Janus (34 page)

The ground slipped from under him and he almost rolled into the stream. For a moment he wanted just to lie there. But that was the weakling too. He had to do something. To wash his hands, remove the evidence.
The first,
he thought suddenly,
the first here.

He plunged his hand into the water.

The cold bit his flesh. He watched dark stains unravel into the current until his fingers gleamed through the ripples like ice. Crouched on the bank here, he could only reach one hand into the water at a time. It would have been easier if the bank were lower here, or there were stepping stones in the water. . . .

The moonlight glittered into his mind from the scale-backed stream. Silver ropes and handfuls of coins tumbled and vanished and returned. Finally he pulled his hand out and stared at it. From each finger colourless liquid dripped. The flesh must be wrinkled and pulpy now, but the light wasn’t strong enough to show that. His mouth whispered, “. . . a long snow-slope, with a fence at the bottom, and Orion rising above it.” And a night breeze stirred the branches.

He shivered and plunged the other hand, thrashed it about in the water, then pulled it out, and rubbed the two together. Clothes, shoes—he would have to do a proper inspection. Osmon must have done his job by now. It was just a matter of keeping them off his trail until he was ready to strike. They would find the bodies in a few days, and then the search would narrow. He would have to be ready to act before they closed in on him.

Elinda met Carlo outside the clinic. “Come in,” he muttered. “We’ll be less conspicuous inside than out.” It was after hours and stars glinted among high clouds.

“I’m not worried about being seen,” she said.

“You may be, later. In any case, I am.”

“You said you wanted to talk,” she said briskly as they went in. “That’s fine, because I need help in reaching Barbara, and it looks like you’re the only one who can provide it.”

“You’re very cold. You’re not making it easy for me.”

“I’m sorry, but I haven’t got a lot of spare sympathy any more. If you don’t want to talk, let me tell you what I’ve been thinking.”

“I don’t know what we can do for Barbara that we haven’t already tried.”

“Some time ago Dr. Henry was talking about your machine being like a surgical tool, a light-pipe. It took me a while to make the leap, but finally I got there: does it mean you could go into someone’s mind, that you could look around in it, and find out what was wrong and help them, even if they couldn’t talk to you?”

He frowned. “Things like that have been tried. But it’s not easy, and no one’s proved there’ve been any real benefits. There are problems in matching two brains, maybe two minds, separating what looks like real communication from illusions created in the connection, or even one’s own submerged fantasies—the thing behaves more like a badly cracked mirror than like a window. I think I can guess why you’re interested, but I’m not going to encourage you. There are some real risks for the users, too—one or two psychoses have almost certainly been triggered by experiments like that.”

“I’ll leave the clinical therapy to you; what I want is to find out what happened—that’s all I can do for her for now. And you’re saying this idea might work.”

“You’re talking about leaping off a cliff that might be two metres high or twenty kilometres.” Carlo took a step away from her. “Supposing it does work, you manage to get into her mind, you do find something in there, and you both come back after the experience—how are you going to be able to trust it? We’re fishing in very muddy waters here, polluted as likely as not, and some of the things down there can bite.”

“If it’s come from her mind, I can check it out afterwards.”

“It may not be that simple,” he said. “These machines—I’ve been trying to make you understand—they play with both your minds, you might stir up fantasies from your own subconscious—you might never make contact with her at all. Or, if you do make a link, god knows what sort of illusion the two of you could unknowingly produce.”

“I understand that. It’s a risk I’m prepared—”

“Let me finish this, please. Or I’ll never be able to say it. These machines—one of their functions, not their main function, is to impress illusions on a suitably prepared mind. These illusions can be quite abstract; the machine and the operator look into the subject’s mind and find images, sense-data that will make them real.”

“You use the machine to create a fiction—an imaginary life.”

“A legend, it might be called in some areas. But of course. there’s a major difference. The fiction is written into the subject’s mind, so it is no longer fiction as far as that subject is concerned: it becomes part of the mind. It can amount to a new personality.”

She was staring at him. “You said—the other night you said you’d created me.”

