R.W. IV - The Magic Labyrinth

by Philip José Farmer

"I should kill the computer right now," Loga said. "I've waited too long as it is. For all I know, my mother's soul was collected today."

  "Wait!" Frigate said. "I've got an idea! You said you'd reopened your private resurrection chambers when you got here. Can they be fixed up so that we could be resurrected in them, too?"

  "Why, yes. They could be. The resurrector catchers operate on a slightly different frequency from that of the computer. I had my wathan and Tringu's tuned to it. I could do the same for you. But why?"

  Frigate started to explain, but Loga, Burton, and Nur comprehended at the same time what he meant to say.

  They would go down in force, leaving several behind to do the necessary supervision. They would storm the room, and, though they might be killed over and over, they still could put out all the beamers of the computer.

  "How'd you happen to think of that, Pete?" Tom Turpin said.

  "I'm a science-fiction writer. I should've thought of it when I found out what the situation was."

  "I should've thought of it, too," Loga said. "But we're all under great emotional pressure."

  "You can duplicate these?" Burton said, holding up the pistollike sphere-ended weapon.

  "As many as we'll need."

  Within two minutes, the entire group was armed with the beamers. The Ethical then had his machine print out diagrams of the route to the valve room from the control room and from his private resurrectors. They studied the diagrams, identifying each corridor and chamber with the corresponding screen displays.

  "There are video cameras on every wall in that area, including the valve room. Here's a picture of it from the files."

  They studied the reproductions issued by the machine until they knew the room by heart. Then Loga commanded that a module be duplicated in the e-m cabinet, and he gave them the simple instructions for pulling out the old module and inserting the new.

  Unfortunately, the Ethical was unable to get diagrams showing where the computer's defenses were located.

  "That information must be in the computer's memory banks."

  Nur said, "Why don't you ask the computer for it?"

  Loga looked surprised, then laughed softly.

  A moment later he had information, though it wasn't what he'd asked for. The computer refused to divulge where its weapons were.

  "Well, it was worth a try."

  They got into their chairs and followed the Ethical to a lift shaft. They descended in it far faster than they'd dared operate their chairs until then. When they'd gone a mile, he stopped and then went into a bay and from there into a corridor. After a few minutes Burton, who had an excellent sense of direction, realized that they were heading for the general area of the secret room at the base of the tower. At their speed, they quickly arrived at it.

  The Ethical looked at the door, still kept from opening by the grail Burton had placed there. His face turned red.

  "Why didn't you tell me that the doors were still open?"

  "I thought about it, but it didn't seem important," Burton said.

  "The agents could have come through!"

  "No. They couldn't possibly have caught up with us in such a short time. They'll be using sailboats."

  "I won't take any chances."

  Loga turned the chair away from the door, then turned it back to face them.

  "You get that boat out of the entrance while I'm gone."

  "Where'll you be?" Burton said.

  "I'm going to a control room so I can reactivate an automatically operated aircraft and direct it to the ledge. It'll melt it all down, and then it'll-plug up the cave entrance."

  "Go with him," Burton said to Tai-Peng and de Marbot.

  Loga glared but said nothing, and his chair turned and flew down the corridor.

  Burton led the others into the fog-shrouded room where, with much shoving, they got the boat out into the sea. Then they went back to the corridor, the larger ones squeezing themselves again through the narrow opening above the grail.

  "We should've asked Loga to open it all the way," Frigate said.

  "I don't think he wants us to know how he opens it," Burton said.

  "Still doesn't trust us?"

  "With the life he's led, he's conditioned to trust no one."

  That, however, wasn't true. Loga, trailed by the Chinese and the Frenchman, returned after fifteen minutes. He got out of the chair and banged his fist on the wall a few inches from the door. At the same time, he said, clearly, "Ah Qaaq!"

  The door slid back within the recess.

  Burton made a mental note of the exact area struck.

  "How did you know that someone wouldn't be coming along and catch you?" he said.

  "This door is one big video screen. I also have other screens which look just like part of the walls. They're situated so that I can see up this corridor past its curves for some distance."

  They followed Loga into the room. Halfway down it, he stopped, turned, facing the wall, and voiced the codeword again. An apparently seamless part of the wall moved back and they slid into a recess. The room beyond was well-lit and contained some equipment on tables, a large cabinet, and two skeletons. These were pointed toward the door as if they'd been about to leave the room. On the floor by bone fingers was a metal box. It had a number of dials, gauges, buttons, and a small video screen on one side and prongs on the other.

  Loga said, "If only I could have sent that signal a few seconds earlier. I would've caught them before they removed the control box."

  "But you wouldn't have known that," Burton said. "You would still not have been able to take the chance of killing yourself. By the way, why were the doors closed? Those two would've had to open them to get in."

  Nur said, "Since they wouldn't have known the codes, how'd they get in?"

  "After seventy-five seconds, the doors close automatically unless countermanded. What happened is that the investigators located this room by tracing the circuits. That would've been a very time-consuming and arduous job because they couldn't use the computer to do the tracing. When they located this room, they must have been using magnetometers, too. They went back to find the tap-in source, and found the programmed open-shut code box. It wouldn't have taken them long to analyze the code."

