The Labyrinth Of Dreams

by Jack L. Chalker

  I didn’t wonder that they hadn’t locked us up in town. The whole sheriff’s office seemed to have just two cells, more like holding areas, and both of them were used for drunks and the like. Normal procedure, if they were serious about the charges against Brandy, would have been to hold her until she could be transferred to a county lockup, wherever that might be, and to process her and set bail at that time. The fact was, they didn’t want us off with state authorities and real lawyers and judges outside the company’s control. They just wanted us on ice until they—or the company—decided just what to do with us.

  The cafe extended the friendliness we’d come to expect from the town. We entered and were told to wait, although there were only three tables with people at them, out of a total of maybe twenty tables and booths. The waitress went back, and brought out two large bags and two cans of Coke and handed them to us. I peered inside. It looked like a burger, fries, a small wilted-looking salad in a plastic dish with a cover on it, and a commercial brownie. We sighed and started to sit down at one of the tables, but the waitress stopped us. “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to eat outside somewheres,” she told us, not sounding the least bit sorry. She lowered her voice. “Some of our patrons object to eating in the same place as you.”

  We looked around. None of the patrons there now seemed more than mildly curious about us.

  Brandy looked her straight in the eye. “You mean with black folks?”

  The waitress shrugged. “We are sensitive to our customers’ wishes. They’re our bread and butter.”

  “You never heard of the Civil Rights Act? The Equal Accommodations Act?”

  “No,” responded the waitress, and it sounded like she meant it. “Look, you better go before there’s trouble. Some folks here won’t take kindly to you causing trouble, and it wouldn’t do no good to yell for a cop. Besides, where else you gonna get food? You go or you starve.”

  We got the idea. I’d seen some of those guys in the logging outfits and big pickups around town already, and I just didn’t think it was the best time to get into a real argument with them, not to mention the fact that we did indeed depend on this place for even the leftover shit they handed us. At least the Coke was fresh. There was a little park near the railroad tracks with a lone picnic table, and we ate the food there, such as it was.

  “What do you think?” Brandy asked me.

  “I think we’re in deep shit,” I responded honestly. “Look, there’s a phone booth over there. If I had a quarter to activate it, I’d try a few collect calls or charges to our home number.”

  “This do?” she asked me, and reached into her purse and pulled out a small amount of change. Small, but at least a buck’s worth. I stared at it. “How’d you manage that?”

  “It all fell on the floor last night when I was cleanin’ out the purse. Before any of that shit hit the fan, I mean. I got some of it, but most of it wound up in back of the bed. I thought of it this morning.”

  I took a quarter and walked to the booth, wondering if we finally hadn’t had a break. This proved, however, to be a rather unique phone company. First of all, the operator apologetically said that it wasn’t the policy of the phone company to permit charges to an out-of-state number. It wasn’t a question of dealing with AT&T or GTE; she wouldn’t give me a long distance line. I tried a couple of collect calls to numbers at home, including Kennedy’s DEA number, but each time that same operator told me that they refused to accept the call. When she refused to connect me to the Oregon state cops, I got the message. At least I got the quarter back.

  “No good,” I told Brandy. “They got us cut off. They own either the phone company or the operators here, too. The only thing now would be to hitchhike up to the next town, where they might have a freer phone system, or hop a freight and scram. They don’t seem to be watching us too closely.”

  She thought it over. “Maybe, but even if we could get out, then what? We got no money, no ID, no nothin’. We go to the state cops, they just turn us back over here—and you know it. We go to some lawyer, he ain’t gonna believe a word of this, and it’s our word against theirs and they got those charges. I ain’t gonna spend a life in this wilderness washin’ dishes and lookin’ over my shoulder for no cops who want me on no murder rap and you for aidin’ and abettin’ a fugitive. Hell, this crew could probably get Hertz to give out interstate warrants on us for stealin’ their car!”

