02. The Shadow Dancers (43 page)

"I always loved you just the way you were," he told me seriously. "I never asked for anything else."

"Then piss on 'em all. If they don't take this coarse, foul-mouthed black bitch the way she is, I don't want 'em. If I ain't learned nothin' else, I sure as hell learned that. Look what that kinda shit caused here. I bet that damned Chairman of the Board shits just like everybody else, just in a gold pot. Hell, them highbrows kept makin' them remarks but we impressed the hell outta them, too! Just bein' what we are and doin' what we do best. Better'n anybody!"

"I don't think we have to impress people when we get home," he said real casual. "I think people have to impress
us."

"Huh?"

"Well, even putting aside the post-tax nearly four million we still have in the bank for the Vogel job-you remember how I started that summation? A wager. A fee, if you will. If I lost, I paid with my life. But I'm still here."

"What in hell did you
win?"

"A retainer, more or less, with fringe benefits. They pay us a flat fee, adjustable for inflation, every month for the rest of our natural lives for the
right
to consult us on Company business. We don't lose the retainer if we refuse the job. That only gives 'em the right to talk. The fringes include medical care, miracle pills and drugs, and everything else that the Center can provide to their own people. We also have unlimited access to the Labyrinth. If we want to get away from it all, we have an infinity of choices."

"Sam-how much of a retainer."

"Well," he sighed, "it starts at ten thousand dollars a month. Of course, it'll come from the Company so we'll have to pay taxes, but it's filtered through a number of foundations and tax gimmicks to minimize things. I figured if we let the foundation let us live in one of its houses and use its cars and stuff we ought to be able to get by for a few years, letting that four million just roll over and multiply."

"Sam, that's over a hundred thousand a year!"

"Sure. Plus expenses. The consultative services of the highest-regarded private eyes in a few thousand known worlds is cheap at that price."

"Oh, my God . . ."

Well, that's most of the good news, anyways. The rest was that the Center's microsurgery techniques was so good that reversin' my sterilization was a breeze for them, though I had a long waitin' period before they was sure my system could take it without hurtin' no kid.

We got to thinkin' 'bout adoption, but never followed up on it. Sam wanted to adopt an Asian baby. I think he just wanted to see the looks on teachers' faces when both parents show up for the PTA, not to mention the bar or bas mitzvah. Oh, yeah-I had to take the instructions over from the start, but now any kid I have will be born of an official Jewish mother. We took a trip to Israel to celebrate, then went down into Kenya and Tanzania and Zimbabwe and Malawi, too. I got to admit it was a charge bein' in places where black folks run the whole thing and people was starin' sideways at
Sam.

I ain't gonna give you the good vibes jive, though. It took almost a year and a half, longer than the damned case, to get me to where both my mind and body worked reasonably well. I still have dreams of them super highs and periods sometimes when I kinda blank out and flash back to feelin'
the bad old mellow times. My eyes got so bad I can't see the end of my nose without glasses, and I need the kind of special high-tech glasses they ain't invented here yet to see reasonable at all. I can't drive 'cause every once in a while when I see a ripplin' effect or some shimmerin' colors I kinda trip out for a few seconds to maybe a minute. I can read fine with the glasses and do, but I gotta keep from concentratin' too hard on any one image, whether it's a printed page or a paintin' or even a big unmovin' object like a parked car, or it kinda does a flip in my head and I'm seein' everything backwards, like in a mirror, sometimes for up to an hour. Sometimes when I stub my toe or hit my head or somethin', instead of pain I get a pleasure rush.

And, every now and then, I get these episodes, as the docs call 'em. Like suddenly gettin' super turned on for no reason at all and usually at the worst possible time and situation. Or I'll get up and put on makeup and jewelry for no real reason and come down and not realize I didn't put no clothes on till somebody points it out, or we'll be eatin' out and I'll pour ketchup on my ice cream and eat it without noticin'. I didn't get away scot-free; that damned thing did some damage up there. I'm gettin' control of the worst of it, though, and Sam's been super supportive.

