A Maze of Death

8

Glen Belsnor lay dreaming. In the dark of night he dreamed of himself; he perceived himself as he really was, a wise and beneficial provider. Happily he thought, I can do it. I can take care of them all, help them and protect them. They must be protected at all costs, he thought to himself in his dream.

In his dream he attached connecting cable, screwed a circuit-breaker in place, tried out a servo-assist unit.

A hum rose from the elaborate mechanism. A generated field, miles high, rose in every direction. No one can get past that, he said to himself in satisfaction, and some of his fear began to dwindle away. The colony is safe and I have done it.

In the colony the people moved back and forth, wearing long red robes. It became midday and then it became midday for a thousand years. He saw, all at once, that they had become old. Tottering, with tattered beards—the women, too—they crept about in a feeble, insect-like manner. And some of them, he saw, were blind.

Then we’re not safe, he realized. Even with the field in operation. They are fading away from inside. They will all die anyhow.

“Belsnor!”

He opened his eyes and knew what it was.

Gray, early-morning sunlight filtered through the shades of his room. Seven A.M., he saw by his self-winding wristwatch. He rose up to a sitting position, pushing the covers away. Chill morning air plucked at him and he shivered. “Who?” he said to the men and women pouring into his room. He shut his eyes, grimaced, felt, despite the emergency, the rancid remains of sleep still clinging to him.

Ignatz Thugg, wearing gaily-decorated pajamas, said loudly. “Susie Smart.”

Putting on his bathrobe, Belsnor moved numbly toward the door.

“Do you know what this means?” Wade Frazer said.

“Yes,” he said. “I know exactly what it means.”

Roberta Rockingham, touching the corner of a small linen handkerchief to her eyes, said, “She was such a bright spirit, always lighting up things with her presence. How could anybody do it to her?” A trail of tears materialized on her withered cheeks.

He made his way across the compound; the others clumped after him, none of them speaking.

There she lay, on the porch. A few steps from her door. He bent over her, touched the back of her neck. Absolutely cold. No life of any kind. “You examined her?” he said to Battle. “She really is dead? There’s no doubt about it?”

“Look at your hand,” Wade Frazer said.

Belsnor removed his hand from the girl’s neck. His hand dripped blood. And now he saw the mass of blood in her hair, near the top of her skull. Her head had been crushed in.

“Care to revise your autopsy?” he said scathingly to Babble. “Your opinion about Tallchief; do you care to change it now?”

No one spoke.

Belsnor looked around, saw not far off a loaf of bread. “She must have been carrying that,” he said.

“She got it from me,” Tony Dunkelwelt said. His face had paled from shock; his words were barely audible. “She left my room last night and I went to bed. I didn’t kill her. I didn’t even know about it until I heard Dr. Babble and the others yelling.”

“We’re not saying you did it,” Belsnor said to him. Yes, she used to flit from one room to another at night, he thought. We made fun of her and she was a little deranged… but she never hurt anybody. She was as innocent as a human being could get; she was even innocent of her own wrongdoing.

The new man, Russell, approached. The expression on his face showed that he, too, without even knowing her, understood what an awful thing it was, what an awful moment it was for all of them.

“You see what you came here to see?” Belsnor said to him harshly.

Russell said, “I wonder if you could get help by means of the transmitter in my noser.”

“They’re not good enough,” Belsnor said. “The noser radio-rig. Not good enough at all.” He rose to his feet stiffly, hearing his bones crack. And it’s Terra that’s doing this, he thought, remembering what Seth Morley and Babble had said last night when they brought Russell over. Our own government. As if we’re rats in a maze with death; rodents confined with the ultimate adversary, to die one by one until none are left.

Seth Morley beckoned him off to one side, away from the others. “You’re sure you don’t want to tell them? They have a right to know who the enemy is.”

Belsnor said, “I don’t want them to know because as I explained to you their morale is low enough already. If they knew it came from Terra they wouldn’t be able to survive; they’d go friggin’ mad.”

“I’ll leave it up to you,” Seth Morley said. “You’ve been elected as the group’s leader.” But his tone of voice showed that he disagreed, and very strongly. As he had last night.

