The Labyrinth Of Dreams

by Jack L. Chalker

  “As soon as I stop, you move!” I told them. “Don’t stop for anything! Now—you reloaded?”

  “Yeah!”

  “Give me all you got, slow, one at a time!”

  I put the car into reverse and gunned it backward at her first shot, then whirled it around as a shot came right through the windshield. I hit the brights, full, threw it into park, and dove for the couple of yards I needed to get in back of the motel office.

  Sure, I knew he’d eventually shoot out the headlights, but with a sniperscope those brights blinded him almost instantly, and now they illuminated the whole stretch of parking lot, road, and tree-filled embankment on the other side where he was. Those damned lights were full in his face, and until he got them out, everything in the darkened motel in back was invisible to him except maybe the Coke machine.

  When you mount a sniperscope, it’s for a specific purpose. It takes time to shut it off, then remove it (since it’s a big sucker) so you can use the standard pin sights. The guy was good; he’d just finished shooting out the last of the four headlights in less than thirty seconds with a couple in the grille for good measure, but now it was going to take him almost that long to remount and recalibrate his scope again. I looked back, trying to adjust my own eyes for the dark, and I didn’t see a soul in the back units.

  I did, however, hear the unmistakable sounds that the train was now moving, not just rumbling back and forth as cars were switched and disconnected up front. That meant traffic would soon be clear, and there’d be an open run from town to here and back again. This had already gone on longer than the shooter figured, I thought with confidence. He counted on maybe nabbing one clear, then keeping them pinned down until his partner could get to the room and finish the other off, counting on the train to block both traffic and loud shots. Clearly they hadn’t expected third-party intervention, and particularly not third-party-with-a-big-peashooter-of-their-own. At this point, our boy would either have to run for it or come to us.

  He was determined, that was for sure. I saw him now run down along the road, carrying the rifle as bold as you please, and then run across to the nearest block of units. He was pretty good, really; Uncle Sam had apparently shown him the proper way to do things with a rifle and against hostile fire. Clearly he was going to come up in back of that block of motel units, maybe all the way back to the tracks, then try and stalk them—and here I was without a weapon to my name.

  I went forward, worried about Brandy but also having enough common sense to realize that I had to act independently with what I had. I made my way around to the motel office and found the door ajar. Inside, there was nobody, but the switchboard phone had been ripped out and all the connector cords had their plugs cut off. It was still connected, though; the thing buzzed like a hornet’s nest and there were four lights flashing.

  Under the reception counter, however, I thought I found what I was hoping for. Two buttons; one red, one white. If the phone lines were still connected, the odds were that these were, too. I pushed them both, and bells and alarms started going on all over the place. God bless Oregon for a strict fire code. About thirty seconds later I heard a loud siren from off toward town; clearly the fire alarm had triggered the volunteer signal, something I hadn’t figured on at all but didn’t mind in the least.

  Two cars with flashing red lights arrived within a minute, but they weren’t who I expected. Both were white cars with security on them in big black letters. These weren’t from town; they were from the corporation. I didn’t care who they were. They had on plant-blue uniforms and they wore .38s. I went up to the nearest of them.

  “Two guys started opening up on the middle unit,” I told them. “One from over there, one from the end. The one at the end’s been taken out, but the sniper is moving up in back there and he has a scope!”

  “Who’re they after?” the private cop asked, drawing his weapon.

  “Two guests and my wife are back there someplace, with one gun.”

  There was a sudden sharp exchange of fire from in back of the motel. I heard the rifle go twice, and Brandy’s magnum go three times, but it was hard to tell the order and impossible to say who got who. They didn’t wait, though. One car went to each end of our middle unit and they got out, using the doors as shields, acting like real pros.

  Red and blue lights from a sheriff’s car appeared, and it too roared up, followed by a very large fire engine. I shouted for the firemen to get down—it was a sniper, not a fire—then threw caution to the winds and ran back up to the middle unit. Both rent-a-cop teams had moved in back, while the deputies split to cover the rear of the two end units. I wasn’t worried about myself, but I was terrified as to what those shots might mean for Brandy. I suddenly realized just how much I needed her.

