Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  And so it was that I grew up in Troezen, and did not know my parentage, but suspected that I was one for whom a great future was expected. And this is how I began in the days before Dædalus constructed his maze and introduced Indeterminacy and made it possible for me to undertake my life in many different ways.

  4. Dædalus.

  Many complications came to pass when Dædalus built his great maze for King Minos of Atlantean Crete.

  For a long time, there had been the classical period. Golden Age of Athens. Gods, Homer, Plato, all that stuff.

  Only one man, in the short sweep of antiquity, knew that his way of life was passing. Dædalus was able to do something about it. He can well claim to be the first modern man.

  Dædalus had learned through computer studies that Knossos, Crete, the entire Atlantean civilization, was due to go down the tubes shortly due to unavoidable natural catastrophe. Knowledge of this leaked out and there was unrest throughout the kingdom. People felt that this state of affairs could not be allowed to continue.

  Minos agreed and set up a think tank with the Seven Wise Men of Hellas.

  They came up with the idea of the maze and recommended Dædalus for the job.

  5. Theseus. About the Maze.

  So here is Theseus searching for the Minotaur in the labyrinth which Dædalus constructed for King Minos back in the great days of Atlantean civilization.

  It is a day, a featureless day, a day like so many others in the labyrinth.

  The labyrinth, or maze, is a magical creation, a testing ground for heroes, a place of simultaneous realities and repetitions. The maze is the highest achievement of Atlantean scientific alchemy, the supreme monument to a civilization already in decline and soon to be destroyed by natural cataclysm, but destined to live forever through Dædalus’ art.

  The basic situation is simple enough: Theseus has to find the Minotaur, a monstrous creature part human, part beast. Theseus must kill the Minotaur and then find his way back to the everyday world.

  The situation has been played out many times, with many different outcomes, and with different people in the leading roles. I’m not the only Theseus there’s been or the only one there’ll be. I’m just the current one; the one in the narrator position, though not, actually, the narrator of the entire story. I’ll explain that a little later. Just now I’m Theseus, a professional Minotaur-killer, or rather, one of a long line of Theseuses, who have been recurring with almost sickening regularity ever since Dædalus introduced Recurrence into his scheme for the maze more complicated than the world it was modeled upon.

  6. The Maze: Dædalus’ Achievement.

  Theseus wasn’t at all sure he could bring off this minotauricide. The old legends made it seem quite simple and straightforward, but they were just popular tales for public consumption. The reality was something else again. Even leaving aside the nature and attributes of the Minotaur for the moment, and ignoring his considerable record of victories, and considering only the vastness of the maze and its endless interconnections and ramifications, one might think that Theseus’ task was hopeless. How could he find the Minotaur within the maze?

  It was Dædalus’ achievement to build a maze more complex than the world upon which it was modeled. Past and present were simultaneously present in Dædalus’ maze, and all times and places could be found within its twists and turns. You can find anything within the maze, but it’s best not to expect anything specific; you can never tell who or what will turn up, because there are so many people and things in the maze. In fact, in the maze you encounter a greater variety of creatures than is found in nature itself, chimæras and harpies, Titans, Lapiths and Centaurs, Nemean lions, Stymphagian birds, and so forth. The fabulous was always just around the corner, but the chance of encountering something you were actually looking for was very slight indeed. A man might wander forever through the interlocking complications of Dædalus’ maze without finding anyone who has even seen a Minotaur, let alone finding the monster himself.

  Right now Theseus was hungry. He had a knapsack filled with items that might prove useful in the quest, but none of them was edible, at least not at the moment. Nor was there any food in sight. There was nothing in sight. Theseus was standing in the middle of a gray characterless limbo. This part of the maze is incomplete, although Dædalus planned to finish it as soon as he found the time.

  Rummaging through his knapsack Theseus found a roadmap, a miraculous roadmap with the property of generating whatever it represents. The map shows a sector of Knossos, Minos’ city, itself a part of the maze.

