03. The Maze in the Mirror (18 page)

Getting the place in shape also wasn't much of a problem. With Maria's help, we picked up from mysterious crews that asked no questions a bundle of things, including a laundry list of stuff I demanded-including, of course, real laundry. It was pretty practical, basic stuff but it fit me, showing they'd done their homework. Dirty stuff just got thrown in a box and stuck outside; somebody seemed to pick it up and drop it back clean with a speed and efficiency I wished my own laundry had.

While Maria got the place clean and livable, I worked with the two crates of security gear I had requested. To be truthful, I needed maybe a tenth of what I'd ordered and some of the stuff I ordered I knew only because I'd seen it somewhere and knew it would be logical in a security apparatus. I just didn't want any of them to take a look at my tools and deduce my exact security setup from my parts list. This way they'd be guessing, and they could never be sure they had it all or that something hidden someplace wasn't gonna come out and bite them.

We also got two reasonable if not great cots with bedding, a porta-john (in which I stuck some really fine looking electronic gear that blinked and occasionally buzzed but otherwise did nothing-I had fun just thinking of anybody trying to go to the John in there, though, Maria included), a portable kitchen unit with water tank, some decent food and drink, and all the comforts of high-class camping. I also got a desk, a set of normal office supplies, and a Series 16000 Company terminal plugged into their network, not the Company's, although I discovered we had a lot of databases in common. It wasn't until I went to work on that sucker that I realized just how much the Company had been compromised.

Still, that one wide open room meant that Maria and I were gonna get to know each other
real
well.

And then, as promised, came the files on the eight remaining suspects, along with a wall viewer and data files that interfaced to the 16000, which was set up for interactive voice communications and could answer my questions within the limits of its knowledge. With that, we could settle in and see just who and what we might be dealing with.

The first guy was Quin Tarn, but he was no Irishman. He was Asiatic, built like a pro wrestler, a martial arts expert and a fellow who trained every day by smashing granite with his hands and feet. He wasn't exactly the kind of guy I wanted to meet or know, and I wasn't the least curious about whether he was bald for real or shaved every day nor how he could move his massive head without a neck. The martial arts bit alone put him high on the immediate list, but the fact that he was only five six in spite of his weight and bulk lowered him a bit. Somehow I couldn't see this guy in high heels, not even boots.

"Do you have a voice sample?" I asked the computer. "If so, play it and also play one for each subsequent subject as they come up."

"Complying," the computer responded. It had a voice like an insufferable British snob and I already disliked it.

Tarn's image went into motion, and he was clearly talking to someone out of "camera" (or whatever they used) range.
"No
tai quart su yang,"
he said, or something like that.

"Nothing in English?" I asked the computer.

"He is not on record as speaking English," the computer responded. "However, it is fairly easy to hypno-teach any language necessary."

I nodded. "Can you synthesize the voice, then?" I asked it. "Use all the elements of speech patterns to create an English sentence he might utter?" I had already disqualified the guy as Gravel Voice, but that only excluded one mystery.

"Complying."

Tarn's image moved, although now it looked like a very badly dubbed Italian movie, the words having no resemblance to what his lips were doing and, for that matter, no relation to what
he
was doing, either.

"The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy blue dog!" he said forcefully.

Oh, well. His high tenor alone told me why he probably had built up all those muscles and had that look about him. He had an odd, high voice,
but nobody, and I mean
nobody,
was gonna laugh at somebody who looked like that.

"Was Tarn in favor of the project to destroy the Company from the start, and without reservation?" I asked the computer.

"He argued neither for nor against nor took any part in any debate," the computer responded. "All he did was vote for it when the vote was called."

I nodded. O.K., that said something.

"Who did he lose, if anybody, when his world blew?"

"Two wives and six children, youngest three, oldest thirteen," the computer told me.

My god!
I
thought, reflecting on my own feelings when Dash had been kidnapped.
No wonder they are so callous about everybody else! If they'd murdered Dash, I would have been out only for their hides and I'd live for it.
It put some perspective on them, anyway.

