The doctor’s name was Chidra, and he had
me strapped down and surrounded by so many gadgets that I
couldn’t move. They’d already poked and probed and
scraped and sampled and quizzed and tested us so much I was dizzy.
Now it kinda looked like the moment of truth.
Fact was, I was totally incapable of kickin’ the juice,
even though I was no longer expectin’ that massive high. I
felt great, and just a rest or heavy exercise was enough to wash
away guilt and lingerin’ doubts and memories. I wanted Sam. I
loved Sam. But I thought Sam was bein’ totally unreasonable.
If he really loved me, then he’d take one of my offers.
That’s how you thought.
“First, since you are intellectually unimpaired, I am
going to explain the options to you,” Chidra said.
“I’m going to be blunt, and I already know your answers
so I don’t wish or expect any. Just listen. Clear?”
“I guess.” What was the point if he already
knowed?
“First, you can elect the colony. It won’t be fancy,
but there will be people there you have known and work will go on
studying this thing. You would be provided with all the basics and
be expected to submit from time to time to studies, but otherwise
it would be a carefree life, much like the life you shared with
that stranded exploiter team, with some amenities and no strange
natives. I must be blunt. With this thing managing and protecting
your body, you might well live a hundred and fifty years. Even if
we eventually found a miracle cure or stabilizer that would render
you harmless and nondependent, which may be years, even decades
away or might not be possible at all, you would remain there, since
your patterns would be fixed and there would be, I’m afraid,
little purpose or use in allowing you out. You simply have no means
to contribute.”
It didn’t sound too awful. Plenty of sex, lots of room to
exercise and play, and no work or responsibilities, plus flush
toilets.
“A second choice would be to return to your world where,
I’m told, you still have a substantial sum of money that
would guarantee supporting you comfortably. Your half would come to
a bit under two million dollars, if that means anything to you. I
have no idea what a dollar is worth. You would be maintained on the
capsule with the pure virus as you were for most of your addiction
period. When you needed a supply, thirty days or so at a time, you
would go to a Company representative and draw it, like from a bank.
You already have a high level of nymphomania; this would probably
proceed unchecked.”
That sounded even better.
“We would, in either case, make some adjustments that
would be in our mutual interests. We would not tamper with your
intellect, but we would have to tamper with your memories. We would
eliminate all memories of Sam, of your marriage, of your career, of
the Company and the Labyrinth. There would be gaping holes in your
memories of the past, but you would not be bothered by it and you
would never be curious about it or want to know. You would dismiss
it if you found it out somehow. You would be perfectly content the
way you were.
“The third and only other option would be to allow us to
treat the illness and cleanse your body. The cleansing itself is
relatively simple and subjectively painless, but curing and
treating the results in mind and body would be a long and difficult
process with no guarantees. If you want your Sam, though,
that’s the only road. We’ve done some fairly good
analysis of him, and we believe he will be dead or as good as dead
within a year without you, and that’s the plain
truth.”
“I’ll bring him around. I’ll take number two.
You even get the high with that, don’t you?”
“I said you weren’t to choose. Not now. The reason
why you are so secured is that in a few moments I’m going to
feed a charge through the body at a low level. It will stun the
virus and confuse it. It will not be able to deal with it. There
will be no permanent harm, and the whole process will take many
hours as we compensate. During that period, and particularly near
the end of it, since the virus will adjust eventually and reseize
control, you will have your thoughts clear, organized, and
unfettered. Then I will ask the question again.”
“Now, wait a minute, I—”
Suddenly I felt a real sensation through my whole body, kinda
like when you touch an electric light socket that ain’t
grounded but weaker, almost pleasant. After a while, I just went to
sleep with it, hardly thinkin’ at all.
Now, I know what they done. I even kinda suspected it at the
time, but it didn’t make no difference. They used that
neutralizin’ current and a hypnoscanner not to program me,
but to feed in subtle visions and suggestions, provoke old
feelin’s. Memories of life with Sam, of just lyin’
there sometimes while he was still asleep and just watchin’
him and feelin’ love. All his habits, his quirks, his
idiosyncracies. Knowin’, too, that it was mutual, that he
both loved and respected me just the same. And then other
visions—one vision. Sam, in the Labyrinth, tryin’ to
block the killer from shootin’ in my direction, takin’
the bullet, part of his head
splatterin’ . . . and what I felt then,
and after.
And there was other visions, superimposed one on the other. Me,
screwin’ Calvin or somebody, havin’ a ball,
gettin’ into that high, always over the sight of Sam’s
bloody head. The meanin’ was clear. All I had to do was nod
my head and get a life of highs, pleasure, and ease—all at
the expense of Sam, all paid for by Sam’s destruction.
And, through it all, I could think. Really think,
’cause the juice was too busy handlin’ the distractions
to block out the negative emotions. Guilt, shame, regret, all was
there; I had a sense of right and wrong, good and evil I
hadn’t had in over a year. I had perspective. Yeah, I’d
be happy. Oh, I’d be sad and cry if I was told that Sam
blowed his brains out, but it wouldn’t last long.
