03. The Maze in the Mirror (32 page)

"I have decided that the risk to putting your interests first makes the odds of successfully accomplishing my own interests almost prohibitive. First you must stop the project in the only permanent way possible, by using the flaw built into the basic plan. Then I will give you entry and aid to Carlos."

"No deal!"
I shot back to him on the keyboard. "
I assume that what you want is neither easy nor safe and that my odds there aren't so hot, either. I also assume that the only way to accomplish your own goal is to trigger something nasty before its time. Otherwise they'd just bide their time and start over. The only way to insure things is to destroy one of the key sidings, and I suspect I know which one is the most likely candidate to permanently disable the plan by making the odds too prohibitive and the new setup too complex to have a decent chance of success."

"You do not disappoint me, Horowitz."

"Well, I am now. If I blow that it'll have to be from the universe side. I'm not too certain what will happen, but I have the idea that it'll make some of the Labyrinth uninhabitable for a while, and that means that even if I live I'll be cut off. On top of that, the Company will know as soon as I come through the gate. They would have to. So, no matter what, I will fall into their hands and probably by now they have
classified me as Benedict Arnold, Jr. And to top it all off, this crew here will have nothing to do for a while but revenge itself on me and mine, not to mention blowing that world they threatened. No, no deal."

"There will be a way to use the Labyrinth even after. The calculations have been checked and double-checked. If it were not so, there would be no purpose to this, now, would there? You know only part of his security. I can give you all of it and the bypass procedures. I can also provide a way to bypass the Company and exit your world. Considering your resources and your familiarity with it and with the Company, you should be able to make it there. And if the Company catches you, tell them the truth. The information you require will still be in your hands-before you do what I want but after you are irrevocably committed to that course of action. When the Company people understand what you have done and why and what you still have to do, and considering you can promise them Carlos in the bargain, I do not think they would hesitate to aid you. You will need the Company's services anyway

-after your business is done. That fact alone jeopardizes what I require. If they learn about what I wish before it is done they will prevent it. They would have to. And that means this is all for nothing."

"What is the rush on this?"
I asked it via the terminal keyboard.
We have months, maybe a year, don't we?"

"You are brilliant, Horowitz, in some things, but foolish in others. Yours was the only Company-held and Company-controlled point they had not already secured and prepared. It is still the most vulnerable

-it is Markham's home world and a busy one. Do you think they would move against you and thenhope to maintain the fiction for months or years? And they are more nervous now yet more confident, too. They have speeded things up. All is in place. They need only to hook up and test the timing computers now. We are talking days, Horowitz."

Unfortunately, the cavalier attitude they'd taken with me had hinted at this, but I didn't like to see it confirmed. "
Can't you knock off one or two of them and send the rest scurrying to deeper cover?"

"I already tried that with Pandross. You can see how successful I was. Perhaps I should have killed one a few days later, and one more later still, but I was loathe to do it. They are my soul-mates, after all. If I do it now I believe I will have the opposite effect of rushing them into doing it, perfectly prepared and tested or not. The more rush and the less testing, the higher the odds of it generating just the sterilizing surge we both fear. You are due to see Valintina next. When you leave her, you must be prepared to act. My associates will move in and provide all you need. It must be done then-and quickly-while you would not be missed here. If you do it, then they will be powerless to carry out their threat against the world they selected, and by the time they are it will be empty and irrelevant to them. They will have to go to ground for years."

I thought about this new wrinkle.
"And what about Maria?"
I typed to my absent client, thinking it through. For all her problems, I had come to like her, and she'd been of great use, as I said.

"I thought it was obvious. If you get away and live, she is dead in a horrible and slow manner. If she is not killed, then she must hunt you and use all methods to get you, and she will. It has been so from the start of this. Face the truth. One of you must die."

He was right, of course, but I didn't like this new order of things. I was being pushed into it now, trapped in a corner before I was ready, just as he'd figured all along. I didn't like being pushed, and I liked being trapped into doing somebody else's bidding even less.

"
I'll think about it."
I told the client, and didn't wait for a reply. I grabbed the pencil and paper and stalked away.

Maria was reading something in a language I couldn't begin to guess over on a mat on the floor, and she looked up and must have read my expression. "Something the matter?" she asked. "You do not look happy. What were you looking for in the computer for so long?"

"I'm reaching a moment of truth long before I'm ready," I told her, and then pointed to the pad.

She raised her eyebrows. "Again?"

I nodded, and she and I walked over to where I was certain we could not be visually observed.

"Do you know where Carlos's access switch is and how to get in to it?" I wrote on the paper.

She didn't just nod as I'd hoped, but took the paper and wrote, "I know where but not necessarily how to enter."

"I will figure a bypass," I wrote to her. "That's my field. You just get me where we have to be. Be ready with all that we need as soon as I finish the next interview."

She looked both surprised and worried. "Do you really think you can get in? Not to mention back out?"

I nodded, although I was by no means certain of either. I could only assume that all of them were wired by Pandross, and I'd seen and examined
enough of his stuff now to know pretty well how he thought. Besides, Carlos wasn't in hiding, he was at his usual place, and with the project so furious right now he would probably be getting daily messenger briefings. He was far less concerned with people getting in than getting out, of that I was sure. We would wait for a messenger, intercept him or her, then use Maria's security code implant so they would think she was the messenger-and we would have the , communiqués even if we had to chop them off the real messenger's arms.

As for getting out-well,
somebody
knew how to open and close and monitor that switch. It would be improvise, improvise, but I had no other choice.

