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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
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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.
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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
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0Siege%20Of%20Eternity.txt 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.
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