I could see that he hadn't been receiving much kindness from them. His breathing was fast and shallow, and he was clearly in pain. I don't think of myself as a person without compassion. Treacherous little freak that he was, Dopey was still the closest thing I had to a friend anywhere within some distance measured in light-years, and I didn't really want to cause him more suffering.
On the other hand, the thought that I might somehow survive all this had revived my desire to learn whatever might be advantageous to the human race. I said, doing my best to sound sympathetic, 'I guess they're forcing you to tell them all kinds of things, Dopey.'
'That is a correct assumption, Agent Dannerman.'
'Including the things that you wouldn't tell us when we were your prisoners?'
'Including everything. Why do you ask?'
'Because,' I said, 'if you've been spilling your guts to the Horch robots already, what's the point in keeping secrets from me anymore?'
He considered that grayly for a moment, then gave his wriggly sort of shrug. 'Very well, Agent Dannerman. What is it you wish to know?'
I said, 'Everything.'
'Everything' turned out to include more information than I could grasp in a single session. Since those sessions occurred only at the convenience of the robots, they didn't come very often, either, and they didn't last long when they did. Worse than that, a lot of what Dopey admitted to having told the Christmas trees did nothing for me. I had no particular interest in the dietary needs of the other species who worked for the Beloved Leaders-Docs, fighters, half a dozen other serving races-and when I asked him what part those other weirdos played in the grand Beloved Leaders scheme, his answers made little sense to me.
But the Christmas trees had also asked him in detail about the way he had come to Earth, and that might be worth knowing. It was radio that had done us in. One of the random scouting ships of the Beloved Leaders had detected some early terrestrial broadcasts, and that was the signal they had been looking for. At once the ship changed course, homing in on the radio signals, and we had become targets.
All that took time. How much time, Dopey couldn't tell me with any precision, but from the nature of those first broadcasts-sports events, political speeches, random news programs, and all in AM sound radio only-I figured out that the scout ship had had to be more than a hundred light-years away at the time of:i detection. Which meant something over a hundred years of travel time for the ship. And sometime along the way, as the ship sniffed its way down the electronic scent trail of humanity, Dopey was dispatched to the ship to begin the task of deciphering what those broadcasts were all about.
'Not just one of me,' Dopey clarified. 'It is what I am f trained for, but the volume of data was too great for a single person to handle. Many broadcasts, from many parts of your planet, and ultimately with vision as well as sound. We eavesdropped on every scrap of voice and picture. Altogether there were seven copies of me, to share the work of deciphering your preposterous number of languages. I do not know what happened to the other six. But I was the one who was tasked to remain on your Starlab orbiter, until you and your party came to investigate.'
That was as far as we got in that session, and I was burning with impatience to learn more. When the next chance came, Dopey was looking frailer and closer to his Eschaton than ever. He didn't really want to go on talking to me, but I wasn't willing to let him stop. He told me how the scouting ship had dropped off the pod that attached itself to Starlab, and how they had filled the old satellite with recording and transmission devices. He described the scout ship itself to me-a vessel much larger than Starlab, with a crew of dozens of beings of several different races. And then he became obstinate. 'This is all foolishness, Agent Dannerman,' he complained. 'What is the use of telling you all this, when there is no chance that you can pass it on to your conspecifics?'
I said staunchly, 'I'm still alive, Dopey. So there is always a chance.'
'But,' he said reasonably, 'you do not know if your planet still exists. We have no way of knowing how long it has been before these copies of us were made.'
I had an answer for that. 'It can't be very long,' I told him. If it was all over on Earth, they wouldn't still be asking me all those questions.'
He looked at me in surprise. 'That is not so. You are forgetting, Agent Dannerman, that the Horch and the Beloved leaders wish to know everything possible about all intelligent species. Even the extinct ones. It will make them easier to rule at the Eschaton.'
CHAPTER TEN
I wasn't willing to believe that. I couldn't afford to. But it stayed in my mind.
I stripped down and used my wretched underwear for a washcloth, while Dopey watched me with lackluster curiosity. While I was wringing out my shorts and draping them on the edge of the table to dry, I said, 'If I only had some clean clothes, I'd almost feel human.'
That wasn't entirely true, but I was trying to cheer Dopey up. It didn't work very well. He didn't respond. He just sat there, perched on the far edge of the table, with his eyes half closed and his great peacock fan the color of mud. He had been taking punishment, all right. There were rips in the periphery of his fan that hadn't been there before, and new stains on the jumper he wore. I tried again, encouragingly. 'We don't have to give up, you know. There's always a chance to escape.'
He didn't answer that, either, just sat there, breathing raggedly. He wasn't asleep. His eyes were more or less open, and he hadn't pulled his fan over his head to shut me out, but he wasn't listening.
I gave up. I spooned some water out of the drinking jug into one of the cups of dehydrated stew, and ate one of the apples while the stew was soaking. I tugged at the lid to the litter box, thinking it might be some kind of weapon if I could get it off. I couldn't.
Then I saw that Dopey had begun to move. He levered himself painfully off the table and waddled slowly over to the water jugs. He drank some, then splashed some over himself.
I took him by his frail little arm and said clearly, 'I intend to escape. I need you to help me make a plan.'
He grunted without actually answering. I squeezed harder on the arm. 'Talk to me!' I demanded.
He wrenched himself free. 'If you make a plan,' he said, 'you are telling the Horch what to expect. Are you an even greater fool than I thought?'
'But-but that was why I asked in English!'
He sighed. 'They listen in, no matter what language we speak. Whether we see them or not, they are observing us at all times.'
I said, 'Hell.' Of course it was only an illusion, but I had believed we had at least that much privacy. I shouldn't have. That was a Bureau trick, too. I'd done it myself: after you've interrogated a couple of suspects for a while, you put them together and listen to what they say to each other.
He was talking again. 'In any case,' he said gloomily, 'there is no hope of escape. We will die here, Agent Dannerman, and the next time I see you we will be at the Eschaton.'
His certainty was bringing out all the stubbornness in me. 'If there's really going to be an Eschaton,' I said.
'But of course there will!'
I shook my head at him. 'Pat didn't think so, and she's an expert in that subject-'
'An Earth-human expert!' he sneered.
'All the same. Pat said it had been conclusively shown that there wasn't enough mass in the universe to make it contract again. It will go on expanding forever and never shrink down again to the Big Crunch. So no Eschaton. She said there was no doubt about that at all.'
Dopey made the gagging rattle in his throat that was his version of a contemptuous laugh. 'Your primitive beliefs! Both the Beloved Leaders and the Horch are far, far wiser than Dr. Pat Adcock. There is no question.'
He turned his back on me and limped over to gaze without much interest at his purple food. 'You don't seem real happy about it,' I offered.
He put a small chunk of the stuff in his mouth, chewing unenthusiastically-and sloppily; crumbs were falling to the floor. Then, with his mouth full, he said, 'You do not understand, Agent Dannerman. I have betrayed the
