I ain’t too clear on what came next. Oh,
sure, I remember it, but not like it was real. More like a dream,
you know? That’s ’cause I was her, and she
didn’t think about much. It’s only when I think back on
it with what I know as myself that I can put it into any kinda
picture that makes sense.
I woke up in a kinda dingy, smelly dormitory. It didn’t
have much in the way of lights and none in the way of privacy, but
it had like twenty naked girls sleepin’ on cots. Down at the
end there was a long basin and a row of open toilets. It looked and
felt perfectly normal. This was my tribe and these were my sisters.
The hard part for even me to get into now is that I had no sense of
personal identity, of self, at all. I had a name all
right—Beth it was—but there was no sense of bein’
a particular person named Beth.
We got up, took our shits in turn, walked under these open
showers and wiped each other with hard soap, dried each other off
with towels, and combed each other’s hair with carved wood
combs. The showers were cold and while there was a lot of noise
there wasn’t much said. We could talk, all right, in a kind
of strict pidgin southern that made a lot of uses out of few words,
but there wasn’t no need.
Then we went out, naked, on a cool gray day, and we did
exercises and ran around this dirt track like schoolgirls at play.
Some white folks watched us from off a ways but we didn’t pay
’em no mind. Then we all went into this other building where
there was tables and benches on which were dishes and let the
sisters who’d gotten up early serve us. I can’t tell
you what the food was; you drank this thick, real sweet drink and
you ate these different kinds of cakes. Lookin’ back I figure
it was some kinda cheap health food, full of vitamins and minerals
and stuff.
Then we all pitched in to clean up, makin’ that place not
just clean but spotless. Then it was back to the exercises
and the track again, only this time it was more playful and less
organized. All this with no boss, no supervisor, not even any
orders.
This day would be different, though. In late morning, a black
truck pulled up at the big farmhouse off in the distance and after
a while two black-clad storm troopers armed with pistols came over
to us and we stopped and waited, curious but not afraid. White
folks were afraid of these kind of men; to us they were just more
white folks. With them was Jenner, one of the supervisors at the
farm. He pointed, then drawled out, “All right, you girls!
Listen up, now! I’m gonna call out three names. If you hear
your name, then you go in and you shower and then you come back out
to us. The rest of you just keep on with whatever you was
doing.”
I was just as shocked and scared when they called Beth as if I
were really Beth—which I thought I was. Still, I went with
Daisy and Lavinia and took the shower and then reported back. We
didn’t say nothin’ to each other—we was all too
scared and confused for that. The black-clad men looked us over
like we was horses or somethin’, then Jenner said, “You
all been sold to a man up north. You go with these men and follow
their orders.”
That was it; no good-byes, no nothin’—just go on,
get in the back of the truck, and off. Well—not quite. When
we got to the truck the men put chains on us. They didn’t
feel heavy, so I guess they were some kind of strong new
metal—they felt like aluminum but were hard as steel. They
cuffed us hands in front, with about a foot’s worth of chain
between, and they cuffed our legs with maybe two feet of chain
between. I don’t know why they chained us—where was we
gonna go?—but they did, then loaded us into the truck, which
was a kinda pickup truck with one of them caps on the back. It
wasn’t no camper, though; it was heated but you just sorta
sat on the floor and that was it. There was a coupla boxes in
there, too, but we didn’t dare open ’em. Crazy thing
was, I got a little thrill, even got a little turned on, by
wearin’ the chains.
Once we started off, though, we all got to cryin’ a
little. It was like bein’ torn from the only family and world
we knew.
After a while, though, Lavinia kinda took charge. She was more
aggressive than we was. She even went to the little window and
looked out, and after a while we did, too.
The impressions of the trip are just that—impressions. The
highways looked real fancy, like our interstates, and had a lot of
little cars on ’em. We went through a city, I don’t
know which, and it looked real ugly, all sterile gray with block
after block of tall, dirty buildin’s and lots of even uglier
industry belchin’ smoke into the gray day. Most of the people
we saw moved like they was always tired, dressed in plain clothes.
Clearly the white folks here didn’t have much fun, neither.
The good life, if it existed at all, was for the big shots.
And that, maybe, was the craziest thing of all. The more we saw
of that white world, the less we wanted of it. We had no
responsibilities, little work, no cares. Nobody would want to
escape into that world. Even bein’ wrenched and sold
we were still secure and safe. No decisions, no responsibilities.
It’s scary to me to think that people can be brought up and
conditioned to think that way, even now. Still and all, it was that
world that did it, partly. It was a gray world filled with people
with gray souls; a world without hope. They was all property, all
slaves, white and black. The only difference was, nobody expected
nothin’ from us.
They stopped the truck off and on, to stretch their legs and
ours. They had one of them porta-potties for us and the boxes had
cold, hard versions of the cakes and sweet stuff they’d fed
us back at the farm and a jug of water. That was all for us. Every
once in a while they’d stop the truck someplace and get out,
sometimes for quite a while, just leavin’ us inside, while
they ate or whatever. They were pretty ordinary-lookin’ white
men ’cept for their fancy uniforms and shiny boots, but
we’d flaunt it a little for ’em.
“Tempted to take ’em all on, Pete?” the one
asked. “They might be too much for you.”
“Nigresses? You got to be kiddin’. I
ain’t that hard up. Why? You tempted?”
“Yeah, sorta.”
“Well, forget it. Vogel’ll run ’em through
every test in the world. You know the rules. He gets ’em
first. Don’t trust no real women not to cut his balls
off.”
“Aw, what’s he care? These ain’t virgins. Look
at ’em.”
“Well, you do what you want, but the last guy who did that
wound up dangling from a meat hook on the walls.”
They didn’t, although truth was we wouldn’t have
minded. Oh, they did a little fanny pattin’ and tit
grabbin’ now and again, but overall they probably treated us
better than they did their own kind. They even hauled out some old
blankets when the chill got greater so we could wrap ’em
around ourselves.
Fact was, the three of us did a lot of it in the back, there. It
seemed normal and natural to make out, it felt good, and helped
pass the time.
Eventually we got there, not over highways but back country
mountain roads. We didn’t really see the place till we was
inside it, but when we got there and the door opened it was clear
we was at our new home. Big place, but with lots of
buildin’s, grounds, and people. We got took into the basement
of the big house where they let us shower, fed us, then put us in
this tiny room with no windows, a bare light bulb, and a big old
mattress on the floor that was big enough for the three of us. We
was exhausted from the trip and just slept. They left the chains
on.
The next day they processed us. There was a couple of people in
lab whites and one older guy in black uniform who wore glasses. He
came up to me. “Name?”
“Beth, suh.”
He looked on his chart, then started in. First he tried to get
me mad by makin’ nasty comments, then he both scared and hurt
me a little. I said “Ow! You huhtin’ me, suh!”
but that was about the extent of my rebellion. Finally they gave us
a bunch of shots with this injector gun, took X rays and scanned us
with something, then took us in to a hypnoscan, although as Beth I
had no idea what it was. It was definitely something Vogel was not
supposed to have in this world, that’s for sure. I
can’t say what they did with it, but I can guess they was
lookin’ for somebody just like I was—a plant. Jamispur
must have known his business; I passed. The hypnoscan
couldn’t find a trace of Brandy anywhere, nor, apparently,
did any of the cosmetic changes show.
Time had no meaning for us, so I don’t know how long we
just hung around there, but finally this woman also in black and
with real short hair came for us and brought us up to the main
floor and took us into a room that was nicer than any of us had
ever seen. We got cleaned and scrubbed and then perfumed, and our
nails got trimmed and painted, they put on real heavy makeup which
was foreign to us, pierced our ears and gave us earrings, even did
our hair. We liked it, but we also knew we was about to meet our
owner.
In all the plannin’ back at headquarters, the one thing
that never entered anybody’s head was that Vogel would see
all three of us at the same time. He never allowed nobody else in
the Safe Room, that was sure, but three at once wasn’t even
considered, yet that’s what happened. It was the first kinda
thing Sam had worried about from the start—there were too
many things you couldn’t think of. If the number of
unexpected and unanticipated things was too high, the thing would
go wrong real fast. And we all knew some things would go wrong.
That’s why you needed a thinkin’, experienced human
being in there and not just some hypno-programmed anybody. My job
was to improvise.
We waited around awhile; we was all excited, and Lavinia
whispered, “Dis new massa be one big stud to take us
all de same time. Don’t y’all fuck up, now. A gal kin
git used t’this shit.”
We’d all moved up from tribal to house status, and clearly
Lavinia saw visions of makeup and perfume and comfortable living if
we all pleased him. It didn’t matter that our chains were
still on.
It was fairly late at night when they came for us. That same
short-haired bitch in black it was—Vogel’s secretary or
aide or whatever. “You listen good, now,” she said
coldly. “You are about to be brought up to
Gruppenfuehrer Vogel, your owner and master. You behave
and perform right and he can be most kind. You nigger farm sluts
just do whatever he wants and don’t screw up. If he
isn’t pleased, you’ll go to the lab and wish
you’d never been born. Now—come.”
We didn’t understand the specifics, but we got the
message, and followed her out and up a back stairway—tough in
them leg chains—then down a second floor hall past an armed
door guard—there was guards all over the place—and into
a huge bedroom, the biggest I ever seen anywheres and the most
luxurious, too. “Wait here,” said the bitch, and left.
We heard the outer bedroom door lock. There was stuff all
over—valuable stuff, pretty stuff, even sharp stuff that
might be used as a weapon. We didn’t move. This was the last
test, apparently.
Finally, a man came out of a far door, dressed in brown pants
and shirt and leather boots. He was a big guy, and chunky, but in
real good shape, with a rounded face and short brown hair. He had a
small thing in his hands that might have been a short whip or
riding crop, and he had on a pistol belt and holster with the
pistol in it.
He walked up to us and got a queer half smile on his face.
Finally he said, in a rather mild and gentle voice, to each of us
in turn, “What is your name?”
