It was well after dinner on the third night that they came for us. Two of the guards came in and motioned for us to get up and get ready to go someplace. We were more than ready, although we figured that they were just going to take us back up to the abbot. Instead we found ourselves outside in the dark—it always seemed to be in the dark, these days—and being marched toward a fairly fancy-looking stagecoach. The driver up top was an indistinct figure dressed all in black himself, and when we got in, we found ourselves shut up with a fugitive from a Robin Hood movie. Well, all right, the outfit was a dark purple and not forest green, and the boots and belt were a dull, dark red, but you get the picture, right down to the little three-cornered hat. I first took this character for a young guy, but on second look it was a real boyish-looking girl, no makeup, short hair combed and parted on the side.
The coach lurched forward and we almost found ourselves in the girl’s lap. I used to watch all sorts of westerns and costume epics, with stagecoaches and chariots and all the rest, but I never realized how damned bumpy, rocky, and downright uncomfortable they were.
The girl smiled. “It takes some getting used to, but it’s easier if you just relax.” She had one of those low, husky kinds of voices that also could be either male or female. I was getting my fill of androgyny by now.
“And who might you be? Maid Marian?” I asked her.
She threw me a curve, with her reply, because she knew who Maid Marian was, and because she seemed to know things about our own world: “And you are the barbarian warrior with his Numidian queen, right?”
“Touche! So what’s this all about before I get so seasick on this meat wagon that I can’t make out what you’re saying?”
“My name is Jamie,” she said, and she had that same English-type accent as everybody else around here. “My occupation is somewhat like your own. I am in the security division, northwest zone.”
“For the Company, the Church, or the local government?” Brandy put in.
“For all of them, to one degree or another. Someone wants to talk with you under more controlled circumstances, and we thought it best to get you out of there as quickly as possible, before they started getting ideas on their own.”
“You mean they do have an Inquisition, then?” I said. “I knew it!”
“An Inqui—” She paused and laughed. “That’s amusing. Surely you don’t think that the place up there is Christian, do you? Oh, there are Christians about, here and there, but they were never the major force in this world that they were in so many others.”
Brandy looked thoughtful. “Come to think of it, we never did see a cross. Not a one. Even that abbot wore some kind of round medal.”
She nodded. “I fear they are an odd lot, although they have a great deal of influence in this district. They worship a whole pantheon of gods and demigods, and spirits of trees, animals, fire, you name it. Oh, on the whole they’re a very moral and sanctimonious lot. They never sacrifice anyone to the gods who doesn’t go willingly.”
Brandy and I gulped at the same time. “They sacrifice—people?” she managed.
“Oh, yes. Not very often. Usually only at solstices and equinoxes unless there’s some special need or occasion. As I say, they have a lot of power and influence about, and everyone’s a bit frightened of them anyway, so they make perfect allies. We maintain them and allow them a measure of authority, and in exchange they run the station for us. It works out rather well all around, and has for quite a long time. You do realize by now, I hope, what sort of operation you’ve blundered into?”
“We sorta figured it out,” Brandy told her. “Not that it’s clear or that we can follow everything or accept everything, and maybe we guessed wrong here and there, but I think we got it. There’s a whole lot of Earths, and somebody runs the railroad between ’em.”
“The railroad is a near-perfect analogy,” Jamie replied. “Yes, there are a lot of Earths. A lot of universes, really, all one right after the other, as far as anyone can find. They all exist basically in the same place, only removed so that what happens in one has virtually no effect in the ones on either side. There are occasional mild problems, which are usually taken as ghosts, spirits, premonitions, visions, or whatever, usually connected with an overlap between specific people or places. Some worlds that have destroyed themselves have bled their poisons as well, drastically changing or even destroying their neighbors at the same time. Well, on one of these worlds, a minor company—formed in a barn, basically, by some very bright people—discovered how to go between them. Such a discovery led to profits, and power, and what we have today.”
Brandy peered closely at the woman. “And just what do we have today?”
“Why, the Company, of course. The biggest thing that ever was created, bar none. You’ve had a taste of it.”
“More than a taste,” I noted sourly. “You haven’t been stuck in these hills for a year, living on apples and nuts, with nowhere to go and little or nothing to do.”
She shrugged. “No one told you to break into the Company. No one took a sword to your throat and forced you into the Labyrinth. Occasionally there’s a field disturbance and someone from one world suddenly passes through to the next, which is why all worlds have their mysterious disappearances and occasional appearances, but that didn’t happen to you. I have read your file.”
That got Brandy’s interest up. “So there’s a file on us, is there?”
“There is a file on everyone who ever, wittingly or unwittingly, got involved directly with the Company. I must say that you two look only vaguely like your pictures, though. That’s one major reason we were wondering about you, you see. The boss finally had to trace you entirely through the, network to verify your story, and that only makes us ninety percent certain. You could have been intercepted at any number of points, particularly since the time line of that siding you were on is quite fast.”
I stared at her. “What do you mean by that?”
