That damned elusive Minotaur! With his predilection for flight and his talent for dissimulation you might wonder how anyone, even a hero, even a god, for that matter, could hope to overwhelm him, could dream of finding him, for example, eating a quiet dinner in an Indian restaurant. But they do, and they say, “That’s him, let’s git him, ha, ha, take that, and that, look boys, we got ourselves a Minotaur or whatever they call them critters. Otis, you and Charlie hold his knackers while Blue cuts off his head with the chain saw, and then we’re off to Ma Tatum’s for a little well earned diversion.” Unlikely, but it happens.
Not this time, though. This place looks all right, it feels safe, and the Minotaur, a beleaguered monster, knows about these things. Up ahead, in the middle of a cobblestoned street, is a nice restaurant. It would be nice to go in and have a civilized meal for a change, yes, and a glass of wine. The monster has money, or rather, traveler’s checks, good anywhere in the universe. Monsters with traveler’s checks are always welcome. In fact, the Minotaur has discovered that money is the best disguise of all. If you have enough of it, no one suspects you of being a monster; they just think you’re an eccentric foreigner.
Yes, a nice meal would pick up his spirits considerably. The Minotaur starts toward the restaurant, his hooves clicking on the cobblestones.
9. The Maze Larger than the World.
For a long time it was impossible to be sure of anything. That was because indeterminacy ruled the maze world, and nobody liked it but Dædalus. The inhabitants detested it. Dædalus, they said, you have gone too far. No good will come of this, you’re letting yourself be seduced by a mere proposition. Come, be reasonable, lay down a few hard facts, promulgate some operating instructions; at least give us some defaults. We need a little order around here. A little order is all we ask for, Dædalus; it keeps things nice, please, just for us, okay?
Dædalus wouldn’t listen. He considers his critics negligible, old-world sentimentalists in love with obsolete ideas. The old order that they dream of never was, and will not be again.
The people in the maze, despite Dædalus, despite the rule of uncertainty, have set up some rules for themselves, just to avoid the chaos, and in order that a few things could be planned.
This matter of the Minotaur, for example. Many Theseuses came through these parts looking for the fabulous beast. A regular industry had sprung up to supply all of them. You could stop at any newsstand and buy a Standard Guide to Minotauronics, with thumb index and handy chart. You could try Hermes’ adaptation of Pythagoras’ Negative Inference System. There were many other methods and all of them worked to some extent, not through their intrinsic merit but because, for reasons not yet fully understood, the maze shaped its interminable topology to the intentions of the players within it, so that, although you cannot plan to find what you are looking for, you also cannot hope to escape it.
10. The Spool of Thread.
It is not often that a spool of thread becomes a central character in a drama. But so it is. The main components of our story are Theseus, the maze, the Minotaur, Dædalus, Ariadne, and the thread, the all-important link with the outer world that Dædalus gave to Ariadne, who gave it to Theseus.
By following the twists and turns of a magical spool of thread, Theseus was able to find his way to the depths of the maze where the Minotaur slept, kill him, and find his way out again. Or so the received version of the legend has it.
Actually, this was a simplified explanation which was given out to the barbaric Dorians of the post-Atlantean civilization after Dædalus’ sophisticated technologies were lost in the holocaust that engulfed the ancient world.
The spool of thread was actually a homing device, a mechanical “hound” programmed to pursue the Minotaur through visual, audio, and olfactory modalities.
A quasi-living entity, the thread was susceptible to transformation, just like everything else in Dædalus’ maze. In its thread form it was a kind of fly-by-wire missile, whose speed could be adjusted by the thought impulses of its operator. But it was also liable to change form without warning, in response to the rigorous but little-understood laws of Magical Engineering.
So it was that as Theseus sat there, relaxing in his chair at the restaurant, and with a comfortable flirtation going on with the waitress, he heard a squeaking sound from his knapsack. Theseus opened a flap and out crept a mouse, a rather pretty mouse, on the small side but daintily proportioned, and colored chartreuse.
“Why, hello, little mouse,” Theseus said. “Have you been riding long in my knapsack?”
“Spare me the baby talk,” said the mouse. “You knew me last as a spool of thread.”
“Why have you changed into a mouse?” Theseus inquired.
“It was required by the exigencies of the situation,” the mouse replied.
“I see,” Theseus said, and asked no more, for he could tell by the reply that the mouse, like so many magical creations, was a master, or mistress, of the dialectics of evasion. But Theseus thought to himself that the mouse might be a symbolic solidification of the mouse that does the questing across the screens of computers.
“It’s time for us to go,” the mouse said.
“Right now?” Theseus asked. “It’s really quite comfortable in this restaurant, and there’s no real urgency about this quest, is there? I mean, we have forever, or at least quite a long time, in which to find each other, the Minotaur and I. How about I get you a bowl of milk and a nice bit of cheese and we plan to get started in about a week?”
