The Mirror Maze

by James P. Hogan

  “Gee, that’s too bad. I’m sorry to hear it.”

  “What ever happened to that other guy, the one you used to live with—big feller with the beard. D’you and him still stick together?”

  “I’ve… been out of touch with him for a while.”

  “Oh? Well, he’ll be doin’ okay, I reckon. Remember me to him next time you see him.”

  “Sure. Look, it was good seeing you again, Mac. But I have to go.”

  “Nice of you to stop by. You take care, now, young feller.”

  • • •

  Mel had a light lunch in the hotel coffee shop and then went upstairs to his room to spend the rest of the afternoon going through the information he had obtained while the details were still fresh in his mind. The records he’d taken from the university would, for the most part, no doubt, lead only to dead ends and trails petering away amid the vagaries of four years. The former members of the Socratic society, Brett’s fellow postgraduates in computer science, and the others that Brett had associated with, were now scattered among dozens of geographic locations and occupations, some at home and some overseas; some—typically the ones who were faring more successfully—had remained visible and kept in touch with the university’s alumni organization, while others had vanished without a trace. And without a doubt, practically everything the records showed them as doing now would turn out to be just what it seemed and far removed from Soviet espionage. But the whole haystack would have to be checked for the single needle that might be in there somewhere. Thoroughness and monotony went together in this kind of business.

  Then he turned to the material from the Chamber of Commerce. The formal letter inviting Oberwald down to Pensacola as an after-dinner speaker had been sent by a Bernard Lehnard, who was the Chamber of Commerce secretary at the time. Mel set the sheets aside. He would have expected the official invitation to have been sent by the secretary, whoever initiated the process.

  Next he turned to copies of correspondence that had been exchanged between the Chamber and the university’s student union body during 1996, relating to visits and speaking engagements by public figures. Mel scanned over the next few pages quickly and put them aside. President of a local canning company… commander from the Naval Point air base across the bay… assistant secretary of state—Mel raised his eyebrows; somebody had been aiming high back then… Then, when he turned to the next sheet, the name Hermann Oberwald caught his eye straight away. He separated the sheet out. There was more pertaining to it farther down the pile. The person who seemed to be handling it at the university’s end at that time had been a Joan Flassner. She signed herself ‘Coordinator of Current Affairs Liaison,’ whatever that meant.

  Mel stared at the name, then turned his head and frowned at the collection of sheets that he’d set to one side, relating to Oberwald’s visit. There had been something about the tone of one of them that stuck in his mind as odd. He picked up the pile and shuffled through it until he found the letter, and read it again. It was one of the ones from Joan Flassner to the Chamber of Commerce, and began: “Dear Mr. Lehnard, we are delighted to learn of Dr. Oberwald’s acceptance of your invitation…” Mel’s eyebrows knitted as he read the opening once more. That was it. It didn’t have the ring to it that it should have had if Flassner had simply heard of an intended visit by Oberwald and was writing to inquire about the possibility of including the university in his schedule as well—which was the way Mel had assumed it had happened. Rather, from the way the letter was worded, it sounded as if she had been aware already that the Chamber had invited him, before he’d accepted. And the rest of the text, too, he saw as he read on, supported the same conjecture.

  Mel stared at the letter and rubbed his chin reflectively. Did it mean that somebody at the university had initiated the whole thing, not the Chamber at all? He rummaged down a few more sheets and picked out another letter that he’d noted, this time from Lehnard to Flassner, dated three days after Oberwald’s visit. In the second paragraph he found: “… we applaud your initiative and hope that this successful event will pave the way toward more cooperation between the City’s student population and its business community.” He read it again. “Your initiative”—the university’s initiative. That seemed to clinch it. But like Lehnard at the Chamber of Commerce, Flassner would have been simply the club secretary doing the work. It was unlikely to have been she who originated the proposal to invite Oberwald. But she would have known who did, Mel thought to himself.

  He laid the sheets out along the room’s bureau-top and stared at them for a long time, then got up and paced over to the window to stand contemplating the Pensacola suburbs while he pondered on what to do next. At length, he came back and sat down at the bureau again, picked up the phone, and punched in the number of university’s administration department.

  “Registrar’s office.”

  “Betty Crouch, please.”

  “One moment.” Music started playing in his ear. Mel groaned beneath his breath. Surely universities weren’t doing this now, too? He wondered how long it would be before the Samaritans started.

  Then, cheerfully, “Hello. Betty Crouch speaking.”

  “Oh, hello, Mrs. Crouch. This is Melvin Shears again. We met this morning.”

  “Ah, yes. The young lawyer from Boston. What can we do for you?”

  “Er, I’ve been going through some of the information you were kind enough to let me have. It’s fine, thank you, but there is just one small thing I need in addition.”

  “I’d hate to think of you going all that way back without it. What is it?”

  “A couple of the people I need to contact were members of the political debating group there—the Socratic society.”

  “Yes.”

  “The secretary of the Socratics four years ago was a person called Joan Flassner. It would help very much if I could talk to her. Do you happen to know how she can be contacted?”

