Short Fiction Complete

by Fred Saberhagen

  Thus the ascent from the harbor turned into an informal procession, with Theseus and Daedalus walking ahead, and the small honor guard following a few paces back, irregularly accompanied by the remaining thirteen Athenians, who looked about them and perhaps wondered a little at the unceremoniousness of it all. The girls whispered a little at the freedom of the Cretan women, who, though obviously respectable as shown by their dress and attitudes, strode about so boldly in the streets. The gaily decorated wagon in which the new arrivals might have ridden, rumbled uphill empty behind a pair of grateful horses. The wagon’s bright paint and streamers jarred with the mock-mourning of the newcomers.

  When they had climbed partway through the town, Daedalus suggested gently to his companion that the imitation mourning would be in especially bad taste at Court today, for a real funeral was going to take place in the afternoon.

  “Someone in Minos’ family?”

  “No. One who would have been your fellow student had he lived; in his third year at school. A Lapith. But still.”

  “Oh.” Theseus slowed his long if slightly wobbling strides and rubbed a hand across his forehead, looking at the fingers afterward. “Now what do I do?”

  “Let us not, after all, take you to Minos right away.” Daedalus turned and with a gesture called one of the Court officials forward, saying to him: “Arrange some better quarters for Prince Theseus than those customarily given the new students. And he and his shipmates will need some time to make themselves presentable before they go before the King. Meanwhile, I will seek out Minos myself and offer explanations.”

  The officer’s face and his quick salute showed his relief.

  “DAEDALUS.” King Minos’ manner was pleasant but business-like as he welcomed his engineer into a pleasant, white-walled room where at the moment his chief tax-gatherers were arguing over innumerable scrolls spread out upon stone tables. Open colonnades gave a view of blue ocean in one direction, Mount Ida in another. “What can I do to help you out today? How goes the rock-thrower machine?” The King’s once-raven hair was graying, and his bare paunch stood honestly and comfortably over the waistband of his linen loincloth. But his arms within their circlets of heavy gold looked muscular as ever, and his eyes were still keen and penetrating.

  “The machine goes well enough, sire. I wait for the cattle-hides from Thrace, that are to be twisted into the sling, and I improve my waiting time by overseeing construction of the bronze shields.” Actually by now the smiths and smelters were all well trained and needed little supervision; so there was time for thought whilst looking into the forge and furnace flames, time to see again the gull’s effortless flight as captured by the mind and eye . . . “Today, King Minos, I come before you with another matter, one that I am afraid will not wait.” He began to relate to Minos the circumstances of the Prince’s arrival, leaving out neither the black sails nor the drunkenness, though they were mere details compared with the great fact of Theseus’ coming to be enrolled in the school.

  Minos during this recital led him into another room, out of earshot of the tax gatherers. There the King, frowning, walked restlessly, pausing to look out of a window to where preparations for the afternoon’s funeral games were under way. “How is Aegeus?” he asked, without turning.

  “Prince Theseus reports his esteemed lather in excellent health.”

  “Daedalus, it will not do for King Aegeus’ son to leave Crete with his brains addled, any more than they may be already.” The King turned. “As has happened to a few—Cretans and Athenians and others—since the school was opened. Or to leap from a tower, like this young man we’re burying today. Not that I think the Prince would ever choose that exit.”

  “Yours are words of wisdom, Sire. And no more will it be desirable for Theseus to foil publicly at an assigned task, even if it be only obtaining a certificate of achievement from a school.”

  Minos walked again. “Your turn to speak wisely, counselor. Frankly, what do you think the Prince’s chances are, of pursuing his studies here successfully?”

  Daedalus’ head bobbed in a light bow. “I share your own seeming misgivings on the subject, great King.”

  “Yes. Um. We both know Theseus, and we both know also what the school is like. You better than I, I suppose. I can have Phaedra keep an eye on him, of course. She will be starting this semester too—not that she has her older sisters brains, but it may do her some good. It may. He is as stalwart and handsome as ever, I suppose? Yes, then no doubt she will have an eye on him in any case.” Continuing to think aloud, arms folded and a frown on his face, Minos came closer, until an observer might have thought that he was threatening the other man. “I had no thought that Aegeus was about to send his own son. But I suppose he did not want his nobles’ children displaying any honors that could not be matched in his own house. Oh, if he’d had a scholarly boy, one given to hanging around with graybeard sages, then I would have issued a specific invitation. I would’ve thought it expected. But given the Princes nature . . .” Minos unfolded his arms but kept his eyes fixed firmly on his waiting subject, “Daedalus. You are Theseus’ friend, from your sojourn at the Athenian court. And you were enrolled briefly in the school yourself . . . I sometimes marvel that you did not throw yourself into it more wholeheartedly.”

  “Perhaps we sages are not immune to professional jealousy, Sire.”

  “Perhaps.” Minos’ gaze twinkled keenly. “However that may be, I now expect you to do two things.”

