03. The Maze in the Mirror (38 page)

"Partially. It caused a massive surge in both directions. Some came out of the substation entrance and caused all the problems, but that was mostly backwash, as it were. The main force was forward, as designed, and it fried the switch and surged along the main line faster than even the protective equipment could kick in. On its own, it would have been minimal, but the surge reached other sidings, ones we didn't know about, also prepared, and set them off, too. It was a massive energy wave, frying a lot of stations and a lot of switches and not incidentally a lot of people."

"But it didn't break out."

"Uh uh. That damned computer had it pretty well figured, just how much power it would release
and what direction it would take and what damage it would do. By the time it reached the Company siding it was strong enough to trigger all the protective seals and switches and then fry them, melt them down almost literally. It eventually shorted out two of the main regulators at the Zero wall. Not enough to cause permanent disruption, but enough to lower power levels to minimal operation for a long time to come. Maybe years, maybe longer. It's going to be a very long time before we can move large quantities of material in this sector, and for a fair amount of that time we'll be on our own and flying blind."

"Huh? What?"

"Sam-you know the Company world. You remember how massive the security was on that place, how it was overkill to the infinite degree. This stuff melted it down. The whole damned bypass, covered in a thick, smelly, harder-than-diamond substance, and without power. Since it was a bypass system power is still available, but we have no power back to the Company world and no contact and no switches. Sam, they're sealed in, along with, I might add, a number of other worlds and main stations as well along the path of this thing. Even with full power it'd take years to get back in there, and even then we'd need a lot of knowledge we don't have to find the weak point and punch back through. Knowledge that's locked in the main computers inside the Company world. Computers that no longer work because they were grid powered. The whole damned Company world is without power."

Sam's jaw dropped. "You mean-they're sealed in tight? Without any power, without any access to
the grid line? Well I'll be damned. . . ."

"God knows, when and if we ever get back in there, what we'll find," Markham continued. "I don't think
our
world, even this country, could get along without power. If everything suddenly shut down, if we were suddenly back to the Eighteenth Century, few of us would survive. We don't know how to farm in the old ways. We don't know how to get our food and store it and transport it without power and mobility. To survive on our own without communication, heat, anything. We aren't even built for that any more. A fair amount of the Third World would get along okay, but we'd be finished. Mass starvations, freezings, riots, you name it. And, Sam, the Company world doesn't
have
any Third World, and all its knowledge and advisers and all the how-to manuals and the rest were in their vast computer network that's now without power and probably one great cold lump. They can't even look it up."

Sam shook his head. "No wonder I got this treatment right out of a sickbed. In a sense, I'm the worst traitor to ever hit this operation. Good grief, I was the hand that killed G.O.D., Inc.!"

Markham gave a dry laugh. "Well, they got their wish, little good that it'll do them. The Company's too big for that, Sam. We're hurt, we're wounded, we've got real problems, probably for the rest of yours and my lives, but the Company's still here. An emergency Board composed of senior experienced managers has already been named, and without a native Company worlder on it. It's like a government, Sam. You can overthrow a government, even execute all the politicians, but so long as the civil service is intact it still runs. We're really
going to miss those centralized computers and their irreplaceable databanks, but we have access to a lot of computers ourselves and even if they each cover only one region or area we'll cope. Voorhes was right. So long as the Labyrinth survives, the Company survives."

Sam Horowitz sighed again. "You gonna untie me now, or execute me?"

"I'm going to untie you. Hell, Sam, you've got a job to do that we can help with."

"Brandy, you mean. Bill-all the data was in that case, and you said the house was destroyed."

Bill Markham grinned. "Yeah, but they make damned good cases, you know. And I want our Brandy back as much as you do, Sam. And, most of all, I want Carlos. I wish I knew for sure if Mancini and Yugarin really
were
in
that control room for the timing tests, but from what I saw we'd need their complete medical scans to identify them from the remains, and the only place they might be is in the Company's security computers."

"Or Kanda's and Pandross's little dream," Sam reminded him. "Right now, that damned thing is the most powerful computer in all creation." He yawned and stretched as one of the agents cut him loose, then groaned. "What I want first is a good meal and a decent sleep. Then I want to go see Dash while you find my burnt case. And after that-we'll see."

They said the setting was quite beautiful, although a bit archaic-looking, like something out of an old movie, with the great castle stuck atop the bluff overlooking the crashing sea. She, herself, didn't know because she couldn't see it. Since
they'd smashed her glasses taking her out of the house maybe-what?-weeks or months ago, she hadn't been able to see much of anything except big blurs.

It was getting harder and harder to have any sense of time at all. The setting was the same, the people were mostly the same, and the climate seemed warm and wet all the time.

She'd gotten to know her way around the Castle, as everybody called it, very well, at any rate. When the rule was that she was to be watched and prevented from harming herself, either accidentally or deliberately, but otherwise was not to be helped or aided in any way, you learned quickly.

In a way, it was sort of like going back to a kind of ugly existence after five years of a good dream. The fact that she'd been this route before toughened and sustained her. She had briefly considered suicide, but rejected it on two levels. One was that there was always a chance, however slim, of beating even this system and situation. She'd been down this far or farther before and had somehow squeaked clear in the end, and so long as there was any hope at all for beating it, even if it was a long time in coming as looked certain, she wasn't about to pack it in. The other level was more basic; killing herself would provide Carlos with a great deal of amusement, and she didn't want to give him the satisfaction. Worse was the fear she might botch it, and either cripple herself or give them even more excuse for their endless taunts. Without being able to see, she was just never sure who was around and what she could get away with.

Those little bastards with their nerve holds had put her out for the count during the raid on the
house. She was vaguely aware of being stuffed in a truck or ambulance or something and of eventually some kind of plane ride, but it had been remote, distant, like the fringes of a half-remembered dream.