  It had been over, however, before the reinforcements arrived. As I went around in back of the rental cops, I heard Brandy shout and then saw the cops move in back and switch on their flashlights. I followed, and found the trio in the culvert between the back of the motel and the tracks, with two of the company cops now putting away their weapons and leaning down to help the wounded. Two others were examining a form about twenty feet away.

  Whitlock looked messy, but he really was pretty lucky. Most of the damage was nothing but superficial cuts from the motel window shattering. He’d been nicked in the side but it wasn’t much; he’d simply tried to make it out to the car, and gotten trapped in the crossfire, playing dead because he was too scared to move.

  Brandy hadn’t gotten the shooter; Amanda had a rifle, too, which I’d mistaken for the hit man’s shots. It just had a small, cheap, regular scope on it, though, useless from inside the room at that distance and in the dark. Braced here, though, with the hitter walking full-body toward her, she couldn’t miss.

  “We better get you up to the plant infirmary,” one of the rental cops said to Whitlock. “You all right for the car or should I call for the town ambulance?”

  “I—I can manage,” he said weakly, and I was startled to hear his voice, which was low, soft, but almost—if not all the way—into the female register. Close up he looked smoother, more—I don’t know, certainly not an ex-Marine, if you know what I mean. In point of fact, seeing the pair now, close and off their guard and not moving about, they did look damned near identical, but not in the way I figured. It wasn’t a case of her trying to look like him; rather, it was he who was looking and sounding very much like her.

  I went to Brandy. “You all right?”

  “Yeah, I think so,” she managed, breathing a little hard. “It was pretty hairy there, though, wasn’t it? If you hadn’t pulled that bit with the car lights, we’d all been dead ducks.”

  We walked over to the dead hit man, and even Brandy’s eyes weren’t so bad that she didn’t give a little gasp and cry. This one was a real bloody mess, but the face was pretty much unmarked. That face, those eyes, were very familiar to me.

  “What the hell is going on here?” I managed.

  Lying on the ground, dead from three shots in the torso, was unmistakably the form of Martin Whitlock IV, looking very male and very ex-Marine and just like his picture.

  I turned, ready to demand an explanation of this as an earned right, and came face to face with the sheriff of McInerney. Or, rather, face to chest. He was about six five, three hundred pounds, all muscle, including the head. He was the biggest, meanest-looking sucker I’d ever seen.

  Brandy stared at him, equally openmouthed. I think we both felt he was either somebody on a break from a circus sideshow or he was going to say, Marlowe, I want you to find my Velma. Instead, he looked down at Brandy’s magnum. “Ma’am, you’ll have to give me that,” he said in a very deep and commanding voice, the kind that you would have obeyed if he’d said you had to get down on all fours and bark like a dog. She handed him the pistol, butt first. “What is your name, ma’am?”

  “Horowitz. Mrs. Brandy Horowitz.”

  The big man was certainly startled. “Horowitz?” He turned to me
. “And I suppose your name is Uncle Remus?”

  “That’s uncalled for, Sheriff,” I responded, getting my nerve back. That kind of stuff never went over with me whether in Camden or in the wilds. “I’m Sam Horowitz and this is my wife. We’re private investigators.”

  “Oh, yeah? Then, I guess you have a license for this artillery piece?”

  The fact was, she didn’t, but a good P.I. always is ready. “Sure, but it’s in Jersey,” she responded.

  “Well, we’ll have to check that out. Will you both come along with me, please?”

  They were already taking the couple from the east away, and I noticed that the private cops were attending to the sniper’s body exclusively. I would have loved to have gotten a look at the other hitter out front, but I was a little afraid he’d look just like Martin Whitlock and I wasn’t sure I could take yet a fourth look-alike, particularly tonight. Still, I didn’t like this treatment.

