02. The Shadow Dancers (16 page)

"What's two or three years to a guy fifty to seventy who expects to live another hundred to hundred and fifty years? That's why he's takin' the time to experiment and movin' so slow and cautious. But we just blew a lot of that research down the drain. We don't have it, but neither does our big boy, and he ain't gonna get no more from Vogel or his world. They wasn't done-that's clear. How long was it supposed to go on? Another year? Five? Or maybe until they found out what they wanted to know no matter what. Well, they ain't found it yet 'cause they was still doin' research and experiments. We don't know what they're lookin' for and why, but it's pretty damned clear that if they don't find it then there's no plot, no threat, no scheme. They just lost their main man and the technicians who done most of the work, but they still need the work and now the heat's on real hard. Now, he's got two choices. Either open up somewheres else and start from scratch, or step up in a place he's already at. You tell me which one's less risky and less trouble."

Bill thought a moment. "Aldrath, who knows about that second world except us and your immediate staff? Was it in your report to the committee?"

"No. Since we were doing only surveillance activities there, I thought it prudent not to mention it or we might drive the operation totally underground. They do not even know we intercepted the courier. They were told that we discovered it by accident during routine checks of Vogel's station." He paused a moment. "Sometimes you find it best and prudent to tell your superiors only what they need to know. We needed a plan for Vogel, lots of manpower and appropriations, all the rest. We had to take a station, have an attacking force, plus all the monitoring both in that world and within the Labyrinth. The committee had to be told."

"And I'd say that would be used, since it already is set up," Bill added. "To try the same thing that they did with Vogel with a new stationmaster would be too risky for words now that we know how he did it, and it would take a long time. I think you're right. I think they'll step it up where they already are and go with what they have. If it goes bad, then they can always start new."

Somethin' just sorta snapped inside me. Maybe it was my brains, but it all come together. "Look," I told them, "I want this bastard. I want him bad. You know the odds on Sam. They grow longer every day, every week. I tell you, if he goes, there ain't much I got to live for and that's the truth. All I got is a burnin' hatred and will to get this man and nail his hide to Sam's tank."

Bill looked at me and shook his head. "You've done your bit, Brandy. More than done it. You have millions, you're still young and attractive, you still have quite a life ahead no matter what happens to Sam. You're in shock now, and grief, too, and I can't say you're going to ever forget that, but you'll learn to live with it just like others have. Besides, what if Sam comes out of it and you're back in the fire again?"

I didn't really believe that, any of it. I accepted that
much. I had no family, no friends, and all I could look forward to was the best friends money could buy. I wasn't real unhappy in that broke-down office in Camden with the roaches and shit once Sam was there. Half of me was down in that damned tank or in splatter on the Labyrinth floor. I didn't
want
to learn to live with it.

"I want this bastard no matter what the cost, and I think Sam would, too."

Bill sighed, and I could almost see his brain workin'. Half of him was wracked with guilt and embarrassment over blowin' this at the end, and the other half was real tempted. He really wanted me to do it; he just didn't want me on his conscience right next to Sam.

"Look," he said carefully, "this isn't the same thing. We don't have a Vogel to snatch here. We don't even have a station or operation on that world, just some agents, a communications link, and some weak points. They only have access to it because the Pennsylvania weak point is between two heavily traveled worlds and the Labyrinth comes on for brief periods spontaneously there, and we can't build a substation without getting the authority and approval of the committee. There's no spy satellites, no big team with all sorts of connections, nothing. There's no backup."

"If I can be watched and get word out, then that's the only backup I'll need. If I get in too deep, even the damned United States Marines ain't gonna be no help to me."

"It's a string of hookers and the mob, you know," Bill reminded me. "To get close there, you run a real risk of getting hooked on this stuff yourself, even without meaning to. You're over the age they like, but if they find out who you are or suspect you're working for us, they'll do it."

