02. The Shadow Dancers (6 page)

This was suddenly gettin' interestin', although I still wasn't too sure I liked where it was goin'.

"What we propose is this," Markham went on. "Two separate actions both timed to the second. One is a diversionary attack on the wall from outside. That'll draw security's attention and most of the security personnel. At the same time, our team will use a command force from the Labyrinth to enter the station even if it's not operating. With the gate open, we can tap whatever power and forces we need. We'll be in our element. We could hold that place for an incredible length of time, even against direct bomb hits and worse."

"How long?" Sam pressed. "If you need a diversion it means they'll know they've been had even if they can't get to you. How long can you hold it before you'll have to withdraw or risk being blown up?"

"I doubt if they'll blow up the whole complex with an external attack jeopardizing their escape routes, but we figure thirty, maybe forty minutes tops."

"Uh huh. And what about Vogel? He's not going to know there even
is
an attack if he's as isolated as you say, but if he does learn it, he's also going to know that it's the Company because they have the station and he's not going to exit that way. He'll hotfoot it out of there a different way and make for a hidden substation just like Cranston did."

"No, it won't be as easy for Vogel as it was for Cranston, who built one of his houses over a weak point and assembled a substation there. This isn't Oregon, it's Pennsylvania -central Pennsylvania. The nearest weak point he could make for that would be accessible to him would be hundreds of miles away at either a point near Asheville, North Carolina, or even further away up in Newfoundland. Des Moines is too small, and too well covered inside. You're right, though. He'd try and get out overland to one of those points somehow if he knew the station was taken, but he won't know. We egged on and supported an overambitious major-I think his name was Ryland-to move against Vogel, and we studied the drill. If they're attacked and Vogel isn't in the Safe Room, he goes there immediately. If he's in there, he stays there, and gets sent a blinking light alarm. Then he can plug in a phone that connects through a direct wire to security in the basement and get the details and decide on a course of action from almost complete safety."

"Neat," I said. "This Ryland-I guess he didn't make it."

"His people got a pretty fair way, but they eventually were killed or captured. Vogel had the captured ones hung up alive on hooks suspended from the outer wall and left there until they died. He left the bodies to rot as an object lesson. Ryland tried to get away in a helicopter and they shot it down with a surface-to-air missile."

"Nice guy you got there," I said sourly. "No wonder he went bad."

"Uh uh. It
is
a wonder he went bad, and part of the puzzle. It takes an ugly, brutish, but smart man to survive and hold on to power in that kind of society. He was carefully picked because
our
Vogel was so much like
their
Vogel, all the way through, only
our
Vogel was stuck as a low-level administrator. Thing is, he's exactly right for that kind of role in that kind of world and he has everything he ever dreamed of. If he finally was tired of the price in lack of privacy and whatever that the position demanded, he could always have asked to be replaced as stationmaster and retired to a world that still fit him. Now, he's forbidden to ever be a member of the Reich Council or Fuhrer-in spite of his German name and lineage he was born in Pittsburgh, and you have to be a native-born European German to get those kind of posts, or even get into the position where you might get them. He might well become Leader of the Western Reich someday, though, if he plays it right and survives, so he has a lot to lose by crossing us. What could he gain?"

"The only way you can pay that kinda dude is with power. Real big power," I pointed out. "What's he care 'bout bein' no new Hitler when he knows how many worlds there are?"

Markham nodded. "And that means that this whole business is real big, about as big as can be. They're careful, really patient, limiting their experiments, getting it right even if it takes years."

I thought a moment. "If they could hook whole worlds on this shit, you'd have the ultimate power trip."

"You would, but I doubt if that's their intention. We have-what? Four, maybe closing in on five billion people just here alone, right? That's four billion doses a day, every day, forever. The distribution and supply alone would drive
you bananas. Somehow, though, it's an attack against the Company, probably near its heart to go through all this. Think of men like Vogel, all of them, in total control of the technology, the knowledge, and the Labyrinth itself. I don't know what or how, but I feel at in my bones. Something very dangerous is going on here and Vogel's the only key. We think we finally figured one way to nab him."