  “Is she still with the university, do you know, Mr. Shears?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “Well, let me see what the computer says. Even if she’s left, she might have stayed in touch.” In the background at the other end, Mel could hear the clicking of a keyboard being operated. Then, “We don’t have a number for her, but she is on our mailing list. The address we have is in Tallahassee…”

  The address turned out to be an old one when Mel called Information, but he was able to get the numbers of four Flassners listed in the Tallahassee area. He hit lucky on the third.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi. Is this Joan Flassner?”

  “Yes.”

  “The Joan Flassner who was with the University of West Florida at Pensacola around four years ago?”

  “Yes, I was. Who’s this?”

  “My name is George Bradey. Do you have a moment now?”

  “It depends what you’re selling.”

  “I’m not selling anything. I just need some information.”

  “What land of information?”

  “I’m writing a section of the history, and I wanted to ask you—”

  “What history?”

  “Oh, you mean the secretary hasn’t contacted you yet and told you?”

  “Secretary of what?”

  “The UWF Socratic society. You were the society’s secretary when you were here four years ago, right?”

  “That’s right. I was.”

  Mel went on to explain that he was writing a history of the society, sensing Flassner loosening up more as he talked. Finally he said, “I noticed that you had Dr. Herman Oberwald as a guest back then.”

  There was a pause. “Did we?… I don’t really remember.”

  “It was back in 1996.”

  “Oh, maybe.”

  “It seemed a pretty prestigious name, compared to most of the others I’ve listed—you know, presidents of local canning companies, guys from the Navy base, and that kind of thing. I was hoping for some more background on how you got ahold of him.”

/>   “Oh yes, I remember now. He didn’t actually come down to Pensacola to visit us. He came down to talk at the city Chamber of Commerce annual dinner. We just got him for lunch the next day, before he went back.”

  “I see. Joan, can you tell me how you found out about him from the Chamber of Commerce?” Mel tensed as he waited. This was the crucial part. The records didn’t support the version that Flassner remembered.

  The silence dragged. Then Flassner spoke again, sounding less certain of herself now. “Wait… I don’t think I did find out from them… No, that was it. It was somebody at the university who came up with the idea. He thought he could get Oberwald down here, through some connections he had. It sounded like a good idea. I think it was us who suggested it to the C.o.C. They sent him the invitation, though.”

  “That sounds interesting—just the kind of material we’d like to develop. Can you tell me whose idea it was?”

  “I’m thinking… It was a tall guy with a ginger mustache, from the Business School. Unusual name, started with a Q… Quinn? No, Quintz, that was it. Sheldon Quintz.”

  “I’d like to talk to him. Do you happen to know how I could get in touch?”

  “Sorry. He could be anywhere.”

  “Not to worry. I’ll see what we can dig up in the records here. Thanks a lot for being so helpful. Can I call you again if there are any more questions?”

  “Sure. It was nice talking to you… What did you say your—”

  “Thanks again. ’Bye now.” Mel hung up.

  Mel exhaled a long breath and looked at the notes he had been making. So, Sheldon Quintz had suggested inviting Oberwald to Pensacola. And Quintz had indicated that he had the right contacts to get the invitation accepted. Could that have been the way of getting Oberwald and Brett together, after Quintz had spotted Brett as fitting a profile that he’d been told to watch for? It made him a possible candidate all right. And it had been arranged in such a way that the direct link from Quintz was obscured.

  There was nothing further Mel could do that day. He called Winthram to pass on as much as he had learned, and then turned his attention to the one other duty that he had left to do before leaving. He tidied his papers away and locked them in his briefcase, then showered and changed into some fresh clothes after a day of subtropical humidity. At six-thirty he left, heading for Beach Haven by the Bayou Grande on the west side of town, across the water from the Naval Air Station. Pensacola was his home town, and he hadn’t seen his family for a long time.

  CHAPTER 18

  “It’ll be a disaster, you wait and see,” Mel’s father, Stan, said over the dinner table. “They were talking about it last night on TV. It’s going to mean going back to a completely uncontrolled, unregulated, dog-eat-dog existence—runaway development everywhere, pollution, destruction of resources, exploitation of the common man. That’s who’s behind it—the big corporations.”

  “They have to be kept in line by somebody,” John, Mel’s younger brother by three years chimed in. Mel had never had a lot of time for him. He drifted in and out of jobs, got bored with them, and in between collected from the state. “That’s what government’s for. Take it away and you’d have anarchy.”

  “I don’t know why you let yourself be duped into believing all that stuff,” their father grumbled. “You used to have more sense.”

  Mel sawed off another piece of steak. The trouble was that Stan was an employee of the Department of the Interior, and he took any criticism of government as a personal attack. It was even worse when the criticism came from a member of the family, since that constituted a betrayal of his values and beliefs which, as head of the household, he had a right to expect would be shared by everyone else, too. Mel always tried to stay off politics because they inevitably ended up arguing, but it always happened, anyway.

