One thing Bill Markham drove into my head was
that long string of numbers for home. I had some trouble
pullin’ ’em out, but they felt and sounded right when I
faced the switcher.
“Thuteen, twenny-nine, two, stroke sev’n,” I
managed.
The switcher checked. “You are authorized transit to that
world,” she said. She was one of them that really needed a
shave and a haircut. “Proceed straight on and I will autoexit
you.”
“Any ways I can git a word sent up to Aldrath
Prang?” I asked her. I wanted some insurance.
“Executor Aldrath Prang has been relieved of all duties in
security,” she told me. “I can connect you to Security
General if you like.” Aldrath fired! This was goin’ along much faster
than I thought. “Uh, no thank you, ma’am. It be kinda
personal.” And I walked straight ahead, and five
cubes later walked out into a mess of broke-down concrete
surrounded by a high wall. It was a real mess down there, and I was
glad it was daylight. It looked from the droppin’s and shit
that things lived down there I didn’t wanna meet.
There was this rickety old ladder, and I climbed it to the top
and found myself out in the woods with just this pit or well or
whatever it was there, surrounded by a fence with barbed wire all
’round it. There was a gate with a big padlock on it, though,
and there was only one thing to do. I took out the gun, prayed it
was still loaded, and shot square at the lock. It kinda ricocheted
around and away without smashin’ the lock like it always does
in the movies, but when I pulled the lock came free and I could get
outta the gate.
The next question was, where was I and was I in the right world
after all? It still looked like Pennsylvania, which made
sense—I was on the Pennsylvania track and hadn’t really
been switched, just told to go straight ahead—but it
wasn’t any territory I knew.
I tried to find a clear spot, then looked around at the horizon.
Nothin’ much to see. A farm or somethin’ off one way,
not much else. Every time we used the damned Labyrinth before it
always dumped us at the Company in Oregon where we didn’t
wanna be and I kinda expected the same thing. This time, though,
they’d stuck me at the State College area substation which
they didn’t use much and wasn’t manned. First time I
actually ever wanted to be in Oregon and I was here!
I listened, and heard the sound of traffic off in the distance.
Well, that was somethin’—a road. Someplace along there
there just had to be a phone. Clutchin’ my shoulder
bag, I made my way through the woods and down the mountainside
toward the road.
Things opened up considerable after a while, and I was
lookin’ out over green fields and farmland down to a snaky
little road with a fair amount of traffic on it. I started down,
and was halfway across the open field before I suddenly remembered
I was stark naked. It didn’t bother me none but it sure would
attract a whole lot more attention than I wanted and I didn’t
want to get picked up and thrown in no jail while they charged me
and checked me out. I sat down in the field and checked what
I’d chucked into the shoulder bag. Thing was, I’d had
time to unpack at the lodge and I hadn’t really been
thinkin’ too good when I made my run for it. I was lucky to
have thought of the bag at all.
The only thing I could find was a pair of spike-heeled shoes,
not the best for walkin’, and the real tight slinky metallic
blue dress that matched them that I’d worn to dinner. There
was also a topless string bikini lodged in a side pocket that
I’d missed, but somehow that didn’t seem none too
practical. Well, that dress was knee-length, real low cut, and had
them slits in the side that left no doubt I wasn’t
wearin’ nothin’ under it, but at least it was legal. I
also found a small compact, a lipstick, a wide-toothed comb, an
emery board, and a small bottle of spray perfume.
That and the long golden pierced earrings I generally kept on
was my sole worldly goods.
I got over to a clump of bushes and sat down to see about
gettin’ it on, and suddenly I felt an overwhelming urge and
need to sleep. I knowed I’d been on the go a lot and needed
it, but not now. It was the juice, of course, makin’ me do
what it decided I had to no matter what, and even though I fought
it and didn’t want to, the next thing I knew it was much
later, and the bright sun that had been on my right comin’
down was now on my left. I cussed and got up. Not havin’ a
watch there wasn’t no way to tell the time, but the usual
sleep was between eight and ten hours. If it was maybe eight when I
conked out, it was probably ’bout five now. I looked out at
the road and there was a fair amount of traffic goin’ the
opposite way, which checked out. I didn’t know what day or
month it was ’cept it was still warm; time didn’t run
at exactly the same rate in any of the worlds, so all I could know
for sure was that it was summer here. Trouble was, I didn’t
even know the year. I’d been like ten months in
Siegel’s world, but how much time had passed here in the
meantime? Might be a couple of years, and, then again, it might be
only May or June here.
I was hungry and sure to get more so, but I didn’t have no
way to feed myself so that was one thing I had to push off.
Wouldn’t get no food or phone sittin’ here, though, so
I squeezed into the dress and, in spite of everything and I guess
out of habit, took time to comb my hair, put on fresh lipstick, and
a little makeup and even spray a little perfume on. Well, it
weren’t just vanity and habit; there was only one way I was
gonna get fed and get where I was gonna go.
I stuck the shoes back in the bag, though. No use in
breakin’ my neck with them here.
There was no way to pick a direction, but I saw some road signs
’bout half a mile to my left so I made my way that way. Best
to know where I was first. I had trouble readin’ ’em
when I got to ’em, but finally made out a sign sayin’
state college 10. Well, they’d have phones there, but I
didn’t figure no big college town would be quick and easy
pickin’s for me, and it was the wrong way anyways. I crossed
the road, struck a real sexy pose, and started hitchin’. I
figured it might take four or five minutes tops, but it was even
less than that. I didn’t mind if I got a dirty old man, and
any would-be rapist would find they sure tangled with the wrong
girl!
A little sweet-talkin’, a nice little sob story in a high
sexy voice, and a few moves will get you most anything if you
don’t have no standards or scruples. I got let off at a big
truck stop out in the middle of nowhere, and I didn’t have to
be there long before I had more than enough offers to get food and
even a little cash. Still, it was fairly late by the time I was
able to make a phone call, and when I stood at the phone booth I
suddenly realized I didn’t know what to call. Bill
Markham’s number was another of those things burned into my
mind, but I didn’t dare call him unless I had to. He could
stop my twin if she hadn’t already done the deed and all
that, but he’d also have people all over the place and
I’d be off to the Center in no time “for my own
good.” My old number was no good; I’d disconnected it
before leavin’ and sublet the apartment, puttin’
everything in storage.
I finally called Philadelphia information and asked for a Spade
& Marlowe number. The agency was dead and gone, but not its
client lists, and there might be a service or referral number.
There was a number, but it was only a recordin’ sayin’
that Spade & Marlowe’s cases had been transferred to the
Marquand Agency and givin’ their number. I tried them but
nobody answered. I hadn’t even thought about this angle.
Maybe I had to call Markham anyways. I had one last thought, and
that was if Sam had been back long enough to get a place and maybe
get his own number, it would be listed. I checked, and, sure enough
and to my complete surprise, they did have a listin’
for a Samuel Horowitz. I called the number and it rang a few times,
then got picked up.
“Hello?” come a woman’s voice. Her
voice. My voice. I stuck my voice up way high.
“Is Mistah Horowitz theah?” I asked pleasantly.
“No, I’m sorry, he’s out of town,”
Brandy Two replied. “I’m his wife. Can I take a
message?” Like hell you is, honey! “No, thanks. Will he be
back soon?”
“Not for a couple of days.”
“I’ll call agin then. Bye,” I responded, and
hung up. So Sam was out of town—or maybe just plain out?
She’d use that if she’d already iced him, but then why
would she still be there? To get Markham, too, maybe? Only way to
find out was to get there.
It wasn’t all that hard. You just sat there sweet as honey
and then picked the fly you wanted to trap. I give him good value
for his trouble, so we was both satisfied. I got dropped right near
Broad and Market ’bout four-thirty in the mornin’, and
I had ’bout forty dollars on me at the time. Not a lot, but I
walked over to Chestnut and got a room at the YWCA. Not that I
wanted to, but it was gettin’ on time.
I took my juice, had a good time, then slept until four that
afternoon. I rarely ate meat, but I was able to find decent stuff
at a health food store and carry out just up the street. I was down
to seven bucks, which didn’t worry me none, particularly in
center city Philadelphia after dark. The only real worry I had was
I was havin’ trouble gettin’ used to the cars
bein’ back over on the left side of the street again.
A good detective has no problem gettin’ an address when
she’s got a phone number, even though it was too new to be in
the book. The number turned put to be for a development up north of
the city near Willow Grove, not exactly on the train routes. I
caught a late train up as close as I could, then had to use my
charms to get a big, black taxi driver to run me there for seven
bucks. It turned out to be a bunch of fancy-lookin’ duplexes
on them little dead-end streets, but that was somethin’ of a
relief since I was afraid I’d be lookin’ at some
security apartment tower. The cabbie—Calvin his name
was—refused my money and I promised I’d call him
through his taxi company as soon as I was free. Maybe I would,
too—he was real nice and real good-lookin’—but
that was if I wasn’t dead or somethin’.
I checked out the house. There was one light burnin’ in
the front room, but the shades was closed and I couldn’t tell
if anybody was in there. The rest of the place looked dark. There
didn’t seem to be no alarm system, but the doors had good
bolt locks and the place was air-conditioned so the windows was
closed, locked, and secure. Finally, I decided to see if things
would go the easy way; I held the gun inside the shoulder bag
pointin’ at the door and rang the bell. I heard it go a
number of times, real loud, but there was no reply. Suddenly the
phone rang inside, and for a minute I thought I’d tripped
some alarm system, but after eight rings they gave up. There was
nobody home, all right.
It took some doin’ to get inside without crashin’ no
loud glass. I was a hell of an athlete by this time, though, and
actually managed to jump up and grab hold of the gutter spout on
the second floor and pull myself up, rippin’ my dress mostly
off in the process. Still, there on this little roof overhang, I
was at an upstairs window. The lock was one of them simple throw
types, so I put the pistol up against the glass right on the flat
push part of the lock and fired. The shot was quiet as usual, and
damned if the thing didn’t turn about halfway and come mostly
free. The hole was big enough for a finger, and I managed to tap it
around enough and open the window and crawl in. I no sooner got in
and shut it than I saw a back light come on, and then somebody come
out of the backdoor of the other half of the buildin’ and
look around. They checked the whole area with a flashlight,
includin’ Sam’s patio, and even shined a light up my
way, but they didn’t see nothin’.
There was two bedrooms and a bath upstairs. One of the bedrooms
was just that; the other was storage and filled with the boxes and
trunks I’d left when I stuck everything in storage. Most of
my clothes and other stuff was in there, still packed, although
she had obviously opened stuff and begun to sort it. I
could see why she had problems with it; everything was way too big
’cept the shoes. My feet bones didn’t shrink or tighten
up with the rest of me. I dug out a big old extra long tee shirt
that came down halfway to my knees and I used that lonely bikini
bottom, even if it did have sparklies all in it. My credit cards
and shit was all in safe deposit at Tri-State Bank, so there
wasn’t much more I could do.
I stuffed the remains of the dress in the shoulder bag, then
went into the bathroom. I stuck the bag in behind some shit under
the sink so it couldn’t be easily seen, except for the juice
capsules and the gun. Then I started lookin’ for places to
hide the juice, and found more, to my surprise. Not a lot—six
capsules, hid in my old mink coat still in the trunk. But they was
her supply. We sure did think alike. Trouble was, how to
hide ’em so she wouldn’t figure right off where they
was. I decided to think like Sam. I had trouble findin’
somethin’ that worked as a screwdriver, but then I unscrewed
a floor plate for the air-conditionin’ and stuck all but a
couple in there. Those I stuck in a little kitchen baggie and stuck
under a seat cushion in the livin’ room. It was so obvious
nobody’d think of lookin’ for it.
The clocks said it was a little after ten. I didn’t know
anything else to do but sit and try and relax and wait. The kitchen
was real basic and clearly not stocked up for any length of time
even for one, and there wasn’t nothin’ in it fit for me
to eat.
About ten-fifteen I heard a car drive up and stop, and somebody
got out and walked up to the door. I retreated up the stairs as a
key entered the lock. I didn’t want to be seen till I knew
the score and which one I was facin’. I decided I’d
just keep quiet, lay low, and wait.
After a while of movin’ in and out and packages
rustlin’, I heard footsteps come up the stairs and
she came up and went into the bathroom. She was
wearin’ a sleeveless stretch-type pale pink top and a pair of
real tight jeans with sandals. They all looked new, so I figured
she’d been shoppin’. Either they staked her some or
she’d made it as far as my deposit box.
I was in the dark bedroom, ready with the pistol if need be, but
she flushed and come out and went down the hall to the other
bedroom and switched on the light. I had a margin nearly to noon
the next day before I needed a jolt, but maybe she didn’t. I
hoped not. I heard her give a little gasp; I guessed she’d
noticed the neat hole in the window in there. In a sense, I was
actually in her mind, and I didn’t hav’ta see her to
know what she was doin’. Hole, then check, open the window
and look out, then check the walls and see where the bullet
bouncin’ off went. Her next thought would be to check for her
juice stash, and I heard her pull the trunk around, open it, and
start feelin’ through the pockets of every coat in there and
lookin’ down the bottom, feelin’ the linings to make
sure it didn’t drop down, then I heard her give a panicky
sort of cry.
I crept down the hall and watched her, knowin’ how
I’d feel. Then she suddenly realized that somebody was there,
turned, and froze. She saw the gun first, then me.
“Dey ain’t dere, sista,” I told her.
“Dey been moved far, far away.”
“You! How’d you even get here?
What do you want with me?”
“I think you gots the smarts ta’ figah dat out
yo’self. You gots t’know at least what dis
part’s all ’bout.”
She got slowly up and stared at me. “They—they said
you’d never even know! And even if you did, no way
you gonna leave without no juice!”
“I gots juice. All God’s chillun
gots juice. Dey keep makin’ dese l’il eensy-weensy
mistakes wit’ dis chile. Go ’head. Tear dis place
up. You won’t find no juice. Uh, uh, not a drop. Don’
worry, though. I gots it all hid nice’n safe. Lots ’n
lots of it. Ol’ Arnie, he had one big stash, and now
I got it. Ol’ Arnie, he don’t need it no mo’. He
deader than a cooked rat.”