“In time,” Belsnor said, clamping his long, expert fingers around Seth’s upper arm. “When the right time comes—”

“It never will,” Seth Morley said, moving back a step. “They’ll die without knowing.”

Maybe, Belsnor thought, it would be better that way. Better if all men, wherever they are, were to die without knowing who did it or why.

Squatting down, Russell turned Susie Smart over; he gazed down at her and said, “She certainly was a pretty girl.”

“Pretty,” Belsnor said harshly, “but batty. She had an overactive sex drive: she had to sleep with every man she came across. We can do without her.”

“You bastard,” Seth Morley said, his tone fierce. Belsnor lifted his empty hands and said, “What do you want me to say? That we can’t get along without her? That this is the end?”

Morley did not answer.

To Maggie Walsh, Belsnor said, “Say a prayer.” It was time for the ceremony of death, the rituals so firmly attached to it that even he himself could not imagine a death without it.

“Give me a few minutes,” Maggie Walsh said huskily. “I—just can’t talk now.” She retreated and turned her back; he heard her sobbing.

“I’ll say it,” Belsnor said, with savage fury.

Seth Morley said, “I’d like permission to go on an exploratory trip outside the settlement. Russell wants to come along.”

“Why?” Belsnor said.

Morley said in a low, steady voice, “I’ve seen the miniaturized version of the Building. I think it’s time to confront the real thing.”

“Take someone with you,” Belsnor said. “Someone who knows their way around out there.”

“I’ll go with them,” Betty Jo Berm spoke up.

“There should be another man with them,” Belsnor said. But, he thought, it’s a mistake for us not to stay together; death comes when one of us is off by himself. “Take Frazer and Thugg, both of them, with you,” he decided. “As well as B.J.” That would split the group, but neither Roberta Rockingham nor Bert Kosler were physically able to make such a journey. Neither had as yet left the camp. “I’ll stay here with the rest of them,” he said.

“I think we should be armed,” Wade Frazer said.

“Nobody is going to be armed,” Belsnor said. “We’re in a bad enough situation already. If you’re armed you’ll kill one another, either accidentally or intentionally.” He did not know why he felt this, but intuitively he knew himself to be correct. Susie Smart, he thought. Maybe you were killed by one of us… one who is an agent of Terra and General Treaton.

As in my dream, he thought. The enemy within. Age, deterioration and death. Despite the field-barrier surrounding the settlement. That’s what my dream was trying to tell me.

Rubbing at her grief-reddened eyes, Maggie Walsh said, “I’d like to go along with them.”

“Why?” Belsnor said. “Why does everyone want to leave the settlement? We’re safer here.” But his knowledge, his awareness of the untruth of what he was saying, found its way into his voice; he heard his own insincerity. “Okay,” he said. “And good luck.” To Seth Morley he said, “Try and bring back one of those singing flies. Unless you find something better.”

“I’ll do the best I can,” Seth Morley said. Turning, he moved away from Belsnor. Those who were going with him started away, too.

They’ll never come back, Belsnor said to himself. He watched them go and, within him, his heart struck heavy, muffled blows, as if the pendulum of the cosmic clock were swinging back and forth, back and forth, within his hollow chest.

The pendulum of death.

The seven of them trudged along the edge of a low ridge, their attention fixed on each object that they saw. They said very little.

Unfamiliar hazy hills spread out, lost in billowing dust. Green lichens grew everywhere; the soil was a tangled floor of growing plants. The air smelled of intricate organic life here. A rich, complex odor, nothing like any of them had smelled before. Off in the distance great columns of steam rose up, geysers of boiling water forcing its way through the rocks to the surface. An ocean lay far off, pounding invisibly in the drifting curtain of dust and moisture.

They came to a damp place. Warm slime, compounded from water, dissolved minerals and fungoid pulp, lapped at their shoes. The remains of lichens and protozoa colored and thickened the scum of moisture dripping everywhere, over the wet rocks and sponge-like shrubbery.

Bending down, Wade Frazer picked up a snail-like unipedular organism. “It’s not fake—this is alive. It’s genuine.”

