01. Labyrinth of Dreams (23 page)

"And you're milking them all," Brandy commented.

"Well, yes, of course we are. Only a very few—representative ones from the regions of more dramatic departures in history, culture, and development. We have perhaps a dozen established stations in your area of the Type Zero spectrum, all well apart. Occasionally we can open a temporary station stop—a flag stop, we call it—when we need something specific from a close neighbor, such as someone's exact counterpart. That, of course, breeds the curses of this network. You live in constant paranoia in this job, never a hundred percent certain if the person you're talking to is the exact same one you think or someone else. And, as you can well understand, any organization with this amount of power makes enemies. Some just want the power for themselves. Some believe we have an ideological mission to remake all the worlds into whatever vision the group has in mind. Others think it's immoral to do what we do, or are troubled by our methods; and still others want free and unlimited access to the network with no restrictions, which would bring chaos. You see how it is."

We nodded, because we
did
see. "I know you're in bed with some pretty disreputable elements back home," I noted. "I can see how that sort of thing would upset people."

The train lurched and then began to move into the dawn. We were clearly not going to remain in central Oregon much longer.

"Sam, Brandy—look. The Company is not heartless, even though it must sometimes seem pretty ruthless. We've seen the horrors humans can do to other humans in all their worst aspects, but we can't cure the ills of an infinite number of worlds. It simply isn't possible. We took the view, long ago, that we would not interfere in the development of worlds in any way that would induce dramatic change, with a single exception: We can't even hope to prevent mass destruction of humanity where it might occur, but when it is clear that a holocaust of that magnitude is about to take place, and that world adjoins worlds where it is not, we endeavor to stop it. That alone taxes our resources, but something like a nuclear exchange of massive proportions is so catastrophic it actually can bleed over, poisoning the worlds on either side for some distance, killing those nearest and dramatically altering others further away. That is something we feel we
must
do, no matter what the cost. If a world blows itself away, it is tragic and we can't stop it, but when it takes up to billions of others with it—we must try."

"That sounds admirable enough," I admitted.

"Otherwise, we establish stations and spurs, and that takes resident Company personnel. We're so stretched now, that often that personnel is of a different type, and thus can't even operate freely within the world. For what we want, we
are
dependent on setting up a network of natives, people from that world. In many cases, the most efficient way to gain access to whatever we want quickly and unobtrusively is to co-opt the criminal element, particularly if it is well organized and powerful. They understand wealth, power, and secrecy. I looked up your world. We've only had stations there for thirty years or so. The easiest way into the so-called Western World was through its criminal organizations, which were organized much like corporations. They act as autonomous subsidiaries of the Company, and only those at the very top know the truth—and they don't mind. Control them, and their inheritors, and leave everything else running normally, and we get what we want."

Brandy sighed. "Let me get this straight. You're sayin' that the
Mafia
is a wholly owned and operated subsidiary of this Company of yours?"

"Well, yes, among others. It's different here, because this society is far more simply organized. Here we simply need to control some key members of the nobility and influential religious groups. The biggest problem is being dependent on the slow transportation system and the very slow communications here."

"If they got steam now, they're about ready to explode into real technology," I noted.

"No, that's unlikely. Most of the basic research here has been done already. Most of it is suppressed, sometimes forcefully. The rulers here, those at the empire level, want no radical changes beyond what you see. I suspect we may have overdone it at the beginning, when we showed certain key people other worlds, worlds like yours. To them, those worlds are the stuff of nightmares."

There was little to say to that. "Might it be presumptuous to ask where we're heading?" I asked, trying to steer things to a more practical point. "And what you plan to do with us?"

"We are heading south to my beach house," he told us. "There we'll get you cleaned up, groomed, dressed, and whatever, and there you can be examined by staff personnel. I have a few ideas right now, but until we know more I won't be able to give much more information, I fear. We've hooked up a sleeper and a diner to the train. Just berths, I'm afraid, but they will allow you to get some sleep. Tomorrow will be early enough to discuss the future. Nothing is hurried here."

