The Mirror Maze

by James P. Hogan

  “Ah!…”

  “And not only that. She will also shortly be traveling to the Middle East, on the vice president’s visit to Egypt and Israel.”

  Goryanin, intrigued, nodded his head slowly. “Yes, this is getting very interesting indeed.”

  “There was also another man there, too, who we’ve got nothing on,” Chelenko said. “I got DS6 over there to check him out, all the same. It turned out he’s a lawyer from Boston. It seems he arrived with the girl—probably just her current boyfriend.”

  “I’d like an eye kept on him, anyway,” Goryanin said. “Kordorosky is throwing a fit upstairs again.”

  “Yes, I’ve already arranged it,” Chelenko said.

  “Good… You know, I don’t mind telling you, Sergei, if that man does take over here, I’m heading for Kamchatka or anywhere else at the far end of Siberia, as far away from Moscow here as possible.” Goryanin continued staring at the board for a few seconds, then snorted to himself as an afterthought occurred to him. “In fact, if things go that way, I mightn’t have much of a choice in the matter.”

  CHAPTER 35

  It was something that happened every three years or so. Some group or other—more often than not, one that included a lot of insecure wives who felt it was the state’s job to keep their menfolk respectably in line for them if they weren’t able to—would call for the city to “clean up its act. ” The media would pick up the story, and the City Fathers would dig up an ordinance to enforce to demonstrate their sense of responsibility as custodians of public morality. Then, within a few months it would be quietly forgotten, things would return to normal, and three years later the cycle would repeat. This time they had banned nude or topless dancing in places that sold alcohol.

  Brett stamped around at the far end of the lounge by the picture window, fuming. “Hell, I don’t especially wanna sit anywhere watching tits and asses all night, but the point is it’s none of their goddam business! You know, Mel, I’m beginning to think there might be something to this Constitutional thing that everyone keeps talking about, after all.”

  “Come over to Paul and Martha’s again sometime,” Mel suggested. He was sitting at the large walnut table by the shelves, with an open folder and a heap of papers for a class assignment strewn in front of him.

  Randal Crewe, a skinny student with heavy, horn-rimmed spectacles and a long, hollow face with a pointed chin, looked across from where he was lounging on the couch. “Are they the Brodsteins?” He had stopped by ostensibly to return a propane torch that Marty had borrowed, but really to hear firsthand the story of how Mel had been driven home by the police two nights before.

  “Yes,” Mel said.

  “That might not be such a bad idea.” Brett stared out at the bay and continued grumbling, half to himself. “It’s the same mentalities that used to put people on racks or set fire to ’em for saying their prayers wrong. They’d still do it today, too, if the Constitution didn’t keep that kind of stuff out of government. But they’re trying to change it. They run half the country already and own the other half, and they’re insane. What do you do? Another ten years of this, and well have the Inquisition back.”

  “I saw a picture of a head crusher that the Inquisition used to use,” Randal said. He licked his lips with relish. His eyes gleamed behind their thick lenses. “It had a bar that your chin went on, an iron skullcap over your head, and a big screw to force it down, like on the old printing presses.”

  “Have you any idea how crazy some of those people are?” Brett asked, turning to look at Mel. Randal irritated Brett, who usually responded by acting as if he were not there. “I mean, have you ever listened to some of the things they believe? They actually want a nuclear war with the Soviets!”

  Mel looked skeptical. “Okay, I agree that maybe the best way to prevent a war is to be ready to fight one, but how could anyone actually want one?”

  “That’s what I’m telling you. They’re insane.”

  “First, your teeth were crushed into their sockets,” Randal said, speaking in the way he had of stressing the sibilants. “Then they broke and splintered the jawbones. Your eyes were forced out of their sockets as the pressure increased, and your brains squirted out in jets when your skull cracked.”

  “Randal, give us a break.” Mel said. Then, to Brett again, “How could anyone actually want one?”