“Daisy, suh.” “Beth, suh.”
“Lavinia, suh.”
“Come on in back with me.”
They said the entrance to the Safe Room was through the
bathroom, but they didn’t say that the bathroom was
bigger’n most folks livin’ rooms. The door in the back
was open inward, but it looked less like a door than a bank vault,
and the wall through it was a good eight inches thick.
The Safe Room itself was about the size of an average bedroom,
but there was storage in the walls for all sorts of stuff, a desk
and chair, and the whole thing was carpeted in a thick, spongy
wool. Vogel closed the door with a chunk.
And I slowly returned. It was a weird sensation, like Brandy was
being poured from a bucket into the vast empty spaces of
Beth’s mind. The setup continued to hold Beth forward, on
automatic, but it was almost like I had two minds, and the other
one could take control anytime it wanted to. Vogel came over, took
off his gun and belt and put it on the desk right in back of me. I
knew I could get it before he could react, but I didn’t even
consider it. It was one of the first tricks I’d fallen for in
trainin’, and I would have bet my life that the gun was
totally empty. There was a clip somewheres real near if he needed
it, but anybody who made for that gun would just be trapped.
No matter what happened, I didn’t dare make a move till
that security light come on, tellin’ me that the diversionary
attack had started and that the station was being invaded and
secured. This room was a vault, all right; I had a little twinge of
worry that the warning light might be burnt out or
somethin’.
I also figured Vogel was real kinky, but he wasn’t as near
far out as I had been afraid he might be. He wasn’t one of
them game-playin’ types, anyways—I guess he did enough
of that in real life. He had real clever ways of usin’ all
three of us, though, and once he got naked and got started, showed
a few things I filed away for reference. He had a real good body,
real hairy, too, and a tight ass, and one humongous pecker. I just
let Beth have free rein and waited.
The soft white light in the room suddenly changed, blinking a
real weird-lookin’ red. He was so turned on and so into it
that he didn’t notice at first, but when he came up for air
he saw it. I never saw a guy come down that fast, but he just got
up, pushin’ us out of the way, and went to the desk, opened a
drawer, and got put a handset phone and plugged it into a wall
outlet. The girls just kept goin’ on with each other; even I
was so turned on at that point it was tough.
Vogel was clearly real pissed at the alarm, and if it had been
anything less than it was somebody woulda died on that wall out
there. He calmed down the moment he was told, though.
“An attack? Who? Well, try and find out, damn it! Can you
hold? I don’t care what weapons they’re
using—you hold them! No—I’ll wait it out here,
but I’ll keep the line plugged in. You give me two short
buzzes if they breach the wall, one long if you want me to pick up
the phone. Have all emergency procedures in full effect as of
now!” He put down the phone and turned back to us.
“Sorry, loves, but we have a problem. Don’t
worry—we’ll get back to our business, I promise. Now I
need you. Get up and help me move this desk.”
We didn’t feel none too much like work but we got up and
helped him pull the desk away. It was pretty easy—the thing
was not that heavy—but his kind didn’t do no work when
he had other folks to do it for him.
We pulled up the carpet where the desk had been and there was a
door there with a kind of combination lock built into it, like a
safe. The emergency tunnel! We didn’t know about the lock,
but I wasn’t gonna make no move till he twiddled it and then
threw the switch and pulled the thing open. A long, deep, black
hole was all there was.
I really thought that maybe we was gonna luck out on this, that
he was gonna go down and right into the arms of the station people
without me doin’ nothin’, but clearly he wasn’t
gonna move right off.
The phone gave a long buzz and he picked it up.
“Yes? All right, then. Best I stay right here for now. The
station’s on? Good—what? Well keep trying the
station, man! I don’t like the smell of this!”
Uh oh. They had some feelin’ that the station had been
taken. It probably wouldn’t enter their heads in
plannin’ that it could be, but if they tried to call
somebody there and either got a strange voice or no answer
they’d be suspicious, what with an attack at the front.
Vogel was still naked, but he got his pistol, then reached
behind a panel, got a clip, and snapped it into place. I’d
guessed right.
I hadn’t been able to shoot my little jet of joy juice
into him; he had gave me the lower end in our sex play. Now there
seemed no way to give him the kiss; it would have to be the hard
way.
I moved real fast, pushin’ him off balance and then
usin’ my knee and then put his head between my arms and used
the chain as a choker. He twisted me off, but then he grabbed me by
the shoulders and while the leg chain made karate useless I brought
up my knee with full force and caught his exposed jewels right on
the balls. He screamed and let go of me and doubled over,
droppin’ the pistol in his pain. I got him real good, too,
’cause I had the gun and even had time to make sure I had a
shell in the chamber before he was able to come out of it and
figure what happened.
The other two girls looked at the whole thing with real shock
and horror on their faces, but they just pressed back against the
wall.
“Who the hell are you?” Vogel gasped.
“You know who I’m with,” I replied,
keepin’ the Beth accent and grammar since it was lousy
English but I could say it clear. “The Company want you. You be one
baaad boy!”
He recovered enough to stand, shakily, and look bewildered.
“The Company! It would have to be, but—why?”
“It seem you make lots of dem bigwigs scared with dat drug
thing you got.”
I got to say he really did look surprised. I’d have loved
to have gotten more, but the clock was tickin’ and the bomb
was under my feet. I gestured with the pistol. “ ’Nuff.
Git on down the hole. You can ’splain it
yo’self.”
He looked a little cagey, and I got to admit I was feelin’
a little good right then at it bein’ easier than most of the
practices. I was right behind him, when suddenly I got hit hard
right on the head. It was so unexpected I took a tumble, got
tripped up by the leg chains, and fell. Vogel didn’t waste no
time; he was on me in a second and just about tore that gun from my
grip. I got up, still feelin’ dizzy and confused, and looked
around. That damned muscle-headed Lavinia had hit me over the head
with the desk chair!
Vogel was back to himself now. “Not a move!” he
cautioned me. “I never had to get dressed one-handed before
but I’ll manage, and I’ll blow your brains out if you
so much as twitch!”
I rolled over and looked at Lavinia. “You dumb nigger
bitch!” I swore. I’d’a killed her with my own
hands then if I could. She looked so damned smug and proud of
herself.
“Don’t blame her,” Vogel said, not
givin’ me enough of an openin’ to do anything. He got
shirt, pants, and boots on real slow and careful. “She
doesn’t know who or what you are except that you were my
enemy. You see, even though we’ve just met, I’m the
only one she’s got.”
I was mad both at her and at myself. Lavinia was bein’
promoted from field to house in the only life she knew. She’d
said she could get used to perfume and lipstick and comfortable
beds, and she had no idea that there was any alternative—nor
had I time to explain to somebody like that the reality of things.
Even if she could understand it, she wouldn’t believe it.
Vogel kicked the trapdoor shut and then moved to the main door,
opening it. He pointed the gun at me.
“I wish I had time to find out all the details, or even
put you through the hypnoscan now, but I don’t. I gather your
friends are causing all this ruckus to divert attention from you,
and that they’ve captured the station.”
“Give it up, man!” I told him. “Dey gon’
blow dis joint if’n I show or not. Dey wan’ you live,
but dey git you dead if’n dey hav’ta.”
“I thought so. The fact is, I don’t know if
you’re what you say you are, and I don’t know if
I’m being set up or not, but until I can sort this out
I’m not going to surrender to anyone, particularly not to
some nigger bitch or on her say-so. Get up!”
I made it to my feet, though I felt achy. Gettin’ hit by a
chair ain’t the small thing you see on TV.
He turned to the two others. “You two remain here until
someone comes. I won’t forget this, Lavinia, I promise. Make
yourselves at home in the bedroom. Use and enjoy anything you
find.”
Yeah, for a few minutes, until the joint blows, I thought
sourly, but nobody was gonna listen to me.
“Now you listen to me,” he said to be with a real
cold tone that could freeze blood. “I saw your moves, I know
what you can do, but you don’t try anything. Once
we’re outside here, you’ll be observed by security and
guards. Even if you somehow overpower me, and I’m ready for
you now, you will only get cut down by others. You cannot reach
your friends and they cannot reach you. If you want to live,
you’ll do just what I say.”
He had a point, and if he was leavin’ the place I sure
wanted out, too. Once we was out of the buildin’, it would be
up to Sam and the rest to get me out. I was ready to do my part,
but suicide wasn’t it. We was now on Plan B. Not so good and
a lot riskier, but the object was to get him out of his safe and
guarded place where he could get took.
We went into the hall, and some of the sentries had their
eyebrows raised by seein’ me marched out at gunpoint, but
they snapped to. “Ready the drome!” he called to one,
then said to the other, “You have the key for these things.
Give it here and watch her. She’s a bitch!”
The sentry produced a small key, and Vogel took the time to
unlock the hand manacles on one side and then hook ’em back
around so that my hands were now chained behind my back. Then he
pushed me forward, gun at the ready, to some stairs and then, to my
surprise, up not one but two flights. A dome shape was goin’
back with a lot of noise above us, and I could see we was in open
air, on the roof, and there was a small, funny-lookin’
helicopter there. That wasn’t in no briefin’
books!
He opened a door, pushed me into one seat, then got in on the
other and started the thing. It started with a quiet whine, then a
big roar as the blades got to speed. It was some kind of jet
helicopter but different than any I’d seen. All the
instruments was in German.
We went up a little, then he pushed somethin’ and pulled
back and we went straight up so fast I felt like the breath was
bein’ knocked out of me. When he cut it and hovered, we was
so far up that you could see the whole compound down there. There
was still some fightin’ on two sides, and all sorts of
runnin’ around, and it was all lit up like a Christmas
tree.
