The Man In The Maze

EIGHT

When they met again the next morning it was easier for both of them. Rawlins, having slept well under the sleep wire, went to the heart of the maze and found Muller standing beside a tall flat-sided spike of dark metal at the edge of the great plaza.

“What do you make of this?” Muller asked conversationally as Rawlins approached. “There are eight of these, one at each corner. I’ve been watching them for years. They turn. Look here.” Muller pointed to one face of the pylon. Rawlins came close, and when he was ten meters away he picked up Muller’s emanation. Nevertheless, he forced himself to go closer. He had not been so close yesterday except in that one chilling moment when Muller had seized him and pulled him near.

“You see this?” Muller asked, tapping the spike.

“A mark.”

“It took me close to six months to cut it. I used a sliver from the crystalline outcropping set in that wall yonder. Every day for an hour or two I’d scrape away, until there was a visible mark in the metal. I’ve been watching that mark. In the course of one local year it turns all the way around. So the spikes are moving. You can’t see it, but they do. They’re some kind of calendars.”

“Do they—can you—have you ever—”

“You aren’t making sense, boy.”

“I’m sorry.” Rawlins backed away, trying hard to hide the impact of Muller’s nearness. He was flushed and shaken. At five meters the effect was not so agonizing, and he stayed there, making an effort, telling himself that he was developing a tolerance for it.

“You were saying?”

“Is this the only one you’ve been watching?”

“I’ve scratched a few of the others. I’m convinced that they all turn. I haven’t found the mechanism. Underneath this city, you know, there’s some kind of fantastic brain. It’s millions of years old, but it still works. Perhaps it’s some sort of liquid metal with cognition elements floating in it. It turns these pylons and runs the water supply and cleans the streets.”

“And operates the traps.”

“And operates the traps,” Muller said. “But I haven’t been able to find a sign of it. I’ve done some digging here and there, but I find only dirt below. Maybe you archaeologist bastards will locate the city’s brain. Eh? Any clues?”

“I don’t think so,” said Rawlins.

“You don’t sound very definite.”

“I’m not. I haven’t taken part in any of the work within the city.” Rawlins smiled shyly. The quick facial movement annoyed him and drew reproof from Boardman, who pointed out over the monitor circuit that the shy smile always announced an upcoming lie and that it wouldn’t be long before Muller caught on. Rawlins said, “Most of the time I was outside the city, directing the entry operations. And then when I got in, I came right in here. So I don’t know what the others may have discovered so far. If anything.”

“Are they going to rip up the streets?” Muller asked.

“I don’t think so. We don’t dig so much anymore. We use scanners and sensors and probe beams.” Glibly, impressed with his own improvisations, he went on headlong. “Archaeology used to be destructive, of course. To find out what was under a pyramid we had to take the pyramid apart. But now we can do a lot with probes. That’s the new school, you understand, looking into the ground without digging, and thus preserving the monuments of the past for—”

“On one of the planets of Epsilon Indi,” said Muller, “a team of archaeologists completely dismantled an ancient alien burial pavilion about fifteen years ago, and then found it impossible to put the thing back together because they couldn’t comprehend the structural integrity of the building. When they tried, it fell apart and was a total loss. I happened to see the ruins a few months later. You know the case, of course.”

Rawlins didn’t. He said, reddening, “Well, there are always bunglers in any discipline—”

“I hope there are none here. I don’t want the maze damaged. Not that there’s much chance of that. The maze defends itself quite well.” Muller strolled casually away from the pylon. Rawlins eased as the distance between them grew, but Boardman warned him to follow. The tactics for damping Muller’s mistrust included a deliberate and rigorous self-exposure to the emotion field. Muller was not looking back, and said, half to himself, “The cages are closed again.”

“Cages?”

“Look down there—into that street branching out of the plaza.”

Rawlins saw an alcove against a building wall. Rising from the ground were a dozen or more curving bars of white stone that disappeared into the wall at a height of about four meters, forming a kind of cage. He could see a second such cage farther down the street.

Muller said, “There are about twenty of them, arranged symmetrically in the streets off the plaza. Three times since I’ve been here the cages have opened. Those bars slide into the street, somehow, and disappear. The third time was two nights ago. I’ve never seen the cages either open or close, and I’ve missed it again.”

“What do you think the cages were used for?” Rawlins asked.

“To hold dangerous beasts. Or captured enemies. What else would you use a cage for?”

