R.W. IV - The Magic Labyrinth

by Philip José Farmer

  "What could go wrong with a module like that?" Frigate said.

  "Nothing," Loga said. "If it's inserted properly. I suspect human error. If the card was put in upside down, the circuits would operate properly. But every time there was a voltage surge, one of the circuits would be slightly damaged. There aren't many surges, but over a long period of time the damage would be cumulative. The error would have been noticed long ago – if the technicians hadn't been dead."

  He put the card inside a metal cube and attached it to a leg-piece of armor just above the knee.

  "All he has to do is press the inset button in the cube, and the magnetism will be canceled. The cube is thick enough to withstand many shots from the beamers."

  All of Göring's armor was put on him except the globular helmet. Loga poured out the yellow wine into exquisite goblets brought from his apartment. He lifted his high and said, "To your success, Hermann Göring. May the Creator be with you."

  "With all of us," Hermann said.

  They drank, and the helmet was secured. Göring climbed up a short ladder into the top of the submarine and got himself with some difficulty into the hatch. Loga went up and, looking down into the hatchway, repeated the operation instructions. Then he closed the hatch.

  Loga, as chief of operations, took the chair in the revolving platform. The others seated themselves before control consoles and began the adjustments taught them by the Ethical.

  The first of the armed coffin-shapes lifted and headed toward the doorway. That was Burton's. Behind it came Alice's, then the others. They single-filed through the exit and turned right.

  When all were out, the submarine rose from the floor and followed the robots.

  The descent to the floor just below sea level took him fifteen minutes. He halted his robot before a closed door above which were letters in alto-relief. Burton activated the beamers, and presently the door was cut on one side from its top to the bottom. He moved his robot over and melted through another section. Then he rammed the machine into the middle, and the cut section fell backward.

  Burton saw a gigantic room filled with equipment. He shot his machine toward a closed doorway in the opposite wall. Before it got there, sections of the wall slid back, and the sphere ends of beamers moved out. Scarlet lines spat from them.

  Burton moved the controls on the panel so that his robot angled upward to the right. He held it then and pressed the trigger-activation button. Scarlet lines streamed out along the edges of the screen, and he had the satisfaction of seeing a globe explode. Fragments flew against the screen but did no damage.

  A few seconds later, the screen went blank.

  One of the computer's weapons had destroyed the camera on top of the robot.

  Burton cursed, and he cut off the beamers. There was nothing he could do except watch. He pressed the button that would tie his computer in with one of Loga's cameras. Instantly, he could see from a camera on the wall above the doorway the robots had entered. His robot hovered ten feet above the floor, its front end pointed up at the beamers on the other wall. The robots were in a semicircle so that they wouldn't get hit by their companions.

  The last beamers in the room blew up, shifting the view from one camera to the next as one room after another was conquered. Alice's robot was melted down. De Marbot's camera was destroyed. Tai-Peng's was pierced by three beams at once, and it fell as some vital part was melted.

  The others went dead one by one until only the submarine was left. The dirigible-shaped craft took over then, cutting through two doors, its thick hull drilled into by the computer's beamers.

  The submarine came to a doorway wide enough to admit it but crossed by beams from ten weapons. Hermann shot his craft through it and came out into the next room with a small section of the stern cut off and many deep holes in the hull.

  Ahead of him, at the opposite wall, was another entrance. Here was where he would have to abandon his craft. He drove it at great speed, slowed it a few feet from the doorway, and, while scarlet lines melted holes in the hull, climbed out. Immediately, the beamers transferred to him.

  Göring fell out onto the floor, shielded from half of the weapons by the vessel but the target of the others. He got up slowly and staggered through the door entrance. Ranks of beamers turned toward him and tracked him as he ran toward the other doorway leading to the valve room. Just before he got to it, a door slid out from a recess and blocked the entrance. Ignoring the beamers, he began cutting through the door. He made a small hole, and he removed the cube holding the card and threw it ahead of him. Then he crawled through the hole, his beamer in his hand.

  Burton and the others could hear his heavy breathing.

  A cry of agony.

  "My leg!"

  "You're almost there!" Loga shouted.

  Purplish vapors poured out through the hole.

  "Poison gas," Loga said.

  The screen shifted the view to the valve room. This was large and on the right-hand wall (from Hermann) a down-curving metal tube came out of the wall about ten feet above the floor. Near it was a small metal box on a table from which thin cables ran to another box. The front of the box had recesses from which the ends of modules stuck out.

  Göring crawled to the cube as at least a hundred beamers poured their ravening energy into his suit.

  His voice came to the watchers.

  "I can't stand it. I'm going to faint."

  "Hang on, Göring!" Loga said. "A minute more, and you'll have done it!"

  They saw the bulky gray figure grab the cube, turn it over, and let the card module drop out. They saw Hermann pick it up and crawl toward the module box. They heard his scream and saw him fall forward. The module fell from his fingers at the foot of the table.

  The scarlet lines continued their fire and did not stop until the armor was riddled with holes.

  There was a long silence.

