"If I go back in the labyrinth, the Supremate will know. He"ll send the sisters to tear me up."

"Supremate won"t know." A sputter. Jervis was going fast. "How do you think you got out so easy earlier? This close to recharge...no power. Sensorposts are dead. Supremate has no way of knowing you"re there."

Wade stared down. Jervis was losing his race against autolysis. His lips split. His eyes had liquefied and pooled in their sockets. "Use my key. Pointaccess to first subinlet. Look for sign..."

"What sign?"

"Guidance...tracking...pah pah point."

"Okay, what then?"

"Put bomb there and...get...out.

Wade touched the corpse. It was hot with rot.

Yet Jervis" mush face still smiled in final freedom. The gas fat torso began to smoke. "Stick it up the Supremate"s a.s.s." A t.i.tter, like a giggle. Then: "I-I..."

"Aw, no, Jerv!"

"I"m gone."

And he was.

The bomb was black, a six inch cube, but it seemed like magic to shift minutely in size. It felt warm as a hearth brick.

He"d found it on the front floor of Jerv"s Dodge Colt, which had been turned, over the last day or so, into a hatchback gorewagon. The Supremate had transformed his friend into a murderer. It was time for payback.

Better get a move on, Wade thought. He jogged back into the building, back to the lab. What remained of Jervis was just a clothed rib cage around which had settled a large puddle of dark slime. The only remnant of the real Jervis Phillips was a pack of Carlton 100s stuck in the shirt pocket.

Wade snapped the extromission key off the corpse"s neck, then ran up to Besser"s office.

The extromitter dot stared like a glazed eye. Wade"s watch read 11:42-eighteen minutes would be plenty of time to get in and out. He felt surprisingly fearless as he inserted the key and began to extromit. What did he have to worry about? Even if there were any sisters left, the Supremate wouldn"t be aware of his entrance. There would be no way that the Supremate could alert them. These were comforting thoughts.

They were also stupid ones.

CHAPTER 42.

Lydia slammed the brakes and skidded. In front of the sciences center, she saw Wade"s Corvette and another car behind it. Lydia backed up and wheeled in.

The other car was a gold Dodge Colt, Jervis" car.

The spotter and Tom"s key remained where she"d left them in the Vette. Lydia grabbed them and rushed into the building.

It wasn"t hard to find where the confrontation had taken place, nor was it hard to discern the victor. Somehow, Wade had done the job on Jervis-the dismembered, smoking carnage was proof. But the cadaver"s neck lacked the extromission key.

Oh, no, she thought. He didn"t-he couldn"t have- She picked the hewer off the floor and ran upstairs.

The extromitter glowed weirdly in Besser"s dark office. When Lydia put two and two together, she didn"t come up with four, she came up with DUMB a.s.s. More than likely, and for some unknown reason, Wade had gone back into the labyrinth.

Besser"s desk clock read 11:44. She knew that the labyrinth was leaving at midnight. She also knew that five minutes before midnight, recharge would occur, and she had no idea what that entailed. One more thing she knew: Wade wouldn"t last a second in the labyrinth on his own. G.o.dd.a.m.n imbecile, she thought. She saw no other choice but to go in after him. But as she reached for Tom"s extromission key, she heard...what?

What were they? Grunts?

She turned quickly, hefting the weight of the hewer. She thought it might be Wade, but when the shadow-and the sloppy, wet sound it brought-crossed the office door, she knew far too well who it was.

"Huh hi, Lydia. You"re sure lookin" mighty pretty tonight."

When she saw the state of the thing which stepped into the block of moonlight, all Lydia could say was, "Oh, f.u.c.k!"

"I always kind of had a crush on ya. Course, I never said nothin", figured you"d laugh at me, you know?"

But Lydia was definitely not laughing. She was as revolted as she was terrified. The thing facing her was Porker.

Wade said he"d been killed in the grove by the sisters-disemboweled. But she needed no explanation when she saw the k.n.o.b end of the transceptionrod in his head.