“And when they open now—”

“The city’s still trying to serve its people. There are enemies in the outer zones. The cages are ready in case any of the enemies are captured.”

“You mean us?”

“Yes. Enemies.” Muller’s eyes glittered with sudden paranoid fury; it was alarming how easily he slipped from rational discourse to that cold blaze. “Homo sapiens. The most dangerous, the most ruthless, the most despicable beast in the universe!”

“You say it as if you believe it.”

“I do.”

“Come on,” Rawlins said. “You devoted your life to serving mankind. You can’t possibly believe—”

“I devoted my life,” said Muller slowly, “to serving Richard Muller.” He swung around so that he faced Rawlins squarely. They were only six or seven meters apart. The emanation seemed almost as strong as though they were nose to nose. Muller said, “I gave less of a damn for humanity than you might think, boy. I saw the stars, and I wanted them. I aspired after the condition of a deity. One world wasn’t enough for me. I was hungry to have them all. So I built a career that would take me to the stars. I risked my life a thousand times. I endured fantastic extremes of temperature. I rotted my lungs with crazy gases, and had to be rebuilt from the inside out. I ate foods that would sicken you to hear about. Kids like you worshipped me and wrote essays about my selfless dedication to man, my tireless quest for knowledge. Let me get you straight on that. I’m about as selfless as Columbus and Magellan and Marco Polo. They were great explorers, yes, but they also looked for a fat profit. The profit I wanted was in here. I wanted to stand a hundred kilometers high. I wanted golden statues of me on a thousand worlds. You know poetry? Fame is the spur. That last infirmity of noble mind. Milton. Do you know your Greeks, too? When a man overreaches himself, the gods cast him down. It’s called hybris. I had a bad case of it. When I dropped through the clouds to visit the Hydrans, I felt like a god. Christ, I was a god. And when I left, up through the clouds again. To the Hydrans I’m a god, all right. I thought it then: I’m in their myths, they’ll always tell my story. The mutilated god. The martyred god. The being who came down among them and made them so uncomfortable that they had to fix him. But—”

“The cage—”

“Let me finish!” Muller rapped. “You see, the truth is, I wasn’t a god, only a rotten mortal human being who had delusions of godhood, and the real gods saw to it that I learned my lesson. They decided to remind me of the hairy beast inside the plastic clothing. To call my attention to the animal brain under the lofty cranium. So they arranged it for the Hydrans to perform a clever little surgical trick on my brain, one of their specialities, I guess. I don’t know if the Hydrans were being malicious for the hell of it or whether they were genuinely trying to cure me of a defect, my inability to let my emotions get out to them. Aliens. You figure them out. But they did their little job. And then I came back to Earth. Hero and leper all at once. Stand near me and you get sick. Why? It reminds you that you’re an animal too, because you get a full dose of me. So we go round and round in our endless feedback. You hate me because you learn things about your own soul by getting near me. And I hate you because you must draw back from me. What I am, you see, is a plague carrier, and the plague I carry is the truth. My message is that it’s a lucky thing for humanity that we’re shut up each in his own skull. Because if we had even a little drop of telepathy, even the blurry nonverbal thing I’ve got, we’d be unable to stand each other. Human society would be impossible. The Hydrans can reach right into each other’s mind, and they seem to like it. But we can’t. And that’s why I say that man must be the most despicable beast in the whole universe. He can’t even take the reek of his own kind, soul to soul!”

Rawlins said, “The cage seems to be opening.”

“What? Let me look!” Muller came jostling forward. Unable to step aside rapidly enough, Rawlins received the brunt of the emanation. It was not as painful this time. Images of autumn came to him: withered leaves, dying flowers, a dusty wind, early twilight. More regret than anguish over the shortness of life, the necessity of the condition. Meanwhile Muller, oblivious, was peering intently at the alabaster bars of the cage.

“It’s withdrawn by several centimeters already. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I tried to. But you weren’t listening.”

“No. No. My damned soliloquizing.” Muller chuckled. “Ned, I’ve been waiting years to see this. The cage actually in motion! Look how smoothly it moves, gliding into the ground. This is strange, Ned. It’s never opened twice the same year before, and here it’s opening for the second time this week.”

“Maybe you’ve just failed to notice a lot of the other openings,” Rawlins suggested. “While you slept, maybe—”

“I doubt it. Look at that!”

“Why do you think it’s doing it right now?”

“Enemies all around,” said Muller. “The city accepts me as a native by now. I’ve been here so long. But it must be trying to get you into a cage. The enemy. Man.”