“Somebody sent you. Who?”
“Som’body do know the secret, but I dunno who.
Ain’t yo’ gal Addison, though, even if she did
pop Arnie two slugs wit’ dis selfsame gun. Kills real
quick ’n quiet.”
“Are you gonna—kill me? There can’t be two of
us in this world.”
“Well, dere is now. We goin’ downstairs and den we
gon’ talk a bit ’bout a lotta things. Where we go from
dere be up to you.”
I was careful, and I had the experience with guns and with
handlin’ folks who didn’t wanna be handled. I think she
sensed that, and was also really thrown off by me bein’ there
at all, so she gave me no trouble. She also seemed to have
completely bought the idea that I’d removed all the juice
from the house. Hell, I kept fallin’ for shit like
that, so why shouldn’t she?
So we sat and we talked, and I got some more details on this
setup. She swore she didn’t know nothin’ ’bout no
plot when she was shadow dancin’ down at Siegel’s, and
that she had no memories or recollections of her full self, as she
called it, until she read that card. She never really doubted who
she was, though, even then; it was the basic selfishness of the
juice addict that kept her quiet and let me go away confused and
broken. I understood; when somebody else held the juice you danced
their way.
But she’d spent so much time with me, been so close all
that time, she could do me nearly perfect. After that split-up,
they flew her up to the lodge and this mysterious Dr. Carlos for
the final touches. The ultimate test, though, she still found
unpleasant to talk about but it brought her to this point. They
found one of the regular girls at the club, not the dancers but one
of the ones who lived where Deb and I had, was givin’
information on the sly to the cops. They brought her up to the
lodge, and they gave the poor girl to her and then they withheld
the juice.
“I resisted,” she told me. “I held out longer
than I thought I could, but I finally did what they said. Every
bit. Not just killin’ her, but cuttin’, mutilating,
while she was strung up screamin’. It was then I knew
I’d do anything for the juice. I know it’s
wrong, but, next day, I didn’t feel bad, and I didn’t
have no nightmares. I knew just what I was and where I stood.
Killin’ this white man of yours—it was no big thing
after that. I lost some sleep over figurin’ it, but I
wouldn’t lose sleep over doin’ it. If they had you down
there, and your Sam strung up, you’d carve him up yourself.
Only thing was, you wasn’t gonna be strung out with some
controller standin’ in back with the juice you craved. On
your own, they thought you wouldn’t be able to do it. At that
moment, you either kill yourself or do as they order. There
ain’t no third way.”
The phone rang. She looked at me, and I went over and looked at
the phone. It was one of them new styles, with the automatic dial
and built-in speakerphone. I figured it was the same one I’d
bought for the old apartment. I gestured her over, then hit the
speaker on/off button and nodded to her.
“Yes?” she asked into the little mike.
“Brandy,” came a woman’s cool, familiar voice,
“this is Addison. Is everything going all right?”
She looked at me. “Fine. I’m settled in.”
“Very well. This is a change of orders. It is very
important. Sam Horowitz is on his way home. We aren’t sure of
the route or timing, but he could be there anytime within a few
hours to tomorrow afternoon. You are not to kill him. Do
you understand?”
She frowned. “But I thought—”
“There has been a change in circumstances. Brandy Horowitz
is loose with a large enough supply to cause real trouble for some
time. We think she made it to this world. She is now your
target. She is certain to try to contact Sam, perhaps make an
attempt on you. Delay, hold, or restrain her if possible but do not
kill her unless you have to. If you spot her, use the contact
method to get hold of us immediately. This is quite
urgent.”
“Lemme get this straight. You don’t want me to kill
Sam, and you don’t want me to kill Brandy, neither, if I can
help it? Then other than hold her, what else am I supposed to
do?”
“Become Brandy Horowitz. We have other uses for you now.
You can play the part. He knows you got addicted. That will cover
many lapses and your erratic behavior, and he, too, had some
recovery problems. He’ll buy it. You make him buy
it.” The line went dead.
I was as amazed as she was at this. Why, after all this trouble,
such a change in plans? Did Siegel’s death, and the
intervention of some third party they didn’t know ’bout
in my escape, cause ’em to regroup? This didn’t make no
sense at all to either of us.
“How do you contact dem?” I asked her.
“The Chessworks. It’s a toy and game store in
central Philadelphia. You call their number and you leave a message
for Miss Addison to call you with the one who answers or on the
machine if it’s after hours. I used it once already, but it
was a man who called back, not her.”
“Well, she here now. Guess her wastin’ Arnie made
troubles. Don’t know what dey still want me
livin’ for, though.”
“So, what now?”
Yeah—what now? Sam was safe, at least for now, and I had a
way to contact Addison to make a deal. Trouble was, if I did it now
she’d know immediately who gave me the number and where I had
to be. Sam might be hours, even tomorrow afternoon, gettin’
in, and I needed a jolt before that. Worse, it was into prime
hours, and the juice only let up on mandatory sex when you had your
period. “When you due yo’ jolt?” I asked her.
“Anytime now. Past time. Can’t you tell?”
Truth was, I could tell. She’d been time shifted
in her routine ’cause of all that stuff at the lodge.
“Okay. Figured as much. Dat’s why I didn’t
take it all. Thought it might be kinda useful. Left one here
fo’ ya.” I reached under the cushion and palmed the two
cubes.
“Now—we goin’ upstairs and you gonna get happy
fo’ a while.”
She didn’t resist; you don’t in those circumstances
as I well knew. When you’re due, that’s the only thing
important to you.
“Now, you listen to me,” I said coldly. “I got
all de rest o’ the juice. You know, too, one o’
us’d die befo’ she tell you where her stash
is. You betta’ play ’long wit’ me, girl, or
I’ll see you go t’hell.”
I gave her the jolt and watched it take effect almost enviously.
I wanted it bad, too, but it wouldn’t be no good to me for a
long while yet. Some knowledge of Sam helped next, ’cause it
didn’t take me long to find what he called his Junior G-Man
Detective Set. It was a small box with fingerprint kit, evidence
collectors, and a couple pairs of handcuffs.
I rolled her over and she smiled and groaned, then cuffed her
hands in back and then cuffed her legs as well. Then I gagged her,
left, and turned out the light. She didn’t even notice all
that.
I went down, called the cab company and asked for Calvin to pick
me up, then went back upstairs and got my bag, stuck the gun in it,
deep, made my face over a little and combed my hair, then put on
the heels, even if they wasn’t real suited for what I was
wearin’. I was tempted just to have Calvin in, but I had
enough sense to realize that if Sam come in durin’ it I might
have some trouble convincin’ him I was the right one.
It was stupid and risky, but when the juice tells you to do
somethin’, you ain’t got no choice at all, and the
sight of her up there in high heaven on the bed only tripled the
lust.
I was sure as hell gonna give Calvin his seven bucks
worth—with one hell of a tip.
Now, I got to admit I took a hell of a risk considerin’
the timing and all, but that’s how this thing works. The only
thing I had left was my brain, and that was workin’ good as
ever.
Needless to say, when I got back about four in the mornin’
I was real extra careful to make sure that everything was just as I
left it, includin’ a few little things on the doors nobody
would notice but would be out of place if they was opened. I even
checked the neighborhood for snoops and found none. Finally I went
in, checked out the downstairs, then went upstairs real
careful-like, and found Brandy Two also pretty much as I left her,
only now she was asleep instead of on the super high—or mad,
as she almost surely was from the looks of the bed. Wasn’t
nothin’ to do but relax, so I went downstairs and watched a
movie on one of them superstations, which felt real good to be able
to do after all that had happened, then just gave myself that jolt
and disappeared into heaven on the couch.
I remember wakin’ up in the blissful comedown for a while,
then just driftin’ back to sleep. Wasn’t no use in
doin’ nothin’ else, nohow. Sam might come home and be
confused as hell, but at least I was the first Brandy he’d
see.
Which was why it was a real shock to wake up upstairs on the
bed, hands cuffed behind my back. I turned and found Brandy Two
still there as well, only she was only cuffed by her hands.
Sittin’ in a chair opposite, holdin’ his .38,
swiggin’ coffee, and lookin’ more’n a little
tired, was Sam.
I was so damned happy to see him, alive, lookin’ well and
as I remembered him, that I sat right up.
“Sam!”
“My mother warned me about all sorts of things,” he
said real casually, ignorin’ my outburst. “She gave me
tons of advice on almost every situation in the world. However, I
don’t think she ever covered something like
this.”
“Welcome back,” said my twin. “We been
talkin’ ’bout you.”
“I bet,” I shot back. “Bet you been
tellin’ him de God’s honest truth, huh?”
Sam sighed. “I am a detective. I don’t even
like being a detective all that much. Usually it’s
boring as hell. Unfortunately, it’s the only thing anybody
ever taught me how to do that paid money. Now I have two women
here, cuffed on my bed, which is kinky enough for any detective
novel, and both of them look absolutely identical. Both also have a
passing resemblance to my wife, but both look like versions of my
wife as sculpted by a master sculptor with a massive bribe from
her.”
“He’s puttin’ you on, honey,” Brandy Two
said dryly. “He knowed ’bout the two of us before he
ever showed up here.”
“They do tend to notice—eventually—when the
identical same person passes the same station twice in the same
direction without ever going in the opposite
direction,” Sam commented. “Don’t worry, Sleeping
Beauty, I already know a fair amount of the story. You see, I asked
your counterpart here about our little dog Asta, and she said Asta
had to be given away. Isn’t that just terrible?”
I was cuffed on the bed, but I had to laugh and keep
laughin’ for a while. Finally I managed, “Right,
Mista’ Charles.”
One thing Sam and my late Daddy had in common was a passion for
the old classic detective novels, stories, and films, and I caught
it, too. I guess Brandy Two was too damned mad at Daddy to take up
that taste in her life. That’ll teach her to read them sexy
romances. In fact, Sam always reminded me of William Powell in
The Thin Man. Oh, he don’t look or talk like
Powell—wish he did—but it’s the same
attitude.
“So why am I cuffed?” I asked him.
“You are cuffed, my dear, because you are hooked on the
most addictive substance yet discovered and you apparently have a
fair amount of it. You ought to see what it’s done to the two
of you. Before I can have a—working relationship, let’s
call it—with either of you, I have to know where the stash is
and take control of it. You’re the one who knows, so
that’s why we’ve been waiting for you to wake
up.”
“Sam!” I cried. “It’s me! Damn
it, dey give me dis shit-slut talk an’ all, but it’s
me!”
“I worked vice, babe. Remember? I’ve seen many as
strong as you be willing to kill their own husbands, mothers, and
children for drugs a lot less potent than this one. You have two
choices—tell me now or tell me later. If you choose later,
then I have to make some choices, since I have to go to
sleep before either of you needs a fix or I’ll keel over and
you two need food and recreation, if I remember the stuff’s routine
right. If it’s now, I can relax. If it’s later, I have
to either start a treasure hunt, which I’m too damned spent
to try, or call in somebody to take over, which means Bill Markham
and you know what that means, or I have to hand-feed the
two of you and find some more handcuffs. Now—which is
it?”
“Sam—you know I can’t do
dat!”
He stared hard and serious at me. “Brandy! It’s
me!” he said mockingly. “You wanted
me to trust you on that basis. Not the same the
other way, huh?”
He had me, and I didn’t know how to get out of it.
“For God’s sake, tell him!” my twin pleaded.
“It’s the only way I’m gonna get out of
these damned cuffs, too.”
I didn’t know what to do, so I tried a two-way approach.
“Sam—I been through hell. I thought you was
dead, for God’s sake! Only wanted t’ git even.
Screw dem good. And I can, Sam. Dat’s de honest
truth. If’n nothin’ else good come out of dis, I got
dat. I knows who’s who and what it’s all
’bout!”
“I have some of it myself,” he told me. “After
they finally ran some checks to see if I should be taken off life
support and found out that the computer instructions for my
maintenance in that tank included a certain drug that kept me sound
asleep for months, and they brought me out and told me about it, it
wasn’t hard to figure. It’s not enough, babe. Not
enough at all. Why do you think they engineered the sacking of
Aldrath? Put that young fellow, Dakani Grista, in temporary
command? Dakani’s young, ambitious, and like most young and
ambitious smart boys he wants to feather his own nest. He’s
not in on this but he’s not going to do anything to
jeopardize his standing. He got rid of most of Aldrath’s top
people and replaced them with bureaucratic hacks. Now, if you or I
walk in and tell him we know who’s behind all this and most
of the cast of characters, do you think he’ll believe us and
move on it? On his own, against one of his patrons and a higher
class at that?”
“Not everybody’s in dem upper classes,” I
pointed out.
“True, but they’re all well connected to them and
work for them. Dakani might put one of them through the ringer if
we had solid evidence, but not on either of our deductions or
say-so. Aldrath would have. That’s why they had to retire
him. It wasn’t hard. Even knowing what we know you can make a
pretty good case for his incompetence. He was too close to the
problem. He had Top Man Disease. He believed his reports from his
agents in the field and he fed only those reports into his
computers and came up with exactly the conclusions and acted in
exactly the ways they wanted him to. His only departure from
orthodoxy was you, when he let you go in alone, and when this
Crockett woman reported you had been captured and hooked on the
stuff, he looked more like a fool. Can’t you figure out, with
all his resources, why he couldn’t find the origin
world?”
I nodded. “Same thing. Machines tol’ him dat de
place was bare.”
“Right. Or, it was certified as having been looked at and
given a clean bill of health. That means we’re right back
where we started from. They can blow up Vogel’s place and
most of his experts, they can cover their people for a while more
back where you just came from, and they can cover their own asses
at headquarters and rely on Dakani’s inexperience and
eagerness to please to keep it that way, but the origin
world’s their smoking gun. They can’t blow it up, they
can’t abandon it, and they can’t cover up a whole
world’s evidence. Deliver that world and you expose the
cover-ups and maneuverings. Find that world and even Dakani will
have to move fast and hard for the same reason he won’t act
without it—expediency and his own neck. So, babe,
you’re one hell of a detective but you still ain’t got
a damned thing.”
