Read Online 03. The Maze in the Mirror by Jack L. Chalker - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jack L. Chalker
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didn't know how extensive it was or how many people were really involved on that lower level. The fact was, neither did Mukasa. They worked through a minimum of middlemen, mostly that sweet little secretary-mistress of his."
"Yeah. Addison or whatever her real name turned out to be."
"So that there could be no slips, they used a stock Company security technique with all of them to prevent them from giving out information under duress, hypno, even accidentally. They all had auto-erase routines implanted in their minds. You spill anything, you suddenly forget, and for good, whatever cross references there are and all other details, and it's beyond recovery. I, for example, know an awful lot nobody else is supposed to know. What if I were kidnapped, or even turned traitor? The first unauthorized access of that information would wipe it out completely. I'd remember that I once knew it, but I wouldn't know what it was. See?"
Sam nodded. "So you had no leads on dear Doctor Carlos or anyone else who might be in the organization even when you had the leader."
"Well, he thought hewas the ringleader. Remember, they were out to get Mukasa, too. The problem with the closed culture of the Company world is that they tend to think that everybody thinks like they do. They don't have moral principles, just logical positions. They think that the only reason a slave hates slavery is because he'd rather be a master and enslave somebody else. It's nearly incomprehensible to them, except on an academic level, to imagine someone who might hate slavery because it is evil, because it is morally repugnant. Concepts like evil and morally repugnant really have no meaning for them. So they went out andrecruited a huge number of very talented, even brilliant, people who for one reason or another had reason to hate the Company. It was a straight business deal to them, see? Help me break the Board and take over the Company and then you will run the Company as my underlings."
"Yeah," Sam sighed, "but the underlings really hated the Company, including the fellow who hired them. I wonder why?"
Markham shrugged. "There are always enough people who get stepped on in any large organization who generate that kind of hatred. Far less from the Company world, of course, but it's there even there, at least in any human cultures comprehensible to us. When you have access to all the personnel files and all the evaluations and Histories of everyone who ever worked in any capacity for the Company, I doubt if it would take either of us more than a day to find an entire army."
"Point taken. But a Company girl did fall into the lower camp."
"Uh huh. She was out all the time, in contact with these people on a near-constant basis. She found in these rebels something she'd never seen in her own people-passion. A total commitment to a cause, and a viewpoint that graphically illustrated just what the Company did and what it was like and which humanized the whole thing. We think she fell in love with Carlos, and that Carlos radicalized her until she identified more with them than with her own people. Sheer guilt, but stirred well with resentment that the only way she could progress in society was as a mistress and henchman. The guilt part is the same reason so many poor little pampered rich kids become Trotskyites and the like here. And, of course, they used her just like they used her boss. The problem was, we lopped off the guy who caused it all to be possible and we lopped off the radicalized agent of the real plot, but we didn't lop off the true head of the radicals and the organization remained pretty well insulated and intact. We have been trying for years now to find out who, what, and where they are."
"And you succeeded?"
"To a very low point only. Do you know how many worlds intersect the Labyrinth and how many weak points there are even where we don't have stations? Let's just say it's a geometric progression. The only thing we had going for us was that the
"Yeah. Addison or whatever her real name turned out to be."
"So that there could be no slips, they used a stock Company security technique with all of them to prevent them from giving out information under duress, hypno, even accidentally. They all had auto-erase routines implanted in their minds. You spill anything, you suddenly forget, and for good, whatever cross references there are and all other details, and it's beyond recovery. I, for example, know an awful lot nobody else is supposed to know. What if I were kidnapped, or even turned traitor? The first unauthorized access of that information would wipe it out completely. I'd remember that I once knew it, but I wouldn't know what it was. See?"
Sam nodded. "So you had no leads on dear Doctor Carlos or anyone else who might be in the organization even when you had the leader."
"Well, he thought hewas the ringleader. Remember, they were out to get Mukasa, too. The problem with the closed culture of the Company world is that they tend to think that everybody thinks like they do. They don't have moral principles, just logical positions. They think that the only reason a slave hates slavery is because he'd rather be a master and enslave somebody else. It's nearly incomprehensible to them, except on an academic level, to imagine someone who might hate slavery because it is evil, because it is morally repugnant. Concepts like evil and morally repugnant really have no meaning for them. So they went out andrecruited a huge number of very talented, even brilliant, people who for one reason or another had reason to hate the Company. It was a straight business deal to them, see? Help me break the Board and take over the Company and then you will run the Company as my underlings."
"Yeah," Sam sighed, "but the underlings really hated the Company, including the fellow who hired them. I wonder why?"
Markham shrugged. "There are always enough people who get stepped on in any large organization who generate that kind of hatred. Far less from the Company world, of course, but it's there even there, at least in any human cultures comprehensible to us. When you have access to all the personnel files and all the evaluations and Histories of everyone who ever worked in any capacity for the Company, I doubt if it would take either of us more than a day to find an entire army."
"Point taken. But a Company girl did fall into the lower camp."
"Uh huh. She was out all the time, in contact with these people on a near-constant basis. She found in these rebels something she'd never seen in her own people-passion. A total commitment to a cause, and a viewpoint that graphically illustrated just what the Company did and what it was like and which humanized the whole thing. We think she fell in love with Carlos, and that Carlos radicalized her until she identified more with them than with her own people. Sheer guilt, but stirred well with resentment that the only way she could progress in society was as a mistress and henchman. The guilt part is the same reason so many poor little pampered rich kids become Trotskyites and the like here. And, of course, they used her just like they used her boss. The problem was, we lopped off the guy who caused it all to be possible and we lopped off the radicalized agent of the real plot, but we didn't lop off the true head of the radicals and the organization remained pretty well insulated and intact. We have been trying for years now to find out who, what, and where they are."
"And you succeeded?"
"To a very low point only. Do you know how many worlds intersect the Labyrinth and how many weak points there are even where we don't have stations? Let's just say it's a geometric progression. The only thing we had going for us was that the
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