03. The Maze in the Mirror (31 page)

"He was. You both certainly impressed him by blowing his plan, which is one point in your favor, and, I suspect, he also wanted to make very certain that you were here and under our complete control during all phases of our current project. Most of us are on this project for noble motives, but Carlos is oriented towards vengeance. The plan fills his need for vengeance against the Company, and I fear he might have thoughts of revenge towards you as well. He is willing to see you, but only on his home grounds, and I'm not at all certain that we can allow that."

"Well, then, make him last," I told Voorhes. "The end. I've had Maria doing some checking on him and his place, and with a little more time and a little luck I may have a little bit of insurance there. Let's cross that bridge when we come to it."

Voorhes thought that over, then replied, "Very well. But I would be very, very disappointed, Mister Horowitz, to go this far only to discover that you were finished off by our own people."

"So would I, Mister Voorhes," I told him sincerely. "So would I."

Stacy Cutler reminded me of the kind of bush woman you'd see in an old Victor Mature versus the Mau Mau movie. Very British in speech and mannerisms, dressed in khaki military style shirt, shorts, and bush ranger hat, with military laced boots. She was the first of the admittedly small number of women at the top of this strange heap,
and she was, interestingly, also the only one other than Voorhes who looked close to her age and made few if any attempts at concealing what time and experience does to all of us.

She met me at a small clump of trees in what looked very much like the African plains; there was a waterhole nearby but I didn't want to get too close to it. As usual in wild places like this, it had more than its share of inhabitants, from tribal-acting monkeys to gazelle, zebra, and the like, and I had no desire either to panic them or, worse, provoke them. I remembered seeing someplace that those monkeys in particular could be worse enemies than a lion.

I also didn't see her coming, although you would have expected to hear the roar of a Land Rover or the chanting of bearers the way she looked. It was often difficult to remember that the sides and personalities here were plus or minus only in relative terms, no different than dealing with organized crime or the roughest parts of a major city or maybe the government. Cutler, like Tarn and Kanda and even Voorhes, seemed both nice enough and harmless enough, and on their own terms probably were-but they were smart cookies as well, worldly wise, deadly, and survivors in a high-tech high-stakes jungle. I felt like some Israeli detective improbably kidnapped and forced to live and work and interact with the PLO while I solved a problem for them. Within the context of their world they seemed reasonable people, but in the greater context they remained what they were and I remained what I was. And that was the problem.

So I stood there, worried about becoming somebody's main course in the next dinner, as
alert as I ever was to any danger signs, and suddenly I hear a woman's voice very near me say, "It is beautiful, is it not?"

I practically jumped out of my skin, whirled, and came face to face with her.

"They make more noise than you do," I noted, feeling suddenly relieved.

"They can all be silent or loud as conditions warrant," Cutler responded. "Unlike humans, who can be loud and obnoxious for no reason at all. Do you know where you are? In rough geographic terms, I mean?"

I shrugged. "It looks like Africa. East Africa, probably."

"Africa, yes, but not east. In almost any of the worlds where humans developed and expanded and triumphed, where we are standing now would be dry, desolate sand in all directions. Near the dead center of the Sahara, in fact, as it once was and as it would still be elsewhere if humans hadn't spoiled it. Oh, there are patches of desert, yes, and the rains are infrequent, but the river and stream network is more than adequate to keep most of it grass and much of it lush. The Mediterranean and Atlantic storms dump the water, which runs inland to the low spots and forms a vast network of rivers and lakes, some quite large. There are still great forests on the Atlas and Antiatlas mountains and other coastal ranges that regulate the flow and control much water and some wind erosion. Humans cut them all down, allowing the ravages of nature to scour the land and grind it up and turn it to desert."

I looked around. It was certainly nicer, if a bit wilder, than pure desert, I had to admit. "Then there are no humans here-except you and perhaps your people."

She sighed. "Very few, all imported, all careful to maintain that they leave minimal footprints. There are many species here across the entire animal and plant kingdom that are unique, and many more that have been made extinct by humans elsewhere. In this world the Great Auk still roams in the Pacific, the dodo still reigns in the North Atlantic regions, and the skies of North America can still be blackened by the passenger pigeon. It is a beautiful world, unspoiled by humans."

"You don't have much use for humans in large numbers, I suppose," I commented. "Me, I'm happy that it worked out both ways-humans in some places, with places like this still surviving as well."

"This is not a zoo, it is a world!" she snapped. "What have humans done where they arose? Killed the wildlife, deforested the land, ruined their own planet, raped and plundered everything until they ultimately had to depend on technology outstripping their voracious killer appetites. For what? Intelligence? There is intelligence here, although it is not human. Some insect societies here are as complex as your own, and on both land and sea many of the higher animals
think.
But none has the self-destructive viciousness of humankind. This world is
alive.
Your world and the others are dying, filthy cesspools, monuments to prolonged mass stupidity and greed, itself exploited ruthlessly by other humans from another world who would push it even further into decay until they took all worth taking, then abandoning
it to slowly strangle in the debris left behind. No, I have no love at all for humans."

"I'm afraid I'm a little prejudiced," I told her. "I'm human, and unless there were humans I wouldn't be here. Call me selfish or self-centered, but that fact, to me, outweighs the other arguments, as sympathetic as I may be to
places like this and plants and animals like these."

"I do not expect you to see things my way. I find your approval is not required and, in fact, I consider your views totally irrelevant."

"They probably are," I agreed, "but since they dragooned me into this against my will and set up the rules, I have to keep following through."

"That is why I am tolerating this."

"I find your attitude here and your attitude initially objecting to the big plan a little inconsistent," I told her. "It would seem that even the big risk of wiping out all humanity everywhere wouldn't bother you too much."