On the surface, my client's offer seemed the most rational, and was. But he hadn't played completely true with me, nor with anyone else, and he had only one interest in mind-making the Yugarin-Mancini-Kanda plan too hard to ever use. He needed me to accomplish that, and once I did it he would revert to his original mind-set and objectives. With no further need of me, I could easily be not just double-crossed but hung out to dry. I had only his word and nobody to check it with that I would even be able to still get back out.

Besides, no matter what the long odds against me, it pissed me off that he was calling all the shots. My own interest involved merely undoing what he had done in the first place, and if I couldn't get my own problems solved then I didn't much give a damn about whether they blew things wide open or not.

* * *

I wasn't really much interested in Valintina, but I had to go through the motions. It turned out to be a very strange experience in its own right, and one sure way to make sure I remembered which side I should be on.

It began after I went through the switch and walked down a short siding, then out into a plain reception chamber that looked kind of like a small .function room at the Holiday Inn, with little furnishing but some nasty-looking gun ports and such. It kind of reminded me of the less than pleasant reception area you got when entering the Company world.

It was unoccupied except by me, and had no doors that could be opened from this side and no ways to look out.

"Stand in the center of the room and remove all your clothes," a tough-sounding female voice said from an embedded speaker in the room.

I looked around. There didn't seem to be an alternate set provided. "I beg your pardon?"

"Remove all clothing, your watch, and anything else you might be wearing, and place them in the corner nearest the Labyrinth substation entrance. They will not be touched, and will still be there when you exit."

"Uh, yeah, that's fine, but what do I wear instead?" I asked loudly. This kind of security I could admire, but that didn't mean I had to like it.

"Just do as instructed and then walk through the door when it opens."

I sighed, and undressed and tried to fold everything neatly, sticking my watch and wedding ring on top of the pile. Even after being around Maria all this time and under observation almost constantly, I still had a sense of modesty and a bit of self-consciousness as well knowing that strangers were looking at me and probably making nasty comments as well. There is nothing worse to strip the dignity and confidence out of someone than to make them nude and have them parade around strangers.

Now in my birthday suit, though, I turned and walked towards the far wall, and as I reached the area a door buzzed and then opened and I walked through-and into something of a formal garden setting, with a nice pond, lots of trees and flowers, and two attractive young women dressed in tight black outfits which included sidearms stood there looking at me. It was almost oppressively hot and very humid.

I felt immediately like crawling back in or finding a hole or fig leaf or something, and I put my hand in front of my crotch, but the door shut behind me and there was no way to anywhere except past this pair of obvious security officers, both of whom seemed highly amused.

"Okay, so what do I wear around here?" I asked them, my embarrassment turning to anger.

"Oh, my!" one said in a mocking tone. "He's embarrassed! See how he tries to shield himself from us. What's the matter, boy? You ashamed of your prick or something?"

"He has a cute little ass," remarked the other, "but I can't say much for the rest of him."

"I'm not used to being on display," I retorted, really feeling mad now.

The other one laughed. "This is Senora Mendelez's private preserve. You asked for an invitation, but you weren't invited. Here, she
makes the rules and you follow or you may leave. No man here is permitted to wear clothes or to wear anything not given him by a woman resident. You will treat all women with respect while you are here and you will put up with whatever you must, or you will regret it. Any lack of respect or failure to exhibit the proper attitude and deference while here, particularly in front of the boys, will have to be severely and painfully punished, even if you are a guest. You understand that? And understand, too, that any of us are fully capable of giving such punishment. Either play it that way, or sit here under guard until your keeper comes for you and you can return to where you came from."

I wanted to do just that, particularly since I was only going through the motions with this one, but I had no choice but to play it out. Still, I was keenly aware that I was beyond the political rebel and the eccentric and into the land and style of the kind of personality who would cheerfully hook people on drugs and think of new perversions for them to use.

"I, too, am not here voluntarily," I told them. "I must have my interview."

"Your funeral," the taller of the two remarked. "Okay, follow us."

We walked up a well maintained path through a dense jungle alive with insects and almost solid with plant life, and I began to wonder if they had mosquitoes in this climate or worse. Even so, this was the most impressive security entrance I'd seen and the only one up to the caliber I'd expected from the rest. Guarded and fortified entry chamber-damned tough to get through and requiring a large force-then out into a small clearing that exposed you to most likely withering fire, and when you got through that you would have to push through jungle prepared by defenders all the way and landscaped to tell you almost nothing.

There were frequent junctions in the path, too, much of which I suspected was to force anyone getting in to either know his or her way around or walk into a neat trap.

The
correct
path took us ultimately out of the foliage and onto a wide white sand ocean beach, almost pristine in its beauty and with breakers far enough off so that you could enjoy water or beach.

The back of the beach was a significant hill rising maybe a hundred feet at its height, producing a cliff atop which stood a stunning tropical home and patio jutting out just slightly out over the overhang and which probably provided a great, sweeping view of the beach and oceanfront far below. On either side, long, zig-zagging stairs reached from house to beach, and I groaned thinking that I would have to climb them.

There were a few people on the beach, looking like the kind of folks you usually hate. Trim, perfect-looking women either nude or wearing only bikini bottoms, all with perfect tans, being rubbed or made over by equally tanned and muscled guys left over from the Arnold Schwartznegger Look Alike Contest. One woman was doing a kind of flex exercise and revealing bigger and better muscles than I'll ever have. I kind of suspected that the other women were equally musclebound.

They all stopped what they were doing and stared at us-or, rather, at the poor excuse for a two hundred and twenty-eight pound weakling
with the weight in all
the wrong places being marched along by two Amazon warriors. I gave up any pretense at modesty and just tried to put my nudity out of my mind. Hell, I'd be embarrassed and intimidated around people like these even if I were fully clothed. About the only thing I had on them was their greased pig look; I had more chest hair than they had hair on their heads.