03. The Maze in the Mirror (20 page)

It was about fifteen minutes when Voorhes answered, voice only of course, and he sounded surprised.

"I thought Maria would handle any requirements of yours," he noted.

"Then she didn't go to see you, then. You have any idea where she snuck out to while I was out?"

"Probably reported in at home."

"Uh huh. And who runs that world?"

"Why, uh, they are allies in our cause . . ."

"Can the bullshit!" I told him. "Straight answers or what the hell am 1
here for?"

He sighed. "All right. Technically it's Yugarin's, but Carlos spends more time with them than Gregory does. What's the difference? Neither would be there now. Too exposed."

"But their people in high places would be there, so that puts me a little on notice. Thanks."

"Is that all this was for? This was very inconvenient."

I smiled. I wonder what his reaction would have been if I told him just exactly what I suspected- and what I knew? I would have to drop some crumbs and hints, but for the first time since I walked into this I was feeling like I had some control of events.

"I have discovered everything it is possible to discover sitting here in a passive situation rooting through files," I told him. "If I can't follow up my leads then there's no purpose to going on."

"You tell Maria and she will get whatever you need," Voorhes told me. "Go anyplace, ask any questions."

I shook my head. "Uh uh. I'm not Nero Wolfe, and even if I was I couldn't do it that way if I didn't have my Archie with me."

"What?"

"Never mind. Look, Voorhes, this isn't a problem in ethics or in physics. It's not something you can just dump facts into a computer and push 'enter' and come up with the correct answer. If it was, you wouldn't need somebody like me. You'd just have a thousand Marias gathering every fact and asking every question and put 'em in your machine and-
poof!-
guilty party, motive, opportunity, method, all neat and tidy. Maria might be very useful, but she's no investigator. She comes from a world where they don't even need cops, only a more subtle and sophisticated version of the Spanish Inquisition. You're a historian. You did lots of research. Probably spent lots of time in huge libraries with tons of books and documents and the like."

"Yes, so?"

"Why bother? Why not just hire a bunch of kids off the street-any street-so long as they could read and write and tell 'em to go in to that library and find everything you need?"

Voorhes hesitated before replying, thinking this over. "I see your point. They wouldn't have the foggiest notion where to look, or what they were actually looking for. Without my training, they probably wouldn't know a major discovery when they found it. Point taken, Mister Horowitz. But they're not going to expose themselves, even to
you, for a broad fishing expedition. Some would as soon kill you as look at you."

"Well, I'm fishing for sure," I told him, "but I'm not fishing blind. As yet, I have no motive, but I'm warm in a number of areas. I think I might be warm enough to draw some attention of my own."

"You
do
know something," the rebel leader muttered, surprised but sincere. "What did you find that we missed, Horowitz? And why aren't you coming out with it?"

I was ready for that. "Because I don't have a motive," I told him sincerely, "and without one it makes no sense at all. And if I revealed what I knew, even to you, even to Maria, there's a very good chance that I might be doing your murderer's work for him. As I understand it, I'm working for all of you, collectively, as a client. I can not and will not explain my steps every minute of the time when I might be briefing the very person or people I'm trying to catch. The only way to safeguard my clients is not to explain or demonstrate until I have every piece of the puzzle it's possible to have, and then only when I have you all together, so no one can pull anything. I require complete freedom to investigate and complete cooperation from everybody involved. You tell them that. You tell 'em that they play the game my way or there are sure as hell gonna be more killings no matter how deep they hide, because sooner or later they have to come out. Your organization is too management-oriented, Voorhes. If you all keep in your holes, you won't have an organization, you won't have an operation, you won't have a master plan. You'll be retired for good."

I gave him as long as he needed to digest
that. Finally he said, "You don't think that we can manage through communications and go-betweens?"

"No, and you know you can't, either. Nobody but you eight has a real emotional stake in this thing, a commitment. The rest are just plain crooks. You leave them on their own they either have to be people like Maria with no possible initiative, in which case nothing gets solved, or they'll take your big organization away from you. You try it with steady communications and live agents and those communications and those agents will lead your killer right to each of you. Unless, of course, it's you, Voorhes."

"What?"

"You're immune, which means you're not a probable target. They all know where you are. They can't get to you but they don't have to. There's only one switching cube. Anybody who knows that cube and the Labyrinth system could blow your switch mechanism from the cube side, leaving you trapped forever where you are. The fact that they haven't shows either that you're involved in this or that you're not a target-yet. Now, you put this on to the other seven, and you tell them that I need to talk to each and every one of them. Their terms-strip-searches and blindfolds permitted if they want it that way. But I need to talk to each one, and I need certain questions answered by each and every one of them. Give me the freedom to do your job and I'll solve your damned case. Don't, and I'm going to sit here, relax, and wait until the next murder."

Voorhes sighed. "Very well, I'll put it to them just that way. In fact, I'll send this recording on the open access net for them to pick up. I can do
nothing else. What level of agreement, or cooperation, you get from them is up to each of them."

"Fair enough," I told him. "In fact, who says yes and who says no and who is straight and who's not with me will be a great deal of information in and of itself."

I signed off, feeling quite pleased with myself. Maria wasn't quite so amused. "Do you always speak like that to people who would just as soon have you shot?" she asked me, a bit incredulous.

"Why not? They intend to shoot me sooner or later anyway. Right now, they need me. Either they do it my way or they shoot me now and try somebody else, who'll give 'em the same ultimatum if he or she's any good and won't learn a damned thing out of fear or hesitancy if they're not. Besides, if we don't get out of here and exposed, how the hell is our murderer going to contact me?"

She looked startled. "You expect the murderer to contact you?"