  “That’s just what they say to scare people,” Mel said. “They’re playing on the stereotypes in people’s heads. Look, free-market capitalism and big-business politics are not the same thing. They couldn’t be more different, but people confuse them all the time. Big corporations don’t want a free market, whatever else their PR people pretend. It disciplines them, and it benefits the public. They want political protection—economic privilege enforced by law. That’s what we’re against. The silly part about all this is that you and I are really on the same side.”

  His father shook his head in a way which said that couldn’t be true, and he’d find a reason why when he’d thought about it. “I still say you can’t just let them run wild to do anything they want,” John insisted again. “They’d destroy everything for profits. I mean, what do they care about you and me? You have to have regulation.”

  “I’m not saying that you shouldn’t regulate anything,” Mel answered. “If regulations genuinely protect people, such as in setting safety standards, say, then that’s fine—as long as it applies equally to everybody and every company, without discrimination. In fact that’s a good example of what government should be doing. But the kind of thing I’m talking about would be phony environmental regulations, for instance, that are sold to the public as protection from some nonexistent risk, but whose real effect is to keep out the smaller companies with new ideas that might undercut prices. In other words they raise the costs of getting into the business—like a license. The big companies can afford the costs of complying, but the little guys can’t put up the ante to get into the game. So the Constitutional position is simply that if a lawyer can show a court that the real effect of a regulation or piece of lobbying is to protect somebody’s economic privilege, which always means that the rest of us end up paying for it, then it’s struck off the books.”

  The other two chewed their food silently, each hearing only what had been in his mind to begin with. Mel wondered why he bothered trying to explain anything. Their mother, Delia, looked up as the lull continued. “Anyway, we’re glad you were able to stop by, Mel. It’s been a long time. What did you say you were in Pensacola for?”

  “Oh, some research to do with a case I’m working on.”

  “I never thought you’d end up a lawyer. You seemed so settled in computers at one time.”

  “I heard a new lawyer joke the other day,” John said, sniggering.

  “We don’t want to hear it,” Delia told him.

  “Now that the Constitutionals have done it, there are going to be some big changes,” Mel said. “That’s where a lot of the important work will be.”

  “What about the poor people? What about the ones who need help, the unemployed?” Stan demanded suddenly. “They say they’re gonna stop all the payments, cut out the taxes, everything… What happens to the people who can’t function? You just going to let ’em starve, or what?”

  “Dear, do we have to go into all that again?” Delia said.

  “He doesn’t have an answer.”

  Mel put down his fork. “Look, nobody’s against compassion or caring for people who need it. But why does it have to follow that the only way to achieve it is through government coercion? I’m not against your goals. I’m just saying that your method isn’t the right way to achieve them.”

  “Look at the size of the problem!” Stan exclaimed. “You’re talking about millions of people out there. Who else is big enough to handle it?”

  “But that’s my whole point,” Mel said. “Most of the dependents on the rolls are caught in a trap that the system created. I mean, how many of them really couldn’t take care of themselves if they had the opportunity and the incentive?” He couldn’t resist a glance in John’s direction. “Most unemployment is created by bad legislation, either through pricing labor out of the market or restricting business, which is the natural employer of people. If you shrink the problem to the real, residual needs that are left, private charity could easily cover it. There was an explosion of schools, universities, hospitals, orphanages, parks, theaters, in the last century, all built with private money. People can be amazingly generous when they decide where their money will go, and
who really deserves help and who’s on the take.”

  “It still sounds to me as if you’re trying to get rid of government altogether,” Stan pronounced. “As John said, it adds up to anarchy.”

  “Not at all,” Mel answered. “It has plenty to do in its proper role: defense, law enforcement, running the courts, and the minimum of legislation beyond that protects everyone’s rights. Essentially it’s a passive function.”

  “The little guy would get crushed,” Stan declared.

  “He would not. It’s the little guy who’d benefit. Almost all unnecessary law exists to keep him in his place. Government doesn’t create a dollar of wealth. It can only hand out what it takes, and ultimately it’s the little guy who it gets taken from, every time.”

  “I think it’s just more work for the lawyers,” John said.

  Their mother collected the plates together across the table. “Well, I don’t know. It seems there are people around who are going to need some kind of help. There’s a retired couple along the street who send over a third of their income to the TV ministries. They think it’ll guarantee them a place in heaven.”

  “There’s nothing you can do about a self-imposed stupidity tax,” Mel said.

  “Did you ever see any more of that girl you used to know—one of the two sisters?” Delia asked. “Eva, wasn’t it?”

  “They were still seeing each other after he switched to law school,” Stan said.

  “Were they? I don’t remember.”

  “I haven’t seen her for a while now,” Mel said.

  “And you haven’t taken up with anybody new since?” his mother asked. Mel detected a trace of disappointment in her voice.

  He grinned apologetically. “Not really. It’s just been a lot of work and staying alive.”

  “I think she’s dropping a hint that she wants grandchildren to visit,” Stan murmured with a wink, evidently deciding to forget further differences—for the moment.

  “You know the score,” John said, looking at Mel. “Little painted people-box, someplace. Boredomsville, nine to five. All safe and secure and nice…”