  And that, of course, was exactly why nobody was keeping close tabs on us. The fact was, they didn’t much care if we escaped. Either we’d be ruined for life, and on the run, or we’d get picked up and trucked right back here. Brandy lit a cigarette and looked at it mournfully. “And I only got four more packs of these!”

  “I told you not to start again. Come on, if you’re done. I think I’m in the mood for a romantic walk in the woods.”

  We walked along the railroad tracks for a few hundred yards, then came to the switching point. The whole area cleared out fairly good just up along the single-track spur, and for the first time we could see the complex that was General Ordering and Development, Inc. It was damned impressive.

  There must have been thirty or forty railcars on sidings, eight per track, along with unloading areas for both bulk cargo and containers. A number of truck cabs and frames sat in a neat lot nearby, waiting for goods. Two warehouse-style buildings were visible, both of which seemed to go off into the distance. Because of a ten-foot fence topped with barbed wire and a solid and locked gate across the tracks, that was all that could be seen of the complex.

  Brandy gave a low whistle. “They sure didn’t get this big on Vegetrons,” she noted. No people were visible, but when Brandy shook the fence, more in frustration than to do anything, there was a sudden, furious barking, and from the vicinity of the boxcars came a whole horde of very nasty-looking Dobermans. We didn’t need any more hints; we started back before they started hurling themselves at the fence.

  “You got to figure they use those to check the trains for visitors,” she noted, disappointed.

  “Yeah, probably, but it’s still the weak link in their system. They have to keep those dogs locked up when the fence is open. You can bet on that. Ten to one they don’t roam much during regular hours, either, or no employee there would be totally safe. If we rode in on a car and then managed to get up toward the buildings before they secured the place, I think we’d be safe.”

  “Yeah, then all we got to worry about is their own cops and alarms, with them all uptight to keep what happened last night from happenin’ again.”

  “Then, we play it by ear. But if a train comes through tonight and stops, then at least one of us is going up there. I can’t see how anything short of execution is any worse than what we got now. If we can discover something, then maybe we can make a deal.”

  We weren’t exactly equipped for burglary, but the bottle of black hair dye I’d bought during our Bend shopping spree had enough for my hair and also to dye one of her tee shirts black. I figured the plaid shirt and jeans would do for me.

  I hadn’t really expected another train the next evening. For one thing, it was Saturday, and any plant was likely to be closed the next day, particularly in this northwest version of the Bible Belt, but I was wrong. I wondered just where the hell they were going to park the new cars, since the sidings up there had looked pretty full.

  We went out in back of the motel and began walking alongside the train. We didn’t see anyone, but kept out of the light and close to the brush just to be sure. Finally we came to where the road curved to go into town and the tracks crossed the road, and there we saw flashing lights not only from the crossing signs but also from cars blocking the way. Both the sheriff’s deputies on the town side and the company cops on our side were actively at the crossing and out of their cars. Up near the gate they were bound to have active security, and we clearly weren’t the only ones to see this point as a weak spot.

  “Can’t ride the rods,” I told Brandy. “They’re sure to check there.
And I don’t see any open boxcars. The only crack we have at it might be that gondola just in back of that livestock car or whatever it is.”

  It was a tarp-covered load, and seemed to be filled with a dark crushed rock. We crawled in and under the tarp, and both of us quickly wondered why the hell we’d bothered dying anything. You just sat in that stuff and you were covered with black soot. It was almost like fine coal dust, a whole railroad car full, but it definitely wasn’t coal. I couldn’t figure out just what it might be. The car in front, though, turned out to be chock-full of live and very agitated turkeys, very much awake in the middle of the night and protesting loudly. It covered any sounds we might make, but it worried me. This General Ordering wasn’t likely to be doing TV ads for live turkeys, and that implied that we might be in a section that wasn’t going in at all.

  “If we don’t, we don’t,” was Brandy’s response. “The hell with this. Either we get in there tonight or we take this train to someplace where we can call home and get some help from somebody.”