Thugg was holding a sponge which he had fished from a small, warm pool. “This is artificial. But there are legitimate sponges like this on Delmak-O. And these are fakes, too.” From the water Thugg grabbed a wriggling snake-like creature with short, stubby legs that thrashed furiously. Swiftly, Thugg removed the head; the head came off and the creature stopped moving. “A totally mechanical contraption—you can see the wiring.” He restored the head; once more the creature began flopping. Thugg tossed it back in the water and it swam happily off.

“Where’s the Building?” Mary Morley said.

Maggie Walsh said, “It—seems to change locations. The last time anyone encountered it it was along this ridge and past the geysers. But it probably won’t be next time.”

“We can use this as a starting stage,” Betty Jo Berm said. “When we get to the spot where it last was we can fan out in various directions.” She added, “It’s a shame we don’t have intercoms with us. They would be a lot of help.”

“That’s Belsnor’s fault,” Thugg said. “He’s our elected leader; he’s supposed to think of technical details like that.” To Seth Morley, Betty Jo Berm said, “Do you like it out here?”

“I don’t know yet.” Perhaps because of Susie Smart’s death he felt repelled by everything he saw. He did not like the mixture of artificial life forms with the real ones: the mixing together of them made him sense the whole landscape as false… as if, he thought, those hills in the background, and that great plateau to the right, are a painted backdrop. As if all this, and ourselves, and the settlement—all are contained in a geodetic dome. And above us Treaton’s research men, like entirely deformed scientists of pulp fiction, are peering down at us as we walk, tiny-creature-wise, along our humble way.

“Let’s stop and rest,” Maggie Walsh said, her face grim and elongated still; the shock of Susie’s death had, for her, not worn off in the slightest. “I’m tired. I didn’t have any breakfast, and we didn’t bring any food with us. This whole trip should have been carefully planned out in advance.”

“None of us were thinking clearly,” Betty Jo Berm said with sympathy. She brought a bottle out of her skirt pocket, opened it, sorted among the pills and at last found one that was satisfactory.

“Can you swallow those without water?” Russell asked her. “Yes,” she said, and smiled. “A pillhead can swallow a pill under any circumstances.”

Seth Morley said to Russell, “For B.J. it’s pills.” He eyed Russell, wondering about him. Like the others, did this new member also have a weak link in his character? And if so, what was it?

“I think I know what Mr. Russell’s fondness is for,” Wade Frazer said in his somewhat nasty, baiting voice. “He has, I believe, from what I’ve observed about him, a cleaning fetish.”

“Really?” Mary Morley said.

“I’m afraid so,” Russell said and smiled to show perfect, white teeth, like the teeth of an actor.

They continued on and came, at last, to a river. It seemed too wide to cross; there they halted.

“We’ll have to follow the river,” Thugg said. He scowled. “I’ve been in this area, but I didn’t see any river before.”

Frazer giggled and said, “It’s for you, Morley. Because you’re a marine biologist.”

Maggie Walsh said, “That’s a strange remark. Do you mean the landscape alters according to our expectation?”

“I was making a joke,” Frazer said insultingly.

“But what a strange idea,” Maggie Walsh said. “You know, Specktowsky speaks about us being ‘prisoners of our own preconceptions and expectations.’ And that one of the conditions of the Curse is to remain mired in the quasi-reality of those proclivities. Without ever seeing reality as it actually is.,’

“Nobody sees reality as it actually is,” Frazer said. “As Kant proved. Space and time are modes of perception, for example. Did you know that?” He poked at Seth Morley. “Did you know that, mister marine biologist?”

“Yes,” he answered, although in point of fact he had never even heard of Kant, much less read him.

“Specktowsky says that ultimately we can see reality as it is,” Maggie Walsh said. “When the Intercessor releases us from our world and condition. When the Curse is lifted from us, through him.”

Russell spoke up. “And sometimes, even during our physical lifetime, we get momentary glimpses of it.”

“Only if the Intercessor lifts the veil for us,” Maggie Walsh said.

“True,” Russell admitted.

“Where are you from?” Seth Morley asked Russell.

“From Alpha Centauri 8.”

“That’s a long way from here,” Wade Frazer said.

“I know.” Russell nodded. “That’s why I arrived here so late. I’d been traveling for almost three months.”

“Then you were one of the first to obtain a transfer,” Seth Morley said. “Long before me.”

