hardly ever were really friendly to Bureau personnel. 'Well, maybe that explains it.'
'Explains what?'
'We searched their car,' he said, 'and found a locator radio. So we checked yours, Brigadier. This was stuck under your right front fender. You were bugged.'
'Oh, shit,' Hilda said. And didn't have to say what that meant: this was no simple mugging, these people had followed her from her apartment and what they were after was Brigadier Hilda Morrisey herself.
She would have none of the medics desire to take her to the emergency room for a checkup, nor of Agent Tepp's to escort her home. She was perfectly capable of driving, and annoyed besides. This damn business would have to be reported. Which meant that people would know that Brigadier Hilda Morrisey was known to frequent makeout bars.
She was aware, as she was leaving the parking lot, that there was suddenly a lot of shouting going on from inside the bar-something on the news screen, odd enough to have distracted the clientele from the pursuits that had brought them there. But it wasn't her business and she had other things on her mind.
She was halfway around the Outer Belt when she remembered two things. The first was that Junior Agent Tepp hadn't finished explaining what she was doing in the place. The second was that she hadn't finished taking the call on her carryphone when the thugs attacked.
'Radio intercept received 2248 hours. Transmission follows.'
And then, as she listened to the message, she learned what the commotion at the bar had been all about. She sat bolt upright behind the wheel. 'Jesus,' she said out loud. 'Now we've got troubles.'
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Pat Adcock was the first to reach the old car, flinging the doors open, but Dannerman came slipping and sliding down the snowy hill after her, half-tugging old Rosaleen Artzybachova. 'You drive,' he ordered, hustling the old lady into the backseat, before trotting around the car to get in beside Pat. 'Do you know how to drive this thing?' he asked as an afterthought, but she already had the motor going and was turning the car around. The car's screen had lighted up as soon as Pat turned the key, displaying some weird kind of creature that Dannerman didn't have time for. He slapped it off. 'Hurry up,' he ordered. 'We have to get to the rendezvous before sundown, and we don't know if they have friends nearby-What?'
Artzybachova was pounding on his shoulder. 'Turn that back on!' she demanded.
Dannerman craned his neck around in honest puzzlement. 'What for? We can watch TV once we're in the VTOL-'
'Do it now! Didn't you see who was speaking?'
Pat resolved the dispute; as soon as she had the car heading downhill she reached forward and snapped the screen on again. 'Oh, hell,' Dannerman said sulkily. 'What's the matter with you? What can be so important that we have to see it this minute?'
But then the picture showed an agitated-looking woman, with a sheet of fax flimsy in her hand. '-was received just minutes ago,' she said. 'We will repeat it now, and then we will go to the White House for comments on this astonishing new development. Stand by, please-'
She disappeared. There was a moment of white-screen silence. Then a picture appeared. It showed a bizarre creature with a pumpkin head and a spindly body and a mouthful of teeth, and Dannerman did not ask again what it was that was so important.
The Scarecrow didn't seem to be speaking; it stood stolid before the camera-whatever kind of camera it used-with its spindly arms crossed over its spindly chest, but there was a voice, and it spoke in English. 'People of Earth, your difficulties are at an end. We have succeeded in establishing communication with you once again. Soon we will provide you with further information as to how you may join the legions of sentients who are proud to call us their Beloved Leaders.
The picture faded. 'Oh, Christ,' said Pat Adcock, almost going off the road. 'It's starting all over again.'
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The Scarecrow message changed many things for Hilda Morrisey. Not just for her. For the whole damn world, of course ... but all that she would have to think about later, when she found time. What it meant for her right now was another all-nighter, still wearing her makeout dress with no time to go home and change, up to her unsatisfied loins in things that had to be attended to this instant, if not before, loaded on wakeup pills, frazzled, harassed, overtaxed. .. and, yes, loving it, because it sure-hell beat doing nothing at all.
Lacking a specified job description, Hilda took a hand wherever she was needed. The entire Bureau headquarters staff had to be found and wakened and called in. The team had to be convened. Situation estimates had to be prepared. Current Bureau missions had to be prioritized. Some would go forward unchanged-the 'clear and present danger' ones like imminent bombings, ongoing hijack plans, missions that involved serious loss of life or major property damage-though probably even some of them would be starved of manpower. Everything else had to go on hold. By 2 A.M. the headquarters was fully staffed and buzzing like a wasp nest, and Hilda had her own most urgent jobs under control. She had time, finally, to stop in at the clinic and get a pill for the head that was still pounding from the assault in the roadhouse parking lot.
That turned out to be a mistake. 'About time you got here,' said the duty doctor. 'We buzzed you hours ago.'
'For what?'
'For your post-trauma checkup, of course,' the doctor said, picking up the phone to call in supporting staff. Then there was nearly three-quarters of an hour gone out of Hilda's life, just when she wanted the time most: X rays, blood tests, peeing into a bottle, having one or more medics stare, in relays, into the pupils of her eyes.
Not to mention the infuriating business of having to count how many fingers were being held up before her.
