inquiry by a few large powers to the exclusion of the smaller nations, whose right to the fruits of any technology arising from interplanetary activities is clearly delineated in General Assembly Resolutions 2357, 3102 and 3103, and on this subject I have a right to be heard.'
The President: 'The delegate from the Estonian Republic has indeed a right to be heard. However, her time has expired, and if we don't get on with this hearing, we will be here all day.'
– Proceedings of the General Assembly
He looked hangdog. 'There's been so much to do,' he complained. 'You didn't even hear about the war stories he was telling-'
'War stories?'
'Stories you wouldn't believe, ma'am. We've got them all recorded if you want to hear them-'
She did want to hear them. She was running late, would have to go directly home to change for Daisy's damn dinner party, but she waited an extra ten minutes while one of the techs produced the chip with the interrogation records on it, and then she got out of there. There would certainly have to be a lot of changes at Camp Smolley, she thought as she drove back onto the road.
When she could switch the car to automatic she popped the chip into the car's player…
The man had been right. The stories were hard to believe. They weren't war as Hilda Morrisey knew war. They were stories of annihilation, of whole planets destroyed by dropping asteroids onto them, even of whole solar systems wiped out by making a sun go nova. The people of those planets weren't human, of course. But they were, so Dopey had said, quite intelligent, quite civilized, quite advanced cultures which had simply refused to accept the Scarecrows as their masters.
So there was an actual war going on, and it was universe wide.
She sighed and turned off the player. Not one word of it sounded plausible to her. It was the kind of children's fantasy you came across on the television when you were idly hunting for something worth watching… and immediately moved to the next channel. It couldn't be true. The astronomers had been definite about that. The universe was not going to recollapse in the first place. And if it did, it surely would not bring about the miraculous rebirth of everyone who had ever lived… a category which, for Hilda, included a fair number of people whose deaths she had personally helped to bring about, and certainly did not wish ever to meet again.
But if it were true…
Hilda Morrisey didn't spend much time thinking about her own death, and certainly not about some possible afterlife. If anything, she hoped there wouldn't be one. When Hilda thought about dying at all she thought of it as a sort of grant of executive clemency. Being dead meant you didn't have to face any more consequences of things you had done that someone, sometime, might want to hold you accountable for. She didn't want to think that she could have been quite wrong about that.
The next morning she woke early and with a great desire to get the taste of Daisy Fennell's quiche and ratatouille dinner and the chocolate-raspberry dessert that followed it out of her mouth. Her little apartment had a fully stocked kitchen, so Hilda was able to make herself some real oatmeal and pour herself some honest coffee, not flavored with Mexican chocolate or Florida limes. She had not expected so much domesticity from Daisy (though actually it had been Frank who did the cooking), and she especially had not expected the two teenage girls that Frank had brought to the marriage. Jesus, she thought, and put the dinner, and Frank's partner Richard, out of her mind.
Forintel sitrep NBI Eyes Only
The Spanish police have asked us to investigate possible Stateside activities by members or sympathizers of the Basque nationalist organization, the Euskadi ta Askatasuna. It is thought that such persons, particularly in Southern California, are active in supplying funds and possible weapons to the Basque separatists in the Atlantic seaport towns of northern Spain.
No other new alerts are reported at this time. All current surveillance operations will continue.
The first thing she did in the office was recheck all the arrangements for Dannerman's mission. He was in Kiev, he hadn't yet made contact, it was now up to the locals to get him to Artzybachova's hideaway. The second thing was to report to the deputy director, who scowled ferociously at what she had to say. 'Pickets? Around Camp Smelly? Now how the hell did they know where to go?' And it wasn't a rhetorical question, either: 'Find out,' he ordered. 'And why haven't you convened a team meeting today? Don't give me you didn't have time, you have to make time, Hilda. And your man Dannerman-the other one-is being a real pain in the ass. Deal with him.'
He did not say just how the Dannerman who wasn't in Ukraine was being a pain, but Hilda had a pretty good idea. When she got back to her little office she half expected to find him waiting there. He wasn't but there were five messages from him in her mail, increasingly hostile in tone, demanding she call him back.
She didn't. She was perfectly sure there would be a sixth call, and she would decide how to deal with him then. Meanwhile she had other things on her mind. She dialed the locator service and instructed it to find Junior Agent Merla Tepp and have her report.
Then she gritted her teeth and dropped in on Daisy Fennell to thank her for the perfectly lovely time. Fortunately Daisy was busy. They had at last located the last of the gang that had kidnapped and killed the President's press secretary and she was assembling a team to bring the man in. 'Don't go away,' she ordered Hilda, and finished giving orders on her screen. Then she turned and smiled. 'How did you like Richard? Frank says he was really interested in you. He'll probably call you.'
'That would be nice,' Hilda said dismally. 'Daisy, can't we do better than this Captain Terman who's running Camp Smolley?'
'Oh, Terman,' Daisy said. 'Yes, I suppose you're right. He lost a leg in the field and the director gave him that job himself-knew the family, I think. I guess he thought it didn't matter, because Terman was basically just a caretaker-who needed Camp Smolley? But if he can't hack it- Anyway, what I wanted to say about Richard-'
But Hilda was reprieved when Daisy's screen buzzed at her again. It only took a moment, then she turned and looked blankly at Hilda.
'Funny thing,' she said. 'It's that Spanish business. The police got an anonymous phone tip, and when they checked it out they found a munitions dump-all kinds of stuff. Even mininukes. The funny part is, our assets in the Basque community in California? They think it was the Basques themselves that phoned it in.' She shook her head. 'Listen, Hilda, it's crazy around here today, but how about you and I having lunch one of these days? You know, girl talk. I want to tell you more about dear Richard…'
There wasn't going to be any way of avoiding a lunch and girl talk, but Hilda was firmly determined to avoid dear Richard. No friend of Daisy Fennell's would do, even for an occasional bed partner. But it would be nice to have somebody, Hilda thought…
Back in her office, Cadet Merla Tepp was waiting. She stood up as Hilda came in. 'You called for me, Brigadier. If it's about my application to be your aide-'
Hilda waved that aside. 'What it's about,' she said, 'is the fact that there were born-again pickets at Camp Smolley yesterday. Looks like they came from the kind of groups you were investigating. How did they know?'
Tepp said promptly, 'There was a rumor when I was investigating them that they had a lead into the Bureau.'
'Did they?'
'I don't think so, Brigadier. I think they were just bragging. The woman who claimed to have it was picked up in the raids, and I'm pretty sure she's still serving time-that was for the arsons in the California schoolbook warehouses. I didn't interrogate her myself, but I've seen the transcripts. What the interrogators concluded was that she was lying. There probably wasn't a real body in place here, but there might have been a leak in the electronics.'
'Thanks,' Hilda said. 'You can go.'
The woman tarried. 'Ma'am? About being your aide-'
'Go,' Hilda ordered. 'We'll talk about it later.'
And perhaps they would, she thought; she was certainly going to need more help here. But there were things