Then there's my twin, only she ain't so much my twin no more. She didn't have no Sam or nothin', so there was no way she could kick the stuff. She controls her own juice supply now, but she decided that she knowed one thing best and made a deal. She's back workin' for Fast Eddie Small in
that
world, on a fifty-fifty split, still packin' 'em in. They sent Mukasa's brains to the brain laundry, and now he's happily workin' in the labs at that juice leper colony of theirs. His poor wife and
her
lover are there, too, as are the whole set of them from the exploiter team. Hell, their top folks are in charge there.

They still ain't found Carlos, which worries everybody, but they did find forty-two of the fifty shadow dancers in a safe world stop, all with their throats cut. What he's doin' with the other eight I don't want to know. We can't always be savin' their damned world. The cost's been too high, even though the rewards are good. Ioyeo was right about one thing, though; that society and that Company ain't gonna change 'less it's forced to, and the longer they don't the more loyeos and Mukasas and Jamispurs they make. Dakani's still got the security post, but also still with "actin'" in front of the name, but he's pretty secure now. He has old Aldrath Prang outside in the Labyrinth and the field seein' how they can keep the kind of computerized foolery from happenin' again. He was by not long ago, and sat and watched our tapes of every Thin Man movie and every Raymond Chandler film ever made.

The way they worked it for us was that Mayar Eldrith got us a Company job. It's well disguised and a new post, but it's one they needed for years. It comes with a two-hundred-and-forty-four-acre estate in central Pennsylvania near Bellefonte and State College, a manor house with fourteen furnished rooms, huge livin' room and fireplace, an indoor hot tub, and an outdoor pool, plus horse stables. Most of it is used for contract farmin' - the trust which is the Company cover here leases out the land to local farmers, mostly for corn. The horses are part of a deal with Penn State's agricultural college and they mostly take care of them, though I'm learnin' to ride a horse and not doin' too bad at it. That leaves our ten grand a month for groceries and livin' expenses and a few luxuries, like the Mercedes sports car and my minks and jewels.

See, in a wooded patch up part of a hillside on the property is this big, round, concrete-lined pit with a fence around it. Seems like the lock on that fence been gettin' broke a lot, posted or not. We see that it ain't used unless it's supposed to. I guess you could call us substationmasters; at least, this one's needed somebody to oversee it for a long time. Makes gettin' visitors and goin' visitin' a breeze, too. We even got a number of local friends now. The area's too cold for too long, but the folks in general are real nice and friendly with none of the usual hangups. It's the university what does it. They don't know nothin' 'bout no Company or Labyrinth, and we intend to keep 'em in the dark.

Well, the docs at the Center finally give me the go-ahead, and it didn't take long at all to get me pregnant. I didn't want to put it off no more, and if this one don't make me swear off it we might have more. We really do love kids,
and, just as important, we need something more than just each other to center our lives on. Sam's got his ailments like I got mine, but with the Center's help and some commitment on our part there's no reason we couldn't live to be a hundred or more if we wanted to. But in case one of us didn't, there's gonna be at least one more reason to keep on livin' and doin'. It sure done in the last of my hopes of keepin' my old good looks, though. I'm puttin' on weight like mad and I ain't in no mood to take it off. Sam ain't gonna love me no less fat or thin, so why kill myself? I'm already married-for keeps. If that fat bothers them jocks joggin' up and down the road come snow or sun, then tough shit.

Ain't nothin' I get more of a charge out of than walkin' arm in arm with Sam down College Avenue to a restaurant or over to the university for a show or up to a movie, with my diamond earrings and seven months' belly stickin' out from under my mink coat. I just wanna shout to people. "
I got Sam in love with me and millions of bucks and the acclaim of a people who routinely walk between the worlds and you don't! Eat your hearts out!"

We got a few disagreements, of course. I was kinda hopin' for fraternal twins and name 'em Nick and Nora, but I know the odds against that. If it's a boy, Sam wants to name him Dashiell. It ain't bad, but any kid who's gonna start life half black and all Jewish don't need nothin' more on his shoulders. Almost in retaliation I threatened if it was a girl to name her Mignon or Agatha, after some pretty good mystery writers of
my
sex. We'll find compromises someplace. After all,
I
get to fill out the birth certificate.

One thing we did agree on, and it was easy. We was in Philadelphia closin' out the last of our business there and we walked by this mall pet store window and in it was a small wire-haired terrier puppy we just couldn't resist.

We named him Asia.