03. The Maze in the Mirror (19 page)

The figure came to life. "Hey! Maglia! Bring that over here!" he growled, and his voice was somewhat deep and had just a touch of gravel in it. He was close enough to the right height to fudge it, and while the accent was wrong, it wasn't beyond belief that he could mask it or alter it if he suspected he was being overheard. The accent wasn't Italian, at least not my kind. It was possible that on his world it was far closer to Latin still than the current tongue back home, or had gone off on a slight tangent. Who knew?

The next figure was a tall, thin, yet tough-looking woman, with dirty blonde hair cut short in a man's style, with strong, sharp features and a confident stance. She was wearing what looked like some
kind of jungle outfit and her face and hands seemed weathered, as if she spent most of her time in the bush.

"Stacy Cutler, age forty-five, height five feet eleven inches," the computer informed us. "Cutler is a zoologist. Although she's had little formal training beyond undergraduate studies, she has lived all her life in wilderness areas where her parents were also scientists. She is tough, muscular, could exist without aid in almost any wild area that supports life, and carried on her parents' work after their death by hiring out as a guide and mercenary soldier to finance it as needed. She has overseen most of the exploration, development, and preliminary studies on safe worlds and abandoned line junctions. Of them all, she has shown the least injury and the least emotion regarding her lost world and seems to accept it, using the network as a means of furthering her own studies in many areas. She opposed the plan because it includes the concept of shutting down the Labyrinth, and she dislikes the idea of having to settle on one world forever. She was the most difficult to persuade and finally went along because she saw it was something the majority was bent on doing. She apparently extracted a series of concessions for her support, although what those were is not part of my data."

Even more interesting. Opposed, brought around only when it seemed futile to continue to go against the more passionate rest-I kind of wondered what would have happened to anybody at that meeting who hadn't finally come around. If she had an insincere conversion, and if she still opposed it, she'd be particularly nervous of
Pandross, who would be looking at the opponents very hard and constantly. She was also tall enough, strong enough, and skilled enough. A real possibility.

She came to life on the screen and said, "You! Put that crate over there and drop it at the cost of your hide!" The English was definitely her native tongue, but it held a strong and odd accent- closer maybe to South African, with its Germanic undertones, but not quite.

The picture changed again. "Dilip Kanda, fifty, five foot five, a mathematician and electrical engineer," the computer informed us. The man certainly looked either Indian or Pakistani, if there was such a difference where he'd come from; a bit pudgy but darkly handsome for all that.

"Kanda lost family, children, friends, clan, tribe -all of it," the computer continued. "A firm believer in reincarnation, with the discovery of infinite alternate worlds simply reinforcing that belief system since now there's really room for it, he was saddened, even grieving, for his loss but appears to hold the Company less in hatred than in contempt. A sincere Hindu, he has become increasingly strict and very much an ascetic, indulging in few pleasures and much contemplation, abstaining from sex, from meat, from most worldly pleasures, with the exception of an abiding taste for elaborate pastries the results of which are evident and the reason for which he will explain at length but which are beyond the logic abilities of any other human or computer to follow. However, he has in the past come up with many of the most successful operations against the Company that have been conducted, his plans rarely if ever
compromised or discovered, and he treats going against them as an intellectual challenge. He was, however, quite willing from the start to go ahead with the Great Plan, on the grounds that some metaphysical symmetry would be achieved and that the Company race should have to be reborn again at the bottom."

Kanda's image began to move. "We must all see that life is the search for
bakti,"
he said, and that was it. The voice was typical East Indian, with the accent and all, and a low tenor voice that might almost be described as melodic.

I tended to dismiss him on the basis of height and the reported attitude, which I at least understood given the guy's beliefs, but I didn't really want to eliminate him entirely. This guy had beaten the Company consistently and for many years, and if the computer were to be believed he was the most dangerous and clever mind among them. If he wanted to murder one of his fellow Directors, and his motive might be rather weird or maybe just an intellectual exercise, he'd do it so cleverly that he'd be totally wrong as a suspect and quickly dismissed. And, if I were Pandross, he'd be the one I'd be most at ease with, maybe even turning my back on him-maybe to get him one of his sweets? I wished now I knew what had been in Pandross's refrigerator.

There was another picture now. "Herbert Voorhes," the computer told us needlessly. "At sixty the oldest of the group, and one of the earliest recruits by the Company. Five feet eight inches tall, muscular, a linguist and scholar, a historian by profession and one-time university history professor, which was why he was one of the first
recruits. He has trained himself in weaponry and basic self-defense and can hold his own but is no match for a professional agent. Lost a wife, two grown children, and some grandchildren in the conflagration, and is bitter and driven by hatred of the Company. The titular leader because of his age and because of his ability to grasp a multiplicity of subjects and plans, he chaired the meeting and spoke forcefully for the plan when it was proposed. He also was operational chief for the move against your substation."

Uh huh. I
thought
the old guy wasn't telling it all. Still, what the computer was saying fit with what I'd seen of the man. He'd lost all that the others had-family, friends, loved ones-but he'd lost even more. He was a historian of a world whose history had ended; a world that no longer required a historian. They had not only eliminated all near and dear to him, they had rendered even his life's work meaningless. But as a historian he was talking as an expert on the history of revolutions, idealistic mass movements, and the like, and how they were inevitably corrupted. The question that remained was whether or not his sense of morality for the many was best served by wiping out the Company or saving a world from a fate his had suffered. I thought I believed him, though. If the Nazis had won, as they had in so many worlds, and represented all that was left of human "culture," I wouldn't have much of a problem in wiping them out rather than letting them go on. I didn't think he would, either.

And, finally, there was the dear departed.

