And then there was Anita Berman, who had been the biggest improvement of all.
Anita had always been a sweet and forgiving woman, with plenty to forgive: any number of broken dates and long absences when he could not tell her what was going on because it was Bureau business. Now that she knew he was a Bureau agent all the lapses were explained. No, better than just explained. Anita was thrilled. She had been as swept up in the Scarecrow turmoil as anyone else on Earth, and here he was, her lover, astonishingly at the very heart of it! “I was always pretty crazy about you, Dan,” she had whispered in his ear the night before, “but, wow, now it’s really special!”
He was grinning reminiscently to himself, when someone tapped his shoulder. It was a cop, pointing at the beginning of the line. There a woman inside the gate was beckoning peremptorily to Danner-man. He recognized her as Senator Alicia Piombero, and she was gesturing for him to come in.
Even at the UN, a United States senator could smooth all ways. When he had run the gauntlet of catcalls from the waiting line and was at the gate, she looked him over, and said, “You’re Dannerman, right? You were summoned to appear at this thing?” And, when he nodded: “That’s what I told the guard. Just show him the summons and he’ll let you in.”
The guard did. As they walked toward the actual doorway he thanked the woman, and she said, “You’re welcome. Maybe we can do each other a favor.”
“What’s that?” he asked, but she shook her head, pointing at the other guard post just inside the door. When they had finished with the metal detectors and the patdowns and the sniffers she took him aside.
“Listen,” she said, “I only have a minute because I have to get up to the Security Council, but you’ve been having trouble collecting your pay, haven’t you? I mean, because now there are two of you?”
It was a sore point. “The damn payroll people are taking forever to figure out what to do, yes,” he said.
“Well, Representative Collerton-I don’t know if you know her? She’s willing to get a special members’ bill through to pay both you Dannermans in full. You’re entitled, after all, and that would cut right through the red tape.”
Dannerman perked up, then his guard went up. “That would be good,” he said cautiously, waiting for it.
“Glad to do it, Dannerman, but you can do something for me, too, if you want to. You know Marcus is a little annoyed with me?”
Mr. L. Koga: “Whatever may or may not be going on in the Security Council at this time, it is our undoubted duty to learn the facts in this matter to the satisfaction of each and every delegate, not just those who represent the so-called Great Powers, so that we may take appropriate action.”
Mr. V. Puunamunda: “Will the gentleman from Kenya please yield?”
Mr. L. Koga: “I will yield to the gentleman from the Marshall Islands for thirty seconds.”
Mr. V. Puunamunda: “I thank the gentleman. I wish only to call to the attention of this body that our islands may be endangered, owing to the severe tropical storms of recent years, but they are still voting members of this General Assembly, and we, too, should be allowed to participate in the questioning of the witnesses.”
Proceedings of the General Assembly
“I know about Senator Wintczak’s stories that he thinks came from you, yes.”
She clearly didn’t want to discuss the stories. She just said, “So he’s doing a lot of stuff that I’m not kept informed on. I can’t let that happen. You can understand that. We aren’t going to go back to those old CIA days, with you spooks going off on all sorts of tear-ass mystery missions and the Senate kept fat, dumb and ignorant.”
“No, ma’am,” Dannerman said, because she seemed to expect it.
“So we can do each other some good. If you could just keep me posted on what’s happening that isn’t talked about in the team meetings-“
Dannerman did his best not to laugh; the woman wanted him to spy on the spymaster!
“I’m not asking you for anything I don’t have a right to know,” she went on persuasively. “Give me a call when you can, and I’ll get Susie Collerton started on the bill. Right now I’ve got to get up to the Council.”
That made him frown. “You’re going to the Security Council? But I thought it was the General Assembly that was meeting.”
She looked at him with faint pity. “That’s where the circus is. The Council is where the work will be done. Think about it. We’ll talk later.”
Once inside the building a uniformed woman in a blue UN beret escorted Dannerman to a waiting room. Dannerman, still mulling over his conversation with the senator, paid little attention to where they were going until she stopped at a doorway, saluted smartly, and said, with an accent Dannerman couldn’t identify, “In here, please, until you are called.”
The place was marked “VISITORS’ LOUNGE” on the door, in all five of the official languages of the UN, but the only visitors in it that day were the ones with subpoenas from the General Assembly. Some of them were there already, Dannerman saw, Rosaleen Artzbachova and Pat Adcock sitting near the door and, at the far end of the large room and not sitting at all, four people in the uniform of the People’s Republic of China. Dannerman recognized one of them-no, Dannerman corrected himself, he recognized two of them, and they both were the pilot who had taken them to Starlab in the first place, Commander James Peng-tsu Lin. He nodded toward the Lins, but, standing stony-faced and silent, they didn’t meet his eye. He shrugged and turned to the others. “Morning,” he said. “You look like you’re all recovered from our trip.”
Rosaleen corrected him. “This one wasn’t in Ukraine. She’s Patrice. Pat’s in the ladies’ with Pat Five, but, yes, we’re fully recovered. How did things go in Arlington?”
“Oh,” he said, recollecting himself, “no problem. The D.D. ate me out a little, but then they sent me right home, because they had other things on their minds. They did have orders for me, so you’ll be seeing a lot of me for a while. They’ve put me in charge of your guard details at the Observatory.”
The door opened again. When Dannerman turned he saw the two Pats, returned from the washroom, but they didn’t enter right away. They were peering curiously down the hall, and so was their escort.
Dannerman had no trouble recognizing which was Pat Five. In just the few days since he had seen her last she seemed to have become much more pregnant. She was definitely heavier than the Pat beside her, and a lot of the gained weight appeared to be in her face, which looked almost bloated. Dannerman had had very little experience of pregnant women, but he remembered hearing that they were supposed to be at their prettiest when pregnant. It hadn’t worked that way for Pat Five. The guard in the blue beret spoke to them, and they hastily got out of the way to make room for the next arrivals.
Of which there were a lot. First came Hilda Morrisey and her new aide, along with a uniformed Bureau lieutenant colonel Dannerman didn’t recognize; then a couple of Bureau guards, curiously lugging large, flat boxes of torn-up paper. Then there was another clutch of guards surrounding the aliens: the two huge, pale Docs, one of them carrying the little turkey thing, Dopey. Finally the other Dannerman and his Pat One strolled in, keeping their distance from the space freaks; and suddenly the large room didn’t seem very large anymore.
Hilda Morrisey glanced around, then nodded to the lieutenant colonel, who began issuing orders. The two guards with the paper boxes set them down near a window, while the others shepherded the aliens to the same area, Dopey looking on interestedly but silent.
The Chinese officers looked up, first startled and uneasy as they found themselves in the presence of the weird beings from space, then in revulsion as they caught the scent of them. The senior officer spoke sharply. They began to move farther away, but the two Jimmy Lins didn’t follow. They were speaking agitatedly to each other, then one of them hurried across the room to Pat Five, wearing a broad and suspiciously fake smile. “How nice to see you, my dear!” he cried. “And my unborn child, how is he doing?”
Pat Five gave him nothing but a hostile look, but Patrice answered for her. “He isn’t yours, he’s ours, and he isn’t him. He’s them. Three of them. She’s having triplets.”
“Triplets! How very wonderful!”
“Oh, cut it out,” Patrice said in disgust. “Really, Jimmy, you don’t want these kids, do you?”