hangover, Dan. And Martin said he was at Kourou, and Jimmy Lin was back in the Chinese space center; in fact I think one time when our Jimmy was listening in the one of him that was in China was getting laid. He said it was just like being there. You could see, hear, taste, smell, feel-it was virtual-reality stuff, only better than anything I've ever seen.'
Then they were all talking at once, waking Dopey. 'You people are very noisy,' he complained, peering out from under his great plume, but no one paid attention to him.
'You mean,' Pat said shakily, 'you could feel and see everything I did? Everything?'
'Well, just when we had the helmet on,' Pat One said consolingly. 'And we could only receive ourselves-Patrice and Patsy and I could tune in on you, Dan-Dan on the other Dan and so on. Dopey had a way of tuning in on everybody-that's why they put the bugs in your heads in the first place. But he never let us do that.'
Pat was shaking her head. 'Thank God I wasn't doing anything very interesting,' she said. 'But now I really do want to get this damn thing out.'
'Even if it kills you?' Dannerman asked.
Dopey yawned a little cat yawn. 'You people concern yourselves over such trivial things,' he complained. 'Why should that procedure kill you? The device no longer serves any useful purpose, since you have destroyed the relay channel on your Starlab. My medically trained bearer can remove it without harm to you.'
Pat sat up, openmouthed. 'You're sure?'
'Of course I am sure. Was it not he who installed the devices in the first place?'
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Dannerman knew what going to hospital was all about, because he'd done it. More than once. You went to hospitals when, for instance, the knee-breakers of the Mad King Ludwigs or the Scuzzhawk enforcers had found out you were a narc, and consequently had beaten the pee out of you. Then, when you got to the hospital, the basic thing you felt was just gratitude that you'd made it there. All you hoped for was that maybe these people could make everything stop hurting.
This time was different. Dannerman had never before gone into a hospital when there was actually nothing wrong with him at all, and when the reason he was there was to let somebody chop holes into parts of his head where neurosurgeons hesitated to cut. Where, if they made one little slip, pow!, your brain was tapioca.
What made it worse-not that Dannerman required that it be made -was that the somebody who was about to stab him in the worse spinal cord wasn't even a human being. It was a two-meter-tall golem, with a lot more arms than seemed reasonable, from some preposterous part of outer space. The damn thing wasn't even looking at Dannerman as it stood impassive in the lurching Bureau van. It wasn't looking at anything. It seemed to be in a standing-up coma. And it smelled terrible.
The party had waited until after dark to make the trip to Walter Reed. Darkness wasn't perfect security. It wouldn't stop any professional snoop from switching on his IR scanner that turned any scene into broad, full-color daylight. But it might save them from being observed by some chance-met news reporter or simple civilian gawker who might just happen to be passing by the freight entrance when their little procession of cars slid through the door to the loading dock, and the door descended behind them.
Walter Reed was meant as a veterans' hospital, but it happened to be really handy to the nation's capital. Presidents and congressmen noticed that right away, and so it became the sort of general all-purpose low-cost medical facility for the nation's top brass. What it didn't have many of anymore was military veterans, because there hadn't been that many wars lately. Now it was mainly the Federal Police Corps which supplied the bodies to fill those ready beds. The Bureau's casualties didn't mingle with shot-up street cops. The Bureau had its own little section, where security was easy to maintain.
Dr. Marsha Evergood was waiting for them on the dock. She glanced at the pair of aliens, the Doc and the Dopey, with a mixture of skepticism and dislike but said nothing as she led them into an elevator. They made a considerable procession, with the aliens, the three bugged humans and Colonel Hilda Morrisey. The Bureau's advance party had done its job. No one else was in sight. Not in the halls behind the freight dock, not in the elevator, which was manually operated by a uniformed Bureau cadet, not in the short stretch of hallway that led them to an operating theater.
It was a real operating theater this time, Dannerman saw. The difference between it and the Bureaus Pit of Pain were that this one had actual surgical machinery, some of the pieces faintly whispering and chuckling to themselves, and the glass wall to the gallery was ordinary glass. There was nobody watching in those seats, either.
Dr. Evergood planted herself at the head of the operating table and peered at the Doc. 'How do you want to do this?' she asked the room in general.
The Doc didn't answer. It simply stood impassively, while Dopey methodically picked up surgical instruments and put them down again in disdain. 'So very primitive.' He sighed. 'Still, we will do the best we can.'
The best we can. That didn't really sound good enough to Danner-man. Involuntary little choking sounds that came from Patrice and Pat showed that they felt the same way.
There were four or five operating-room attendants in the room, meticulously scrubbed and masked. Though all Dannerman could see of them was their eyes, he was pretty sure that what he saw in those eyes was horror, as the weird little being from space touched their sterile racks with his unwashed fingers. What had become of asepsis? Why, for that matter, were Dannerman and Hilda and the two Pats allowed to enter in their inevitably germ-laden clothes, exhaling their germ-laden breaths, maskless, into the pure air of the operating room?
Dr. Evergood and Dopey talked for a moment in low tones. Then Dopey raised his voice. 'Anesthesia?' he said. 'No, of course not, we will have no need for your anesthesia.'
'Hey,' Pat said faintly.
Dopey turned to peer at her. 'Have I alarmed you? But there is no reason to fear, this bearer is quite competent. You will experience little or no pain.' He paused for a moment for some of that silent communion with the Doc. Then, 'He is prepared to commence. Who wishes to be first?'
Dannerman glanced at Pat and Patrice. Both of them were gazing at him. 'Me?' he said.
Dopey took it as an offer. 'Then very well,' he said. 'If you will simply lie on that structure over there, Agent Dannerman? Facedown, if you please. Yes, that is fine. Do you Dr. Adcocks wish to watch? If not, you may wait outside, but I think you will find it interesting-oh, what are you doing to Agent Dannerman now?'
Dannerman felt something being draped over the back of his head as the nurses sprang to action. 'They're masking the area,' Dr. Ever-good said.
'No, no, that is not necessary. One other thing, Agent Dannerman. Do you wish your actual memories restored in place of the simulations we imposed on you? That would take a bit longer, but if you wish-no? Very well. Then we can begin.'
And they did. Or Dannerman supposed that they did, though all he experienced was the Doc's light touch at the base of his skull, then a sharp sting in the same place…
And then Dopey was saying, 'You may get up now, Agent Dannerman. Which of you Dr. Adcocks wishes to be next?' And next to the operating table Dr. Evergood was incredulously holding some coppery thing in the folds of a surgical cloth, and the two Pats were looking astonished and-well, yes, there was no other word for it- looking terrified.
One of the nurses took Dannerman's arm and led him away to the recovery room. Once outside the operating theater he pulled his mask off, gazing at Dannerman in wonder. But all he said was, 'Holy shit.'
The recovery room wasn't actually much of a recovery room, but then it didn't have to be. As far as Dannerman could tell, he didn't really have anything to recover from. What the room was in the normal course of events was an upper-floor solarium for the use of ambulatory patients. On this day the ambulatory patients were out of luck, because the deputy director had preempted the space.
Dannerman was surprised to see that there were two people in it already: the other Dannerman and the Pat