"You sound like the sort of man who would get rid of a defective window in his building by blowing up the building," she shot back. "If there was a way to just wipe out the people and leave the rest alone I believe I could enthusiastically support such a scheme. But what they are doing would be indiscriminate, wiping out this world as much as your world or the Company's world. At the very least it would be a disaster to tens of thousands of worlds on a scale even humans have not previously attempted. The ultimate ecological disaster at best. I find no joy in that possibility."

"Nor do I," I assured her. "Yet you ultimately got talked into approving it."

"You make it sound as if it were some weighty
philosophical debate, Mister Horowitz," she responded coolly. "I thought the percentage of error too high, but as I had no alternative and the percentage was still small, the ultimate worst case unlikely, I saw no other choice but to proceed. Does that disappoint you? Did you believe I was some great moralist on this question?"

"I had kind of hoped that," I admitted, "but, no, I didn't expect it. I'm getting a fairly clear picture of you all now-all except the one fellow who isn't here. Pandross alone remains a very dim and cloudy figure with a real sense of unreality about him. Did you really know what he thought, or did you just take him for granted like everybody else seems to?"

She considered that. "Thought about what?"

It was a fair question. "About
anything,
really, except security systems and gadgets. This plan, past plans, war, peace, love, hate-anything at all."

As it had with the others, the question seemed to really catch her off guard, even bother her. She just stood there for a very long time before finally saying, in a kind of distant tone, "Now that you mention it, no."

"Was he with the group when you were all in training back at the Company? Did you see each other much before the horrible end of your world?"

She shook her head negatively. "Not really. We were all specialists in different fields, you see, training in different areas under different departments. There were quite a number of us, too, you must remember. We nine weren't the only ones there, simply the only ones Mukasa could-or
would-save or shield from execution. We were together with the rest only for the few introductory indoctrination lectures and it was so long ago now I can't even remember much about them. I knew Valintina slightly-such a brilliant, happy girl then-and also Carlos, again very slightly-he was a handsome fellow who believed himself God's gift to women and in those days made a career out of chasing every woman around. But Pandross-no. He would have been up with Mukasa's own in security, and that wasn't an area that the rest of us were allowed near." She paused a moment, then asked, "Why? What are you getting at?"

"A man who all of you worked with for over a decade," I explained, "and wound up trusting with your security, your lives. A man so dedicated and capable in his field and so reliable that you never gave him a second thought-any of you. I've talked to most of you now, and you have very strong impressions of one another. I've been warned about Valintina and Carlos, had almost a psychoanalysis of Voorhes, had philosophical discussions about Tarn and gotten many strong opinions on Kanda and Yugarin and Mancini, and I felt as if I knew you before we ever met. You know each other very well, even each other's idiosyncrasies, likes and dislikes, hopes and fears. You're like a strong family, in a way. You don't all like each other-who among us didn't have someone in the family we couldn't stand?-but you
understand
each other, know each other well. All eight of you. But none of you knew Pandross. Each of you had the same thing in common, and each of you had a common cause, but while eight of you were brothers or cousins or uncles or aunts, Pandross wasn't even a distant cousin four times removed. He was more like the repairman you call when something's broke and you can't fix it yourself. You talk to the plumber, you exchange pleasantries on the weather or sports or politics, but you don't really know him. You don't really know much of anything about him."

"I-I believe I see what you mean," she said, a little wondrously. "Yes, that's exactly right. But he was so good at what he did, and so absolutely reliable each time, there was no reason to think on it further. Do you really think it was more than just his abysmal lack of personality?"

"There's always somebody home inside each head," I told her. "Sometimes it's easier to find that person than with others. Over the course of this investigation I've learned more about all of you than I think you even now would believe, and far
more than I need to know for this-but not one damned thing about the victim. He was reliable, brilliant, didn't like to socialize, hadn't much of a personality, and just did his job and made no other real impression at all. Now you tell me that not only didn't you interact with him other than on business during more than a decade of high activity, none of you even knew him before, even casually."

"That much is true," she admitted, "but I can not see where that gets you. I mean, he was
always
reliable. He never once slipped or betrayed a confidence or an operation. Some were blown, yes, including many of the big ones, but it wasn't because of what he did, and many also succeeded. There is no logical reason to believe that he was anyone or anything other than what he claimed to be."

"I disagree," I told her. "There is every reason in the world to believe that Lothar Pandross never existed. That the fellow who said he was Pandross, a fellow refugee, probably had never even been to your origin world. He was good, he was well briefed, and he could convincingly fake it in the same way that somebody from my world who said he was from the country of Benin wouldn't be questioned too closely by me since I've never been to Benin and would have trouble finding it on a map, if it hasn't changed its name recently. But if he got close to you, in the way the rest of you did, he'd have to open up, have to have an in-depth story and personal history and background that had no holes whatsoever in it, no inconsistencies however tiny, or he'd lose some of your confidence."

She was appalled at the suggestion, which she clearly didn't believe. "Surely you don't suggest that he was a spy for the
Company!"

"No, not the Company. Not exactly, anyway, and not for the Company cause. When and if I can find out where he
did
come from, and how he wound up as one of your group of survivors, I'll have the last major piece in this puzzle."

Maria had been quite busy, and I didn't know now how I would have coped without her. I now had a fair amount of information on Carlos's lair, including a general map and layout, the basic security systems built in, and the general routine of the place. There were, however, also an awful lot of people living and working there, all of whom
were in thrall to Carlos and not to regular security no matter what their personnel files said and any of which, no matter what they thought of him, would still have no choice but to blow away anybody threatening his cozy situation.

On the other hand, my client, when he made another remote control appearance, decided he no longer liked the deal.