  We waited several endless minutes and then the train lurched and started to move slowly forward. As we crossed the intersection, the law had lights shining under the cars and through the couplings, and men there to check ’em out. We kept real still and didn’t watch much of the festivities.

  We stopped in the woods short of the gate and there was another lurch. I risked a peek and saw a whole line of cars ahead of us being pulled off onto the siding. I couldn’t see around the turkeys, but I could’ve sworn the main engine wasn’t attached. That truck and rail yard was really lit up, though, and there was a bunch of people around, many coming this way from the gate and checking under and even up on the cars. I didn’t like that.

  I could hear a bunch of them close-by now, and for some reason all my mind could picture was a marching army of Martin Whitlocks.

  “Hey, Al! What you doing up there?” somebody called. “You think somebody’s gonna climb in there with them turkeys? Anybody does that deserves to get through. Those things peck like hell!”

  There were some grumbles from ahead and some casual laughter from nearby on the side. If they were this thorough, the odds were that they were going to take the damned tarp off. There wasn’t much to do but burrow down in this soft, sooty stuff and get as still as possible.

  The tarp came off, although I knew it more by sound than by sight. I just held my breath and prayed I wouldn’t sneeze, and I hoped Brandy was doing the same.

  A couple of guards jumped up on either side and stuck their hands in the muck, one not too far from me. “Yuk! This stuff’s really lousy!” one of them said, and the others seemed to agree. They put the tarp back on and jumped down. I was about to burst, but I gave them as much time as I could before slowly easing my head up and taking a breath—and then trying to stifle a coughing fit. Brandy, as a newly returned chain-smoker, was in worse shape than I was on this, but the train gave a noisy lurch and we were going forward again as she hacked the stuff out of her lungs, me not far behind her. I finally crawled up and peeked out, and saw we were through the gate and being pulled onto a siding. Off to the left, I could see a small switcher pushing a long line of railcars out the other side and back to the main track.

  Well, at least that explained the storage and the back-and-forth jerks. They uncoupled the engine, drove it forward a ways past a second switch, then took a number of cars on a switcher out to be hooked up to the big one, while other, full cars were pulled into the newly vacated siding.

  “I hear dogs barking,” Brandy hissed to me. “Think maybe they do a check with them and a trainer?”

  “Bet on it. We’re gonna hafta get the hell off as soon as we stop, and get to cover up by the main buildings.”

  “Anything to get out of this shit bath,” she said, and I could only agree with her on that one.

  As soon as we stopped, I looked around, saw nobody, and got out, then gave her a quick hand down from a ledge to the ground. We went immediately under the next row of train cars and out the other side again, and none too soon. The dog barking was getting real loud, and just as we cleared the next set of standing cars they lurched. We had to keep going, under and across, as long as possible.

  There was a short stretch of open track rows at the end of the last line of train cars, and it was well lit. Up top in a tower were two figures looking very busy as they surveyed it all. The switchman and the dispatcher for the yard, most likely. It was maybe thirty yards to any real darkness and cover, but it was only about thirty feet to the base of that tower. Under it, we couldn’t be seen by the men above, and we’d have a little cover in the shadows while we waited for our best chance to run the rest of the way. We poked our heads out, and looked in both directions from under a boxcar. There were a few figures walking down at the far end, but nobody seemed close. The big danger would be if one of the two guys in the tower looked down, but we had to chance it.

  “Now!” Brandy whispered. “Nobody close; one dude up there is gone and the other’s lookin’ through binoculars.” Unthinking, I followed her to the tower shadows as fast as I could run, then braced myself against a support beam, breathing hard. I looked over at her and saw she wasn’t breathing all too comfortable herself.

  “Take your time,” I said in a low, hushed tone. “We got twice as far to run the next leg and we don’t want to collapse halfway.” I stared over at her, concerned, and still a little disconcerted by her looks. Without her old hair or the wig she really looked different.

