Pat sighed, sparing a quick look at Dannerman, who had written something on a scrap of paper and was holding it covered, impatiently waiting. “They have the power,” she said. “I don’t know about ‘rights.’ Except that we don’t have any at all.” And to Dannerman: “Is that what I think it is?”
“For the new ones,” he said, handing it to Pat. She glanced at it: it was what she had expected, a synopsis of the parts of the briefing that were not to be spoken out loud.
She showed the newcomers the technique of managing to read it without ever letting it be exposed to hostile eyes. When the first one read it she said nothing, just looked affronted and unhappy when she passed it to the other. When the other finished she giggled wanly. “Passing notes back and forth,” she said, “it’s like being in school again.”
“Only school was never like this,” the other one agreed, and Pat marveled: they were thinking the same thoughts she had thought. Well, they would, wouldn’t they? Being the same person . . . except for being a lot cleaner.
Which made her think of something. She glanced at the other captives, all of whom had edged close to listen in, and lowered her voice. “Listen,” she said. “They left you your perfume, didn’t they? Could one of you spare me a couple of drops?”
They could, and Jimmy Lin stepped closer, inhaling. “Ah,” he said, “that’s really fine. I’d almost forgotten what a woman was supposed to smell like.”
Pat gave him a look of disgust. “Shoo,” she ordered, and then, more politely, “All the rest of you, could you just leave us alone for a bit? So we can get used to this?”
The other three considerately took themselves over to the cooker, but Lin looked rebellious. “Who are you to give me orders, Ice Queen? Maybe these other ladies appreciate a little male attention.”
“We don’t,” one of the others said briefly. “Get lost.” When he moved sulkily away she stared after him. “What’s the matter with him?”
“He’s horny.”
“Well, sure he’s horny. He’s always been horny, but he didn’t use to act like that.”
“Ah, no,” Pat said, remembering. “Not quite as forthright, anyway. But that was then. You were his boss then. Now that doesn’t matter anymore.”
The other Pat was staring after Jimmy, who was now sulkily demanding his share of what was coming out of the cooker. “Speaking of that kind of thing . . . well,” she said, now almost whispering, “excuse me for asking, but I don’t suppose anybody’s actually getting any, are they?”
“In this goldfish bowl? I wish.”
“Because,” the other went on, “I couldn’t help seeing the way Dan-Dan looks at you, you know? Is something new going on with you two?”
Pat had to think about that one. “I wouldn’t be surprised,” she said finally, surprising herself. “He’s not really a bad guy when you get to know him … I mean, not counting that he’s a goddamn spy.”
That took explanation, too. Everything did, not helped by the fact that the new arrivals not only looked the same but talked at the same time, with the same words, and then stopped and stared at each other. “Hell,” Rosaleen said at last. “We’ve got to do something about telling you apart. Let’s start by naming you. You”-the original-“you’re Pat. And you”-the one nearest her-“you can be Patricia-“
“It’s Patrice, actually,” the two new ones said together.
“All right, Patrice. And you’re Patsy.”
The third one looked rebellious. “The hell you say! Nobody ever calls me Patsy!”
“Oh, come on,” the Patrice said soothingly. “It’s not so bad and Rosie’s right about needing names.”
The Patsy scowled. “So why don’t you be Patsy, then?” Then she surrendered: “Oh, well, I guess it makes no difference, but you owe me.”
“Fine,” Rosaleen said, smiling for the first time. “That’s settled: Pat, Patrice and Patsy. Now, hold still.” She was pulling out her multicolor pen. “Just so the rest of us can know which of you is which I’m going to put a little beauty spot on your foreheads.”
“Hey!” both of them protested at once.
Rosaleen overruled them. “It’s just for now; it’ll wear off by the time we think of something better. Let’s see. We’ll do blue for you, Pat, just to be fair. Red for Patrice; and I’ll do green for Patsy.” And then, mimicking Dopey: “Are there any questions?”
She was talking to the Pats, but it was Jimmy Lin who spoke up. “I have one. Which of you is going to be the lucky girl who gets me?”
Pat opened her mouth to chastise him, and then closed it again. What was the point? Better just to ignore him, she thought, and, hostess like, was about to ask her new best friends if they were ready to eat again when something happened. It sounded like a distant crump of a blast-thunder? an explosion?-and a moment later that constant, featureless white light from overhead dimmed and reddened. It only lasted for a second. Then it was bright again.
“What the hell was that?” Patsy asked.
Nobody had an answer. Patrice asked, “Does that happen a lot?” and Pat shook her head.
“Never before,” she said. “It sounded like something blew up.”
Rosaleen Artzybachova said, “Did you feel the floor shake?”
Dannerman thought he had; none of the others were sure. But there wasn’t any doubt that something had happened, and, though they chewed the subject over the next half hour or so, all they could agree on was that they didn’t like it.
Except for Jimmy Lin. Who said, grinning weakly, “How about that? Just talking about sex I can make the earth move for you.”
Whatever it was, it didn’t happen again. By their second day-well, by the time they woke up from their second sleep after their arrival-the two new Pat Adcocks were at least no longer speaking in chorus. Nurture had triumphed over nature. There hadn’t been many differences in their experience, and those only small ones. Patsy had burned her hand trying to learn how to use the cooker; Jimmy Lin had been a little too forthright when he managed to get Patrice alone-well, not “alone,” but at least a couple of meters from any of the others, enough for him to deem the privacy adequate-and it had wound up in a screaming match. Things like that. But however little the differences had been, they were enough to set each of them off on somewhat different trains of thought.
What all the Pats had, and kept, was a preference for each other’s company. They ate together. When one of them had to use the toilet the other two stood protectively before her, glaring the three males down. They slept nestled next to each other, woke at the same time, whispered to each other. Within the small group of captives they had become a separate subunit. It was, Pat thought, a little reassuring to have two companions whom she could trust absolutely, since they were herself.
The other four were not as pleased. Dannerman and Rosaleen embarked on a chess marathon, doggedly ignoring the three Pat Adcocks. Martin Delasquez hardly spoke to anyone, retreating into sleep, or pretended sleep, for hour upon hour, while Jimmy Lin went the other way. He was hyperactive, Pat thought. He seemed hardly to sleep at all. He kibitzed the chess players, tried unsuccessfully to get Martin to play some other game with him and, of course, did his best to talk sex with any or all of the three Pats. If they were worried about getting pregnant, he offered, the revered ancient Peng-tsu had the answers for that, too. “We could do approaching the Fragrant Bamboo, for instance,” he said. “That’s doing it standing up, you know? And Peng-tsu says you can’t get pregnant that way. You don’t believe that? All right, then there’s always the Jade Girl and the Flute, or The White Tiger Leaps-that one,” he said, with a wink, “I don’t want to tell you about, but any time you like I could show you.” All that sort of talk had long since become pretty stale for Pat, but the two new ones were more tolerant. They let him talk. Anyway, Pat thought, that was better than Jimmy’s other main occupation, which was feverishly writing out notes with ideas for doing something-going on a hunger strike, capturing Dopey and torturing him until he did whatever they wanted- maybe using some of the concealed weapons they still possessed, maybe by dunking his limbs or tail into the cooker. Pat wondered if the man was going insane. When he passed around the suggestion for cooking Dopey’s plume, on the grounds that that was bound to hurt but unlikely to kill the creature, he was almost trembling with excitement; but then, a few hours later, he was talking enthusiastically about some of his ancestor’s other sexual proposals . . . when the wall clouded and Dopey came in.