But they was honest. I also got views of them wards of Vogel
refugees, of Donna and the rest. What if I did take the cure and
wound up crippled or brain damaged? Would that be any more
of a service to Sam? And I knowed it would. I knowed that even
then, he’d be there, always, doin’ what he could,
’cause he loved me. I was the only thing left to him that had
any importance, any meanin’.
In the end, the bottom line was, who did I really value most?
What was most important to me? Who was more valuable, more
precious? With the juice in force, of course, the answer was
simple. Self-preservation of me and the juice inside was all there
was. But the juice wasn’t talkin’ now. It was just me,
all by myself. I still loved the juice, the way it made me
feel, but I loved Sam, too. I owed him.
“You simply have no means to
contribute.”
And there it was, in the doc’s own words. Without Sam, I
had no reason to exist except for pure pleasure. Brandy One and
Brandy Two would merge. It would be as if Sam had never existed,
like the agency died with Daddy. Not only Sam, but all that I had
accomplished, or might have accomplished, would be gone. You could live a hundred and fifty
years . . .
As a fucking dumb vegetable. What kinda livin’ was
that? He was there, watchin’ over me, even though he was
sick at what I’d become . . .
Values . . . worth. You ain’t
human, he said. The juice needed to survive. It needed a host
and it needed a weed and both was equal in importance. That’s
all I was or would be. Some stinkin’, worthless weed. Not a
human, a thing who’d turn its back on somebody who
needed me even when that somebody’d been there when I’d
needed him. Once he’d been willin’ to die for me, and
me for him. I was willin’ to get in this fix just to avenge
him. If I really loved him, no matter what the power and lure of
the juice, I oughta have the guts enough to live for him, too.
I was still under; I knowed they wasn’t even ready for me
to come out of it yet, but I still fought it off and screamed,
“Do it, Doc! Get this thing outta me! Hurry it up and do
it now, ’fore it changes my mind!”
They learned enough from the early ones to know how to do the
easy part. They put you in a chamber, out cold, the juice in you
and doin’ fine, and all at once, evenly through the body,
they put this ray that was very specific and very deadly only to
it. The death of the juice was instantaneous and uniform throughout
the body. There was no chance for it to curl up and mount a defense
or do more damage than it done already.
The trouble was, the damage it done makin’ you over into a
comfortable and controllable home for it was done, and on top of
that its absence was more painful and rough than you knew.
All our lives we live with some pain. Gas pains, joint pains,
muscle aches, you name it. We tune it out, learn to tell the new
pains from the old, the important ones from the routine. With the
juice, you didn’t have no real pain ’less it was
somethin’ serious, and then only long enough for the juice to
take care of what was wrong. I woke up in real pain. I needed a
pill somethin’ bad. I was in so much agony that I pleaded
with them to put me back on the juice, that I couldn’t stand
it no more. I knowed Sam was there, but I couldn’t see him or
talk to him. I couldn’t face him with the idea that I was too
weak to take this, that I couldn’t hack it no more without
the juice. They gave me a few pills to help me sleep but
that’s about all they did. No juice. Lotsa sympathy, no
juice.
They was always there, though, watchin’ and
monitorin’, tellin’ me it would get better, but it
didn’t. It got worse and worse and finally I just
couldn’t stand it no more. I sunk so deep in depression and
pain and misery I couldn’t even think straight and all I
wanted was out. They stopped me twice from killin’
myself.
They begun a program of physical and mental therapy and drove me
hard. I didn’t feel no better, but at least I was doin’
somethin’. Fact was, the lousy way I felt was called
normalcy. It was somethin’ you just didn’t know or
notice till you didn’t have it. Then, when I was ready to at
least see Sam, to get some reinforcement, I couldn’t.
I was in a kinda isolation ward. Seems the juice took over most
of the job of my body’s immune system. It took a lot of their
medicines and a lot of time to build itself back up where a common
cold wouldn’t kill me.
They had a lot of pills for me to take without fail, and my mind
worked funny tricks there. I kept tryin’ to understand why if
I had to take these damned pills all the time they just
couldn’t give me the juice and cure it all at once. God! How
I wanted it! I thought about it, craved it constantly.
Finally I was built-up enough to see Sam, but all he had to do
was come in and say, “Hi, babe,” and I collapsed into
his arms and just cried and cried and begged for him to hold me and
never let go. A few days later, when they decided that the benefits
outweighed any risks, they let him move in with me. I just wanted
him to hold me and kiss me and make love to me and nothin’
else mattered in the whole damned multiple worlds.
I wore him out, and I knew it. He was exhausted and a little ill
himself and wound up with what they called a “minor coronary
episode,” and that was crazy, too, ’cause all of a
sudden he was more of a patient than I was and I was gettin’
shit for him and tendin’ to him.
The docs got fancy names for it. They claim I subordinated and
fixated and all the rest of that crap on Sam. All the energy, all
the emotions, all went to Sam and Sam alone. It was, well, like
when you first fall deep in love with somebody. You can’t
think of nothin’ or nobody else but them, you damn near
worship them, you just wanna be with them always. It kinda wears
off and settles in after a while—what they mean when they say
the honeymoon’s over—and it had some with us, too, but
they say this kinda thing might not wear off for years, maybe not
ever, this time, and I don’t give a damn. Sometimes you just
about gotta lose what you most want before you realize how
important it is. I had almost murdered half of myself, and it would
never happen again. I was Sam’s rainbow weed and he was mine
and we was each other’s juice. Neither of us was much damned
good without the other, but together we was one hell of a
team.