  Here it is, the magical moment, the transformation, and no one can tell you how it happened. He opened the roadmap, and when he looked up, he found that the limbo had disappeared, perhaps into some other limbo, and he was standing on a narrow cobblestoned street. On either side of him were tall narrow houses with steep roofs and bay windows. He was in front of a hotel with a restaurant downstairs, marked in red on the map with two stars. The cheerful owner was standing outside in his shirt sleeves in the mild spring weather, smiling, obviously a man who knows how to take care of hungry heroes.

  That’s how it goes. That’s how life or Dædalus or whatever it is puts us, the Theseuses and Minotaurs, into play. There’s no way of finding exactly what you’re looking for, nothing can be planned, but sometimes things just work out, and so Theseus was not surprised to find himself here. In the maze the description can become the described and the map is sometimes the territory. Theseus entered the restaurant.

  The owner guided him to a sunny table near a window. Theseus folded the map and put it back in his knapsack, leaned the knapsack against the wall, unbuttoned his denim jacket, lighted a cigarette, made himself at ease.

  The menu was written in an incomprehensible local dialect, but Theseus was an intuitive menu reader, like all heroes who journey to distant places, and he made a selection and asked for a beer right away. It was brought by a pretty blonde waitress in an embroidered white blouse and black skirt. He took a sip of beer and watched with appreciation as she moved away. She brought his food soon after, and he ate his fill, loosened his belt, settled back in comfort with coffee and a cigarette.

  The maze afforded some pleasant moments like this, when danger seemed far away, when the Minotaur was forgotten, when the troubles of the past with Ariadne were forgotten, when the troubles of the future with Phædra were forgotten, when he could even forget that he was in the maze for professional reasons, on a dubious adventure which he performed for the amusement of others, the people of Minos’ court, who watched his movements and the movements of other heroes in their spherical television sets, and whose interest provided the real motivation for his efforts.

  Not for the first time he considerd kicking back, giving up the quest for the Minotaur which had led him so far from Athens, so far from the repetitive comforts of the Maze, so far from Ariadne and the children. He wouldn’t mind staying right here in this pleasant hotel, living in one of the rooms upstairs, getting to know the blonde waitress, visiting the local museums, the art galleries, the rock clubs, and other places of interest in the vicinity.

  It is true that he didn’t speak the local language, but that was not a serious obstacle. Theseus has found in his travels that he got along nicely with just a few words of the local lingo, plus his menu-reading ability, which is essential for survival in any world. He found advantages in his ignorance of the local tongue; it saved him from having to engage in political discussions with foreigners, or cultural disputes, which are worse. And lack of a common language had never prevented him from having charming little foreign girlfriends who indicated their pleasure by smiles and gestures rather than words, endless words.

  Theseus loved foreign women, their look, their smell, their exotic clothing and unfamiliar mannerisms. But he also loved the pert and lively women of his native Hellas. In fact he had a hero’s appetite for women, and a poet’s appreciation of them. But his relationships never seemed to last, something always went
wrong, and unpleasant guilt and unbearable complication followed. He knew this, knew he’d be wise to stay out of trouble, get on with the job, fulfill his contract, find and kill the Minotaur. But wisdom has never been the virtue of a hero and there was something about this blonde waitress. . .

  He watched her. How demurely she moved between the tables with her trays of food and drink, in her little waitress’s costume with the black stockings, eyes downcast, a vision of sweet innocence and childlike sexuality! And she was aware of him as something more than a mere customer, something to be used “in the context of equipment,” in Heidegger’s immortal phrase, a phrase which he shouldn’t know but through Dædalus’ machinations has come to know all too well, along with a lot of other knowledge more appropriate to a time-traveler than to the hero of an ancient quest. Anyhow, she seemed interested in him. He was sure of it, a hero could tell these things.

  She came over to his table and addressed him in broken Hellenic. He loved the way her light clear voice mangled his native language. She was only asking if he wanted more coffee, but he was half in love with her already.

