That didn’t stop any of them from doing what they were here to do. The bickering was intense and Marcus Pell was in the thick of it, backing up the President’s personal representative. Starlab was American property, the President’s man was announcing, and so everything on it was American property as well. Nonsense, said everyone else. The goods were treasure trove, belonging to whoever found them and, besides, the United Nations had declared them the common property of all.
Of course, there was no real chance that the lander’s cargo was going to be delivered to the UN Building. It would be divided among the world’s powers. The bickering here was over how many pieces it would be divided into, and who would get the pieces. Hilda eavesdropped on a group of Germans and Poles arguing about whether the Slavic countries of Europe were entitled to any consideration at all, but really ought to consider themselves part of Eurospace-“We have had enough experience of being part of your space,” one of the Poles was saying in German rudimentary enough for Hilda to follow. A few minutes later some Australians and New Zealanders were complaining that the damn Pommies still thought they were a major power, for God’s sake. She wandered past the Canadian delegation, speaking urgently among themselves until they caught a glimpse of her uniform. Then they became freezingly silent-still no doubt pissed off because their country hadn’t got anything out of letting the U.S. use their landing strip in the first place.
Then she caught a glimpse of Merla Tepp, standing by herself and gazing somberly at something Hilda couldn’t quite see. When she got closer she saw that it was the Doc, placidly silent and still wearing his incongruous, metallic old-lady head shawl, with another like it held in one of its lesser arms-stolid and stunned, brother to the ox, some old words came to Hilda’s mind. If the Doc was at all aware of the ferocious arguments going on all around, he gave no sign.
Tepp held half a sandwich in one hand, and that reminded Hilda that her recently emptied stomach was ready for refilling. “Where’d you get it, Tepp?” she demanded.
Tepp blinked at her, then came back to alertness. “There’s a chow line giving them out, ma’am, but it’s only this kind of thing. You’re entitled to get a decent meal in the deputy director’s aircraft.”
“I don’t want a decent meal. I want one of those. Where’s this chow line?”
“Right outside the general mess. But you’ve got to queue up.”
For a moment Hilda considered requisitioning Tepps’s remaining half sandwich away from her, but decided against it-not out of any particular consideration for Tepp, but because a chow line was as good a place as any to listen in on talk.
The trouble with doing that was that some of the people at the end of the line were talking to each other in Japanese, others in what seemed to be Pakistani. Hilda wished for the presence of that ugly, but gifted, little turkey, Dopey, as a translator, then caught sight of Jimmy Lin and his two minders coming along to join the line. “Here!” she called, waving. “I’ve saved you a place!”
That got them all dirty looks from the Pakistanis just behind her, but they didn’t push it any farther than that. The minders paid no attention, since there was an irritated-sounding discussion going on between them-in Chinese. They weren’t paying much attention to their charge, either, and, after one searching glance, none at all to Hilda Morrisey.
Low-voiced and with one eye on the minders, Hilda asked Lin cordially, “How’s it going?”
Lin looked weary and tired. “How would I know? All I know is I want to go home.”
“You’ll feel better after you get something to eat.”
“Eat this slop? Christ, Morrisey, I used to feed my gardener better than this. We were supposed to have our own meals on a submarine, and sleep there, too, but the damn thing never showed up.”
That was interesting. “What submarine are you talking about?” she asked, keeping her voice idly conversational.
But that was more than the minders were willing to put up with.
One of them broke off their discussion to say something sharp to Lin, who hung his head. “He says I shouldn’t be talking to you, so leave me alone,” he told Hilda; and that was die end of conversation on the chow line.
It was pretty nearly the end of arguing, too. Everything that could profitably be said in Kourou had been said already. The next step depended on what happened at the United Nations, and only God knew when there would be any decisions there. Gossip said the General Assembly was pulling an all-nighter. Most of the people in Kourou were drifting away toward whatever beds they had been able to find. And Hilda, she abruptly realized, was bone-tired.
The deputy director’s airplane was performing a function it had never been designed for. It was meant as luxury transportation for a privileged few, not as a boardinghouse. The overextended galley stewards did their best. They managed to provide a hot meal for everybody, but it was a long way from epicurean. Sleeping on the plane was no pleasure, either. There just weren’t enough blankets to go around. Hilda’s rank earned her one for her very own, though it wasn’t much of a blanket. The thing had started life as a lap robe and covered very little of Hilda herself. Merla Tepp didn’t have that much rank. On the floor beside Hilda’s couch she made do with somebody’s abandoned trench coat thrown over her.
It didn’t keep Tepp awake, though. It didn’t even keep her from snoring.
At first Hilda almost enjoyed the sound, which was associated in her mind with enjoyable nights of male bedmates, but it quickly got stale. Tepp wasn’t male. They hadn’t been making love. The noise was only noise, after all, and it was keeping her awake. She reached over to poke Tepp. The woman muttered something incomprehensible without waking, then turned over on her side. The snoring stopped.
Hilda, however, did not go immediately to sleep. Too much had been happening; her mind was racing with the memories of her first venture into space, and the way her familiar world was being remade, without her consent, by these bizarre creatures from other worlds.
Now that they had actual samples of extraterrestrial machines, and the expertise of the Doc to dissect them, the reverse engineering could start. And what then?
It was one thing to contemplate the possible uses of adding Scarecrow technology to the Bureau’s already formidable capacities. That could be very fine. Capturing and bugging terrorists and dopers and turning them loose to be unwitting spies; new weapons; instant transportation anywhere by means of these portals . . . why, the Bureau would have more power than any organization before in the world’s history. . . .
Except that the damn UN had forced itself into the act, and those same abilities would be given to their enemies.
That thought made her scowl up at the dimly lit ceiling. There had to be some way of keeping a competitive advantage for the Bureau. Well, and for the rest of the United States, too, but the important thing was to keep the NBI several steps ahead of everybody else in the world. Was old man Krieg, the UN American delegate, skillful enough to make that happen? Probably not. Probably the Bureau would have to protect itself, as it always had. . . .
A new sound from Merla Tepp made her turn her head and look down. It wasn’t a snore this time. It was more like a sob. Astonished, she saw that Tepp’s face was damp with tears.
Now, what was that all about? Was Tepp, too, worrying about the future? But then Tepp turned restlessly, still asleep, and the snoring started again.
That was insupportable. Hilda was confident there was no way she could ever get to sleep with that racket going on half a meter from her ears . . .but then she did.
What woke her was the deputy director’s voice snapping through the aircraft’s PA system. “Wake up and get going, everybody! The UN has agreed upon a plan and distribution of the items will start in thirty minutes.”
For an old hand like Hilda thirty minutes was all the time in the world. She was down the wheeled steps of the plane in less than twenty, and she had even managed to browbeat the sleepy stewards into coffee and a couple of sweet rolls. Of course, that meant she was still wearing the slept-in clothes of the day before and she hadn’t even attempted a turn at the aircraft’s inadequate showers, but she was awake and ready. It was still dark in Kourou, though there was a faint early glow on the eastern horizon, and it was not yet unbearably hot.