When you been broke as a naked slave in chains, bein' hooked don't seem so damned horrible no more. "I know the risks. But if I nail this bastard, it'll be worth it."

"Yeah, but what if you do and then Sam comes around? So we break 'em, but you're hooked for good or die from a supply cutoff. No, I can't allow it."

"You told me they could break the addiction. Here, probably."

"We have had some success, yes," Aldrath admitted, "but
it is very unpleasant and very ugly and quite often results in irreversible brain damage. Come, let us go over and we'll let you see just what we are facing and what you are truly talking about."

We went to one of the separate buildings, away from the main center. This was a security building, with all sorts of controls on gettin' in and gettin' out, but with Aldrath Prang along there weren't too many doors you couldn't get through.

In some ways it was hard to think of the Center as a hospital, since even though you had patients and some regular kind of rooms none of the treatment rooms or labs looked anything like treatment rooms or labs. We went into this room that looked more like some computer room or library. There was a bunch of screens, chairs, and both microphones and keyboards all around, 'cept them keyboards had about a hundred keys and the symbols on them made Arabic or Chinese look real familiar. Aldrath sat down at one and typed a few things and the screen came on. It looked like one of them medical shows where they blow up the blood or cells to giant size.

"There is the enemy," he told us. It all looked like icky brown slime to me with lots of little things floatin' in it. "I'll blow it up and you can see it face-to-face."

The thing zoomed in, and suddenly there was a real pretty pattern of multicolored see-through shapes. They looked kinda like them Christmas stars with all the points comin' out like sunbursts, but somehow they all fit together. Inside, they seemed to be made up of millions of little strings, like jellied shredded wheat.

"I never seen nothin' like that," I told him.

"Neither had we," he replied. "Separately, they aren't much, and the amount of magnification needed to get them this large and this clear is enormous. They're not quite as big as a common virus, but much more complex. The raw stuff has a different pattern than you see here-really colorless, with fewer spikes and more tightly packed granules. When it invades a host, it makes the entire trip through the bloodstream in a minute or so and finally settles in the brain, but it takes a grand tour first. When it settles in, it changes, and it's never the same twice in any
two individuals. It adapts to what it finds in incredible ways. At the start, it seizes control of vital chemical areas of the brain, turns off the body's defenses but only to it, then reproduces and grows to a certain size that the body can support without harming it, then stops. As a body manager, it's actually quite good and unique to each individual."

"You mean-it thinks?"

"No, we're pretty sure it doesn't, not in any sense we think of it. It can live only in a host, and its sole imperative seems to be survival of itself and its host. It cleans house, and much more efficiently gets rid of invading bacteria, viruses, you name it. Cancerous and precancerous conditions are identified, attacked, and dissolved. Arteries are unblocked. Body chemistry works at maximum efficiency. Hosts are actually healthier and in better condition than any human we find naturally."

"You make it sound almost like somethin' worth havin'."

"We think that in the world where it evolved, it
is
something worth having. The only way you can catch it is by sexual transmission. I could take a vialful of the stuff and inject it directly into you and you couldn't get it, since it would be individually adapted to its host. To reproduce, it actually builds a cluster of virgin and unadapted units encased in a gelatinlike shell with a mind of its own and some real power. It not only goes in with sperm, it can appear in females as well and actually invade upstream, as it were, through the penis of the male. The world where it comes from has no addiction problem, since they live with it naturally the same as we live with a host of beneficial bacteria, and, as I said, it pays its own freight by making a more efficient body. We know that host is a Type One because it's close enough to us that this thing can adapt, recognize, and use our body so well, but it's not a hundred percent."

I nodded. "Bill told us. It can't keep livin' in our bodies, right?"