“And . . . if yo’ does
got the stash? What den? De funny farm fo’ us?”
“Uh uh. How much of the stuff is there in this
stash of yours, anyway?”
“ ’Bout thutty-five.”
“Well, that’s not bad, although I wish it were more.
Truth is, after all this time I don’t think we have too much
longer. The fact that they were bold enough to make all the recent
moves they did shows that, and the idea that they were out to
eliminate the two of us. I think they’re going to make their
big move anytime now, and I think as it stands they’re going
to succeed. The two of you are rather uniquely positioned to act on
it. Of course, it would be easier if we could get us a hypnoscan
and get rid of that Stepin Fetchit accent of yours—it would
be real convenient if the two of you were interchangeable—but
that’s why they made sure you had it. So they could always
tell the two of you apart.”
I was startled by that idea, but then I didn’t see why I
didn’t figure it right off. Sure—if she was gonna play
me, she had to talk like me, but since we was so damned much alike
they had to make dead certain that even if I was discovered or
sprung I couldn’t pull a switch back on them. I was wrong;
they hadn’t underestimated me at all. If anything,
they’d overdone it.
“But—if yo’ git ’em, what happen to
us?”
“There are three sides to the question for both of
you,” he pointed out. “Their side, the Company’s
side, and your side. Unlike the other two, your side has a vote,
but it’s only on whose side to belong to. Now, I have the
same problem, with minor differences. If I go along with them, even
volunteer for their side, I’ll probably wind up with Bill
Markham’s job and vastly increased powers and get the both of
you as souvenirs. If I go against them, they’ll either have
to kill me or when they take power in spite of me they’ll
probably eliminate me anyway as a potential thorn in their
side—unless I win.”
“Sounds like you’d be better off changin’
sides,” Brandy Two noted.
“The way things stand right now, you’re probably
right,” he agreed, “but I have two powerful reasons not
to. First, we’re late immigrants here. I’m
first-generation native born because my father had some foresight
and he saw what was coming in Europe and managed to get here. The
family was fairly poor, and he was the youngest, so they pooled to
send him and my mother here first. By the time he was settled
enough to try and help others, it was too late. Where they were
sending the Jews you didn’t need money. It won’t be
Jews this time, particularly, but I can still smell it coming. I
guess I inherited it from my father. This time it’s me asked
to be a ‘good German’ for my own prosperity and safety
and the hell with the others. I grew up hating that kind of person
for killing my family. I value that hatred too much to compromise
it. And, of course, there’s one other reason.”
He paused, then went on. “They took the only human being I
ever loved and they robbed her of her humanity and made her
something ugly.”
“Sam! No!” I cried out. “It ain’t
true!”
“Yes it is,” said Brandy Two sadly. “Honey, my
old life weren’t much, but it sure as hell was a life. We
ain’t people no more—we’re property. We
can jive talk all we want ’bout bein’ victims and
helpless and all that, and we are, but I don’t kid myself
’bout what I am. Take a look at yo’self, girl!
We is slaves! Only difference ’tween us and
our great grandfathers is dey didn’t wanna be no slaves, but
we do!”
I turned ’round as best I could and stuck my head facedown
in the pillow, sobbing, ’cause I knew right off she was
right. If Sam hadn’t been there, right in the room, then I
woulda rejected the whole thing, put it from my mind. I still loved
him, but I’d cheat on him in a minute, betray him in a flash.
I had betrayed him, already, and all my daddy stood for,
too. I would help that bunch of Vogels win, or look the other way,
so long as they guaranteed my juice supply. I woulda thought it was
wrong and too bad, but I’d’a let it happen, even
helped, anyways. Worst part was, if I was in real withdrawal, and
they told me I had to kill Sam to get the juice, I really
didn’t know if I could keep from pullin’ that
trigger.
No, that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was that I
still didn’t want no cure. If it came down to
betrayin’ Sam or gettin’ the cure, I would probably
betray him, even now. I knew it in my bones, just like my damned
double did. When Sam made that remark ’bout goin’ over
to the other side and gettin’ us as prizes I got a real
feelin’ of excitement that it might be so. It was
Aldrath’s worst-case example when he tried to talk me out of
goin’ in. I couldn’t have Sam and the juice.
And as I thought this, the juice I had reacted. You wasn’t
allowed to get too depressed. You wasn’t allowed to get
yourself too messed up. It pushed my blood pressure back down and
pushed a few of them chemical buttons in my brain. I still thought,
Yeah, they’re both right. I ain’t the same person
no more. Can’t never be. It feels too good to be
like this. I turned over again and looked at him.
“You see?” Brandy Two commented plainly.
“It’s easier when you know what you’ve become and
don’t fool yourself no more. Not better, just easier. You
just lose your right to judge.”
I swallowed hard. “Okay, Sam, so we deal wit’ me as
I is. So what if I tells ya where de stash is? What happens in a
coupl’ve weeks?”
“I don’t know. That’s as honest an answer as I
can give you,” he responded, lookin’ and soundin’
real sad. “I’m the only one taking a real gamble. Deep
down, I have to gamble on both of you to save my hide, and you have to gamble on me not
holding out or turning you in. I’m betting on your basic
addict selfishness, though. You’re both smart girls; it
doesn’t affect that, which is lucky.”
“We’re listenin’,” Brandy Two assured
him.
“If you betray me, you’ll be on their side and
they’ll give you juice—for a while, anyway. They may
keep you on it. Then, again, they may just decide that they
don’t need you anymore and have no place for you. Then
it’s the end. There’s always that risk, and it’s
strongest when they’ve won. If there’s one thing
Brandy—my Brandy—knows, it’s that the
Company top isn’t just powerful, it’s racist. They
needed others for guinea pigs, but neither of you will fit into
their final plan. You know what happened to Vogel’s victims
when they had no further use for them.”
I had a real uneasy feelin’ when he said this, since that
was always the one fear I had since gettin’ hooked, and the
one fear the juice did not make go away. “Go
’head, we listenin’.”
“Play it my way, and we’ll have the origin world.
The present Company. They’re no angels themselves and they
really don’t give a damn, but when there’s no reason to
be cruel they take care of their own. They’d never let this
shit get out generally—hell, you put a million doses out on
the streets of Philadelphia and loads of people, some of them very
middle and upper class, would be fighting to get hooked and
wouldn’t even ask or think about the price they’d pay.
You know that. But it’s organic, sort of. It exists
somewhere in nature. A sufficient supply for the few addicts
remaining could be insured indefinitely, particularly for the pair
that exposed the thing and saved the damned Company’s
neck.”
“Is that really—possible?” Brandy Two asked in
wonder. “A lifetime supply, forever?”
“He ain’t jivin’, sista’,” I told
her. “Dat’s jes’ de way dey do stuff.” He
was right, and it made me feel a lot better to know that I could do
the right thing and still be in my own best interests. “We
got nothin’ to lose if Sam play square wit’ us.”
If the opposition believed I might not shoot Sam for the juice,
then I was damn sure Sam couldn’t betray me.
“Unda’ de flo’ vent in de upstairs hall, Sam. It
all dere.”
He relaxed and put the gun away. “No it
isn’t.”
I shot up. “What!”
“You may be only a shadow of your former self, but you
still think the same. I found them before you even woke up. Now
they really are no longer in the house.”
“Den why—?”
“If you couldn’t bring yourself to trust me and tell
me, then I had no chance. No chance at all. Now, maybe, if we can
give the details to your—sister—here and make
her believe it, then we have a fighting chance.” He
gave a weary grin. “Now you two have only one worry, and
it’s a minor one, all things considered, but I just want you
to be a little paranoid, too.”
“What dat?” I asked him.
“If, somewhere, there are two Brandys as identical as the
two of you, so much so they might have pulled off the switch, then
somewhere, almost definitely, there’s a Sam Two as well, one
with the ethics of a cockroach who decided that being on the vice
pad in Bristol was pale stuff compared to millions in the bank in
this life. The original Sam is recovering from a serious
brain injury, remember? That could hide any lapses. You see,
that’s the reason I was delayed so long. The move was
anticipated, but tricky. We now have something on them—maybe.
You see, in the Labyrinth, about thirty-six hours ago, one of us
blew the other’s brains out. That’s why you, my
would-be replacement bride, were called off. That’s the
beauty of it. Nobody—not you, not the Company, not the
opposition—knows which one I really am. Not for
sure.” Damn his hide!
“Chessworks.”
“I would like to speak to Miss Addison, please.”
“One moment. I’ll transfer your call.” Click! Buzz! Whirr! Ring! “Yes?” It was
her voice all right.
“This is Brandy. We have her.”
“Where?”
“Right here at the house. She’s good. She actually
got the drop on me, but she didn’t figure on a double for
Sam, too. Neither did I! Why didn’t you tell
me?”
“It was not necessary for you to know. We didn’t
know if she might contact Markham or someone first to get
allies.”
“You give her too much credit. She’s a shadow
dancer, jus’ like me. She was hopin’ to replace me and
use Sam in a scheme to make a deal with you, but she’d
never give that Company no crack at her. You oughta know
that by now.”
There was silence for a moment, then Addison said, obviously
amused, “Very well, then. This situation has changed from a
strong and threatening negative into a positive. Put Sam on,
please.”
“I’m here,” he said. “I’m on the
upstairs extension.”
“All right. You know your mission. Do it right and do it
within the next twenty-five days and you’ll live there like a
king on those millions. Fail, and you will be remembered when the
time comes, I promise you.”
“I got the picture,” he replied. “It’s
not like I haven’t done it before. Once you bump off yourself
you can bump off anybody. What do you want us to do with the
broad?”
“I’ll have a car at your place in sixty minutes or
less, traffic willing. Since you’re about to have delicacy
problems, I don’t think having a Brandy there who is an
obvious addict would escape Markham’s notice. We’ll
take both of them for now.” She hung up. Abrupt, that girl,
but she had a lot on her mind.
“What you s’posed t’do?” I asked
him.
“Murder Markham in such a way that it can’t be
traced to me, preferably make it look like an accident.
Dakani’s no fool. He kept most of the resident agents, even
the ones close to Aldrath, on the job. Markham’s chomping at
the bit to be let loose on this thing, and Dakani’s inclined
to promote him and give him some powers. If he failed, the kid
could always blame Bill and Aldrath’s people; if he
succeeded, the kid gets the credit and maybe keeps the job. There
are very few people with Bill’s experience or track record in
playing the game the right way. Hell, if they considered
me a threat, think what they consider Bill! It’s
still a pretty small and close organization they’ve got, out
of necessity, and they’ve still got a hard job ahead no
matter what. What’s it cost them to get me to waste Bill? If
I do, he’s out of the way. If I fail, I’m the only one
who suffers.”
“Makes sense,” I agreed. “Real surprised
t’hear all dat on de phone, though. If I was Bill I’d
have a tap on it.”
“Oh, he does,” Sam replied. “State of the art
for this world, but no high-tech stuff by Company standards. On the
other hand, Addison’s people have a tap, too, and they can
tap into this tap. It blocks all calls to the Chessworks
prefix from registering or recording on Bill’s tap. Same goes
for her calls here. They’re pretty confident of
it.”
“They been pretty fuckin’ confident of
everything,” Brandy Two commented sourly. “What you
think they’re gonna do with me?”
“Make you a guinea pig, just like her, before they risk
any of their own with this.”
“Sam? S’pose dey don’t?” I said
worriedly. “S’pose dey jus’ send us back t’
Fast Eddie or worse?”
“Then I’m done,” he answered flatly.
“But you won’t be any worse off than you would have
been otherwise, would you?”
I got a little chill. “Sam—hold me once,” I
asked him. “Hold me like y’used to an’ jes’
play like it be old times. Please.”
And he held me real close and real tight, and he kissed me long
and hard, and I knowed there was still the love there. God! How
I’d mucked it all up! God! How I wanted him!
The car, a big blue Mercedes, pulled up in about forty minutes.
I didn’t expect Addison to be in it, and she wasn’t;
just a big, rough-lookin’ black dude in a suit and a young
straight-haired, round-faced black woman in a white uniform, like a
nurse. We opened the door, and for just a moment I couldn’t
go out it. I didn’t want to go. Somethin’ held me back.
All I wanted to do was turn around and grab Sam and run for it.
Scream for him to make love to me and then put a bullet through my
head.
Instead, I walked out, and my twin followed close behind. She
and I was at least dressed decent for a change; she’d shopped
for more than one outfit.
We got in, both of us lookin’ sullen but me most of all,
and even as the doors closed and we pulled away I felt like a
tremendous hand was reachin’ out and tryin’ to snatch
me back there. It took a while for the feelin’ to fade, and
it was real curious that the juice hadn’t done nothin’
to calm it down.
“Now, you two listen up and listen up good,” the
“nurse” said, turnin’ to us. “You just sit
there real nice and quiet-like and enjoy the ride. We got some
miles to make today. When you two need t’ get
juiced?”
“After eleven tonight,” Brandy Two replied, and I
said, “Anytime afta’ fo’ in the
mornin’.”
She nodded to herself. “Well, we gonna put you two on an
equal basis. Now, we gonna pull over up here and you two are gonna
get out and we all gonna go over in the bushes and you’re
gonna get naked and we’ll see if you got any juice on you.
Any juice we find, we’re gonna destroy. You got
that? Now, I don’t have no juice, and Monroe, here,
he don’t have no juice, so if you two girls
don’t behave and do just like we say we aren’t gonna
make it to the folks who do. Understand?”
We understood. We even figured on it. I had none, but my twin
had four, since that’s a natural thing for a shadow dancer to
do in these circumstances, and she’d already managed to hide
two in the car, keepin’ two on her person.
They found all four, although I thought for a moment that old
Monroe was gonna miss the one wedged in back of the seat rest. They
ain’t that easy to destroy, but they had some chemical that
would do it. I wondered who the hell they was to know so much, but
they never said. Some folks from their force here, probably drawn
from the Company’s mob ranks, who expected to be real
important here when the new folks took over, most likely.
