The Mirror Maze

by James P. Hogan

  And Stephanie, for her part, didn’t know why she had been brought there because nobody had told her. It was one of those things that had slipped down a crack somewhere amid all the excitement and confusion of the past night. Hariv thought that Lurgar had told her, Lurgar assumed Hariv had taken care of it, and everyone else had been too busy to even think about it.

  She was more puzzled than ever as she stood with the two officers and saw that the trucks from the plane that had just landed were filled with Israeli paratroopers. The first ones came up to the officers who had brought her here, and there was a lot of laughing, back-slapping, and joking exchanges in Hebrew. And then her eyes widened incredulously as she recognized the grinning, black-faced figure in a camouflage smock, a pack slung across its shoulder, and carrying a submachine gun, approaching her with a cocky swagger behind them. “My God, it’s Mel!” she gasped weakly. And Dave Fenner was with him.

  “Hi,” Dave said. “We brought him back in one piece. He ends up in the strangest places.”

  Stephanie was shaking her head, unable to speak. She brought a hand to her brow, her mouth moved helplessly, and she started to laugh. Then she found her voice at last. “It’s just… I had no idea that…”

  “You mean they didn’t tell you?” Mel said.

  “No. I haven’t heard anything at all since…” And she stared past them, forgetting for the moment that they existed. She had just seen who had climbed out of the truck after them. “Oh my God…”

  Brett was looking at her, equally thunderstruck.

  “And nobody even told you that—” Mel began, but Dave caught his sleeve and shook his head. It wasn’t a time for talking. And Stephanie wasn’t listening, anyway.

  Brett came slowly across from the truck, ignoring the other two, and reached out for her. The spell broke, and she threw herself into his arms and clung, shaking her head and pressing herself to him while he closed his eyes and pulled her close. The tears came then, in a flood, releasing everything that had built up inside her for months.

  And as Melvin Shears watched them, something happened inside him, too. It was Brett, the old Brett, just as he had always been. She was Stephanie again, and belonged with him. And the world belonged to Mel. For Eva had finally died.

  He and Dave glanced sideways at each other. “I don’t think they’ll need us around for a while, do you?” Mel murmured.

  Dave shook his head. “What would you say to a long, cool, Israeli beer right now?”

  “You’ve talked me into it,” Mel said. They turned away and began sauntering toward the buildings behind the Land Rover, where the others were converging. “I always said you were persuasive, Dave.”

  “I thought that was supposed to be your job.”

  “Well, you’re not doing bad for a beginner.”

  Dave clapped an arm around Mel’s shoulder. “You didn’t do too badly yourself for a beginner, either.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “It’s not the best beer in the world, you know.”

  “You’re wrong there, Dave. It’ll be the best I ever tasted in my life, I promise you.”

  EPILOGUE

  Four people stood in silence, staring at the grave in California, each absorbed in personal thoughts and recollections. Stephanie was wearing a black dress and hat. The last times he had been here, she’d had to watch from afar, at the gate. This was her way of making up for it—her own private ceremony. Brett, Mel, and Dave had put on suits and dark ties to be here with her.

  The grave was laid with fresh flowers. A new headstone had been erected. It read:

  EVA SHIRLEY CARNE

  1973–2000

  FREEDOM’S CHILD

  They stood for a while, each having prepared words to say at this moment, all of them feeling now that no words were adequate. The silence and the individual inner communions were more appropriate.

  Stephanie had half expected to be tearful, but found that she was not. Somehow, after everything, tears seemed inappropriate, too—unbecoming to the memory of someone like Eva. At last Stephanie nodded briefly. Brett took her arm and steered her back to the roadway leading to the gate. Mel and Dave followed. They had left their cars outside, preferring to walk to the graveside, in a small gesture of homage, rather than disturb the tranquility.

  As he walked beside Dave, Mel thought back over everything that had happened since that first week in November…

  Setting up the missile attack to look like the work of the Soviets had been the last in the long trail of false clues pointing in that direction. After all the previous deceptions and the preparation of public opinion, with the missiles being launched from a Soviet-built aircraft flying from a Soviet client state, what else could the world have thought? Even the crew of the Ilyushin—drawn from a fanatically anti-Western Muslim sect—had believed they were working with the backing of the Soviets.

  If the plan had gone as conceived, the world would also have been reacting to the assassination in Cairo, by the new U.S. regime, of a figure the public had been led to believe was about to shift the Middle-East power balance in favor of the Soviets. The destruction of the regime would have been seen as the Soviet response, the elimination of a leadership that preached humanity while it operated by gangster methods. Although the act would no doubt have been judged insanely harsh and out of all proportion to the provocation, who would have doubted that the Soviets had been responsible? (And any lone voice trying to point out that it couldn’t have been organized in a mere matter of days would have been drowned in the furor.)