“Sam?”
“Yeah, babe?”
“I love you Sam.”
“I love you, too, babe.”
“You still gonna love me when I’m old and blind and
ugly wrinkled?”
“If you can love me the way I look now, why the hell
should I be any different?”
“I don’t want it to go back like it was, Sam. You
was miserable with that high-class clientele and chasin’ down
computer embezzlers in Pittsburgh and I was miserable ’cause
I wasn’t chasin’ down them white collar bastards with
you. I don’t wanna be separated again by no job or no funny
lone wolf missions to other worlds. We’re a team or
we’re nowhere. Even in this business, even though we
didn’t know it, we was a team. Ain’t nothin’
gonna break us up again.”
“You impressed a lot of people here, babe, including me.
Even the bad guys were impressed. They made most of their mistakes
because even though they had you on a gold leash they
couldn’t keep their admiration and fear of you in check. Half
that summation was yours, maybe more. God, though, wasn’t
that great! You couldn’t sell it to Hollywood. They
wouldn’t believe it.”
“I’m through impressin’ nobody but you. I
talked myself into this mess in the first place ’cause I kept
tryin’ to impress all them folks who looked down on blacks,
on women, on people with bad grammar or ignorant table manners. All
them stupid, meaningless rules.”
“I always loved you just the way you were,” he told
me seriously. “I never asked for anything else.”
“Then piss on ’em all. If they don’t take this
coarse, foul-mouthed black bitch the way she is, I don’t want
’em. If I ain’t learned nothin’ else, I sure as
hell learned that. Look what that kinda shit caused here. I bet
that damned Chairman of the Board shits just like everybody else,
just in a gold pot. Hell, them highbrows kept makin’ them
remarks but we impressed the hell outta them, too! Just bein’
what we are and doin’ what we do best. Better’n
anybody!”
“I don’t think we have to impress people when we get
home,” he said real casual. “I think people have to
impress us.”
“Huh?”
“Well, even putting aside the post-tax nearly four million
we still have in the bank for the Vogel job—you remember how
I started that summation? A wager. A fee, if you will. If I lost, I
paid with my life. But I’m still here.”
“What in hell did you win?”
“A retainer, more or less, with fringe benefits. They pay
us a flat fee, adjustable for inflation, every month for the rest
of our natural lives for the right to consult us on
Company business. We don’t lose the retainer if we refuse the
job. That only gives ’em the right to talk. The fringes
include medical care, miracle pills and drugs, and everything else
that the Center can provide to their own people. We also have
unlimited access to the Labyrinth. If we want to get away from it
all, we have an infinity of choices.”
“Sam—how much of a retainer.”
“Well,” he sighed, “it starts at ten thousand
dollars a month. Of course, it’ll come from the Company so
we’ll have to pay taxes, but it’s filtered through a
number of foundations and tax gimmicks to minimize things. I
figured if we let the foundation let us live in one of its houses
and use its cars and stuff we ought to be able to get by for a few
years, letting that four million just roll over and
multiply.”
“Sam, that’s over a hundred thousand a
year!”
“Sure. Plus expenses. The consultative services of the
highest-regarded private eyes in a few thousand known worlds is
cheap at that price.”
“Oh, my God . . . ”
Well, that’s most of the good news, anyways. The rest was
that the Center’s microsurgery techniques was so good that
reversin’ my sterilization was a breeze for them, though I
had a long waitin’ period before they was sure my system
could take it without hurtin’ no kid.
We got to thinkin’ ’bout adoption, but never
followed up on it. Sam wanted to adopt an Asian baby. I think he
just wanted to see the looks on teachers’ faces when both
parents show up for the PTA, not to mention the bar or bas mitzvah.
Oh, yeah—I had to take the instructions over from the start,
but now any kid I have will be born of an official Jewish mother.
We took a trip to Israel to celebrate, then went down into Kenya
and Tanzania and Zimbabwe and Malawi, too. I got to admit it was a
charge bein’ in places where black folks run the whole thing
and people was starin’ sideways at Sam.
I ain’t gonna give you the good vibes jive, though. It
took almost a year and a half, longer than the damned case, to get
me to where both my mind and body worked reasonably well. I still
have dreams of them super highs and periods sometimes when I kinda
blank out and flash back to feelin’ the bad old mellow times.
My eyes got so bad I can’t see the end of my nose without
glasses, and I need the kind of special high-tech glasses they
ain’t invented here yet to see reasonable at all. I
can’t drive ’cause every once in a while when I see a
ripplin’ effect or some shimmerin’ colors I kinda trip
out for a few seconds to maybe a minute. I can read fine with the
glasses and do, but I gotta keep from concentratin’ too hard
on any one image, whether it’s a printed page or a
paintin’ or even a big unmovin’ object like a parked
car, or it kinda does a flip in my head and I’m seein’
everything backwards, like in a mirror, sometimes for up to an
hour. Sometimes when I stub my toe or hit my head or
somethin’, instead of pain I get a pleasure rush.
And, every now and then, I get these episodes, as the docs call
’em. Like suddenly gettin’ super turned on for no
reason at all and usually at the worst possible time and situation.