“Long before any of us,” Wade Frazer said. He contemplated Russell, who stood head and shoulders above him. “I wonder why an economist would be wanted here. There’s no economy on this planet.”

Maggie Walsh said, “There seems to be no use to which any of us can put our skills. Our skills, our training—they don’t seem to matter. I don’t think we were selected because of them.”

“Obviously,” Thugg grated.

“Is that so obvious to you?” Betty Jo said to him. “Then what do you think the basis of selection was?”

“Like Belsnor says. We’re all misfits.”

“He doesn’t say we’re misfits,” Seth Morley said. “He says we’re failures.”

“It’s the same thing,” Thugg said. “We’re the debris of the galaxy. Belsnor is right, for once.”

“Don’t include me when you say that,” Betty Jø said. “I’m not willing to admit I’m part of the ‘debris of the universe’ quite yet. Maybe tomorrow.”

“As we die,” Maggie Walsh said, half to herself, “we sink into oblivion. An oblivion in which we already exist… one out of which only the Deity can save us.”

“So we have the Deity trying to save us,” Seth Morley said, “and General Treaton trying to—” He broke off; he had said too much. But no one noticed.

“That’s the basic condition of life anyhow,” Russell put in, in his neutral, mild voice. “The dialectic of the universe. One force pulling us down to death: the Form Destroyer in all his manifestations. Then the Deity in His three Manifestations. Theoretically always at our elbow. Right, Miss Walsh?”

“Not theoretically.” She shook her head.

“Actually.” Betty Jo Berm said quietly, “There’s the Building.”

So now he saw it. Seth Morley shaded his eyes against the bright midday sun, peered. Gray and large, it reared up at the limit of his vision. A cube, almost. With odd spires… probably from heat-sources. From the machinery and activity within. A pall of smoke hung over it and he thought, It’s a factory.

“Let’s go,” Thugg said, starting in that direction.

They trudged that way, strung out in an uneven file.

“It’s not getting any closer,” Wade Frazer said presently, with jejune derision.

“Walk faster, then,” Thugg said with a grin.

“It won’t help.” Maggie Walsh halted, gasping. Circles of dark sweat were visible around her armpits. “Always it’s like this. You walk and walk and it recedes and recedes.”

“And you never get really close,” Wade Frazer said. He, too, had stopped walking; he was busy lighting up a battered rosewood pipe… using with it, Seth Morley noted, one of the worst and strongest pipe-mixtures in existence. The smell of it, as the pipe flared into irregular burning, befouled the natural air.

“Then what do we do?” Russell said.

“Maybe you can think of something,” Thugg said. “Maybe if we close our eyes and walk around in a little circle we’ll find ourselves standing next to it.”

“As we stand here,” Seth Morley said, shading his eyes and peering, “it gets closer.” He was positive. He could pick out all the spires, now, and the pall of smoke above it seemed to have lifted. Maybe it’s not a factory after all, he thought. If it will come just a little nearer maybe I can tell. He peered on and on; the others, presently, did the same.

Russell said reflectively, “It’s a phantasm. A projection of some kind. From a transmitter located probably within a square mile of us. A very efficient, modern vidtransmitter… but you can still see a slight waver.”

“What do you suggest, then?” Seth Morley asked him. “If you’re right then there’s no reason to try to get close to it, since it isn’t there.”

“It’s somewhere,” Russell corrected. “But not in that spot. What we’re seeing is a fake. But there is a real Building and it probably is not far off.”

“How can you know that?” Seth Morley said.

Russell said, “I’m familiar with Interplan West’s method of decoy-composition. This illusory transmission is in existence to fool those who know there is a Building. Who expect to find it. And when they see this they think they have. This is not for someone who does not know there is a Building somewhere out here.” He added, “This worked very well in the war between Interplan West and the warrior-cults of Rigel 10. Rigelian missiles zeroed in on illusory industrial complexes over and over again. You see, this kind of projection shows up on radar screens and computerized sweep-scanner probes. It has a kind of semi-material basis; strictly speaking it’s not a mirage.”

“Well, you would know,” Betty Jo Berm said. “You’re an economist; you’d be familiar with what happened to industrial complexes during a war.” But she did not sound convinced.

“Is that why it retreats?” Seth Morley asked him. “As we approach?”

