02. The Shadow Dancers (34 page)

I suddenly saw where she was goin' with all this, and I was appalled. "You have the missin' element now, the thing that the juice needs and we can't make. But to pull it off, then
you
..."

She nodded. "Yes. I must become a host, an addict, myself. I am prepared to do this. As you can see from Aeii, here, there is very little physical change in us compared to you. It is not obvious to anyone, which is the point."

"He'll be cautious. He'll catch you. You know damned well he'll run you through one of them mind wringers before he lets you get near him, once it all starts."

"Dear, sweet Carlos, here, will see that it doesn't happen.
Even the great manipulator Jamispur will not be able to detect it, just as Vogel's technicians could not detect you. He will see only what men expect to see when they examine women like me. He will be extra clever, and search for the lone linkage that might trigger a different personality, but it will not be there. One with Jamispur's skills might have detected you at Vogel's, given time, but not even he can detect what is cut off, closed off, no longer there."

"But that's a kind of suicide," Brandy Two pointed out. "What good's your revolution if you can't pull no strings?"

"The strings will be pulled by others. The depth of my commitment is so absolute I will let no consideration stand in my way. I am only the weapon, not the revolution."

"Yeah, so your big man's in charge, he can just send out for juice any old time he wants," I noted. I got a real uneasy feelin' about this, and about anybody who was this much of a fanatic. "Who could stop him?"

She smiled. "He only thinks he knows where it comes from. He does not. Only a precious few know. And after, even I won't know. We do not mean to control the Corporation, we mean to bring it down. All of it, from its corrupt and inbred male leadership to its vicious class distinctions. And once we do that, we will begin instilling justice on other worlds as we can and as we find them."

Well, I had to admit there ain't been no crime chief who was female since Ma Barker, but I wasn't none too sure I'd like these folks better. Seems I remembered old Ma was pretty scary herself. And it seemed to me, anyways, that nobody who could excuse folks like Vogel and Siegel and cause so much torture and sufferin' and death could accept slow, peaceable reform. Who would be marched to the camps in
this
world 'cause they was impossible to reform and reeducate? How many slaves would they make to build their perfect societies? Old Aldrath had it right, I thought, when he said that progress only came if you had worlds to steal from.

"You will be my vanguard," she continued. "You deserve the honor, for depriving me of Vogel just when vital discoveries were made. The two of you will have the honor of paving the way for the salvation of humanity."

10.

Of Rainbow Weeds and Other Matters

The last of the puzzle was comin' clear now; the few things that didn't make no sense was fallin' into place. I ain't too much on subjects like biology or other sciences, but detective work is puzzle solvin', and makin' sense of what evidence you got is the way to solve it. Trouble was, we always thought we was dealin' with one organization, the competition, as any moves against the Company was always called. Now we had that, and a band of fanatic revolutionaries within it even the bad guys didn't know about.

I still can't figure why Addison just come out and told it to us, or why she bothered to have Carlos fix me up. The only thing I could figure was that somehow she thought just 'cause we was bright women stuck by circumstances she thought we'd understand, maybe even applaud. Yeah, maybe in the end that was it. All this secrecy and skulking about in disguise, all this two-timin' and double-crossin' was leadin' up to the climax for her, and since she didn't expect to be able to appreciate it then she just wanted to take a few bows now.

Still, while it was double dangerous to be around her at this stage, the fact was it was lucky beyond any hopes we had. Maybe Sam had her figured all along; maybe, somehow, he knew she needed an audience, and we was the only witnesses around guaranteed not to talk.

Carlos and this Aeii was a lot less friendly, and clearly considered us excess baggage, but they indulged her. Why not? At least instead of tryin' to figure a way to tag along, we was bein' forced to take front row seats.

It was clear that Carlos and Addison had a thing goin'. At
least, he looked at her and treated her like some kinda goddess, and he was the only man around who we ever saw her drop her act and guard. He knew he was gonna lose her, but he was willin'. Like I said, fanatics. I don't know whose world spawned him, but he sure as hell wanted it changed.