Or I’ll get up and put on makeup and jewelry for no real
reason and come down and not realize I didn’t put no clothes
on till somebody points it out, or we’ll be eatin’ out
and I’ll pour ketchup on my ice cream and eat it without
noticin’. I didn’t get away scot-free; that damned
thing did some damage up there. I’m gettin’ control of
the worst of it, though, and Sam’s been super supportive.
Then there’s my twin, only she ain’t so much my twin
no more. She didn’t have no Sam or nothin’, so there
was no way she could kick the stuff. She controls her own juice
supply now, but she decided that she knowed one thing best and made
a deal. She’s back workin’ for Fast Eddie Small in
that world, on a fifty-fifty split, still packin’
’em in. They sent Mukasa’s brains to the brain laundry,
and now he’s happily workin’ in the labs at that juice
leper colony of theirs. His poor wife and her lover are
there, too, as are the whole set of them from the exploiter team.
Hell, their top folks are in charge there.
They still ain’t found Carlos, which worries everybody,
but they did find forty-two of the fifty shadow dancers in a safe
world stop, all with their throats cut. What he’s doin’
with the other eight I don’t want to know. We can’t
always be savin’ their damned world. The cost’s been
too high, even though the rewards are good. Ioyeo was right about
one thing, though; that society and that Company ain’t gonna
change ’less it’s forced to, and the longer they
don’t the more loyeos and Mukasas and Jamispurs they make.
Dakani’s still got the security post, but also still with
“actin’ ” in front of the name, but
he’s pretty secure now. He has old Aldrath Prang outside in
the Labyrinth and the field seein’ how they can keep the kind
of computerized foolery from happenin’ again. He was by not
long ago, and sat and watched our tapes of every Thin Man movie and
every Raymond Chandler film ever made.
The way they worked it for us was that Mayar Eldrith got us a
Company job. It’s well disguised and a new post, but
it’s one they needed for years. It comes with a
two-hundred-and-forty-four-acre estate in central Pennsylvania near
Bellefonte and State College, a manor house with fourteen furnished
rooms, huge livin’ room and fireplace, an indoor hot tub, and
an outdoor pool, plus horse stables. Most of it is used for
contract farmin’—the trust which is the Company cover
here leases out the land to local farmers, mostly for corn. The
horses are part of a deal with Penn State’s agricultural
college and they mostly take care of them, though I’m
learnin’ to ride a horse and not doin’ too bad at it.
That leaves our ten grand a month for groceries and livin’
expenses and a few luxuries, like the Mercedes sports car and my
minks and jewels.
See, in a wooded patch up part of a hillside on the property is
this big, round, concrete-lined pit with a fence around it. Seems
like the lock on that fence been gettin’ broke a lot, posted
or not. We see that it ain’t used unless it’s supposed
to. I guess you could call us substationmasters; at least, this
one’s needed somebody to oversee it for a long time. Makes
gettin’ visitors and goin’ visitin’ a breeze,
too. We even got a number of local friends now. The area’s
too cold for too long, but the folks in general are real nice and
friendly with none of the usual hangups. It’s the university
what does it. They don’t know nothin’ ’bout no
Company or Labyrinth, and we intend to keep ’em in the
dark.
Well, the docs at the Center finally give me the go-ahead, and
it didn’t take long at all to get me pregnant. I didn’t
want to put it off no more, and if this one don’t make me
swear off it we might have more. We really do love kids, and, just
as important, we need something more than just each other to center
our lives on. Sam’s got his ailments like I got mine, but
with the Center’s help and some commitment on our part
there’s no reason we couldn’t live to be a hundred or
more if we wanted to. But in case one of us didn’t,
there’s gonna be at least one more reason to keep on
livin’ and doin’. It sure done in the last of my hopes
of keepin’ my old good looks, though. I’m puttin’
on weight like mad and I ain’t in no mood to take it off. Sam
ain’t gonna love me no less fat or thin, so why kill myself?
I’m already married—for keeps. If that fat bothers them
jocks joggin’ up and down the road come snow or sun, then
tough shit.
Ain’t nothin’ I get more of a charge out of than
walkin’ arm in arm with Sam down College Avenue to a
restaurant or over to the university for a show or up to a movie,
with my diamond earrings and seven months’ belly
stickin’ out from under my mink coat. I just wanna shout to
people. “I got Sam in love with me and millions of bucks
and the acclaim of a people who routinely walk between the worlds
and you don’t! Eat your hearts out!”
We got a few disagreements, of course. I was kinda hopin’
for fraternal twins and name ’em Nick and Nora, but I know
the odds against that. If it’s a boy, Sam wants to name him
Dashiell. It ain’t bad, but any kid who’s gonna start
life half black and all Jewish don’t need nothin’ more
on his shoulders. Almost in retaliation I threatened if it was a
girl to name her Mignon or Agatha, after some pretty good mystery
writers of my sex. We’ll find compromises someplace.
After all, I get to fill out the birth certificate.
One thing we did agree on, and it was easy. We was in
Philadelphia closin’ out the last of our business there and
we walked by this mall pet store window and in it was a small
wire-haired terrier puppy we just couldn’t resist.
We named him Asta.
