02. The Shadow Dancers (3 page)

Not that I wanted to go back where I was. Uh uh. I ate real good, the sheets were satin, and I had a jacket in the closet there that was genuine mink, and folks who woulda laughed in my face a while back now kept tryin' to get me to take their credit cards. We was doin' real good-maybe eighty grand a year or more, before taxes, and we had a shitload of deductions. It was crazy. Years and years I worked like a dog and got nothin' but poorer and poorer- I'd'a made a profit goin' on welfare-but now I had all this stuff and not only didn't I have to work for it, it was better I didn't. If Daddy had this agency the way it was now, then maybe I'd'a grown up fancy and speakin' all clear and nice like some TV newsperson and have gone to all the right schools and I'd be right up there now. I mean, I seen some of them high-steppin' black folks around, and they seem to be real in and real popular. They're even more uncomfortable when I'm around, though; guess I remind 'em too much of their roots or what they beat. Maybe kinda like that sergeant in
Soldier's Story
who thought black society couldn't afford blacks like me no more.

Thing was, them oreos wanted to forget where they came from; I couldn't help but bring it with me.

That left Sam as the only important person in my life. He was my lover and my best friend, but he was really my
only
friend. He was everything rolled into one, but when he wasn't around I had nothin'. I needed something of my own, some place where I'd feel comfortable and something to do I felt important at.

I'm also not gettin' no younger. Oh, sure, with our connections with the Company we can get a lot of fancy stuff that keeps us lookin' and feelin' better than we should and maybe give us real nice lookin' old ages, but I never yet seen a drug that didn't have a price and I sure wouldn't start on them things if I was gonna have kids. I'm thirty-two now, my clock's tickin' on that no matter what magic they can pull, but I don't want to bring up no kids in a downtown apartment. They'll have enough problems bein' half black and half white, and I want them schooled and brought up so they at least'll be comfortable in this society where only money really matters.

We're makin' out good but we're spendin' good, too. Hard to stop when you ain't never had it before and never thought you would, and that's both Sam and me. If I got to be my own universe I want a nice, big house with lots of land, like out in the new-money sections of the Main Line.

Well, I always get down in the dumps when Sam's not around. I had to do something, though, and I knew it. I'd quit smokin' 'cause we couldn't afford it and now I was up to two packs a day and, as I say, the weight was comin' back fast, but I just couldn't bring myself to put myself on some diet. Who the hell was I tryin' to impress, anyway?

I just settled back on the bed and was goin' through the TV cable guide when the phone rang. It was late, so I figured it had to be Sam, but it wasn't. It was Bill Markham.

Now, we hadn't seen or heard from Bill Markham in quite a while, so it was a pretty big surprise. He was head of security for the Company here on our Earth, a native of
here, too, and while he helped us get where we were he also was one of them folks whose nuts we'd pulled out of the fire when we stumbled into this. Without even a Christmas card after all this time, I figured that if Bill called it wasn't to see how we was.

"Brandy, is Sam back yet?"

"Uh uh. Not till tomorrow afternoon, last I knew. Why?"

"We've had something come up that might be up your line. Company business."

"I can tell him to call you when he gets in."

"Uh uh. No, this concerns both of you. You, really, more than Sam."

I was curious, at least. "Anything you can tell me now?"

"Not over the phone. It's not a security problem here- yet-but it's better told in the office where you can see the materials I have. Sam might as well be there, because he can have a role, too, if he wants, and I can't see this going off or you agreeing to anything if he's not in."

"You might be right," I admitted. "We'll see. Sam's due to get in to the airport 'bout three-forty in the afternoon, and I know he's plannin' to come straight in to the office."

"Fine. Why don't the two of you come straight over to my offices in the Tri-State Building? We'll talk there."

"Uh, yeah, sure, Bill. No hints?"

"Not now. Tomorrow. See you then."

"Yeah, okay," I responded, and he hung up.

Now I really got to wonderin', and worryin' a little, too. Me more than Sam. That was the real puzzler. I mean, we been damned lucky all in all, and we were even luckier when we fell into our lone case with the Company so far. We shoulda died or been marooned forever in one of those parallel worlds more than once.