  How nice it would be to settle down with this charming feminine person who conveyed her meanings in smiles and nods, how nice to live in an apartment with tall windows on an upper story of a cobblestoned street like this one. How nice to wake up with this warm, fragrant and delightful person beside him. Already he was sure she would get right out of bed, because, true to her waitress heritage, she’d be getting him his coffee. And she’d be smiling, even early in the morning. . . .

  Yes, of course he’d like more coffee! She went off to get it and he leaned back in his chair, wily Theseus wondering yet again if another adventure more pleasurable than this old matter of the Minotaur might not be beginning for him.

  7. Ariadne Telephones.

  Theseus hailed originally from Troezen, up near Scythian territory. Naturally, that’s where Ariadne tried to telephone him first when she found that the hero had abandoned her on Naxos.

  Not that it should come as any surprise to her. She knew the old legends as well as anybody, but she just never believed that Theseus would abandon her in a place like Naxos. And now he’d gone and done just that.

  But she couldn’t get through to Theseus, the only person she could reach was Max, Theseus’ agent.

  “He’s on a quest,” Max told her. “The new Minotaur gig finally came through.”

  Poor Ariadne. Tears streaked her cheeks. She said, “Will you give him a message? Tell him it’s morning in Naxos and it rains all the time. Tell him he has no right to do this but don’t tell him that he’ll just get angry. Tell him I’ve forwarded his blue hero coat which he’ll need if he follows the Minotaur into the northern regions of the maze. Tell him there’s one version of the old legend which says that Theseus and Ariadne settled down in Naxos and lived there for the rest of their lives. Tell him that’s the one we decided was true, in case he’s forgotten.

  “Tell him Dionysus arrived last week on his sailboat and told me in no uncertain terms that he’s not responsible for me despite the legend that says he will fall in love with me and marry me and live happily with me on Naxos ever after. Dionysus says it may well turn out that way and he does consider me cute, but he’s got a few things to do before getting to that. He has to find his motorcycle which someone borrowed, and he has to evict some Titans squatting in his apartment in downtown Naxos, and until he settles these things I’m on my own.

  “Tell Theseus I’ve had to sell his orange suit of armor, his pin-striped shield, his matched set of swords, and a few other things just to make ends meet.

  “Tell him I can’t think of anything I’ve done to warrant this sort of behavior on his part; I’ll admit it was hectic in the last weeks before our departure from Crete when we were searching all over the island for someone to clean the head of the Medusa he’d caught, and build an olivewood presentation case for it with a viewing mirror so they wouldn’t be turned to stone. But it’s not my fault it was raining all the time; do I make the weather? Dionysus asked me to tell Theseus that he’s got the Soma he asked for, and he’ll meet up with him somehow somewhere and get it to him.

  “Tell him I think Dionysus is starting to get extremely interested in me despite his gruff manner. I don’t know what to tell Dionysus; which version of which old legend am I supposed to follow? Tell Theseus to please let me know something; I really need some answers, and that I am his loving Ariadne.”

  “Don’t worry about a thing,” Max said. “I’ll tell him.”

  8. The Minotaur.

  The Minotaur, despite his enormous stature, his knife-edged hooves, his lashing black-ox tail, his dagger-shaped teeth of a carnivorous bull birthed from a nightmare, despite his needle-pointed horns and dazzling speed, despite his unimpeachable victories over the Nemean lion and the winged oryx of the Sabateans, despite all that, but in keeping with the inner bovinity of his nature, was a fearful and trepidatious creature diseased with compunctions and covered all over with pinpoint doubts.

  The Minotaur didn’t spend much time in his lair. It left him too vulnerable to surprise attack; he knew that a moving defense is the best defense, and so he roamed everywhere, up and down and in and out of the convolutions of Dædalus’ maze.

  He regretted the loss of the old labyrinth, the one they had built for him under the palace at Knossos, where they sent him the pretty little bull dancers to feast upon each year: He had sneered at it then, a dinner once a year, where’s that at? Now he’d give anything to have it back again—the comforting stone walls, that he once thought were gallingly familiar, the passageways of a thousand turns and complications, which he once knew better than the inside of his own mind. Yes, and considered boring, simple monster that he was back then.