“That won’t do at all,” the mouse said. “It’s not that I’m in any rush, personally. When I finish this quest, I’ll just be sent out on another. Finding a Minotaur or finding a hypotenuse is all the same to me. That’s life for a homing device. But things tend to happen rather suddenly around here, when they happen at all. The Minotaur is on the move, and unless we make a simultaneous move, I’m apt to lose his location-trace. Then you really would have forever in which to search, and perhaps a bit longer.”
“Oh, very well,” Theseus said, getting to his feet. “Landlord, my bill! You take Visa card, I suppose?”
“Oh, yes,” the landlord said. “All major credit cards are honored in the maze.”
Theseus signed and looked around for the waitress to say goodbye, but the mouse told him, “Never mind that, you’ll meet her again.”
“How can you know that?” Theseus asked.
“Because you have no luck at all,” the mouse said, snickering. “And now, my fine hero, let us be off.”
The mouse climbed into his knapsack, then popped her head out again. “My name, by the way, is Miss Mouse. But you may call me Missy.” She crept into the knapsack and made herself comfortable in a pair of his hiking socks.
Theseus left the restaurant and set off down the main road. It was a fine day. The sun—not the real sun but a substitute that Dædalus had found that looked just like the real thing, only with nicer colors—was climbing toward the zenith. Midday already! Theseus felt the first pangs of a familiar sensation. Theseus was able to identify it without difficulty: yes, Theseus was getting hungry again already. That’s the trouble with meals in imaginary restaurants: they never satisfy for long.
11. Theobombus, leading cybernetician
at the Mount Parnassus computer works, looked up, an expression of disquiet passing over his handsome, aquiline, middle-aged features like the wings of a bat trembling just above the surface of a newly discovered painting by Manet, or like the way certain sounds seem to rebound in the caverns of the ear with an appeal so insidious, and so overwhelming, that we may be glad that music does not bear a moral imperative. Yes, there could be no doubting it. He had the biggest and best array of computing equipment the world had ever seen. He had to hand it to Dædalus; he was a man who got his men what they needed. What made it all the more neat was the way Dædalus had bypassed technology, letting intuition bear the point it so often seems to tend to, despite the cryptic tergivserations from our so-called reason. Dædalus
’ machines were damned good, his programs were brilliant, and the result of it all, the fruits of so much intellectual toil, the crowning achievement of what science can bring you, was the knowledge that the world had approximately ten and a half years of normaltime left to continue in, after which it would be annihilated.
A bummer, right? Nobody wants to hear they’re going to be wiped out in about a decade. Four and a half years left and still counting. Dædalus could see he was going to have a crazed electorate on his hands unless he did something.
Dædalus swung into action. He created the self-enclosed Maze of the Minotaur, the Maze larger than that which contains it, the Maze that contains the rest of the universe that observes the Maze.
It was a neat solution. As any advanced mathematician could see, Atlantean civilization couldn’t be saved in realtime, but in mazetime®, Dædalus’ own invention. Minos, the nobles of his court, his civilization, could go on forever.
The maze which Dædalus had proposed was more complicated than the civilization it was based upon. It was a universe with its own space-time, with built-in spectators and a high degree of self-consistency. It had been expensive, but well worth it.
The maze had no objective existence, of course. Not even Dædalus could arrange that. But it didn’t matter. What Minos and his court got was just as good as the real thing.
Within Dædalus’ maze, all of the legends and myths of the Hellenes could be played out. There were creation myths, the stories of the Olympian gods, the Odyssey and the Iliad, Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, Orestes and Electra, Iphigenia, just about everyone of any importance.
The people of Atlantis could sit around and watch the action on their small spherical television sets.
For people of importance, Minos’ inner circle of cronies, there were very large spherical television sets in which they could sit and watch the action from the inside.
From the inside of the very large spherical television sets, a member of the audience could even participate in the drama. This was useful when one of the main players needed a vacation.
There was no lack of dramatic material. The stories of the Greeks are interconnected and overlapped. Connections existed between all of the myth cycles. Each myth was a world of possibilities, and was connected at many points to other mythic worlds. Major myths could be rerun many times, and each time with a different outcome.
This made betting possible, which was taxed, and became one of the major sources of revenue for the upkeep of the maze.
The capitol city of Knossos, known throughout Hellas as The Big Olive, was incorporated into the maze. Due to the maze’s enhancement features, Knossos became contemporaneous with all space and time, and Minos found himself the ruler of the universe’s largest city.
Minos and his friends also got immortality out of it, an important plus.
Since the labyrinth was a plenum, entirely filled with its contents, there was no room in it for anything new.
All that could be found in the maze, theoretically at least, were variations on the formal possibilities already contained within it.
This wasn’t a very restricting condition, since the maze was so large, so complicated, so interconnected, that originality was never missed. It was replaced nicely by the seemingly fortuitous.
The only thing that irked Dædalus about the maze was that he could never meet anyone new in it. But old friends are the best friends, and this was a small price to pay, considering what he got.
12. King Minos.
King Minos lived in the new palace that Dædalus built for him within the maze. So magnificent was the result that it used up all the descriptive materials for millions of miles and thousands of years on all sides.
