I was consumed with jealousy, exactly. I just didn’t choose to look at their bed.
While he was placing our orders with the kitchen Pat came in, looking exactly as I expected her to look. “Sorry,” she said. “Pell is such a pain in the ass sometimes.” She took a quick look at the screen, made her choices and then sat down next to me, explaining what Marcus Pell had done to make her late. It was her job to take the Threat Watch synoptics as they came in from the Observatory and dumb them down enough for Marcus Pell to understand. That was a tricky tightrope for her to walk. If she didn’t make them simple enough for him to grasp at the first hearing, he complained she was wasting his time. If she simplified them too much-as tonight-he got suspicious and demanded to know what she was leaving out.