The Man In The Maze

1

Within the maze the air was somehow warmer and sweeter. The walls must cut off the winds, Rawlins thought. He walked carefully, listening to the voice at his ear.

Turn left… three paces… put your right foot beside the black stripe on the pavement… pivot… turn left… jour paces… ninety-degree turn to the right… immediately make a ninety-degree turn to the right again.

It was like a children’s street game—step on a crack, break your mother’s back. The stakes were higher here, though. He moved cautiously, feeling death nipping at his heels. What sort of people would build a place like this? Ahead an energy flare spurted across the path. The computer called off the timing for him. One, two, three, four, five, GO! Rawlins went.

Safe.

On the far side he halted flatfooted, and looked back. Board-man was keeping pace with him, unslowed by age. Boardman waved and winked. He went through the patterns, too. One, two, three, jour, five, GO! Boardman crossed the place of the energy flare.

“Should we stop here for a while?” Rawlins asked. “Don’t be patronizing to the old man, Ned. Keep moving. I’m not tired yet.”

“We have a tough one up ahead.”

“Let’s take it, then.”

Rawlins could not help looking at the bones. Dry skeletons ages old, and some bodies that were not old at all. Beings of many races had perished here.

What if I die in the next ten minutes?

Bright lights were flashing now, on and off many times a second. Boardman, five meters behind him, became an eerie figure moving in disconnected strides. Rawlins passed his own hand before his face to see the jerky movements. It was as though every other fraction of a second had simply been punched out of his awareness.

The computer told him: Walk ten paces and halt. One. Two. Three. Walk ten paces and halt. One. Two. Three. Walk ten paces and halt. One. Two. Three. Proceed quickly to end of ramp.

Rawlins could not remember what would happen to him if he failed to keep to the proper timing. Here in Zone H the nightmares were so thick that he could not keep them straight in his mind. Was this the place where a ton of stone fell on the unwary? Where the walls came together? Where a cobweb-dainty bridge delivered victims to a lake of fire?

His estimated lifespan at this point was two hundred five years. He wanted to have most of those years. I am too uncomplicated to die yet, Ned Rawlins thought.

He danced to the computer’s tune, past the lake of fire, past the clashing walls.

2

Something with long teeth perched on the lintel of the door ahead. Carefully Charles Boardman unslung the gun from his backpack and cut in the proximity-responsive target finder. He keyed it for thirty kilograms of mass and downward, at fifty meters. “I’ve got it,” he told Rawlins, and fired.

The energy bolt splashed against the wall. Streaks of shimmering green sprouted along the rich purple. The beast leaped, limbs outstretched in a final agony, and fell. From somewhere came three small scavengers that began to rip it to pieces.

Boardman chuckled. It didn’t take much skill to hunt with proximity-responsives, he had to admit. But it was a long time since he had hunted at all. When he was thirty, he had spent a long week in the Sahara Preserve as the youngest of a party of eight businessmen and government consultants on a hunt. He had done it for the political usefulness of making the trip. He had hated it all: the steaming air in his nostrils, the blaze of the sun, the tawny beasts dead against the sand, the boasting, the wanton slaughter. At thirty one is not very tolerant of the mindless sports of the middle-aged. Yet he had stayed, because he thought it would be useful to him to become friendly with these men. It had been useful. He had never gone hunting again. But this was different, even with proximity-responsives. This was no sport.

3

Images played on a golden screen bracketed to a wall near the inner end of Zone H. Rawlins saw his father’s face take form, coalesce with an underlying pattern of bars and crosses, burst into flame. The screen was externally primed; what it showed was in the eye of the beholder. The drones, passing this point, had seen only the blank screen. Rawlins watched the image of a girl appear. Maribeth Chambers, sixteen years old, sophomore in Our Lady of Mercies High School, Rockford, Illinois. Maribeth Chambers smiled shyly and began to remove her clothes. Her hair was silken and soft, a cloud of gold; her eyes were blue, her lips were full and moist. She unhinged her breast-binders and revealed two firm upthrust white globes tipped with dots of flame. They were high and close together, as though no gravity worked on them, and the valley between them was six inches deep and a sixteenth of an inch in breadth. Maribeth Chambers blushed and bared the lower half of her body. She wore small garnets set in the dimples just above her plump pink buttocks. A crucifix of ivory dangled from a golden chain around her hips. Rawlins tried not to look at the screen. The computer directed his feet; he shuffled along obediently.