  Now it was different. The old labyrinth was gone, or rather, the labyrinth was everywhere, the old world was falling apart, and only Dædalus was holding it together by sheer force of will and magical schemes. This was to be applauded, no doubt, but where had it gotten the Minotaur? Here he is out in the wilderness, and when he sleeps in the forest he is guarded by flocks of tiny birds who feast off the parasites that live in his hairy ears, paying for their dinners by taking turns staying awake and watching out for trouble: “Look, over there, a leaf moved, a branch stirred, a shadow cut across the moon.”

  Most of these are false alarms. The Minotaur has asked the birds on several occasions, please, as a personal favor to me, apply to your perceptions of danger a degree of discrimination so that I can get a little sleep without having to jump to my feet twenty times a night in response to your premature reports of suspicious shadows that turn out to be owls, strange noises that turn out to be mice. The tiny birds argue back in their twittering language, with much indignant fluttering of iridescent wings: “Isn’t it enough that we spend our nights in your service listening and watching for danger? We are your early warning system, O Minotaur, indiscriminate but acute, but that’s not enough for you; you want us, poor brainless feathered things though we are, to attempt the logical computations of analysis, not only to detect but to interpret, to decide not only what noise or sight should alert you, but which should not. You are unreasonable, O Minotaur, and unkind, and perhaps you’d like it better if we went away to visit our relatives the humming birds, leaving you to figure out what every little sound means in the darkness of the night by yourself since you’re so smart.”

  The Minotaur apologizes, even a poor warning system is better than none, excuse me, I was asking too much, the Minotaur’s got enough trouble without making new enemies or losing old friends, “I’m sorry, stay with me, please.” Although he knows the tiny birds wouldn’t leave him anyhow, these humming birds they speak of, who has ever seen them? But he goes through the formalities of asking them to stay, just carry on as before, and in the end they agree, grudgingly at first, then forgivingly, flying around his head like a circle of dusky motes.

  Since he can’t have his old stone labyrinth back, the Minota
ur feels safest in the woods, in deep forest where the trees are crowded together shoulder to shoulder and connected by dense and stringy shrubs with hooked and rattly leaves, the sort of mazelike terrain that a monster can slip through without much difficulty, but that a man, even a hero like Theseus, finds difficult and noisy going.

  And the forest is filled with good things to eat. The Minotaur’s senses operate by human equivalents. Where a man might see acorns, decayed logs and rotting muskrats, the Minotaur sees olives, pizza, jugged hare. A good place, the forest, with its dappled greens and grays, the primeval colors of camouflage.

  The Minotaur would cheerfully spend the rest of his life here. But that’s not to be, the forest seems infinite when you’re in it, but all too soon you come to cleared land, you see human habitations, you see thin streamers of smoke from the cooking fires and hear the sounds of children playing, and you know you’re back in it again, civilization. You even think of retracing your steps, going back into the dear sweet woods, but no, from afar comes the sound of the hunter’s horn, and the yap and squeal of the dogs, and there’s nothing for it but to go on, keep moving on, moving on.

  The Minotaur was by no means without resources when he came into human-occupied territory. You might think that a bull-headed man standing seven feet tall and colored jet black with gouts of foam around his muzzle would be more than noticeable. But this is not the case. People are unobservant. And, the Minotaur has several disguises which have proven effective in the past. One of his ruses is to dress himself up as a Renault police van, painted dark blue, with policemen appliquéd on the windows. Deep in his throat the Minotaur makes the sound of a motor ticking over, the van just crawling through the streets, its tires whispering of atrocious pain and meaningless retribution. People tend to avoid him when he wears his van disguise, and even those who see through it move away and mind their own business, because the police have been known to disguise their vans as Minotaurs disguised as vans; there’s no end to their twisted subtlety, a wise man keeps his nose out of such matters.