  “Look, Sheriff, we just saved that couple’s life,” I pointed out. “I’m not saying we’re owed an explanation, but at least I think we deserve some courtesy. Without us, you’d have two dead bodies.”

  “Yeah, well, we appreciate that, Mr. Horowitz, we really do, but that don’t mean we don’t follow procedures. We got two dead, and the one in front was killed with something other than a rifle—this pistol, I assume.”

  “He was shootin’ at us!” she protested. “All I did was self-defense!”

  “Well, ma’am, I’m sure an investigation will show that, but right now it’s a shooting requiring justification. Just get into the car, please, both of you.”

  “So what’s the charge on me?” I asked him. “I’d go anyway to get this ridiculous thing out of the way with my wife, but you’re acting like I’m under arrest as well.”

  “Yes, sir, you are, and it’s my duty to inform you that anything you say from this point can be taken down and used in evidence against you, and that you are entitled to a lawyer before any questioning begins. If you can not afford a lawyer, one will be appointed for you without charge. Do you understand that?”

  “Yes. I want to know the charge on me.”

  “Well, sir, suspicion of vandalism, suspicion of breaking and entering, and turning in a false fire alarm, for starters.”

  “This is absurd!”

  Absurd it was, but they took us in, booked us, and brought us up before a very-sleepy-looking magistrate. We waived the right to a lawyer right now, since in a company town there was no way in hell he’d do anything but cost us money, but we reserved the right to import one later. The judge looked over the charge sheet and also a list of what had been on our persons at the time of booking. Unfortunately, that included our last two grand and our credit cards.

  “Samuel Horowitz, you are accused of three misdemeanor counts. Do you have counsel?”

  “Not at this time, Your Honor, but I will.”

  “Very well. Trial is set for nine in the morning on the fourth of August. Bail is set at five hundred dollars, with a condition that you remain within this county until the trial date. To insure that, should you post bail, we will retain your wallet, cards, driver’s license, and investigator’s license. Meals may be taken at Malone’s Cafe, and lodging at the motel, said charges to be deducted from your bond upon appearance. Next.”

  He looked down at Brandy and you could see on his face that he didn’t much like her color or her attitude.

  “Brandy Parker Horowitz, you are charged with willfully causing the death of another, identity to be determined. As the sheriff’s report indicates that the victim himself possessed a weapon and it had been fired, the holding charge is manslaughter pending the outcome of a final investigation. As no holster was found, under the laws of the state of Oregon you are also charged with carrying a concealed and loaded weapon. As these are potentially serious charges, trial is not set, pending the outcome of a complete investigation. Bail is set at—ah—one thousand seven hundred forty-six dollars and twenty-seven cents. Condition of bail is that you not leave the jurisdiction of this court until trial.” The other conditions were the same as mine.

  In effect, the bastard yokel had taken every cent we had, including pocket change, as well as every single thing we had—those credit cards, driver’s licenses, you name it. Ordinarily I’d have called the bar association all the way over in Salem and gotten a civil-liberties man here, while refusing to pay, but I didn’t like the idea of Brandy being locked up in a redneck jail like this even for a few days. Frankly, from their attitude at the booking, I didn’t think they’d be real nice to even a white guy if his name was Horowitz.

  It was dawn before they had a deputy drive us back up to the motel, and when we got there, dead tired and pissed as hell, we found that they’d cleaned up most of the mess, although the window to Whitlock’s room was still out and there were still two holes in our door. When we got inside, we discovered that we’d had visitors. The contents of our new suitcase and Brandy’s box had been dumped and gone through carefully, and they’d taken anything that might have been a weapon. Also missing was my photo of Whitlock and all that pertained to the case.

  “Well, Little Jimmy warned us,” I sighed, undressing and flopping down on the bed. “Remind me next time to let anybody who wants to shoot and kill anybody else they want, if we aren’t getting paid to save ’em.”

