01. Labyrinth of Dreams (34 page)

And then he was gone, exiting through one of the intersecting cubes, and we rushed forward. Brandy again saved me, because she immediately saw that the only way Cranston could have turned his stop back on, let alone made it past here, was if somebody in his crew had taken over the switch again. She ran in and immediately fired her last shots in the clip at the transfer cube, not even looking at who she might be shooting. By the time I got there, there was the figure of a small, middle-aged man reeling back with a number of holes in him, while another figure lay slumped over the controller board.

Cranston had to have his own communications channel through the Labyrinth; he'd activated it as a precaution before coming downstairs, and obviously when he reached the cellar he gave the orders to take out the switchman. We should have covered that, but we'd been assured by those who were supposed to know that the flag stop was closed off.

Brandy pointed up, unable to convey sound in the medium, and I looked and saw a fleeing figure, tiny but in the cube. We concentrated on it and went for it, entering just as he exited to the next spot.

Now, though, it was getting tougher. There were worlds showing on some of the cube-faces, worlds that were dark, worlds that were green, worlds that were desert, worlds that were blasted heaths. There were sometimes as few as six facets, sometimes many more, showing, but all but two always showed worlds, exits into reality. The Labyrinth twisted and wound about, but there was only one way to go, to stay in it. We only kept up because Cranston had been slowed by his wounds. He was losing blood fast, and he couldn't keep this up very long. He knew it too, better than we, and he risked a look back to see us gaining on him.

Then, unexpectedly, a very dismal and dark cube-face came up to his right and he took it. We ran in, now only twenty or thirty seconds behind him, and exited out onto a world. Wherever it was, the exit point was outdoors and in the midst of a violent thunderstorm with tremendous wind gusts and driving rain. It was warm, but that didn't make it any less miserable.

Thunderstorms, I thought as the rain soaked through me in a moment. Why is it always thunderstorms?

We were on a beach with tremendous waves coming in, and up between the beach and dense growth was maybe a couple of hundred feet worth of driftwood. It was a sea of dead trees, jagged and twisted and not very wet. I never saw anything quite like it, but it sure as hell made it hard to spot Cranston. We both stopped.

"It must be a safe house, something like that, for them!" I shouted to her over the roar of the storm. The lightning and thunder were fierce. "Somewhere here he's got enough to hole up until his buddies check here and pick him up!"

"Not without a doctor, he don't!" she shouted back. "Move in and get some shelter behind that driftwood! So long as we're between him and the Labyrinth, he'll have to come to us. No use trackin' him in this storm!"

She was right; we could do nothing until the storm passed, but we were in better shape than he was. Even if there was a superhospital just beyond the jungle line over there, he'd never get through with that wound in his side, not in this crap. I doubted if even
we
could. He was just taking a breather and trying to get some temporary treatment for his wound. I knew how he felt. My left arm was still killing me off and on— mostly on, right now—and this hadn't done it any real good. They'd told me to keep from using my left arm for a while and not to get the bandages wet.

Our shelter was more theoretical than real, and that storm showed no signs at all of letting up. Only the realization that there were green trees here kept me from thinking that this was a world of perpetual storms. I couldn't even tell if it was light or dark, but the frequent and violent lightning flashes, some hitting within our line of sight, gave the whole place an eerie sort of strobe-light effect.

Then, slowly, the storm started to fade, the wind going down to less-than-gale force, the lightning growing more intermittent and further away, and the rain almost completely stopping. Brandy took her reserve clip off its belt clasp and pushed it into the pistol-grip bottom. She looked up at the sky. "It's still night," she said. "I think we wait 'til mornin'."

"Suits me fine," I replied.

"I'm sorry, but I cannot wait that long," came the gasping voice of Lamont Cranston from above us. We turned as one and looked up at him, as he stood there, that crazy gun pointed down at us. He had removed the dressing gown and tied it around his midsection in an attempt to stem the bleeding, and it wasn't doing the full job. If we looked like hell, Cranston looked like a walking dead man.

"If you want to commit suicide, go ahead," I told him, "but don't include us in this." His gun was wobbling, and he looked strangely not quite at us, a fact Brandy, too, couldn't miss.

"I'll make it," he gasped. "I've been worse off than this before. Just throw the guns out there in the sand."

We did it. It didn't seem worth a move. I was wondering how much longer he could remain perched on that huge driftwood log. The rain had stopped, but the logs were wet and there was a really strong runoff at the bottom. I wasn't sure which would kill us first—Cranston's gun or possibly the shifting logs.

"I know a little about wounds, Cranston," I said. "Air Force training and police training. I can help you a little. Maybe keep you alive until help arrives. You may have been worse off before, but you were younger then, and in much better shape."

"Maybe—I won't—make it," he managed, wavering, "but I'm—going to do—what I should've done—when I first—laid eyes—on you."

He was right above us, very close, but Brandy and I were both in a depression between the logs in front of him. I slowly moved my hand toward my belt and got my own backup ammo clip. Brandy, noticing, suddenly moved away from me to my left, and I took the clip and threw it at Cranston as hard as I could. It hit his chest and bounced off, but it made him, for the slightest moment, forget his balance. He fell, backward, away from us, and we heard him cry out. I went for the guns, but Brandy moved to one side, climbed up, then looked down. "Forget it, Sam, unless there's wild animals around."

"Huh? What?"

I returned, but with the guns, and climbed carefully up on the logs and looked down at Cranston. He'd fallen on a sharp, slightly twisted tree limb and it had gone right through his chest. He looked pretty gruesome, but he also was very dead.

"It's a mercy," I told her. "He was walking dead anyway and he knew it."

She sighed. "G.O.D. just wasn't on his side," she said.

