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her, with nothing to do, but the only clues the prisoners had to measure how much of it was passing were their own internal ones-the number of times they (unenthusiastically) ate some of the scraps the Dopey had given them, or slept (uncomfortably stretched on the bare cell floor), or, when the remorseless demands of their metabolisms made it file:///F|/rah/Frederik%20Pohl/Pohl,%20Freder...n%201%20-%20The%20Other%20End% 20Of%20Time.txt (47 of 122) [1/15/03 6:25:15 PM] file:///F|/rah/Frederik%20Pohl/Pohl,%20Frederik%20-%20Eschaton%201%20-%20The%2 0Other%20End%20Of%20Time.txt necessary, did their best to come somewhere near the impossible wish to urinate and move their bowels in private. It was not a kind of existence Pat Adcock had ever expected for herself. Not Patrice Dannerman Ely Metcalf Adcock, who had never in her life gone hungry, except in the occasional struggle to get rid of a few extra pounds, who had, from tiniest childhood, always lived a life of privileged security-well, reasonable security, if you didn't count the natural hazards everyone faced from street violence or random terrorist acts. Pat was accustomed to being a person of position. She was entitled to give orders to nearly two hundred people, as the operating head of a reasonably prestigious scientific enterprise. She was also used to all the perquisites that went with being more or less rich. What Pat Adcock was used to was being an organism efficiently adapted to the ecological niche she occupied. She had all the skills necessary for that life; knew how to juggle budgets even in runaway inflation; how to discourage a date who wanted more intimacy than she cared to give-and how to motivate one who didn't; how to find a clean and comfortable ladies' room at need, wherever she was; how much to tip a headwaiter and when it was best just to give him a smile; how to- Well, how to live, in the particular world she was designed to live in. But not in this new world, which seemed to call for skills she didn't have and didn't know how to acquire. So nothing in Pat's previous life had prepared her for the present confinement and privation, not to mention the humiliating aspects of their captivity. Naked, weaponless, surrounded by the mirrored walls- wherever she looked six Pats, or sixty times six Pats, looked back at her, dwindling as the reflections became more distant. They were penned like abandoned dogs in an animal shelter, waiting to be adopted-or to be put to death. Nor did they have any more control than a stray dog over their future. They could tell time only by events. Only in their case the events weren't inspections by possible new owners, they were occasions like the time when they got the food from Starlab, and the time when they were at last given back their clothes, and the frightening time when they killed the Dopey. No circumstances were ever so bad that a little human effort couldn't make them worse. As their tempers grew short they became quarrelsome. Pat snapped at Martin Delasquez for snoring, Dannerman and Rosie Artzybachova withdrew Page 62 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html from the others, each busy at some not discussed thoughts of their own, while Martin and Jimmy Lin argued fiercely over whether the lack of blankets to sleep on was worse than the lacks in their limited larder, and whether mints, apples and corn chips represented a diet they could survive on. For Pat, who was trying to force herself to down one more meal of that sort of trash, it was the last straw. "Oh, shut up, you two, for God's sake. Dan, what's the matter with everybody?" It was a rhetorical question, but she could see him making the effort to give her an answer. "It's prisoner neurosis," he said. "You see a lot of it in jails; that's why you have so many murders in prisons. Actually, it's the policeman's best friend, because when people are hiding out from the cops, after a while they just can't stand each other. That's when they do something foolish and get caught." Jimmy was listening with a half smile. "You know all about that, don't you, Dannerman?" he said. Dan gave him an opaque look. "It's common knowledge. Psych 101, or don't they teach that in Chinese colleges?" Lin met him stare for stare, then shrugged. "Actually, I got my bachelor's at the University of Hawaii," he said, and dropped the subject. Pat frowned, chopping a bruised part out of the apple she had just picked up; there was something going on between the two of them, but she couldn't guess what. Jimmy was being his usual irritating self, of course, but Dannerman-well, what was Dannerman up to, exactly? He prowled their cell for hours at a time, then sat silently, seeming to be trying to work something out, though she couldn't imagine what. Rosaleen was talking to her. "Do you notice anything about the apples?" Pat looked at the fruit, puzzled. "Well, I think that's the second or third I've had with a bruise in the same spot." "Really," Rosaleen said thoughtfully. "That I hadn't noticed. What I was talking about was how many are there. I never packed that many." "And actually I only had one package of corn chips," Pat said. "I don't understand. Are they raiding a supermarket somewhere?" "If they are, they could give us a little more variety," Martin said sourly. Dannerman speculated, "Maybe they figure that's all we need, since that was all they found on us." "Or maybe they have some way of multiplying the food- you know, loaves and fishes," Rosaleen said. "But they could find something better to multiply. There's stored food in Star-lab. If Dopey-" She hesitated before she said it, but they did need a name for the creature. "If Dopey can bring the file:///F|/rah/Frederik%20Pohl/Pohl,%20Freder...n%201%20-%20The%20Other%20End% 20Of%20Time.txt (48 of 122) [1/15/03 6:25:15 PM] file:///F|/rah/Frederik%20Pohl/Pohl,%20Frederik%20-%20Eschaton%201%20-%20The%2 0Other%20End%20Of%20Time.txt potable water still from the orbiter he can bring us some of the food, too." "Or," Jimmy Lin said, "he could bring us a bed, maybe one of those four-posters with curtains that come down? So we could get on with that breeding he was talking about?" Pat gave him a freezing look. It was nice that Jimmy seemed to be coming out of his funk, but she didn't want him starting anything that could not be properly finished. As a matter of fact, the subject had been on her mind from time to time. This enforced intimacy was stimulating glands that she didn't really want stimulated just then. She thought almost wistfully of ex-husband Ferdie Adcock-not of that son of a bitch of another ex-husband, Jerry Metcalf, who [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |