02. The Shadow Dancers (17 page)

"But volunteers ain't standin' in line to infiltrate this mess."

"To say the least. It's a real trap, since anybody we send in who gets addicted becomes controlled by them and for their own self-preservation goes over to the other side. We can't snatch and interrogate the underworld figures involved, since they really don't seem to have any knowledge beyond ours worth blowing the only other lead we have. We've considered a switch of some of theirs for some of ours-the big boys, I mean-but it seems the reason these people were chosen is that there are no good candidates who would work for us against them inside that organization. The only possibles are counterparts who are the same people inside and out and already bosses themselves-not likely to want to work for us-or the kind of people who would take the job but wind up enticed by the power of this thing and be just as bad as the ones they replaced."

"We still don't know where it comes from or how it gets into our courier network," Aldrath added. "The actual couriers who deliver it get messages to pick it up at different points every time, and only after it's already dropped. There's been no pattern in those drop points that we can find, and no single individual or group can be linked to most of the drops."

I nodded sadly. It shook me bad to see that and know just what sufferin' was goin' on. The worst part was that nobody did all this just to trap hookers or hook the kind of folks we seen in that hospital wing. What did they plan to do? What was they lookin' for? An immunity agent, so they couldn't get hooked? Probably, but that wasn't all of it, since you'd need one hell of a population of the world these come from jerkin' off all the time to supply any huge amounts of the stuff. A way to make it work just as good without shots in us as it did in the people it came from? That didn't make no
sense, neither, since that would mean no addiction and no control. It didn't make no sense. I did have a thought, though.

"What if they got it in here, to this world?" I asked them. "You could just keep a few big men on a string and rule it all."

"We thought of that, of course," Aldrath replied. "Our first thought, really. But controls are very strict. We do not allow it in, and our equipment is set to it. No virgin material was ever here-that work was done elsewhere. Even if it was surgically embedded in your body, we'd pick it up, since it's an alien compound with a unique structure. Anything that would shield it from our instruments would show up the shielding. The computer scanners can't be altered by anyone without exactly what was done being public. Not even the President or Chairman of the Board could smuggle that stuff in."

"Yeah, but what if they snuck in one of the folks from the world that has these natural?"

"First of all, he'd be pretty obvious since he'd have to have sex to spread it and I'm afraid our people are- clannish. They wouldn't do it here, on this world, other than with their own kind, and rape would be pretty quickly reported, particularly by a Type One individual. They might hook a few people before they were caught, but they wouldn't get close to the classes with the power by then and, once caught, we could find the home world this thing comes from from the one who came in. Besides, one of the things we do when you enter is read your genetic code. We
know
their basic genetic code, and we're even attempting to clone some cells to see what they really look like and give us more of a limited range to hunt for them, but so far without success. Clones in any case don't come out as full-blown adults; it takes the same time as with natural development. So far we've had no real luck, and the code only gives us that vast range of worlds I talked about. Unfortunately, it's a pretty common species type, almost as common as our own. To further minimize the risk, no one from that family of genetic relatives is permitted in here at all. And nobody from here, once they take a post in the Corporation, leaves."

It did seem like they thought of everything this time.

Sure, you might hook a young one out exploring but he'd never come back 'cause he couldn't get his supply of the stuff while he waited around for twenty or thirty years to get an important job, if then. This was a puzzler, all right. If not hookin' the Board, then what? Or, rather, who?

"What about transport and switchmen?" I suggested. "Control them and it don't matter what happens here."

"We know what it looks like so we can test for it," Aldrath said. "We test everyone four to six times a year for a variety of things, and anytime we suspect or see anything unusual or have someone in a critical area. They didn't even hook their couriers for that reason. You might hook some stationmasters, but what does that get you in the end?"

Bill thought for a moment, then said, "It could get forbidden stuff in and out of places. Ever think of that?"

"Of course. But Vogel got his hypnoscan without it, and there's not much beyond this organism that's so dangerous and so valuable to make it worth the risk. Besides, if that was all, why test it? Why hook fifty young, pretty girls and make them sell sex for hire? Other substances do as well for that. Why only women down there? Vogel's people experimented on men and women equally, with equal results. We have lots of pieces, but whenever you build a frame they don't go together."

