CHAPTER TEN
Whatever the little alien’s belly bag had done to the guard, the man hadn’t died of it. Mores the pity, Hilda told herself. If the damn fool had been dead, that would have been the end of it. His corpse could have been off-loaded and transported at leisure to the Bureau’s autopsy facilities, where something useful might have been learned. Alive, he was a lot more trouble. He had to be personally escorted to the nearest emergency room, with a senior officer going along to make sure he didn’t blab anything he shouldn’t, and who was the lucky senior officer to get the job? Why, naturally it was Colonel Hilda Morrisey.
Infuriatingly the man was wide-awake and apologetic long before Hilda got him to the emergency room. The duty doctors were annoyed. “There isn’t anything seriously wrong with this man,” one said to Hilda. “He could stand to lose a few kilos, and I’d watch that liver, but he doesn’t belong here. You say he had some kind of electric shock? Has he had medical treatment already?”
“No. Well, yes,” she added, remembering that one of the golems had forced his way over to fiddle with the unconscious guard for several minutes. For all the good that could have done. “I guess you could say he had some first aid. But our plane was just landing, so we brought him right here.”
When the doctor said it would probably be best to keep him overnight Hilda agreed, but required the privilege of saying a word or two in the patient’s ear. When she was confident that he understood the importance of keeping his mouth shut about anything that had happened on the plane she left him. She hurried to the headquarters and one of the suites for visiting VIPs, and the first real sleep she had had in more hours than she wanted to count.
Hilda slept dreamlessly and woke herself early. She didn’t need an alarm; it was a matter of will, and as soon as her eyes were open she knew where she was and what she had to do. First thing was to peek out into the suite’s living room to make sure her uniform was back, cleaned and pressed overnight. It was. She retrieved it and headed for the bathroom, scooping up the underwear she’d washed and left to dry on the little line. While she was pulling her stockings on she called the Bureau’s New York office on the secure line, voice only, and got the night duty officer. “Colonel Morrisey here,” she told him. “I’m going to be stuck at HQ for a while. Any problems your end?” There weren’t. All the ongoing operations were proceeding smoothly without her, the man said, and accepted her instructions to turn all her Studebaker files over to Major Geltmann. Then she made herself a cup of coffee from the little machine in the bathroom while she checked the situation reports.
As she expected, all four of the Pat Adcocks and both Danner-mans had been stowed away in a safe house, with plenty of Bureau security surrounding them. What was more surprising was that the aliens were squirreled away with them. That couldn’t be permanent, if only, Hilda reflected, because the woman agent who ostensibly lived there would have a lot to say about the damage to her carpets.
The only other item that concerned her was that a meeting of the Ananias team was scheduled for 0900. Vice Deputy Director Daisy Fennell was to be in the chair, and Hilda herself was listed as one of the participants. But Marcus Pell was not, and when Hilda checked a little farther it turned out that he, too, was logged as remaining overnight in the safe house.
Well, that made sense. If there was anything important for the National Bureau of Investigation to investigate, the place to do it was where the Starlab people were. Hilda felt a brief sense of resentment. She should have been there herself. Would have been, if she hadn’t been stuck with that damn guard.
But she wasn’t there, and meanwhile she had time for some errands of her own. She checked her makeup, swallowed the last of the coffee and took the elevator up to the motor pool, because she did not intend to sleep another night in that borrowed T-shirt from the Bureau’s women’s bowling team.
Twenty minutes later she was parking at one of Arlington’s shopping malls. She did not miss the fact that the valet who took her two-seater gave her one of those oh-you’re-a-cop looks-not hostile exactly, and certainly not deferential, just wary. She got the same look from the half dozen sidewalk vendors who were peddling inflation-hedge knickknacks just outside the mall entrance. Even the two city cops who were interrogating a young woman against a wall- shoplifter? someone with a cause who had, perhaps, tried to plant a stink bomb in the food department?-paused to salute her, but their expressions were as stony as the perpetrator’s herself.
It was the uniform, of course.
Yanqui Bureaucrats Refuse to Release Delasquez Alleged Death Data.
Once again the Anglo politicians in Washington have denied the official demands of the sovereign State of Florida for a full and complete account of the so-called “death” of the “other” General Martin Delasquez.
El Diario, Miami
Hilda Morrisey was proud of the uniform. It marked her, and everyone who wore it, as part of that group that was charged with protecting all these people-from themselves, often enough. But there were times when she didn’t want to advertise what she did for a living. If she were going to stay in this area for a few days, away from the closets of her little New York City flat. . .
So once she had picked up the necessities she spent another half hour picking out things she could wear off duty. Some of them nice things. The sorts of things that made her look like the kind of woman a man, some man, might want to know better. Some man to replace Wilbur, who evidently wasn’t going to be handy for a while.
On her way back with her acquisitions Hilda allowed herself a pleasant little reverie about that some man she had not yet met, idly switching on the news, half-listening to the garbled stories and wild speculations over the amazing reports from Calgary.
The message light flashed on the car screen.
She hit the display button. What turned up was an extract from die orders of the day. It said: Col. MORRISEY, Hilda J. Reassigned Arlington HQ. Promoted brigadier.
That took care of news, Wilbur and idle speculations. “You bastard, “she said to the air, switched over to manual drive and whipped the car around in the direction of the safe house and Deputy Director Marcus Pell.
The safe house had sixteen rooms and seven baths, not counting the Jacuzzi and the pool in the backyard. It needed them all. It was crowded, with four Pats, two Dannermans, two Docs, the Dopey, the deputy director and a couple of his interrogators-and eleven, count ‘em, eleven guards in and outside the house, plus about half a dozen maids, cooks and cleaners. Who were, of course, also guards, even if they didn’t flaunt their weapons quite as conspicuously as the ones in uniform.
The guard at the gate wasn’t uniformed; he was dressed in overalls, and he held what looked like a leaf blower. (Bad cover, Hilda noted. The thing wasn’t a real leaf blower, of course; it was something a lot more effective against any possible trespasser-but a leaf blower? In December, with patchy snow still on the ground?) He looked briefly at Hilda’s uniform and the ID she flashed at him, then waved her on to the next guard. Or, actually, guards. There were two of them here, this time in uniform and standing at a checkpoint with stop-‘em-dead spikes in the driveway just past their post. Hilda’s rank wasn’t enough to get her past them. She had to sit in the car, fuming, until the deputy director himself came strolling down from the safe house. He gave the guards a nod of the head, and waited until they had taken themselves out of earshot before he spoke. “Morning, Hilda,” he said pleasantly. “I bet I know why you’re here.”
“I bet you damn well do, Marcus,” she snarled. “I’m here to tell you that I’m quitting, and as soon as I get to a secure terminal you’ll have it in writing.”
He shook his head patiently. “No,” he said, “I won’t. Calm down, Hilda. You know this business is too big for you to sit out. Jesus!” he went on, his expression changing. “You wouldn’t believe what kind of technology these people have! I was up half the night with that Dopey creature, and he talked straight through. My God, how he talked! Matter transmitters. Jail walls the keepers can walk through but the inmates can’t pass. Weapons-oh, Hilda, the weapons they’ve got! You’re not going to want to miss all this-“