Even long after the initial paralysis had worn off they'd kept her drugged and sedated. She had vague memories of eating and drinking and doing other stuff but it was distant and willowy, her mind out to lunch for that period. That was one reason why time was no longer meaningful; she had no way of knowing how long that initial period was.

They'd kept her that way for quite a while, then slipped her through into the Labyrinth at some long forgotten substation maybe in South America or Asia or someplace like that, where the Company security had a hole. When she had finally come to she'd been stark naked on a bed in this place with no clear memories of how or when she'd gotten here.

"So nice to have you back," she heard Carlos' mellow voice say to her. She had spent little time with him back then, but she would never forget him or his dark good looks and smooth Latin charm that could mask the ugly, monstrous soul inside of him. "Once I acquire something it is mine, and I dislike losing anything of mine. The fact that you and your husband put me to a lot of trouble and ruined a nearly perfect plan to do to the Company and its world what they so richly deserved only makes your return more satisfying."

"Why didn't you just kill me and get it over with?" she asked him.

"Killing is so-
permanent,"
he replied. "I prefer a more creative approach. Years ago the Company killed everything in my life I ever had, yet left me alive in a kind of personal Hell. When. I attempted to strike back at the ones who did that, you prevented me. Now I want you to feel helpless and impotent, cut off, as I do. I want you to know on a personal level what my kind of ache is, to hate so much that you would do anything to do to me what you so judged and condemned me for trying to do to those who harmed me. And then you will crumble, as hope vanishes and you snap, sinking mentally to the level I have already reduced you to physically, knowing all the while what is happening. When that happens you will be a living testimony to inspire the proper attitude in all those who work with me here. And this time you will be helpless as we strike the fatal blow."

She said nothing, but his words were causing her stomach to have fits.

"We must first come to a realization of your situation," he continued, watching her. "You are in my personal home, on a world that does not appear in the Company's charts, via a switch that does not even exist on the Company's records. Everyone here is mine. Not even my comrades can come here without my permission, and as my guests. Not that those here could not leave, but they do not wish to. I have-a system."

"Yeah, you got 'em all on your damned drugs."

"Very clever. But not the old kind, which were difficult to control. We have made much progress since then. I got the idea from a world I did business with, a world in which people are now born with an inability to replenish certain natural enzymes. From the cradle they must be given what they lack regularly or they go into withdrawal and
die. Their society is loyal, ordered, and obedient. From my studies of the viral-like agent with which you are so familiar from the past, I learned how to induce this condition in people not born that way. First we remove something essential, and then we give it back as a daily treatment. The combinations are infinite, so no two people have the same formulation. It must be made, uniquely, for each individual. Since only I know the codes for the formulations and cross-checks, everyone is very loyal and obedient to me."

"You may make me obedient, but there ain't no way you're ever gonna make me loyal," she retorted.

He laughed. "But that is the way I wish it. You see, almost everyone here is here because they are valuable to me and my organization. Security people, the staff here, maintenance, medical-you name it. Not to mention the scientists and technicians in my laboratories probing ever deeper into body and brain chemistry. Not you. You are simply one of my toys, a household item of furniture. For now, you have no other purpose than existence. You have already been treated, so you are- secure. I'm sure you know what that means."

She sighed, having expected it. "Yeah, I know."

"There are three main living floors and over sixty rooms in the Castle, as well as formal gardens in the back, pool and recreation area, that sort of thing. You have free reign of all the public areas, but will refrain from entering any private room unless taken there. I want you always on public view. Sleep where you wish, eat when you like. It will take you quite some time to get to know the place, but you have a nearly infinite amount of
that. The lower areas and laboratories are secured and off limits, but you will be prevented from entering them anyway. Be cooperative and obey your set of rules and you will avoid punishment. After the first few times with the electric whip or the shock gun you will not wish to be punished again."

She didn't like even the names of them.

"Now," he continued, "the rules. Your status here is no higher than, say, a pet in the house. You will keep out of the way. You will not interfere in anything. You will keep yourself clean and reasonably neat and will be told who to see and where to go to accomplish that. You will speak only when spoken to unless it is an emergency of some sort. As a sign of your status here you will wear no clothing at all. It is always either hot and dry or hot and wet here. You will be cooperative. If anyone here takes it into their head to fondle or feel you up, you will not only let them and not resist, you will convince them that you enjoy it. And if anyone has more in mind, you will do it with enthusiasm and accommodate their needs or wishes. You have no private quarters, or any quarters. When you are sleepy find a comfortable place in a public area and go to sleep. You will do no work, ask no favors, pry into any business or other activities nor ask any imprudent questions or exhibit curiosity, nor do any harm to anyone. Everyone understands this, and any infractions will be recorded and you will be sought out and punished. And we don't want to see any frowns, only nice, happy smiles. Any questions so far?"

She sighed. "No." He wanted to strip her of her dignity, have her parade helplessly around as an
object lesson, and reduce her to a kind of static hell. It showed just how his mind worked.

"Good. Now, once a day someone will come to you and give you the supplement you now require. Your own personal formulation, I remind you. No one else's would do you any good. We have a machine that dispenses them once a day for everyone. There are no reserves. I am sure you know how to give it to yourself. You had practice. The withdrawal is fully as bad as you remember it, and as lethal in the end. Remember that. And please do not think of harming yourself. Someone will always be watching-somewhere."

"You will never totally own me," she said evenly, and meant it.

"Oh, I will, and I'll know when. When you finally and totally give up, surrender. When you then ask me, beg me, for a better drug, a stronger drug, that will take your mind away, then it will be complete. And depending on my mood, perhaps I will give it to you, and watch you administer it to yourself. And it will happen-sooner or later."