01. Labyrinth of Dreams (15 page)

There was only one guy on the closest gate, and he didn't look like a guard, more like a truck driver or factory worker. A truck cab came down and stopped, and he talked to the driver and pointed. Just a yard boss or traffic manager, I thought. "Well? Do we take him out or wait him out?" I asked her.

"Let's wait a couple minutes. Then we'll take him out if we have to. I don't like the lights down there, but there ain't much can be done 'bout it. We got to get through and I forgot my wire cutters tonight."

Sometimes, patience will give you a little break. Another truck came up and stopped, and this time the guy jumped up on the step and said something to the driver, and they drove down to the yard, the gate man hanging on. We didn't wait for an engraved invitation, but started crawling down to that open gate as fast as we could. I made it first, got up quickly and turned the corner, then flattened in the darkness on the other side. Brandy had more trouble than I did, but, then, she wasn't shaped right for it and she hadn't had the benefit of Uncle Sam's technique.

It was a nick-of-time thing, but we made it. No doubt about it—they had some holes in their security, whether we'd had luck or not. They knew it, too; about twenty seconds after Brandy had cleared the lighted area and had joined me prone on the grass on the warehouse side, a private cop car roared up to the gate, stopped, and radioed something. Within two or three minutes a guy, maybe the same one who was there before, came running up from the yards and started getting into a screaming match with the rent-a-cop. Finally they had the last words and the cop drove on up past us and back into the complex. I didn't know who won, but the guy on the gate gave a rising finger in the direction of the cop's taillights and at least had the satisfaction of the last word.

"Okay, sweetheart," I said in my best Bogie voice, "let's go case this joint."

5.

The Labyrinth

The place was
big,
bigger even than we'd thought from the outside. It went back, it seemed, almost forever, an endless series of gigantic warehouse structures with office-type fronts and loading-dock rears, interconnected with a network of roads. This was no television-junk joint, I don't care how much they make. This was many millions right here, and this was only a
branch
location. I hated to see what they had near Davenport.

Still, in a way, it was
less
than I expected, too. "This joint's as big as General Motors," I noted, "but where's the smokestacks?"

She frowned. "Yeah. I think we're gonna wear this gunk forever, but if it's some kind of raw plastic, then where's the place they make it into little plastic thingies? You're right!"

"I'm more than right. We haven't been over this whole place yet, having been here more like an hour than a week, but so far I haven't come across any big parking lots, either. Place this size must take hundreds, maybe thousands, of people to run. So far, outside of the rail yards, all I've seen are rent-a-cops and gate guards. Oh, that's a lot over there, but it's for what? Ten? Twelve cars, tops."

"Maybe they bus them in from town," Brandy suggested, thinking.

"That whole town would have to be here, and there's no sign of it. That town would be bigger than it is, just supporting the work force this place must take. I mean, two jail cells, two little cafes, one gas station, and a grocery store that was a real mom-and-pop operation? Come on. That town isn't real. The whole damned thing's a front, run for this operation by folks out of work for years with the logging bust, taking their money and being their whores. It's bought and paid for, so nobody looks too close and nobody notices things out of the ordinary. How they get up the tax assessor I don't know, but bigger fish than him have been bought and paid for. If I remember, this was the state where that Indian swami and his cult took over and ran a whole county for years."

"That doesn't answer your question," she pointed out. "Where are the people who work here? Who are they and where do they live?"

"Even better. Where in here do they process a couple hundred live turkeys?"

The rent-a-cops had been real active in patrols, but if they thought anybody was inside who shouldn't be, they didn't act like it. They were easy to dodge, even though the streetlights within the complex were well thought out. The real problem was the sheer size of the place, and the inability to really get a look inside those massive buildings. Many were lit; it appeared as if the biggest one in the back was active and at work, although there was no sign of life outside nor any crowd of cars or whatever anywhere around.

