"Chalker, Jack L - G.o.d. Inc. 2 - The Shadow Dancers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chalker Jack L)

measured amounts. As far as we can tell, he's handling the real experimentation
himself, and very effectively and ruthlessly. He's well placed to be able to do
so, as you'll see in a minute."
"And the other place?" Sam asked.
"A world not too far from this one and very similar in a lot of ways. They're
getting only about three thousand doses every twenty to thirty days, so there's
only enough to sustain maybe a hundred people. They appear to be going to a
local organized crime underboss who's never had any known connection with us and
shouldn't even know about the Labyrinth. He, in turn, has one man supervising it
and they seem to be using it in a very low-level way, to maintain a group of
young women as prostitutes. This thing's ready-made for that on a petty level-I
mean, this thing compels you to have sex a lot. We don't know what connection
they have to Vogel, or why they were picked, or why they're being allowed to use
something like this for such a petty and ordinary thing. Company people don't go
there, except our wayward courier, of course, and we've had a monitor on that
gate ever since and nobody but that courier ever approached. We sent in a small
team of agents, and they couldn't find anything odd, either. There's a
connection there, but we can't find it."
"But they know about the Labyrinth," Sam noted.
"Yeah, they do-but not many," Bill replied. "The big boss has had a lodge up
near the central Pennsylvania weak point for years, and this place happens to be
one of those on the way from here to there that's weak enough that when we open
that Labyrinth route it can be accessed without a station-like the dead end you
two were shoved into that time."
"Yeah, only here nobody jumps in but something gets tossed out. All we could
find was that they were being paid off to do just what they're doing and ask no
questions. There's lots of ways you can do it when you have a crime boss on the
hook, including checking close other worlds, getting inside information he can
use, and feeding it to him. You can feed him just enough, wrapped around the
parcel, to keep him quiet and on the hook."
"You mean," I said, "that somebody just pops up once and bribes this crime boss
into this? We'll pay you if you find fifty or more girls and hook 'em on this?"
"That's about it. We don't know why. Makes no sense on its face, and except for
the fact that most but not all of the girls they hooked are relatively young,
there's no connecting thread between them. None. There's no reason to think they
know much. Just hired help, like the courier-but a lot harder to snatch and
interrogate. You see what kind of a bind we're in?"
We could see, too. "You can't snatch any addicts for information 'cause they'd
be dead in two days," I noted. "You can't take out the courier without killin'
all them girls and lettin' whoever's doin' this know you're on to 'em. Ain't
nobody in this chain that knows anything worth knowin' 'cept this guy Vogel."
"Yeah. Vogel. He knows a lot, even if he doesn't know it all. He had to be
directly contacted if only to corrupt him. He had to be sold on becoming a
traitor, which is much harder considering the risks. He's got one hell of a
racket where he is that fits his peculiarities to a T, and he's got a reliable
reputation. He'd have to be offered something really big to switch. He also
knows exactly what he's got because he's in charge of the experimentation, and
as a stationmaster he's well positioned to move people and goods when he wants."
"Why not just take him out, then?" Sam asked. "Get him out of there on a
pretext, fry his brain, and then take what results he has as well?"