03. The Maze in the Mirror (15 page)

"I think I can guess who the security chief who
carried it out was," I said, horrified.

"Yes. Mukasa Lamdukur. Not then on the Board -he was far too young for that. Not the man who voted to order it, although he certainly would have done so, but the man assigned to actually do it. Even then he was a schemer, consumed with ambition and a lust for power. He had already been gathering data on the old abandoned switch points from the past, and checking them out, then erasing them from the security data banks. He had the highest code-after all, he was born to the position, as it were, and they trust blood over anything else every time. Having found places to hide them, he now needed an army-an organization that could not be traced by conventional Company means. People who hated the Company so much they could never be swayed by it."

"Now you've lost me," I told him. "If your people were between your world and the Company's holdings, and if there was no negotiations, then where did you all come from?"

"We were already here. The Company works as much as possible through locals. You know that. You're a part of a local organization. Not only do locals know the territory but they are inconspicuous and you get your pick of the best talent. We had been recruited from our various nations and jobs before our countries turned the tables; we'd been brought to other worlds, even the Company world, to be trained in the new technology,
the
new economics, and become the Company on our world. We weren't the first by any means, just the last. We were cut off when the breakthrough occurred, and, quite naturally, Lamdukur ordered us arrested, rounded up, and if he'd been true to his orders he would have liquidated us all, since we were all potential threats to Company officialdom. He didn't, though. Instead, we were officially killed-the weakness he exploited most in that huge organization is the belief that whatever the computer tells you is true-and our records erased. We were taken to one of the hideaway worlds, outfitted with new security transponders that can be reprogrammed with almost any code once you have it, and set up as a rebel organization. Oh, he gave a stirring, tearful speech to us, I tell you."

"Uh huh. I bet. Like he did everything to stop it but those bastards on the Board just did it coldly, and he was morally repulsed by it and that he was the only means of eventually revenging yourself on the Company and so forth. I can imagine."

"The speech, yes. The effect on us, I doubt. Some of us couldn't take it. They went mad, or refused to believe that our world wasn't still out there someplace, or they killed themselves. The rest of us-we believed it. We knew the location. Most of us had husbands, wives, children back there, or at least brothers and sisters, parents, relatives, close friends. The loss was deeply personal, but it was more than that. We had no home, no roots, no reality any more. There suddenly was no future for us anywhere, nothing to live for- except revenge. Our hatred and our revenge fueled us, Horowitz, and still does. If I truly believed in a metaphysical Hell of eternal torment I would willingly consign myself there for eternity if I could murder this Company. But I-we-are already in Hell. We have been in Hell for a very long time now. It is always with us. It never goes
away. We took what Lamdukur gave us and took advantage of the security freedoms we had and we set up shop to discover how we could murder the Company. We made a blood pact that we would never waver, and, so far, none of us have."

"Needless to say, you included Mukasa in your murder plans as well, but he was too culturally blind-sided to realize it. He thought you bought the package."

"Yes. The Company has many weaknesses, and its culture is the worst of them when properly understood. But, you see, we rejected tit for tat revenge. For one thing, destroying the Company world meant seizing control of the full Labyrinth, and not even Lamdukur could manage that without being caught. We finally decided we didn't want to destroy them-we wanted them in Hell. All of them. And for as long as possible."

"That's where your drug came in. Infect the Board and then they have to follow your orders because you have the supply. Use the Board to infect the top levels of society. Use them to infect the entire golden race of the Company, and then you have made them into a race of abject, addicted slaves."

"That was the gist of it, yes," Voorhes admitted. "It was quite a clever plan, too. You must grant us that. Particularly when we were able to turn Ioyeo into our willing and fanatical agent. Some of us may seem to be rather romantic figures-present company excepted. It wasn't difficult to engineer an affair, have it turn serious, and then convey our own loss and torment. We took her home and showed her what the Company had done. We showed her countless other examples of the cruelty and horror what you call G.O.D., Inc. had inflicted and continued to inflict; how many billions of lives it had so casually enslaved or snuffed out. His courier became our carrier, and he would become the first victim of his own plot. It was delicious."

I thought about Brandy and her torment with the drug. "Not if you're on the receiving end of things. You nearly destroyed my wife, not to mention quite literally blowing some of my brains out. Fortunately not the ones I used most, but I remember."

Voorhes shrugged. "You must understand that this is not merely revenge, it's a mission. The Company now controls or exploits thousands of worlds. There are hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions left to go. One by one they will be corrupted and made colonial possessions or they will be destroyed. How many lives is that, Horowitz? It must end, no matter what the cost, for the sake of those who have yet to feel the yoke. If the cost is you, or your family, or five whole worlds, or fifty, it must be done for the sake of the others. We alone can do it."

I didn't exactly go along with that greater good thesis, but I now understood what drove them, and why it wouldn't matter if I voiced my concerns. They were not going to be talked out of that by me or anyone else, not now, and they were by now hardened fanatics, able to rationalize anything at all to attain their ends.

Just like the Company.

"And now you say you're close to your goal," I noted. "A different way."

"That need not concern you. What our plans are
now is not something you want to know if you ever hope to live out a normal life."

"What you are planning may or may not be relevant to the case. I'll have to decide that later. If I have a need to know, then I'll have to know. The important point right now is that you feel you are close to your goal. How close? Weeks? Months? Years?"

Voorhes shrugged. "I'd rather not answer that, but a bit longer than months, certainly. Let's just say that it won't be next month but it might well be next year."

I nodded. "That will do. And how long have you known the rough completion time? That is, about how long ago did you determine you were going to be able to do it and within a specified time frame?"

The rebel frowned. "I don't understand your logic here."

"Bear with me."