The cage was fully open now. There was no sign of the bars except the row of small openings in the pavement.

Rawlins said, “Have you ever tried to put anything in the cages? Animals?”

“Yes. I dragged a big dead beast inside one. Nothing happened. Then I caught some live little ones. Nothing happened.” He frowned. “I once thought of stepping into the cage myself to see if it would close automatically when it sensed a live human being. But I didn’t. When you’re alone, you don’t try experiments like that.” He paused a moment, “How would you like to help me in a little experiment right now, eh, Ned?”

Rawlins caught his breath. The thin air abruptly seemed like fire in his lungs.

Muller said quietly, “Just step across into the alcove and wait a minute or so. See if the cage closes on you. That would be important to know.”

“And if it does,” Rawlins said, not taking him seriously, “do you have a key to let me out?”

“I have a few weapons. We can always blast you out by lasing the bars.”

“That’s destructive. You warned me not to destroy anything here.”

“Sometimes you destroy in order to learn. Go on, Ned. Step into the alcove.”

Muller’s voice grew flat and strange. He was standing in an odd expectant half-crouch, hands at his sides, fingertips bent inward toward his thighs. As though he’s going to throw me into the cage himself, Rawlins thought.

Boardman said quietly in Rawlins’ ear, “Do as he says, Ned. Get into the cage. Show him that you trust him.”

I trust him, Rawlins told himself, but I don’t trust that cage.

He had uncomfortable visions of the floor of the cage dropping out as soon as the bars were in place: of himself dumped into some underground vat of acid or lake of fire. The disposal pit for trapped enemies. What assurance do I have that it isn’t like that?

“Do it, Ned,” Boardman murmured.

It was a grand, crazy gesture. Rawlins stepped over the row of small openings and stood with his back to the wall. Almost at once the curving bars rose from the ground and locked themselves seamlessly into place above his head. The floor seemed stable. No death-rays lashed out at him. His worst fears were not realized; but he was a prisoner.

“Fascinating,” Muller said. “It must scan for intelligence. When I tried with animals, nothing happened. Dead or alive. What do you make of that, Ned?”

“I’m very glad to have helped your research. I’d be happier if you’d let me out now.”

“I can’t control the movements of the bars.”

“You said you’d lase them open.”

“But why be destructive so fast? Let’s wait, shall we? Perhaps the bars will open again of their own accord. You’re perfectly safe in there. I’ll bring you food, if you have to eat. Will your people miss you if you’re not back by nightfall?”

“I’ll send a message to them,” said Rawlins glumly. “But I hope that I’m out by then.”

“Stay cool,” Boardman advised. “If necessary, we can get you out of that ourselves. It’s important to humor Muller in everything you can until you’ve got real rapport with him. If you hear me, touch your right hand to your chin.”

Rawlins touched his right hand to his chin.

Muller said, “That was pretty brave of you, Ned. Or stupid. I’m sometimes not sure if there’s a distinction. But I’m grateful, anyway. I had to know about those cages.”

“Glad to have been of assistance. You see, human beings aren’t all that monstrous.”

“Not consciously. It’s the sludge inside that’s ugly. Here, let me remind you.” He approached the cage and put his hands on the smooth bars, white as bone. Rawlins felt the emanation intensify. “That’s what’s under the skull. I’ve never really felt it myself, of course. I extrapolate it from the responses of others. It must be foul.”

“I could get used to it,” Rawlins said. He sat down crosslegged. “Did you make any attempt to have it undone when you returned to Earth from Beta Hydri IV?”

“I talked to the shape-up boys. They couldn’t begin to figure out what changes had been made in my neural flow, and so they couldn’t begin to figure out how to fix things. Nice?”

“How long did you stay?”

“A few months. Long enough to discover that there wasn’t one human being I knew who didn’t turn green after a few minutes of close exposure to me. I started to stew in self-pity, and in self-loathing, which is about the same thing. I was going to kill myself, you know, to put the world out of its misery.”

Rawlins said, “I don’t believe that. Some men just aren’t capable of suicide. You’re one who isn’t.”