My twin and me, we had problems with the juice that they had to handle. Like I said, when the juice says you need somethin', you really need it. Food we got, at roadside places, though not the balance we needed, so we both wound up with some of them funny and otherwise gruesome combinations of things. They also let us run, at roadside rest stops, and we was able to use the space and some of the gear in the truck for other exercises and weights. The sex urge was a problem, since the driver was this tough-lookin' woman in a black outfit and cowboy hat and Carlos was only interested in Addison. The only way out of it was the way we'd had to go when the club was closed and weather kept any chance of gettin' anybody slim to none. I won't go into details, but if you ever wonder what it'd be like to be somebody else and get laid by yourself, ask me. It wasn't all that bad, since we both sure enough knew just what the other liked most. It was kinda like havin' a million great appetizers but no main course, but so long as you got off, the juice didn't know no different.

They all watched us with real distaste, and Addison in particular looked uncomfortable. We was a real example of what she was thinkin' of doin' to herself.

We come into a small private airport somewheres in Ohio, I think, and there was a plane waitin' for us. It was a small job as planes go, but it could take the five of us, with the lady trucker keepin' on the road with all that fancy and illegal gear. It was a straight air charter, called ahead from the road. I figured from this either we wasn't goin' where I thought we was or they decided not to use anyplace the Company might now be monitoring.

We finally landed, after two stops, someplace in Mississippi, which didn't thrill either of us none on the face of it. I got to admit, though, that my twin was far less thrilled than me. In her world Lincoln lost the 1864 election, and President McClellan made peace with the Confederacy. Oh, they got reunited again, long 'bout 1900, but on strict
terms that included a state's rights to make its own laws on segregation and race and to leave the union again if the Compact of 1900 was broken. Yeah, the south abolished slavery eventually, but her version of the place sounded more like South Africa than the U.S.A. I knew. The north wasn't so bad-most of the states had their own civil rights acts-but her Mississippi of today was kinda like ours of the twenties. I tried to assure her that
this
Mississippi even had black mayors and councilmen and sheriffs, but I had to admit I still didn't feel comfortable in the place, neither.

By nightfall, we was in a rented station wagon headin' south, first on nice road, then on real back road shit. We finally got to this old deserted shack in the middle of this hot, humid, swamp in the center of the lousiest land in the state. It was run-down and didn't have no phone or electricity or nothin', but it had a pump outside that worked, an old-style outhouse out back that smelled like nothin' else on this or any other Earth, a wood-burnin' old iron stove, a few supplies in sealed containers, and a bunch of mattresses stacked up in a corner that would do for all of us. Addison had stopped at a grocery and picked up a bunch of things, which told us we was gonna be there for a little while but not too long or there'd be a hell of a drive for more.

They put us to work beatin' out the mattresses, wipin' down the place, washin' out the pots and pans, and even choppin' some of the chunks of wood there so they'd fit in the stove for cookin'. We also did the cookin', the servin' on paper plates and with paper cups we'd bought, and the cleanin' up. The way they had us goin', I got the real impression that the only thing these folks found wrong with havin' a low class to do the shitwork was that they was all in it. They wasn't so damned superior as they liked to think they was, but any attempt to point it out was met mostly with anger and threats, not reason. 'Bout the only consolation we had was that the millions of mosquitoes there tried us and dropped dead without no bites of consequence, while them three was near eaten alive and covered with Carlos's salve.

We was there close to two days when that big old truck finally got to us. By that time they'd gone down into the swamps and come back with this thing that was like a flat
piece of roughed-up plastic that floated a little bit off the ground. There seemed to be some kinda touch controls on it, though nothin' was marked, so it went up or down to suit. To move, though, you had to push it, although even if a couple of us stood on it, anybody could move it as easy as if it was on flat rails.