Unfortunately, Minos didn’t have the place all to himself as he had originally planned. When Zeus came for a visit, he decided that Minos’ place was where he’d like to stay when he was away from Olympus. He asked Minos if he could have an apartment somewhere in it, and even offered to pay rent. Minos couldn’t very well refuse.
“I may bring in a few friends from time to time,” Zeus said.
“Oh, certainly,” Minos replied. “Feel free.”
“I will,” Zeus said.
Zeus took over a suite of rooms right above the apartments where Minos lived; overlooking the Fountain of Innocents, the Forum, the Beauborg, and the sex shops of the Rue St. Denis. Zeus did his own decorating. He put in a cocktail lounge and a bowling alley. Topless nymphs served Coors beer and Slim Jim sausages to the sounds of country rock. In Minos’ estimation Zeus’ suite had no class at all.
There was even a moldy deer’s head mounted on one of the walls, overlooking the pool table. It had been a gift from Hades, who had searched through all the gift shops of hell until he found just the right thing.
Hades was Zeus’ brother. Minos didn’t like him, either. Hades was a gloomy fellow, always filled with moralistic ideas and cruel, very cruel, which is proper for a ruler of hell but not much fun in a brother.
Minos sat in his throne room. There was a low rumble of thunder overhead. Zeus had just bowled a spare. The deed was accompanied by gusts of homeric laughter. Minos sighed, gritted his teeth and walked to the window. Far below, crowds moved along the wide paved areas. There were fire eaters, mimes, clowns, magicians, orators and musicians. Minos had thought they would be amusing. Now he wished they’d all go away.
They couldn’t go away, of course. They lived in the vicinity, both the entertainers and the crowds who came to be entertained. Minos was stuck with them. And it was his own fault.
13. How Knossos was Peopled.
Soon after his palace was built, Minos had asked Dædalus to find him a population. His own had perished in the destruction of Atlantis and Minos felt that it was important to have people around, since they gave a place a certain liveliness and color. Dædalus, in a hurry as always, and with a lot of other things on his mind, had simply taken the first population that came to hand, that of 20th century Paris. Minos actually had had quite a different population in mind. He’d thought that it might be nice to have Andean Indians, or Balinese, or possibly Eskimos. But he’d never gotten around to mentioning it, and he didn’t want to ask Dædalus to take the Parisians back since the Master Builder had gone to quite a lot of trouble to get them.
The loss of the population of Paris did not pass unnoticed on 20th century Earth, and was especially remarked upon in France. The new French government had to act quickly. A statement was issued declaring that the Parisians had been carried off by an anomaly, and the event could confidently be expected never to happen again, such being the nature of anomalies. This satisfied everyone except for the lunatic fringe addicted to conspiracy theories. Paris was quickly repopulated. People were imported from other parts of France, and from Africa, the Caribbean and southeast Asia. Soon it was business again as usual.
As for the kidnapped Parisians in Knossos, they adjusted to their new situation without undue hardship. For one thing, Knossos looked just like Paris, except for the Assyrian tourists whom most people mistook for Americans. For another, Minos granted all the inhabitants free vacations in luxury hotels in the nearby Hanging Gardens of Babylon, thus proving the superiority of enlightened monarchy to any form of socialism.
14. In the Maze of Juxtapositions.
Life is crazy in Dædalus’ maze. Theseus found himself standing on a dusty white country road under the shade of a solitary olive tree. To his left there was a range of low mountains. He studied them for a while, aware that there was something unusual about them.
Then he realized what it was: the mountains were moving slowly toward him. Or he was moving slowly toward them. Or both the mountains and he were moving toward each other.
The olive tree started edging away from both him and the avalanching hill.
Then a nearby hill went into motion and began bearing down on him. He studied it and considered taking evasive action. But where can you go when a hill is chasing you? It’s like a landslide of ele
phants and there’s nowhere to run. So Theseus stood his ground. Heroics are cheap when you’re dead anyway. Still, what can you do?
He was more than a little surprised when the hill collected itself like a great ocean wave and flowed beneath him instead of pouring over him and grinding his flesh and bones to gravel. He was able to surfboard over it on his sneakered feet, wearing the soles of those sneakers down to an eighth of an inch by friction due to the abrading they took from rocks, gravels, sand, sea shells, fossils, old cigarette butts, and all the other matters of which a hill is composed. He was grateful to be shod at all when he stepped off the now-spent hill.
Theseus realized at once that he was in one of Dædalus’ experimental areas. The maze, at this point in space and time, could be likened to a series of mobile walkways, as at an airport. Mountains, trees, lakes, and Theseus himself, were all mounted on movable surfaces, which approached, retreated and circled around each other, flowed into and around each other, approached and retreated in accordance with laws which Dædalus had invented but not elucidated, following the ancient dictum that mysteries give an air of pleasurable profundity, whereas explanations always smack of the banal.
Nothing in this collage of moving surfaces ever collided. Interaction was suspended; only passing juxtapositions were possible. It was magical and delicious, this section of the maze of juxtapositions. Theseus loved the way things suddenly appeared, moved toward him for a while, then went away. A whole castle passed in this manner, and the people on the battlements waved, like tourists anywhere. Then, without warning, he was in a bog.
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