I couldn't help thinkin' how Sam woulda loved this-
did
love this. Even though he was against my goin' undercover, he still had real joy at the puzzle itself and a real yen to solve it. So did I. Havin' seen the price, though, I just couldn't quite talk myself into it. The price of solvin' this one was a one-way ticket to hell.

After six weeks, I went back home. Sam was still in the tank and there was no change, and I was beginnin' to get used to the idea that there might never be. There was sure no reason to hang around; headquarters world was friendlier and more comfortable than Vogel's for me, but I was still an outsider in more ways than one.

Goin' home, though, proved only a temporary relief. The agency was pretty well a dead duck; Sam had handed off his cases to other PIs before we left and there wasn't much to pick up on, and I just didn't feel much like tryin' for new
business. I might no longer care what that class of people thought of me, but that didn't mean they was gonna keep comin' in with new jobs. Sure, I could have picked up some work just from the Company-but it woulda been charity work, just Bill and the rest tryin' to give me somethin' to do.

Not that I had to do much. At first them bastards tried to get away with payin' just half the money, since they didn't have Vogel alive, but I shamed 'em into the full amount. I didn't need it; just the two and a half million was more than I ever expected to see in my life. It was just the principle of the thing, damn it.

I took a quarter of a million out and put it in liquid funds so I had cash and let Whitlock at Tri-State Savings keep and invest the rest. Then I got out all the bills we owed, big and small, and paid them all off. It was kinda rough lookin' at the check register and seein' Sam's handwritin' on most of the stubs.

In fact, Sam haunted everything. I kept wakin' up in that apartment expectin' to find him next to me, or maybe in the livin' room or kitchen. The phone would ring with somethin' or other and I'd instantly think it was Sam callin' from Pittsburgh or some other place and have it picked up before I realized that it couldn't be him.

There wasn't no sense in keepin' the office, so I closed it down and sublet it to the end of the lease. I didn't want to stay in town no more, neither. Seems like once you got money word gets around fast, and every fast-buck artist and get-rich-quick schemer and con artist finds you real fast. I had to get out of town, go off by myself awhile, but I couldn't think of anyplace I wanted to move to lock, stock, and barrel. I went up to New York for a while, rented a shabby little studio apartment just off Greenwich Village, under the name Beth Parker. I know, I know, but I was feelin' more'n a little like poor Beth right then, kinda lost without nobody around. I picked New York 'cause I was always a city girl at heart, and I didn't really know nobody up there and nobody knew me. The Company arranged for driver's license, credit cards, and a local bank account in that name. With the straight hair and smooth complexion even some of my relatives wouldn't'a knowed me anyways.

I was rich, but I didn't
feel
rich, and I didn't want nobody to know that I was. Sam had married me when I was a ghetto girl in cockroach heaven. I took very little with me, and bought what I needed from second-hand stores in Manhattan. When I was bored and lonely and depressed I ate a lot, and since that was the case most of the time I satisfied my every whim. Started smokin' cigarettes again, too, and quickly got up past two packs a day. Every kind of drug you can think of and a lot you never heard of were easy in the Village, and I tried some of the ones I knew about. They helped for a while, but I knew I was only runnin' from myself.

I at least started one thing I always meant to do and never had. There was a congregation of black Jews in New York and I went up there and started takin' classes in instruction. They was a little surprised-the Jewish faith takes converts, but doesn't go after 'em, and you really have to work to join that religion-but I found it real interestin' and a real relief from the Bible thumpers of my childhood. Sam wasn't exactly the world's most religious Jew, but deep down it wasn't just cultural. Deep down he really believed it, and that was more than I could say about myself, so it seemed to make sense. Actually, tellin' the rabbi about Sam-and his condition-without, of course, revealin' the hows and wheres, hurt me a little 'cause he got real skeptical. "If Sam were a Catholic, I think you'd be entering a nunnery now," he said. It took some time to convince him that I really meant it.