We took the Northwest Extension up to I-80, then headed west.
That State College substation had always been leaky for the
opposition; there musta been some way they had of usin’ it
without it registerin’ on security’s boards, or so I
figured. We didn’t go all the way there, though; instead, we
turned in at a roadside motel where they fed us, then took us to a
room in back for which Monroe had the key.
Monroe sent “nurse” Longstreet outside, then turned
to us. “Now, which one of you is the fuckin’
oreo?”
“Me,” we both responded at once. I was real
surprised, and signalled her it was okay.
“We both been lib’rated,” I told him.
“We don’t care ’bout no color. What’re you?
De black Klan?”
That enraged him, and he started in on me. I had real rough,
big, nasty bruisers before, but this guy was somethin’ of a
psycho. The only thing that was savin’ me was that the juice
wouldn’t let nothin’ get real painful without
tippin’ the scales the other way. Kinda made you a masochist
to get pleasure for pain, but it was better than the alternative.
Fact was, the only thing savin’ Monroe was the fact
that we both needed juice.
Suddenly there was loud talkin’ outside, and the door
opened and Monroe stopped for a moment and looked up, mean as hell.
Standin’ there was Ms. Cool herself, Addison. I could hear
Longstreet cussin’ a blue streak outside, but somebody had
her.
Addison took one look, figured what was goin’ on even if
she didn’t know the reason, and said, fairly firmly,
“Just what the hell do you think you’re
doing?”
“Shut up, bitch! This ain’t your business!”
Monroe growled. That was a mistake.
“Girls,” Addison said, calm as could be, “you
have my permission, and my support, if you want to kill this
idiot.”
Monroe gave a big laugh, but it didn’t last long. You take
two women bodybuilder types together and no hunk even
Monroe’s size and strength was gonna keep us from doin’
damage. It was one hell of a fight, though, ’cause of the big
weight difference, and while we done him some real damage, when
Brandy Two kicked him in the gut and sent him to the floor under
the sink, he rebounded, made for his coat, and I knew he was
goin’ for his gun.
He never made it. There was this short Pfutt! sound, and there
was a neat hole in the side of his head. He actually looked
surprised; I think he was dumb enough and strong enough that it
took him five full seconds ’fore he realized he was
dead. The recoil hardly moved him. Finally he just sort of sat down
on the floor, stared hard, like he was seein’ somethin’
he couldn’t understand, then keeled over.
“Messy, but satisfying,” noted Addison, putting her
pistol back in her purse. “You—get your clothes on and
both of you come with me,” she added, pointin’ to me.
“I had hoped to use this place tonight but we’re going
to have to have it cleaned up instead.”
I got back into my jeans, shirt, and sandals and we followed her
out. I got to admit I was surprised at all this; she hadn’t
seemed like the kind to give a damn about stuff like that as long
as it wasn’t her. Two big men pushed Monroe’s
girlfriend into the room after we left and closed the door. I
looked around and figured either everybody else was sound sleepers
or business was lousy.
Parked in an outer lot designed for the purpose was a tractor
trailer; one of them big rigs. The trailer didn’t have no
signs or pictures or nothin’, just a big dirty silver.
Addison leaped up on the ledge like she done this all the time,
threw the levers, and opened one side of the back. We hauled
ourselves in, and she got in after us. It was pretty dark in there,
but soon as she closed and bolted the rear door the lights come
on.
Inside was a whole bunch of equipment, some real big, some in
crates and some not, and two people. One was a medium-sized fellow
in plaid shirt, jeans, and boots who had real dark skin but
wasn’t black; he kinda looked like some Indian. The other was
a woman with a great build, kinda like ours, but with golden skin
and brown hair. One of the golden people of the headquarters
world.
The truck roared into life, although I ain’t sure right
then if even they knew where they was goin’. Monroe had sorta
screwed up their plans. The man reached in his pocket and took out
two little cubes and tossed them to us. “Here,” he
said, in Spanish-accented English. “Get your fix now. We have
much work to do.”
I still wasn’t sure it was late enough for me, but since
these folks had the supply it didn’t cost nothin’ to
try. I was under in real sweet ecstasy in about a minute and a
half.
They didn’t do nothin’ in the comedown period, since
they shut off most of the lights and all of ’em seemed to be
asleep themselves. We was still movin’, but we didn’t
know to where. I heard my twin give a giggle and turned to her.
“Look at ’em,” she said. “The most
dangerous people around, and we don’t dare do nothin’.
That girl one of them bossworld people?”
“Yeah, that’s what they look like,” I
replied.
“Reminds me of somebody, but I can’t think
who.”
I looked over at her. “The rest of the shadow dancers.
Different color, different hair, but all the rest of them girls
looked just like that. Haven’t you figured that much out
yet?”
“Uh uh. Not till now. By the way—glad to see you can
talk regular again. Guess they musta done it while we was out with
somethin’ in here.”
I was flat-out amazed. Until that moment I hadn’t realized
that I was back to normal—at least, the normal I was
before they run that jive on me at Arnie’s. Wasn’t
nothin’ to read in there, but I could imagine a page in my
mind and know all the words. Somehow, they took that module out of
me that they put in. That meant that one of these crates, probably
the biggest, was a hypnoscan, and that made the Mex or whatever he
was Dr. Carlos. Brandy Two confirmed it.
“That pig was my main trainer at the lodge. You suppose
he’s one of ’em, too?”
I shook my head. “No way. Wrong build, wrong face, wrong
everything. I guess they could make themselves look like that if
they really wanted to, but I don’t think they did it to him.
He’s like that pair back there, and Crockett, and
Arnie—just hired help. Real smart and skilled hired help, but
that’s it.”
“You suppose they ran us both through that thing like they
did last time? I mean, they took somethin’ out of your head,
but did they put somethin’ else in?”
It was a good question, but I was fairly confident they
hadn’t. “Uh uh. They can take that shit out in
’bout an hour, but it takes a long time to put
things in. Damn! I’m starvin’ and I
hav’ta go to the bathroom.”
“Me, too. So do they, I guess. Got to be somethin’
in here.”
We was feelin’ good, and we got up and did a little
explorin’, tryin’ not to wake up nobody. They
did have one of them chemical porta-potty things back in a
corner, and that at least took care of the immediate problem. We
wandered back, ’cause there was nothin’ else to do.
“You know, that girl she looks kinda Hawaiian. You got
Hawaiians in this world?”
I nodded and looked. “Yeah, ’cept for the brown hair
and maybe a little difference in skin tone, you’re right.
Never thought of that. Island kind of folks, anyways. You got my
brains, even if you ain’t got my experience. See anything
else peculiar? Take a look at both them girls.”
She tried, but shook her head. “What do you
mean?”
“Addison’s one of them, too. You take that makeup
off, put down that hair and make it that brown color, and put her
in some decent clothes.”
“Them eyes ain’t right.”
“Yeah, they are, under there somewhere. She ain’t
been medically converted. It’s more like some kind of
high-tech makeup job, like they might do in their world for show
business. That’s why the makeup’s so heavy. Covers up
the seams.”
“But her skin’s darker—not like ours, but like
white folks with real deep suntans.”
“More tricks, that’s all. Probably takes a bath in
some kinda dye that shade, which is a little darker and duller than
theirs. Makes a world of difference. The shadow dancers was black,
brown, lily-white, and China yellow, but they was all the same. All
but us.”
Even with the noise and shakin’ and rattlin’, I
guess we was talkin’ too loud ’cause Addison stirred,
opened her eyes, looked over at us, then got up. “No
use,” she said. “I can’t stay asleep in something
like this. I heard you two talking.”
“We was just wonderin’ whether you started out in
actin’ or not,” I said pointedly. “You do great
makeup, and you play parts real good, too.”
“You are good. Uh—I assume you are this
world’s Brandy I’m talking to. Since Carlos took that
module out you really are incredibly identical.”
“I am—was—the detective,” I told
her.
“Well, to answer your question, my parents were
performers. The sort of art they practiced has no real equivalent
here. It’s a traditional form among my people that is both
for art and religion. It is practiced only by husband and wife
teams, so when my father died the show was over, so to
speak.”
“I didn’t think none of you people ever
died,” I commented.
“It is true that we live a long time, and do not
suffer the diseases and infirmities you do, but we all die, sooner
or later, from age or from accident. His was accidental, in a
crash. They loved each other very much. My mother was left with
three daughters and no means of support. She was expected to marry
again out of convenience, but she could not bring herself to do so.
The only chance they had for any future was in one of the colonies,
one without major class distinctions. We were neither fish nor
fowl, as you say. We were low-class people performing for
upper-class patrons. Unless we all found eligible men in our very
small profession, we could not continue it. It took money to
emigrate and become established, and my sisters were very young.
There was a patron, a very powerful man, whom we played for often,
who took a liking to me. I could become his mistress, his kept
woman, as it were, and he would pay for the emigration of my
family. I accepted. I was fifteen years old.”
This was something I hadn’t expected at all. She was
moody, soft, introspective, and had a need to talk. I guess,
rollin’ along in a semi in the early-mornin’ hours and
unable to sleep, she just figured some company was better than
none. At least she figured we’d understand, although why she
felt we would I didn’t know.
“Yeah, well, at least you had the silks and furs,”
Brandy Two commented. “Me, I was just past fourteen when I
run away, and I wound up in a run-down row house in Washington, me
and six other girls, hooked on smack in another few months
’cause it helped not to think or regret and workin’ the
streets for a quota. We all got our sob stories, honey.”
Addison looked at her, then at me. “No, there’s a
difference. I look over at the two of you and I see exactly the
same person. I listen to you speak, and I hear only slight
differences in your speech, and that probably only because this is
not my native tongue. But on my right is a woman who came up from
nothing and made something of herself and developed her brain, and
on my right is the same woman who did none of this. You might have
had bad luck, bad breaks, or even made some stupid decisions, but
clearly you had choices. Two ways at least to go. I did not. Women
in my society are theoretically equal to men, but none, not even in
the upper classes, ever can reach a level of decision making,
policy making. Middle-class women can have education and careers,
but they always work for men carrying out men’s projects and
goals. In my class, a woman could not even be chief gardener of an
upper-class estate. An assistant, perhaps, but always taking orders from the
men.”
“It ain’t that cool here, neither,” I pointed
out. “Is that what got you into this?” Hell, in
this world some of the meanest radicals was women.
“Try bein’ a black woman in this kinda society and see
how far you get.”
“Each world has its own problems,” Addison said.
“I can do nothing for other worlds until I fix my own. That
is difficult and dangerous enough.”
“Yeah, so you’re doin’ your sugar
daddy’s work for him, like always,” my twin noted.
“You give him his revolution and he gives you the shaft. I
seen that too many times before.”
“He just wants power, it’s true, and he might be no
better, perhaps worse, than what we have now, but he is a product
of society and he does not understand the concept of
radical. By the roots. Nothing less will gain what I want.
To him, this is a small, limited plot to take over the Board and
control it. A few parties, a few party girls with some of the old
men, and that’s it. I am his link to all of it. He cannot
leave. He was brilliant in showing me how even the greatest
computers and experts can be fooled if they are fed consistent but
faulty information. He is a typical, arrogant upper-class male and
I know him far too well. I knew he would never even think
that he could be a victim of just such a thing. How could he? I am
a mere, insignificant woman, a mistress, lover, and actress,
carrying out his orders to the letter. A majority of the corporate
board as his shadows, dancing to his tunes. That’s all his
vision allows.”
I suddenly saw where she was goin’ with all this, and I
was appalled. “You have the missin’ element now, the
thing that the juice needs and we can’t make. But to pull it
off, then you . . . ”
She nodded. “Yes. I must become a host, an addict, myself.
I am prepared to do this. As you can see from Aeii, here, there is
very little physical change in us compared to you. It is not
obvious to anyone, which is the point.”
“He’ll be cautious. He’ll catch you. You know
damned well he’ll run you through one of them mind wringers
before he lets you get near him, once it all starts.”
“Dear, sweet Carlos, here, will see that it doesn’t
happen. Even the great manipulator Jamispur will not be able to
detect it, just as Vogel’s technicians could not detect you.
He will see only what men expect to see when they examine women
like me. He will be extra clever, and search for the lone linkage
that might trigger a different personality, but it will not be
there. One with Jamispur’s skills might have detected you at
Vogel’s, given time, but not even he can detect what is cut
off, closed off, no longer there.”
“But that’s a kind of suicide,” Brandy Two
pointed out. “What good’s your revolution if you
can’t pull no strings?”
“The strings will be pulled by others. The depth of my
commitment is so absolute I will let no consideration stand in my
way. I am only the weapon, not the revolution.”
“Yeah, so your big man’s in charge, he can just send
out for juice any old time he wants,” I noted. I got a real
uneasy feelin’ about this, and about anybody who was this
much of a fanatic. “Who could stop him?”
She smiled. “He only thinks he knows where it comes from.
He does not. Only a precious few know. And after, even I
won’t know. We do not mean to control the Corporation, we
mean to bring it down. All of it, from its corrupt and inbred male
leadership to its vicious class distinctions. And once we do that,
we will begin instilling justice on other worlds as we can and as
we find them.”
Well, I had to admit there ain’t been no crime chief who
was female since Ma Barker, but I wasn’t none too sure
I’d like these folks better. Seems I remembered old Ma was
pretty scary herself. And it seemed to me, anyways, that nobody who
could excuse folks like Vogel and Siegel and cause so much torture
and sufferin’ and death could accept slow, peaceable reform.
Who would be marched to the camps in this world
’cause they was impossible to reform and reeducate? How many
slaves would they make to build their perfect societies? Old
Aldrath had it right, I thought, when he said that progress only
came if you had worlds to steal from.
“You will be my vanguard,” she continued. “You
deserve the honor, for depriving me of Vogel just when vital
discoveries were made. The two of you will have the honor of paving
the way for the salvation of humanity.”