“Well, there’s a centerpoint of sorts. Worlds go out in all directions from it. It’s not the one that runs the Labyrinth—it’s really not much of anything—but it’s likely it’s the prime world, the seat of creation. The time rate there is also the base rate, and it’s quite slow, relatively speaking. The further away from the centerpoint, the faster the time rate seems to be for each given world. It’s purely subjective—you never know the difference unless you travel often between them. Take this world, for instance. I have no idea of the true ratio, but it’s probable that an hour here would be the equivalent of, say, a day in your home universe, or perhaps the reverse. That abandoned experimental botanical region the switchman shuttled you to when it was clear you were not authorized on the system—which is one of the standard procedures for such things—runs at a very fast clip. That’s why it was used for organic experiments. You plant your seeds and they grow at a normal rate relative to their universe, but since it’s hundreds of times faster than the universe of the planter, he or she just pops back over in a day or two, and it’s a year later to the plants.”
Brandy shook her head wonderingly, and I was feeling a little dizzy. “You mean,” Brandy said, “that we spent a year there but maybe only a coupla days passed back home?”
“Yes, something like that. That’s why it took so long to trace you, you see. The switchman’s report on you hadn’t even reached Company security for processing when you popped up here. I fear that switchman you talked into sending you here is going to get badly disciplined.”
“You’ve been to our world?” Brandy pressed. “You seem to know a lot about it.”
“Not yours. Good heavens, that would push chance too far. One like yours, anyway, and several more. Part of our promotional training. I must tell you that I wasn’t all that impressed. All that dehumanizing machinery, the ugly smells, the coldness of the people, the crime and corruption and fears and tensions . . . We’ve had three murders in this barony in the past four years, and all were crimes of passion. It’s quite peaceful and quit
e secure. Oh, I suppose your medicine is wondrous, and perhaps the good of such mass communication and transport outweighs the bad, but somewhere along the line you seem to have lost your sense of values and proportion. Your woodland is vanishing, your animals and plants are dying, your water and air are fouled, and you live in houses like forts behind heavy locks and steel bars, and fear to venture out alone at night. Everyone was so upset, when I was there, that a bunch of fanatics had blown up some ambassador in some foreign kingdom; yet right then, people were getting robbed, raped, and murdered all around them, and everybody seemed to think that was normal. No, thank you. I like it here.”
It was a hell of a speech, and I wished I could come up with a good, snappy retort, but I was still trying to find the flaw in her reasoning.
“Tell us about this place, then,” Brandy invited. “What is your world like?”
“Oh, it’s not organized very differently from anywhere else. There’s an emperor here, one of several for all the empires about, and under him there are kings and a few queens who run countries within the empire. The countries are divided into smaller and smaller units under dukes, barons, and the like, each taking a sacred oath to obey and defend the one above him. The nobility accounts for about four percent of the population. Then there are the knights and their families, the heads of individual estates and the leaders of police and military, which are one and the same thing here, and that’s another five percent or so. The rest of the people, except for the townspeople and traders and the like, are bound to the land. They work, and in exchange are given food, clothing, housing, general cradle-to-grave care, and protection from any bad elements.”
“That’s the kind of thing they used to have in olden days,” Brandy pointed out. “I forget its name, but what it boils down to is that about ten percent have everything, and everybody else supports them as slaves.”
“It’s feudalism. That’s the word,” I put in.
“No, it’s not slavery,” Jamie argued. “In the world like yours that I lived in for a year there were several different forms of government. One was called a democracy, but in it about five percent of the people had about ninety-five percent of the wealth, and most of the political power. You got to vote for which of the two people put up by the rich you wanted. Then there were two other systems that differed in ways too subtle to matter. One had the government owning everything in common, and was run by a single party and a bureaucracy that amounted to about nine percent of the people. The party made all the decisions and lived quite well, and the rest of the people worked for whatever the party gave them. The third system was sort of like the other two combined, with the rich owning everything and being members of a party who all sat down together and decided what would be made, what would be sold, and at what price and profit, and what wages and working conditions would be. In all cases it seemed that you were talking about ten percent ruling ninety percent absolutely. I may be a bit dull on political matters, but I couldn’t really see much difference deep down. No people in this land may be bought or sold. It is immoral. They remain with the land, no matter who becomes their lord.”
I began to realize that they’d sent us a live one to soften us up. Trapping us in a coach with Jamie in the middle of the night was worse torture than sending us back to the Garden.
“And you? Do you belong to somebody’s land?” Brandy asked.
“Oh, my, no! I’m the daughter of a knight. The fifth daughter. My parents were always preparing my sisters for marriage and position, and I was always down learning fencing with the squires and outdoing the boys at their own games. Why not? I never liked the idea that men were inherently better at some things than women, and, besides, by the time they got to me there was pretty slim pickings in terms of wealth or advancement possibilities. My father, noting my talents and having surrendered at his attempts to make a lady out of me, introduced me to a man who turned out to be a marketing representative with the Company. My contacts and position have allowed me to aid my family, so they are content; and my job suits my own proclivities, so I am content. The Company is male at the very top, but no one not born on that world can be on the very top anyway, and that takes both talent and relatives. There is, however, a considerable career path an ambitious and smart woman might take, and that is sufficient for me.”