  America would have screamed for war, of course, but its leadership—whatever little of it survived—would have known that with the space defenses useless war was out of the question. In the ensuing political turmoil, the country would have disintegrated into anarchy as totally as Russia itself had in 1917, setting the stage for America to be brought to heel with the same ruthlessness and for the same ostensible reasons—to restore stability and order. And the yoke around the neck of the world would have been complete.

  As things were, however, one of the Kremlin’s periodic internal feuds seemed to be erupting, and from the few details that had leaked out through the smoke, there were signs that Russia might be undergoing an upheaval. Oleg Kordorosky, the sinister deputy chairman of the KGB, reportedly had died of a heart attack; the general secretary, Petrakhov, was out of favor suddenly, and the more moderate faction among the military was making a concerted bid for power, rallying around the figurehead of the aging Marshal Androliev, who had emerged as a popular hero. Nobody on the outside could be sure what it all meant, but one thing was certain—the new American administration would have all the time it needed to find its feet.

  They reached the gate, where the two cars were parked. Brett and Stephanie would be going straight on to Denver now, to pick up the threads of their life together. Brett had already talked to Ed Gilman about some of the advanced programming that the fission-fusion project was going to need—the attitude of the financiers had begun to reverse itself, thanks to the sensational revelations emanating from Washington since the new government had assumed office. Mel had been to Boston to show his face at the firm and tell his story… but somehow he couldn’t see himself back in his office there again. Evron and Winthram had its place in his past now, like Pensacola, like Chapel Hill, like Eva… and that was where, like them, it belonged.

  Stephanie hugged and kissed Mel, hugged and kissed Dave. Brett embraced them. They said final good-byes… for the time being. Nobody promised to stay in touch. It wasn’t necessary. Brett opened the passenger-side door to let Stephanie in, then walked around the car and climbed in the driver’s side. He started the motor, U-turned on the roadway, and with a final flurry of waves and a few toots on the horn, they were on their way.

  Mel watched until the car disappeared from sight. Then he turned and walked back to where Dave was waiting at his car. They climbed in, and as if compelled by the same instinct, both turned their heads and stared back in the d
irection of the new white stone gleaming distantly in the sun, with the flowers piled around it.

  Dave started the motor, and they pulled away. The heaviness of their mood lifted gradually as they left the San Mateo area and cruised north on Highway 101 in the California sunshine, bound for San Francisco.

  “What are you planning on doing next?” Dave asked, eyeing Mel curiously. “Take a break, then back to the desk?”

  Mel shook his head. “To be honest, Dave, I can’t see it.”

  “Oh, really? Didn’t I tell you that, though?”

  “I can’t remember. Did you?” They were playing games again.

  Dave waited. Mel watched the scenery. “What, then?” Dave asked finally.

  “I don’t really know.”

  Dave smiled to himself. After a short pause, as if the thought had just occurred to him, he said lightly, “You know, the people I’m with aren’t going to be all out of work suddenly, just because of what happened a couple of weeks ago. There’ll always be plenty to do in that line. They’re always interested in meeting new people. I, ah… I just happen to know somebody who’d be real keen to talk to you.”

  Mel pretended to think about it. He still didn’t know who Dave worked for, he realized. “I guess you do get kind of hooked on the adrenaline kick, don’t you?” he said.

  “Interested, maybe?”

  Mel grinned and quit the pretense. “Sure, I’ll talk to him.”

  “See, I knew it. You’re really a cowboy at heart. You like toting an Uzi around. That’s no good, Mel. Guys like that bomb out on the first interview.”

  “That’s not it at all. I like the paid vacations to exotic places.”

  A car passed them in the fast lane doing at least ninety. Its rear window displayed a Constitutional tortoise. Mel relaxed back in the passenger seat and smiled to himself. It was funny, yet at the same time seemed symbolic. He surveyed the prospects for the future, and they looked good. New millennium. New direction. New person. New phase of life. Everything was evolving. It was a good feeling to be a part of it all.

  True, one day none of it would matter. But that only made today matter even more.

  That was what Eva had understood.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Born in London in 1941, James P. Hogan worked as an engineer specializing in digital electronics and for several major computer firms before turning to writing full-time in 1979. Winner of the Prometheus Award, he has won wide popularity and high praise for his novels with their blend of gripping storytelling, intriguing scientific concepts and convincing speculation. Mr. Hogan currently makes his home in the Republic of Ireland.