“I am the Resurrection and the Life,” said Maribeth Chambers in a husky, passionate voice.

She beckoned with the tips of three fingers. She gave him a bedroom wink. She crooned sweet obscenities.

Step around in back here, big boy! Let me show you a good time…

She giggled. She wriggled. She heaved her shoulders and made her breasts ring like tolling bells.

Her skin turned deep green. Her eyes slid about in her face. Her lower lip stretched forth like a shovel. Her thighs began to melt. Patterns of flame danced on the screen. Rawlins heard deep throbbing ponderous chords from an invisible organ. He listened to the whispering of the brain that guided him and went past the screen unharmed.

4

The screen showed abstract patterns: a geometry of power, rigid marching lines and frozen figures. Charles Boardman paused to admire it for a moment. Then he moved on.

5

A forest of whirling knives near the inner border of Zone H.

6

The heat grew strangely intense. One had to tiptoe over the pavement. This was troublesome because none who had passed this way before had experienced it. Did the route vary? Could the city introduce variations? How hot would it get? Where would the zone of warmth end? Did cold lie beyond? Would they live to reach Zone E? Was Richard Muller doing this to prevent them from entering?

7

Maybe he recognizes Boardman and is trying to kill him. There is that possibility. Muller has every reason to hate Boardman, and he has had no chance to undergo social adjustment. Maybe I should move faster and open some space between Boardman and myself. It seems to be getting hotter. On the other hand, he would accuse me of being cowardly. And disloyal.

Maribeth Chambers would never have done those things.

Do nuns still shave their heads?

8

Boardman found the distortion screen deep inside Zone G perhaps the worst of all. He was not afraid of the dangers; Marshall was the only man who had failed to get past the screen safely. He was afraid of entering a place where the evidence of his senses did not correspond to the real universe. Boardman depended on his senses. He was wearing his third set of retinas. You can make no meaningful evaluations of the universe without the confidence that you are seeing it clearly.

Now he was within the field of the distortion screen.

Parallel lines met here. The triangular figures emblazoned on the moist, quivering walls were constructed entirely of obtuse angles. A river ran sideways through the valley. The stars were quite close, and the moons orbited one another.

What we now must do is close our eyes and not be deceived.

Left foot. Right foot. Left foot. Right foot. Move to the left slightly—slide your foot. More. More. A trifle more. Back toward the right. That’s it Start walking again.

Forbidden fruit tempted him. All his life he had tried hard to see clearly. The lure of distortions was irresistible. Boardman halted, planting each foot firmly. If you hope to get out of this, he told himself, you will keep your eyes closed. If you open your eyes you will be misled and go to your death. You have no right to die foolishly here after so many men have struggled so hard to teach you how to survive.

Boardman remained quite still. The silent voice of the computer, sounding a little waspish, tried to prod him on.

“Wait,” said Boardman quietly. “I can look around a little if I don’t move. That’s the important thing, not to move. You can’t get into trouble if you don’t move.”

The ship’s brain reminded Mm. of the geyser of flame that had sent Marshall to his death.

Boardman opened his eyes.

He was careful not to move. All about him he saw the negation of geometry. This was the inside of the Klein bottle, looking out. Disgust rose like a green column within him.

You are eighty years old and you know how the universe should look. Close your eyes now, C.B. Close your eyes and move along. You’re taking undue risks.

First he sought Ned Rawlins. The boy was twenty meters ahead of him, shuffling slowly past the screen. Eyes closed? Of course. All of them. Ned was an obedient boy. Or a frightened one. He wants to live through this, and he’d rather not see how the universe looks through a distortion screen. I’d like to have had a son like that. But I’d have changed him by this time.

