Jack Chalker - A War of Shadows

Inside was a small, comfortable office with a large switchboard staffed by four middle-aged women. It was the last thing he expected. He looked around, trying to spot any other offices or branching corridors, but this seemed to be it. And none of them were paying the slightest attention to him.

He stood there a moment, feeling lost and foolish, then harrumphed a few times. Finally one of the women finished a conversation, wrote something down on a pad, and looked up at him with a smile.

“Yes?” she inquired pleasantly.

“I—ah, I’m a job applicant. I got a telegram to come here at 3:00 P.M.sharp.”

She looked puzzled. “That can’t be right. We sure don’t need anybody here and there’s nobody higher-up around, ever. We’re just the mail drop.”

He was certain she wasn’t talking about revolutionaries. “Mail drop?”

She nodded. “Sure. We take orders for mail-order beauty creams, hand lotions, and the like. You know. You must have seen the TV ads. ‘Call thisnumber now to have your Magic Creme rushed C.O.D. to your door.’ ”

He was feeling a little numb and thoroughly confused. “That’s what Woodbine Laboratories makes? Beauty creams?” was all he could say.

She nodded again. “Far as I know. Of course, I’ve never seen them. They’re actually out in California. We just call in the orders at the end of each shift.”

He turned. “I must have the wrong place,” he muttered, and touched the knob to leave.

“Wait a minute!” the woman said. “Hey! Mary! You know anything about somebody interviewing for jobs today?”

He sighed and turned. A matronly-looking woman turned from her switchboard and eyed him, nodding slightly to herself, a slight smile on her face.

“Mr. Cornish?” she asked pleasantly.

He felt suddenly tight again. “Yes,” he responded.

“The hiring isn’t done here.” She scribbled something on her order pad, tore it off, and he walked over and took it from her. “Go over there and I think you’ll find who you really want.”

He stared at her, and for a second he thought he should know her, but the feeling vanished. He smiled back at her, thanked her, and left.

They were damned clever, though, he had to admit to himself as he rode back to street level and walked outside. A hell of a way to see if it’s the right man without any problems. A hell of an information front! God! You could even pass code messages in the phoned-in orders through your own toll-free number! Who could tell?

The new address wasn’t in Boston at all, but in West Newton. He debated for a moment how to get there, then hailed a cab. There were a lot of cabs and few private vehicles in Boston these days.

The cabbie was a surly sort who didn’t talk much and looked like a balding fugitive from a bad jungle movie. They sped quickly out of the city.

Finally they pulled up at an apartment house on the outskirts of West Newton. Sam looked at the scribbled memo. “This isn’t the address,” he told the driver.

“Yes it is, Mr. Cornish,” the cabbie replied in an accent that sounded slightly Spanish.

He had to laugh. All the angles. “Tell me, what would have happened if a real cabbie had beaten you to me?” he asked.

The man shrugged. “I am a real cabbie, for the record,” he replied. “In any case, you’d have gone to the other address and someone would have directed you here.”

He laughed again and started to get out. Suddenly he heard the man yell. “Hey, man! I said I was a real cabbie!” He pointed to the meter.

Sam paid him, wondering what would have happened if he hadn’t, and walked into the apartment.

It was an old, smelly, musty place built a good thirty years before and not well maintained since housing got cheap in the Boston area. It was very quiet, too. Not a sound behind any of the doors, and no names on the doors or mailboxes. He wondered where he should go.

A door opened down the hall and a woman’s head leaned out. “Down here!” she called pleasantly. He shrugged and walked to her.

There were two other people inside, a man and a woman in addition to the woman at the door. All looked to be in their thirties or forties.

And, again, they all looked somehow familiar.

“Sit down, Sam,” the woman who’d called him said, and gestured to a chair. He sat, and she took a seat on a sofa opposite him, the other two sitting on either side of her.

“You don’t remember me, do you, Sam?” said the woman.

He shook his head. “You look vaguely familiar, I have to admit, but…”

She smiled wistfully. “We’ve all grown older, Sam. You, too. Your body sure as hell is in good shape, but your face! Man! Like all the others! Reminds me that we’re all getting old.”

He relaxed, remembering her now. Take off twenty pounds around those hips and smooth out that pitted face, put a reddish-brown pageboy wig on her thin and frazzled black hair, and you had her.

“Hello, Maureen,” he said.

She brightened. “So you do remember! Wow!” Suddenly her manner and tone softened. “I guess we’re all getting old.”

He remembered her, all right. One of the original old college crowd. The sex groupie type, he recalled. Slept around bisexually with all and sundry. She wasn’t so attractive any more.

He managed a chuckle. “But not too old, right? Back in harness after all this time.”

She was suddenly all businesslike. “Why do you want to get back, Sam?”

He thought about it. He’d thought about it all day, the answer to that question.

“I was dead, Maureen. I just had a breakdown, couldn’t take it any more. I needed out, a rest. But walking out—well, it kind of killed me. Once up there in the commune I just couldn’t bring myself to leave. I guess it was like a return to the womb, few responsibilities, no cares. I’d been living tense, expecting to be dead at any moment, for years. Then I was safe, secure—I don’t know how to explain it.”

“But why come out now, Sam?” she pressed. “Why leave the cocoon at all?”

He sighed. “I was a zombie. Oh, I didn’t admit it to myself, no, but I was. Up there I was safe, insulated—but without purpose. I just existed, Maureen. I reached that point a couple of years ago, but I had no place else to go. All of you were underground or in jail or dead, and I was still wanted by the feds. I kinda put myself in prison up there—I couldn’t get out when I wanted to.”

Maureen turned to the others one at a time, then asked the man, “Well? What do you think?”

The man shrugged. “Why not? I don’t think he’ll gum up anything, and at least we know he’s safe.”

Maureen turned to the other woman, who just shrugged and nodded. She then looked straight at Sam. “Okay, I guess that’s it. Welcome to the club.”

He smiled and started to say something, but suddenly he felt a series of tiny pricks in his arm. He whirled around, surprised, and saw two other men, both huge and muscular, grinning at him. One had a needle-gun in his hand.

He started to say something, started to protest, panic rising within him, but ,the whole world was suddenly spinning and he blacked out.

“You look beat,” Jake Edelman said sympathetically.

Sandra O’Connell smiled appreciatively. “ I am a little tired. I’ve been going over that stuff for days now—and nothing. There’s just nothing there!”

Jake Edelman lit a cigar, inhaled, and blew out a stream of blue-gray smoke so dense it almost choked her. He looked thoughtful.

“I really wish you wouldn’t do that,” she protested.

He shrugged. “Sorry about that. My office, my social conventions. No place left to enjoy things any more. No this, no that, everything’s banned. The whole damned world is bad for you and mad at you at one and the same time.” He reached over to the window, flipped a control, and a fan started dragging the smoke behind him. “Better?” he asked.