  "But what about the knock accompanying the code? How . . ."

  "They figured that out, too, though it would've taken longer."

  He pointed at the cabinet. "The resurrector."

  He went in with Frigate at his heels. The American said, "You couldn't use your own power supply?"

  Loga stopped and picked up the control box and then walked to the side of the cabinet. He inserted the prongs into receptacles on the side of the cabinet.

  "No, I couldn't. I would've liked my own atomic converter so there'd be no wires to trace. But energy-matter conversion and wathan-attracting require enormous power. The physical-extraphysical interface alone uses enough power to blackout half of the cities of ancient Earth in the late twentieth century."

  Frigate said, "How'd you prevent this power drain from showing up on meters?"

  "I made arrangements for it not to. To go back to the original question. If the engineers had removed the code box, I wouldn't have been able to get out of the secret room into the corridor. The outer access door is activated by a signal going to another coder-decoder. It was very fortunate that the engineers didn't work on that before they were killed. I lost the signal-generator when I had to abandon my aircraft. But the boats in the cave contain generators. These are automatically started when the sensors detect that the tower is near."

  "The door mechanisms wouldn't have used much power. Why didn't you use separate power generators for them?"

  "I should have. But it was simpler and more economical to use the main power supply."

  He smiled slightly. "I wonder what the engineers made of the codeword. Ah Qaaq is Mayan. The Ah is the article defining the name as masculine. Qaaq means fire. Loga is Ghuurrkh for fire. Perhaps that was what identified me
. They might've put the Mayan name into the computer for a search. If they did, they got an answer within a second after insertion of the question.

  "I outclevered myself."

  He poised a finger over a button. "Gather around. I'll explain the simple operation twice so that there won't be any confusion. You're able to read the markings. When I press this button, that small silvery inset disc will turn on. That indicates that the power is on.

  "That larger inset disc by the ON light is a readout frequency meter."

  He pressed a button. The smaller disc glowed orange.

  "Now . . ."

  The light went out.

  "Khatuuch! What is . . .?"

  Loga put his hand on the box for a second, then ran around to the front of the cabinet. He opened the door and looked in. Even at their distance from it, the others could feel the heat.

  "Run!" Loga said, and he limped as fast as he could toward the exit.

  When Burton had reached the exit he looked at the cabinet. The control box was melting, and a large cube inside the cabinet was glowing red.

  Loga swore in Ghuurrkh and then said, "Those . . . those . . .! They fixed it so that when power came on it'd melt the converter!"

  Except for Loga and Burton, who'd died so many times that they no longer feared the prospect of death, the others were relieved. Burton could see it in their faces. They knew they'd be resurrected with their wathans attached, but they still loathed the idea of dying.

  Burton said, "We have the other resurrector."

  "It'll be set up, too," Loga said. He was ashen.

  "Can't you fix it so it won't melt?"

  "I'll try."

  But he failed.

  Burton, looking at the molten mass, thought it was time to tell Loga something he'd put off revealing because the resurrectors were more urgent business.

  He said, "Loga, when we left your secret room to go after you, I put a bullet by the door to mark its location. The bullet is gone."

  There was a short silence. Frigate said, "A housekeeping robot probably picked it up."

  "No," Loga said. "If the robots were programmed to do such work, they'd have disposed of the skeletons."

  "Then someone else has gotten in!"

  SECTION 14

  Three-Cornered Play: Carroll to Alice to Computer

  54

  * * *

  They went to a laboratory. Loga sat down before a computer and worked furiously. Within a short time, all the cameras in the tower were operating. Two seconds later, the screen before him glowed with a display.

  Burton whistled.

  "Frato Fenikso! Hermann Göring!"

  He was at a table eating a meal made by a grail-box. From his extreme thinness and the great black marks under his hollow eyes, he needed more than one meal.

  "I can't see how he caught up with us so quickly," Loga said.

  "The computer reports seeing no one else, but they may be out of camera range just now. And if they're agents, one might have the codeword. Monat could've passed it on to them in The Valley."

  "Why don't we ask Göring?" Burton said.

  "Of course. First, though, I'll ask the computer where he is."

  Loga read the instructions, and they got into their chairs and flew out of the room. Ten minutes later, they were outside the laboratory down the corridor from Loga's hideaway. They set their chairs down softly and entered on foot. Though Göring was not armed, they couldn't be sure they wouldn't find others with him by now.

  Burton bellowed, "Achtung!"

  He laughed loudly when Göring jumped up, food spewing from his mouth, arms flying, the chair falling backward. Gray and trembling, he whirled around, his eyes wide. He seemed to be trying to say something, and then his face reddened, and he clutched his throat.

  "My God! He's choking!" Alice said.

  Göring was blue and on his knees by the time Burton hit him on the back and made him expel the food caught in his throat.

  Alice said, "That wasn't at all funny, Richard. Quit laughing. You might've killed him."

  Burton wiped the tears away and said, "I'm sorry, Göring. I guess I just wanted to pay you back for some of the things you'd done to me."

  Göring gulped at the glass of water handed him by Aphra Behn.