"Right. First of all, there seems to be something, some element, that it needs that our bodies lack. It forms its reproductive units, but they don't work. They fall apart and are gobbled by the would-be host's immune system. Therefore, it can't reproduce-but it doesn't know that and keeps trying anyway. Second, this element, which defies isolation, is present in the clusters we see, but since no more can be made in our bodies it starts to break down and be expelled or changed, perhaps by the chemicals of our own bodies, into harmless material. We suspect the latter, since that would explain why we can't find it. Within thirty-six hours the thing starts to die, and starts killing the host in the process. Only a fresh infusion of virgin material will restore it. Hence, we have a dangerous and deadly addiction."

He turned back to us. "You see, we can't even take material from another host and inject it, since it changes to be specific only to that host and it's using every bit of it for its own use anyway. The virgin cells won't grow on their own-they need a host-and so we can't make our own supply. Since the carrier in the drug modules appears to be semen, we've made a genetic analysis of the host and we're trying to find the world it comes from. The problem is, we've not yet found an exact match and there are hundreds of thousands of worlds in this genetic category. We'll find it, eventually, but it takes lots of time. I mean, you just can't walk in to every world, walk up to the nearest male, and demand a semen sample for lab analysis."

Yeah, I could see that. Pardon me, sir, but we in our protective suits to keep from catchin' nasty diseases want you to lie down and jerk off into this here tube for us ...

"But Bill said you could cure it."

Aldrath sighed. "Sort of. The trick is to get a host when the thing is in full control, not breaking down. Then the subject is somewhat frozen and suspended, life support slowed, and the entire organism is then attacked at one time throughout the body. It
is
a foreign organism; our scanners can isolate it and attack it with equal strength all through the body. That kills it, and keeps it from killing the host, but it doesn't replace the body chemicals the thing was managing. We then have to keep the host in suspension for many weeks while we stimulate the right areas of the brain and get it used to doing things the old way again. Then the
body
is okay, but the mind is something else. Most of them resist cures to the last moment. When we cure them, they feel terrible physically and they would go back on the stuff in a moment no matter what the price, even months later-which is all we've had to study this. It requires the hypnoscan and psychiatric techniques to remove that craving. The hypnoscan is a wonderful invention, but it cures nothing. It can only add and subtract and distort."

"I see."

"Only slightly. All of our subjects came from projects run by Vogel, outside of his compound, and snatched in convincing ways so neither he nor his people knew we were involved. We've found none without some evidence of brain damage, although we suspect this was the result of experiments or somebody not getting their injection in time. The long-term users also retain their habit patterns. Their inhibitions remain suppressed, their selfishness remains high, their sexual drives become insatiable in an attempt to recapture that ultimate high. No one has yet completed therapy sufficiently to be restored to total normalcy. Come on. I'll show you just what we're up against."

We went down to a lower section of the building that began to look more like a luxury jail than a hospital. I seen good-lookin' young guys and pretty young girls sittin' there in rooms in near constant masturbation. The weird thing was, you could talk to 'em and they'd talk back, but they never stopped. Others seemed to act normal, but had problems talkin' or writin' or rememberin' what they just said, and others with jerky muscle movements like the palsy. The best ones seemed tired, run-down, not ambitious or much interested in doin' things.

"We could wipe out much of their memories-get rid of the longing for the high-but to do that we'd have to rebuild their personalities," Aldrath told us. "Our only real hope is to find the world where this stuff comes from. If we had just one individual from that world and could compare him or her to one of us with it, we could find the critical chemical difference. Then we could synthesize it, stabilize the organism, and find a way to tame this beast. Cure the addiction, block the reproduction, and those who have it would be able to live normal, productive lives in the best of health and get its advantages without its terrible drawbacks."

I nodded and we walked back out into the sunshine and fresh air. I was shaken by what I saw, but also angry. I didn't
want no
thing
livin' inside me, but them people and a lot more was goin' through hell because they didn't have the thing's parents' address. Somebody did, but they didn't want us to know it.

"That's the bottom line, Brandy," Bill told me. "I don't want you in there, like that. I couldn't handle that on my conscience."