"Lothar Pandross, forty-eight at death, six foot two, security and espionage chief. Pandross had
been in the military of his nation when he was recruited, and even then was a security officer overseeing the protection of high-tech weapons systems. He was replaced by a double with superior training with the idea of replacing him later so that they would have access to the military secrets of his world's most technological nation. He appears to have been orphaned at an early age and educated and trained by his army. He does not appear to have harbored personal hatred towards the Company for doing what they did to his world, but none the less considered the Company 'the Enemy,' and himself a soldier in its overthrow. He was quite good at his job, and while he rarely went into the field himself he commanded and directed thousands and was personally responsible for the recruitment of most of the personnel who now work for us."

I nodded, then had this silly hunch and played it. "Do you have a voice record of him?"

The Pandross figure came to life. "So nice to see you," he said cordially to somebody out of frame. "Please-sit down."

I nearly jumped out of my seat. Give him just a bit of a whisper and that was Gravel Voice all the way, and his size and covert intelligence experience would be more than adequate to make him look like the description we'd built up. There was no such thing as certainty under these conditions, but I knew deep down to my bones that Lothar Pandross had personally directed that raid on the house, had personally supervised the abduction, had gone along for the whole thing.

The real question was, did Voorhes know that and was he just covering or conning or even testing
me by saying that nobody involved resembled the one I was after, or was he, perhaps, covering his shock and unwilling to admit that Pandross had been there and he hadn't known? Or was it just that my description wasn't good enough?

Right now it didn't matter, but clearly the chief of security had been there all along. No wonder he figured out the weak point in my system! And no wonder he was able to slip first his plant, Bond, in and out, and then himself in and out without the Company knowing a damned thing. He was almost certainly good enough to do just that. But why did a guy who was so vital and who almost never went on missions himself stick his neck out like that?

Much more importantly, how did he do it three weeks after he'd been murdered?

6.

Murder in the Cathedral

I didn't have to see Voorhes; the computer network was perfectly capable of putting me in touch with whoever I wanted to talk to, and also to get them in touch with me. Still, I wasn't in any real rush, I took the opportunity to use the ersatz shower they'd rigged up and actually caught a fairly long sleep before beginning the first active stage of the affair. I wanted to be rested and to have thought things out. The way things were going, I figured I'd eat and sleep as well and as long as possible whenever the opportunity presented itself. Right now I was dead tired and that wasn't the best way to press anything.

Maria, I'm afraid, was less than impressed with me at this point.

"So, you have solved it all, the great genius detective, sitting here in his chair, and now he goes to sleep?"

"Hardly," I responded. "But you should get some sleep, too. We might be busy in a while."

She was still awake when I lay down, though, and didn't look inclined to take my advice. I made a mental wager that as soon as I was out she'd be out, too-out of this hole, maybe back before I woke up again. That was fine with me. I had no illusions that the same computer that gave me outward access gave anybody else a full report on
me, and it didn't matter much. I just relaxed, and tried to put myself to sleep even though my mind was sifting what had already been learned.

So Pandross was alive, and that stiff-a double? One with the big boy's own I.D.? Voorhes said they had erasable and re-recordable implants, and who would be in charge of doing that but Pandross himself? If I wasn't being had for some reason, then why the hell didn't any of those other bright revolutionary geniuses think of it? Because they could conceive of Pandross double-crossing them even less than one of them murdering him?

That made sense, sort of. I mean, the guy held the keys to their whole kingdom, and to the computers and data banks and all that nice stuff they needed to operate as well. If he went bad, then they had a glass house of an organization to begin with. And since they had a sort of locked room murder there, it would never occur to them that the one guy who could so easily commit the crime, know just where the security monitors were and how to avoid all alarms-hell, he put 'em there- and just how to erase everything needed afterwards, was Pandross himself.

But if he was going to disappear, then why expose himself in the midst of the operation on my place? Naturally, he wouldn't have known that they were out to recruit me-or would he? Maybe he was still in charge in some alternate and nicely functioning security setup, monitoring their every move. And he'd been looking for me, not Brandy -the tape made that clear. Why? Was it, maybe, to get me before the others could? Maybe he had another double to replace me, one of his boys, for some reason.

Maybe so that I, or that other me, in his capacity
as detective trying to find the murderer of Pandross, would eventually have to go to and interview each of the suspects in their hiding holes? Thus pointing to exactly where they were so that Pandross could then deal with them one by one in isolation?

If that was true, then the plot had been turned on its head, but the bulk of the theory still stood. If Pandross was opposed to this plan, whatever it was-maybe he figured it wouldn't work and would destroy the rebel network, or maybe he just didn't like giving up all that power. To a pro like him, the fight, and little victories, would be the thing, the reason for living. Final victory would render him powerless and obsolete.

With that thought in my head, I drifted off into a surprisingly deep sleep.

When I woke up to what my watch said was a new day, Maria was out cold on the other cot and I didn't disturb her. I went over and checked and reset the simple door seals, though, that showed me she had indeed been a busy little girl while I slept. It would be interesting to know just who held her leash tight enough for her to obey at all costs, but that might come later. These people would only trust alternate worlds they already controlled; Maria's world was under one of the eight survivors whether she or they knew it or not.

I fixed coffee and got a couple of doughnuts and went over to the computer terminal. "I want to talk to Voorhes. How long will it take?" I asked it.

"Depends on if he answers," the machine responded fairly reasonably. "Signaling and connect. It usually takes him about fifteen minutes to come to the substation where he can take the call
after the signal goes out. More if he is away from his home."

I nodded and munched a doughnut. "That's fine. By that time I might have enough coffee into me to get me awake."