02. The Shadow Dancers (9 page)

Yeah, it sure sounded like one of them-what'cha call it?-Utopias, all right, and maybe it was about as close as we get, but I couldn't help think that we'd gotten sucked into all this 'cause some folks with real power, probably
right here on this planet, ran at least one and maybe many rebel groups that tried to sucker and screw up and take over parts of the Corporation's territories and worlds, and we was here at all 'cause there was at least one known traitor and he had some boss higher up. They was askin' me to risk my mind and my neck against them folks, so I figured I had a right to bring that up, and did.

Aldrath shrugged. "Humanity is by nature imperfect, and so perfection is not attainable without also costing humankind the things that are most important to it. Creativity, a measure of freedom, curiosity, drive, willpower. We can remove these things, but then we make not perfect humans but perfect automatons. In spite of the fact that the lowest of the low here have things your richest and most powerful people would envy, we have classes. It is a part of our culture and our heritage. Our very language, our accents, are differentiated by class so that merely by a person's speech we know their station. Our very names are actually descriptives chosen for their poetry, their symmetry, and their meaning. My name is actually-" He gave one of them pretty songs. "The names we give you are rough transliterations of these sounds according to English rules. The corporate chiefs are the highest class and marry only among their own families. The professional, or managerial class does the same. The working, or common class is likewise separated not merely by name and accent but by family and society. As always, this causes strains."

"And I don't suppose there's anyone really anxious to let people move up," Sam commented.

"Not many. I, for example, am from the professional class and would not be anything else. The big limits are all on the corporate class-the people you will be meeting. They have all the real policy-making power, but they can not abrogate that power or that responsibility. That's determined almost from birth. They have very little choice in their lives and much of it is quite boring. I, on the other hand, am what I am because that's what I wanted to be. I could have chosen any profession I liked, and if I made the grade I'd have gotten it. If I didn't, or found I hated it, I could have chosen another. I work as hard as I like to work-and I very much like working-and get tremendous
benefits. I don't have a private estate here or elsewhere, but I can avail myself of the desirable parts of any of them."

"Yeah, that's all well and good for you," I said, "but what about the common folks?"

"Those who greeted you today are so-called common folks. There's no heavy labor; it's mostly a service and maintenance economy here, and most of what we have that's really odious is automated. We automated everything once, but finally cut back so we automated only what people shouldn't ever be required to do. They, too, have a choice of many jobs, no real stress or pressure they don't wish to take upon themselves, and much in the way of benefits and opportunities. For example, how old would you say that trio who met you were?"

"No more than eighteen for the oldest," Sam answered.

The security chief laughed. "The girl is thirty-seven, and the two boys are thirty-one and forty. When you do jobs you enjoy and have conquered all the diseases and defects inherent in our ancestry, it's amazing how long a span you can have. I, for example, am sixty-seven just last month. From your standpoint I'm probably about half that, which is the way I feel and act. The average lifespan here is about two hundred and nine years, and you begin to get gray hairs and a few wrinkles at about ninety, but you really don't start looking old until you're about a hundred and sixty, and I know several two-hundred-year-olds who still swim a few kilometers a day and do mountain climbing for a hobby. That's true no matter what class you're in."

"Yeah, but what if some commoners think they can run things better than you, or maybe want to be scientists instead of lab assistants or something like that? What then?" I asked, gettin' an idea of how even this kind of society could get rebels.

"That's what I meant by outlets and expansion," Aldrath replied. "If there are commoners who believe they have superior talents and abilities and can demonstrate them, there are ways for them to be educated every bit as good as, say, my own son. We just can't have them here, since that would upset the system and the balance. They are welcome to go to a colony where they might find a place, or even found their own. Only the corporate level is closed absolutely, since there can be only one set of people controlling the Labyrinth and they are born, raised, and trained to do that and safeguard both us and the other worlds from one who might use that power for evil. We are not dictators to other worlds and cultures, Madam Horowitz. We are thieves. We steal things we need, and, most of all, ideas, art forms, even stories from unique and different cultures. In exchange, we keep the would-be dictators and oppressors of universes out, and we try as hard as we can to preserve worlds that have not destroyed themselves from doing so. Other than that, we do not tip balances."