Vogel started the chopper forward, slow at first, like he was
waitin’ for somethin’. What it was was a tremendous set
of explosions that made the whole place down there look like World
War III. Buildings, includin’ the big manor house, just blew
apart like they was toys. The station blew, too, in one hell of a
blast that also seemed to trigger a whole bunch of funny blue-white
lights, like a solid Labyrinth cube. The station shimmered, then
just—winked out. Just like that. There was nothin’ left
of it but one monster hole in the ground.
Sam was supposed to be on the B team, the Just In Case team, so
I could only hope and pray he still was and hadn’t decided at
the last minute to meet me in the station.
Vogel gave a satisfied laugh, then pushed us forward at maximum
speed into the night sky.
“What now?” I asked Vogel as we sped into the night
sky.
“I am the stationmaster for this world,” he replied.
“No one knows the setup here, the weak points, the Labyrinth
accesses and modifications like I do. I have enough knowledge of
the security system and its goals to get through safely if I pick
the right access track and don’t go through a switch. We
don’t have far to go once inside. There I can take stock of
things, with enough equipment to discover what I must know and
perhaps make contact with others.”
“You ’spect me to just sit ’round all dat
time?”
He chuckled. “My dear, are you that naive? You are on a
mission into an alternate world and you have failed in your
objective and you have failed to elude capture. Surely you realize
that they cannot allow this. You know too much, and you might be of
value to someone against their interests. Everyone can be broken.
Everyone. Were I, however, to try to break you or subject
you to physical, mental, or artificially induced interrogation, it
would be automatic. You would be blocked out, the process reversed,
and you would again be only poor, sweet Beth, my willing, eager,
and appallingly dumb slave. I couldn’t even bring you back
with hypnoscan and the best equipment.”
It wasn’t no bed of roses in that little chopper naked and
in chains, but I got a real sick feelin’ when he said that so
confident and smug, ’cause I knew deep down in my gut he was
tellin’ the truth.
“Don’t let that worry you,” he said smoothly.
“In fact, if I had to flee, they gave me a perfect tool and
assistant. You will be a great help to me. It will be amusing to
watch it happen more slowly. Beth, all of her, is still inside you,
whole and complete. Your willpower keeps her down now, but the more
tired you get and the more you sleep the more she will merge with
you. Those are powerful programs, and very complete, since they
have to fool even the devices that create them. It’s still
for their protection—at your expense.” He laughed, but
suddenly got real cold and crazy. “You listen to me, bitch!
You are my property! I own you! What sanity you have
depends on me. If I put this down and let you go right now, you
would become Beth instantly in this world, a world where
power is everything and your skin alone marks you as having
none.”
I figured he was tryin’ to scare me, and he was
doin’ a pretty good job. He was sure right that I
wouldn’t last long in these parts alone. He was also right in
that all of Beth was still in my head, and I almost had to fight
her to keep from actin’ like her. The only chance I had now
was Sam and Bill and that crowd. I knew they was coverin’ the
most likely substations, and they also said that somehow they could
track me—but that was no sure thing, if we got away clean
before they knew it. That was some takeoff and nobody figured on
this chopper. What if they thought we was both dead? That scared me
the most, ’cause that left me as Vogel’s slave
forever.
I dozed off after a while; I couldn’t help it. I was dead
tired and there wasn’t much more to say. Trouble was, I
dreamed, and I didn’t dream Brandy’s dreams. I started
to, but they were all made up of my fears and I ran from
’em—into Beth. Those were simple, pleasant, secure
dreams, of lots of sex and no worries or cares or
responsibilities.
The helicopter landed, wakin’ me up, but I just lay there,
half asleep, not really awake. It was daylight now and the sun was
shinin’ and it looked like a pretty day. My arms hurt and I
couldn’t remember why. Chained in
back . . . I must be bein’ punished for
somethin’, but what?
Vogel came back and got in and looked at me carefully.
“Beth?” he asked.
“Yessuh?”
“Now, listen close. You got a demon inside you, a real bad
one that wants to hurt you and me and everybody. You can feel it in
your head. I bet it’s trying to get in right now.”
And it was. I felt it, comin’ in like a mass of mud.
“You can fight it, Beth. Don’t let it in! You must
fight it with everything you have! You will fight it. You
will not let it in!”
But Beth couldn’t really fight it, the knowledge and
understanding, and I was more or less back in control, but shaken.
Vogel saw this, but didn’t seem terribly upset. “You
ought not to fight it,” he said. “It is inevitable.
Here—I will prove it.”
He got me out of the helicopter and then undid my arm bracelets
and chains. The relief was enormous, almost orgasmic, both the
ultimate pleasure and pain at the same time.
We was in a grassy meadow and there was cows in the distance,
but the sun was fairly warm and the air humid and it felt okay
after that gray chill.
“There’s a farm just two kilometers that way,”
he told me, “and a town another two beyond that. You want to
get away, just go ahead. I won’t stop you or shoot you. Go to
the farm and see what reception you get. Go to the town and see
what happens. Or, perhaps, go wild in the fields here and try and
live on what garbage you can steal until you’re caught. Go
ahead.”
I looked around. “You made yo’ point,” I told
him, and actually for the first time I could at least understand
the poor, late Lavinia. Even slaves in the old south had a place
they might run to, if they had the guts and the energy, up north.
Not here. Not anywhere. Latin America, maybe, but I didn’t
know enough about the rest of this world to know for sure or how
far down. And them old runaways, they didn’t have to fight no
Beth every time they got tired or slept. Even if all the shackles
were off, there was just no place to run. Hell, I didn’t even
have any idea where in hell we was!
He unpacked a basket that had sandwiches and a jug of what
proved to be cider and gave me some. There was enough Beth in me to
find the meat in the sandwiches unappetizing and the cider pretty
bad tastin’, but I managed. After, he told me to pick up all
the stuff and repack the basket and put it in the chopper and I
did. There wasn’t anything else to do but play along. It was
all out of my hands now and I knew it. I’d just have to be
good.
But I sure would like to get Vogel someday in a world where the
black people were on top. There were some—I asked once.
Vogel surprised me by also removin’ my leg chains. Not bad
treatment for somebody who’d kicked him in the balls and cost
him his empire.
“A final demonstration,” he said, enjoyin’ it.
“I need some sleep, and the men with the gasoline can’t
be here for a few hours. Since I still can’t be certain you
won’t try to grab my pistol and overpower me, I will lock
myself in the cabin. Unfortunately, that means you remain outside.
Go where you will, but not out of sight, please. Almost anyone who
found you around here would be far less kind than I, and you would
lose any hope that your friends could find us.” And, with
that, he climbed into the cabin and locked both doors and settled
in.
This, I decided, was the nuttiest situation I could imagine. I
was stark naked in some cow pasture, and I was free and my
kidnapper had locked himself in to protect himself from me.
As a demonstration, though, it beat all the lectures in the
world.
There was no way I was gonna live in no cow pasture, and trees
and hills of any size was few and far between here. Last thing I
wanted to be was a slave to a bunch of farmhands, and the town
would have the usual Nazi everything. I sure wasn’t about to
kill myself so long as there was any hope of bein’ rescued,
but I thought I might do it if it was this for life or death. So I
just moved out a little into the warm sun and sat down in the grass
and waited.
The gas truck came a couple of hours later, driven by two
typical cracker types. I pounded on the door and woke up Vogel and
he got up and came out. The two drivers just stared at me and I
thought at first it was because I was naked, but then I realized
they probably never saw a black person before in their lives.
Vogel noticed it, too, and enjoyed every minute of it.
“You want to feel her up a little? Go ahead. She likes
it.” He took a manacle with chain and held it sorta like a
whip. “She won’t do nothin’, will you,
Beth?”
I hated his guts but the only protest I could manage in this
situation was to not reply. It was a horrible situation, almost but
not quite a rape, but just as degrading and humiliating, and I
flipped out. Brandy shut off and Beth took over, as Vogel figured
would happen. The only thing Beth had was her body; her skin
limited anything she might want to do or anyplace she might want to
go, and any mind was a liability. She wound up givin’ both of
’em blow jobs and enjoyin’ every minute of it.
That’s how Vogel paid most of the gas bill.
We was in the air when I managed to creep back into control, and
now I knew what havin’ a split personality was like. I was so
completely disgusted and humiliated that I was on the edge of just
givin’ up and lettin’ Beth take over. The only thing
that stopped me was that I knew I was this man’s and this
world’s prisoner, but I was damn well not his
property or slave. It was the only part of me I could still
control, and I had too much pride and too much hate for him to let
him have that, too.
It was clear Vogel felt he wasn’t bein’
chased—they’d have caught up to us by now—and he
was in no real hurry. If he’d made a run for the stations
closest to his Pennsylvania retreat, they’d have nabbed him,
but if two, three, or more days went by with no sign, and even in
this tight dictatorship no records comin’ back to their
contacts, they’d slack off. They had to. The way both the
headquarters people’ and Vogel talked, it would take hundreds
of folks to stake out all the possibilities. They could spare that
many for a day or two, but not for real long.
I wanted Sam, bad. I needed him. More, I needed just to know
that he was still alive. That had been one hell of a bang, and I
don’t think they was the ones who triggered it.
Turned out, too, that Vogel wasn’t out of the woods,
neither, ’cause he didn’t dare use much of his
influence for anything that might get his location reported back to
someplace where it could be noted by our people. He did, however,
have money. That helicopter was outfitted partly as a permanent
getaway car, complete with fake and convincin’ Nazi IDs and a
fair amount of money. He just got a charge out of using me instead
when he could. Still, he couldn’t keep outta notice and with
farms and real small towns forever; he was gettin’ nervous
’bout his own people here now. Three days after we set out,
he made for this real hot, dry, dusty desert place with big, tall,
purple mountains in the distance. There musta been mining there
sometime long ago, ’cause on the desert floor but up against
the mountains there was this tiny, broke-down ghost town. Not much,
about a half dozen buildin’s that looked worse than any
slum.
He picked the place well. Nobody, not even no roads, around for
a hundred miles, a hot baked nothin’ of a place, but with a
kind of sandy ground that showed every track around. Ain’t
nobody been ’round that place in a long time, I thought.