  She looked at me and grinned. “In all this time, this is the first time you’ve ever been blacker’n me.”

  “Guess again. All it did was equalize us. Sheesh! I don’t know what that stuff is, but ten to one it’s cancer-causing at the very least.”

  “Smells like some kind of gasoline,” she noted.

  “Yeah. Must be some petroleum product, some plastic powder. It’s probably easy to store and ship that way, then gets poured into little molds and heated to make plastic widgets for nineteen ninety-five. You ready?”

  She nodded. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

  “Then, let’s do it!” A quick check showed nobody in sight, and we headed straight back for the darkness at the edge of the tracks, which proved to mark a point about two thirds of the way up a hill or embankment toward the plant itself. The thing wasn’t totally dark, but as black as we both were, it gave more than enough cover. We had experience from the night before how hard it was to spot somebody in a dark place.

  We ran most of the way up that hill until we hit another high fence. It wasn’t expected, and we both stopped and sat down against it and looked back at where we’d covered. It seemed an impossible distance.

  Brandy pointed. “Rental-cop lights, up and down between those far cars. See ’em?”

  “Yeah. Maybe the dogs smelled us. I guess we got to keep moving. Wonder if there’s a break in this fence?”

  “Got to be. Question is whether or not there’s people at the gates.”

  She was right, of course. There were two large gates big enough for trucks to pass through, both open but both with people on them. There was a smaller gate further down, just people-sized, that was unguarded, but there was no way in hell we could get to it without getting past the truck gates, and if we could do that we could go through them.

  There was only one guy on the closest gate, and he didn’t look like a guard, more like a truck driver or factory worker. A truck cab came down and stopped, and he talked to the driver and pointed. Just a yard boss or traffic manager, I thought. “Well? Do we take him out or wait him out?” I asked her.

  “Let’s wait a couple minutes. Then we’ll take him out if we have to. I don’t like the lights down there, but there ain’t much can be done ’bout it. We got to get through and I forgot my wire cutters tonight.”

  Sometimes, patience will give you a little break. Another truck came up and stopped, and this time the guy jumped up on the step and said something to the driver, and they drove down to the yard,
the gate man hanging on. We didn’t wait for an engraved invitation, but started crawling down to that open gate as fast as we could. I made it first, got up quickly and turned the corner, then flattened in the darkness on the other side. Brandy had more trouble than I did, but, then, she wasn’t shaped right for it and she hadn’t had the benefit of Uncle Sam’s technique.

  It was a nick-of-time thing, but we made it. No doubt about it—they had some holes in their security, whether we’d had luck or not. They knew it, too; about twenty seconds after Brandy had cleared the lighted area and had joined me prone on the grass on the warehouse side, a private cop car roared up to the gate, stopped, and radioed something. Within two or three minutes a guy, maybe the same one who was there before, came running up from the yards and started getting into a screaming match with the rent-a-cop. Finally they had the last words and the cop drove on up past us and back into the complex. I didn’t know who won, but the guy on the gate gave a rising finger in the direction of the cop’s taillights and at least had the satisfaction of the last word.

  “Okay, sweetheart,” I said in my best Bogie voice, “let’s go case this joint.”

  5

  The Labyrinth

  The place was big, bigger even than we’d thought from the outside. It went back, it seemed, almost forever, an endless series of gigantic warehouse structures with office-type fronts and loading-dock rears, interconnected with a network of roads. This was no television-junk joint, I don’t care how much they make. This was many millions right here, and this was only a branch location. I hated to see what they had near Davenport.

  Still, in a way, it was less than I expected, too. “This joint’s as big as General Motors,” I noted, “but where’s the smokestacks?”

  She frowned. “Yeah. I think we’re gonna wear this gunk forever, but if it’s some kind of raw plastic, then where’s the place they make it into little plastic thingies? You’re right!”