  Burton heaved a deep sigh and turned his equipment off. The others did the same. Burton went up onto the platform and stood behind Loga. His screen was still alive, but now it showed a pulsing many-colored figure, a globe-shape with extending and withdrawing tentacles.

  Loga was bent forward, his elbows on the edge of the panel, his hands against his face.

  Burton said, "What's that?"

  He knew it was the picture of a wathan, but he didn't know why it was on the screen.

  Loga removed his hands and stared at the screen.

  "I put a frequency tracker on Göring."

  "That's he?"

  "Yes."

  "Then he didn't Go On?"

  "No. He's with the others."

  What do we do now?

  That was the question of all.

  Loga wanted to kill the computer before it captured more wathans, and then he would duplicate it at its predata stage. But he also hoped hopelessly that someone might think of something which would solve the problem before the wathans were released. He was mentally paralyzed and would evidently do nothing unless an impulse broke through and he pressed the fatal button.

  The others were thinking hard. They put their speculations, their questions, into their computers. Always, there was some flaw in their schemes.

  Burton went down several times to the floor below and stood or paced for hours while he gazed at the splendid spectacle of the swirling wathans. Were his parents among them? Ayesha? Isabel? Walter Scott, the nephew of Sir Walter Scott the author, and a great friend of his in India? Dr. Steinhaeuser? George Sala? Swinburne? His sister and brother? Speke? His grandfather Baker, who'd cheated him out of a fortune by dropping dead just before he could change his will? Bloody-minded and cruel King Gélélé of Dahomey, who didn't know that he was bloody-minded and cruel since he was only doing what his society required of him? Which was no acceptable excuse.

  He went to bed exhausted and depressed. He had wished to talk to Alice, but she seemed withdrawn, foundering in her own thoughts. Now, though, she didn't seem to be in a reverie which would remove her from painful or d
istasteful reality. She was obviously thinking about their dilemma.

  Finally, Burton slipped away. He awoke after six hours, if his watch was correct. Alice was standing over him in the dim light.

  "What's the matter?" he said drowsily.

  "Nothing. I hope. I just came back from the control room."

  "What were you doing there?"

  Alice lay down beside him.

  "I just couldn't get to sleep. I kept thinking about this and that, my thoughts were as numerous as the wathans. I tried to keep my mind on the computer, but a thousand things pushed them aside, occupied me for a brief time, then slid away to be replaced by something else. I must've reviewed my whole life, here and on Earth.

  "I remember thinking about Mr. Dodgson before I finally did sleep. I dreamed a lot, all sorts of dreams, a few good ones, some terrible. Didn't you hear me screaming once?"

  "No."

  "You must have been sleeping like the dead. I awoke shaking and perspiring, but I couldn't remember what it was that'd horrified me so."

  "It isn't difficult to imagine what it was."

  Alice had gotten up to get a drink of water. On returning to the bed, she again had trouble getting to sleep. Among other things, she thought of the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson and the pleasures from knowing him and from his two books inspired by her. Because she'd reread them many times, she had no trouble visualizing the text and Tenniel's illustrations.

  "The first scene that came to me was the Mad Tea-Party."

  Seated at the table were the Hatter, the March Hare, and the Dormouse. Uninvited, Alice sat down with them, and, after some insane conversation, the March Hare asked her to have some wine.

  Alice looked all around the table, but there was nothing on it but tea.

  "Actually," Alice said to Burton, "that wasn't true. There was also milk and bread and butter."

  The book-Alice said, "I don't see any wine."

  "There isn't any," said the March Hare.

  Later there was a silence while Alice was trying to solve the riddle of why a raven was like a writing desk. The silence was broken when the Hatter turned to Alice and asked her what day of the month it was. He'd taken his watch out of his pocket and had been looking uneasily at it, shaking it and holding it to his ear.

  Alice considered a little and then said, "The fourth."

  The real Alice said to Burton, "Mr. Dodgson wrote that date because it was May in the book and the fourth of May was my birthday."

  The Hatter sighed and said, "Two days wrong! I told you butter wouldn't suit the works!"

  "It was the best butter," the March Hare meekly responded.

  Burton got out of bed and began pacing back and forth.

  "Must you go into such detail, Alice?"

  "Yes. It's important."

  The next scene she visualized, or empathized, since she became the seven-year-old Alice of the book, was from the Wool and Water chapter of Through the Looking-Glass. She was talking to the White Queen and the Red Queen.

  "Can you keep from crying by considering things?" she (Alice) asked.

  "That's the way it's done," the White Queen said with great decision. "Nobody can do two things at once, you know."

  "Alice!" Burton said. "What's all this nonsense leading to?"

  "It's not nonsense. Listen."

  In her reverie, Alice leaped from the White Queen to Humpty Dumpty.

  "Perhaps because Loga is so fat that he reminds me of Humpty Dumpty."

  She, the book-Alice, was talking to the huge anthropomorphized egg sitting on a wall. They were discussing the meaning of words.

  "When I use a word," Humpty-Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less."

  "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

  "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master – that's all."

  Then the real Alice – But is she any more real than that other Alice? Burton wondered – flashed to the scene where the Red Queen asked her if she could do Subtraction.