He’s gonna get away with it! I thought in
somethin’ of a panic. That fucking son of a bitch is
gonna do it, and take me with him! I knew where he was
headin’—sorta. There was all sorts of time lines in
which people just never developed at all, or anything else, for
that matter, that could think. Some of ’em was right in the
middle of otherwise populated worlds, and some had been rigged up
by bigwigs both in the Corporation and by traitors to it as safe
worlds.
Vogel no longer even worried about me, even when I wasn’t
Beth. Truth was, even though I had my full knowledge and identity,
most times, more and more I just was actin’ and
thinkin’ like Beth ’cause it didn’t do no good to
fight. The longer we kept from bein’ caught by anybody, the
harder it was to fight it. My last hope, the shit still in that
tooth compartment, was dashed ’cause whenever I was under
that kind of sexual thing Beth took over. It might as well not be
there.
Vogel left me there while he checked out the buildings,
bein’ as cautious and sure as he could. He came back and
pointed. “There’s a trail up to an old mine there. Get
the supply basket, particularly the water, and come with
me.”
I got it, although it was heavy and a little awkward.
That trail wasn’t much these days, particularly for bare
feet and carryin’ that basket, but I kept up with him. It was
a long way up from the town and hot and dry as could be, and Vogel
stopped every once in a while and had me bring him a bottle to
drink. He didn’t give me none ’though I was dry as
hell, and I was so far gone by that point it never even occurred to
me to take a drink without permission. It wasn’t until we was
halfway there that he let me have the last half of a warm beer he
was drinkin’. It was a strong brew on a mostly empty stomach
on a hot day and I got feelin’ a little high from it.
We was high, too. Lookin’ down the helicopter was far
enough below that it was blurry to me, and everything beyond was
too blurred to see. On top of everything else, my vision treatments
was wearin’ off fast and I was goin’ back to
bein’ legally blind without no glasses. We finally reached
the ledge where the mine entrance was—more broke-down timbers
and an old musty hole—and he let me have another beer and he
had the last one.
“I put in this substation myself several years ago. Just
me and three others, none of whom lived to tell of its
existence,” Vogel said. “It’s a known weak spot,
but the Company ignored it because it was clearly inside a
mountain. They didn’t know about this mine.”
I giggled, feelin’ pretty drunk on only one and a half
beers. “Dat damn thecurity juth as fulla holes as always
was,” I muttered, more to myself than to Vogel. “But if
you on the squah wit’ th’ Comp’ny, den why you
build dis at all?”
“A good question, so I’ll answer it. Graft, mostly.
Most stationmasters need a little just to do their jobs. That
hypnoscan, for example, was wonderful for insuring loyalty and
changing minds, but it’s illegal here. Places like this make
getting that kind of thing possible. I haven’t had to use it
in years, though. There are better methods. It’s handy
now.”
He got up. “Stand up and stick close to me. Get me the
flashlight out of the basket and hand it to me. We’re going
to leave this burning hellhole.”
I got up and followed him into the mine. It was dirty and dingy
but almost immediately it was cooler. The flashlight lit up the
place, but it was still bad lookin’. It went in and then
curved around and down a bit. Some of them rafters was real old,
and every once in a while some dirt and stuff would come down on or
around us.
There was an old iron gate at the end of it, with a thick,
rusted lock on it. Vogel didn’t have the key, but he
didn’t need it. With my help the whole gate came free, lock,
door, and all, and we put it to one side. Beyond that was a bunch
of machinery, painted black so it didn’t show, and Vogel
turned it on. Just beyond in the tunnel, there was a sound like an
electric motor whine, then a pulsing, and then he threw another set
of switches and the Labyrinth line appeared, then did its usual
thing of dividin’ and dividin’ again.
For a minute I had a thought. Once in there, I had a place to
run—anyplace but out into one of the other worlds. Just to a
switch point. He wouldn’t dare follow but so far.
’Course, he had the gun, but I still figured it was worth the
chance. Vogel, unfortunately, had the same idea.
He grabbed the basket, moved some stuff, and came up with the
arm and leg chains. My hopes sank. No way I was gonna dodge bullets
wearin’ those. If I’d’a known he put
them in there, or had my full wits in me, I’d’a chucked
them things.
He turned to me, his back to the Labyrinth, and turned me around
and pulled my hands behind me. He fixed the chains, then
turned—and looked straight into two mean-lookin’ guys
with big, fancy guns.
He turned back and saw two more guys with guns blockin’
our way back out again. He grabbed me and put me in front of him,
back against the wall, pistol out. This was one tough dude.
“Stay back or she’s dead!” he shouted.
“You let me through and I’ll give her back to
you!”
“You’re in no position to deal, Vogel,” said
one of the men who had to have come in through the Labyrinth.
“The idea was to get you. It was her job, too, and
in a way she did the job anyway. Kill her and you have no leverage.
Shoot any of us and we’ll have to try and shoot you even if
it’s right through her.”
“Oh, great,” I muttered. He had one hand on his
pistol, the other wrapped around the chain holding my hands in back
of me. Freak-out Beth was nowhere around now. She couldn’t
handle this kinda situation. Me, it took two seconds to figure the
odds—either we’d be there a long time, or Vogel would
shoot and take his chances. He wasn’t the type to surrender
peacefully or they wouldn’t’a needed me in the first
place.
Using all my muscle power, I twisted my body and fell to the
stone floor. Vogel, his hand wrapped in the chain, had no choice
but to fall with me. His gun went off, and the shot ricocheted all
over the place, but if it hit anybody it wasn’t clear. They
was on him in a minute, tossin’ the gun away and
haulin’ him up back to his feet none too gentle. One of the
men from in back, the entrance side, ran forward to me.
“Brandy! My God! You all right?”
“Tham!” I managed, and then we was huggin’ and
kissin’ and both of us was cryin’. One of the men found
the key to the chains and gave it to Sam, who undid them and handed
them over. The leg chains got put on Vogel; they had plain old
handcuffs for his hands.
“How did you—?” I managed.
“We didn’t foresee this kind of getaway,” he
told me, “but we still had the monitor on to your encoder so
we could tell when you went into the Safe Room and start the show.
All of a sudden the thing went nuts, and we got a reading of
straight up and over. We got everybody back and radioed the men in
the station to get back in the Labyrinth. Most of them made it. We
followed you by land for a while but it wasn’t possible, and
by the time we got something in the air you were out of range.
We’ve been going nuts trying to find you ever
since.”
He helped me up. I was still shaky and I knew I was gonna have a
bunch of bruises. “Den how did—dis
place . . . ?”
“Every world where the Company has a station they have
satellites to monitor communications and general conditions. Back
home, ours can read a newspaper. Theirs can find all the encoded
people and give a fix. He led a real zigzag route over two thirds
of the country and he was real clever about it, but when we got two
fixes on this spot we knew he had to be heading here, even though
we didn’t have it down as a possible. He couldn’t use
Oregon or Mendocino, the only other two possibilities over
here, because we had them covered. It had to be here. We got here
about an hour before you did—close—but time enough to
radio back to Bill in Oregon and have him monitor the weak point on
the Labyrinth side while Sergei and I staked this place
out.”
“Den why didn’t you take him when we git
heah?”
“First, we wanted him—and you—alive. This was
the least risky. And we didn’t really know where the
substation was until we followed you up. We figured the tunnel was
the best bet. You saw how he was even in here. Figure the odds if
we’d tried to take him in the open.”
It made sense. “Den—it’s ovah? I kin get back
to tawkin’ normal?”
“It’s over, babe. Let’s go back to the doc and
then home and collect. I figure they owe us a cool five million
smackers. Haji—lead the way! We want out!” Bye-bye Beth. It’s for your own good, too.
The two men from the Labyrinth side led the way, with Sergei and
Sam and me bringin’ up the rear and a very sour-lookin’
Vogel in the middle. It felt real good to see him
in chains. A coupla times we passed windows out to worlds that
looked right for him and I half expected him to make a break for
it, but he didn’t.
We made a coupla switch points on the way back to headquarters
and I was feelin’ good. Fact was, the man had been
right—they got Vogel ’cause Vogel had me. The crazy
thing was, if I had made any kinda break for it, or if he’d
dumped me and gone it alone, he might just have made it
out. He was just so damned arrogant that he was gonna break this
uppity nigress that he never thought of this kind of
trackin’.
We was in the main line now, almost home. Most of the world
pictures mirrored to us looked a lot like headquarters.
They hit us first with a concussion grenade that knocked
everybody silly, then came at us from the sides and top. I
don’t know how many there were, I was feelin’ so groggy
from the concussion, but I looked up and saw bodies everywhere and
the flashes of guns we couldn’t hear but could kill just the
same. The concussion grenade didn’t make no noise, neither,
but it was like a big fist knockin’ us flat.
There were six of them—I got the sense of both men and
women, all dressed in black and hooded and with firearms. Our
people managed to get two of ’em, but the others looked
around and started firin’ at random into just about everybody.
I saw the whole thing like it was slow motion; I saw Sam jump as
one of the black-masked killers brought his gun around on me and
jump the guy from the front. I saw the flash and then saw part of
Sam’s head explode in blood and he was knocked down right on
top of me. I guess they figured they got me, too, ’cause they
lit out on the run to the next cubes and out of my sight.
Sam was a bloody mess and he looked as dead as the others, but I
thought I saw some signs of life there. There was a switching cube
just three back and I figured the best thing I could do to save
what lives there was to save was to make it back there and get help
on the double.
We wondered how the big man was gonna take Vogel out, and now we
knew. It made perfect sense in 20-20 hindsight. Vogel was to be
hauled to headquarters. They knew just where in the Labyrinth
he’d have to pass, and, most of all, they knew it was us just
twenty minutes or so after we nabbed him. I didn’t think of
anything like that right then, just Sam.
The last thing I expected out of this was for me to be
the survivor.