I was about to ask whether she liked boys or girls best, but Brandy read my mind and gave me a poke in the side. What the hell. Diplomacy was a part of the detective’s art at times.
It was nearing dawn when we began to slow, maybe three or four hours out. I didn’t know much about horses, but I figured we’d have to stop just to rest them. We were coming into a town of some kind, down low, and in the distance I heard an eerie and very mechanical whistle blow. “What’s that?” I asked.
“A train. What else would it be except a train or the fire alarm?” Jamie asked casually. “They can’t get steamboats this far upriver.”
And here I was just getting used to the idea of being in the land of King Arthur or something. “You have steam stuff?”
“Oh, yes. We’re not primitives, after all. Steam is at the heart of the emperor’s power, for only the emperor runs things of steam, and licenses and schools all those who operate such devices. When I was little I once had a dream of being the first female train driver, but that’s just not done here. One of the empires over in Africa, I hear, is a matriarchy and there it’s possible, but that’s not the way of my own emperor or land. As I say, there are trade-offs, and I have found my own niche.”
“Yeah,” Brandy whispered a bit sourly. “Everybody born at the top thinks that way.”
To my surprise we went right down to a small railway station, and then alongside the tracks, slowly. There wasn’t a lot of light, but the trains used in this world looked more primitive than museum pieces, not even as fancy as the wild-west trains or those of the Civil War. The cars were all wood and looked like they belonged to an enlarged antique Christmas train set. Most were freight, but the last car was an old-time passenger car, and it was the only part of the train that was lit.
We pulled up to it, and Jamie reached over, opened the door, then hopped out and helped us both down. We were stiff and I, at least, was starting to feel my lack of sleep. I wasn’t tired enough, though, that I didn’t see a dozen or more black shapes lurking about the yard. Whoever this was, he carried a real heavy bodyguard.
The car was divided into two parts, a parlor area and a sleeping area, and we entered the parlor and took seats in lavish surroundings. There was gold trim and velvet seat covers and the curtains were fine silk. It was the kind of car old royalty must have owned in Europe back in the nineteenth century.
A man entered, wearing a maroon dressing gown, a pipe in his mouth. He was a large man, rather handsome with a full brown beard just going to gray, nicely trimmed hair of the same color and condition, and a large build. His gray eyes surveyed us with some bemusement, and he smiled and came fully into the parlor. “You must pardon my meeting you like this,” he said to us in a voice that was full and sonorous and more classical American than English, “but I’m afraid I hadn’t planned on fitting any of this into my schedule. This world isn’t one where you expect your tea to be late or anything more complex than a toothache.” He paused a moment. “Oh, pardon. Jamie, you wish to make the formal introductions?”
The security agent stood. “Sir, Mr. Samuel Horowitz and his wife, Brandy Horowitz. May I present the chief of operations for the northwest district of the Company?”
The man smiled and stuck out a hand. “Lamont Cranston, at your service,” he said pleasantly.
7
A Choice of Futures
There was a sense of total unreality about sitting in an antique railroad car, surrounded by a world still stuck mostly in the Middle Ages, and having the Shadow come up and introduce himself. I figured I needed sleep worse than I thought.
“You seem startled by my name,” Cranston noted. “Have you encountered an alternate m
e?”
“Not exactly,” I told him, “but if you can’t cloud men’s minds so they cannot see you, it’ll be a big disappointment to us.”
He frowned. “Invisibility? Haven’t heard of that one.”
“Your name was attached to a fictional detective who could, back in my world.”
He laughed pleasantly. “Well, that’s flattering. It does happen, you know. Everything happens, you see.”
He sat down, and just after, we felt the car lurch and there was a loud sound behind us. They were adding cars, it seemed.
“Brandy, Sam—I hope I may call you that—just how much do you understand of all this?”
“They got it pretty clear. Surprisingly clear,” Jamie assured him.
“I don’t know how it’s possible, but we have to figure there’s a lot of Earths one on top of the other,” Brandy told him. “And your Company can go between.”
“Very good!” Cranston exclaimed, sounding quite pleased. “There’s not merely a lot of Earths, there’s apparently a number approaching infinity. An enormous amount have no human life at all, and many have no life of any kind. Others have developed rather differently, with different species dominating the worlds. We’re in what we call the ‘human’ band, although that’s misleading and an insulting term in many ways. It’s just that the men who discovered the infinite worlds and the way to go between are from a world where people evolved much the same as your ancestors and mine did. We prefer to call the band the Type Zero band, and those Earths which developed quite different advanced forms are Type Ones, Type Twos, and so on. Each band is vast in and of itself, with uncountable variations of the same basics. Far too many for our people to even have sufficient numbers of live bodies to check them out.”
The Labyrinth Of Dreams Page 17