We were treated with every courtesy by Cranston and his staff while we were on the journey, but Jamie was there with us any time we weren't in the sleeper, and when we were, others outside and all around made sure we stayed there. They would talk about pleasantries or maybe the land or any kind of general things, but nothing specific, and certainly nothing more about the Company. Cranston kept to himself a lot, apparently working in his room, but he made appearances for meals and occasional drinks.

In the sleeper, Brandy wondered where all this was leading. "I can't get a handle on the man, Sam. He's the kind of man who don't mess with you unless you can do him some good, but what could we do for him in
this
place? Is he gonna ask us to kill somebody for him and take the fall, or what?"

"I don't know, babe. We have to roll with him for now, though, because he's the boss and there's no place to run. I know what you mean, though. He's too high up to mess with us for this length of time unless he has something in mind, but he's too low down in the Company totem pole to really do
us
much good."

Cranston's "beach house" turned out to be a monstrous Elizabethan-style estate overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It was, however, more than a little isolated, forcing us to ride south for most of the day and the next night on the train, then transfer to coaches and basically climb a mountain on a pretty poor dirt road for maybe thirty miles to get over to it. It had a permanent staff, but was clearly supplied by. sea somehow, and not off that rickety road with the hairpin curves. The view from his terrace was beautiful, though, and his living room could hold four hundred families from a Camden project with room left over.

A staff was there, and no matter how they dressed or talked, it was clear from the outset that absolutely no one in or around that house was anything but a Company employee, and from some of the accents and what they knew, it was equally clear that few were natives of this world.

We were measured for clothing by people who'd done it a lot, and somehow some of that clothing was ready for us within hours of our arrival. While waiting, each of us was given a full physical by a doctor who knew far more about medicine than any doctor should in this world, and maybe more than a doctor would back home. The place had no electricity and was fireplace-heated at night, but that doctor had instruments that worked by battery power. He pronounced us both in excellent physical shape, except for Brandy's vision, and used a small device to measure her eyes.

We went back to the bedroom, a luxury affair with big, wide bed, fireplace, redwood furnishings, and the rest, and when the clothes arrived, so did a pair of glasses. They were round and seemed rimless, but the bridge and earpieces were a golden bronze color. They looked kind of cute on her, although they magnified her already big eyes somewhat. She put them on and, standing stark naked, walked to the mirror and looked at herself in wonder. "Sweet Jesus!" she breathed, and it occurred to me that it was the first time she was really seeing herself clearly in the reflection. Me, I'd been admiring her new head of hair since I came in. So what if it was mostly gray? It was
hair,
damn it, where hair hadn't been in years and where, I had thought, hair would never be again.

Just the exercise and the food of the Garden had dropped almost a hundred pounds from her, replacing most of it with good muscle. The only places she hadn't lost much were in her face, which was still round and apple-cheeked, and in her breasts, which had stubbornly refused to shrink much. Her ass and hips were tight, her waist very slender. I made her at something around 40-24-36, and she was something else.

Me, I had a full head of hair, although it was uneven, hanging down the neck maybe an inch, and a full and pretty ragged beard of the same color. I always had a lot of body hair, but it was uneven; now I had hair on my hair—chest, arms, legs, you name it. I'd slimmed down and firmed up pretty good myself, although it was still the same old nose and mouth and eyes that peered back at me, maybe a little more worn and wrinkled. It was easy to see, though, why we wouldn't match the IDs Cranston had gotten. Our own relatives wouldn't recognize us now. I had a sinking feeling they would, sooner or later, though. I remembered that when I got out of Basic I looked almost this good, and I'd sworn to myself I'd keep it, but it hadn't lasted six months after I was free to do what I wanted again. I was a born self-abuser.

"Oh, Sam, this is
dy-no-mite!"
she squealed. "If I ever thought I
could
look this way I'da worked at it. I sure as hell ain't gonna let this go, no sir!" She turned to me. "You don't look so bad yourself, you know. Get that hair and beard trimmed up and you'll be the sexiest man in
any
of these worlds."