Porker was naked, huge, pale as turned cream. His completely eviscerated abdominal cavity hung open in plain view. No organs there, just empty s.p.a.ce. The sisters had eaten his innards and brought him back for service, getting double their money"s worth of the poor obese slob.

"Where"s Wade?" Porker asked.

"How should I know?"

"Did he go back into the labyrinth?"

"He"d have to be crazy to do that."

Porker"s boyish, chubby face turned up in a grin. "You didn"t answer the question."

"All right, how about this: I don"t know where Wade is."

"I think you do," the young, insecure voice replied. Muddy bare feet trudged forward, thudding. "And you"re going to tell me."

Porker had been gross enough in real life; dead, naked, and gutted, he was grosser still. Lydia swung the hewer, hoping the creature"s huge limbs would be too sluggish to respond. Instead the fat hands blurred, caught the hewer below the blade, and tossed it aside. The big boyish pumpkin grin blazed in the moonlight.

The clock read 11:45. Lydia shucked her Trooper, without much confidence. She remembered how effective bullets were against the dead. Nevertheless, she fired two Magnums into Porker"s plump face. His head jerked back, the face cracked. One more double tap from the Trooper widened the crack to a grinning fissure, but like a monster sleepwalker, Porker continued to lope for her. Flaps of white flab hung ragged around the opened belly, through which the obvious erection peeked. Porker grinned in spite of his divided face, and said, "You haven"t had it till you"ve had it from a dead man."

Despair touched her frown. Lydia was sick to death of being a s.e.x object to monsters and dead men. She shrieked, disgusted, as Porker"s body collided into her. Before she could even get off her last two shots, he dragged her down, straddled her, and began to open her pants.

The labyrinth was cold now, like a meat locker. Wade"s breath condensed before his face. The psilight was so low he could see neither walls nor floor. Only the extromitter dot of each access guided him from place to place. Tracking guidance point, he forced steadily into memory, searching.

He shivered, yet the bomb in his hand seemed to be gaining temperature. Soon it would be too hot to hold. He glanced, almost casually, from the next subinlet. The sign hovered: EMWGUIDANCETRACKINGPOINT.

"Eureka!" he whooped. He extromitted into the canted chamber of glowing red and yellow threads. The crisscrossing, intense light brightened even as he watched. Wade didn"t know this place from a hole in the ground, but there was one thing he felt sure of: something big was in the works, and it was going to happen soon.

Sweating, he dropped the bomb on the floor and extromitted back out.

Dead sensorposts extruded from the ceiling. Thank G.o.d they were inactive now. Getting in had been easy, and he saw no reason why getting out shouldn"t be just as easy. "Home, James," he muttered. He plugged in his key, thinking down down down! and disappeared into the glowing black slit.

Porker was drooling on her, fumbling with her pants. Lydia couldn"t even squirm against the tremendous, dead weight. The broken face and toothy grin twitched in l.u.s.t.

Gagging, she poked the Trooper. The blue steel barrel entered the spreading crack and she squeezed off round number five. Gun smoke and bits of pulp gusted back into her own face. She heard something clink, and Porker stiffened.

She fired the last round, keeping the barrel deep in his face. Like a lid, the top of his skull blew off-the transceptionrod flew across the room. Porker made a deep, lowing sound, like an impaled cow, then sidled over, dead.

"Thank you, Colonel Colt," she whispered, and glanced at the clock: 11:47. What bothered her most, as she grabbed the hewer and began to extromit, was this: If they"d seen fit to bring Porker back from the dead, what had they done with...

Sergeant J. T. Peerce stepped out of the final subinlet before the main point access. "St. John! Over here!"

Wade froze. A reflex nearly caused him to use his jeans for a bathroom. Peerce waved from the servicepa.s.s, wearing a clean police uniform and the same redneck sneer he"d been born with. In other words, Peerce looked normal.

