William Bayer - Mirror Maze

Didn't have the patience. Now I got a mad-dog bomber to deal with and a girl I love who'll get blown to bits if I screw things up.

"Good food. No?" Valyenkov pointed to a diner. Trucks were parked in front.

"Yeah, good food."

He looked around. They were driving by the burn-off towers. The looming steel skeleton frames and huge gas storage cylinders dwarfed everything.

So, what does Clury want? What if he doesn't want anything? What if he just wants to kill me? Maybe Stoney was right: Put a bomber in a corner, he'll throw a bomb. Clury' hates me. He's had three days to figure out that no matter what he does I'm going to take him down. So, if he's going down, why not take me with him? And, since he thinks Gelsey's my girlfriend, why not inflict extra punishment by killing her first before my eyes.

"I've been fucking stupid!"

Valyenkov turned. "I am stupid? Why you say?" "Me, not you," Janek explained.

"Oh, okay, I understand… So, why the mirror maze? Why does he want to meet there? Maybe he likes it because of what a bomb'll do to all that heavy glass.

His problem was that, since he had no idea of what to expect, he would be forced to improvise. Angry as he was at himself for leading Clury to Gelsey, he knew he would not be able to save her life if he went in burdened with guilt.

It was 1: 10 A.M. when he got out in front of her building, paid off Valyenkov and sent him on his way. The wind was fierce, carrying smells of autumn leaves and rust. He stepped back to look up at Gelsey's loft.

For a moment he thought about entering through her trapdoor. If he could get onto the catwalks, he'd be able to see exactly where Clury stood.

He rejected the idea. Too risky. Clury might hear him, might even have forced Gelsey to take him in that way. Anyway, even if he saw them from above, he would never be able to find them easily on the floor. The maze was too confusing. As soon as he entered it he'd be lost. Getsey was the only one who understood it. If he could just manage to separate her from Clury, she might be able to find a place to hide.

He decided to obey Clury's orders, enter the maze through the front. And if he's up on the catwalks, he can watch me stumble through.

He pulled open the front door. The gleaming tunnel embraced him. He shut the door, cutting off the wind.

It was not difficult to make his way through the Corridor of Distortion.

Its mirrors, each one different with a unique capacity to deform, were meant less to baffle than amuse.

But Janek did not stop to smile at the images of fat Janek, thin Janek, Janek-as-pair-of-legs, Janek-as-hourglass. Rather, he hastened to the Chamber of Unobtainable Ecstasy, hoping he would see Clury and Gelsey in the blue room-since he knew the secret of its effect.

The chamber was empty. He saw only images of himself. And, as on his previous visits, it was impossible to differentiate between real space, through which he could advance, and mirrorspace, which blocked his progress. The only way through, he knew, was to move slowly, hands outstretched to feel for the glass.

He wound as quickly as he could through the Fragmentation Serpent; it seemed to him unlikely that Clury was waiting there. The sinuous corridor, with its parabolic mirror-as-mouth, was lined with silvered cubistic surfaces that broke up his body into conflicting planes.

Then, as he left through the serpent's narrow tail, he caught his first glimpse of Clury and Gelsey in the Great Hall of Infinite Deceptions. It was impossible to know exactly where they stood since the mirrors projected false images everywhere. The closer he moved toward them, the more reflections of them he saw: lustrous clones, repeated and repeated, surrounding him on all sides, mixed with an equal number of replicas of himself.

"Lots of mirrors, right, Janek?"

Everywhere he turned he saw Clury, bull-necked, smiling as he spoke.

Gelsey, standing beside him, looked serene. Only her eyes betrayed her fright. She was wearing a shirt and shorts, her hands were bound in front of her with rope and there was some sort of pack, presumably containing the bomb, mounted like a child's school satchel on her back.

The worst part of it was the way Clury controlled her. He held a leash attached to a chain-link choke collar around her neck.

"Yeah, lots of mirrors. Bother you, Clury?" He tried to sound tough, indifferent, as if he felt at home in the maze p and was used to dealing with punks who held his girl hostage.

"Just so you know, if little darling' here breaks loose, I can set her off by remote."

Clury opened his hand to reveal a slim black object that looked like a television control module. The mirrors reflected it a thousand times.

"Why're we meeting here?"

" ' here I can see if anyone else comes in, no matter which direction.

That's how I know I'm having a one-on-one. See, Janek, I'm not interested in surrender."

"What are you interested in?"

"A deal."

"A deal made under duress is no good. You know that.

"I got something to say."

"So say it."

"First, put your gun on the floor. Carefully." He held out his remote unit to show that his thumb was poised on the button.

I know what he wants. He doesn't want to talk or deal. He's going to kill us off, then set things up to look like ' and I killed each other.

He's good at that. It's what he did with Metaxas. He spent the last three days figuring out just how to do it.

Janek shrugged, unbuttoned his jacket, removed the Glock from its holster, stooped, set it carefully on the floor.

"While you're bent over pretty like that, put down your ankle weapon, too."

Janek removed the Beretta from his right ankle holster, laid it beside the Glock, then stood up.

"Now back off."

Janek edged backward until his shoulder grazed the wall of mirrors. He watched as Clury, leading Gelsey by the leash, approached his guns, stooped and picked them up. The mirrors reflected the action: a thousand Clurys and Gelseys moving together, each image showing them from a slightly different angle, a thousand Clurys and Gelseys moving down endless mirrored corridors, approaching from every direction at once. it was then that the concept hit him: Amid all these moving images of humans dancing across myriad "mirrors of deception," there was no way to tell which were reflections and which were actual people. Intuiting that this insight was the key to victory, Janek began to move. Suddenly the Great Hall became alive with images. it was as if a great crowd of people had filled it up. The only strange thing about this crowd was that its members had only three faces-a thousand Janeks, a thousand Clurys, a thousand Gelseys mingling and milling around.

"What're you doing?" Clury yelled, his words echoing off the glass.

"You've got my guns. What's the problem?" Janek bellowed, circling, then doubling back.

"Why are you moving?" Clury's pockmarked cheeks skipped across the silvered surfaces.

"I don't want to get shot." Now Janek could not distinguish between the genuine Clury agd the counterfeits.

"You will be shot if you don't stand still." A thousand Clurys aimed Janek's Glock.

"What're you going to shoot at, Clury?" Janek said, walking faster.

"Me or one of my clones running around in here?"

Clury leveled the Glock in the opposite direction. Or at least Janek hoped so-there was the possibility that Clury had him in his sights.

"Go ahead, shoot me if you can," Janek taunted. He liked his tone. It built up his confidence. He wanted to distract Clury, make him forget about using Gelsey as a shield. By focusing on Clury and ignoring her, he hoped to cause Clury to ignore her too.

"Stand still or I'll blow up your girl."

Janek laughed. "She's not my girl. And you won't blow her up." As he moved clockwise around the room, his mirror- twins moved in all directions. He felt as if he were revolving at the center of a rapid counterwhirling merry-go-round.