“So I discovered, and thank you. I didn’t kill myself, you notice. I tried some fancy drugs, and then I tried drink, and then I tried living dangerously. And at the end of it I was still alive. I was in and out of four neuropsychiatric wards in a single month, I tried wearing a padded lead helmet to shield the thought radiations. It was like trying to catch neutrinos in a bucket. I caused a panic in a licensed house on Venus. All the girls stampeded out stark naked once the screaming began.” Muller spat. “You know, I could always take society or leave it. When I was among people I was happy, I was cordial, I had the social graces. I wasn’t a slick sunny article like you, all overflowing with kindness and nobility, but I interacted with others. I related, I got along. Then I could go on a trip for a year and a half and not see or speak to anyone, and that was all right too. But once I found out that I was shut off from society for good, I discovered that I had needed it after all. But that’s over. I outgrew the need, boy. I can spend a hundred years alone and never miss one soul. I’ve trained myself to see humanity as humanity sees me—something sickening, a damp hunkering crippled thing best avoided. To hell with you all. I don’t owe any of you anything, love included. I have no obligations. I could leave you to rot in that cage, Ned, and never feel upset about it. I could pass that cage twice a day and smile at your skull. It isn’t that I hate you, either you personally or the whole galaxy full of your kind. It’s simply that I despise you. You’re nothing to me. Less than nothing. You’re dirt. I know you now, and you know me.”

“You speak as if you belong to an alien race,” Rawlins said in wonder.

“No. I belong to the human race. I’m the most human being there is, because I’m the only one who can’t hide his humanity. You feel it? You pick up the ugliness? What’s inside me is also inside you. Go to the Hydrans and they’ll help you liberate it, and then people will run from you as they run from me. I speak for man. I tell the truth. I’m the skull beneath the face, boy. I’m the hidden intestines. I’m all the garbage we pretend isn’t there, all the filthy animal stuff, the lusts, the little hates, the sicknesses, the envies. And I’m the one who posed as a god. Hybris. I was reminded of what I really am.”

Rawlins said quietly, “Why did you decide to come to Lemnos?”

“A man named Charles Boardman put the idea into my head.” Rawlins recoiled in surprise at the mention of the name. Muller said, “You know him?”

“Well, yes. Of course. He—he’s a very important man in the government.”

“You might say that. It was Boardman who sent me to Beta Hydri IV, you know? Oh, he didn’t trick me into it, he didn’t have to persuade me in any of his slippery ways. He knew me well enough. He simply played on my ambitions. There’s a world there with aliens on it, he said, and we want a man to visit it. Probably a suicide mission, but it would be man’s first contact with another intelligent species, and are you interested? So of course I went. He knew I couldn’t resist something like that. And afterward, when I came back this way, he tried to duck me a while—either because he couldn’t abide being near me or because he couldn’t abide his own guilt. And finally I caught up with him and I said, look at me, Charles, this is how I am now, where can I go, what shall I do? I got up close to him. This far away. His face changed color. He had to take pills. I could see the nausea in his eyes. And he reminded me about the maze on Lemnos.”

“Why?”

“He offered it as a place to hide. I don’t know if he was being kind or cruel. I suppose he thought I’d be killed on my way into the maze—a decent finish for my sort of chap, or at any rate better than taking a gulp of carniphage and melting down a sewer. But of course I told Boardman I wouldn’t think of it. I wanted to cover my trail. I blew up and insisted that the last thing in the world I’d do was come here. Then I spent a month on the skids in Under New Orleans, and when I surfaced again I rented a ship and came here. Using maximum diversionary tactics to insure that nobody found out my true destination. Boardman was right. This was the place to come.”

Rawlins said, “How did you get inside the maze?”

“Through sheer bad luck.”

“Bad luck?”

“I was trying to die in a blaze of glory,” said Muller. “I didn’t give a damn if I survived the maze or not. I just plunged right in and headed for the middle.”

“I can’t believe that!”

“Well, it’s true, more or less. The trouble was, Ned, I’m a survival type. It’s an innate gift, maybe even something paranormal. I have unusual reflexes. I have a kind of sixth sense, as they say. Also my urge to stay alive is well developed. Besides that, I had mass detectors and some other useful equipment. So I came into the maze, and whenever I saw a corpse lying about I looked a little sharper than usual, and I stopped and rested when I felt my visualization of the place beginning to waver. I fully expected to be killed in Zone H. I wanted it. But it was my luck to make it where everybody else failed because I didn’t care one way or the other, I suppose. The element of tension was removed. I moved like a cat, everything twitching at once, and I got past the tough parts of the maze somehow, much to my disappointment, and here I am.”

“Have you ever gone outside it?”

