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wakeup pills," Hilda told him, "but I want you to get a night's sleep tonight.
This is Cadet Tepp."
He shook hands, then said, "There's something I'd like you to look at before
we go in to see
Dopey. Him? He's fine. I let him sleep for a while, and now he's busy telling
the debriefers about this universal war that's going on. Wait, I'll show you."
As they entered the workshop room he snapped on a screen, and there was Dopey,
speaking in English again. Hilda paused to listen for a moment: "Yes, the
Horch managed to penetrate our channel for that broadcast. Fortunately I was
able to jam most of their message. What else was in the message?
Nothing of importance. Only more of their vile libels against the Beloved
Leaders. No, the Horch didn't come to Starlab in person; that is a foolish
question. If they had, I wouldn't be alive to talk to you. They are utterly
ruthless-"
Ruthless, Hilda thought. This from the creature who had cheerfully told them
how his own people wiped out whole planets! She noticed a faint smile on
Colonel Makalanos's face, and saw that he was looking at Tepp. The woman's
expression was pure horror as she stared at Dopey.
Makalanos cleared his throat. "Over here, Brigadier," he said, pointing at a
workbench. "You remember the recording device they were disassembling? Well,
there was a problem."
There certainly was. The device was in a sealed cubicle now, glass-faced, with
attached sleeves so that the workers could work on it from outside. "Dry pure
nitrogen," Maklanos remarked. "Seems it was taking up moisture from the air-"
And that hadn't helped it a bit. Two of the dissected parts were on the table
next to it, and they looked, well, moldy. Where mold had been scraped off so
that the original material was visible the parts that had once looked like
cardboard were now gelatinous and splotchy.
Whatever the gadget had done, it was clear that it would never do it again.
"I've ordered a hold on opening the others," Makalanos reported. "The bio team
has taken samples and they're working on them in their own lab; I haven't had
Dr. ben Jayya's report yet. I was about to talk to Dopey about it, but perhaps
you'd like to question him yourself?"
She would. She did. The creature gave her a lofty look. "But surely you
understand that your primitive technology can't hope to deal with truly
advanced devices."
"Can you deal with them for us?"
"No, of course not, not me personally." Dopey looked surprised at the
question. "That is what bearers are for."
"Are you saying that one of your Docs could have taken the recorder apart
without damaging it?
Could he tell us how? He can't talk-"
"Yes, he can; and no, of course he does not talk. That is not necessary. He
can draw schematics if that is necessary-that is, provided he hasn't been so
starved on the inadequate diet you give us that his faculties have been
impaired."
"I don't want to hear any more about your diet. We're doing the best we can,"
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Hilda said grimly.
"But it is simply not good enough, Brigadier Morrisey. If you will go to
Starlab-"
"I don't want to hear about that, either. I'm asking you about these gadgets."
Dopey's fan turned a sulky pale yellow. "And I am telling you that they are
beyond your
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file:///F|/rah/Frederik%20Pohl/Pohl,%20Frederik%20-%20Eschaton%202%20-%20The%2
0Siege%20Of%20Eternity.txt understanding. Why do you treat me this way? I have
befriended your people at great risk to myself! I want you to bring one of my
companions down here-one of the Dr. Adcocks, or even an
Agent Dannerman. They can tell you-"
"You can tell us everything we need to know, Dopey," she said persuasively.
"Now listen to me for a moment."
"I am listening, Brigadier Morrisey. What choice do I have?"
"No," she corrected, "you aren't listening. You're talking. What I want to say
is that we have two sets of programs here. Your program is for us to send a
flight to Starlab to get you more food.
Our program is also to go to Starlab, because we want to learn from your
people's machines. So we have a lot in common, do you see? But something
prevents us from doing that."
"Yes, Brigadier Morrisey, something does: your bickering among yourselves."
Time for Change!
Although our delegate to the United Nations has continued his wise policy of
restraint, the patience of the People's Republic of China is not
inexhaustible. His call for an emergency meeting of the Security Council must
be heeded. This newest provocation of the Americans in reassessing their
inflation indices is the direct cause of the recent large losses in the
Shanghai Stock
Exchange. Their preposterous claim to "custodianship" of the artifacts from
space is without justification, and we do not even mention their high-handed
actions in regard to the child of our brave astronaut, Cdr. J. P. Lin.
-Editorial, New China Journal, Taipei, Taiwan, PRC
"No, that's not it. We'll straighten out the bickering, trust me on that. What
really prevents us is that we don't know what to do when we get there. How do
we take the machines apart to bring them back for study? What's inside them?
We don't want our people cutting into some piece of equipment the wrong way
and ruining it, the way we did with your recorder. We particularly don't want
one of our people touching the wrong thing and getting killed-or accidentally
blowing up the whole Starlab. You don't want that either, do you? That would
be no good for either of us. So what we need, you see, is for us to have
really good, solid, detailed information about the machines before we leave-"
On the way to the room where the Docs were held, Dopey waddling sullenly
ahead, Hilda reflected complacently that the skills of interrogation didn't
change no matter who you were interrogating, eyewitness, felon, bizarre freak
from interstellar space-all the same. Dopey had achieved a small concession
from her: she had undertaken to get one of the Pat Adcocks drafted to keep him
company.
And now she had gained his cooperation in something that really mattered.
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