  “That’s religious compassion and tolerance for you,” Randal said.

  “They’ve got it right there in the Bible that human history is gonna end with the battle of Armageddon in a last, great, apocalyptic war,” Brett said to Mel. “And that’s when Christ is gonna come back. And they’ve convinced themselves—and this is the really scary part, Mel—that the conditions that were prophesied for it to happen are all here, right now. They think that Russia is Magog, and Libya and the rest of ’em were all in the Bible, and that it will all start when they attack Israel… They’ll even tell you the exact place where the last battle will be.”

  “You mean they’re saying a nuclear war with the Soviets is prophesied in the Bible?”

  “Like I said, they want it to happen. Because the sooner it happens, the sooner they’ll have their Second Coming. And the thought doesn’t worry them at all, because they don’t think they’ll even be there: Christ is gonna lift ’em all up into the sky and away from it all. And there are people who think like that running the country. That’s why they’re not all that bothered about running the national debt into trillions, what they do to the economy, or why we don’t have a space program anymore.”

  “You’re kidding,” Mel breathed incredulously.

  “None of it’s gonna last long enough to matter. All that counts is building up the military to win the war for Christ when it happens. That’s what they think God is telling them.”

  “Do you know what being broken on the wheel was?” Randal asked.

  Just then the front-door buzzer sounded. “I’ll get it,” Brett said, moving away from the window. “Are you expecting anyone?”

  “Not that I know of,” Mel said from the table. “Maybe it’s evangelists come to save your soul. They’ve heard about you, Brett. The word’s out.”

  Brett snorted and walked through to the hallway. A few seconds later Mel recognized Chuck’s voice. He sounded excited. “Hey, Brett, have you heard?”

  “Heard what?”

  “About Alfonso’s.”

  “Over on Barrancas?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about it?”

  “You know about the crackdown they’ve been having on the stripper bars lately?” Chuck came into the lounge with Brett. Harry was behind them. “Hi guys,” Chuck said to Mel and Randal.

  “We were just talking about it,” Brett said. “They’re taking over the world.”

  Chuck laughed. “But you haven’t heard yet what Alfonso’s place has done. The law says you can’t have strippers where you sell alcohol, right? Well, they’ve done it the other way around from what they were supposed to. They’ve kept the strippers and stopped selling booze. So now you don’t have to be overage to go in there any more. It’s full of high-school kids with cokes right now, all having a great time!”

  Brett gaped. “You mean they’re watching the strippers?”

  Chuck nodded delightedly. “It’s a sellout—packed house. The cops are outside, but they can’t do anything because it’s legal. The City’s having a panic session to redraft the law. It’s a scream!”

  Brett threw back his head and guffawed at the ceiling. “I don’t believe it! That has to be the best thing in years. Hey, I gotta see this. Are you two heading that way?”

  “That’s why we stopped by,” Harry said. “Marty called us about it. Everyone’s on their way there.”

  “Especially since Rudshaw and his pals are there, too, making a fuss outside and waving Bibles,” Chuck said. “We figured you wouldn’t want to be left out.”

  “Let’s go,” Brett said. “Coming, Mel?”

  “I
t sounds fun, but I have to finish this,” Mel replied.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes, really.”

  “If you say so.” Brett looked at Chuck “Okay for a ride? I’m still waiting on Obee’s for a part for my transmission.”

  “No problem,” Chuck said. Harry had already led the way out again.

  “Can I come along, too?” Randal asked, getting up. He seemed disappointed at having been cheated out of his chance to shine.

  “Sure,” Chuck told him. Which meant they’d get all the gruesome details on the way over.

  “See you later, then, Mel,” Brett called back as they followed Chuck out.

  “Have fun.”