One thing Bill Markham drove into my head was
that long string of numbers for home. I had some trouble
pullin’ ’em out, but they felt and sounded right when I
faced the switcher.
“Thuteen, twenny-nine, two, stroke sev’n,” I
managed.
The switcher checked. “You are authorized transit to that
world,” she said. She was one of them that really needed a
shave and a haircut. “Proceed straight on and I will autoexit
you.”
“Any ways I can git a word sent up to Aldrath
Prang?” I asked her. I wanted some insurance.
“Executor Aldrath Prang has been relieved of all duties in
security,” she told me. “I can connect you to Security
General if you like.” Aldrath fired! This was goin’ along much faster
than I thought. “Uh, no thank you, ma’am. It be kinda
personal.” And I walked straight ahead, and five
cubes later walked out into a mess of broke-down concrete
surrounded by a high wall. It was a real mess down there, and I was
glad it was daylight. It looked from the droppin’s and shit
that things lived down there I didn’t wanna meet.
There was this rickety old ladder, and I climbed it to the top
and found myself out in the woods with just this pit or well or
whatever it was there, surrounded by a fence with barbed wire all
’round it. There was a gate with a big padlock on it, though,
and there was only one thing to do. I took out the gun, prayed it
was still loaded, and shot square at the lock. It kinda ricocheted
around and away without smashin’ the lock like it always does
in the movies, but when I pulled the lock came free and I could get
outta the gate.
The next question was, where was I and was I in the right world
after all? It still looked like Pennsylvania, which made
sense—I was on the Pennsylvania track and hadn’t really
been switched, just told to go straight ahead—but it
wasn’t any territory I knew.
I tried to find a clear spot, then looked around at the horizon.
Nothin’ much to see. A farm or somethin’ off one way,
not much else. Every time we used the damned Labyrinth before it
always dumped us at the Company in Oregon where we didn’t
wanna be and I kinda expected the same thing. This time, though,
they’d stuck me at the State College area substation which
they didn’t use much and wasn’t manned. First time I
actually ever wanted to be in Oregon and I was here!
I listened, and heard the sound of traffic off in the distance.
Well, that was somethin’—a road. Someplace along there
there just had to be a phone. Clutchin’ my shoulder
bag, I made my way through the woods and down the mountainside
toward the road.
Things opened up considerable after a while, and I was
lookin’ out over green fields and farmland down to a snaky
little road with a fair amount of traffic on it. I started down,
and was halfway across the open field before I suddenly remembered
I was stark naked. It didn’t bother me none but it sure would
attract a whole lot more attention than I wanted and I didn’t
want to get picked up and thrown in no jail while they charged me
and checked me out. I sat down in the field and checked what
I’d chucked into the shoulder bag. Thing was, I’d had
time to unpack at the lodge and I hadn’t really been
thinkin’ too good when I made my run for it. I was lucky to
have thought of the bag at all.
The only thing I could find was a pair of spike-heeled shoes,
not the best for walkin’, and the real tight slinky metallic
blue dress that matched them that I’d worn to dinner. There
was also a topless string bikini lodged in a side pocket that
I’d missed, but somehow that didn’t seem none too
practical. Well, that dress was knee-length, real low cut, and had
them slits in the side that left no doubt I wasn’t
wearin’ nothin’ under it, but at least it was legal. I
also found a small compact, a lipstick, a wide-toothed comb, an
emery board, and a small bottle of spray perfume.
That and the long golden pierced earrings I generally kept on
was my sole worldly goods.
I got over to a clump of bushes and sat down to see about
gettin’ it on, and suddenly I felt an overwhelming urge and
need to sleep. I knowed I’d been on the go a lot and needed
it, but not now. It was the juice, of course, makin’ me do
what it decided I had to no matter what, and even though I fought
it and didn’t want to, the next thing I knew it was much
later, and the bright sun that had been on my right comin’
down was now on my left. I cussed and got up. Not havin’ a
watch there wasn’t no way to tell the time, but the usual
sleep was between eight and ten hours. If it was maybe eight when I
conked out, it was probably ’bout five now. I looked out at
the road and there was a fair amount of traffic goin’ the
opposite way, which checked out. I didn’t know what day or
month it was ’cept it was still warm; time didn’t run
at exactly the same rate in any of the worlds, so all I could know
for sure was that it was summer here. Trouble was, I didn’t
even know the year. I’d been like ten months in
Siegel’s world, but how much time had passed here in the
meantime? Might be a couple of years, and, then again, it might be
only May or June here.
I was hungry and sure to get more so, but I didn’t have no
way to feed myself so that was one thing I had to push off.
Wouldn’t get no food or phone sittin’ here, though, so
I squeezed into the dress and, in spite of everything and I guess
out of habit, took time to comb my hair, put on fresh lipstick, and
a little makeup and even spray a little perfume on. Well, it
weren’t just vanity and habit; there was only one way I was
gonna get fed and get where I was gonna go.
I stuck the shoes back in the bag, though. No use in
breakin’ my neck with them here.
There was no way to pick a direction, but I saw some road signs
’bout half a mile to my left so I made my way that way. Best
to know where I was first. I had trouble readin’ ’em
when I got to ’em, but finally made out a sign sayin’
state college 10. Well, they’d have phones there, but I
didn’t figure no big college town would be quick and easy
pickin’s for me, and it was the wrong way anyways. I crossed
the road, struck a real sexy pose, and started hitchin’. I
figured it might take four or five minutes tops, but it was even
less than that. I didn’t mind if I got a dirty old man, and
any would-be rapist would find they sure tangled with the wrong
girl!
A little sweet-talkin’, a nice little sob story in a high
sexy voice, and a few moves will get you most anything if you
don’t have no standards or scruples. I got let off at a big
truck stop out in the middle of nowhere, and I didn’t have to
be there long before I had more than enough offers to get food and
even a little cash. Still, it was fairly late by the time I was
able to make a phone call, and when I stood at the phone booth I
suddenly realized I didn’t know what to call. Bill
Markham’s number was another of those things burned into my
mind, but I didn’t dare call him unless I had to. He could
stop my twin if she hadn’t already done the deed and all
that, but he’d also have people all over the place and
I’d be off to the Center in no time “for my own
good.” My old number was no good; I’d disconnected it
before leavin’ and sublet the apartment, puttin’
everything in storage.
I finally called Philadelphia information and asked for a Spade
& Marlowe number. The agency was dead and gone, but not its
client lists, and there might be a service or referral number.
There was a number, but it was only a recordin’ sayin’
that Spade & Marlowe’s cases had been transferred to the
Marquand Agency and givin’ their number. I tried them but
nobody answered. I hadn’t even thought about this angle.
Maybe I had to call Markham anyways. I had one last thought, and
that was if Sam had been back long enough to get a place and maybe
get his own number, it would be listed. I checked, and, sure enough
and to my complete surprise, they did have a listin’
for a Samuel Horowitz. I called the number and it rang a few times,
then got picked up.
“Hello?” come a woman’s voice. Her
voice. My voice. I stuck my voice up way high.
“Is Mistah Horowitz theah?” I asked pleasantly.
“No, I’m sorry, he’s out of town,”
Brandy Two replied. “I’m his wife. Can I take a
message?” Like hell you is, honey! “No, thanks. Will he be
back soon?”
“Not for a couple of days.”
“I’ll call agin then. Bye,” I responded, and
hung up. So Sam was out of town—or maybe just plain out?
She’d use that if she’d already iced him, but then why
would she still be there? To get Markham, too, maybe? Only way to
find out was to get there.
It wasn’t all that hard. You just sat there sweet as honey
and then picked the fly you wanted to trap. I give him good value
for his trouble, so we was both satisfied. I got dropped right near
Broad and Market ’bout four-thirty in the mornin’, and
I had ’bout forty dollars on me at the time. Not a lot, but I
walked over to Chestnut and got a room at the YWCA. Not that I
wanted to, but it was gettin’ on time.
I took my juice, had a good time, then slept until four that
afternoon. I rarely ate meat, but I was able to find decent stuff
at a health food store and carry out just up the street. I was down
to seven bucks, which didn’t worry me none, particularly in
center city Philadelphia after dark. The only real worry I had was
I was havin’ trouble gettin’ used to the cars
bein’ back over on the left side of the street again.
A good detective has no problem gettin’ an address when
she’s got a phone number, even though it was too new to be in
the book. The number turned put to be for a development up north of
the city near Willow Grove, not exactly on the train routes. I
caught a late train up as close as I could, then had to use my
charms to get a big, black taxi driver to run me there for seven
bucks. It turned out to be a bunch of fancy-lookin’ duplexes
on them little dead-end streets, but that was somethin’ of a
relief since I was afraid I’d be lookin’ at some
security apartment tower. The cabbie—Calvin his name
was—refused my money and I promised I’d call him
through his taxi company as soon as I was free. Maybe I would,
too—he was real nice and real good-lookin’—but
that was if I wasn’t dead or somethin’.
I checked out the house. There was one light burnin’ in
the front room, but the shades was closed and I couldn’t tell
if anybody was in there. The rest of the place looked dark. There
didn’t seem to be no alarm system, but the doors had good
bolt locks and the place was air-conditioned so the windows was
closed, locked, and secure. Finally, I decided to see if things
would go the easy way; I held the gun inside the shoulder bag
pointin’ at the door and rang the bell. I heard it go a
number of times, real loud, but there was no reply. Suddenly the
phone rang inside, and for a minute I thought I’d tripped
some alarm system, but after eight rings they gave up. There was
nobody home, all right.
It took some doin’ to get inside without crashin’ no
loud glass. I was a hell of an athlete by this time, though, and
actually managed to jump up and grab hold of the gutter spout on
the second floor and pull myself up, rippin’ my dress mostly
off in the process. Still, there on this little roof overhang, I
was at an upstairs window. The lock was one of them simple throw
types, so I put the pistol up against the glass right on the flat
push part of the lock and fired. The shot was quiet as usual, and
damned if the thing didn’t turn about halfway and come mostly
free. The hole was big enough for a finger, and I managed to tap it
around enough and open the window and crawl in. I no sooner got in
and shut it than I saw a back light come on, and then somebody come
out of the backdoor of the other half of the buildin’ and
look around. They checked the whole area with a flashlight,
includin’ Sam’s patio, and even shined a light up my
way, but they didn’t see nothin’.
There was two bedrooms and a bath upstairs. One of the bedrooms
was just that; the other was storage and filled with the boxes and
trunks I’d left when I stuck everything in storage. Most of
my clothes and other stuff was in there, still packed, although
she had obviously opened stuff and begun to sort it. I
could see why she had problems with it; everything was way too big
’cept the shoes. My feet bones didn’t shrink or tighten
up with the rest of me. I dug out a big old extra long tee shirt
that came down halfway to my knees and I used that lonely bikini
bottom, even if it did have sparklies all in it. My credit cards
and shit was all in safe deposit at Tri-State Bank, so there
wasn’t much more I could do.
I stuffed the remains of the dress in the shoulder bag, then
went into the bathroom. I stuck the bag in behind some shit under
the sink so it couldn’t be easily seen, except for the juice
capsules and the gun. Then I started lookin’ for places to
hide the juice, and found more, to my surprise. Not a lot—six
capsules, hid in my old mink coat still in the trunk. But they was
her supply. We sure did think alike. Trouble was, how to
hide ’em so she wouldn’t figure right off where they
was. I decided to think like Sam. I had trouble findin’
somethin’ that worked as a screwdriver, but then I unscrewed
a floor plate for the air-conditionin’ and stuck all but a
couple in there. Those I stuck in a little kitchen baggie and stuck
under a seat cushion in the livin’ room. It was so obvious
nobody’d think of lookin’ for it.
The clocks said it was a little after ten. I didn’t know
anything else to do but sit and try and relax and wait. The kitchen
was real basic and clearly not stocked up for any length of time
even for one, and there wasn’t nothin’ in it fit for me
to eat.
About ten-fifteen I heard a car drive up and stop, and somebody
got out and walked up to the door. I retreated up the stairs as a
key entered the lock. I didn’t want to be seen till I knew
the score and which one I was facin’. I decided I’d
just keep quiet, lay low, and wait.
After a while of movin’ in and out and packages
rustlin’, I heard footsteps come up the stairs and
she came up and went into the bathroom. She was
wearin’ a sleeveless stretch-type pale pink top and a pair of
real tight jeans with sandals. They all looked new, so I figured
she’d been shoppin’. Either they staked her some or
she’d made it as far as my deposit box.
I was in the dark bedroom, ready with the pistol if need be, but
she flushed and come out and went down the hall to the other
bedroom and switched on the light. I had a margin nearly to noon
the next day before I needed a jolt, but maybe she didn’t. I
hoped not. I heard her give a little gasp; I guessed she’d
noticed the neat hole in the window in there. In a sense, I was
actually in her mind, and I didn’t hav’ta see her to
know what she was doin’. Hole, then check, open the window
and look out, then check the walls and see where the bullet
bouncin’ off went. Her next thought would be to check for her
juice stash, and I heard her pull the trunk around, open it, and
start feelin’ through the pockets of every coat in there and
lookin’ down the bottom, feelin’ the linings to make
sure it didn’t drop down, then I heard her give a panicky
sort of cry.
I crept down the hall and watched her, knowin’ how
I’d feel. Then she suddenly realized that somebody was there,
turned, and froze. She saw the gun first, then me.
“Dey ain’t dere, sista,” I told her.
“Dey been moved far, far away.”
“You! How’d you even get here?
What do you want with me?”
“I think you gots the smarts ta’ figah dat out
yo’self. You gots t’know at least what dis
part’s all ’bout.”
She got slowly up and stared at me. “They—they said
you’d never even know! And even if you did, no way
you gonna leave without no juice!”
“I gots juice. All God’s chillun
gots juice. Dey keep makin’ dese l’il eensy-weensy
mistakes wit’ dis chile. Go ’head. Tear dis place
up. You won’t find no juice. Uh, uh, not a drop. Don’
worry, though. I gots it all hid nice’n safe. Lots ’n
lots of it. Ol’ Arnie, he had one big stash, and now
I got it. Ol’ Arnie, he don’t need it no mo’. He
deader than a cooked rat.”
