I hefted it for a moment, then put it back on the bench. I didn’t like the feel of the thing. “And you don’t know what it’s for?”
Rosaleen looked surprised. “Oh, did I not tell you? They are the power source for their Scarecrow machines.”
“Like batteries?”
She sighed. “I thought that at first, but Meow-Mrrranthoghrow-says they are not. Or if they are, they are batteries of a kind which never needs to be recharged. Then I thought they might be receivers for some sort of broadcast power, but that means there would have to be some sort of transmitter somewhere. Mrrranthoghrow says-if I understand him-there is not.”
“Then what?”
She shook her head moodily. “That is what I have been asking the quantum people at the Observatory. You see, there is this thing called Vacuum energy,’ about which I know little more than the name. When I ask Kit Papathanassiou he tells me that, yes, it is all about us, everywhere, all the time. Virtual particles spring into being and disappear, vast quantities of them. We cannot detect them, but quantum theory says they are there. They are gone almost as soon as they occur-usually-but some scientists think they do not always disappear. They even think that it is such a Vacuum fluctuation’ that caused the Big Bang long ago, and thus created our whole universe.”
“I never heard of any of that,” I admitted.
“No. I had heard not much more. But when I ask Papathanassiou he says certainly this vacuum energy exists, the theory is quite complete in this respect, but it cannot be tapped for any useful purpose. He is very positive about that. Yet these little things do tap into something, and I wish I knew what that was.”
Thoughtfully she replaced the cover over the objects, then looked up. “Ah, here come our Docs.”
So we got started late, but we made up for lost time: questions pouring out of the techs, Pirraghiz struggling valiantly to make sense of the answers from Mrrranthoghrow and Wrahrrgherfoozh, me translating both ways. I didn’t have much time to think about Rosaleen’s worries.
But they did stick in my mind, and there was something else that was bothering me, too. When we had finished the session and I saw Hilda’s great white box rolling toward us to take me to my next date, I asked Rosaleen about it. “Isn’t that sort of, well, low priority?”
“My interest in how the Scarecrows get their power? But it is of great potential, Dan.”
I waved a hand at her. “In the future, sure. But right now the Scarecrows are maybe going to kill us all, and shouldn’t we be concentrating on doing something about that? I don’t just mean you, Rosaleen. It’s everybody. They don’t seem to be worried.”
She looked a touch offended, but then she put her hand on my arm and smiled. “You are right, Dan. Have you ever read the story by Mr. Edgar Allan Poe called ‘The Masque of the Red Death’? It is about the time of one of the great old plagues. All over the city people are dying, but in this one place there is a ball and the people there are dancing and drinking and pretending nothing is amiss-although it is only a matter of time before the plague will come to them and they, too, will die. It is denial, Dan. What you cannot face, you deny. Perhaps it is better to do that than simply to dissipate your energies in useless worrying.”
“Well,” I said obstinately, “I do worry.”
And Hilda, rolling up just in time to catch the end of the conversation, said irritably, “You sure as hell do, Danno, and you make me nervous. How about if you quit worrying and get on with your job?”
Well, she was right, too. But that didn’t stop me from worrying. The human race was experiencing some sort of reprieve, sure, but I didn’t think it could last.
And, of course, it didn’t.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Actually, it was that same night that things began to go sour.
When I got through with the 1730-1930 debriefing Hilda was waiting for me as usual, but she didn’t hustle me off at once. “Listen, Danno,” she said, sounding either embarrassed or annoyed, I couldn’t tell which. “Do you think you can take yourself to dinner without me?”
“Well, sure,” I said, startled. “Does that mean you trust me to go off on my own?”
“It means I’m a little tired tonight, Danno,” she said, sounding irritable. “No argument, just go do it. And listen, I might be going to bed early tonight, so I’ll see you in the morning.”
I guess I was in my prisoner state of mind again, and any break in the routine made me uneasy. But when I got to their apartment Pat and Dan M. were unsurprised. “Actually,” Dan M. said, “she called me a while ago, asked me to escort you to the rest of your dates if she wasn’t up to it.”
“She’s about ready for dialysis again,” Pat told me.
It was the first I’d heard of dialysis; Hilda had never said a word. “So she’s sick?” I asked, trying to imagine Hilda Morrisey allowing herself to be sick.
Pat looked reproving. “She’s always sick, Dan. That Tepp woman did a good job on her. Do you have any idea what she has to go through every night?”
I didn’t, so Pat explained it to me while we were waiting for our dinners to arrive. It pretty nearly spoiled my appetite.
I knew that this religious fanatic named Tepp had killed a Doc and shot Hilda before she offed herself as well. I didn’t know quite how shot up Hilda actually was. There wasn’t much left of some of her organs-thus the dialysis every couple of weeks-and even less of her whole autonomous metabolism. Every night, Dan said, when she rolled herself into her private little clinic, the medics extracted what was left of her body from the life-support box-as gently as they could, but never without pain. Then they did all the undignified things that had to be done for a body that had lost the skills of doing them for itself. Check the Foley catheter, empty the urine bags. Roll her over for the daily high co-Ionic. Patiently massage every last muscle and tendon, kneading hard to keep them from wasting