“My job here is to implement the instructions given me—to install past histories compatible with the required personality types I’m asked to shape. You were one of them. I was given a program to break you out of certain behaviour patterns. In some respects at least, I haven’t done very well. But still . . .” He hesitated. “I don’t know all of what you were before, but what you are now is in large measure a product of the machine and my own efforts.”

“Jesus Christ.” she whispered and closed her eyes. “I . . . I can’t deal with that now.” Then she looked him in the eyes. “You’ve no choice but to help me.”

He stared at her.

“You’re being stupid, Carlo. You’ve already given me an illegal gun, and now you’ve told me this place’s secret. You’d better do exactly what I want.”

“Christ, you’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Clever man.”

“Oh god. . . . Well, we can try. But not yet. I need time to test out the programs and check over the machines. And we’ll have to find an evening when things are quiet.”

“I’m sure that’s all within your capabilities. I have complete faith in you, Carlo. Just don’t leave it more than a week.”

Grebbel levered back the lid of the crate and flicked his flashlight beam over the contents. He nodded. “Ingram machine pistols. They’ll do for close-range work. Get them out of here and put the crate back at the bottom of the rack.” He looked towards Shelling crouched with his black box inside the door of the darkened weapons store. “How much longer can you keep the alarms quiet?”

“Maybe ten minutes, before they change codes. But the guard’ll be round before then.”

“This’ll have to be enough. Find the azoplas explosives and let’s get this lot into the cave.”

“You look as though you haven’t been sleeping,” Elinda said to him. “That’s what you told me before, but now it’s you.” They were walking outside the cafeteria, the smoky daylight warm on them.

Grebbel gave a short laugh. “Who has time to sleep?”

“I saw the eagles again this morning,” she said as they walked on. “I thought I might go up there, to the caves, again sometime soon.”

“No,” he said. “Don’t do that.”

“No? Have you found something else—? No: it’s to do with what you’re planning, isn’t it—whatever’s keeping you away at night? And we don’t talk about that, do we?

“I’m going to talk to Carlo,” she said. “He started to tell me something about our memories, and I want to get the rest of it out of him. And there’s more. I think I know how to reach Barbara.”

“Don’t tell me, Elinda. You’re trying to force me to tell you what I’m doing, and I can’t.”

“You won’t. If you’re so ashamed of it, then don’t do it.”

“It’s not a matter of shame, it’s deeper than that. And anyway—” He broke off and shook his head.

“It’s too late? You’ve sold yourself already?”

“Not sold. Maybe bought, reclaimed. Yes, reclaimed, at a price.”

“I’m going to ask Carlo to help me, and if he can’t or won’t—”

“
Don’t tell me.
”

Larsen and Menzies were walking beside the dam. The air was warm. His head lowered, Larsen pulled his hands out of his pockets and squeezed them together. “You’re sure about it?” he asked. “You’ve seen him with the others?”

“I’ve seen enough to be sure they’re holding meetings. Our Mr. Grebbel is planning something.”

“It’s good of you to say ‘our,’ but the responsibility is mine, I’m afraid. I should have checked on him myself, but I suppose I didn’t want to believe he would go so far, or so quickly.”

“Don’t try to take everything on you again. It’s ours. We have to decide what to do.”

“Thank you,” Larsen said. “You’re right. The trouble with knowing both sides is that there are no illusions left. And the woman in my office, Michaels—she’s been asking questions. She suspects something. I don’t think Grebbel can have confided everything to her, but she has her own interests, and she’ll be in danger if she follows them much further.”

“She’s still trying to find out what happened to that woman they found in the woods?”

“Yes, and she’s part of this somehow, and Michaels may cause things to unravel from that end if she’s not careful. I fear that whatever we try, someone is going to be hurt, and if it isn’t us, it may be someone more innocent.”

Five days later, Carlo told Elinda the arrangements were complete, and she met him that evening in the clinic. “I shouldn’t be letting you do this,” he said. “If we had any formal regulations here I’d never get away with it. Back there, they’d have my licence before I could get out of the door.”