02. The Shadow Dancers Read Online Free PDF Page A

shrugged. "They haven't come in here, anyway. There was a move to get them into the narcotics trade here simply as a safety measure, something we could do, but that talk's all but died out now. But elsewhere, we're facing something new, something even the opposition is a little nervous about."
    The opposition. That meant any folks in the Company or workin' for it or on the home world who didn't like things the way they was and wanted changes, by fair means or not. Control of the whole multi-universe business was really in the hands of just a very few people, nameless and faceless to us, who were called the Board of Directors, and from what they told us this Board was basically one big family. It was kinda like a kingdom, with the same few families holdin' all the top jobs and top power, and that always left other folks unhappy. Anytime you had this much power in so few hands you was bound to have a lot of lower-downs after your hide. That was one reason why gettin' in to the home world was so hard and so restricted, and why them Directors never left.
    "A drug?" I prompted him.
    "Yeah. A drug and more than just a drug. You two have been around. You know what the usual drugs will do. There's a fair number of addicts who couldn't get off if they wanted to, and if they need a fix bad enough they'll kill their own grandmother."
    We both nodded. We knew that all too well.
    "There's a new drug. At least we call it a drug, although it doesn't act like any drug anybody has ever seen. It acts a little like it's alive, although if you saw it under a microscope you couldn't believe it could be. It looks almost like water, maybe just a touch brownish, and if it is injected anywhere into a Type Zero human it heads straight for the brain, checks it out, takes over, then moves in and starts doing its thing. It actually manufactures duplicates of enzymes in your brain and then replaces your natural enzymes with its duplicates. The duplicates are of the samesort, but not exactly. They're purer, actually more efficient. When they first take over control, whatever those enzymes control gets a pure jolt of what it likes and so do you. There are pleasure centers in the brain. When stimulated, the body sticks in these enzymes and you feel pleasure. In this case, the pleasure would be prolonged and absolute."
    "That's a fairly simplified description of the way drugs like heroin work, Bill," Sam noted. I got to admit I got a little lost with all them enzymes but I figured the result.
    "That's true, but that's because the plant enzymes, highly refined, are injected directly. In this case, the process is indirect. We have a controller, almost a control center, that uses the body's own materials to make what it needs, but it controls things. With heroin, rejection sets in, the plant substances or chemicals are expelled, and it's kind of like an engine suddenly losing its oil. Unlike the engine, your body will eventually replace and start making those chemicals again, leaving only the memory of the stimuli, but between the time the enzymes or chemicals are expelled and the time the body needs to replenish and regear it's like running an engine with very little oil. It gets very, very sick."
    That was the best way to explain withdrawal to a lay person I ever heard.
    "It does pass, though, without killing or doing real harm to the body," Sam pointed out. "You only wish you'd die."
    "True. But a lot of what we do is based on pleasure-pain stimuli. The memory of the rush, just how great you felt, remains, and a fair number are inclined to get hooked again even if they're forced off. Now this stuff is different. It's more like a parasite. It spreads over your body, but doesn't duplicate itself to the extent of harming any part of it. It gets what it needs from the body, and it's pretty stable once it's complete, but it knows you. Don't ask me how that's possible, but it does. If it gets into the brain it sort of takes over. The body abruptly considers it