  Daedalus bowed.

  “First, stand ready to offer Theseus your tutorial services, as they may be required.”

  “Of course, Sire.”

  “Secondly—will you go today to see the Bull and talk to him? I think in this case you have greater competence than any of my usual ambassadors. Do what you can toward explaining the situation. Report back to me when you have seen the Bull.”

  Daedalus bowed.

  ON HIS WAY toward the Labyrinth, at whose center the Bull dwelt, he stopped to peer in unnoticed at the elementary school, which like most other governmental departments had its own corner of the vast sprawling House. On a three-legged stool surrounded by a gaggle of other boys and girls sat ten-year-old Icarus, stylus in hand, bent over wax tablets on a table before him. Chanting grammar, an earnest young woman paced among her pupils. Daedalus knew her for one of the more recent graduates of the school where Theseus was bound. For a moment the King’s engineer had the mad vision of Theseus in this classroom, teaching; hardly madder than that of the Prince sitting down to study, he supposed. After a last glance at his own fidgeting son—Icarus was bright enough, but didn’t seem to want to apply himself to learning yet—Daedalus walked on.

  As he passed along the flank of the vast House, he glanced in the direction of the field of rock-hewn tombs nearby, and saw the small procession returning across the bridge that spanned the Kairatos, coming back to the House for the games, the bull-dancing and the wrestling that should please the gods.

  Pausing in a cloistered walk to watch, he pondered briefly the fact that Minos himself was not coming to the funeral. Of course the King was always busy. There was Queen Pasiphae, though, taking her seat of honor in the stands, rouged and wigged as usual these days to belie her age, tight girdle thrusting her full bare breasts up in a passable imitation of youth. And there came Princess Ariadne to the royal bench, taking the position of Master of the Games, as befitted her status of eldest surviving child. And there was Phaedra—how old now? sixteen?—and quite the prettiest girl in sight.

  He had thought that Theseus might be sleeping it off by now, but evidently the recuperative powers of youth, at least in the royal family of Athens, were even stronger than Daedalus remembered them to be. The Prince, cleansed by what must have been a complete bath and scraping, and suitably tagged for a modest degree of real mourning by a black band around his massive biceps, was just now vaulting into the ring for a wrestling turn. Stripped naked for the contest, Theseus was an impressive figure. Daedalus stayed long eno
ugh to watch him earn a quick victory over his squat, powerful adversary, some Cretan champion, and then claim a wreath from Ariadne’s hand.

  Then Daedalus walked on. There was, on this side of the House, no sharp line of architectural demarcation where ordinary living space ended and the Labyrinth began. Roofed space became less common, and at the same time walls grew unscalably high and smooth and passages narrowed. Stairs took the walker up and down for no good reason, and up and down again, until he was no longer sure whether he walked above the true ground level or below it. Windows were no more.

  Now Daedalus was in the precincts of the real school, which Thesus would attend. Behind closed wooden doors taut silence reigned, or else came out the drone of reciting voices. A dozen times a stranger would have been confused, and like as not turned back to where he started, before Daedalus reached a sign, warning in three languages that the true Labyrinth lay just ahead. He passed beneath the sign with quick, sure steps.

  HE HAD GONE scarcely fifty paces farther, turning half a dozen comers in that distance, before he became aware that someone was following him. A pause to glance back got him a brief glimpse of a long-haired girl’s head, peering round a corner in his direction. The girl ducked out of sight at once. All was silent until his own feet began to move again, whereupon the shuffle of those pursuing him resumed.

  With a sigh, he stopped again. Turned and called softly, “Stay.” Then he walked back. As he had expected, it was a student, a slender Athenian girl of about eighteen, leaning against the stone wall in an exhausted but defensive pose. Daedalus vaguely remembered seeing her around for the last year or two. Now her eyes had gone blank and desperate with the endless corners and walls and angles and stairs and tantalizing glimpses of sky beyond the bronze grillwork high above. Failing some kind of test, obviously, she stared at him in silent hopelessness.

  It was not for him to interfere. “Follow me,” he whispered to her, “and you will come out in the apartments of the Bull himself. Is that what you want?”

  The girl responded with a negative gesture, weak but quick. There was a great fear in her eyes. It was not the fear of a soldier entering a losing battle, or a captive going to execution, but great all the same. Though not as raw and immediate as those particular kinds of terror, it was on a level just as deep. Not death, only failure was in prospect, but that could be bad enough, especially for the young.

  He turned from her and went on, and heard no more of feet behind. Soon he came to where a waterpipe crossed the passageway, concealed under a kind of stile. He had overseen most of the Labyrinth’s construction, and was its chief designer. This wall here on his left was as thick as four men’s bodies lying head to toe. Just outside, though you would never guess it from in here, was a free sunny slope, and the last creaking shadow in the chain of lifting devices that brought seawater here by stages from the salt pools and reservoirs below.