The doctor’s name was Chidra, and he had
me strapped down and surrounded by so many gadgets that I
couldn’t move. They’d already poked and probed and
scraped and sampled and quizzed and tested us so much I was dizzy.
Now it kinda looked like the moment of truth.
Fact was, I was totally incapable of kickin’ the juice,
even though I was no longer expectin’ that massive high. I
felt great, and just a rest or heavy exercise was enough to wash
away guilt and lingerin’ doubts and memories. I wanted Sam. I
loved Sam. But I thought Sam was bein’ totally unreasonable.
If he really loved me, then he’d take one of my offers.
That’s how you thought.
“First, since you are intellectually unimpaired, I am
going to explain the options to you,” Chidra said.
“I’m going to be blunt, and I already know your answers
so I don’t wish or expect any. Just listen. Clear?”
“I guess.” What was the point if he already
knowed?
“First, you can elect the colony. It won’t be fancy,
but there will be people there you have known and work will go on
studying this thing. You would be provided with all the basics and
be expected to submit from time to time to studies, but otherwise
it would be a carefree life, much like the life you shared with
that stranded exploiter team, with some amenities and no strange
natives. I must be blunt. With this thing managing and protecting
your body, you might well live a hundred and fifty years. Even if
we eventually found a miracle cure or stabilizer that would render
you harmless and nondependent, which may be years, even decades
away or might not be possible at all, you would remain there, since
your patterns would be fixed and there would be, I’m afraid,
little purpose or use in allowing you out. You simply have no means
to contribute.”
It didn’t sound too awful. Plenty of sex, lots of room to
exercise and play, and no work or responsibilities, plus flush
toilets.
“A second choice would be to return to your world where,
I’m told, you still have a substantial sum of money that
would guarantee supporting you comfortably. Your half would come to
a bit under two million dollars, if that means anything to you. I
have no idea what a dollar is worth. You would be maintained on the
capsule with the pure virus as you were for most of your addiction
period. When you needed a supply, thirty days or so at a time, you
would go to a Company representative and draw it, like from a bank.
You already have a high level of nymphomania; this would probably
proceed unchecked.”
That sounded even better.
“We would, in either case, make some adjustments that
would be in our mutual interests. We would not tamper with your
intellect, but we would have to tamper with your memories. We would
eliminate all memories of Sam, of your marriage, of your career, of
the Company and the Labyrinth. There would be gaping holes in your
memories of the past, but you would not be bothered by it and you
would never be curious about it or want to know. You would dismiss
it if you found it out somehow. You would be perfectly content the
way you were.
“The third and only other option would be to allow us to
treat the illness and cleanse your body. The cleansing itself is
relatively simple and subjectively painless, but curing and
treating the results in mind and body would be a long and difficult
process with no guarantees. If you want your Sam, though,
that’s the only road. We’ve done some fairly good
analysis of him, and we believe he will be dead or as good as dead
within a year without you, and that’s the plain
truth.”
“I’ll bring him around. I’ll take number two.
You even get the high with that, don’t you?”
“I said you weren’t to choose. Not now. The reason
why you are so secured is that in a few moments I’m going to
feed a charge through the body at a low level. It will stun the
virus and confuse it. It will not be able to deal with it. There
will be no permanent harm, and the whole process will take many
hours as we compensate. During that period, and particularly near
the end of it, since the virus will adjust eventually and reseize
control, you will have your thoughts clear, organized, and
unfettered. Then I will ask the question again.”
“Now, wait a minute, I—”
Suddenly I felt a real sensation through my whole body, kinda
like when you touch an electric light socket that ain’t
grounded but weaker, almost pleasant. After a while, I just went to
sleep with it, hardly thinkin’ at all.
Now, I know what they done. I even kinda suspected it at the
time, but it didn’t make no difference. They used that
neutralizin’ current and a hypnoscanner not to program me,
but to feed in subtle visions and suggestions, provoke old
feelin’s. Memories of life with Sam, of just lyin’
there sometimes while he was still asleep and just watchin’
him and feelin’ love. All his habits, his quirks, his
idiosyncracies. Knowin’, too, that it was mutual, that he
both loved and respected me just the same. And then other
visions—one vision. Sam, in the Labyrinth, tryin’ to
block the killer from shootin’ in my direction, takin’
the bullet, part of his head
splatterin’ . . . and what I felt then,
and after.
And there was other visions, superimposed one on the other. Me,
screwin’ Calvin or somebody, havin’ a ball,
gettin’ into that high, always over the sight of Sam’s
bloody head. The meanin’ was clear. All I had to do was nod
my head and get a life of highs, pleasure, and ease—all at
the expense of Sam, all paid for by Sam’s destruction.
And, through it all, I could think. Really think,
’cause the juice was too busy handlin’ the distractions
to block out the negative emotions. Guilt, shame, regret, all was
there; I had a sense of right and wrong, good and evil I
hadn’t had in over a year. I had perspective. Yeah, I’d
be happy. Oh, I’d be sad and cry if I was told that Sam
blowed his brains out, but it wouldn’t last long.