"What was his profession?"

"Mineralogist," the computer replied. "Specifically an expert in precious gems."

O.K., that fit. Big jewels were a very common trading item and very useful no matter what world you were in if you wanted to set things up from scratch, and I'd seen places on the Company world where even the doors were so jewel-encrusted they'd be enough to retire for forty lifetimes if you could have heisted them. A guy like Tarn would be very useful when setting up and financing a new takeover operation. He could also introduce big and valuable gems onto the market to turn into cash without arousing a lot of suspicion.

"Next. We'll come back to all of them later."

The next one I'd never met, never seen, but very
much wanted to meet and preferably in a dark alley. He was five eleven, with dark, handsome Latin features and burning black eyes, but as ruggedly handsome as you could imagine. Even Maria, I noted, studied him with inordinate attention. I tended to hate any guy who looked like that with so evident a lack of care, but in his case it was more than doubled.

"Doctor Carlos Augusto Montagne-Echevia," the computer said. "A doctor of research pharmacology recruited right out of graduation, and, as such, the youngest of the group. He is fluent in the nine most common languages, including both English and Mandarin. Unmarried, something of a radical in university, he nonetheless was third oldest in a family of eleven and the first to ever reach university, let alone graduate with a doctorate. All of his family was wiped out, of course, including his oldest sister and his three week old godson, her baby. He wholeheartedly endorsed the plan in the meeting and was its most fervent supporter."

That was interesting. It meant that he hadn't come up with the plan, either. Then again, for a pharmacologist, even a brilliant and hate-filled radical one, the drug thing was more his type of scheme anyway. Still, you could sure see how he could almost count on Mukasa's mistress and go-between to fall for him. He just took it for granted.

His image went into motion. "There will have to be more production," he said in accented but excellent English. "We can not meet our schedule with what you have been putting out."

Well, that was it for Carlos, but at least the words
were his, and his voice was as smooth and romantic as you figured it would be. I had the feeling that he never had to yell; there was a controlled undercurrent in his tone that implied absolute menace to whoever he was talking to. He was an interesting personality, and I was happy to keep him on my prime list even if I couldn't see him as Gravel Voice, either. He was the right height, and he didn't seem to be the kind of guy to want to end this. He was so filled with hate he wanted to go on and on and on, and he was both bright enough and nervy enough to bump off Pandross in his lair, too.

Considering the way
I
felt about him, I could see Voorhes' point in taking me over Brandy. At least I was able to consider other suspects, although no matter what else happened I wanted some dealings with dear old Carlos before this was done.

"How did Carlos feel about the group selecting me for this investigation?" I asked the computer.

"Doctor Montagne was the one who suggested you, and pressed for you against opposition. He also worked out the plan which brought you here."

Uh huh. I figured as much. Carlos' main problem was that he'd go from Philadelphia to New York by way of Timbuktu and the South Pole. His plots were always so needlessly complex that they were bound to unravel.

Unfortunately, that made him less a suspect here. Taking out the security chief in such a clever and essentially direct way just wasn't his style.

"Gregory Yugarin," the computer said, putting up a picture of Rasputin. Well, maybe not, but he was a Slavic type for sure, and he had wild, unmanageable-looking black hair and one of those long but scraggly beards that showed a total lack of
attention. "Six feet two, forty-nine years old, and a Doctor of Geography; he is an expert in mass transportation systems," the computer added. "He is known as a loner type with no family ties or background on the record. Extent of loss is therefore unknown. Speaks six languages and nine dialects but is not on record as an English speaker. It was Doctor Yugarin who researched and deduced the vast majority of inactive Labyrinth stations and lines and established the network for movement in the main system. His comrades consider him totally trustworthy but something of a mystery. He is not a social man. He was, however, the one who came up with the plan now underway and the one who called the meeting."

Yugarin's image came to life, this time again the Italian movie type, and he said, "My name is Gregory Ilych Yugarin and I am a geographer."

