And, for that matter, dawdling over the search wasn't getting the bills paid. She gritted her teeth and worked doggedly away until hunger reminded her she hadn't had any breakfast.
On her way to an early lunch Dannerman stopped her. He looked amused. 'I think I've got a lawyer for you,' he said. 'He's a shark, all right. He worked for the Carpezzios-they were big druggers; I was working on them before, uh-'
'Before you decided to come and spy on us,' Pat said helpfully.
'Well, yes. The only thing is, he's expensive. First thing he said was that he wanted a fifty-thousand-current- dollar retainer before he'd even talk to you.'
'I haven't got fifty thousand-' Pat began, but Dannerman was shaking his head.
'Wait a minute. When I told him what it was all about he said he'd waive the retainer, only he wanted half of whatever he collected for you.
Pat was scandalized. 'That might be millions!'
'More than that. So we went round and round for a while, and he finally came down to twenty-five percent. You're not going to do any better, Pat.'
'I'm not?' She thought for a moment, then sighed. 'He's really good?' she asked.
'He's really bad. He got the Carpezzios off with two years in a country-club jail, when I figured they'd be away for life. And he's handled big suits against the government before. Anyway, he'll be here this afternoon.'
At the elevator Rosaleen Artzybachova came hurrying out of her office. 'Take me along,' she pleaded. 'I have to get away from that truly exhausting woman for a while.'
In the elevator Rosaleen described her morning with the Bureau brigadier. Hilda Morrisey had all but sucked Rosaleen's brains out to get the data she wanted, which amounted to a complete plan of the Starlab orbiter as it had been abandoned, with every bit of equipment marked and identified, and then the whole thing compared with the sketches the instrument-Doc had been ceaselessly turning out at Camp Smolley. 'I left her transmitting the plans to the Doc back at the biowar plant, so he could mark the positions of all the Beloved Leaders material-oh, sorry. I mean the Scarecrow material, of course; it's just that we called them Beloved Leaders for so long, I got in the habit. But, Pat, do you have any idea how much stuff is there? God knows what it will do to our lives when we get it sorted out. If indeed we ever can do that. It's like-it's like giving some Renaissance genius like Leonardo da Vinci a brand-new pocket screen to play with. Or a fusion bomb. Or like all of current technology, all at once, to see what he could make of it. And we're not Leonardos.'
In the restaurant Pat toyed with her Caesar salad while the old lady devoured a huge platter of fajitas, washing it down with a bottle of Mexican beer, talking the whole time. It had been an active morning for Rosaleen, with Brigadier Morrisey setting an unflagging pace-'She's trying to get it all in today because she's leaving for the Eurospace base at Kourou tomorrow morning. And I don't think she'd had any sleep last night, either.' She chewed in faintly envious silence for a moment. 'Makes me wish I was fifty again.'
But those labors had been productive. From the Doc's sketches they had identified four separate power generators of different types-though without a clue as to how any of them worked-plus the gadget that transported people across galactic distances faster than light-plus several dozen other bits of equipment which did God knew what, and God knew how.
Pat glanced at their Bureau guard, alertly nursing a cup of coffee two tables away, and wondered if she would try to stop Rosaleen's chatter if she knew what the woman was saying in this very public place. But of course there wasn't any real hope of secrecy anymore, anyway. Once the UN mission came back with whatever samples of Scarecrow technology they could carry the whole world would be looking on and it would all be common property. . . .
But not if she and this lawyer could prevent it. 'Come on,' she said, signaling for the check. 'Let's get back to work.'
As soon as she was at her desk she turned on the screen and instituted a search for all the morning's transmissions from Rosaleen Artzybachova's terminal. Most of what she found was gibberish-the damn woman had encoded all the traffic to Camp Smolley-but among the remaining messages there were the twenty or thirty of the Doc's admirably precise sketches that could be salvaged.
What the sketches might represent, Pat could not say, but they certainly looked potentially valuable. When the lawyer arrived she had a display of them ready for him. He glanced at it, then frowned and said, 'Turn off that machine, please. Let's just talk for a bit.'
His name was T. Lawrence Hecksher, and he didn't look like Pat's idea of a mob mouthpiece. Hecksher didn't look like a hotshot, jury-befuddling lawyer from some video serial, either. What he looked like more than anything else was somebody's grandfather-white, muttonchop whiskers, twinkly sky-blue eyes under feather white eyebrows, apple red cheeks. He would have made a fine department-store Santa Claus, Pat thought, if his talents hadn't been more in demand for helping tax evaders and mob assassins stay out jail.
He acted grandfatherly, too. When he had settled himself across from the desk the first thing he said was, 'If you have recording systems going, my dear, please turn them off.' He had no recorders of his own, either. As Pat began to describe what she hoped he could do for her he made notes. With a pen. On paper.
'Why can't we use the screens?' Pat asked suspiciously.
He waggled his head at her. 'Records we don't have can't be subpoenaed. I don't want to have anything on the record that can be construed as any sort of admission, or anything that represents privileged information we aren't supposed to have. That's why I didn't want to look at your screen. Don't forget, this is not a small matter. In order to protect your interests we will need to prevail against some of the best lawyers in the world. All over the world.'
Pat gave him a dismayed look, but he smiled reassuringly. 'Don't worry. I have dealt with government attorneys for many years. I'll eat them alive. And I'll get all the information we need in disclosures, but I'll do it legally. Now. The first thing I'm going to want from you is documents. ...'
And so, documents he got: documents, documents and more documents. By the time T. Lawrence Hecksher left the office he had the registry numbers of every document that could have any bearing on the case: Uncle Cubby's will and the probate records; the instrument creating the trust for the T. Cuthbert Dannerman Astrophysical Observatory; the records of the building of Starlab and all the disbursements made from Uncle Cubby's estate to pay for it; Pat's own contract of employment, to show that she had authority to institute a suit on the Observatory's behalf-'We'll need all your, ah, sisters to sign the complaint as well, of course.' When Pat suggested that most of this could be obtained with less trouble from Dixler, the lawyer for Uncle Cubby's estate, or from the Observatory's own attorney, he gave her a forgiving smile. 'I don't think we'll trouble them, my dear. I find I work best when I don't involve any other attorneys if I can help it. I'll have the complaints and summonses ready to sign and serve by