Boardman began to lift his right leg, checked himself, reimplanted it on the pavement. Just ahead, pulsations of golden light leaped in the air, taking now the form of a swan, now the form of a tree. Ned Rawlins’ left shoulder rose too high. His back was humped. One leg moved forward and the other moved backward. Through golden mists Boardman saw the corpse of Marshall stapled to the wall. Marshall’s eyes were wide open. Were there no bacteria of decay on Lemnos? Looking into those eyes Boardman saw his own curving reflection, all nose, no mouth. He closed his eyes.

The computer, relieved, directed him onward.

9

A sea of blood. A cup of lymph.

10

To die, not having loved—

11

This is the gateway to Zone F. I am now leaving death’s other kingdom. Where is my passport? Do I need a visa? I have nothing to declare. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

3

A chill wind blowing out of tomorrow.

7

The boys camped in F were supposed to come out and meet us and lead us through. I hope they don’t bother. We can make it without them. We just have to get past the screen, and we’re all right.

5

I’ve dreamed this route so often. And now I hate it, even though it’s beautiful. You have to admit that: it’s beautiful. And probably it looks most beautiful just before it kills you.

3

Maribeth’s thighs have small puckers in the flesh. She will be fat before she’s thirty.

10

You do all sorts of things in a career. I could have stopped long ago. I have never read Rousseau. I have not had time for Donne. I know nothing of Kant. If I live I will read them now. I make this vow, being of sound mind and body and eighty years of age, I Ned Rawlins will I Richard Muller will read I will I I I will read I Charles Boardman

13

14

On the far side of the gateway Rawlins stopped short and asked the computer if it was safe for him to squat down and rest. The brain said that it was. Gingerly, Rawlins lowered himself, rocked on his heels a moment, touched his knee to the cool pebble-textured pavement. He looked back. Behind him, colossal blocks of stone, set without mortar and fitted to a perfect truing, were piled fifty meters high, flanking a tall narrow aperture through which the solid form of Charles Boardman now was passing. Boardman looked sweaty and flustered. Rawlins found that fascinating. He had never seen the old man’s smugness pierced before. But they had never come through this maze before, either.

Rawlins himself was none too steady. Metabolic poisons boiled in the tubes and channels of his body. He was drenched with perspiration so thoroughly that his clothing was working overtime to get rid of it, distilling the moisture and volatilizing the substratum of chemical compounds. It was too early to rejoice. Brewster had died here in Zone F, thinking that his troubles were over once he got past the dangers of G. Well, they were.

“Resting?” Boardman asked. His voice came out thin and unfocussed.

“Why not? I’ve been working hard, Charles.” Rawlins grinned unconvincingly. “So have you. The computer says it’s safe to stay here a while. I’ll make room.”

Boardman came alongside and squatted. Rawlins had to steady him as he balanced before kneeling.

Rawlins said, “Muller came this way alone and made it.”

“Muller was always an extraordinary man.”

“How do you think he did it?”

“Why don’t you ask him?”

“I mean to,” Rawlins said. “Perhaps by this time tomorrow I’ll be talking to him.”

“Perhaps. We should go on now.”

“If you say so.”

“They’ll be coming out to meet us soon. They should have fixes on us by now. We must be showing up on their mass detectors. Up, Ned. Up.”

They stood. Once again Rawlins led the way.

In Zone F things were less cluttered but also less attractive. The prevailing mood of the architecture was taut, with a fussy line that generated a tension of mismatched objects. Though he knew that traps were fewer here, Rawlins still had the sensation that the ground was likely to open beneath him at any given moment. The air was cooler here. It had the same sharp taste as the air on the open plain. At each of the street intersections rose immense concrete tubs in which jagged, feathery plants were standing.

“Which is the worst part for you so far?” Rawlins asked.

“The distortion screen,” said Boardman.

“That wasn’t so bad—unless you feel peculiar about walking through stuff this dangerous with your eyes closed. You know, one of those little tigers could have jumped us then, and we wouldn’t have known about it until we felt the teeth in us.”