I ain’t too clear on what came next. Oh,
sure, I remember it, but not like it was real. More like a dream,
you know? That’s ’cause I was her, and she
didn’t think about much. It’s only when I think back on
it with what I know as myself that I can put it into any kinda
picture that makes sense.
I woke up in a kinda dingy, smelly dormitory. It didn’t
have much in the way of lights and none in the way of privacy, but
it had like twenty naked girls sleepin’ on cots. Down at the
end there was a long basin and a row of open toilets. It looked and
felt perfectly normal. This was my tribe and these were my sisters.
The hard part for even me to get into now is that I had no sense of
personal identity, of self, at all. I had a name all
right—Beth it was—but there was no sense of bein’
a particular person named Beth.
We got up, took our shits in turn, walked under these open
showers and wiped each other with hard soap, dried each other off
with towels, and combed each other’s hair with carved wood
combs. The showers were cold and while there was a lot of noise
there wasn’t much said. We could talk, all right, in a kind
of strict pidgin southern that made a lot of uses out of few words,
but there wasn’t no need.
Then we went out, naked, on a cool gray day, and we did
exercises and ran around this dirt track like schoolgirls at play.
Some white folks watched us from off a ways but we didn’t pay
’em no mind. Then we all went into this other building where
there was tables and benches on which were dishes and let the
sisters who’d gotten up early serve us. I can’t tell
you what the food was; you drank this thick, real sweet drink and
you ate these different kinds of cakes. Lookin’ back I figure
it was some kinda cheap health food, full of vitamins and minerals
and stuff.
Then we all pitched in to clean up, makin’ that place not
just clean but spotless. Then it was back to the exercises
and the track again, only this time it was more playful and less
organized. All this with no boss, no supervisor, not even any
orders.
This day would be different, though. In late morning, a black
truck pulled up at the big farmhouse off in the distance and after
a while two black-clad storm troopers armed with pistols came over
to us and we stopped and waited, curious but not afraid. White
folks were afraid of these kind of men; to us they were just more
white folks. With them was Jenner, one of the supervisors at the
farm. He pointed, then drawled out, “All right, you girls!
Listen up, now! I’m gonna call out three names. If you hear
your name, then you go in and you shower and then you come back out
to us. The rest of you just keep on with whatever you was
doing.”
I was just as shocked and scared when they called Beth as if I
were really Beth—which I thought I was. Still, I went with
Daisy and Lavinia and took the shower and then reported back. We
didn’t say nothin’ to each other—we was all too
scared and confused for that. The black-clad men looked us over
like we was horses or somethin’, then Jenner said, “You
all been sold to a man up north. You go with these men and follow
their orders.”
That was it; no good-byes, no nothin’—just go on,
get in the back of the truck, and off. Well—not quite. When
we got to the truck the men put chains on us. They didn’t
feel heavy, so I guess they were some kind of strong new
metal—they felt like aluminum but were hard as steel. They
cuffed us hands in front, with about a foot’s worth of chain
between, and they cuffed our legs with maybe two feet of chain
between. I don’t know why they chained us—where was we
gonna go?—but they did, then loaded us into the truck, which
was a kinda pickup truck with one of them caps on the back. It
wasn’t no camper, though; it was heated but you just sorta
sat on the floor and that was it. There was a coupla boxes in
there, too, but we didn’t dare open ’em. Crazy thing
was, I got a little thrill, even got a little turned on, by
wearin’ the chains.
Once we started off, though, we all got to cryin’ a
little. It was like bein’ torn from the only family and world
we knew.
After a while, though, Lavinia kinda took charge. She was more
aggressive than we was. She even went to the little window and
looked out, and after a while we did, too.
The impressions of the trip are just that—impressions. The
highways looked real fancy, like our interstates, and had a lot of
little cars on ’em. We went through a city, I don’t
know which, and it looked real ugly, all sterile gray with block
after block of tall, dirty buildin’s and lots of even uglier
industry belchin’ smoke into the gray day. Most of the people
we saw moved like they was always tired, dressed in plain clothes.
Clearly the white folks here didn’t have much fun, neither.
The good life, if it existed at all, was for the big shots.
And that, maybe, was the craziest thing of all. The more we saw
of that white world, the less we wanted of it. We had no
responsibilities, little work, no cares. Nobody would want to
escape into that world. Even bein’ wrenched and sold
we were still secure and safe. No decisions, no responsibilities.
It’s scary to me to think that people can be brought up and
conditioned to think that way, even now. Still and all, it was that
world that did it, partly. It was a gray world filled with people
with gray souls; a world without hope. They was all property, all
slaves, white and black. The only difference was, nobody expected
nothin’ from us.
They stopped the truck off and on, to stretch their legs and
ours. They had one of them porta-potties for us and the boxes had
cold, hard versions of the cakes and sweet stuff they’d fed
us back at the farm and a jug of water. That was all for us. Every
once in a while they’d stop the truck someplace and get out,
sometimes for quite a while, just leavin’ us inside, while
they ate or whatever. They were pretty ordinary-lookin’ white
men ’cept for their fancy uniforms and shiny boots, but
we’d flaunt it a little for ’em.
“Tempted to take ’em all on, Pete?” the one
asked. “They might be too much for you.”
“Nigresses? You got to be kiddin’. I
ain’t that hard up. Why? You tempted?”
“Yeah, sorta.”
“Well, forget it. Vogel’ll run ’em through
every test in the world. You know the rules. He gets ’em
first. Don’t trust no real women not to cut his balls
off.”
“Aw, what’s he care? These ain’t virgins. Look
at ’em.”
“Well, you do what you want, but the last guy who did that
wound up dangling from a meat hook on the walls.”
They didn’t, although truth was we wouldn’t have
minded. Oh, they did a little fanny pattin’ and tit
grabbin’ now and again, but overall they probably treated us
better than they did their own kind. They even hauled out some old
blankets when the chill got greater so we could wrap ’em
around ourselves.
Fact was, the three of us did a lot of it in the back, there. It
seemed normal and natural to make out, it felt good, and helped
pass the time.
Eventually we got there, not over highways but back country
mountain roads. We didn’t really see the place till we was
inside it, but when we got there and the door opened it was clear
we was at our new home. Big place, but with lots of
buildin’s, grounds, and people. We got took into the basement
of the big house where they let us shower, fed us, then put us in
this tiny room with no windows, a bare light bulb, and a big old
mattress on the floor that was big enough for the three of us. We
was exhausted from the trip and just slept. They left the chains
on.
The next day they processed us. There was a couple of people in
lab whites and one older guy in black uniform who wore glasses. He
came up to me. “Name?”
“Beth, suh.”
He looked on his chart, then started in. First he tried to get
me mad by makin’ nasty comments, then he both scared and hurt
me a little. I said “Ow! You huhtin’ me, suh!”
but that was about the extent of my rebellion. Finally they gave us
a bunch of shots with this injector gun, took X rays and scanned us
with something, then took us in to a hypnoscan, although as Beth I
had no idea what it was. It was definitely something Vogel was not
supposed to have in this world, that’s for sure. I
can’t say what they did with it, but I can guess they was
lookin’ for somebody just like I was—a plant. Jamispur
must have known his business; I passed. The hypnoscan
couldn’t find a trace of Brandy anywhere, nor, apparently,
did any of the cosmetic changes show.
Time had no meaning for us, so I don’t know how long we
just hung around there, but finally this woman also in black and
with real short hair came for us and brought us up to the main
floor and took us into a room that was nicer than any of us had
ever seen. We got cleaned and scrubbed and then perfumed, and our
nails got trimmed and painted, they put on real heavy makeup which
was foreign to us, pierced our ears and gave us earrings, even did
our hair. We liked it, but we also knew we was about to meet our
owner.
In all the plannin’ back at headquarters, the one thing
that never entered anybody’s head was that Vogel would see
all three of us at the same time. He never allowed nobody else in
the Safe Room, that was sure, but three at once wasn’t even
considered, yet that’s what happened. It was the first kinda
thing Sam had worried about from the start—there were too
many things you couldn’t think of. If the number of
unexpected and unanticipated things was too high, the thing would
go wrong real fast. And we all knew some things would go wrong.
That’s why you needed a thinkin’, experienced human
being in there and not just some hypno-programmed anybody. My job
was to improvise.
We waited around awhile; we was all excited, and Lavinia
whispered, “Dis new massa be one big stud to take us
all de same time. Don’t y’all fuck up, now. A gal kin
git used t’this shit.”
We’d all moved up from tribal to house status, and clearly
Lavinia saw visions of makeup and perfume and comfortable living if
we all pleased him. It didn’t matter that our chains were
still on.
It was fairly late at night when they came for us. That same
short-haired bitch in black it was—Vogel’s secretary or
aide or whatever. “You listen good, now,” she said
coldly. “You are about to be brought up to
Gruppenfuehrer Vogel, your owner and master. You behave
and perform right and he can be most kind. You nigger farm sluts
just do whatever he wants and don’t screw up. If he
isn’t pleased, you’ll go to the lab and wish
you’d never been born. Now—come.”
We didn’t understand the specifics, but we got the
message, and followed her out and up a back stairway—tough in
them leg chains—then down a second floor hall past an armed
door guard—there was guards all over the place—and into
a huge bedroom, the biggest I ever seen anywheres and the most
luxurious, too. “Wait here,” said the bitch, and left.
We heard the outer bedroom door lock. There was stuff all
over—valuable stuff, pretty stuff, even sharp stuff that
might be used as a weapon. We didn’t move. This was the last
test, apparently.
Finally, a man came out of a far door, dressed in brown pants
and shirt and leather boots. He was a big guy, and chunky, but in
real good shape, with a rounded face and short brown hair. He had a
small thing in his hands that might have been a short whip or
riding crop, and he had on a pistol belt and holster with the
pistol in it.
He walked up to us and got a queer half smile on his face.
Finally he said, in a rather mild and gentle voice, to each of us
in turn, “What is your name?”