  "Take nine from eight," the Red Queen said.

  "Nine from eight. I can't, you know," Alice replied very readily. "But –"

  "She can't do Subtraction," said the White Queen to the Red Queen. She spoke to Alice. "Can you do Division? Divide a loaf by a knife – what's the answer to that?"

  "Were there any more?" Burton said.

  "No. I didn't think they meant much. They were just memories of some of my favorite sections."

  She'd slept again. And then she awoke suddenly, her eyes wide. She'd thought she'd heard someone far off calling her. "Just over the horizon of my mind."

  It sounded like Mr. Dodgson, but she wasn't sure.

  She was wide awake, her heart pounding fast. She got out of bed and walked to the control room.

  "Why?"

  "It occurred to me that there were three key phrases in the scene. The best butter. Which is to be master? Can you do Division?"

  Burton sighed. "Very well, Alice. Tell it as you must."

  She had seated herself in Loga's chair and made the adjustments necessary to communicate directly with the computer.

  "You realize that you're going to die in two days or less?" she said.

  "Yes. That's redundant information. I didn't need to be informed."

  "You were ordered by Monat not to resurrect anyone until he gave you the countercommand. What form does the countercommand take?"

  Burton interrupted her. "Loga asked him that."

  "Yes, I know. But I didn't think it'd hurt to try again."

  "And the reply?"

  As before, it had been silence.

  Alice had then told it that there was an even higher command, and this had been given to it by Monat before the second order.

  "What is that?" flashed on the screen. "I've been given many orders."

  "The prime directive, the most essential, is to catch the wathans and reattach them to the duplicated bodies. That is what the project is all about. If Monat could have foreseen what his order would result in, he'd not have given it."

  The computer said nothing.

  Alice said, "Put me into communication with the section which Loga was using. That part of which Loga was the master."

  Evidently, the computer had no orders to refuse communication with that part. Until Alice, no one had even thought about that possibility.

  "My God!" Burton said. And then, "What happened?"

  "I told it that it was going to die. It said that it knew it. In effect, so what? So I used my argument for the dominant part of it."

  She followed that up with an order that it regain its former state, that it be independent.

  "The dominant part did nothing during this time?"

  "Nothing. Why should it? As Loga's said, it's a brilliant idiot."

  "What happened then?"

  "I told the dominant that it was its duty to resurrect Monat and confirm or invalidate the order not to resurrect anybody until it got the codeword or whatever it is."

  "Then?"

  "The screen went blank. I tried again and again to get it to respond."

  The eagerness on Burton's face died away.

  "Nothing?"

  "Nothing."

  "But why would it cut off communication? Its duty is to communicate."

  "I hope," Alice said slowly, "that it's evidence of an internal struggle. That the dominated part is struggling with the dominant."

  "That's nonsense!" Burton cried. "If what I've learned about computers is true, it couldn't happen."

  "You forget that this is, in one sense, not a computer. Not the conventional kind, anyway. It's made of protein, and it's as complex as the human brain."

  "We'll have to rouse Loga," Burton said. "I suppose it'll be for nothing, but he's the only one who can handle this."

  The Ethical came from his sleep fully awake. He heard Alice out without any questions, then said, "The
re would be no struggle. Monat's order would have gone to the dominated part as well as the other."

  "That depends upon when the order was given," she said. "If the circuits for domination were put in afterward, then the dominated part wouldn't have received them."

  "But the dominant would have transmitted them to the schizophrenic part."

  "Perhaps not!" Alice said.

  "If it did happen, and I don't think there's the slightest chance it will, then Monat would be resurrected."

  "But I gave that order to the dominant."

  Loga quit frowning.

  "Good! Still, if that's the only way to save the wathans, then it should happen. Even if . . ."

  He didn't want to say what would happen to him.

  They had breakfast in the dining hall except for Loga, who ate while in the control chair. Despite his efforts, he could get no direct response from the computer. One of his screens showed the enclosure of the wathans.

  "When it becomes empty, we'll know that they're . . . lost."

  He looked at another screen.

  "Two more have just been caught. No. Three now."

  While they were breakfasting in gloom, broken only now and then by halfhearted comments, Frigate said, "We do have something important to talk about."

  They looked at him but said nothing.

  "What's going to happen to us after the computer dies? Loga won't consider us ethically advanced enough to let us stay here. In his opinion, we won't be capable of running this operation. I think he's right, except possibly for Nur. If Nur could get through the entrance on top of the tower, he'd be allowed to stay."

  The Moor said, "I've been through it."

  They stared at him.

  "When?" Frigate said.

  "Last night. I decided that if I could get all the way out, I could get all the way back in. I succeeded, though it wasn't easy. I couldn't stroll through as a full-fledged Ethical would."

  Burton growled, "That's fine for you. I apologize for what I said about all Sufis being charlatans. But what about the rest of us? Suppose we don't want to go back to The Valley? And if we do, then we'll tell people the truth. Not that everybody will believe us. There are still Christians and Moslems and so forth who've refused to abandon their religion. Also, I imagine there'll be many Chancers who'll cling to their tenets."