The buildings, too, were mostly wired with elaborate burglar alarms and remote sensors and switches. It wouldn't be easy to get into one that wasn't lit up and in operation.

We did eventually find a parking lot attached to a large one-story structure, but it looked more like the headquarters for the state police, with maybe a dozen plant-security cars parked there and spaces for at least as many more, along with spaces where regular cars were parked. At least the cops commuted.

Without a full tool kit, with jumper wires and pliers and glass cutters and the like, it was unlikely we were going to break into any of the buildings. Worse, sometime the next day we were sure to be missed by the folks down at the town, and while they might figure we scrammed, they would also be thinking of the plant and grounds here. I wasn't sure I wanted to spend much time around here like this. The black stuff smelled and itched like crazy, and there was no food, and no evident water, either. We'd spent so much time on getting in, we hadn't even thought about getting out.

"Let's get over by that big building that looks like it's open," Brandy suggested. "Maybe we can find some way to see in."

"Sounds like a good plan to me," I agreed, just wanting to get
something
out of this experience. We headed over that way, but then had to drop as a door leading inside the building opened and two people walked out, both dressed casually although not in • any particularly recognizable fashion. One was a big man, fat but imposing, sort of the kind you expect to see either selling door to door or driving one of Oregon's ubiquitous pickup trucks; the other was a slender woman of medium height. They were engaged in an animated conversation, and I couldn't make out a word of it. It sure as hell wasn't English.

"Sounds like a record bein' played backwards," Brandy whispered, and the fact was, it sounded
just
like that, only very natural, very conversational.

They passed quite near us, oblivious to our presence, but we stared hard at them. The woman, for example, looked very young, yet she had shoulder-length hair that looked snow-white and a smooth, dark complexion that was hard to make out in the available light. The big man had a face that seemed dark and covered in hair; not just a beard, but more like a monkey's face, and his arms showing beyond his short-sleeve shirt were also the hairiest I'd ever seen. I resisted the impulse to check the moon to see if it was full, although I never really believed in werewolves.

They went to another building, and the big man took out some keys and opened a small box set in the door, and punched a combination that sounded like a push-button telephone being dialed. Then he opened the door and they both stepped in and switched on lights.

"Want to jump into the fire?" Brandy asked. "We'll probably get caught, but it's the only way."

"I don't want to do anything but get out of here," I answered truthfully, but I followed her as she approached the newly unlocked door and tried it. It opened, straight into a small reception room with a desk, chair, and phone, but there was no sign of the hairy man and the white-haired woman anywhere. "They could leave and lock us in here," I whispered.

"Uh uh. There's fire exits, and there's a phone I bet don't go through town," Brandy responded. "We're better off than we were and we get a chance to look around. Come on."

There was a sudden sound of starting machinery, the lights dimmed for a moment, then the whole building started to shake as whatever it was that had been turned on got up to speed. We cautiously approached the inner door, opened it, and peered into a still-darkened warehouse. It was hard to see anything on the floor of the place, although there were catwalks high above that had small lights on them, and far off along one side was a glass picture window at catwalk height that was lit up.

We went along the wall, hitting a stairway up to the catwalks, and both of us got up on it a few steps and tried to see into the darkness of the warehouse floor.

"Sam," Brandy said uneasily, "I swear that the whole bunch of dark there just
moved."

We went further on up the stairway to a metal porch that seemed well above the floor and just below the catwalk level. We were on the opposite side from the picture window and couldn't even really see it from where we were, so it was unlikely we'd be spotted.

Whatever was happening, it took a tremendous machine to do it; and that machine seemed to be under the floor of the warehouse. I stared into the blackness in the center of the place that should be visible, at least in outline, to me at this point but wasn't, and I saw what Brandy had talked about. The darkness seemed almost a solid mass, and it appeared to be shifting, moving, changing shape and form. It was weird, whether real or some kind of optical illusion.

Old Sam Spade and Phil Marlowe had never had to face anything like
this.