“Daisy, suh.” “Beth, suh.”
“Lavinia, suh.”
“Come on in back with me.”
They said the entrance to the Safe Room was through the
bathroom, but they didn’t say that the bathroom was
bigger’n most folks livin’ rooms. The door in the back
was open inward, but it looked less like a door than a bank vault,
and the wall through it was a good eight inches thick.
The Safe Room itself was about the size of an average bedroom,
but there was storage in the walls for all sorts of stuff, a desk
and chair, and the whole thing was carpeted in a thick, spongy
wool. Vogel closed the door with a chunk.
And I slowly returned. It was a weird sensation, like Brandy was
being poured from a bucket into the vast empty spaces of
Beth’s mind. The setup continued to hold Beth forward, on
automatic, but it was almost like I had two minds, and the other
one could take control anytime it wanted to. Vogel came over, took
off his gun and belt and put it on the desk right in back of me. I
knew I could get it before he could react, but I didn’t even
consider it. It was one of the first tricks I’d fallen for in
trainin’, and I would have bet my life that the gun was
totally empty. There was a clip somewheres real near if he needed
it, but anybody who made for that gun would just be trapped.
No matter what happened, I didn’t dare make a move till
that security light come on, tellin’ me that the diversionary
attack had started and that the station was being invaded and
secured. This room was a vault, all right; I had a little twinge of
worry that the warning light might be burnt out or
somethin’.
I also figured Vogel was real kinky, but he wasn’t as near
far out as I had been afraid he might be. He wasn’t one of
them game-playin’ types, anyways—I guess he did enough
of that in real life. He had real clever ways of usin’ all
three of us, though, and once he got naked and got started, showed
a few things I filed away for reference. He had a real good body,
real hairy, too, and a tight ass, and one humongous pecker. I just
let Beth have free rein and waited.
The soft white light in the room suddenly changed, blinking a
real weird-lookin’ red. He was so turned on and so into it
that he didn’t notice at first, but when he came up for air
he saw it. I never saw a guy come down that fast, but he just got
up, pushin’ us out of the way, and went to the desk, opened a
drawer, and got put a handset phone and plugged it into a wall
outlet. The girls just kept goin’ on with each other; even I
was so turned on at that point it was tough.
Vogel was clearly real pissed at the alarm, and if it had been
anything less than it was somebody woulda died on that wall out
there. He calmed down the moment he was told, though.
“An attack? Who? Well, try and find out, damn it! Can you
hold? I don’t care what weapons they’re
using—you hold them! No—I’ll wait it out here,
but I’ll keep the line plugged in. You give me two short
buzzes if they breach the wall, one long if you want me to pick up
the phone. Have all emergency procedures in full effect as of
now!” He put down the phone and turned back to us.
“Sorry, loves, but we have a problem. Don’t
worry—we’ll get back to our business, I promise. Now I
need you. Get up and help me move this desk.”
We didn’t feel none too much like work but we got up and
helped him pull the desk away. It was pretty easy—the thing
was not that heavy—but his kind didn’t do no work when
he had other folks to do it for him.
We pulled up the carpet where the desk had been and there was a
door there with a kind of combination lock built into it, like a
safe. The emergency tunnel! We didn’t know about the lock,
but I wasn’t gonna make no move till he twiddled it and then
threw the switch and pulled the thing open. A long, deep, black
hole was all there was.
I really thought that maybe we was gonna luck out on this, that
he was gonna go down and right into the arms of the station people
without me doin’ nothin’, but clearly he wasn’t
gonna move right off.
The phone gave a long buzz and he picked it up.
“Yes? All right, then. Best I stay right here for now. The
station’s on? Good—what? Well keep trying the
station, man! I don’t like the smell of this!”
Uh oh. They had some feelin’ that the station had been
taken. It probably wouldn’t enter their heads in
plannin’ that it could be, but if they tried to call
somebody there and either got a strange voice or no answer
they’d be suspicious, what with an attack at the front.
Vogel was still naked, but he got his pistol, then reached
behind a panel, got a clip, and snapped it into place. I’d
guessed right.
I hadn’t been able to shoot my little jet of joy juice
into him; he had gave me the lower end in our sex play. Now there
seemed no way to give him the kiss; it would have to be the hard
way.
I moved real fast, pushin’ him off balance and then
usin’ my knee and then put his head between my arms and used
the chain as a choker. He twisted me off, but then he grabbed me by
the shoulders and while the leg chain made karate useless I brought
up my knee with full force and caught his exposed jewels right on
the balls. He screamed and let go of me and doubled over,
droppin’ the pistol in his pain. I got him real good, too,
’cause I had the gun and even had time to make sure I had a
shell in the chamber before he was able to come out of it and
figure what happened.
The other two girls looked at the whole thing with real shock
and horror on their faces, but they just pressed back against the
wall.
“Who the hell are you?” Vogel gasped.
“You know who I’m with,” I replied,
keepin’ the Beth accent and grammar since it was lousy
English but I could say it clear. “The Company want you. You be one
baaad boy!”
He recovered enough to stand, shakily, and look bewildered.
“The Company! It would have to be, but—why?”
“It seem you make lots of dem bigwigs scared with dat drug
thing you got.”
I got to say he really did look surprised. I’d have loved
to have gotten more, but the clock was tickin’ and the bomb
was under my feet. I gestured with the pistol. “ ’Nuff.
Git on down the hole. You can ’splain it
yo’self.”
He looked a little cagey, and I got to admit I was feelin’
a little good right then at it bein’ easier than most of the
practices. I was right behind him, when suddenly I got hit hard
right on the head. It was so unexpected I took a tumble, got
tripped up by the leg chains, and fell. Vogel didn’t waste no
time; he was on me in a second and just about tore that gun from my
grip. I got up, still feelin’ dizzy and confused, and looked
around. That damned muscle-headed Lavinia had hit me over the head
with the desk chair!
Vogel was back to himself now. “Not a move!” he
cautioned me. “I never had to get dressed one-handed before
but I’ll manage, and I’ll blow your brains out if you
so much as twitch!”
I rolled over and looked at Lavinia. “You dumb nigger
bitch!” I swore. I’d’a killed her with my own
hands then if I could. She looked so damned smug and proud of
herself.
“Don’t blame her,” Vogel said, not
givin’ me enough of an openin’ to do anything. He got
shirt, pants, and boots on real slow and careful. “She
doesn’t know who or what you are except that you were my
enemy. You see, even though we’ve just met, I’m the
only one she’s got.”
I was mad both at her and at myself. Lavinia was bein’
promoted from field to house in the only life she knew. She’d
said she could get used to perfume and lipstick and comfortable
beds, and she had no idea that there was any alternative—nor
had I time to explain to somebody like that the reality of things.
Even if she could understand it, she wouldn’t believe it.
Vogel kicked the trapdoor shut and then moved to the main door,
opening it. He pointed the gun at me.
“I wish I had time to find out all the details, or even
put you through the hypnoscan now, but I don’t. I gather your
friends are causing all this ruckus to divert attention from you,
and that they’ve captured the station.”
“Give it up, man!” I told him. “Dey gon’
blow dis joint if’n I show or not. Dey wan’ you live,
but dey git you dead if’n dey hav’ta.”
“I thought so. The fact is, I don’t know if
you’re what you say you are, and I don’t know if
I’m being set up or not, but until I can sort this out
I’m not going to surrender to anyone, particularly not to
some nigger bitch or on her say-so. Get up!”
I made it to my feet, though I felt achy. Gettin’ hit by a
chair ain’t the small thing you see on TV.
He turned to the two others. “You two remain here until
someone comes. I won’t forget this, Lavinia, I promise. Make
yourselves at home in the bedroom. Use and enjoy anything you
find.”
Yeah, for a few minutes, until the joint blows, I thought
sourly, but nobody was gonna listen to me.
“Now you listen to me,” he said to be with a real
cold tone that could freeze blood. “I saw your moves, I know
what you can do, but you don’t try anything. Once
we’re outside here, you’ll be observed by security and
guards. Even if you somehow overpower me, and I’m ready for
you now, you will only get cut down by others. You cannot reach
your friends and they cannot reach you. If you want to live,
you’ll do just what I say.”
He had a point, and if he was leavin’ the place I sure
wanted out, too. Once we was out of the buildin’, it would be
up to Sam and the rest to get me out. I was ready to do my part,
but suicide wasn’t it. We was now on Plan B. Not so good and
a lot riskier, but the object was to get him out of his safe and
guarded place where he could get took.
We went into the hall, and some of the sentries had their
eyebrows raised by seein’ me marched out at gunpoint, but
they snapped to. “Ready the drome!” he called to one,
then said to the other, “You have the key for these things.
Give it here and watch her. She’s a bitch!”
The sentry produced a small key, and Vogel took the time to
unlock the hand manacles on one side and then hook ’em back
around so that my hands were now chained behind my back. Then he
pushed me forward, gun at the ready, to some stairs and then, to my
surprise, up not one but two flights. A dome shape was goin’
back with a lot of noise above us, and I could see we was in open
air, on the roof, and there was a small, funny-lookin’
helicopter there. That wasn’t in no briefin’
books!
He opened a door, pushed me into one seat, then got in on the
other and started the thing. It started with a quiet whine, then a
big roar as the blades got to speed. It was some kind of jet
helicopter but different than any I’d seen. All the
instruments was in German.
We went up a little, then he pushed somethin’ and pulled
back and we went straight up so fast I felt like the breath was
bein’ knocked out of me. When he cut it and hovered, we was
so far up that you could see the whole compound down there. There
was still some fightin’ on two sides, and all sorts of
runnin’ around, and it was all lit up like a Christmas
tree.