Now they needed our muscles, and everybody else's, to move that shit from the trailer onto the slab. It was a lot of stuff, and one of them crates had to weigh a ton-took us two hours just to get it from the back of the trailer to the edge, bit by bit-but once you had it on the slab it was the same as all the rest.

I ain't sure if that lady trucker was in on anything or not, but she got paid off a huge roll of hundred-dollar bills and she never asked no questions or made more than businesslike comments. I got the strong impression that she got not just the cash but that they bought and gave her the truck as well. I guess maybe I wouldn't ask no questions, neither.

Well, once we had it all, they was as anxious as could be to get out of there. I couldn't figure why we flew down, 'cept, maybe, none of the others could stand the idea of two more days and nights in the back of that truck with poor sleep. I got the idea that if they knowed about Mississippi mosquitoes in summer they might have saved their money and taken the truck.

A wide path, just wide enough for the sled, as they called it, had been cut outta the woods, but they had my double and me take an ax and saw and sickle and clear out what had grown back since the last time they used the place, which was more than they'd figured. Still, it only took the two of us to push all that stuff down to this shallow and foul-smellin' lake edge. I knowed we was strong, but we wasn't
that
strong. It was easy to see how small amounts of goods could be easily transported within the Labyrinth.

At the lake's edge, though, we all had to get up on the thing and push off with two long, rough poles, one on each side, walkin' front to back at the same time. This was clearly another one of them Vogel-type entrances, one that the Company didn't consider useful, and when we reached the spot and saw the Labyrinth form, I could see why. All but a tiny little bit of that set of constantly changin' cubes of
light and force was under the damned water. We headed into it, and wound up in a cube that had a fair amount of that water in it, only it wasn't actin' like water should. It was all broke up and floatin' around, and we all got sloshin' wet with swampy, foul-smellin' water in no time. Still, we was able to jump down in a hurry and push into the next cube where it was dry, but the smell lingered on.

I never been on this track, so I had no idea where the switches was or anything, but just before a switch point we angled up and out the top. It was dry land, anyways, and surrounded by one creepy-lookin' forest. I almost preferred the swamp after seein' these monstrous trees and bushes that seemed all misshapen and was all sorts of colors and not just green. If you can imagine a forty-foot-high mushroom that was all ugly bruise-purple and oozed bloody-lookin' shit outta its top, you get the idea of just one of the horrors of that place.

"Anybody live 'round here?" I asked nervously.

"No," Carlos replied. "There are some great apes on other continents that have rudimentary intelligence, but there are no great apes on this continent. There are dangerous creatures about, though, so once we reach the camp and throw on the protection, do not venture beyond it."

He wasn't exactly warmin' to us, but I think he was gettin' to like havin' two strong folks around to do all the shitwork he and the other two might otherwise have to do. Aeii was probably the same way, but we couldn't be sure. She and Carlos could talk in some language, and she and Addison could talk in that singsong tongue, but she didn't know no English, or at least she acted like she didn't.

We passed through a bunch of poles about ten feet apart that looked like fence posts waitin' for the fence. Once inside, Addison hit a switch on a pole and there was some kind of light beams criss-crossin' between each of the posts. "Don't touch the posts or in between," Addison cautioned us. "It is sensitive to size and shape to a degree so it probably wouldn't kill you, but it might burn all your hair
off
and probably leave you blind and partially paralyzed." She didn't have to worry. After that, I didn't want to be no closer to them things than I had to be.

The camp itself looked like some African village, with
three big round huts with thatched roofs and a few smaller ones that looked the same 'cept for size. The biggest one, right in the middle, had some kind of hard, very smooth brown floor, and had a kind of straw door that opened big enough to get the whole sled in. Once in, though, it was real hairy movin', since the place already had a bunch of machines in it. It looked like something out of the Center, or at least Doc Jamispur's lab. There was lights, and even power for all this stuff, though from where I couldn't guess. There sure were no wires to the huts.

We got all but the big, heavy one off easy, then managed to tilt the sled enough to get it to mostly slide off with some real group pushin'.