But they was honest. I also got views of them wards of Vogel
refugees, of Donna and the rest. What if I did take the cure and
wound up crippled or brain damaged? Would that be any more
of a service to Sam? And I knowed it would. I knowed that even
then, he’d be there, always, doin’ what he could,
’cause he loved me. I was the only thing left to him that had
any importance, any meanin’.
In the end, the bottom line was, who did I really value most?
What was most important to me? Who was more valuable, more
precious? With the juice in force, of course, the answer was
simple. Self-preservation of me and the juice inside was all there
was. But the juice wasn’t talkin’ now. It was just me,
all by myself. I still loved the juice, the way it made me
feel, but I loved Sam, too. I owed him.
“You simply have no means to
contribute.”
And there it was, in the doc’s own words. Without Sam, I
had no reason to exist except for pure pleasure. Brandy One and
Brandy Two would merge. It would be as if Sam had never existed,
like the agency died with Daddy. Not only Sam, but all that I had
accomplished, or might have accomplished, would be gone. You could live a hundred and fifty
years . . .
As a fucking dumb vegetable. What kinda livin’ was
that? He was there, watchin’ over me, even though he was
sick at what I’d become . . .
Values . . . worth. You ain’t
human, he said. The juice needed to survive. It needed a host
and it needed a weed and both was equal in importance. That’s
all I was or would be. Some stinkin’, worthless weed. Not a
human, a thing who’d turn its back on somebody who
needed me even when that somebody’d been there when I’d
needed him. Once he’d been willin’ to die for me, and
me for him. I was willin’ to get in this fix just to avenge
him. If I really loved him, no matter what the power and lure of
the juice, I oughta have the guts enough to live for him, too.
I was still under; I knowed they wasn’t even ready for me
to come out of it yet, but I still fought it off and screamed,
“Do it, Doc! Get this thing outta me! Hurry it up and do
it now, ’fore it changes my mind!”
They learned enough from the early ones to know how to do the
easy part. They put you in a chamber, out cold, the juice in you
and doin’ fine, and all at once, evenly through the body,
they put this ray that was very specific and very deadly only to
it. The death of the juice was instantaneous and uniform throughout
the body. There was no chance for it to curl up and mount a defense
or do more damage than it done already.
The trouble was, the damage it done makin’ you over into a
comfortable and controllable home for it was done, and on top of
that its absence was more painful and rough than you knew.
All our lives we live with some pain. Gas pains, joint pains,
muscle aches, you name it. We tune it out, learn to tell the new
pains from the old, the important ones from the routine. With the
juice, you didn’t have no real pain ’less it was
somethin’ serious, and then only long enough for the juice to
take care of what was wrong. I woke up in real pain. I needed a
pill somethin’ bad. I was in so much agony that I pleaded
with them to put me back on the juice, that I couldn’t stand
it no more. I knowed Sam was there, but I couldn’t see him or
talk to him. I couldn’t face him with the idea that I was too
weak to take this, that I couldn’t hack it no more without
the juice. They gave me a few pills to help me sleep but
that’s about all they did. No juice. Lotsa sympathy, no
juice.
They was always there, though, watchin’ and
monitorin’, tellin’ me it would get better, but it
didn’t. It got worse and worse and finally I just
couldn’t stand it no more. I sunk so deep in depression and
pain and misery I couldn’t even think straight and all I
wanted was out. They stopped me twice from killin’
myself.
They begun a program of physical and mental therapy and drove me
hard. I didn’t feel no better, but at least I was doin’
somethin’. Fact was, the lousy way I felt was called
normalcy. It was somethin’ you just didn’t know or
notice till you didn’t have it. Then, when I was ready to at
least see Sam, to get some reinforcement, I couldn’t.
I was in a kinda isolation ward. Seems the juice took over most
of the job of my body’s immune system. It took a lot of their
medicines and a lot of time to build itself back up where a common
cold wouldn’t kill me.
They had a lot of pills for me to take without fail, and my mind
worked funny tricks there. I kept tryin’ to understand why if
I had to take these damned pills all the time they just
couldn’t give me the juice and cure it all at once. God! How
I wanted it! I thought about it, craved it constantly.
Finally I was built-up enough to see Sam, but all he had to do
was come in and say, “Hi, babe,” and I collapsed into
his arms and just cried and cried and begged for him to hold me and
never let go. A few days later, when they decided that the benefits
outweighed any risks, they let him move in with me. I just wanted
him to hold me and kiss me and make love to me and nothin’
else mattered in the whole damned multiple worlds.
I wore him out, and I knew it. He was exhausted and a little ill
himself and wound up with what they called a “minor coronary
episode,” and that was crazy, too, ’cause all of a
sudden he was more of a patient than I was and I was gettin’
shit for him and tendin’ to him.
The docs got fancy names for it. They claim I subordinated and
fixated and all the rest of that crap on Sam. All the energy, all
the emotions, all went to Sam and Sam alone. It was, well, like
when you first fall deep in love with somebody. You can’t
think of nothin’ or nobody else but them, you damn near
worship them, you just wanna be with them always. It kinda wears
off and settles in after a while—what they mean when they say
the honeymoon’s over—and it had some with us, too, but
they say this kinda thing might not wear off for years, maybe not
ever, this time, and I don’t give a damn. Sometimes you just
about gotta lose what you most want before you realize how
important it is. I had almost murdered half of myself, and it would
never happen again. I was Sam’s rainbow weed and he was mine
and we was each other’s juice. Neither of us was much damned
good without the other, but together we was one hell of a
team.