"I saw you die," Wade stammered. "Last night, in the grove."

"Do I look like I"m dead, you daddy rich nitwit?"

But how could this be? "I saw the sisters kill you!"

"You musta been seein" things, then, "cos I"m standin" here, ain"t I? I got away from them b.i.t.c.hes after you and Chief White split. Come on, will ya!"

Wade considered this. He"d been scared s.h.i.tless last night, and come to think of it, he wasn"t really sure what he"d seen. Sometimes the trauma of horror played games with the mind.

"What are you doing here?" Wade asked, still unsure.

"Lookin" for you, ya moe ron. Prentiss got half the force out searchin" for ya. She said ya might"ve come back here when we found that punk Jervis" body with no key "round his neck."

Wade took several cautious steps forward. The power of suggestion plus seeing Peerce alive and well left him no choice but to be convinced.

"Come on, G.o.dd.a.m.n it! We gotta hightail it outta here. Prentiss told me this place takes off in ten minutes. Move it!"

But seeing was believing, wasn"t it? Or at least seeing what you wanted to believe. Right now all Wade wanted to see was someone on his side.

He shed his reservations and approached Peerce.

"By the way," Peerce inquired. "Why"d you come back in here anyway? It don"t make no sense."

"Before Jervis died, he told me to plant the b-" A quick shock hacked off the last word. Wade"s knees locked up.

A whorl of intestines had popped out of Peerce"s shirt.

"Aw, shee it," Peerce griped, looking down. Then he looked at Wade with a dead grin. "Almost had ya goin" for it, huh?"

Wade turned and ran, and Peerce ran after him. Peerce was faster, despite the inconvenience of dragging intestines. The iron hand s.n.a.t.c.hed Wade by the neck and raised him off his feet.

"I wanna know what ya were doin" in here, St. John."

Wade, choking, noticed that Peerce was chewing tobacco. He also noticed the transceptionrod sunk deep in his head.

"I was looking for some cuff links I lost," Wade wheezed.

Peerce spat brown juice. He opened a switchblade. "Punk rich boy piece a s.h.i.t. Start talking by the time I count three. If ya don"t" -Peerce grinned- "then I start carving."

The blade flashed in front of Wade"s left eye.

"One."

Did I come all this way just to get snuffed by a dead redneck cop? Wade asked himself against a hail of incredulity.

"Two."

His heels kicked high on the wall. He could feel his face turning blue.

"Maybe you"ll feel like talkin" once I pop one of them rich boy eyeb.a.l.l.s out," Peerce said. Then he said, "Three."

As she"d guessed, Peerce had caught Wade. She swung the hewer low right to high left. The unimaginably heavy blade was suddenly aerodynamic; it glided through the air with the greatest of proverbial ease-swoooooooosh-and took Peerce"s head off in a perfect line.

Lydia laughed in spite of herself. The head bounced off one wall, then another, then rolled down the servicepa.s.s. But- "Lydia!" Wade yelled.

Peerce"s headless body remained standing. The switchblade remained in his hand- "Pull the rod out of his head!"

What? she thought. She dropped the hewer and turned. It was too dark to see where the head had rolled, but then she stumbled on something and fell on it, like a fumble drill. She felt the top of the head, found the transception k.n.o.b, then grabbed it with her fingers and pulled.

"Hurry!" Wade yelled, still held aloft.

She pulled and pulled. The rod wouldn"t come out. It was like trying to unseat a masonry nail from cement.

Wade was screaming.

Peerce"s severed head expectorated tobacco juice into her face. Thanks a lot, she thought. She raised the head to her mouth, grasped the rod f.l.a.n.g.e with her teeth, and yanked.

Amid an awful, dry grinding sound, the rod began to come loose. Now it was Peerce"s head that was screaming. The rod jerked out of the skull in half inch stops. Peerce"s standing, headless corpse was shuddering in place.

When the transceptionrod came out all the way, the knife-wielding cadaver collapsed.