“Somebody sent you. Who?”
“Som’body do know the secret, but I dunno who.
Ain’t yo’ gal Addison, though, even if she did
pop Arnie two slugs wit’ dis selfsame gun. Kills real
quick ’n quiet.”
“Are you gonna—kill me? There can’t be two of
us in this world.”
“Well, dere is now. We goin’ downstairs and den we
gon’ talk a bit ’bout a lotta things. Where we go from
dere be up to you.”
I was careful, and I had the experience with guns and with
handlin’ folks who didn’t wanna be handled. I think she
sensed that, and was also really thrown off by me bein’ there
at all, so she gave me no trouble. She also seemed to have
completely bought the idea that I’d removed all the juice
from the house. Hell, I kept fallin’ for shit like
that, so why shouldn’t she?
So we sat and we talked, and I got some more details on this
setup. She swore she didn’t know nothin’ ’bout no
plot when she was shadow dancin’ down at Siegel’s, and
that she had no memories or recollections of her full self, as she
called it, until she read that card. She never really doubted who
she was, though, even then; it was the basic selfishness of the
juice addict that kept her quiet and let me go away confused and
broken. I understood; when somebody else held the juice you danced
their way.
But she’d spent so much time with me, been so close all
that time, she could do me nearly perfect. After that split-up,
they flew her up to the lodge and this mysterious Dr. Carlos for
the final touches. The ultimate test, though, she still found
unpleasant to talk about but it brought her to this point. They
found one of the regular girls at the club, not the dancers but one
of the ones who lived where Deb and I had, was givin’
information on the sly to the cops. They brought her up to the
lodge, and they gave the poor girl to her and then they withheld
the juice.
“I resisted,” she told me. “I held out longer
than I thought I could, but I finally did what they said. Every
bit. Not just killin’ her, but cuttin’, mutilating,
while she was strung up screamin’. It was then I knew
I’d do anything for the juice. I know it’s
wrong, but, next day, I didn’t feel bad, and I didn’t
have no nightmares. I knew just what I was and where I stood.
Killin’ this white man of yours—it was no big thing
after that. I lost some sleep over figurin’ it, but I
wouldn’t lose sleep over doin’ it. If they had you down
there, and your Sam strung up, you’d carve him up yourself.
Only thing was, you wasn’t gonna be strung out with some
controller standin’ in back with the juice you craved. On
your own, they thought you wouldn’t be able to do it. At that
moment, you either kill yourself or do as they order. There
ain’t no third way.”
The phone rang. She looked at me, and I went over and looked at
the phone. It was one of them new styles, with the automatic dial
and built-in speakerphone. I figured it was the same one I’d
bought for the old apartment. I gestured her over, then hit the
speaker on/off button and nodded to her.
“Yes?” she asked into the little mike.
“Brandy,” came a woman’s cool, familiar voice,
“this is Addison. Is everything going all right?”
She looked at me. “Fine. I’m settled in.”
“Very well. This is a change of orders. It is very
important. Sam Horowitz is on his way home. We aren’t sure of
the route or timing, but he could be there anytime within a few
hours to tomorrow afternoon. You are not to kill him. Do
you understand?”
She frowned. “But I thought—”
“There has been a change in circumstances. Brandy Horowitz
is loose with a large enough supply to cause real trouble for some
time. We think she made it to this world. She is now your
target. She is certain to try to contact Sam, perhaps make an
attempt on you. Delay, hold, or restrain her if possible but do not
kill her unless you have to. If you spot her, use the contact
method to get hold of us immediately. This is quite
urgent.”
“Lemme get this straight. You don’t want me to kill
Sam, and you don’t want me to kill Brandy, neither, if I can
help it? Then other than hold her, what else am I supposed to
do?”
“Become Brandy Horowitz. We have other uses for you now.
You can play the part. He knows you got addicted. That will cover
many lapses and your erratic behavior, and he, too, had some
recovery problems. He’ll buy it. You make him buy
it.” The line went dead.
I was as amazed as she was at this. Why, after all this trouble,
such a change in plans? Did Siegel’s death, and the
intervention of some third party they didn’t know ’bout
in my escape, cause ’em to regroup? This didn’t make no
sense at all to either of us.
“How do you contact dem?” I asked her.
“The Chessworks. It’s a toy and game store in
central Philadelphia. You call their number and you leave a message
for Miss Addison to call you with the one who answers or on the
machine if it’s after hours. I used it once already, but it
was a man who called back, not her.”
“Well, she here now. Guess her wastin’ Arnie made
troubles. Don’t know what dey still want me
livin’ for, though.”
“So, what now?”
Yeah—what now? Sam was safe, at least for now, and I had a
way to contact Addison to make a deal. Trouble was, if I did it now
she’d know immediately who gave me the number and where I had
to be. Sam might be hours, even tomorrow afternoon, gettin’
in, and I needed a jolt before that. Worse, it was into prime
hours, and the juice only let up on mandatory sex when you had your
period. “When you due yo’ jolt?” I asked her.
“Anytime now. Past time. Can’t you tell?”
Truth was, I could tell. She’d been time shifted
in her routine ’cause of all that stuff at the lodge.
“Okay. Figured as much. Dat’s why I didn’t
take it all. Thought it might be kinda useful. Left one here
fo’ ya.” I reached under the cushion and palmed the two
cubes.
“Now—we goin’ upstairs and you gonna get happy
fo’ a while.”
She didn’t resist; you don’t in those circumstances
as I well knew. When you’re due, that’s the only thing
important to you.
“Now, you listen to me,” I said coldly. “I got
all de rest o’ the juice. You know, too, one o’
us’d die befo’ she tell you where her stash
is. You betta’ play ’long wit’ me, girl, or
I’ll see you go t’hell.”
I gave her the jolt and watched it take effect almost enviously.
I wanted it bad, too, but it wouldn’t be no good to me for a
long while yet. Some knowledge of Sam helped next, ’cause it
didn’t take me long to find what he called his Junior G-Man
Detective Set. It was a small box with fingerprint kit, evidence
collectors, and a couple pairs of handcuffs.
I rolled her over and she smiled and groaned, then cuffed her
hands in back and then cuffed her legs as well. Then I gagged her,
left, and turned out the light. She didn’t even notice all
that.
I went down, called the cab company and asked for Calvin to pick
me up, then went back upstairs and got my bag, stuck the gun in it,
deep, made my face over a little and combed my hair, then put on
the heels, even if they wasn’t real suited for what I was
wearin’. I was tempted just to have Calvin in, but I had
enough sense to realize that if Sam come in durin’ it I might
have some trouble convincin’ him I was the right one.
It was stupid and risky, but when the juice tells you to do
somethin’, you ain’t got no choice at all, and the
sight of her up there in high heaven on the bed only tripled the
lust.
I was sure as hell gonna give Calvin his seven bucks
worth—with one hell of a tip.
Now, I got to admit I took a hell of a risk considerin’
the timing and all, but that’s how this thing works. The only
thing I had left was my brain, and that was workin’ good as
ever.
Needless to say, when I got back about four in the mornin’
I was real extra careful to make sure that everything was just as I
left it, includin’ a few little things on the doors nobody
would notice but would be out of place if they was opened. I even
checked the neighborhood for snoops and found none. Finally I went
in, checked out the downstairs, then went upstairs real
careful-like, and found Brandy Two also pretty much as I left her,
only now she was asleep instead of on the super high—or mad,
as she almost surely was from the looks of the bed. Wasn’t
nothin’ to do but relax, so I went downstairs and watched a
movie on one of them superstations, which felt real good to be able
to do after all that had happened, then just gave myself that jolt
and disappeared into heaven on the couch.
I remember wakin’ up in the blissful comedown for a while,
then just driftin’ back to sleep. Wasn’t no use in
doin’ nothin’ else, nohow. Sam might come home and be
confused as hell, but at least I was the first Brandy he’d
see.
Which was why it was a real shock to wake up upstairs on the
bed, hands cuffed behind my back. I turned and found Brandy Two
still there as well, only she was only cuffed by her hands.
Sittin’ in a chair opposite, holdin’ his .38,
swiggin’ coffee, and lookin’ more’n a little
tired, was Sam.
I was so damned happy to see him, alive, lookin’ well and
as I remembered him, that I sat right up.
“Sam!”
“My mother warned me about all sorts of things,” he
said real casually, ignorin’ my outburst. “She gave me
tons of advice on almost every situation in the world. However, I
don’t think she ever covered something like
this.”
“Welcome back,” said my twin. “We been
talkin’ ’bout you.”
“I bet,” I shot back. “Bet you been
tellin’ him de God’s honest truth, huh?”
Sam sighed. “I am a detective. I don’t even
like being a detective all that much. Usually it’s
boring as hell. Unfortunately, it’s the only thing anybody
ever taught me how to do that paid money. Now I have two women
here, cuffed on my bed, which is kinky enough for any detective
novel, and both of them look absolutely identical. Both also have a
passing resemblance to my wife, but both look like versions of my
wife as sculpted by a master sculptor with a massive bribe from
her.”
“He’s puttin’ you on, honey,” Brandy Two
said dryly. “He knowed ’bout the two of us before he
ever showed up here.”
“They do tend to notice—eventually—when the
identical same person passes the same station twice in the same
direction without ever going in the opposite
direction,” Sam commented. “Don’t worry, Sleeping
Beauty, I already know a fair amount of the story. You see, I asked
your counterpart here about our little dog Asta, and she said Asta
had to be given away. Isn’t that just terrible?”
I was cuffed on the bed, but I had to laugh and keep
laughin’ for a while. Finally I managed, “Right,
Mista’ Charles.”
One thing Sam and my late Daddy had in common was a passion for
the old classic detective novels, stories, and films, and I caught
it, too. I guess Brandy Two was too damned mad at Daddy to take up
that taste in her life. That’ll teach her to read them sexy
romances. In fact, Sam always reminded me of William Powell in
The Thin Man. Oh, he don’t look or talk like
Powell—wish he did—but it’s the same
attitude.
“So why am I cuffed?” I asked him.
“You are cuffed, my dear, because you are hooked on the
most addictive substance yet discovered and you apparently have a
fair amount of it. You ought to see what it’s done to the two
of you. Before I can have a—working relationship, let’s
call it—with either of you, I have to know where the stash is
and take control of it. You’re the one who knows, so
that’s why we’ve been waiting for you to wake
up.”
“Sam!” I cried. “It’s me! Damn
it, dey give me dis shit-slut talk an’ all, but it’s
me!”
“I worked vice, babe. Remember? I’ve seen many as
strong as you be willing to kill their own husbands, mothers, and
children for drugs a lot less potent than this one. You have two
choices—tell me now or tell me later. If you choose later,
then I have to make some choices, since I have to go to
sleep before either of you needs a fix or I’ll keel over and
you two need food and recreation, if I remember the stuff’s routine
right. If it’s now, I can relax. If it’s later, I have
to either start a treasure hunt, which I’m too damned spent
to try, or call in somebody to take over, which means Bill Markham
and you know what that means, or I have to hand-feed the
two of you and find some more handcuffs. Now—which is
it?”
“Sam—you know I can’t do
dat!”
He stared hard and serious at me. “Brandy! It’s
me!” he said mockingly. “You wanted
me to trust you on that basis. Not the same the
other way, huh?”
He had me, and I didn’t know how to get out of it.
“For God’s sake, tell him!” my twin pleaded.
“It’s the only way I’m gonna get out of
these damned cuffs, too.”
I didn’t know what to do, so I tried a two-way approach.
“Sam—I been through hell. I thought you was
dead, for God’s sake! Only wanted t’ git even.
Screw dem good. And I can, Sam. Dat’s de honest
truth. If’n nothin’ else good come out of dis, I got
dat. I knows who’s who and what it’s all
’bout!”
“I have some of it myself,” he told me. “After
they finally ran some checks to see if I should be taken off life
support and found out that the computer instructions for my
maintenance in that tank included a certain drug that kept me sound
asleep for months, and they brought me out and told me about it, it
wasn’t hard to figure. It’s not enough, babe. Not
enough at all. Why do you think they engineered the sacking of
Aldrath? Put that young fellow, Dakani Grista, in temporary
command? Dakani’s young, ambitious, and like most young and
ambitious smart boys he wants to feather his own nest. He’s
not in on this but he’s not going to do anything to
jeopardize his standing. He got rid of most of Aldrath’s top
people and replaced them with bureaucratic hacks. Now, if you or I
walk in and tell him we know who’s behind all this and most
of the cast of characters, do you think he’ll believe us and
move on it? On his own, against one of his patrons and a higher
class at that?”
“Not everybody’s in dem upper classes,” I
pointed out.
“True, but they’re all well connected to them and
work for them. Dakani might put one of them through the ringer if
we had solid evidence, but not on either of our deductions or
say-so. Aldrath would have. That’s why they had to retire
him. It wasn’t hard. Even knowing what we know you can make a
pretty good case for his incompetence. He was too close to the
problem. He had Top Man Disease. He believed his reports from his
agents in the field and he fed only those reports into his
computers and came up with exactly the conclusions and acted in
exactly the ways they wanted him to. His only departure from
orthodoxy was you, when he let you go in alone, and when this
Crockett woman reported you had been captured and hooked on the
stuff, he looked more like a fool. Can’t you figure out, with
all his resources, why he couldn’t find the origin
world?”
I nodded. “Same thing. Machines tol’ him dat de
place was bare.”
“Right. Or, it was certified as having been looked at and
given a clean bill of health. That means we’re right back
where we started from. They can blow up Vogel’s place and
most of his experts, they can cover their people for a while more
back where you just came from, and they can cover their own asses
at headquarters and rely on Dakani’s inexperience and
eagerness to please to keep it that way, but the origin
world’s their smoking gun. They can’t blow it up, they
can’t abandon it, and they can’t cover up a whole
world’s evidence. Deliver that world and you expose the
cover-ups and maneuverings. Find that world and even Dakani will
have to move fast and hard for the same reason he won’t act
without it—expediency and his own neck. So, babe,
you’re one hell of a detective but you still ain’t got
a damned thing.”
