03. The Maze in the Mirror by Jack L. Chalker Read Free Book Online Page B

certain that at least the Master believed it-and if he believed it, then the warriors would believe it, too. If the Master wasn't in on it, if he wasn't putting them on, he'd find the answers.
    "Very well," Prang sighed. "All that you require will be provided and I will postpone a vote until we have information. But we can tolerate nothing less than the full truth in this. Otherwise we must assume that there are no loyal friends of the Company left in your domain."
    It was a simple, understated, and rather elegant threat, Sam thought. "Now-Brandy?"
    "Oh, yes. You heard what was done. Can you bring her out of it?"
    "Depends," the Master responded curtly. "Let me take a look at her." And, with that, he proceeded up the stairs and turned correctly towards the master bedroom.
    "How did he know where she was?" Sam asked, wondering.
    "Forty years ago I learned to stop asking things like that," responded Aldrath Prang. "Come on- let's see what's what."
    "Maybe I should have him find Dash," Sam suggested, and they mounted the stairs.
    The Ginzu Master was poking and probing Brandy's neck as they entered the room. He rose, turned, and said, "I would flay alive the one who did this."
    Sam felt sudden panic. "You mean it's not reversible?"
    "No, of course not. I mean that it is reversible," he grumbled. "It is just-amateurish. Incompetent. Either you use quinsin to totally paralyze an enemy or you use the sixth degree maneuver to have them come out of it in a specified amount of time. This is neither. I have done what I can here. She will be able to eat and move her head, and very slowly all of the body functions will return to her, but it will be a slow process and she might not be totally right for weeks."
    He felt sudden tremendous relief. She was going to be all right! She was going to come out of it!
    With that thought, his mind switched back into its more analytical mode, but the interest and thequestions were not clinical. This was personal.
    "Tell me-would you say that a Ginzu did that? Or perhaps someone who had been taught Ginzu holds and pressure points and perhaps wanted to make us think it was Ginzu."
    Prang gave Sam a quizzical look. "But on the tape Bond said it was Ginzu."
    "No, he said he had escaped from Ginzu," Sam reminded him. "That's not the same thing. We don't know where Bond was or what he was doing. We assumed the cause and effect-he'd escaped from the Ginzu, therefore the Ginzu did this. What do the Ginzu who work for the Company do except make and export knives?"
    "Knives!" the Master hissed. "Mere cheap imitations! Why they only even guarantee them a mere ten years! We have nothing to do with them."
    "Except collecting a royalty," Prang noted. "It's a licensing thing that allows them to maintain their private lands and school. But to answer your question, we do employ Ginzu for temporary security."
    "Huh? Like what?"
    "Well, under normal circumstances, they'd be in charge of my security right now. The only reason they aren't is because they are involved and thus suspect in this. That's only one example. When we must secure a facet for some purpose we use them, and we also use them to guard maintenance and repair projects just in case, since the kind of things we'd be dealing with there are some of the Company's most classified secrets."
    Sam thought about that. "Then if they were discredited you'd have to find alternate security. They'd be pulled off all the nasty jobs immediatelyand effectively neutralized. Someone just might be being very clever here, Aldrath."
    "Possibly," Prang replied, noting the smugness of the Master at Sam's theory, "but we can take no chances. Master, how hard would it be to learn that nerve paralyzing trick to this degree and perhaps sufficient others, including some of the language, to pass as Ginzu?"
    "Some training by a Ginzu warrior would be required," the Ginzu Master told him. "Such things as these are easy to learn, difficult to master, and require constant practice and