“Sam?”
“Yeah, babe?”
“I love you Sam.”
“I love you, too, babe.”
“You still gonna love me when I’m old and blind and
ugly wrinkled?”
“If you can love me the way I look now, why the hell
should I be any different?”
“I don’t want it to go back like it was, Sam. You
was miserable with that high-class clientele and chasin’ down
computer embezzlers in Pittsburgh and I was miserable ’cause
I wasn’t chasin’ down them white collar bastards with
you. I don’t wanna be separated again by no job or no funny
lone wolf missions to other worlds. We’re a team or
we’re nowhere. Even in this business, even though we
didn’t know it, we was a team. Ain’t nothin’
gonna break us up again.”
“You impressed a lot of people here, babe, including me.
Even the bad guys were impressed. They made most of their mistakes
because even though they had you on a gold leash they
couldn’t keep their admiration and fear of you in check. Half
that summation was yours, maybe more. God, though, wasn’t
that great! You couldn’t sell it to Hollywood. They
wouldn’t believe it.”
“I’m through impressin’ nobody but you. I
talked myself into this mess in the first place ’cause I kept
tryin’ to impress all them folks who looked down on blacks,
on women, on people with bad grammar or ignorant table manners. All
them stupid, meaningless rules.”
“I always loved you just the way you were,” he told
me seriously. “I never asked for anything else.”
“Then piss on ’em all. If they don’t take this
coarse, foul-mouthed black bitch the way she is, I don’t want
’em. If I ain’t learned nothin’ else, I sure as
hell learned that. Look what that kinda shit caused here. I bet
that damned Chairman of the Board shits just like everybody else,
just in a gold pot. Hell, them highbrows kept makin’ them
remarks but we impressed the hell outta them, too! Just bein’
what we are and doin’ what we do best. Better’n
anybody!”
“I don’t think we have to impress people when we get
home,” he said real casual. “I think people have to
impress us.”
“Huh?”
“Well, even putting aside the post-tax nearly four million
we still have in the bank for the Vogel job—you remember how
I started that summation? A wager. A fee, if you will. If I lost, I
paid with my life. But I’m still here.”
“What in hell did you win?”
“A retainer, more or less, with fringe benefits. They pay
us a flat fee, adjustable for inflation, every month for the rest
of our natural lives for the right to consult us on
Company business. We don’t lose the retainer if we refuse the
job. That only gives ’em the right to talk. The fringes
include medical care, miracle pills and drugs, and everything else
that the Center can provide to their own people. We also have
unlimited access to the Labyrinth. If we want to get away from it
all, we have an infinity of choices.”
“Sam—how much of a retainer.”
“Well,” he sighed, “it starts at ten thousand
dollars a month. Of course, it’ll come from the Company so
we’ll have to pay taxes, but it’s filtered through a
number of foundations and tax gimmicks to minimize things. I
figured if we let the foundation let us live in one of its houses
and use its cars and stuff we ought to be able to get by for a few
years, letting that four million just roll over and
multiply.”
“Sam, that’s over a hundred thousand a
year!”
“Sure. Plus expenses. The consultative services of the
highest-regarded private eyes in a few thousand known worlds is
cheap at that price.”
“Oh, my God . . . ”
Well, that’s most of the good news, anyways. The rest was
that the Center’s microsurgery techniques was so good that
reversin’ my sterilization was a breeze for them, though I
had a long waitin’ period before they was sure my system
could take it without hurtin’ no kid.
We got to thinkin’ ’bout adoption, but never
followed up on it. Sam wanted to adopt an Asian baby. I think he
just wanted to see the looks on teachers’ faces when both
parents show up for the PTA, not to mention the bar or bas mitzvah.
Oh, yeah—I had to take the instructions over from the start,
but now any kid I have will be born of an official Jewish mother.
We took a trip to Israel to celebrate, then went down into Kenya
and Tanzania and Zimbabwe and Malawi, too. I got to admit it was a
charge bein’ in places where black folks run the whole thing
and people was starin’ sideways at Sam.
I ain’t gonna give you the good vibes jive, though. It
took almost a year and a half, longer than the damned case, to get
me to where both my mind and body worked reasonably well. I still
have dreams of them super highs and periods sometimes when I kinda
blank out and flash back to feelin’ the bad old mellow times.
My eyes got so bad I can’t see the end of my nose without
glasses, and I need the kind of special high-tech glasses they
ain’t invented here yet to see reasonable at all. I
can’t drive ’cause every once in a while when I see a
ripplin’ effect or some shimmerin’ colors I kinda trip
out for a few seconds to maybe a minute. I can read fine with the
glasses and do, but I gotta keep from concentratin’ too hard
on any one image, whether it’s a printed page or a
paintin’ or even a big unmovin’ object like a parked
car, or it kinda does a flip in my head and I’m seein’
everything backwards, like in a mirror, sometimes for up to an
hour. Sometimes when I stub my toe or hit my head or
somethin’, instead of pain I get a pleasure rush.
And, every now and then, I get these episodes, as the docs call
’em. Like suddenly gettin’ super turned on for no
reason at all and usually at the worst possible time and situation.