“That is how I made out its composition,” Russell said.

Maggie Walsh said to him, “Tell us what to do.”

“Let’s see.” Russell sighed, pondered. The others waited. “The real Building could be almost anywhere. There’s no way to trace it back from the phantasm; if there were, the method would not have worked. I think—” He pointed. “I have a feeling that the plateau over there is illusory. A superimposition over something, resulting in a negative hallucination for anyone who sights in that direction.” He explained, “A negative hallucination—when you do not see something that’s actually there.”

“Okay,” Thugg said. “Let’s head for the plateau.”

“That means crossing the river,” Mary Morley said.

To Maggie Walsh, Frazer said, “Does Specktowsky say anything about walking on water? It would be useful, right now. That river looks damn deep to me, and we already decided we couldn’t take the chance of trying to cross it.”

“The river may not be there either,” Seth Morley said.

“It’s there,” Russell said. He walked toward it, stopped at its edge, bent down and lifted out a temporary handful of water.

“Seriously,” Betty Jo Berm said, “does Specktowsky say anything about walking on water?”

“It can be done,” Maggie Walsh said, “but only if the person or persons are in the presence of the Deity. The Deity would have to lead him—or them—across; otherwise they’d sink and drown.”

Ignatz Thugg said, “Maybe Mr. Russell is the Deity.” To Russell he said, “Are you a Manifestation of the Deity? Come here to help us? Are you, specifically, the Walker-on-Earth?”

“Afraid not,” Russell said in his reasonable, neutral voice.

“Lead us across the water,” Seth Morley said to him.

“I can’t,” Russell said. “I’m a man just like you.”

“Try,” Seth Morley said.

“It’s strange,” Russell said, “that you would think I’m the Walker-on-Earth. It’s happened before. Probably because of the nomadic existence I lead. I’m always showing up as a stranger, and if I do anything right—which is rare—then someone gets the bright idea that I’m the third Manifestation of the Deity.”

“Maybe you are,” Seth Morley said, scrutinizing him keenly; he tried to recall how the Walker had looked when he had revealed himself back at Tekel Upharsin. There was little resemblance. And yet—the odd intuition, to an extent, remained with him. It had come to him with no warning: one moment he had accepted Russell as an ordinary man and then all at once he had felt himself to be in the presence of the Deity. And it lingered; it did not completely go away.

“I’d know if I was,” Russell pointed out.

“Maybe you do know,” Maggie Walsh said. “Maybe Mr. Morley is right.” She, too, scrutinized Russell, who looked now a little embarrassed. “If you are,” she said, “we will know eventually.”

“Have you ever seen the Walker?” Russell asked her.

“No.”

“I am not he,” Russell said.

“Let’s just wade into the goddam water and see if we can make the other side,” Thugg said impatiently. “If it’s too deep then the hell with it; we’ll turn back. Here I go.” He strode toward the river and into it; his legs disappeared in the opaque blue-gray water. He continued on and, by degrees, the others followed after him.

They reached the far side with no trouble. All across, the river remained shallow. Feeling chagrined the six of them—and Russell—stood together, slapping water from their clothing. It had come up to their waists and no farther.

“Ignatz Thugg,” Frazer said. “Manifestation of the Deity. Equipped to ford rivers and battle typhoons. I never guessed.”

“Up yours,” Thugg said.

To Maggie Walsh, Russell said suddenly, “Pray.”

“For what?”

“For the veil of illusion to rise to expose the reality beneath.”

“May I do it silently?” she asked. Russell nodded. “Thank you,” she said, and turned her back to the group; she stood for a time, hands folded, her head bowed, and then she turned back. “I did as well as I could,” she informed them. She looked happier, now, Seth Morley noticed. Maybe, temporarily, she had forgotten about Susie Smart.

A tremendous pulsation throbbed nearby.

“I can hear it,” Seth Morley said, and felt fear. Enormous, instinctive fear.

A hundred yards away a gray wall rose up into the smoky haze of the midday sky. Pounding, vibrating, the wall creaked as if alive… while, above it, spires squirted wastes in the form of dark clouds. Further wastes, from enormous pipes, gurgled into the river. Gurgled and gurgled and never ceased.

They had found the Building.