“No. Now and then I go as far as Zone E, where your friends are. Twice I’ve been to F. Mostly I remain in the three inner zones. I’ve furnished things quite nicely for myself. I have a radiation locker for my meat supply, and a building I use as my library, and a place where I keep my woman cubes, and I do some taxidermy in one of the other buildings. I hunt quite a lot, also. And I examine the maze and try to analyze its workings. I’ve dictated several cubes of memoirs on my findings. I bet you archaeologist fellows would love to run through those cubes.”

“I’m sure we’d learn a great deal from them,” Rawlins said.

“I know you would. I’d destroy them before I’d let any of you see them. Are you getting hungry, boy?”

“A little.”

“Don’t go away. I’ll bring you some lunch.”

Muller strode toward the nearby buildings and disappeared. Rawlins said quietly, “This is awful, Charles. He’s obviously out of his mind.”

“Don’t be sure of it,” Boardman replied. “No doubt nine years of isolation can have effects on a man’s stability, and Muller wasn’t all that stable the last time I saw him. But he may be playing a game with you—pretending to be crazy to test your good faith.”

“And if he isn’t?”

“In terms of what we want from him, it doesn’t matter in the slightest if he’s insane. It might even help.”

“I don’t understand that.”

“You don’t need to,” said Boardman evenly. “Just relax. You’re doing fine so far.”

Muller returned, carrying a platter of meat and a handsome crystal beaker of water. “Best I can offer,” he said, pushing a chunk of meat between the bars. “A local beast. You eat solid food, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“At your age, I guess you would. What did you say you were, twenty-five?”

“Twenty-three.”

“That’s even worse.” Muller gave him the water. It had an agreeable flavor, or lack of flavor. Muller sat quietly before the cage, eating. Rawlins noticed that the effect of his emanation no longer seemed so disturbing, even at a range of less than five meters. Obviously one builds a tolerance to it, he thought. If one wants to make the attempt.

Rawlins said, after a while, “Would you come out and meet my companions in a few days?”

“Absolutely not.”

“They’d be eager to talk to you.”

“I have no interest in talking to them. I’d sooner talk to wild beasts.”

“You talk to me,” Rawlins pointed out.

“For the novelty of it. And because your father was a good friend. And because, as human beings go, boy, you’re reasonably acceptable. But I don’t want to be thrust into any miscellaneous mass of bug-eyed archaeologists.”

“Possibly meet two or three of them,” Rawlins suggested. “Get used to the idea of being among people again.”

“No.”

“I don’t see—”

Muller cut him off. “Wait a minute. Why should I get used to the idea of being among people again?”

Rawlins said uneasily, “Well, because there are people here, because it’s not a good idea to get too isolated from—”

“Are you planning some sort of trick? Are you going to catch me and pull me out of this maze? Come on, come on, boy, what’s in back of that little mind of yours? What motive do you have for softening me up for human contact?”

Rawlins faltered. In the awkward silence Boardman spoke quickly, supplying the guile he lacked, prompting him. Rawlins listened and did his best.

He said, “You’re making me out to be a real schemer, Dick. But I swear to you I’ve got nothing sinister in mind. I admit I’ve been softening you up a little, jollying you, trying to make friends with you, and I guess I’d better tell you why.”

“I guess you’d better!”

“It’s for the archaeological survey’s sake. We can spend only a few weeks here. You’ve been here—what is it, nine years? You know so much about this place, Dick, and I think it’s unfair of you to keep it to yourself. So what I was hoping, I guess, was that I could get you to ease up, first become friendly with me, and then maybe come to Zone E, talk to the others, answer their questions, explain what you know about the maze—”

“Unfair to keep it to myself?”

“Well, yes. To hide knowledge is a sin.”

“Is it fair of mankind to call me unclean, and run away from me?”

“That’s a different matter,” Rawlins said. “It’s beyond all fairness. It’s a condition you have—an unfortunate condition that you didn’t deserve, and everyone is quite sorry that it came upon you, but on the other hand, you surely must realize that from the viewpoint of other human beings it’s rather difficult to take a detached attitude toward your—your—”

“Toward my stink,” Muller supplied. “All right. It’s rather difficult to stand my presence. Therefore I willingly refrain from inflicting it upon your friends. Get it out of your head that I’m going to speak to them or sip tea with them or have anything at all to do with them. I have separated myself from the human race and I stay separated. And it’s irrelevant that I’ve granted you the privilege of bothering me. Also, while I’m instructing you, I want to remind you that my unfortunate condition was not undeserved. I earned it by poking my nose into places where I didn’t belong, and by thinking I was superhuman for being able to go to such places. Hybris. I told you the word.”