“I peeked,” said Boardman.

“In the distortion zone?”

“Just for a moment. I couldn’t resist it, Ned. I won’t try to describe what I saw, but it was one of the strangest experiences of my life.”

Rawlins smiled. He wanted to congratulate Boardman on having done something silly and dangerous and human, but he didn’t dare. He said, “What did you do? Just stand still and peek and then move on? Did you have any close escapes?”

“Once. I forgot myself and started to take a step, but I didn’t follow through. I kept my feet planted and looked around.”

“Maybe I’ll try that on the way out,” Rawlins said. “Just one little look can’t hurt.”

“How do you know the screen’s effective in the other direction?”

Rawlins frowned. “I never considered that. We haven’t tried to go outward through the maze yet. Suppose it’s altogether different coming out? We don’t have charts for that direction. What if we all get clipped coming out?”

“We’ll use the probes again,” said Boardman. “Don’t worry about that. When we’re ready to go out, we’ll bring a bunch of drones to the camp in Zone F here and check the exit route the same way we checked the entry route.”

After a while Rawlins said, “Why should there be any traps on the outward route, anyway? That means the builders of the maze were locking themselves in as well as locking enemies out. Why would they do that?”

“Who knows, Ned? They were aliens.”

“Aliens. Yes.”

15

Boardman remembered that the conversation was incomplete. He tried to be affable. They were comrades in the face of danger. He said, “And which has been the worst place for you so far?”

“That other screen farther back,” Rawlins said. “The one that shows you all the nasty, crawling stuff inside your own mind.”

“Which screen is that?”

“Toward the inside of Zone H. It was a golden screen, fastened to a high wall with metal strips. I looked at it and saw my father, for a couple of seconds. And then I saw a girl I once knew, a girl who became a nun. On the screen she was taking her clothes off. I guess that reveals something about my unconscious, eh? Like a pit of snakes. But whose isn’t?”

“I didn’t see any such things.”

“You couldn’t miss it. It was-oh, about fifty meters after the place where you shot the first animal. A little to your left, halfway up the wall, a rectangular screen—a trapezoidal screen, really, with bright white metal borders, and colors moving on it, shapes—”

“Yes. That one. Geometrical shapes.”

“I saw Maribeth getting undressed,” Rawlins said, sounding confused. “And you saw geometrical shapes?”

16

Zone F could be deadly too. A small pearly blister in the ground opened and a stream of gleaming pellets rolled out. They flowed toward Rawlins. They move with the malevolent determination of a stream of hungry soldier ants. They stung the flesh. He trampled a number of them, but in his annoyance and fervor he almost came too close to a suddenly flashing blue light. He kicked three pellets toward the light and they melted.

17

Boardman had already had much more than enough.

18

Their elapsed time out from the entrance to the maze was only one hour and forty-eight minutes, although it seemed much longer than that. The route through Zone F led into a pink-walled room where jets of steam blew up from concealed vents. At the far end of the room was an irising slot. If you did not step through it with perfect timing, you would be crushed. The slot gave access to a long low-vaulted passageway, oppressively warm and close, whose walls were blood-red in color and pulsated sickeningly. Beyond the passageway was an open plaza in which six slabs of white metal stood on end like waiting swords. A fountain hurled water a hundred meters into the air. Flanking the plaza were three towers with many windows, all of different sizes. Prismatic spotlights played against the windows. No windows were broken. On the steps of one of the towers lay the articulated skeleton of a creature close to ten meters long. The bubble of what was undoubtedly a space helmet covered its skull.

19

Alton, Antonelli, Cameron, Greenfield, and Stein constituted the Zone F camp, the relief base for the forward group. Antonelli and Stein went back to the plaza in the middle of F and found Rawlins and Boardman there.

“It’s just a short way on,” Stein said. “Would you like to rest a few minutes, Mr. Boardman?”

Boardman glowered. They went on.

Antonelli said, “Davis, Ottavio, and Reynolds passed on to E this morning when Alton, Cameron, and Greenfield reached us. Petrocelli and Walker are reconnoitering along the inner edge of E and looking a little way into D. They say it looks a lot better in there.”