I helped her down, and we started back toward the Labyrinth. I took Brandy's hand and squeezed it. "Case closed, babe. End of the line. But it sure was a hell of a ride."

She squeezed my hand back. "Sure was. I'm sorry I had to kill him, though. It ends the trail to the big boys."

"Doesn't matter. You don't nail that type with Cranstons. Not in this league. It's like Big Tony. He took over when somebody killed Larry Groziana. Norton was ready to take over from him, and there are a hundred Nortons in the wings waiting for anyone of 'em to slip. They're like weeds. That type's the worst that's in all of us, but you can't even pull 'em out by the roots. No matter what, they always grow back, and the little guys never notice the difference. A hundred loan sharks will take up where Little Jimmy left off. A hundred Cranstons, and their Jamies, will rush in to fill that void. In the meantime, the dope's still sold, the girls still sell themselves, the gamblers still get taken. I think that, deep down, is what makes some cops go on the pad and others quit like me. It's when you wake up one day and you realize that it never ends. Only the faces change, and the victims."

She stopped. "This beach never ends, either."

"Huh?"

"Sam—we didn't come this far in that storm. There ain't no Labyrinth no more."

I stopped, and looked up and down the beach. It was light enough now to see pretty far, and she was right.

"I wonder if this place has apple trees?" Brandy asked no one in particular.

No, it didn't have apple trees, but it
did
have coconuts, and bananas, and other kinds of fruit. It appeared to be an island somewhere in the tropics, not very big but big enough for two. There were exotic birds, and some mean-looking insects, but no people. None that we could find.

It wasn't, however, quite as primitive as the last time. We found a hut on the third day, not far inside the tree line, constructed of bamboo or some kind of wood or plant. It wasn't much, but there was a medical kit, a map of the island, something that looked like instructions which were unfortunately in a language like no other we'd ever seen, as well as some blankets and straw mats. Clearly this was where Cranston had been heading, and where he never had the strength to make, particularly in that storm. We hung up the clothes and went back to nature, but we kept the guns loaded and at the ready, including Cranston's oddball. The hut was too far from the Labyrinth point and too well concealed to be official. If Bill Markham's boys couldn't trace us with those gadgets they implanted in us, then sure as hell somebody from the other side would be along to see whether old Lamont was ready to go. There was no way anybody could know which of us survived.

"You know, it's almost a shame that's true," Brandy remarked. "This place is one I could get used to. Tropical warmth, plenty of food, ocean breezes and the ocean to play in, and no Cranstons, Jamies, Little Jimmys, or nobody else. Only one person who talks English better than me, and I still got you to myself with no competition."

We used the hut, but didn't sleep in it except during the occasional storm. We wanted to see them before they saw us, and we'd spent a year in more primitive conditions than this, only ending that two months or so before this. It was almost like coming home.

But this time it was only a few days before the Labyrinth opened again. Four figures stepped out, all dressed in black as we had been, and fanned out along the beach. One of them had some kind of gadget, and discovered Cranston's decomposing body where we'd left it in about five minutes. They looked at it, then they turned and looked the other way.

"Hey! Horowitzes! You can come home now! All is forgiven!"

It was Bill Markham.

"Over here, Bill!" I shouted. "If we'd known it was going to be you, we'd have dressed for the occasion!"

There were a lot of handshakes and then a tour of the island, including the hut. The writings weren't foreign to Markham"s expert.

"It's a general guide to the island," she told us. "Says what's good to eat and what to avoid, how to use medicinal herbs for this or that, and all that kind of thing. Done on a laser printer. Impossible to trace."

"We weren't sure which crew would come," I told them. "We were ready for the worst."

"Yeah, only this time we weren't gonna jump back in that damned hole," Brandy nodded.

"We'll stake the place out now in case anybody
does
show up from the other side," Markham told us. "The only thing we can do." He sighed. "Well, I was afraid Cranston might be tough. Too bad you had to nail him, but at least
you
nailed
him.
Okay, you passed. Now you got a decision to make."

"Come again?" I said.

"You can stay here and forget about everybody and everything except yourselves. We'll monitor any entries, but we'll never interfere. This place is somewhere in the Hawaiian chain, we figure, only real north of the state, up toward Midway. Not a bad place to be."

"Or?" Brandy asked.

"Or, you can come take a ride on my railroad. Be warned, though—this train's strictly for employees only."

I looked at him. "And what do we go back to?"

"An office in the city. Nicer than the ones you're used to. A full agency, maybe with staff, that can handle independent cases, but has one prime client on permanent retainer. I think, between Whitlock and the Company, we can steer a bunch of needy clients your way. Some real training, though, before that happens, in the less orthodox areas of detection you seem pretty good at, with the understanding that you'll be called upon now and then to use that training for your fat retainer. Interested?"

I put my arm around Brandy and looked at her. "Interested?" I asked her.

"Couldn't be otherwise," she replied. "Can't go against no act of G.O.D."

I looked out over the waters, where clouds formed strange shapes in the western sky, and I swore I saw them, saw them all, there in the clouds. Saw them looking down at us and smiling. Spade, the Op, Marlowe, Archer, McGee, all of them were there, and they all understood.

I looked at Brandy. "You know, Mrs. Charles, we ought to have a dog. After all, we're joining the upper classes now."

"Oooh, Nicki!
You say the most
wonderful
things," she responded.

Bill Markham stared at us, half convinced we'd gone mad. I looked at him and gave him my best Bogart.

"Louie," I said, "this could be the start of a beautiful relationship."

Brandy frowned. "He wasn't a private eye in that one."

I pulled her close and kissed her long and hard. When we broke for air, I said, "It ain't the job that grabs ya, baby. It's the romance. . . ."