Read 02. The Shadow Dancers for Free Online Page A

much. He just got some nice little extras all in things he and his family could enjoy but we wouldn't particularly notice, and for that he got a message slip passed into his pocket now and then that a shipment-he didn't even know what it was, nor cared-would be with so-and-so as unlisted or misaddressed cargo. He'd meet the other courier, either get the parcel or note that it was wrong and offer to take it back to headquarters for resorting, then drop it when his route took him near this other world. That was it."
    "You dead sure this ain't just the tip of the iceberg?" I asked him.
    "Pretty sure. Their supply is limited. There's no clear routine as to when the shipments come, but that's probably just to disguise their origins. Vogel's their dispatcher. He gets it, he holds on to it, and then he sends it out in measured amounts. As far as we can tell, he's handling the real experimentation himself, and very effectively and ruthlessly. He's well placed to be able to do so, as you'll see in a minute."
    "And the other place?" Sam asked.
    "A world not too far from this one and very similar in a lot of ways. They're getting only about three thousand doses every twenty to thirty days, so there's only enough to sustain maybe a hundred people. They appear to be going to a local organized crime underboss who's never had any known connection with us and shouldn't even know about the Labyrinth. He, in turn, has one man supervising it and they seem to be using it in a very low-level way, to maintain a group of young women as prostitutes. This thing's ready-made for that on a petty level-I mean, this thing compels you to have sex a lot. We don't know what connection they have to Vogel, or why they were picked, or why they're being allowed to use something like this for such a petty and ordinary thing. Company people don't go there, except our wayward courier, of course, and we've had a monitor on that gate ever since and nobody but that courier ever approached. We sent in a small team of agents, and they couldn't find anything odd, either. There's a connection there, but we can't find it."
    "But they know about the Labyrinth," Sam noted.
    "Yeah, they do-but not many," Bill replied. "The big boss has had a lodge up near the central Pennsylvania weak point for years, and this place happens to be one of those on the way from here to there that's weak enough that when we open that Labyrinth route it can be accessed without a station-like the dead end you two were shoved into that time."
    "Yeah, only here nobody jumps in but something gets tossed out. All we could find was that they were being paid off to do just what they're doing and ask no questions. There's lots of ways you can do it when you have a crime boss on the hook, including checking close other worlds, getting inside information he can use, and feeding it to him. You can feed him just enough, wrapped around the parcel, to keep him quiet and on the hook."
    "You mean," I said, "that somebody just pops up once and bribes this crime boss into this? We'll pay you if you find fifty or more girls and hook 'em on this?"
    "That's about it. We don't know why. Makes no sense on its face, and except for the fact that most but not all of the girls they hooked are relatively young, there's no connecting thread between them. None. There's no reason to think they know much. Just hired help, like the courier-but a lot harder to snatch and interrogate. You see what kind of a bind we're in?"
    We could see, too. "You can't snatch any addicts for information 'cause they'd be dead in two days," I noted. "You can't take out the courier without killin' all them girls and lettin' whoever's doin' this know you're on to 'em. Ain't nobody in this chain that knows anything worth knowin' 'cept this guy Vogel."
    "Yeah. Vogel. He knows a lot, even if he doesn't know it all. He had to be directly contacted if only to corrupt him. He had to be sold on becoming a traitor, which is much harder considering the risks.