“I’ll flay them if they go in,” Boardman said. Antonelli smiled worriedly.

The relief base consisted of a pair of extrusion domes side by side in a little open spot at the edge of a garden. The site had been thoroughly researched and no surprises were expected. Rawlins entered one of the domes and took his shoes off. Cameron handed him a cleanser. Greenfield gave him a food pack. Rawlins felt ill at ease among these men. They had not had the opportunities in life that had been given him. They did not have proper educations. They would not live as long, even if they avoided all of the dangers to which they were exposed. None of them had blond hair or blue eyes, and probably they could not afford to get shape-ups that would give them those qualifications. And yet they seemed happy. Perhaps it was because they never had to stop to confront the moral implications of luring Richard Muller out of the maze.

Boardman came into the dome. It amazed Rawlins how durable and tireless the old man was. Boardman said, laughing, “Tell Captain Hosteen he lost his bet. We made it.”

“What bet?” asked Antonelli.

Greenfield said, “We think that Muller must be tracking us somehow. His movements have been very regular. He’s occupying the back quadrant of Zone A, as far from the entrance as possible—if the entrance is the one he uses—and he swings around in a little arc balancing the advance party.”

Boardman said, “Hosteen gave three to one we wouldn’t get here. I heard him.” To Cameron, who was a communications technician, Boardman said, “Do you think it’s possible that Muller is using some kind of scanning system?”

“It’s altogether likely.”

“Good enough to see faces?”

“Maybe some of the time. We really can’t be sure. He’s had a lot of time to learn how to use this maze, sir.”

“If he sees my face,” said Boardman, “we might as well just go home without bothering. I never thought he might be scanning us. Who’s got the thermoplastics? I need a new face fast.”

20

He did not try to explain. But when he was finished he had a long sharp nose, lean, downcurving lips, and a witch’s chin. It was not an attractive face. But it was not the face of Charles Board-man either.

21

After a night of unsound sleep Rawlins prepared himself to go on to the advance camp in Zone E. Boardman would not be going with him, but they would be in direct contact at all times now. Boardman would see what Rawlins saw, and hear what Rawlins heard. And in a tiny voice Boardman would be able to convey instructions to him.

The morning was dry and wintry. They tested the communications circuits. Rawlins stepped out of the dome and walked ten paces, standing alone looking inward and watching the orange glow of daylight on the pockmarked porcelain-like walls before him. The walls were deep black against the lustrous green of the sky.

Boardman said, “Lift your right hand if you hear me, Ned.” Rawlins lifted his right hand. “Now speak to me.”

“Where did you say Richard Muller was born?”

“On Earth. I hear you very well.”

“Where on Earth?”

“The North American Directorate, somewhere.”

“I’m from there,” Rawlins said.

“Yes, I know. I think Muller is from the western part of the continent. I can’t be sure. I’ve spent only a very little time on Earth, Ned, and I can’t remember the geography. If it’s important, I can have the ship look it up.”

“Maybe later,” said Rawlins. “Should I get started now?”

“Listen to me, first. We’ve been very busy getting ourselves inside this place, and I don’t want you to forget that everything we’ve done up to this point has been a preliminary to our real purpose. We’re here for Muller, remember.”

“Would I forget?”

“We’ve been preoccupied with matters of personal survival. That can tend to blur your perspective: whether you yourself, individually, live or die. Now we take a larger view. What Richard Muller has, whether it’s a gift or a curse, is of high potential value and it’s your job to gain use of it, Ned. The fate of galaxies lies on what happens in the next few days between you and Muller. Eons will be reshaped. Billions yet unborn will have their lives altered for good or ill by the events at hand.”

“You sound absolutely serious, Charles.”