"But you're much of organized crime on many worlds, including ours," Sam noted. "That's sure as hell interfering."

"I didn't say we didn't interfere. I said we do not
tip balances.
Those things were there before we came and would be there with or without us. We don't even increase their efficiency, and we leave it in local hands. Think of the alternative. We could easily take over any government, even all of them, and thereby safeguard everything, but we do not. We do not actually even take over the criminal societies, we just use them to help us covertly get what we wish. The vast bulk of the criminals do not know or even suspect us."

"Yeah, but you still got traitors and rebels," I pointed out. "I mean, we only got into this thing 'cause some folks from here got ambitious."

"That's true," he admitted, sippin' his drink. "As hard as we try, there are just some people who'll never understand the system. You see, we're
thieves
as well as explorers and preservers. We get a lot out of this. Our medicine, our power systems, this vehicle-all stolen ideas. To preserve this wilderness, we import raw materials we need and which we buy at a fair price and never in quantities that would impoverish a world. There are some who, nonetheless, see us as inherently superior to everyone else. Our religion teaches that all the gods of all the universes are real, and that together they form a powerful overmind, a Supreme Lord. We were selected by the Supreme Lord to master the Labyrinth and oversee the universes. Some take that a bit too far, and see us as the natural and Supreme Lord's choice as
rulers
of all the universes. They simply never grasp the essence of the system:
thieves never steal everything from the last rich man on Earth.
If we came in and took over, destroyed cultures and replaced them with an autocratic government, they would soon all be like us, only under us and never able to attain freedom again. Without that freedom, there is no creativity. If you make them subjects, they will reflect your own will imperfectly and, as a result, will never produce anything new or unusual or creative. In short, nothing worth stealing."

It was a real crazy way of lookin' at things, but it made a kinda lopsided sense. I turned and tried the wine, which was real sweet and went down
good.
I always had a thing for sweet stuff; it's why I ain't never been able to keep weight off.

"So what's next?" I asked the man. "Why bring us here?"

"We have some time, and we thought we'd make the best use of it," Aldrath told me. "There's no place more secure than here, although nothing is absolutely secure. We are going to Mayar Eldrith's estate, which is both private and isolated. He is a senior vice president of the Corporation and chairman of the Security Committee. His staff were all handpicked and are constantly checked by me and are as secure as we can get. We have all the medical-techinical apparatus needed to prep you for this job, and we'll do that as well as practice the system as best we can. When we're ready, we'll also be ready over in Vogel's pesthole of a world."

The flyin' bus turned and started down, and below we could see a real big house, a bunch of smaller houses that were still bigger'n most of what we had back home, with gardens and woods and stuff. It was the kind of country place you might expect the Queen of England to have, and the kind I always dreamed about. There weren't no funny cubes and circles here; this place had real charm and the outside, at least, looked like real wood, though it was real modern-lookin' and had all kinds of crazy angles.

We was met by a small group of young people all of which looked just as beautiful and just as perfect as the ones in the station. I was already feelin' real self-conscious about my looks, kinda like bein' the only black in an all-white town
someplace out west. They wasn't white folks, but they was all the same and they was sure different than any of us.

The main house was
big-
I think it coulda been the biggest hotel in Philadelphia with room left over, though it was only four or five floors. It just went on and on forever. They didn't take us there, though, but to a smaller place down a hill and in some woods.

The inside was
gorgeous,
anyways-all wood paneling, thick carpeted floors that felt and looked great, real modern-type furniture, soft lighting that seemed to come from everywhere and went on when you came in and went down when you left-all that. The upstairs rooms all looked out on a balcony onto an
enormous
livin' room, kinda like in them luxury hotels.