“And . . . if yo’ does
got the stash? What den? De funny farm fo’ us?”
“Uh uh. How much of the stuff is there in this
stash of yours, anyway?”
“ ’Bout thutty-five.”
“Well, that’s not bad, although I wish it were more.
Truth is, after all this time I don’t think we have too much
longer. The fact that they were bold enough to make all the recent
moves they did shows that, and the idea that they were out to
eliminate the two of us. I think they’re going to make their
big move anytime now, and I think as it stands they’re going
to succeed. The two of you are rather uniquely positioned to act on
it. Of course, it would be easier if we could get us a hypnoscan
and get rid of that Stepin Fetchit accent of yours—it would
be real convenient if the two of you were interchangeable—but
that’s why they made sure you had it. So they could always
tell the two of you apart.”
I was startled by that idea, but then I didn’t see why I
didn’t figure it right off. Sure—if she was gonna play
me, she had to talk like me, but since we was so damned much alike
they had to make dead certain that even if I was discovered or
sprung I couldn’t pull a switch back on them. I was wrong;
they hadn’t underestimated me at all. If anything,
they’d overdone it.
“But—if yo’ git ’em, what happen to
us?”
“There are three sides to the question for both of
you,” he pointed out. “Their side, the Company’s
side, and your side. Unlike the other two, your side has a vote,
but it’s only on whose side to belong to. Now, I have the
same problem, with minor differences. If I go along with them, even
volunteer for their side, I’ll probably wind up with Bill
Markham’s job and vastly increased powers and get the both of
you as souvenirs. If I go against them, they’ll either have
to kill me or when they take power in spite of me they’ll
probably eliminate me anyway as a potential thorn in their
side—unless I win.”
“Sounds like you’d be better off changin’
sides,” Brandy Two noted.
“The way things stand right now, you’re probably
right,” he agreed, “but I have two powerful reasons not
to. First, we’re late immigrants here. I’m
first-generation native born because my father had some foresight
and he saw what was coming in Europe and managed to get here. The
family was fairly poor, and he was the youngest, so they pooled to
send him and my mother here first. By the time he was settled
enough to try and help others, it was too late. Where they were
sending the Jews you didn’t need money. It won’t be
Jews this time, particularly, but I can still smell it coming. I
guess I inherited it from my father. This time it’s me asked
to be a ‘good German’ for my own prosperity and safety
and the hell with the others. I grew up hating that kind of person
for killing my family. I value that hatred too much to compromise
it. And, of course, there’s one other reason.”
He paused, then went on. “They took the only human being I
ever loved and they robbed her of her humanity and made her
something ugly.”
“Sam! No!” I cried out. “It ain’t
true!”
“Yes it is,” said Brandy Two sadly. “Honey, my
old life weren’t much, but it sure as hell was a life. We
ain’t people no more—we’re property. We
can jive talk all we want ’bout bein’ victims and
helpless and all that, and we are, but I don’t kid myself
’bout what I am. Take a look at yo’self, girl!
We is slaves! Only difference ’tween us and
our great grandfathers is dey didn’t wanna be no slaves, but
we do!”
I turned ’round as best I could and stuck my head facedown
in the pillow, sobbing, ’cause I knew right off she was
right. If Sam hadn’t been there, right in the room, then I
woulda rejected the whole thing, put it from my mind. I still loved
him, but I’d cheat on him in a minute, betray him in a flash.
I had betrayed him, already, and all my daddy stood for,
too. I would help that bunch of Vogels win, or look the other way,
so long as they guaranteed my juice supply. I woulda thought it was
wrong and too bad, but I’d’a let it happen, even
helped, anyways. Worst part was, if I was in real withdrawal, and
they told me I had to kill Sam to get the juice, I really
didn’t know if I could keep from pullin’ that
trigger.
No, that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was that I
still didn’t want no cure. If it came down to
betrayin’ Sam or gettin’ the cure, I would probably
betray him, even now. I knew it in my bones, just like my damned
double did. When Sam made that remark ’bout goin’ over
to the other side and gettin’ us as prizes I got a real
feelin’ of excitement that it might be so. It was
Aldrath’s worst-case example when he tried to talk me out of
goin’ in. I couldn’t have Sam and the juice.
And as I thought this, the juice I had reacted. You wasn’t
allowed to get too depressed. You wasn’t allowed to get
yourself too messed up. It pushed my blood pressure back down and
pushed a few of them chemical buttons in my brain. I still thought,
Yeah, they’re both right. I ain’t the same person
no more. Can’t never be. It feels too good to be
like this. I turned over again and looked at him.
“You see?” Brandy Two commented plainly.
“It’s easier when you know what you’ve become and
don’t fool yourself no more. Not better, just easier. You
just lose your right to judge.”
I swallowed hard. “Okay, Sam, so we deal wit’ me as
I is. So what if I tells ya where de stash is? What happens in a
coupl’ve weeks?”
“I don’t know. That’s as honest an answer as I
can give you,” he responded, lookin’ and soundin’
real sad. “I’m the only one taking a real gamble. Deep
down, I have to gamble on both of you to save my hide, and you have to gamble on me not
holding out or turning you in. I’m betting on your basic
addict selfishness, though. You’re both smart girls; it
doesn’t affect that, which is lucky.”
“We’re listenin’,” Brandy Two assured
him.
“If you betray me, you’ll be on their side and
they’ll give you juice—for a while, anyway. They may
keep you on it. Then, again, they may just decide that they
don’t need you anymore and have no place for you. Then
it’s the end. There’s always that risk, and it’s
strongest when they’ve won. If there’s one thing
Brandy—my Brandy—knows, it’s that the
Company top isn’t just powerful, it’s racist. They
needed others for guinea pigs, but neither of you will fit into
their final plan. You know what happened to Vogel’s victims
when they had no further use for them.”
I had a real uneasy feelin’ when he said this, since that
was always the one fear I had since gettin’ hooked, and the
one fear the juice did not make go away. “Go
’head, we listenin’.”
“Play it my way, and we’ll have the origin world.
The present Company. They’re no angels themselves and they
really don’t give a damn, but when there’s no reason to
be cruel they take care of their own. They’d never let this
shit get out generally—hell, you put a million doses out on
the streets of Philadelphia and loads of people, some of them very
middle and upper class, would be fighting to get hooked and
wouldn’t even ask or think about the price they’d pay.
You know that. But it’s organic, sort of. It exists
somewhere in nature. A sufficient supply for the few addicts
remaining could be insured indefinitely, particularly for the pair
that exposed the thing and saved the damned Company’s
neck.”
“Is that really—possible?” Brandy Two asked in
wonder. “A lifetime supply, forever?”
“He ain’t jivin’, sista’,” I told
her. “Dat’s jes’ de way dey do stuff.” He
was right, and it made me feel a lot better to know that I could do
the right thing and still be in my own best interests. “We
got nothin’ to lose if Sam play square wit’ us.”
If the opposition believed I might not shoot Sam for the juice,
then I was damn sure Sam couldn’t betray me.
“Unda’ de flo’ vent in de upstairs hall, Sam. It
all dere.”
He relaxed and put the gun away. “No it
isn’t.”
I shot up. “What!”
“You may be only a shadow of your former self, but you
still think the same. I found them before you even woke up. Now
they really are no longer in the house.”
“Den why—?”
“If you couldn’t bring yourself to trust me and tell
me, then I had no chance. No chance at all. Now, maybe, if we can
give the details to your—sister—here and make
her believe it, then we have a fighting chance.” He
gave a weary grin. “Now you two have only one worry, and
it’s a minor one, all things considered, but I just want you
to be a little paranoid, too.”
“What dat?” I asked him.
“If, somewhere, there are two Brandys as identical as the
two of you, so much so they might have pulled off the switch, then
somewhere, almost definitely, there’s a Sam Two as well, one
with the ethics of a cockroach who decided that being on the vice
pad in Bristol was pale stuff compared to millions in the bank in
this life. The original Sam is recovering from a serious
brain injury, remember? That could hide any lapses. You see,
that’s the reason I was delayed so long. The move was
anticipated, but tricky. We now have something on them—maybe.
You see, in the Labyrinth, about thirty-six hours ago, one of us
blew the other’s brains out. That’s why you, my
would-be replacement bride, were called off. That’s the
beauty of it. Nobody—not you, not the Company, not the
opposition—knows which one I really am. Not for
sure.” Damn his hide!
“Chessworks.”
“I would like to speak to Miss Addison, please.”
“One moment. I’ll transfer your call.” Click! Buzz! Whirr! Ring! “Yes?” It was
her voice all right.
“This is Brandy. We have her.”
“Where?”
“Right here at the house. She’s good. She actually
got the drop on me, but she didn’t figure on a double for
Sam, too. Neither did I! Why didn’t you tell
me?”
“It was not necessary for you to know. We didn’t
know if she might contact Markham or someone first to get
allies.”
“You give her too much credit. She’s a shadow
dancer, jus’ like me. She was hopin’ to replace me and
use Sam in a scheme to make a deal with you, but she’d
never give that Company no crack at her. You oughta know
that by now.”
There was silence for a moment, then Addison said, obviously
amused, “Very well, then. This situation has changed from a
strong and threatening negative into a positive. Put Sam on,
please.”
“I’m here,” he said. “I’m on the
upstairs extension.”
“All right. You know your mission. Do it right and do it
within the next twenty-five days and you’ll live there like a
king on those millions. Fail, and you will be remembered when the
time comes, I promise you.”
“I got the picture,” he replied. “It’s
not like I haven’t done it before. Once you bump off yourself
you can bump off anybody. What do you want us to do with the
broad?”
“I’ll have a car at your place in sixty minutes or
less, traffic willing. Since you’re about to have delicacy
problems, I don’t think having a Brandy there who is an
obvious addict would escape Markham’s notice. We’ll
take both of them for now.” She hung up. Abrupt, that girl,
but she had a lot on her mind.
“What you s’posed t’do?” I asked
him.
“Murder Markham in such a way that it can’t be
traced to me, preferably make it look like an accident.
Dakani’s no fool. He kept most of the resident agents, even
the ones close to Aldrath, on the job. Markham’s chomping at
the bit to be let loose on this thing, and Dakani’s inclined
to promote him and give him some powers. If he failed, the kid
could always blame Bill and Aldrath’s people; if he
succeeded, the kid gets the credit and maybe keeps the job. There
are very few people with Bill’s experience or track record in
playing the game the right way. Hell, if they considered
me a threat, think what they consider Bill! It’s
still a pretty small and close organization they’ve got, out
of necessity, and they’ve still got a hard job ahead no
matter what. What’s it cost them to get me to waste Bill? If
I do, he’s out of the way. If I fail, I’m the only one
who suffers.”
“Makes sense,” I agreed. “Real surprised
t’hear all dat on de phone, though. If I was Bill I’d
have a tap on it.”
“Oh, he does,” Sam replied. “State of the art
for this world, but no high-tech stuff by Company standards. On the
other hand, Addison’s people have a tap, too, and they can
tap into this tap. It blocks all calls to the Chessworks
prefix from registering or recording on Bill’s tap. Same goes
for her calls here. They’re pretty confident of
it.”
“They been pretty fuckin’ confident of
everything,” Brandy Two commented sourly. “What you
think they’re gonna do with me?”
“Make you a guinea pig, just like her, before they risk
any of their own with this.”
“Sam? S’pose dey don’t?” I said
worriedly. “S’pose dey jus’ send us back t’
Fast Eddie or worse?”
“Then I’m done,” he answered flatly.
“But you won’t be any worse off than you would have
been otherwise, would you?”
I got a little chill. “Sam—hold me once,” I
asked him. “Hold me like y’used to an’ jes’
play like it be old times. Please.”
And he held me real close and real tight, and he kissed me long
and hard, and I knowed there was still the love there. God! How
I’d mucked it all up! God! How I wanted him!
The car, a big blue Mercedes, pulled up in about forty minutes.
I didn’t expect Addison to be in it, and she wasn’t;
just a big, rough-lookin’ black dude in a suit and a young
straight-haired, round-faced black woman in a white uniform, like a
nurse. We opened the door, and for just a moment I couldn’t
go out it. I didn’t want to go. Somethin’ held me back.
All I wanted to do was turn around and grab Sam and run for it.
Scream for him to make love to me and then put a bullet through my
head.
Instead, I walked out, and my twin followed close behind. She
and I was at least dressed decent for a change; she’d shopped
for more than one outfit.
We got in, both of us lookin’ sullen but me most of all,
and even as the doors closed and we pulled away I felt like a
tremendous hand was reachin’ out and tryin’ to snatch
me back there. It took a while for the feelin’ to fade, and
it was real curious that the juice hadn’t done nothin’
to calm it down.
“Now, you two listen up and listen up good,” the
“nurse” said, turnin’ to us. “You just sit
there real nice and quiet-like and enjoy the ride. We got some
miles to make today. When you two need t’ get
juiced?”
“After eleven tonight,” Brandy Two replied, and I
said, “Anytime afta’ fo’ in the
mornin’.”
She nodded to herself. “Well, we gonna put you two on an
equal basis. Now, we gonna pull over up here and you two are gonna
get out and we all gonna go over in the bushes and you’re
gonna get naked and we’ll see if you got any juice on you.
Any juice we find, we’re gonna destroy. You got
that? Now, I don’t have no juice, and Monroe, here,
he don’t have no juice, so if you two girls
don’t behave and do just like we say we aren’t gonna
make it to the folks who do. Understand?”
We understood. We even figured on it. I had none, but my twin
had four, since that’s a natural thing for a shadow dancer to
do in these circumstances, and she’d already managed to hide
two in the car, keepin’ two on her person.
They found all four, although I thought for a moment that old
Monroe was gonna miss the one wedged in back of the seat rest. They
ain’t that easy to destroy, but they had some chemical that
would do it. I wondered who the hell they was to know so much, but
they never said. Some folks from their force here, probably drawn
from the Company’s mob ranks, who expected to be real
important here when the new folks took over, most likely.