New York's not the best place to be alone, though, particularly if you're a woman. Go into a bar and either ten guys would try and put the make on you-and five women, too, if you stayed in the Village-or you'd be wallflowered out. Same with discos and other dance places, and it didn't feel right goin' to the theater alone. About the only place was the movies, and I went to see a bunch of 'em. And, yeah, I did allow myself to get picked up a few times and I even went to bed with a couple of one-night stands. I needed it. I thought-hoped-Sam would understand. They was like the drugs, though. They helped, but only for a little while.

I called Bill's office in Philadelphia often about Sam, but
it was always the same news. No change. Finally, one night, I was standin' there naked lookin' at myself in a mirror and thinkin' how fast and easy the fat goes on and how hard it is to get off. I finally had it out with myself in that mirror, too.

Okay, girl, now what? You keep on like this, you'll slit your wrists in a year or wind up in a permanent heroin haze. You got so much money you could light your cigarettes with it. You can go anywhere you want, do anything you want, and what good is it doin you? You don't want to go nowheres or do nothin'. You can go out and buy some business and run it, but you don't know no business but investigations and you done all you could in that. You could just screw around, until you got to be a fifty-year-old three-hundred-pound diabetic who had to buy it. If this was reversed the way you thought it could be, you knew Sam could handle it, but you can't. Find some nice guy and shack up with him? You already played with that, and you know that wouldn't be fair to him or you. It'd be a lie, a let's pretend.

Yeah, that was part of it, too.
You don't know no business but investigations . . .

Anyone who gets close enough to learn anything will probably get hooked. . .

That other world is the only thing they got left. . .

There's no possible cure for these people unless we find the origin world
...

"Sam? Do you think it's possible to do it? Do you think I can do it?"

My conversion would have to wait. God knew how I felt, anyways. The next day I took the train back down to Philadelphia and arranged with the Company to visit Sam at the Center.

Aldrath Prang met me personally when I arrived, which surprised me. "News?" I asked him.

"Some. Not about your husband, although there are some recent encouraging signs of increased brain activity. I thought you had a right to be informed of the progress, or lack of it, we're making."

"I'm very interested."

"You were quite right about the shift of activity. Larger quantities are going to the other target world, and they
seem to be preparing to set up some facilities in a South American country where absolute privacy and absolute license can be bought and paid for. They're still limited to the one Pennsylvania access, but they seem to have recently completed a minor substation. It's no more elaborate than Vogel's or Cranston's and far less versatile, but it gives them some freedom."

"Yeah? That costs money and lots of expert manpower, don't it?"

"It does, but they seem to be willing to pay any price- and able to do so-and most of a substation could be built, in unrelated modules far apart, within your own country right now, requiring only some small but vital sections to be added from other worlds. It's not difficult to do, unfortunately. The competition, as you know, has a number of safe worlds with just such substations. One could easily be dismantled and reestablished component by component. They did basically that in setting up the ambush in the Labyrinth. Which reminds me-how is your wound?"

"Gone," I told him, and that was the literal truth. I never seen nothin' like it. When it was ready to go, that bandage, which withstood showers and rain and all the rest, just fell off and there was nothin' there. No scars, no marks of any kind, no skin discoloration. It was a hell of a gash, yet you couldn't even tell now that anything had ever happened there. "But gettin' back to the other-what about the bad guys? I mean, there's got to be a couple who really know what's goin' on now, both local and from off-world. They need a Vogel type for this."

"There is, alas, no shortage of Vogel types. A number of locals may be being raised up and prepped-there is also no end to the scientific amoralist who would jump at the chance of a project like this, although the same problem exists as existed with Vogel's researchers. They are experimenting along given lines with a license to freelance off on their own, but none are actually told what they are looking for. The only off-world presences are a man who is overseeing the South American operation and a woman who is handling things up north. The man is called Dr. Carlos, the woman is known only as Addison, both cover names, naturally. So far we have been unable to get photographs,
let alone more intimate data, on the pair, except that Carlos is dark, looks like an Indian-that's the description, I can only offer it-and speaks with an odd accent, and this Addison is young, not terribly attractive, and has very short hair, wears glasses, and is described as a cold fish who likes men's clothing. We suspect that they were part of Vogel's team on his world and were not present at the compound when it blew and therefore used other exits."