The height was more than enough and the voice-well, it could have been Gravel Voice, particularly if he was using a translation module, but I had the impression from the tape that old Gravelly was less guttural and more, well, Oriental, somehow. Still, while physically the most likely suspect so far, he had the least motive if my hunch was correct. He got the idea, he called the meeting, and he'd gotten his way. Unless he was working both sides of the street with a plot of his own, it didn't make sense.

"Valintina Mendelez," the computer continued, putting up a picture of a breathtaking beauty on a beach someplace wearing only the bottom of a string bikini and sun glasses and needing nothing else. Gad! Was she
stacked!
She was dark, even discounting the suntan, with that peculiar blend of ethnic features that had gone into creating the Brazilian race. Maria, in fact, had many of the same characteristics but, while my initial reaction to her had been as a tropical beauty, this Mendelez put Maria and almost anybody else to shame.

"Age forty-five, five foot seven, botanist, specialist in rain forest plant biochemistry. Brilliant, had worked with her husband in the Amazon area, but had dropped out of university to have two children. Her husband and the children were back for a visit to the home world when the breakout and conflict occurred, and were destroyed when the world was. She is described as having become hedonistic, without any morals, mercy, or other value systems. She can be quite pleasant but will kill without hesitation, even mass murder, and indulges in experimentation on humans, masking her intellect and coldness with what you would call a 'bimbo' persona. Speaks six languages, including English. She was opposed to the plan when proposed and argued against it, but later gave in after she saw the majority favored it."

Interesting. "On what grounds did she oppose it?" I asked.

"On the grounds that it did not induce sufficient suffering on the part of the Company and its race," the computer replied. "Voice sample."

The image came alive. "Hi, Victor!" she squealed and waved to somebody out of sight. "So glad you could come." It was a high, breathless, Marilyn Monroe type voice with just the right amount of exotic Portuguese accent. Naturally the looks had been preserved by the kind of techniques I myself knew so well, but the image of Monroe as Latin porn queen was indelible, right to
that full head of blonde hair.

"Why if she is a leader of the revolution does she not do something about her gross malformations?" Maria asked, in a tone that wasn't catty but serious. I could see that my Watson and I had seriously different ideas of reality.

"Cultural gap," I responded. "She looks and sounds and acts like that because it is attractive to a large number of people, particularly men."

She certainly was the kind to have motive in this-if they were going to shut everything down it would take away the only reason she had for still going on. An egocentric, gorgeous psychopath, she might object to having to settle in to one world and lose a lot of that power and maybe the means of preserving that beauty. She was short, but if she wore really high heels she might make it, and certainly the injection as the fatal weapon was up her alley. There were lots of Amazonian poisons that would kill very quickly and yet break down beyond analysis in a very short time.

The only trouble was, I had to assume that Pandross was at least as competent as I was or they wouldn't have lasted this long. Particularly if I knew her, and knew she'd opposed the plan, I'm not sure I'd have turned my back on her if the two of us were ever anyplace together with nobody else around.

Still, I didn't underestimate her. Anybody who deliberately made themselves that conspicuous obviously had no problems making themselves-look very inconspicuous indeed when they wanted to.

"Salvatore Mancini, fifty-two, five feet ten inches tall, a physicist," the computer went on, showing a picture of a guy almost straight out of
The Godfather,
any part, with drooping moustache, craggy face, graying hair, and a bit of a pot belly, but looking about as Sicilian as Hollywood thinks they look. "Mancini was a fierce nationalist as well as having an enormous extended family of his own, and thus took the destruction of his world very hard indeed. More than that, he took it personally. Although a doctor of physics and a specialist in high energy storage and control, Mancini still came from an area where family and clan were all-important and revenge is obligatory, the price of the soul's salvation. There is no indication that he is particularly religious but his thoughts and patterns were shaped by his inseparable ancestral religion and culture. He was perfectly willing to go along with the plan and raised no serious objections. In fact, it appears that Yugarin consulted with him in its formulation and that his support was a foregone conclusion."