  "Yes, I suppose I can't blame you."

  "You look near-starved," Nur said. "You shouldn't be eating so fast. Too much food too soon after a long starvation can kill you."

  "I'm not that starved. But I seem to have lost my appetite."

  He looked around. "Where are the others?"

  "Dead."

  "May God take pity on their souls."

  "He hasn't and won't unless we do something fast."

  "Göring!" Loga said sharply. "Did you come alone?"

  Göring looked at him strangely. "Yes."

  "How long have you been here?"

  "About an hour."

  "Were there any others close behind you when you were in the mountains?"

  "No. At least, I saw no one."

  "How did you get here so fast?"

  Göring and other Virolanders had dived into the hold of the Not For Hire before it slipped over the shelf into the abyss. They had brought up some sections of the batacitor and rebolted them together in a wooden sailboat. They had also brought up two small electric motors, a spare propeller of the smaller launch, the Gascon, and other parts. They'd worked fast, and four left in the reconverted boat two weeks after the Post No Bills had departed.

  Unlike Burton's group, they'd not taken days off for rest or recreation.

  "Where are your companions?" Loga said, though he'd probably guessed their fate.

  "Two quit early and went back. I went on with my wife, but she slipped and fell down the face of a mountain."

  He made the circular sign, the blessing, used so much by the Chancers.

  "You should sit down," Burton said kindly. "We have much to tell you."

  When he'd heard Loga and Burton tell what had happened, Göring looked horrified.

  "All those wathans? And my wife's among them?"

  "Yes, and now we don't know what to do. Kill the computer so that no more wathans may be caught. Or hope that we can think of some way to countermand its prime command."

  Hermann said, "No. There's a third choice."

  "What?"

  "Let me try to get the module in."

  "Are you crazy?"

  "No. I have a debt to pay."

  Burton thought of his recurring dream of God.

  "You owe for the flesh. Pay up."

  "If you die, your wathan will be doomed."

  "Perhaps not," Hermann said quietly. "I may be ready to Go On. I don't know that I am. God knows that I am far from a saint. But if I can save all those souls . . . wathans . . . then I will have made complete recompense."

  No one argued with him.

  "Very well," Loga said. "You are the most courageous person I've ever met. I think you clearly understand that you may have very little chance to succeed. But here's what we're going to do."

  Burton was very sorry that he had played his little joke on the German. The man was risking his soul, would face the equivalent of damnation, if he failed. Loga was right. Göring was the bravest man he'd ever known. He may not have been once, but he was now.

  Loga decided that they should return to the top level to be near their apartments. On the way, they stopped at a floor where Göring could see the caged wathans.

  He gazed at the glowing, contracting-expanding swirling darting things for a few minutes, then turned away.

  "The most beautiful, the most awe-inspiring, the most hideous."

  He made the circular sign again, though Burton thought that this was more than a blessing. He caught intimations of a prayer for salvation and for stiffening of his determination.

  When they got to the control room, the Ethical immediately set about working at the console on the revolving platform. After five minutes, he sent Göring into a cabinet. Th
ere his measurements were made by beams. Loga put more data into the computer, finishing in an hour.

  He waited for a few seconds before punching another button. He left the platform and limped to a large energy-matter converter. The others crowding behind him, he opened its door. The parts of a suit of armor were on the floor. Loga picked them up and threw them to those outside the cabinet. They put these on Göring and, when they were done, he looked more like a robot than an armored knight. The addition of the backpack, his air supply, made him resemble an astronaut.

  Except for the narrow but long window in the front of the globular helmet, the suit was made of the gray metal. Though thick, it weighed only nine pounds.

  "The window isn't as resistant as the metal," Loga said. "And the beams will cut entirely through the metal if they're applied to one spot for more than ten seconds. So keep moving."

  Göring tested the flexibility of the shoulder, wrist, finger, knee, and ankle joints. They gave him as much mobility as he'd need. He ran back and forth and leaped forward and sidewise and backward. Then he practiced with the beamer until he knew its full capabilities. His armor removed, he ate again. After Hermann had gone to an apartment to sleep, Loga took a chair off to a floor below sea level. He returned in an hour in a two-man research submarine which floated in the air.

  "I didn't think of this until a couple of hours ago. This will help him get through the initial defenses. But he'll have to go on foot after that. The entrances won't be wide enough to admit the vessel."

  During his absence, the others had been busy attaching beamers to the sides of the coffin-shaped clean-up robots and drilling the holes needed for passage of cables. Loga installed video equipment and trigger mechanisms. Then he programmed navigational boxes and installed them.

  Burton went to wake up the German but found him on his knees praying by the bedside.

  "You should've slept," Burton said.

  "I used my time for something better."

  They went back to the control room where Hermann ate a light meal before learning the route and the operation of the submarine. Loga showed him how to remove the old module and insert the new. The latter was a piece of the gray metal the size and shape of a playing card. Though it contained very complex circuits, its surface was smooth. One corner was nicked with a V, indicating that that end was to be inserted into the recess of the assembly. The code number was in bas-relief, and the card was to be put in with the code-side up.