back.
“Travis!” Lamech called. “Can you hear me?”
The miniature Sivarts all stood straight and took their cigars out of their mouths. Unwin thought he could see the mouths moving, but he heard nothing except the rain and the creaking of the big wheel. He and Lamech leaned closer. Something changed in the glass then, and Unwin’s vision blurred. He closed his eyes and opened them, but the problem was not with his eyes.
The reflection of the carnival at their backs was moving, fading in some places as it brightened in others. Parts of the landscape receded into the distance, while other parts zoomed closer.
Unwin no longer heard the sound of the rain on his umbrella. The hall of mirrors had enclosed them. Lamech, in his confusion, spun around once and stepped backward into a transparent wall. “What?” he said, and then, as though he were on a telephone with a bad connection, “Hello?”
“Ed Lamech,” the many Sivarts called, moving again, some of them disappearing as others materialized. “What brings you down here at this time of—” He stopped a moment. “Aw, heck, buddy. Is it day or night? I lose track.”
“It’s good to see you alive, Travis. I’m giving someone a tour, that’s all.”
“They’ll pay you for anything, huh?” The Sivarts ducked around corners, and some of them grew. He was drawing closer. “Who you got with you?”
“Someone who can help us, I think. Help you, Travis—maybe get you out of here.”
“That’s great, Ed.” Sivart’s tone had turned suddenly sour. “I’m glad you’ve still got my back.”
Lamech swept his hat off. “I told you not to go. You’ve put us all in jeopardy. Here in Hoffmann’s mind, one of the Agency’s top men!”
“Now you’re just flattering.”
“We made a good team, Travis. But I’m in some pretty deep water here. Deeper than you know. It’s dangerous for me to be in this place.” Lamech was feeling the walls with his hands, batting at them with his hat. He found an opening between two mirrors and moved through it; Unwin followed him.
“They call this a fun house,” Sivart said. “But I tell you it’s worse than anything we’ve sent the crooks to. He comes in now and then to check up on me. And when he does, it’s like having the top of my skull screwed off and a flashlight shone in. It hurts, Ed. You should have told me what I was up against.”
“I tried, Travis. I tried.”
Several more of the Sivarts vanished. There were only a few of them now. He was close, but Lamech could not find his way to him.
Sivart and his reflections said, “You know how he did this? He learned it from Caligari, that crazy little guy who brought the carnival here. You remember: ‘Everything I tell you is true, and everything you see is as real as you are.’ What did that mean anyway?”
“No,” Lamech said, “the technique came out of the Agency. Somebody stole the secret and brought it to Hoffmann. Greenwood, probably.”
“That’s just the story. Bunch of smoke. Truth is, we’re dabbling in something a hell of a lot older. This goes back, back to the beginning, maybe. It came in with the carnival, and your boss got hold of it somehow. We’d all have been better off without it.”
“How do you know this?”
“You don’t think I got caught right away, do you? I saw it firsthand. Not the way the Manual said to, though. I jumped in at the deep end, went right for the spooky stuff. I wanted to know what makes him tick.”
Lamech was out of breath. He stopped walking and put his hands on his knees. “Well?”
“Nobody taught him to do the voices,” Sivart said. He was pacing back and forth, his reflections multiplying and converging while he spoke. “He was born like that. Grew up in a little village out in the country, immigrant family, hardworking folks. He stole bread by impersonating the baker’s wife, calling him out of the shop with her voice. Clever boy, see? Later he hid in a church balcony and pretended to be an angel, tricked the minister into altering his sermons. Convinced him to put in strange things about overturning the order of the world, no salvation but in topsy-turvydom, et cetera. When they figured out what was going on, they put the kid down as some kind of devil. Probably would have killed him if the carnival hadn’t taken him in.”
Something was wrong. Sivart was shaking as he spoke, and when the