I looked over at Sam and he looked back at me, and I guess we both thought at the same time,
here it comes at last.

"Vogel is a man of heavy sexual needs, but he's also a total paranoid because he has to be to survive. He has a project, a hobby, that's highly offensive to anybody but something he does anyway. It's called
schwartzenbrood,
or something like that. He acquires, trains, and even breeds black women. He picks them according to rigid criteria, acquires them only from other area
gruppenfuehrers,
and they alone are his personal household staff. They prepare his meals, and test them first, and they make his bed, dress him, even bathe him. He treats them more like pets than people. When he gets new women, he always spends some time with them in the Safe Room."

I got that ugly twinge in the pit of my stomach. "You want to slip me in as one of
them?
And take him in the Safe Room and get him to the Labyrinth through the tunnel?" He didn't say nothin', so I added, "You
got
to be
jokin
'."

"He's arranged to purchase three women from a man he's done business with many times before down in southern Virginia. He trusts this man as much as he trusts anyone, because he's got concrete evidence that the man is both a thief and a traitor, which he is. This man's under constant watch by the secret police; he only lives from day to day at Vogel's whim. We, however, can pull a substitution there thanks to our own agents and resources. Vogel's men then pick them up and take them, and you, to the manor. One of the girls is nearly a dead ringer for you-not identical and probably not related, but so close that it's mostly a matter of switching fingerprint cards. You get in, and he takes you to the Safe Room. We'll be monitoring you all the way thanks to a tracer we can put inside your body that even Vogel's best won't discover."

"He'd never buy it," I told him. "Hell, Bill, I'm kinda fat and without my glasses I couldn't see
you
behind your desk, there. I know I don't talk real good, but I sure as hell can't keep up no
Gone With the Wind
act for maybe days or weeks. If he's as careful as you say he's gonna check anyways. And even if I got that far, how am I gonna take him? He looks like a pretty big guy in that picture there."

"You forget our technology. When we snatched that courier and interrogated him, we had to make him forget that he was ever found out, let alone questioned, and do it so that even somebody else with our technology couldn't discover it. Otherwise, we couldn't have taken even that risk with him. You will be absolutely authentic so that even drugs and hypnoscans will not show you as anything other than what we want you to appear. Only when you are actually in his rooms will everything suddenly come back to you, clearly, completely, and thoroughly. At that point, you'll be able to switch the
persona
on and off as needed or required-but, of course, you wouldn't stand hard interrogation from that point. We've done it before. We also might be able to temporarily increase your vision by certain techniques, at least for a week or two. Not twenty-twenty, but much better than now. We don't dare apply any sort of contact or surgical correction, of course. Somebody there might notice. What do you think?"

"I think it stinks," Sam growled. "How big is Vogel, anyway?"

"About six feet, maybe two hundred thirty pounds."

"You think he takes 'em in there to play house? How does she get a weapon? Brandy's pretty strong and she's okay in the chop-chop stuff, but you can't depend on that in this case."

"We don't intend to. We have capsules that will defy a dentist's examination and X-rays. We'll put one or two in, immunize her against the agents, and all she has to do is kiss him and within two minutes or less he'll be the most cooperative, docile sort of fellow you ever want to meet. The cruder, less certain methods would be strictly backup."

"And I'd have like twenty minutes to lay this guy low, then at most another half hour to get him through the tunnel to you, right? That ain't much of a margin when
anything might go wrong," I noted. "What if he decides to stick one of them little cubes on me? Or has somethin' done to my
brain
before he takes me up there? We got a lot of chances for things to go wrong for good here, and only real short margins for it all if it goes right. Maybe if them Nazis were invadin' here right now, and Sam and me are both candidates for the gas chambers, then this would be worth the risk, but it
ain't.
I'm sorry 'bout this world, but it ain't
my
world and it's gonna be just as shitty with or without me or Vogel. It's my life or at the luckiest the rest of my life as a slave. My ancestors was slaves once, but they sure as hell didn't volunteer."