"We use this place when we want privacy, even from the main house, where there are a lot of comings and goings," Aldrath told us. "You'll find clothing and the basics in the closets and bath upstairs. Your meals will be prepared by my security staff and served below in the dining alcove. If you wish to go outside, please limit yourself to the walks out the back of the house and do not go to any other buildings or speak to anyone not on the staff without my permission. We have very little time and much to do. I know you must be tired now, so Bill and I will leave you for now, but we start bright and early tomorrow morning and the sessions will be long ones."

I had thought Bill would stay here, but it looked not. The whole place was ours. "Now, this is somethin'
else!"
I breathed. "The kinda place I always
dreamed
of havin'!"

Sam was glum as usual. "Yeah, they treat the condemned with all the luxuries. I still got a bad feeling about all this. It's too complicated."

"Five million bucks, Sam! We can have our
own
place like this."

"Yeah-if we don't pay too high a price for it."

His name was Jamispur Samoka. He was another of them beautiful people, fifty-one and lookin' maybe in his twenties, and wearin' a pale pastel blue outfit that seemed to be the same here as lab whites were back home. He wasn't no doctor-they didn't have doctors here like we did-but he was the same kind of thing. His workroom looked like some mad scientist's shit from old horror movies, but they was all designed to do different things to and for people. I was scareder of him than of the mission.

"Much of this equipment was developed because our own people need some modifications before venturing into other worlds," he told me. "Also, it's often not possible to get an exact replacement for someone else when we need to infiltrate a place. This equipment can make a close match seem an exact match. It can't work miracles but it can do wonders. Fortunately, we have had the opportunity to get all the physical and genetic data from the woman you are to replace, and that makes it a lot easier."

That didn't sit well with me. "How much of a change will there be? I know I ain't no beauty queen, but I kinda like me the way I am."
Five million bucks,
I kept tellin' myself.
Just think of that.

"It's important to emphasize that there is nothing we can do here that can't be undone here," he replied. "The trick is doing it in the first place. Whatever we do we have an exact record of doing and so we know the way to reverse it. In your case, we do not need to do anything really major or radical, anyway. The biggest problem here, which we don't face all the time, is that you might be subjected to tests available to someone who knows of and has some access to our technology. In effect, it must be so perfect that even we can't detect what we've done. This fellow Vogel is a paranoid and sadist at best. You must hold up to get close to him, and even though he doesn't know we've made him as a traitor, he's bound to have been even more cautious and paranoid because of his fear of discovery. Let me show you something." He reached down, pushed a button, and pointed.

The place where he pointed flickered, then took on an outline of a woman that quickly faded in and became solid and real three-dimensional. It was a black woman, stark naked, and still as death.

"That is who you have to be," Jamispur told me.

I looked hard at the woman, seein' now that it was just some kinda 3-D photograph. "Don't look much like me," I said. "That hair's long and straight. I never could get mine
straight long enough to do much with it. Complexion's wrong, too, and she got a damn sight better figure than me or what you're gonna get out of me in two weeks."

"You underestimate yourself. No one really sees themselves as others see them. I know you're not all that modest about yourself or you wouldn't have taken this job. Will you disrobe and go stand next to the image, on that small dot in the floor, there?"

I did it-hell, he was gonna see more of me than this-and went over. The woman's picture didn't look so real right up close, kinda faded and with lines like bad tuning on the TV. There was a click, and he said, "Now come back over here and we'll look at what we've got."

I came back over and turned, and saw
two
women standin' there. The other one was me, but the doc was right-it really didn't look right, somehow. I started think-in',
is that the way I
really
look to Sam and the others? And
I started makin' little critical notes to myself. Fact was, I
was
kinda cute, though, and I didn't have much different a figure than she did after all. A little more hip and thigh, that's all. The face, hair, and skin tone, though, just weren't right. I looked taller, but that might have been the bush hair.