  The door closed, and quietness descended. Mel heard Chuck’s car start up and pull away outside, then returned his attention to his work. The problem was to construct a schematic design at the logic-gate-and-register level of a multiplexer to handle sixteen communication lines, then write a machine-code routine to drive it, with programmable parameters and options. He worked for the best part of an hour. As the time passed on, his eyes drifted with increasing frequency toward the phone, and his pauses became longer. He’d hoped that she might call him during the last couple of days. By this morning he’d been ready to consider climbing down a notch and calling her, but had put it off with Brett around. Now he felt restless and unsure of what he wanted to do. Finally he shook his head determinedly. “Like hell I will,” he said aloud, and with that he turned a fresh page and resumed writing. She was the one who was messing him around. Why should he be the one to go running?…

  Because he wasn’t doing anything tonight… No, that wasn’t it. Because he wanted to tell her straight to her face—nothing to get excited about, just cool and direct—that he wasn’t going to play that kind of game. Then the record would be straight, and he’d be able to walk away with no misunderstandings and his self-esteem intact. He tossed the pen down, stood up, paced over to the window, then back again, and stood staring down at this notes. “Aw, what the hell?” he muttered.

  Ri-i-i-i-ng. Ri-i-i-i-ng. Ri-i-i-i-ng. Hell, don’t let her be out. He’d never get this thing finished until he knew what was going on. Ri-i-i-i-ng. Ri-i-i-i-ng. Ri—“Hello?”

  “Eva?”

  “This is Eva.”

  “Er… hi. This is Mel.”

  “Well, it’s good to hear from you. How have you been?”

  She sounded warm, friendly, genuinely pleased to hear him. Despite his determination to stay cool, he couldn’t help reciprocating. “Oh, not bad, I guess.”

  “I heard that you and Brett had your own escort home on Saturday.”

  “Oh, that… As a matter of fact, it was mostly my fault.” He heard Eva giggle over the phone—in a fond kind of way, not a mocking way. It brightened him up. “Who told you?”

  “The grapevine’s amazing. Where were you?”

  “Down at Trader’s most of the time. Then in some backstreet place farther downtown,” Mel said vaguely. “I don’t remember.”

  “Why don’t you come on over and tell me about it? Are you busy?”

  Act cool, he reminded himself. “Well, I do have an assignment that’s got to be finished…”

  “Oh well, it was just a thought.”

  “… but it probably wouldn’t take more than the afternoon,” he added hastily. “I could be there by, say, seven.”

  “That’d be great. It would give me time to get a few things done, too.”

  “I wanted to talk to you about something, anyway.”

  “Fine. About seven, then?”

  “See you.”

  “Oh, and Mel.”

  “What?”

  From the tone of her voice, he could almost see her biting her lip impishly. “It’s your turn to get the pizza.”

  • • •

  He was glad that he had called her. It gave him a feeling of having faced up to things squarely, in a manly kind of way, instead of putting them off with some lame excuse to himself in his mind… And besides, he liked being here, at her place. It wouldn’t do any harm to leave the hard-line part that he’d come about until just a little later, he decided.

  He sat sprawled along the couch, from which he had moved some boxes of books to make room. Eva was in the leather recliner by the coffee table with the computer terminal, still laughing uncontrollably at the story he had related about Alfonso’s. Although she could be so serious at times, she could let herself go with abandon when the mood took her. As if to compensate for its excesses, her personality seemed to go to extremes in all directions. “See what I mean. Look at you now,” Mel said. “I’ve never met anybody who was such a mixture of opposites.”

  “Well, statisticians will tell you that it’s a healthy way to be,” Eva said.

  “How come?”

  “Manic-depressives average out at about normal.” She skimmed a tear off her cheek with a knuckle. “And the cops were there, and so were Rudshaw’s Bible freaks?…”

  “That’s what Chuck and Harry said.”

  “Oh, it’s just too funny… I love it when holier-than-thous fall flat on their faces like that.”

  “Brett was raging about them all morning. He says they think the Bible is telling them to fight the ungodly.”

  “You mean Armageddon and the Second Coming, and so on?”