Sam nodded. "She's right, Bill. The puzzle's a good one, and I'd like to help solve it, but you're asking her to risk everything in a very slim chance of this in the name of saving some company bigwigs from an eventual threat that, if it affects us at all, probably won't until we're old and gray. The last time they were working
our
city in
our
world. I'm sorry for these people, but I just can't believe this kind of James Bond plan has a ghost of a chance."

Markham hardly blinked. "I'm authorized to offer one million dollars cash, taxes paid, no strings, to take the case. All money up front, win or lose."

I got startled and just stared. A million bucks tax free . . .

"What good's the money to me, Bill?" Sam asked him. "Damn it, Brandy's worth more than that. If she's not here to spend it with me it's sure as hell not worth it."

I really loved Sam for that, but Bill really got me in my greedy part. A million bucks, cash, tax paid. 'Course, a million ain't what it used to be, but it's pretty good. I was beginnin' to wonder just how possible this thing was."

"I can't pretend this is risk free," Markham kindly admitted, "but I can cover some of the bases. If she's in there more than five days we'll come in, take her out, and blow the joint and the hell with Vogel. Guaranteed. We can also set what's known as an anxiety threshold on the tracer. We can get her pulse and blood pressure from it. If she's threatened with anything like surgery or this drug, it'll trigger her out of the
persona
and her pulse rate and blood pressure will shoot sky high and then we go in and get her right then and there and bye-bye Vogel. If we're down to ten minutes and holding the station and she doesn't show, we'll blow through that place and force whoever's in that Safe Room to come out one way or the other. I don't say you can't get hurt or killed, Brandy, but we'll do everything to keep it from happening, that I swear-and under no circumstances will we strand you there."

I looked over at Sam. "If it was you and not me, would you seriously give it some thought? Honest, now, Sam!"

He sighed. "If it was me going in, I have to honestly say I'd give it some thought, yes," he admitted, knowin' he couldn't fake that kind of stuff with me. "But a million bucks is not worth losing you, babe."

I looked at Bill. "You wanta leave us alone for a couple of minutes?"

Markham took the hint and left. I think he figured on it right off. I don't even think he was listenin' in someplace.

"I won't let you risk it. Not alone!" Sam said as soon as Bill was out of the room.

"We're good, Sam. We proved that."

"Yeah, we're good. As a
team.
He was painting the best damned picture of this cockeyed plot he could and he still made it sound like a sure march to the guillotine. And even if it worked, the odds are you're gonna get beaten or raped or all of the above. The only thing worse than losing you would be having you come back looking the same but not there inside. This is the kind of guy who trims your fingernails starting at the knuckles when he needs a few laughs, and he's surrounded by hordes of like-minded individuals. We're doing good now."

"Yeah, now," I echoed. "But not if we say no and you know it. We're makin' more now than we ever dreamed we'd have, and we're in hock up to our neck and you're workin' twelve-hour days and I'm a kept woman with nothin' to do on her own and less and less to do with the business. And don't give me no bullshit about my bein' a vital part of the business. It ain't true and you know it. I was happier and felt more like a real, useful person when we was in the damned slums starvin' to death, 'cause it was a real partnership and we was
together,
damn it. You got what you want now, but this is my chance to break
out
without losin' what we already got."

"You really think this thing has a chance? That
you
do?"

"I don't know," I admitted. "I only know that we been lucky for two born losers. Every time one of us sunk, somethin' happened in the nick of time to save us and make things better. You remember what we found out. There's hundreds of us out there, someplace, but none of us are havin' this talk now but you and me. I'm the only Brandy that married you. I'm the only one that didn't wind up some whore or junkie or dead. Just you and me gettin' together at the right time, and hittin' it off, or Little Jimmy showin' up and offerin' us that case, or gettin' stuck in a siding world that just happened to be between one world and another so the Labyrinth opened up and we saw and heard it and got out. What's the word? Implausible. Unbelievable. All of it. Everybody's got all sorts of shit in their lives that changed them for better or worse and they're all implausible, impossible, unbelievable. That's what this whole parallel worlds thing is
about.
I'm the one so far who done everything
right.
The
only
one."