  “It really burns me,” she agreed, flopping next to me and looking just as tired. “They took the help, but they didn’t even say thanks.”

  I stared at her. “Still, just when you think you got it, something else pops up and sticks it back in the Twilight Zone or something. How many Martin Whitlocks are there?”

  “I dunno,” she responded, yawning. “But if they’re gonna keep us on ice in this place, I think maybe we oughta get a look at that plant. What’s one more charge, more or less, anyway?”

  She had a point there.

  “I’m dead,” she said, “but I think maybe I’ll go out for a moment and get something from a few doors down.”

  “Huh? What?”

  “They took most of the stuff from the box, but the little fingerprint kit is still there. I just thought of something, if they haven’t cleaned it up. I’ll be right back.”

  She returned in less than a minute, triumphantly cradling something in a handkerchief, and she put it down and unwrapped it on the bed. It was a small flask, gold plated but unadorned with designs or symbols.

  “When she crawled out to him, she brought this to ease his pain, thinkin’ he was hurt worse than he was. He took it and drank some, then put it down. You got off in the car then and I was shootin’, so I wasn’t sure what happened to it. It was still there on the walk.” She carefully removed the small brush and powder from her kit. They’d pushed their hands in to make sure nothing was hidden there, but that was all.

  “What’s the difference?” I asked her. “They even took the print samples I had of Whitlock.”

  “Yeah, but they both touched this in my presence, and neither of ’em were wearin’ gloves. I just got to know.”

  There weren’t many prints on the thing, although enough were smudged that you couldn’t tell anything for sure, but there were four or five clear ones of thumbs and index fingers. “Yeah—see? All three thumbs match and both index fingers match.”

  “So? It just means the smudges are the other one’s.”

  “Uh uh. See here? One of those sets is slightly smaller than the other, and there’s a difference in the grip.” She showed me, and I was doubly impressed with her, sleepy as I was. You had to really look at them, but there wasn’t much doubt in my mind that they were two different people’s prints.

  “You’re telling me that Whitlock and Curry have the same fingerprints?”

  “Nope—that says so.” She carefully applied the fixative and then the paper, and peeled off the prints. “If only we coulda done this with the sniper. I wonder if the prints match?”

  “If they do, then we’ve shot hell out of all police work,” I
pointed out. I was beginning to really feel like I’d fallen into the Twilight Zone now. “No wonder they only found one set of prints in that apartment.”

  “Sam—just what in hell are we dealin’ with here?”

  I shook my head. “I dunno, babe. I remember reading about clones a while back. Make a whole new you from one cell of your body. I knew they could do it with some plants and stuff, maybe worms, but not people. And why Whitlock?” I paused. “No, that won’t work, either. In your genes you’re either male or female. We’re dealing with a male one—the shooter—a female one in Curry who even the lesbian locker room accepted, and our own target, who looked a little of each last night. Damn! They don’t like Jews much around here, and they don’t like blacks. Maybe it’s some kind of neo-Nazi genetic experiment using the rich blue blood of the east.”

  “That would sure explain that sheriff. Nobody like him was ever born natural.”

  “Well, I’m gonna sleep on it, if I don’t have nightmares,” I told her. “Later on, when I’m awake and reasonably normal, we’ll see about looking over that plant.”

  They had completely cleaned up the mess four rooms down by the time we awoke, and somebody had been by and towed away both our car, which was shot to pieces, and theirs, which was only slightly better. It looked deserted and lonely.

  We walked the mile and a half down to the cafe, stopping at the railroad crossing and looking off into the woods where the tracks vanished. There were two sets of tracks, both with polished rails, telling me that this was no spur put in for the company’s convenience but at least a backup main line that had some regular traffic on it. That meant that there was probably a spur just up from here, leading into the plant itself, that necessitated the long loading and unloading and the back-and-forth shifts of the train. It would be interesting to know just how much of the train was uncoupled and stored there. Possibly quite a lot, judging from the hour or so it blocked everything up.