Trouble was, all that we had here and now we owed to the Company. Everything. They gave it to us, but always with a string. Every once in a while the Company might, or might never, ask us a favor, but we sure as hell were expected to jump if it did.

That phone call wasn't no request for a friendly get-together. It was an order.

2.

A Puzzle for a Lone Hand

Sam seemed as happy to see me as I was to see him, but he looked real tired and not up to keeping on the go the rest of the night. He wasn't at all happy to hear about our appointment with Markham, not just 'cause he didn't feel like doin' anything much but also 'cause he felt it had to be bad news.

We quickly got his stuff in the car and I drove him into town. He's not too thrilled about the way I drive, so if he let me he was real tired.

"He didn't say what it was about?"

I shook my head. "Nope. Only that it was me he wanted. You're just there 'cause he knows I won't do it if you say no."

He sighed. "Yeah, that bothers me, too. I don't like this, babe, not one bit. If this is anything like the mess we had last time it might be real bad. We can't always luck out of these things."

"I been thinkin' the same thing. Look, Sam, do we have to take it? I mean, I'd kinda like to see some of them other worlds sometime, I admit, when we know what they are and what the hell is goin' on, but gettin' back into that shit they get themselves into-that's somethin' else."

"Well, we have to go to the meeting, anyway," he replied. "Look, we gotta face facts. We're doing real good right now. Real good. And the whole business is growing. Thing is, though, it's doing good and growing only because the big boys have us on the approved list. One word from good old Godawful, Incorporated and we're back in Camden fighting roaches if we're lucky. You remember
The Godfather?"

"Sure. Saw it three times."

"Well, that's what it's all about. We did them a favor,
mostly by accident, and they offered a favor back." He went into his Brando impression. Sam was great for impressions.
"Someday, and that time may never come, you might be asked to do a small service for me in return.
Well, this time G.O.D. is Godfather, Inc. We been called."

"I think that considerin' what all we done for them, we're even."

"So do I, but all that does is mean we'll get to live our natural lives out. Once you take, you get taken. There's no such thing as a
little
graft. Still, I don't feel any obligation to get my head blown off for them, and even less obligation to let them get
your
head blown off. They set us up, but Spade and Marlowe isn't a subsidiary of G.O.D., Inc., although, Lord knows, everything else seems to be. We been down before, we can be down again. I love this now, yeah, but I love you and life more."

I woulda kissed him for that if I could keep from crashin' the car, 'cause he meant it. Still, I'd been doin' some figurin' of my own.

"Look, Sam-suppose it
is
a big risk? You know I been feelin' kinda trapped, and even though we're livin' good, we ain't got no reserve and if we have to make the agency bigger we'll have ta put most of our money there for a while. Ain't neither of us gettin' no younger, so this might be a chance for a score. We'll hear the man out, but I promise that if we both don't go for it then I won't go it alone. Fair?"

"Fair," he agreed.

Bill Markham was one of them tall, good-lookin', sandy-haired guys who usually is the sales director of some company on the way up or maybe some jock sellin' running shoes on TV. I knew he was older'n me, maybe closer to Sam's age, but he looked real
young
and he talked real smooth. Knowin' Sam was tired and we both was curious, though, he got straight to the point. There was just us in his office, door locked, everything off. Real private.

He reached into his pocket, pulled out a little box, and put his thumb on a small square just about big enough for it. The box opened, and he took out a small opaque cube about the size of a thumbnail. It looked like cheap polished plastic, and 'cept for a brown circle on the bottom there was nothin' to mark it.

"This is what's known as a parium capsule. I don't know
where the name comes from, but they all look pretty much like this except for the color and sometimes the size. Basically, it's a needle-a substance is sealed inside in some kind of suspension when it's made, then you put it where you want to inject it on bare skin, with this little circle down flat against the skin, and press real hard. Anything inside is injected directly into the bloodstream. It even has a little bit of logic, so if it needs to find an artery it'll do it. No needle marks, no pain, no infection, not even much sensation except a little suction feeling when it fires. Then you toss it away. The Company's field medics and others with a need for it have them around. They're small, stackable, easy to store, and you can have a whole pharmacy in a shoe box. This one's used, so feel free to take a look at it, but don't touch the little spot."