I nodded. "Sure. And when he does, I don't want you shooting him or trying anything fancy, either. Getting him won't solve their problem or mine, first because he wouldn't be taken alive and so we wouldn't know if he was a lone wolf or a part of a conspiracy within this conspiracy, and also because he's too smart for anybody to be sure that they have him when they have him. You just come along for the ride and make sure nobody does anything nasty to me during the investigation, and I'll show you how the game is played."

So, anyway, they bought it, of course. Yeah, all of 'em. Which of them could turn me down without having the rest look at them funny? Besides, they
were in their fortresses, the kind of places they prepared for when the heat was on. If they didn't feel safe there, then there was noplace they could really feel safe, and if that was the case why hole up in a bunker in the first place?

Of course, arranging for visits took some careful planning on their part, so I was gonna see 'em in the order they decided to be seen, and that put Quin Tarn at the top of the list.

I got to admit I half expected to be contacted the first time I was allowed back into the Labyrinth. I had to figure that Pandross was around someplace and that he was following my footsteps nicely and that he would know when I was loose and available. Why did I think I'd hear from him? Easy- because I was the only guy in this with no ax to grind and so I was the only one he could trust. When he failed to get me in that raid on the place, he made very sure that there was a strong enough voice presence that I'd know he was alive, so he wanted me to know. I had to figure that I was dealing with at least an equal in this business, maybe better than that, and I think he was counting on that as well.

As to whether or not he was alone, I couldn't guess. It was true that they'd run for cover as soon as he was "murdered," as we might as well, but then they got together and finally decided to include me in on this and plotted their little operation against my substation. He knew about it, so either he had ways of tapping into the communications net they were using, which was possible and even likely, or he had somebody from that hookup tell him all the gory details. Since they'd changed the security codes on the master computers and redid the whole system after he died, I had a hunch they'd use different communications means than the one he'd set up for their electronic meets as well, which made an ally all the more likely. Still, if the guy was good, maybe the best, he might have planned on that and been able to crack the system.

It was a real eye-opener to go through the Labyrinth their way, too. I knew the paths between the Company world and mine fairly well, having travelled them often and looked at the scenery out of the cubes, so I knew we were staying in the general neighborhood and I knew where the Company switch points were. It was kind of impressive to approach one, then veer off into one of those worlds and almost immediately back into a small substation that led to a long and dark section- and when we came out again it was at some unmanned Company substation once more and when we went back onto the main line, well, we were past the switch.

No wonder Carlos and company could stalk up and down and in and out without being spotted. They seemed to have bypassed all the main switches in. the most heavily travelled areas and even created effective private junctions between the main and branch lines using their own automated equipment.

Maria, of course, kept her eyes firmly on me inside the tunnel, if only because for most of it we were in the main Company line and were passing all sorts of people and near-people going this way and that on Company business. I probably wasn't quick enough to make a break she couldn't cure, but in some cases, when we were passing fair
numbers of people, it wouldn't have taken much effort to either signal them I was in trouble or just jump Maria in their presence. The rule was you apprehended anybody doing that and called for Security. Yeah, I could have gotten away and probably gotten her taken, but I didn't want to. That wouldn't save Brandy or Dash or the Labyrinth and it would cause my "fee" to be forfeited as well-and goodbye some world, maybe mine. In fact, I figured the hostage world
was
mine, since that would explain why Voorhes didn't care if their network was compromised and people taken there.

It wouldn't matter if they were purple and had pink fur and wolf snouts; so long as I was convinced they'd really detonate the place, and I was, I wasn't gonna blow their world for any temporary grandstanding. Besides, I had other interests here of a more, personal nature.

Tarn's hideaway, like the others would be, I suspected, was strictly rebel territory. We got off on a hot desert world which didn't even have a Company substation, just a weak point strong enough to come through, and were met there by a couple of tough-looking guys out of
Lost Horizon
or something. You know-
big
guys, with tough Oriental faces and mean eyes, dressed in yak fur or whatever and looking really overdressed for the hot desert. They also had some very fancy high-tech sidearms that showed they really meant business and hadn't just wandered in from the wrong side of the Himalayas or something.

They had fur clothing for us as well, right down to fur-lined boots, parkas, and the rest, and they were a fairly close fit. Maria looked decidedly
uncomfortable and out of place in her outfit, and not all that certain about it, and I figure I looked like a moth-eaten panda, but, what the hell.

With that we travelled maybe half a mile, which was all I could stand in that outfit-it had to be a hundred in the shade there, if there had been any shade-and then to a nicely hidden little substation generator. It was pretty obvious that this was a large weak point, a sort of desert Bermuda Triangle or something, and they'd taken advantage of it to build their own short line to somewhere.

It felt great to be in the silence and dead air of the Labyrinth once more, even if it was a hell of a lot darker and not nearly as comfortable as the Company line. We didn't have far to go, and when we exited it was into a cave or something and it was chilly and damp even through the clothing. I just knew I was gonna get pneumonia on this case.

You needed strong flashlights and a knowledge of the place to get out of there, and these guys had both. We followed, and Maria began to complain. "It is so
cold!"

I smiled. "This is nothing. You ought to see what it's like back home where I came from."

No wishing was needed; when we finally broke into daylight, we were suddenly struck with about the bitterest cold I can ever remember together with maybe a twenty mile an hour wind. It wasn't much worse than the dead of winter in central Pennsylvania, but I hadn't been out in it in several days and where home was wasn't like a mile in the air. This sure was, and it was not only tiring very fast but you didn't have to go far to feel like you could look down further than you could look up.

The guys hooked heavy rock-climbing ropes and
clips to us and we started off. For
me, I
was just hoping that the ropes were just for our safety, not for climbing. Still, it was so stark, remote, and cold I expected to pass Ronald Colman at any moment.