We examined the clothes. They'd only sent up one set each, but what could you expect from six-hour tailoring? Brandy's outfit was all tan or beige, and mostly soft calfskin lined with thin fur, maybe rabbit, that also served as trim. She had a pair of those Robin Hood boots like Jamie had, the kind where the tops are kind of folded down, although with thick but not real high heels; a matching dress that wasn't quite knee-length but was cut real loose; a pullover wool and cotton sweater dyed to match the rest; and a thin calfskin belt that was more ornament than necessary.

My outfit was more along the lines Jamie had worn, but was even more Robin Hoodish in being a real dark green. Except for the boots—which were leather and had the same kind of turned-down-top design but which had lower, flatter heels than Brandy's—mine was all cloth, mostly cotton it seemed, with pants, a pullover shirt that nonetheless had a low cut exposing some of my hairy chest, and a thin black leather belt that also wasn't really needed. There was some stretch, but those pants and that shirt were tight. If anybody in this world had discovered underwear, it was for strictly formal occasions, and even though the pants were reinforced in the crotch, no lady would ever have to guess about my sex or how big it was. It was crazy—I hadn't had any problem being stark naked, but I was more than a little embarrassed at this skintight business. They also didn't seem to have invented flys. I'd have to peel this sucker off to piss.

We were called to dinner and served by a staff dressed out of some old English movie with the double-buttoned uniforms and knee-length jerkins and high socks and all that, even white-powdered wigs, but we dined alone. After, the servants took us into separate small rooms off to one side, and we were given hot scented baths, which we badly needed, and I got the haircut and trim I needed, and got the countless snags out, not without pain, while Brandy got her hair shaped and trimmed. She mostly did it herself, she told me; they just didn't know how to handle her kind of hair.

Finally, we walked out on the cliffside patio and stared into the darkness while the sound of the surf hitting the rocky cliff far below engulfed us. It was not at all lit, except for some reflections from the candles and oil lamps inside, but it was just light enough to keep from killing yourself and not enough to spoil the stars.

"Sam," Brandy sighed, "we've come so far to here, and none of it seems real. I think of all of 'em, this seems the least real, includin' that Labyrinth thing. I almost feel out of place here. I mean, what's a low-class pair of jokers like us doin' in a place like this?"

I nodded and sighed. "Yeah, I think I know how you feel, babe. I don't know what's up now, or whether anything is real. I mean, we're not only on another world in a fancy place, but it's Lament Cranston's place, for heaven's sake!' This is sort of.out of our league, babe. We were back there playing sandlot ball and dreaming of making the minor leagues, while preparing to give up the game and get real jobs. Now we're in the majors, babe, but as utility men. Expendable and maybe useful. Don't kid yourself about the upper-class bit, though. You noticed this place? Even the
maids
got fourteen petticoats on, and the butlers could wait on the queen of England dressed like that. Us, they dress like Robin Hood and a B-western cowgirl. This may be fancy-made, hand-tailored peasant dress, but it's still peasant dress."

"Yeah, well, it's where we should be in this place, I guess. I know tomorrow they might serve us up for breakfast, but, right now, I just got no complaints. Hell, Sam, we never
did
have nothin' but each other, and that's what we got now." She paused a minute and looked back out into the darkness. "You know, when I started missin' them periods back in the Garden, I thought I was pregnant. That doctor says no, though. Says it was the food that did it, that I'll start gettin' 'em again. That's what made these bodies and your hair so right, you know."

I hadn't pressed that point when it was my turn, and I was interested. "You mean I'm going to lose it again?"

"Could be. Maybe not. Turns out that place was designed to grow special food that would do funny things to your chemistry. Not all by itself, but with exercise and sleep and all, it'd pep up your sex parts, change fat into muscle, get your hormones really flowing, and it was supposed to be more or less permanent. Painless perfection. Even protects against most diseases and promotes healin', he said. That's one of the byproducts of working for the Company, I think. You know how old he said Cranston was?"