We both looked, but neither of us felt like handlin' it. You didn't know what had been inside, and none of them gadgets get a hundred percent out; leastwise, none I ever knew.

"The machine for loading them is small and very portable and has its own internal power. It's a highly restricted device, but as with all highly restricted devices it's not impossible to get one or many if you really want them and you have Company or home world contacts."

Home world. That was the world that was supposed to be some kinda paradise off what it ripped off of all the other worlds. They didn't invent nothin', but what he was show-in' us wasn't of this world for sure.

"It's real handy. You can take something-a drug, for instance-and transport it almost any way you like in bulk, then just load it into the little machine, load a bunch of these in as well, and press start. At the other end, the little capsules come out filled with whatever dosage you put in as the load, all precise, stacked and arranged like sugar cubes. These things themselves are tricky to perfect, but once you have the mold in silicon anybody can turn them out."

"I never liked shots much, but so what?" Sam asked. "It's not too far off what might be around here in a few years."

"Maybe. Maybe not. Think about what this might do in, say, the heroin racket, or freebase, or anything like that. Measured doses, different strengths, all safe, and everybody
gets their own fresh needle every day so there's no chance of infection or contamination."

"I'd make a guess they already have," I put in. "Otherwise, why tell us about it?"

He shrugged. "They haven't come in here, anyway. There was a move to get them into the narcotics trade here simply as a safety measure, something we could do, but that talk's all but died out now. But elsewhere, we're facing something new, something even the opposition is a little nervous about."

The opposition. That meant any folks in the Company or workin' for it or on the home world who didn't like things the way they was and wanted changes, by fair means or not. Control of the whole multi-universe business was really in the hands of just a very few people, nameless and faceless to us, who were called the Board of Directors, and from what they told us this Board was basically one big family. It was kinda like a kingdom, with the same few families holdin' all the top jobs and top power, and that always left other folks unhappy. Anytime you had this much power in so few hands you was bound to have a lot of lower-downs after your hide. That was one reason why gettin' in to the home world was so hard and so restricted, and why them Directors never left.

"A drug?" I prompted him.

"Yeah. A drug and more than just a drug. You two have been around. You know what the usual drugs will do. There's a fair number of addicts who couldn't get off if they wanted to, and if they need a fix bad enough they'll kill their own grandmother."

We both nodded. We knew that all too well.

"There's a new drug. At least we call it a drug, although it doesn't act like any drug anybody has ever seen. It acts a little like it's alive, although if you saw it under a microscope you couldn't believe it could be. It looks almost like water, maybe just a touch brownish, and if it is injected anywhere into a Type Zero human it heads straight for the brain, checks it out, takes over, then moves in and starts doing its thing. It actually manufactures duplicates of enzymes in your brain and then replaces your natural enzymes with its duplicates. The duplicates are of the same
sort, but not exactly. They're purer, actually more efficient. When they first take over control, whatever those enzymes control gets a pure jolt of what it likes and so do you. There are pleasure centers in the brain. When stimulated, the body sticks in these enzymes and you feel pleasure. In this case, the pleasure would be prolonged and absolute."

"That's a fairly simplified description of the way drugs like heroin work, Bill," Sam noted. I got to admit I got a little lost with all them enzymes but I figured the result.

"That's true, but that's because the plant enzymes, highly refined, are injected directly. In this case, the process is indirect. We have a controller, almost a control center, that uses the body's own materials to make what it needs, but
it
controls things. With heroin, rejection sets in, the plant substances or chemicals are expelled, and it's kind of like an engine suddenly losing its oil. Unlike the engine, your body will eventually replace and start making those chemicals again, leaving only the memory of the stimuli, but between the time the enzymes or chemicals are expelled and the time the body needs to replenish and regear it's like running an engine with very little oil. It gets very, very sick."