There was another start-up-type whine, and suddenly the center of the warehouse wasn't dark anymore, although I'm not sure just what it could be called. In the center of the darkness, there appeared another, flatter darkness. Sorry, that's the only way I can describe it. It was shiny but nonreflective, like a mirror, and the only reason it could be discerned at all was because it was framed by a pencil-thin outline of blue light. The blue was quite clear, but gave off no radiant light, so the rest of the warehouse floor was still bathed in darkness. Every once in a while, across the surface of the mirrored blackness, small trails of blue light would shoot like stars on a summer night.

It scared the living shit out of me.

"It's invaders from Mars or something," Brandy breathed. "My God—did Little Jimmy know about this?"

"Not at the start, not when he hired us," I managed, unable to keep my eyes off the strange thing on the floor below. "I think maybe he found out more than was good for him before he canned us, though." What would make a weasel like Little Jimmy write off over two million?
This
might. The deal was clear. You call off your dogs and take a long vacation in the tropics, and we'll bail you out and keep you off the bust list.

The crazy thing was, I was ready to believe in Martians or whatever with no real effort, even that they'd hole up in a place like this. Where else? They'd be kind of obvious in downtown Philadelphia. But the Martians involved in a drug deal and double-crossing a Mafioso?
That
I couldn't handle. Not yet.

The big mirror changed. It seemed to fold in on itself, like a file card being crimped in the middle, then go through itself, and when it finished there wasn't one mirror but two, the other intersecting the first at a clean ninety degrees. Now there were more folds, each section folding in, and the thing began to take on a crazy pattern, not regular at all. It reminded me almost of those pictures you see of those old English gardens with the hedges cut like a kid's maze. But this thing was in three dimensions right here on a warehouse floor, and it was turning.

"Let's get out of here," I told Brandy. "We don't know how big and complicated that thing's gonna get, and how safe is safe. That pair up there is up and beyond that floor behind glass. We're not. We don't know where safe is. Maybe it's just gonna take that plastic powder and instantly make forty million plastic Jesus statues, but I don't like to be this close to it until I know a lot more."

"Yeah, okay," she answered huskily.

I took her hand and together we went down the stairway. I could see the door only a few feet beyond the end of the stairs, since it not only showed light around the edges but even had a little red exit sign illuminated above it. That
thing
was still twisting and turning, faster and faster now, and I knew we were in a race. I had my eyes only on that door now, and, naturally, I missed the bottom step and fell onto the cold concrete floor of the place, Brandy falling on top of me. I was hurt, but not enough to matter, and Brandy got up and reached out to help me up, taking my hand in the near darkness. I found it, took it, and was just pulled to my feet when one of the edges of that blue and black thing folded and hit us like a revolving door.

Suddenly I could see Brandy, and she could see me, very well. We both had glows of the blue stuff all around our bodies, making us stand out, but all around us were constantly changing walls of blue-framed blackness. I gripped her hand tight, fearful that we would never again see each other if I let go, and looked for the door and the sign. There was nothing, nothing but constantly changing panes of black mirror framed in blue. Only they weren't mirrors. They weren't
anything.
One swung around on us before we knew it and passed right through us. I braced, expecting to be slapped down by a solid swinging door, but there was no sensation at all. It just came, passed through us, and went on its merry way.

I don't mind admitting that I was scared to death—not only being trapped in that thing, but scared, too, that I would lose Brandy's hand and my only remaining touch to anything real. She held my hand just as tight, and I could tell that the same thoughts were going through her own mind.

It did no good whether you stood still or started walking; the endless series of blue-outlined panels kept moving anyway, so I pulled on her hand and started walking in the direction I was certain was the exit door. With no physical sensation, the light show lost some of its threatening aspects. The effect of moving, though, was unnerving, since all of a sudden it seemed as if everything stopped shifting around but you were boxed in with a cube of blue-outlined squares. Stepping through brought you to another cube, then another, then another.