He sighed. "All right-just a few weeks ago."

"How many weeks?"

Voorhes shrugged. "I don't know. Three, I guess. The last full Committee meeting at which the report was read to all of us was a bit under three weeks ago, Company time. I fail to see where this is leading."

"And when did your murder occur?"

"Ten days ago. At first we didn't think it was a murder or we would have acted sooner. You'll see why when you hear the details. Once our people established that it
was
murder, we've clamped down our own security and retreated to our secure areas whenever possible. That is one reason why we are here. The switch you came through will automatically operate only for me. Anyone else
coming in, or going out, would have to be switched here manually, as you were. That is why I feel secure here."

I nodded. "But not everybody can afford to stay holed up. That's why you want this thing cleared up, isn't it? You've got the end in sight and you're all in your holes because you don't know if you're going to live to see it otherwise. It's limiting your effectiveness and increasing your paranoia."

Voorhes nodded sadly. "Yes. Indeed, that is why we finally decided we needed to get someone in to clear it up. Right now we don't even trust each other enough to go face to face. We don't even know where half the Board is, and they're keeping it that way, communicating through secure channels only. We can't even test one another. It's very frustrating."

"How many members are on your board, or committee, or whatever you call it?"

"Nine. At least, there
were
nine. We're now left with eight. No real replacements, either. The years have taken their toll. We eight are the last survivors of our world."

"Uh huh. What makes you think your victim wasn't just another casualty, though?"

"The murder site. Pandross-that was his name -was our own security wizard. He rarely ventured out of his lair, and that lair was so well protected that only members of the Committee itself could enter-and even then only with Pandross's personal added security code if he wasn't in the Security Center himself. We wanted no Mukasas in our organization, and no doctored records."

"All right. I'll have to take a good look at his
security system, which I assume you've changed, to make absolutely sure, but for now I'll take your word for it that only one of the eight could enter. There's no such thing as an absolutely secure system-I design them myself. It
is
possible that somebody outside of your Committee broke it, which would make somebody like Pandross, who was usually there if what you say is true, and almost always alone and feeling very safe and secure, the easiest mark of the entire Committee. What was the murder weapon?"

"It appeared that he had a stroke in his office. It can happen to any of us, so at first we merely mourned. But Pandross himself instituted a set of very rigid procedures, particularly when one of us died, and he was subjected to an exacting computerized autopsy and analysis. It clearly showed evidence of a nerve-based paralysis hold, one of the martial arts things, that would have rendered him either unconscious or unable to move. With that, we then discovered a fresh puncture wound in the left leg, such as a syringe might make. There was a tiny bruise that we could not see because it was on a dark patch of skin. Whoever did this had planned things thoroughly. There was nothing in the blood stream, but it might well have been something that broke down, or a natural substance, or even a set of air bubbles. We often forget how fragile we really are."

I nodded. "Well, I'm already inclined to accept your theory that one of you did it, just from what you said. Anyone who got in there would almost certainly be someone he knew and trusted. Anyone who could get that close to him and use that paralytic hold wouldn't be someone who overpowered him-there'd be signs of a struggle and other bruises and the like. He knew his assailant and trusted him or her enough to turn his back on them. The killer also knew him. You take targets of opportunity with the needle method. The killer knew of the dark patch and that it would conceal, buying him or her precious time before the autopsy found it and also probably insuring that the murder scene was cleaned up and precious evidence tossed out with the trash. The killer also knew the security room and its procedures, because obviously the goings-on there would have to be erased from the inevitable monitors, as well as the log in and out both of the security center and the world it occupied."

"We all knew how to operate the security apparatus," Voorhes told me. "We had to. We couldn't depend on him for everything, nor on his continued health and well-being. It was personal pass-coded, though-implant I.D., handprint, retinal^ and a coded password which we individually selected and which only we knew. There's no chance of a duplicate being slipped in. You could not access the security records without all of that, including the password."

"There's always ways, but I tend to agree. You are bound together by years of common struggle, a common heritage, and common goals. Even somebody as good as your boy wouldn't safeguard against the eight of you. If he couldn't trust you, then all was lost anyway. I assume you checked on where all eight of you were during that period?"

"Naturally. All of us have ironclad alibis, but, of course, with our command of the system they are as ironclad as tissue."

"Uh huh. Method, opportunity, and motive are the three essentials to solving one like this. We know the method, and that intrigues me. Whoever hit my place had people there with a knowledge of those paralyzing judo type holds."

Voorhes shrugged. "We all do. I doubt if a one of us would claim we could do it effortlessly and confidently, as the killer must have had to do, but any of us could have sufficient surreptitious practice to feel confident enough to do it. None of the Committee was directly involved in your operation, though. It was too likely that all involved would have to be trapped in your world for quite some time and none of us was willing to take that chance."

"Then who was that whispery-voiced character Brandy heard who was obviously in charge? I heard it on my tapes."

Voorhes looked surprised. "Damned if I know. I know of no one on that operation whose voice could be characterized that way. I'd like to hear that recording myself sometime."

"If you let me get back, I'll see that you get a copy. All of you. Not because I want him, although I admit to having foul thoughts in that direction, but because I think it's important that you can't identify him off the bat. If he wasn't at the top he had to be working for somebody who was, and very close to the top himself. Find him and we may find your killer."

I yawned. While it was mid-afternoon here, it was well past midnight for me now. "I'm going to have to get some rest before I can do anything more. The only way I'm going to have real freedom is to indicate to the Company that I'm on to
something. It'll be up to you to provide me with just enough expendable information to keep them feeding me rope, so we won't have squads out looking for me. Also, I'm going to need someplace secure as an office area. You provide the place, I'll make it secure. I think this is going to be, overall, a very interesting case ..."