02. The Shadow Dancers (7 page)

He stared at me. "But those things just happened, one at a time. This is different. This is a clear choice of very high risk and for you alone. The other times, it was both of us."

"Well, you sure as hell can't get in the way
I
can, and probably not any other way, neither. I wouldn't risk my
toenail
for the damned Company and to hell with any threats, real or not, but this is a big score, Sam. Look, say we get outta here and I get hit by a car out front. What you got?"

"Ten grand from Home Beneficial Life Insurance. Okay, but the odds against that are a lot better than the odds here, and you wouldn't
jump
in front of the car."

"Maybe not. Know what I done while you was off in Pittsburgh? Went down and scored some high grade pot and sat around that apartment starin' at the walls and keepin' high as a kite and eatin' a ton of chocolate candy and I was
still
depressed. Now gimme that million and we hire on 'nuff people to take the caseload and we get us a big, fancy house way up the Main Line with lots of room 'n trees 'n luxury, and we get some kids and we enjoy life a little. Maybe I even set up my own business."

He looked at me hard. "Things really that bad for you? I knew you had some problems, but I never had any idea it was this bad. I guess I just wasn't looking at the flip side. Damn it, I'll quit the business. We'll move somewhere with whatever we've got and start a security business or something far away from here and G.O.D., Inc. I mean that."

"I know you do. Hey-you think I
like
this shit? I mean, gettin' killed, that's always a risk when you're after a real bad dude, but what you said, 'bout bein' beat or raped or have my brain scrambled-that's
scary.
But if I can do it, if I can really do it, really pull it off, then I ain't never gonna doubt myself again." I stopped a moment. "Besides, anytime before they put me under I have real doubts, really think that there's no way this can be pulled off, I'll pull out. And I want you there to make sure they listen. Hear?"

He sighed. "Okay. It's not that I don't trust and have full confidence in you, babe-it's just that I don't trust or have
any
confidence in
them.
And I'll be there-all the way through, just to make sure they hold up all the ends of their bargain, and Bill's gonna be there as well. He's gonna pay if it goes wrong because of
his
end."

Sam went out and found Markham and brought him back in.

"We made a decision, and it's firm," I told him. "Five million, same terms."

I was afraid Bill was gonna choke. "You
have
to be kidding!" he managed.

"It's chicken feed to the company if this is really that important, and if it ain't, then I ain't gonna do it."

I never saw a white guy turn red before, but he finally got hold of himself. "All right. By shifting some here and some there I can come up with it. Five million. But not as before. Two and a half now and free and clear, come what may. The other half only when a live Vogel is turned over to my security agents."

"Done," I told him. "And both Sam and you are along on the scene from the word go. That's the other part."

He looked puzzled. "I figured Sam would want in on the action, but why me?"

Sam looked up at him and gave a really evil grin. "So if your people act with the incompetence and unreliability that they've shown in the past and because of it anything happens to Brandy, I won't have to go far to wring your fucking neck."

3.

Heaven Is for Thieves

I remembered to stop the mail and papers and get the bills paid up before we had to leave. We had three days if we needed them, since all of this plan was based on the time them girls was to go from that bastard in Virginia-that other Virginia-up to Pennsylvania. Sam managed to tie up two cases, one of which was gonna send up that little accountant for a long stretch, and pass the others off to other agencies he trusted. Considerin' this was two and a half million bucks no matter what, he didn't mind much if he pissed off a couple of clients.

The morning of the third day we met Bill and went down to the airport and caught a flight west. First class, too, first time I ever rode that, and it was real nice. The seats are real wide, the drinks are free, and the service is great, but the food's just the same-they only make it look a little fancier.

At San Francisco, we changed to a private Learjet for the ride up to Oregon, which was even fancier and more luxurious, but we wasn't on it long enough to really enjoy it. Then, at Bend, the final switch to a standard four-seat helicopter for the ride up to McInerney, the little town in the middle of nowheres high up in the mountains that was the main station at least for
our
North America.

Considerin' how crazy this all was, and how, odds were, I was takin' my last ride, I really just relaxed and enjoyed things and didn't think too much 'bout the end of all this. Not that I was puttin' it outta my mind, it just wasn't nothin' to think about. I done all that when I made the decision to take the case.

I mean, in a way, it weren't no different than dressin' up like some whore and goin' undercover in the bad dude's hangouts, and I done that more than once. Either way, they catch on or somethin' don't go right and you're just as dead whether it's some Nazi nut on some crazy other world or some small-time hood in Philadelphia or Camden. It was true that I had more to lose this time, but I also had more to gain. Sniffin' out some missin' girl to see if she was on some pimp's string or findin' some runaway daddy who was hidin' out in the worst places, the kind the cops don't go in, for twenty to fifty bucks was crazier than doin' this for millions. No risk, no gain. I just made sure high risk was high gain, that's all.

Sam was a lot more worried, mostly 'cause in this case he had no control. He was strictly backup, but he was still important to me and both he and I knew it. If it did go bad, and I could get that word out, it was his job to pull me outa there no matter what.

McInerney was still the little town on the little road along a pass where the railroad came through with the one lousy diner and the one small motel and the Company's station just outside, lookin' like a cross between a railroad yard, which it was, and lots of warehouses, which it also was. 'Cept, of course, one of them warehouses was the station and not for trains.

And that's what the place looked like, even inside. One big, empty warehouse with a concrete floor and lots of dirt and stains and lots of see-through walkways and stairs of steel criss-crossin' overhead. Bill had decided not to waste no time once we got in; he wanted to get us where we-or me, anyways-could start work. That took a lot of high-tech prep, and the best and most secret place to do it was at the Company headquarters-the home world. Few folks who worked for the Company or even rode the Labyrinth all the time ever went there; it was strictly controlled and mostly off limits. I got to admit I was always curious about what the place looked like and what its people were like, but I never expected to find out. Bill had been there twice before, so he at least knew his way around a bit, but this time he wasn't bein' ordered there by the bosses but by us. He didn't really seem to mind, which helped the nerves a little, I guess. 'Course, he didn't have to get his mind fucked and go undercover in that slime pit.