Vogel started the chopper forward, slow at first, like he was
waitin’ for somethin’. What it was was a tremendous set
of explosions that made the whole place down there look like World
War III. Buildings, includin’ the big manor house, just blew
apart like they was toys. The station blew, too, in one hell of a
blast that also seemed to trigger a whole bunch of funny blue-white
lights, like a solid Labyrinth cube. The station shimmered, then
just—winked out. Just like that. There was nothin’ left
of it but one monster hole in the ground.
Sam was supposed to be on the B team, the Just In Case team, so
I could only hope and pray he still was and hadn’t decided at
the last minute to meet me in the station.
Vogel gave a satisfied laugh, then pushed us forward at maximum
speed into the night sky.
“What now?” I asked Vogel as we sped into the night
sky.
“I am the stationmaster for this world,” he replied.
“No one knows the setup here, the weak points, the Labyrinth
accesses and modifications like I do. I have enough knowledge of
the security system and its goals to get through safely if I pick
the right access track and don’t go through a switch. We
don’t have far to go once inside. There I can take stock of
things, with enough equipment to discover what I must know and
perhaps make contact with others.”
“You ’spect me to just sit ’round all dat
time?”
He chuckled. “My dear, are you that naive? You are on a
mission into an alternate world and you have failed in your
objective and you have failed to elude capture. Surely you realize
that they cannot allow this. You know too much, and you might be of
value to someone against their interests. Everyone can be broken.
Everyone. Were I, however, to try to break you or subject
you to physical, mental, or artificially induced interrogation, it
would be automatic. You would be blocked out, the process reversed,
and you would again be only poor, sweet Beth, my willing, eager,
and appallingly dumb slave. I couldn’t even bring you back
with hypnoscan and the best equipment.”
It wasn’t no bed of roses in that little chopper naked and
in chains, but I got a real sick feelin’ when he said that so
confident and smug, ’cause I knew deep down in my gut he was
tellin’ the truth.
“Don’t let that worry you,” he said smoothly.
“In fact, if I had to flee, they gave me a perfect tool and
assistant. You will be a great help to me. It will be amusing to
watch it happen more slowly. Beth, all of her, is still inside you,
whole and complete. Your willpower keeps her down now, but the more
tired you get and the more you sleep the more she will merge with
you. Those are powerful programs, and very complete, since they
have to fool even the devices that create them. It’s still
for their protection—at your expense.” He laughed, but
suddenly got real cold and crazy. “You listen to me, bitch!
You are my property! I own you! What sanity you have
depends on me. If I put this down and let you go right now, you
would become Beth instantly in this world, a world where
power is everything and your skin alone marks you as having
none.”
I figured he was tryin’ to scare me, and he was
doin’ a pretty good job. He was sure right that I
wouldn’t last long in these parts alone. He was also right in
that all of Beth was still in my head, and I almost had to fight
her to keep from actin’ like her. The only chance I had now
was Sam and Bill and that crowd. I knew they was coverin’ the
most likely substations, and they also said that somehow they could
track me—but that was no sure thing, if we got away clean
before they knew it. That was some takeoff and nobody figured on
this chopper. What if they thought we was both dead? That scared me
the most, ’cause that left me as Vogel’s slave
forever.
I dozed off after a while; I couldn’t help it. I was dead
tired and there wasn’t much more to say. Trouble was, I
dreamed, and I didn’t dream Brandy’s dreams. I started
to, but they were all made up of my fears and I ran from
’em—into Beth. Those were simple, pleasant, secure
dreams, of lots of sex and no worries or cares or
responsibilities.
The helicopter landed, wakin’ me up, but I just lay there,
half asleep, not really awake. It was daylight now and the sun was
shinin’ and it looked like a pretty day. My arms hurt and I
couldn’t remember why. Chained in
back . . . I must be bein’ punished for
somethin’, but what?
Vogel came back and got in and looked at me carefully.
“Beth?” he asked.
“Yessuh?”
“Now, listen close. You got a demon inside you, a real bad
one that wants to hurt you and me and everybody. You can feel it in
your head. I bet it’s trying to get in right now.”
And it was. I felt it, comin’ in like a mass of mud.
“You can fight it, Beth. Don’t let it in! You must
fight it with everything you have! You will fight it. You
will not let it in!”
But Beth couldn’t really fight it, the knowledge and
understanding, and I was more or less back in control, but shaken.
Vogel saw this, but didn’t seem terribly upset. “You
ought not to fight it,” he said. “It is inevitable.
Here—I will prove it.”
He got me out of the helicopter and then undid my arm bracelets
and chains. The relief was enormous, almost orgasmic, both the
ultimate pleasure and pain at the same time.
We was in a grassy meadow and there was cows in the distance,
but the sun was fairly warm and the air humid and it felt okay
after that gray chill.
“There’s a farm just two kilometers that way,”
he told me, “and a town another two beyond that. You want to
get away, just go ahead. I won’t stop you or shoot you. Go to
the farm and see what reception you get. Go to the town and see
what happens. Or, perhaps, go wild in the fields here and try and
live on what garbage you can steal until you’re caught. Go
ahead.”
I looked around. “You made yo’ point,” I told
him, and actually for the first time I could at least understand
the poor, late Lavinia. Even slaves in the old south had a place
they might run to, if they had the guts and the energy, up north.
Not here. Not anywhere. Latin America, maybe, but I didn’t
know enough about the rest of this world to know for sure or how
far down. And them old runaways, they didn’t have to fight no
Beth every time they got tired or slept. Even if all the shackles
were off, there was just no place to run. Hell, I didn’t even
have any idea where in hell we was!
He unpacked a basket that had sandwiches and a jug of what
proved to be cider and gave me some. There was enough Beth in me to
find the meat in the sandwiches unappetizing and the cider pretty
bad tastin’, but I managed. After, he told me to pick up all
the stuff and repack the basket and put it in the chopper and I
did. There wasn’t anything else to do but play along. It was
all out of my hands now and I knew it. I’d just have to be
good.
But I sure would like to get Vogel someday in a world where the
black people were on top. There were some—I asked once.
Vogel surprised me by also removin’ my leg chains. Not bad
treatment for somebody who’d kicked him in the balls and cost
him his empire.
“A final demonstration,” he said, enjoyin’ it.
“I need some sleep, and the men with the gasoline can’t
be here for a few hours. Since I still can’t be certain you
won’t try to grab my pistol and overpower me, I will lock
myself in the cabin. Unfortunately, that means you remain outside.
Go where you will, but not out of sight, please. Almost anyone who
found you around here would be far less kind than I, and you would
lose any hope that your friends could find us.” And, with
that, he climbed into the cabin and locked both doors and settled
in.
This, I decided, was the nuttiest situation I could imagine. I
was stark naked in some cow pasture, and I was free and my
kidnapper had locked himself in to protect himself from me.
As a demonstration, though, it beat all the lectures in the
world.
There was no way I was gonna live in no cow pasture, and trees
and hills of any size was few and far between here. Last thing I
wanted to be was a slave to a bunch of farmhands, and the town
would have the usual Nazi everything. I sure wasn’t about to
kill myself so long as there was any hope of bein’ rescued,
but I thought I might do it if it was this for life or death. So I
just moved out a little into the warm sun and sat down in the grass
and waited.
The gas truck came a couple of hours later, driven by two
typical cracker types. I pounded on the door and woke up Vogel and
he got up and came out. The two drivers just stared at me and I
thought at first it was because I was naked, but then I realized
they probably never saw a black person before in their lives.
Vogel noticed it, too, and enjoyed every minute of it.
“You want to feel her up a little? Go ahead. She likes
it.” He took a manacle with chain and held it sorta like a
whip. “She won’t do nothin’, will you,
Beth?”
I hated his guts but the only protest I could manage in this
situation was to not reply. It was a horrible situation, almost but
not quite a rape, but just as degrading and humiliating, and I
flipped out. Brandy shut off and Beth took over, as Vogel figured
would happen. The only thing Beth had was her body; her skin
limited anything she might want to do or anyplace she might want to
go, and any mind was a liability. She wound up givin’ both of
’em blow jobs and enjoyin’ every minute of it.
That’s how Vogel paid most of the gas bill.
We was in the air when I managed to creep back into control, and
now I knew what havin’ a split personality was like. I was so
completely disgusted and humiliated that I was on the edge of just
givin’ up and lettin’ Beth take over. The only thing
that stopped me was that I knew I was this man’s and this
world’s prisoner, but I was damn well not his
property or slave. It was the only part of me I could still
control, and I had too much pride and too much hate for him to let
him have that, too.
It was clear Vogel felt he wasn’t bein’
chased—they’d have caught up to us by now—and he
was in no real hurry. If he’d made a run for the stations
closest to his Pennsylvania retreat, they’d have nabbed him,
but if two, three, or more days went by with no sign, and even in
this tight dictatorship no records comin’ back to their
contacts, they’d slack off. They had to. The way both the
headquarters people’ and Vogel talked, it would take hundreds
of folks to stake out all the possibilities. They could spare that
many for a day or two, but not for real long.
I wanted Sam, bad. I needed him. More, I needed just to know
that he was still alive. That had been one hell of a bang, and I
don’t think they was the ones who triggered it.
Turned out, too, that Vogel wasn’t out of the woods,
neither, ’cause he didn’t dare use much of his
influence for anything that might get his location reported back to
someplace where it could be noted by our people. He did, however,
have money. That helicopter was outfitted partly as a permanent
getaway car, complete with fake and convincin’ Nazi IDs and a
fair amount of money. He just got a charge out of using me instead
when he could. Still, he couldn’t keep outta notice and with
farms and real small towns forever; he was gettin’ nervous
’bout his own people here now. Three days after we set out,
he made for this real hot, dry, dusty desert place with big, tall,
purple mountains in the distance. There musta been mining there
sometime long ago, ’cause on the desert floor but up against
the mountains there was this tiny, broke-down ghost town. Not much,
about a half dozen buildin’s that looked worse than any
slum.
He picked the place well. Nobody, not even no roads, around for
a hundred miles, a hot baked nothin’ of a place, but with a
kind of sandy ground that showed every track around. Ain’t
nobody been ’round that place in a long time, I thought.