We took the Northwest Extension up to I-80, then headed west.
That State College substation had always been leaky for the
opposition; there musta been some way they had of usin’ it
without it registerin’ on security’s boards, or so I
figured. We didn’t go all the way there, though; instead, we
turned in at a roadside motel where they fed us, then took us to a
room in back for which Monroe had the key.
Monroe sent “nurse” Longstreet outside, then turned
to us. “Now, which one of you is the fuckin’
oreo?”
“Me,” we both responded at once. I was real
surprised, and signalled her it was okay.
“We both been lib’rated,” I told him.
“We don’t care ’bout no color. What’re you?
De black Klan?”
That enraged him, and he started in on me. I had real rough,
big, nasty bruisers before, but this guy was somethin’ of a
psycho. The only thing that was savin’ me was that the juice
wouldn’t let nothin’ get real painful without
tippin’ the scales the other way. Kinda made you a masochist
to get pleasure for pain, but it was better than the alternative.
Fact was, the only thing savin’ Monroe was the fact
that we both needed juice.
Suddenly there was loud talkin’ outside, and the door
opened and Monroe stopped for a moment and looked up, mean as hell.
Standin’ there was Ms. Cool herself, Addison. I could hear
Longstreet cussin’ a blue streak outside, but somebody had
her.
Addison took one look, figured what was goin’ on even if
she didn’t know the reason, and said, fairly firmly,
“Just what the hell do you think you’re
doing?”
“Shut up, bitch! This ain’t your business!”
Monroe growled. That was a mistake.
“Girls,” Addison said, calm as could be, “you
have my permission, and my support, if you want to kill this
idiot.”
Monroe gave a big laugh, but it didn’t last long. You take
two women bodybuilder types together and no hunk even
Monroe’s size and strength was gonna keep us from doin’
damage. It was one hell of a fight, though, ’cause of the big
weight difference, and while we done him some real damage, when
Brandy Two kicked him in the gut and sent him to the floor under
the sink, he rebounded, made for his coat, and I knew he was
goin’ for his gun.
He never made it. There was this short Pfutt! sound, and there
was a neat hole in the side of his head. He actually looked
surprised; I think he was dumb enough and strong enough that it
took him five full seconds ’fore he realized he was
dead. The recoil hardly moved him. Finally he just sort of sat down
on the floor, stared hard, like he was seein’ somethin’
he couldn’t understand, then keeled over.
“Messy, but satisfying,” noted Addison, putting her
pistol back in her purse. “You—get your clothes on and
both of you come with me,” she added, pointin’ to me.
“I had hoped to use this place tonight but we’re going
to have to have it cleaned up instead.”
I got back into my jeans, shirt, and sandals and we followed her
out. I got to admit I was surprised at all this; she hadn’t
seemed like the kind to give a damn about stuff like that as long
as it wasn’t her. Two big men pushed Monroe’s
girlfriend into the room after we left and closed the door. I
looked around and figured either everybody else was sound sleepers
or business was lousy.
Parked in an outer lot designed for the purpose was a tractor
trailer; one of them big rigs. The trailer didn’t have no
signs or pictures or nothin’, just a big dirty silver.
Addison leaped up on the ledge like she done this all the time,
threw the levers, and opened one side of the back. We hauled
ourselves in, and she got in after us. It was pretty dark in there,
but soon as she closed and bolted the rear door the lights come
on.
Inside was a whole bunch of equipment, some real big, some in
crates and some not, and two people. One was a medium-sized fellow
in plaid shirt, jeans, and boots who had real dark skin but
wasn’t black; he kinda looked like some Indian. The other was
a woman with a great build, kinda like ours, but with golden skin
and brown hair. One of the golden people of the headquarters
world.
The truck roared into life, although I ain’t sure right
then if even they knew where they was goin’. Monroe had sorta
screwed up their plans. The man reached in his pocket and took out
two little cubes and tossed them to us. “Here,” he
said, in Spanish-accented English. “Get your fix now. We have
much work to do.”
I still wasn’t sure it was late enough for me, but since
these folks had the supply it didn’t cost nothin’ to
try. I was under in real sweet ecstasy in about a minute and a
half.
They didn’t do nothin’ in the comedown period, since
they shut off most of the lights and all of ’em seemed to be
asleep themselves. We was still movin’, but we didn’t
know to where. I heard my twin give a giggle and turned to her.
“Look at ’em,” she said. “The most
dangerous people around, and we don’t dare do nothin’.
That girl one of them bossworld people?”
“Yeah, that’s what they look like,” I
replied.
“Reminds me of somebody, but I can’t think
who.”
I looked over at her. “The rest of the shadow dancers.
Different color, different hair, but all the rest of them girls
looked just like that. Haven’t you figured that much out
yet?”
“Uh uh. Not till now. By the way—glad to see you can
talk regular again. Guess they musta done it while we was out with
somethin’ in here.”
I was flat-out amazed. Until that moment I hadn’t realized
that I was back to normal—at least, the normal I was
before they run that jive on me at Arnie’s. Wasn’t
nothin’ to read in there, but I could imagine a page in my
mind and know all the words. Somehow, they took that module out of
me that they put in. That meant that one of these crates, probably
the biggest, was a hypnoscan, and that made the Mex or whatever he
was Dr. Carlos. Brandy Two confirmed it.
“That pig was my main trainer at the lodge. You suppose
he’s one of ’em, too?”
I shook my head. “No way. Wrong build, wrong face, wrong
everything. I guess they could make themselves look like that if
they really wanted to, but I don’t think they did it to him.
He’s like that pair back there, and Crockett, and
Arnie—just hired help. Real smart and skilled hired help, but
that’s it.”
“You suppose they ran us both through that thing like they
did last time? I mean, they took somethin’ out of your head,
but did they put somethin’ else in?”
It was a good question, but I was fairly confident they
hadn’t. “Uh uh. They can take that shit out in
’bout an hour, but it takes a long time to put
things in. Damn! I’m starvin’ and I
hav’ta go to the bathroom.”
“Me, too. So do they, I guess. Got to be somethin’
in here.”
We was feelin’ good, and we got up and did a little
explorin’, tryin’ not to wake up nobody. They
did have one of them chemical porta-potty things back in a
corner, and that at least took care of the immediate problem. We
wandered back, ’cause there was nothin’ else to do.
“You know, that girl she looks kinda Hawaiian. You got
Hawaiians in this world?”
I nodded and looked. “Yeah, ’cept for the brown hair
and maybe a little difference in skin tone, you’re right.
Never thought of that. Island kind of folks, anyways. You got my
brains, even if you ain’t got my experience. See anything
else peculiar? Take a look at both them girls.”
She tried, but shook her head. “What do you
mean?”
“Addison’s one of them, too. You take that makeup
off, put down that hair and make it that brown color, and put her
in some decent clothes.”
“Them eyes ain’t right.”
“Yeah, they are, under there somewhere. She ain’t
been medically converted. It’s more like some kind of
high-tech makeup job, like they might do in their world for show
business. That’s why the makeup’s so heavy. Covers up
the seams.”
“But her skin’s darker—not like ours, but like
white folks with real deep suntans.”
“More tricks, that’s all. Probably takes a bath in
some kinda dye that shade, which is a little darker and duller than
theirs. Makes a world of difference. The shadow dancers was black,
brown, lily-white, and China yellow, but they was all the same. All
but us.”
Even with the noise and shakin’ and rattlin’, I
guess we was talkin’ too loud ’cause Addison stirred,
opened her eyes, looked over at us, then got up. “No
use,” she said. “I can’t stay asleep in something
like this. I heard you two talking.”
“We was just wonderin’ whether you started out in
actin’ or not,” I said pointedly. “You do great
makeup, and you play parts real good, too.”
“You are good. Uh—I assume you are this
world’s Brandy I’m talking to. Since Carlos took that
module out you really are incredibly identical.”
“I am—was—the detective,” I told
her.
“Well, to answer your question, my parents were
performers. The sort of art they practiced has no real equivalent
here. It’s a traditional form among my people that is both
for art and religion. It is practiced only by husband and wife
teams, so when my father died the show was over, so to
speak.”
“I didn’t think none of you people ever
died,” I commented.
“It is true that we live a long time, and do not
suffer the diseases and infirmities you do, but we all die, sooner
or later, from age or from accident. His was accidental, in a
crash. They loved each other very much. My mother was left with
three daughters and no means of support. She was expected to marry
again out of convenience, but she could not bring herself to do so.
The only chance they had for any future was in one of the colonies,
one without major class distinctions. We were neither fish nor
fowl, as you say. We were low-class people performing for
upper-class patrons. Unless we all found eligible men in our very
small profession, we could not continue it. It took money to
emigrate and become established, and my sisters were very young.
There was a patron, a very powerful man, whom we played for often,
who took a liking to me. I could become his mistress, his kept
woman, as it were, and he would pay for the emigration of my
family. I accepted. I was fifteen years old.”
This was something I hadn’t expected at all. She was
moody, soft, introspective, and had a need to talk. I guess,
rollin’ along in a semi in the early-mornin’ hours and
unable to sleep, she just figured some company was better than
none. At least she figured we’d understand, although why she
felt we would I didn’t know.
“Yeah, well, at least you had the silks and furs,”
Brandy Two commented. “Me, I was just past fourteen when I
run away, and I wound up in a run-down row house in Washington, me
and six other girls, hooked on smack in another few months
’cause it helped not to think or regret and workin’ the
streets for a quota. We all got our sob stories, honey.”
Addison looked at her, then at me. “No, there’s a
difference. I look over at the two of you and I see exactly the
same person. I listen to you speak, and I hear only slight
differences in your speech, and that probably only because this is
not my native tongue. But on my right is a woman who came up from
nothing and made something of herself and developed her brain, and
on my right is the same woman who did none of this. You might have
had bad luck, bad breaks, or even made some stupid decisions, but
clearly you had choices. Two ways at least to go. I did not. Women
in my society are theoretically equal to men, but none, not even in
the upper classes, ever can reach a level of decision making,
policy making. Middle-class women can have education and careers,
but they always work for men carrying out men’s projects and
goals. In my class, a woman could not even be chief gardener of an
upper-class estate. An assistant, perhaps, but always taking orders from the
men.”
“It ain’t that cool here, neither,” I pointed
out. “Is that what got you into this?” Hell, in
this world some of the meanest radicals was women.
“Try bein’ a black woman in this kinda society and see
how far you get.”
“Each world has its own problems,” Addison said.
“I can do nothing for other worlds until I fix my own. That
is difficult and dangerous enough.”
“Yeah, so you’re doin’ your sugar
daddy’s work for him, like always,” my twin noted.
“You give him his revolution and he gives you the shaft. I
seen that too many times before.”
“He just wants power, it’s true, and he might be no
better, perhaps worse, than what we have now, but he is a product
of society and he does not understand the concept of
radical. By the roots. Nothing less will gain what I want.
To him, this is a small, limited plot to take over the Board and
control it. A few parties, a few party girls with some of the old
men, and that’s it. I am his link to all of it. He cannot
leave. He was brilliant in showing me how even the greatest
computers and experts can be fooled if they are fed consistent but
faulty information. He is a typical, arrogant upper-class male and
I know him far too well. I knew he would never even think
that he could be a victim of just such a thing. How could he? I am
a mere, insignificant woman, a mistress, lover, and actress,
carrying out his orders to the letter. A majority of the corporate
board as his shadows, dancing to his tunes. That’s all his
vision allows.”
I suddenly saw where she was goin’ with all this, and I
was appalled. “You have the missin’ element now, the
thing that the juice needs and we can’t make. But to pull it
off, then you . . . ”
She nodded. “Yes. I must become a host, an addict, myself.
I am prepared to do this. As you can see from Aeii, here, there is
very little physical change in us compared to you. It is not
obvious to anyone, which is the point.”
“He’ll be cautious. He’ll catch you. You know
damned well he’ll run you through one of them mind wringers
before he lets you get near him, once it all starts.”
“Dear, sweet Carlos, here, will see that it doesn’t
happen. Even the great manipulator Jamispur will not be able to
detect it, just as Vogel’s technicians could not detect you.
He will see only what men expect to see when they examine women
like me. He will be extra clever, and search for the lone linkage
that might trigger a different personality, but it will not be
there. One with Jamispur’s skills might have detected you at
Vogel’s, given time, but not even he can detect what is cut
off, closed off, no longer there.”
“But that’s a kind of suicide,” Brandy Two
pointed out. “What good’s your revolution if you
can’t pull no strings?”
“The strings will be pulled by others. The depth of my
commitment is so absolute I will let no consideration stand in my
way. I am only the weapon, not the revolution.”
“Yeah, so your big man’s in charge, he can just send
out for juice any old time he wants,” I noted. I got a real
uneasy feelin’ about this, and about anybody who was this
much of a fanatic. “Who could stop him?”
She smiled. “He only thinks he knows where it comes from.
He does not. Only a precious few know. And after, even I
won’t know. We do not mean to control the Corporation, we
mean to bring it down. All of it, from its corrupt and inbred male
leadership to its vicious class distinctions. And once we do that,
we will begin instilling justice on other worlds as we can and as
we find them.”
Well, I had to admit there ain’t been no crime chief who
was female since Ma Barker, but I wasn’t none too sure
I’d like these folks better. Seems I remembered old Ma was
pretty scary herself. And it seemed to me, anyways, that nobody who
could excuse folks like Vogel and Siegel and cause so much torture
and sufferin’ and death could accept slow, peaceable reform.
Who would be marched to the camps in this world
’cause they was impossible to reform and reeducate? How many
slaves would they make to build their perfect societies? Old
Aldrath had it right, I thought, when he said that progress only
came if you had worlds to steal from.
“You will be my vanguard,” she continued. “You
deserve the honor, for depriving me of Vogel just when vital
discoveries were made. The two of you will have the honor of paving
the way for the salvation of humanity.”