“I absolutely am. Sometimes there comes a moment when all the booming foolish inflated words mean something, and this is one of those moments. You’re standing at a crossroads in galactic history. And therefore, Ned, you’re going to go in there and lie and cheat and perjure and connive, and I expect that your conscience is going to be very sore for a while, and you’ll hate yourself extravagantly for it, and eventually you’ll realize that you’ve done a deed of heroism. The test of your communications equipment is now ended. Get back inside here and let’s ready you to march,”

22

He went alone only a short distance this time. Stein and Alton accompanied him as far as the gateway to Zone E. There were no incidents. They pointed in the right direction, and he passed through a pinwheeling shower of coruscating azure sparks to enter the austere funereal zone beyond. As he negotiated the uphill ramp of the entrance, he caught sight of a socket mounted in an upright stone column. Within the darkness of the socket was something mobile and gleaming that could have been an eye.

“I think I’ve found part of Muller’s scanning system,” Rawlins reported. “There’s a thing watching me in the wall.”

“Cover it with your spray,” Boardman suggested.

“I think he’d interpret that as a hostile act. Why would an archaeologist mutilate a feature like that?”

“Yes. A point. Proceed.”

There was less of an air of menace about Zone E. It was made up of dark, tightly-compacted low buildings which clung together like bothered turtles. Rawlins could see different topography ahead, high walls, and a shining tower. Each of the zones was so different from all the others that he began to think they had been built at different times: a core of residential sectors, and then a gradual accretion of trap-laden outer rings as the enemies grew more troublesome. It was the sort of thought an archaeologist might have; he filed it for use.

He walked a little way, and saw the shadowy figure of Walker coming toward him. Walker was lean, dour, cool. He claimed to have been married several times to the same wife. He was about forty, a career man.

“Glad you made it, Rawlins. Go easy there on your left. That wall is hinged.”

“Everything all right here?”

“More or less. We lost Petrocelli about an hour ago.”

Rawlins stiffened. “This zone is supposed to be safe!”

“It isn’t. It’s riskier than F, and nearly as bad as G. We underestimated it when we were using the probes. There’s no real reason why the zones have to get safer toward the middle, is there? This is one of the worst.”

“To lull us,” Rawlins suggested. “False security.”

“You bet. Come on, now. Follow me and don’t use your brain too much. There’s no value in originality in here. You go the way the path goes, or you don’t go anywhere.”

Rawlins followed. He saw no apparent danger, but he jumped where Walker jumped, and detoured where Walker detoured. Not too far on lay the inner camp. He found Davis, Ottavio, and Reynolds there, and also the upper half of Petrocelli. “We’re awaiting burial orders,” said Ottavio. Below the waist there was nothing left. “Hosteen’s going to tell us to bring him out, I bet.”

“Cover him, at least,” Rawlins told him.

“You going on into D today?” Walker asked.

“I may as well.”

“We’ll tell you what to avoid. It’s new. That’s where Petrocelli got it, right near the entrance to D, maybe five meters this side. You trip a field of some kind and it cuts you in half. The drones didn’t trip it at all.”

“Suppose it cuts everything in half that goes by?” Rawlins asked. “Except drones.”

“It didn’t cut Muller,” Walker said. “It won’t cut you if you step around it. We’ll show you how.”

“And beyond?”

“That’s all up to you.”

23

Boardman said, “If you’re tired, stay here for the night.”

“I’d rather go on.”

“You’ll be going alone, Ned. Why not be rested?”

“Ask the brain for a reading on me. See where my fatigue level is. I’m ready to go onward.”

Boardman checked. They were doing full telemetry on Rawlins; they knew his pulse rate, respiration count, hormone levels, and many more intimate things. The computer saw no reason why Rawlins could not continue without pausing.

“All right,” said Boardman, “go on.”

“I’m about to enter Zone D, Charles. This is where Petrocelli got it. I see the tripline—very subtle, very well hidden. Here I go past it. Yes. Ye-es. This is Zone D. I’m stopping and letting the brain get my bearings for me. Zone D looks a little cozier than E. The crossing shouldn’t take long.”

24

The auburn flames that guarded Zone C were frauds.

25

Rawlins said softly, “Tell the galaxies that their fate is in good hands. I should find Muller in fifteen minutes.”