"Okay, two hours." Wilkes threw up his arms. "Hell, I'll wait all night. I'm easy to get along with. But somebody knows where she is, and personally I think it's you, Jake. But we'll wait."
22
We waited.
Conversation was desultory. Vance and Darla sat at a table at the other end of the room, drinking coffee brought in by another of Wilkes' bodyguards. At various intervals they all popped pills to keep up their immunity from the wand's effect. Wilkes told me it was still on low power.
At one point, Darla came toward me, bearing a cup and saucer.
"No, Darla," Wilkes told her.
She stopped. "You said he was your guest," she said sarcastically.
"Don't want you slipping him any tranqs."
"Do you think I would?"
"I don't know, and don't care to take the chance. But I don't want to be inhospitable. I'll pour him a cup." He got up and went to the table and did, then fetched it over to me. "Enjoy, Jake."
"Thank you." I sipped it and found that it wasn't coffee but some kind of grain beverage, with a bitter aftertaste.
"Corey," I said, "there's one thing that's been bothering me since the start of this thing."
"What's that?"
"Why didn't you just kill me?"
Wilkes looked over the newssheet he was reading. "Good question. You can't say I haven't had plenty of opportunity." He folded the sheet and put it aside, then went back to tapping on his lips with his fingers. "This damned Paradox thing set me to thinking. If I just up and killed you, it very well could have turned out that nothing would have changed. You'd be dead, and the map would still be in circulation, brought back from the Great Beyond by the 'you' that never died. Paradox. Or maybe there's really no Paradox and somebody else brought the map back ― one of your religious friends, for instance. They could be in on the whole thing."
"They're not," Darla said emphatically.
Wilkes shook his head sadly. "Another statement that I can't accept at face value. For all I know, they could be part of your dissident network. Maybe they brought the map back and pumped Jake's image up into a legend. Who knows? No, I came up with a plan of sorts. I had to nab you, and I wanted to wait until you shot a potluck to be certain you had the map. After all, none of the stories about you say exactly when you got it."
"So you herded me through a potluck."
"Right, and it wasn't pure luck that you chose the Splash portal. If you think back over all the options you had, you'll find there were few. You could have gone elsewhere, however, which is why the mrrrllowharrr was necessary."
"Back at the motel ― you sent your crew to flush me out of there?"
"Yes, to keep you running. Knew you'd find a way to escape, and you did. You're slippery, Jake." He kept crossing and uncrossing his legs in a compulsive, jerking movement. "Anyway. I had to get that punking map, find out… no! First I had to find out if it even existed, then find out where it came from." He looked uncomfortable. "And I still don't know."
"I'll tell you where it came from, Corey," I said. "You created it."
"How so?"
"If you'd have let me alone, I never would have hid out in that motel, never would have met Winnie, etcetera, etcetera."
He laughed. "The irony hasn't escaped me. Believe me, I've thought about it. But what was I to do? Talk about having few options. No matter what I did seemed doomed from the start…." He trailed off and looked at the ceiling. "Well, that's neither here nor there," he added offhandedly.
After a pause, Vance said, "I wish you'd finish that, Corey. I'm still in the dark as to how getting the map now will alter reality or in any way change the fact that the dissidents have it." He got up from the table and walked over to Wilkes, stood over him, and said pointedly, "I really wish we could clear that up once and for all."
My head was beginning to congeal a little, but it had taken me the better part of an hour to think through what I said next. "There's nothing to clear up. Van," I blurted out. "Can't you see that your little drug scheme is going right out the port?"
He slowly brought his eyes around to me. "What do you mean?"
"He means to drive a wedge between us, Van," Wilkes said mildly. "Oldest trick in the book. Don't fall for it."
"Suddenly I'm very interested in what he has to say. What exactly did you mean, Jake?"
"First, tell me a few things. How did you get in on this, and why?"
He was annoyed. "Doesn't strike me as pertinent."
"Then we don't play."
He went over and sat on the bed, picked up the revolver and absently fiddled with it, looking at me.
"Thinking of shooting someone?" I asked.
"Huh?" Aware now that he had picked it up, he. said, "No. Don't even know how this thing works." He tossed it aside, then glanced at Wilkes and looked back at me. "All right, you win. A little history. Word has been out for a year or two that I'm to be purged. Oh, it's an outdated word, of course. They want to ship me back to Terra for 'evaluation and reassessment.' Fortunately the mills of the Authority grind slowly, and I had some time. But where would I go? Easy. Someplace like the Outworlds. But the cost of living's pretty high here. And strictly cash, no Authority vouchers. I had no gold socked away to speak of. Of course, here you can go up into the hills and pan for it ― they actually do that, you know ― but I'm not the prospector type. Corey approached me about this drug thing. Sounded good, cornering the market and all that. He needed me, he said, to work out all the details about diverting raw material from Hothouse and secreting it out here." He shrugged. "I had no choice, really. I went along."
"Why the raw stuff?" I asked. "Why not the finished product?"
"Actually," Wilkes said, "that was my original idea. Van talked me out of it."
Vance nodded. "The controls are just too tight. The Authority guards its monopoly well. When you get right down to it, it's the source of their power."
"Okay," I said, "so you got the idea to process the stuff here."
"A big investment on my part," Wilkes reminded him. "You should keep that in mind. Van."
"I will. We have a small factory and lab near Seahome, about ready to become operational."
"And what about the Reticulans? What's their motivation for letting you truck gold back through their territory?"
"Same as anybody's," Wilkes answered. "They need gold as much as any race does for intermaze trade. I know it sounds mundane, but their economy is royally screwed up. Their social structure is top-heavy with nonproductive ruling classes who're preoccupied with quaint pastimes like hunting and riding eight-legged beasties around in the woods. They won't stoop to getting their hands dirty. Most technological things are left to slave clas,ses. Beside, Reticulans think it more honorable to take by conquest rather than to create. Only the Roadbugs have prevented them from running amuck, taking over every maze in sight. So, they're hard up for cash." He extended a hand deferentially to Vance. "Sorry. You were saying?"
"I was about to say that when we heard the Roadmap rumors, we knew that it was only a matter of time before the Authority would come barging into the Outworlds. Anyway, that was my fear. I'd have no place to hide." He picked up the revolver again and began to twirl it on his finger. "Now. Tell me about how the whole plan is null and void."
I drained my cup and tried to put it on the lamp table next to me, but I misjudged and sent it clattering to the carpet. "Sorry. Could I persuade you to turn that gadget off? I'd rather have a gun leveled at me, or be tied up."
Vance looked at Wilkes tentatively, but Wilkes shook his head. "I'm a little shorthanded. Van. Jake has a habit of brutalizing my bodyguards." He gave me a grouchy look.