  “You know about all that?”

  “I’ve read some of the things they believe. It’s terrifying. You can see why the Constitution separates church and state.” Now the serious Eva was coming back.

  “I thought it was just to let everyone follow whatever religion they choose… or none at all if they want,” Mel said.

  Eva shook her head. “It does achieve that, but more as a side effect of something that goes deeper. It expressly rejects religious doctrine as a basis for regulating public affairs. In other words, science and reason provide a more effective means of discovering reality and deciding on permissible behavior than notions of divine revelation. Steam engines and electronics work; magic and miracles don’t. Appealing to facts and logic is a better way of deciding a person’s guilt than tying him up and throwing him in the river to see if he drowns. Life under the Supreme Court is better than under the Inquisition. Ask Randal.”

  As Mel sat back to ponder on the implications, Eva picked up a paper from the litter scattered on the coffee table in front of her and began scanning over it idly, letting him think. Finally Mel said, “That’s dynamite. What you just said means that all the claims about the country being founded on God and the Bible are garbage.”

  “Exactly,” Eva agreed, without looking up.

  “The Constitution expressly mandates a secular state.”

  She rested the paper on her knee and looked at him over the top. “Sure. If religion really were a superior road to truth, there’d be no reason not to use it as the basis for all aspects of life, public and private. But the Constitution rejects it. That’s what the far Right won’t accept, and they’re trying to get their hands on government. They want to go back to the way things used to be when the meek and merciful could squash your head if you disagreed with them. That’s why they’re so against the Constitutional movement. The two established parties pay lip service to the Constitution, but they’ve been around too long to have that freedom of choice—they’re both sold out to entrenched interests. They belong to the last century and can’t change. They can’t respond to the way popular thinking is going. That’s why we’ll win in 2000.”

  “I’ve got a feeling you’ll end up recruiting me yet,” Mel said.

  “Great. And if we do, become a lawyer. That’s where all the excitement will be after it happens.”

  “What’s that you’re reading?” Mel asked, sitting up and nodding at the paper on Eva’s lap.

  She replied matter-of-factly. “A paper on defense that Dave Fenner left, about how appeasement doesn’t work. You only end up being taken advantage of.”

  Mel stiffened involuntarily at the mention of Dave’s name
. He got up and strode over to the window, where he stood for a moment, looking down at the evening traffic on Palafox. This was the time to say his piece, leave, and be done with it… if that was what he wanted to do. The problem was that now he wasn’t so sure anymore that he did. He turned back to face the room. Eva was watching, but at least she wasn’t insulting his intelligence by pretending not to know what was on his mind. “Who is Dave?” he asked finally.

  “An old friend. I told you that before.”

  Mel made a face and gestured in the air, searching for a continuation. “I mean, what is he—to you?”

  “A very close old friend.”

  “Isn’t he a bit old for you?” Mel managed finally, in a gruff voice.

  “At thirty-two? I don’t think so. Some people tell me I’m too old for my age anyway. But even if he were, what of it?”

  She was wearing slacks of a thin, pink material that clung revealingly to her legs. Her breasts swelled deliciously against her blouse. Mel’s hormones were in a hopeless conflict with his feelings. He knew what he wanted to say, but somehow he couldn’t turn it into words and spit them out. An urge flashed through him to pick something up and throw it, simply to vent the frustration of not knowing how to communicate, but he fought it back. Finally he said, “Look, this may sound kind of old-fashioned and quaint to you, but I had hoped that… that… Oh, forget it.” He shook his head and sighed hopelessly.

  “Mel,” Eva said. Her voice was quiet, but firm. “We went through this when you were here before. I own my own person—body and mind. I don’t want to be possessed. If I meet somebody one day who makes me feel differently, well, then maybe that’ll change. But right now that isn’t true with you, and it isn’t true with Dave either. We can be friends. We can have fun. But that’s all I’ve ever offered. I can’t be more honest than that.”