He’s gonna get away with it! I thought in
somethin’ of a panic. That fucking son of a bitch is
gonna do it, and take me with him! I knew where he was
headin’—sorta. There was all sorts of time lines in
which people just never developed at all, or anything else, for
that matter, that could think. Some of ’em was right in the
middle of otherwise populated worlds, and some had been rigged up
by bigwigs both in the Corporation and by traitors to it as safe
worlds.
Vogel no longer even worried about me, even when I wasn’t
Beth. Truth was, even though I had my full knowledge and identity,
most times, more and more I just was actin’ and
thinkin’ like Beth ’cause it didn’t do no good to
fight. The longer we kept from bein’ caught by anybody, the
harder it was to fight it. My last hope, the shit still in that
tooth compartment, was dashed ’cause whenever I was under
that kind of sexual thing Beth took over. It might as well not be
there.
Vogel left me there while he checked out the buildings,
bein’ as cautious and sure as he could. He came back and
pointed. “There’s a trail up to an old mine there. Get
the supply basket, particularly the water, and come with
me.”
I got it, although it was heavy and a little awkward.
That trail wasn’t much these days, particularly for bare
feet and carryin’ that basket, but I kept up with him. It was
a long way up from the town and hot and dry as could be, and Vogel
stopped every once in a while and had me bring him a bottle to
drink. He didn’t give me none ’though I was dry as
hell, and I was so far gone by that point it never even occurred to
me to take a drink without permission. It wasn’t until we was
halfway there that he let me have the last half of a warm beer he
was drinkin’. It was a strong brew on a mostly empty stomach
on a hot day and I got feelin’ a little high from it.
We was high, too. Lookin’ down the helicopter was far
enough below that it was blurry to me, and everything beyond was
too blurred to see. On top of everything else, my vision treatments
was wearin’ off fast and I was goin’ back to
bein’ legally blind without no glasses. We finally reached
the ledge where the mine entrance was—more broke-down timbers
and an old musty hole—and he let me have another beer and he
had the last one.
“I put in this substation myself several years ago. Just
me and three others, none of whom lived to tell of its
existence,” Vogel said. “It’s a known weak spot,
but the Company ignored it because it was clearly inside a
mountain. They didn’t know about this mine.”
I giggled, feelin’ pretty drunk on only one and a half
beers. “Dat damn thecurity juth as fulla holes as always
was,” I muttered, more to myself than to Vogel. “But if
you on the squah wit’ th’ Comp’ny, den why you
build dis at all?”
“A good question, so I’ll answer it. Graft, mostly.
Most stationmasters need a little just to do their jobs. That
hypnoscan, for example, was wonderful for insuring loyalty and
changing minds, but it’s illegal here. Places like this make
getting that kind of thing possible. I haven’t had to use it
in years, though. There are better methods. It’s handy
now.”
He got up. “Stand up and stick close to me. Get me the
flashlight out of the basket and hand it to me. We’re going
to leave this burning hellhole.”
I got up and followed him into the mine. It was dirty and dingy
but almost immediately it was cooler. The flashlight lit up the
place, but it was still bad lookin’. It went in and then
curved around and down a bit. Some of them rafters was real old,
and every once in a while some dirt and stuff would come down on or
around us.
There was an old iron gate at the end of it, with a thick,
rusted lock on it. Vogel didn’t have the key, but he
didn’t need it. With my help the whole gate came free, lock,
door, and all, and we put it to one side. Beyond that was a bunch
of machinery, painted black so it didn’t show, and Vogel
turned it on. Just beyond in the tunnel, there was a sound like an
electric motor whine, then a pulsing, and then he threw another set
of switches and the Labyrinth line appeared, then did its usual
thing of dividin’ and dividin’ again.
For a minute I had a thought. Once in there, I had a place to
run—anyplace but out into one of the other worlds. Just to a
switch point. He wouldn’t dare follow but so far.
’Course, he had the gun, but I still figured it was worth the
chance. Vogel, unfortunately, had the same idea.
He grabbed the basket, moved some stuff, and came up with the
arm and leg chains. My hopes sank. No way I was gonna dodge bullets
wearin’ those. If I’d’a known he put
them in there, or had my full wits in me, I’d’a chucked
them things.
He turned to me, his back to the Labyrinth, and turned me around
and pulled my hands behind me. He fixed the chains, then
turned—and looked straight into two mean-lookin’ guys
with big, fancy guns.
He turned back and saw two more guys with guns blockin’
our way back out again. He grabbed me and put me in front of him,
back against the wall, pistol out. This was one tough dude.
“Stay back or she’s dead!” he shouted.
“You let me through and I’ll give her back to
you!”
“You’re in no position to deal, Vogel,” said
one of the men who had to have come in through the Labyrinth.
“The idea was to get you. It was her job, too, and
in a way she did the job anyway. Kill her and you have no leverage.
Shoot any of us and we’ll have to try and shoot you even if
it’s right through her.”
“Oh, great,” I muttered. He had one hand on his
pistol, the other wrapped around the chain holding my hands in back
of me. Freak-out Beth was nowhere around now. She couldn’t
handle this kinda situation. Me, it took two seconds to figure the
odds—either we’d be there a long time, or Vogel would
shoot and take his chances. He wasn’t the type to surrender
peacefully or they wouldn’t’a needed me in the first
place.
Using all my muscle power, I twisted my body and fell to the
stone floor. Vogel, his hand wrapped in the chain, had no choice
but to fall with me. His gun went off, and the shot ricocheted all
over the place, but if it hit anybody it wasn’t clear. They
was on him in a minute, tossin’ the gun away and
haulin’ him up back to his feet none too gentle. One of the
men from in back, the entrance side, ran forward to me.
“Brandy! My God! You all right?”
“Tham!” I managed, and then we was huggin’ and
kissin’ and both of us was cryin’. One of the men found
the key to the chains and gave it to Sam, who undid them and handed
them over. The leg chains got put on Vogel; they had plain old
handcuffs for his hands.
“How did you—?” I managed.
“We didn’t foresee this kind of getaway,” he
told me, “but we still had the monitor on to your encoder so
we could tell when you went into the Safe Room and start the show.
All of a sudden the thing went nuts, and we got a reading of
straight up and over. We got everybody back and radioed the men in
the station to get back in the Labyrinth. Most of them made it. We
followed you by land for a while but it wasn’t possible, and
by the time we got something in the air you were out of range.
We’ve been going nuts trying to find you ever
since.”
He helped me up. I was still shaky and I knew I was gonna have a
bunch of bruises. “Den how did—dis
place . . . ?”
“Every world where the Company has a station they have
satellites to monitor communications and general conditions. Back
home, ours can read a newspaper. Theirs can find all the encoded
people and give a fix. He led a real zigzag route over two thirds
of the country and he was real clever about it, but when we got two
fixes on this spot we knew he had to be heading here, even though
we didn’t have it down as a possible. He couldn’t use
Oregon or Mendocino, the only other two possibilities over
here, because we had them covered. It had to be here. We got here
about an hour before you did—close—but time enough to
radio back to Bill in Oregon and have him monitor the weak point on
the Labyrinth side while Sergei and I staked this place
out.”
“Den why didn’t you take him when we git
heah?”
“First, we wanted him—and you—alive. This was
the least risky. And we didn’t really know where the
substation was until we followed you up. We figured the tunnel was
the best bet. You saw how he was even in here. Figure the odds if
we’d tried to take him in the open.”
It made sense. “Den—it’s ovah? I kin get back
to tawkin’ normal?”
“It’s over, babe. Let’s go back to the doc and
then home and collect. I figure they owe us a cool five million
smackers. Haji—lead the way! We want out!” Bye-bye Beth. It’s for your own good, too.
The two men from the Labyrinth side led the way, with Sergei and
Sam and me bringin’ up the rear and a very sour-lookin’
Vogel in the middle. It felt real good to see him
in chains. A coupla times we passed windows out to worlds that
looked right for him and I half expected him to make a break for
it, but he didn’t.
We made a coupla switch points on the way back to headquarters
and I was feelin’ good. Fact was, the man had been
right—they got Vogel ’cause Vogel had me. The crazy
thing was, if I had made any kinda break for it, or if he’d
dumped me and gone it alone, he might just have made it
out. He was just so damned arrogant that he was gonna break this
uppity nigress that he never thought of this kind of
trackin’.
We was in the main line now, almost home. Most of the world
pictures mirrored to us looked a lot like headquarters.
They hit us first with a concussion grenade that knocked
everybody silly, then came at us from the sides and top. I
don’t know how many there were, I was feelin’ so groggy
from the concussion, but I looked up and saw bodies everywhere and
the flashes of guns we couldn’t hear but could kill just the
same. The concussion grenade didn’t make no noise, neither,
but it was like a big fist knockin’ us flat.
There were six of them—I got the sense of both men and
women, all dressed in black and hooded and with firearms. Our
people managed to get two of ’em, but the others looked
around and started firin’ at random into just about everybody.
I saw the whole thing like it was slow motion; I saw Sam jump as
one of the black-masked killers brought his gun around on me and
jump the guy from the front. I saw the flash and then saw part of
Sam’s head explode in blood and he was knocked down right on
top of me. I guess they figured they got me, too, ’cause they
lit out on the run to the next cubes and out of my sight.
Sam was a bloody mess and he looked as dead as the others, but I
thought I saw some signs of life there. There was a switching cube
just three back and I figured the best thing I could do to save
what lives there was to save was to make it back there and get help
on the double.
We wondered how the big man was gonna take Vogel out, and now we
knew. It made perfect sense in 20-20 hindsight. Vogel was to be
hauled to headquarters. They knew just where in the Labyrinth
he’d have to pass, and, most of all, they knew it was us just
twenty minutes or so after we nabbed him. I didn’t think of
anything like that right then, just Sam.
The last thing I expected out of this was for me to be
the survivor.