Bill was a nice guy, but you always got the idea that if he could get somethin' done a little quicker by killin' you it just wouldn't enter his head to do nothin' else but shoot you right then and there.

It's always kinda impressive to watch the Labyrinth come on, partly 'cause you still can't figure out what it's doin' or how and it's kinda pretty. You stand over in the safe zone of this big warehouse floor and some folks up in a control room high and to one side throw the switches and it starts with a rumblin' under your feet that sorta shakes the whole building, like a vibrator. Then this line is drawn, straight up and down, just a little above the floor, in a kind of blue-white light. It just starts from nowhere, then draws itself to maybe fifteen or twenty feet high. When they're happy with it, they throw more switches and more lines start kinda branchin' off from the other line. Like half the line just falls away and then you have an L, then another from it to make a squared-off U and finally a top, so you got this big square of light.

Then the whole square slips off and you got two sides, then it splits again, and again, till you got a cube of light just sittin' there. Then it really starts goin' fast, foldin' and twistin' in and out of itself until you got a whole mess of cubes connected together. All of it looks like just lights; there ain't nothin' to be seen, but it's kinda neat to look at.

Then you walk right into the mess, even as it twists and turns, goin' to the middle of the thing, until everybody's in the same cube.

From inside, it looks different. You're in this cube of light, all right, but it seems kinda hard and solid somehow. You can see a cube or two ahead or behind, but you can't hear nothin' at all. It's like all the sounds just go away.

When we first fell into this thing by accident a coupla years ago, we only went forward or back, but you can go other ways, too. If you look at the top of the cube, then keep lookin' at it as you walk, the cube kinda, well,
rotates,
if you can imagine it, and you walk through the top; same with the bottom or sides. Wherever you look when you start walkin', that's where you go.

Startin' almost with the next cube, though, not all them
cube faces are blank. You get, well,
flashes
of places, or things. Sunsets, green hills, you name it. They ain't exactly real when you look at 'em, more like reflections in a mirror, but you know they
are
real and that if you go to that cube you'll come out there. Some-a lot-are dark. Sometimes where you're lookin' is the inside of a hill, or maybe up in the air with nothin' below, dependin' on what happened to the spot you're standin' on. That's really the hard part- you don't move all that much for all the walkin' you do through the thing. You can come out just where you went in, but a hundred or a thousand worlds away.

And you can come out some other place, but not without goin' through a switchin' cube. You can always tell a switchin' cube. All the faces but one are dark, and that one has somebody in a room, just a room, sittin' in a chair, lookin' at a whole mess of switches, dials, and screens. If they talk, you can hear 'em, and if you talk, you can be heard, 'cept you sound more'n a little dead and flat.

Lots of them switchers ain't human, neither. At least, they ain't
our
kind of human. First one we got to was a guy with hair all over his face and a real animallike look; sorta the Wolfman in some fancy uniform. Bill says most of the switchers are from the Type One worlds 'cause many of 'em got better hearin' and can see more stuif than we can and for some reason that's important. They don't speak English, neither, or any other language we know, but thanks to some little gizmo when we talk it's translated to their language and when they talk it's translated to ours.

Keeps things simpler. When 1 think of the number of languages they talk just on our world, then you got to figure how many there must be goin' through here.

"Amitash fridlap!"
said the hairy guy. It don't translate till it knows both languages to use, of course.

"Headquarters, please," Bill responded, just like he understood that crap. "Special Agent Markham, world thirteen twenty-nine two stroke seven, with authorized encoded personnel from the same coordinates."

"English, huh?" the switcher grunted. "Okay, I've got you identified on my screen. You're authorized to the next switch module. Go through."

He turned some funny dial and one of the black faces opened up and we walked back into the quiet cubes with the many mirrors again.

The flashin' pictures on the walls, though, were different now. We sure wouldn't come out in no Oregon no more if we walked through one. The skies looked different, somehow, and the land was flatter, the green stuff a darker green. The trees looked big but all twisted 'round, and their leaves, when they had them, were real dark.

Now, some of them paths was just to different exits, but some of the places now already didn't look much like what I knew back home, even if they was Africa or Siberia. It was kinda wild to look at them and know that on most of 'em there was billions of folks all goin' about whatever normal folks did there, livin' and lovin' and dyin' and havin' babies and all the rest, all thinkin' they was the center of creation.

We went through three more switchin' stations, each one with a man or woman or something like that at the controls, but only one was what we'd call normal, and that's only from what I could see. She was kinda plain but with bright orange spiked hair that matched her eyes, so you can see what I mean.

This time, though, she was more of a boss lady than just a worker. "You are authorized onto the headquarters siding. When you get there, follow all instructions. No exits other than headquarters entry will be permitted from this point."

"I understand," Bill told her, and we went on. The Labyrinth took on a real odd look from this point, though; suddenly the walls of the cubes didn't just look like mirrors reflectin' strange places, they
was
mirrors, and they reflected back just us, then us again from the other sides, and so on, so there was thousands of smaller and smaller "us's" just goin' back until we got so small we disappeared, and that was on all the walls 'cept only the one ahead, which was black. Suddenly, though, we stepped out and into a really big cube that was
all
mirrors-even the way we came in was a mirror.

"This place gives me the creeps," Sam muttered, and sounded normal.

"It's designed to unnerve people," Bill replied. "It gets
more unnerving as you go along. This isn't the Labyrinth anymore-it's a special security entry room. We're here."