Boardman continued to instruct him. Rawlins, with the sour taste of lies on his tongue, went on, “I can’t blame you for being bitter, Dick. But I still think it isn’t right for you to withhold information from us. I mean, look back on your own exploring days. If you landed on a planet, and someone had vital information you had come to find, wouldn’t you make every effort to get that information—even though the other person had certain private problems which—”

“I’m sorry,” said Muller frostily, “I’m beyond caring,” and he walked away, leaving Rawlins alone in the cage with two chunks of meat and the nearly empty beaker of water.

When Muller was out of sight Boardman said, “He’s a touchy one, all right. But I didn’t expect sweetness from him. You’re getting to him, Ned. You’re just the right mixture of guile and naiveté.”

“And I’m in a cage.”

“That’s no problem. We can send a drone to release you if the cage doesn’t open by itself soon.”

“Muller isn’t going to work out,” Rawlins murmured. “He’s full of hate. It trickles out of him everywhere. We’ll never get him to cooperate. I’ve never seen such hate in one man.”

“You don’t know what hate is,” said Boardman. “And neither does he. I tell you everything is moving well. There are bound to be some setbacks, but the fact that he’s talking to you at all is the important thing. He doesn’t want to be full of hate. Give him half a chance to get off his frozen position and he will.”

“When will you send the probe to release me?”

“Later,” said Boardman. “If we have to.”

Muller did not return. The afternoon grew darker and the air became chilly. Rawlins huddled uncomfortably in the cage. He tried to imagine this city when it had been alive, when this cage had been used to display prisoners captured in the maze. In the eye of his mind he saw a throng of the city-builders, short and thick, with dense coppery fur and greenish skin, swinging their long arms and pointing toward the cage. And in the cage huddled a thing like a giant scorpion, with waxy claws that scratched at the stone paving blocks, and fiery eyes, and a savage tail that awaited anyone who came too close. Harsh music sounded through the city. Alien laughter. The warm musky reek of the city-builders. Children spitting at the thing in the cage. Their spittle like flame. Bright moonlight, dancing shadows. A trapped creature, hideous and malevolent, lonely for its own kind, its hive on a world of Alphecca or Markab, where tailed waxy things moved in shining tunnels. For days the city-builders came, mocked, reproached. The creature in the cage grew sick of their massive bodies and their intertwining spidery fingers, of their flat faces and ugly tusks. And a day came when the floor of the maze gave way, for they were tired of the outworlder captive, and down he went, tail lashing furiously, down into a pit of knives.

It was night. Rawlins had not heard from Boardman for several hours. He had not seen Muller since early afternoon. Animals were prowling the plaza, mostly small ones, all teeth and claws. Rawlins had come unarmed today. He was ready to trample on any beast that slipped between the bars of his cage.

Hunger and cold assailed him. He searched the darkness for Muller. This had ceased to be a joke.

“Can you hear me?” he said to Boardman.

“We’re going to get you out soon.”

“Yes, but when?”

“We sent a probe in, Ned.”

“It shouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes for a probe to reach me. These zones aren’t hazardous.”

Boardman paused. “Muller intercepted the probe and destroyed it an hour ago.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that?”

“We’re sending several drones at once,” Boardman told him. “Muller’s bound to overlook at least one of them. Everything’s perfectly all right, Ned. You’re in no danger.”

“Until something happens,” Rawlins said gloomily.

But he did not press the point. Cold, hungry, he slouched against the wall and waited. He saw a small lithe beast stalk and kill a much bigger animal a hundred meters away in the plaza. He watched scavengers scurrying in to rip away slabs of bloody meat. He listened to the sounds of rending and tearing. His view was partially obstructed, and he craned his neck to search for the drone probe that would set him free. No probe appeared.

He felt like a sacrificial victim, staked out for the kill.

The scavengers had finished their work. They came padding across the plaza toward him—little weasel-shaped beasts with big tapering heads and paddle-shaped paws from which yellow recurving claws protruded. Their eyes were red in yellow fields. They studied him with interest, solemnly, thoughtfully. Blood, thick and purplish, was smeared over their muzzles.

They drew nearer. A long narrow snout intruded between two bars of his cage. Rawlins kicked at it. The snout withdrew. To his left, another jutted through. Then there were three snouts.

And then the scavengers began slipping into the cage on all sides.