Or I’ll get up and put on makeup and jewelry for no real
reason and come down and not realize I didn’t put no clothes
on till somebody points it out, or we’ll be eatin’ out
and I’ll pour ketchup on my ice cream and eat it without
noticin’. I didn’t get away scot-free; that damned
thing did some damage up there. I’m gettin’ control of
the worst of it, though, and Sam’s been super supportive.
Then there’s my twin, only she ain’t so much my twin
no more. She didn’t have no Sam or nothin’, so there
was no way she could kick the stuff. She controls her own juice
supply now, but she decided that she knowed one thing best and made
a deal. She’s back workin’ for Fast Eddie Small in
that world, on a fifty-fifty split, still packin’
’em in. They sent Mukasa’s brains to the brain laundry,
and now he’s happily workin’ in the labs at that juice
leper colony of theirs. His poor wife and her lover are
there, too, as are the whole set of them from the exploiter team.
Hell, their top folks are in charge there.
They still ain’t found Carlos, which worries everybody,
but they did find forty-two of the fifty shadow dancers in a safe
world stop, all with their throats cut. What he’s doin’
with the other eight I don’t want to know. We can’t
always be savin’ their damned world. The cost’s been
too high, even though the rewards are good. Ioyeo was right about
one thing, though; that society and that Company ain’t gonna
change ’less it’s forced to, and the longer they
don’t the more loyeos and Mukasas and Jamispurs they make.
Dakani’s still got the security post, but also still with
“actin’ ” in front of the name, but
he’s pretty secure now. He has old Aldrath Prang outside in
the Labyrinth and the field seein’ how they can keep the kind
of computerized foolery from happenin’ again. He was by not
long ago, and sat and watched our tapes of every Thin Man movie and
every Raymond Chandler film ever made.
The way they worked it for us was that Mayar Eldrith got us a
Company job. It’s well disguised and a new post, but
it’s one they needed for years. It comes with a
two-hundred-and-forty-four-acre estate in central Pennsylvania near
Bellefonte and State College, a manor house with fourteen furnished
rooms, huge livin’ room and fireplace, an indoor hot tub, and
an outdoor pool, plus horse stables. Most of it is used for
contract farmin’—the trust which is the Company cover
here leases out the land to local farmers, mostly for corn. The
horses are part of a deal with Penn State’s agricultural
college and they mostly take care of them, though I’m
learnin’ to ride a horse and not doin’ too bad at it.
That leaves our ten grand a month for groceries and livin’
expenses and a few luxuries, like the Mercedes sports car and my
minks and jewels.
See, in a wooded patch up part of a hillside on the property is
this big, round, concrete-lined pit with a fence around it. Seems
like the lock on that fence been gettin’ broke a lot, posted
or not. We see that it ain’t used unless it’s supposed
to. I guess you could call us substationmasters; at least, this
one’s needed somebody to oversee it for a long time. Makes
gettin’ visitors and goin’ visitin’ a breeze,
too. We even got a number of local friends now. The area’s
too cold for too long, but the folks in general are real nice and
friendly with none of the usual hangups. It’s the university
what does it. They don’t know nothin’ ’bout no
Company or Labyrinth, and we intend to keep ’em in the
dark.
Well, the docs at the Center finally give me the go-ahead, and
it didn’t take long at all to get me pregnant. I didn’t
want to put it off no more, and if this one don’t make me
swear off it we might have more. We really do love kids, and, just
as important, we need something more than just each other to center
our lives on. Sam’s got his ailments like I got mine, but
with the Center’s help and some commitment on our part
there’s no reason we couldn’t live to be a hundred or
more if we wanted to. But in case one of us didn’t,
there’s gonna be at least one more reason to keep on
livin’ and doin’. It sure done in the last of my hopes
of keepin’ my old good looks, though. I’m puttin’
on weight like mad and I ain’t in no mood to take it off. Sam
ain’t gonna love me no less fat or thin, so why kill myself?
I’m already married—for keeps. If that fat bothers them
jocks joggin’ up and down the road come snow or sun, then
tough shit.
Ain’t nothin’ I get more of a charge out of than
walkin’ arm in arm with Sam down College Avenue to a
restaurant or over to the university for a show or up to a movie,
with my diamond earrings and seven months’ belly
stickin’ out from under my mink coat. I just wanna shout to
people. “I got Sam in love with me and millions of bucks
and the acclaim of a people who routinely walk between the worlds
and you don’t! Eat your hearts out!”
We got a few disagreements, of course. I was kinda hopin’
for fraternal twins and name ’em Nick and Nora, but I know
the odds against that. If it’s a boy, Sam wants to name him
Dashiell. It ain’t bad, but any kid who’s gonna start
life half black and all Jewish don’t need nothin’ more
on his shoulders. Almost in retaliation I threatened if it was a
girl to name her Mignon or Agatha, after some pretty good mystery
writers of my sex. We’ll find compromises someplace.
After all, I get to fill out the birth certificate.
One thing we did agree on, and it was easy. We was in
Philadelphia closin’ out the last of our business there and
we walked by this mall pet store window and in it was a small
wire-haired terrier puppy we just couldn’t resist.
We named him Asta.