  Choosing unthinkingly the correct branchings of the twisted way, he came out abruptly into the central open space. Beyond the broad, raised, sundazzled stone dais in its center yawned the dark mouths of the Bull’s own rooms. In the middle of the dais, like the gnomon of a sundial, stood a big chair on whose humped seat no human could comfortably have perched. On it the White Bull sat waiting, as if expecting him.

  “Learn from me, Dae-dal-us.” This was what the Bull always said to him in place of any more conventional greeting. It had chronic trouble in sliding its inhumanly deep, slow voice from one syllable to another without a complete stop in between, though when necessary the sounds came chopping out at a fast rate.

  The Bull stood up like a man from its chair, on the dais surrounded by the gently flowing moat of seawater that it did not need, but loved. It was hairy and muscular, and larger than any but the biggest men. Though wild tales about its bullhood flew through the House, Daedalus, who had talked to it perhaps as much as any other man, was not even sure that it was truly male. The silver-tipped hair of fur grew even thicker about the loins than on the rest of the body, which was practically covered. Its feet—Daedalus sometimes thought of them as its hind feet, though it invariably walked on only two—ended in hooves, or at least in soles so thick and hard as to come very near that definition. Its upper limps beneath their generous fur were quite manlike in the number and position of their joints, and their muscular development put Daedalus in mind of Theseus’ arms.

  Any illusion that this might be a costumed man died quickly with inspection of the hands. The fingernails were so enlarged as to be almost tiny hooves, and each hand bore two opposable thumbs. The head, at first glance, was certainly a bull’s, with its fine short snowy hair and the two blunt horns; but one saw quickly that the lips were far too mobile, the eyes too human and intelligent.

  “Learn from me, Dae-dal-us.”

  “We have tried that.” The conflict between them was now too old, and still too sharp, to leave much room for formal courtesy.

  “Learn.” The deep and bull-like voice as stubborn as a wall. “The secrets of the a-tom and the star are mine to give.”

  “Then what need have you for one more student, one worn old man like me? There must be younger minds, all keen and eager to be taught. Even today a fresh contingent has come from Athens for your instruction.”

  “You are not tru-ly old as yet; there are dec-ades of strong life a-head. And if you tru-ly learn, you may extend your life.”

  Daedalus curtly signed refusal, confronting the other across the moat’s reflected sky. The King had had him raise the water up here for the Bull’s pleasure, evidently as some reminder of a homeland too remote for human understanding. Some ten years ago the Bull had appeared on the island, speaking passable Greek and asking to see the King, offering gifts of knowledge. Some said it had come out of the sea, but the homeland it occasionally alluded to was much more wonderful than that.

  Daedalus said: “For the past few years I have watched the young men and women going in here to be taught, and I have seen and talked to them again when they came out. I do not know whether I want to be taught what they are learning. Not one has whispered to me the stars’ or atoms’ secrets.”

  “All fra-gile ves-sels, Dae-dal-us. Of lim-i-ted cap-a-cit-y. And once cracked, good on-ly to be stud-ied to find out how the pot is made.” The Bull took a step toward him on its shaggy, goat-shaped legs. “For such a mind as yours, I bring ful-fill-ment, nev-er bur-sting.”

  It was always the same plea; learn from me. And always the same arguments, with variations, shot back and forth between them. “Are there no sturdy, capacious vessels among the students?”

  “Not one in a thou-sand will have your mind. Not one in ten thousand.”

  “We have tried, remember? It was not good for me.”

  “Try a-gain.”

  Daedalus looked around him almost involuntarily, then lowered his voice. “I told you what I wanted. Teach me to fly. Show me how the wings should be constructed, rather.”

  “It is not that sim-ple, Dae-dal-us.”

  The White Bull’s inhumanly deep voice stretched out in something like a yawn, and it resumed its chair. It ate only vegetables and fruits, and scattered about it on the dais was a light litter of husks and shriveled leaves. “But if you stu-dy in my school four years, you will be a-ble to build wings for your-self af-ter that time. I prom-ise you.”

  The man clenched his calloused hands. “How can it take me four years to learn to build a wing? If I can learn a thing at all, the idea of it should take root within my mind inside four days, and any skill required should come into my fingers in four months. The knowledge might take longer to perfect, of course—but I do not ask to build a flock of birds complete with beaks and claws, and breathe life into them, and set them catching fish and laying eggs. No, all I want are a few feathers for myself.”

  When he had enrolled, a year or so ago, he soon found out that he was to learn to build wings not by trying to build them, but by first studying “the knowledge of numbers” as the White Bull put it, and
then the strengths and other properties of the various materials that might be used, and theories of the air and of birds, and a distracting list of other matters having even less apparent relevance. Some of this, the materials, Daedalus knew pretty well already, and about the rest he did not care. His enrollment had not lasted long.

  “Try a-gain, Dae-dal-us.” The voice maintained its solemn, stubborn roar. “You will be-come a tru-ly ed-u-cat-ed man. New hor-i-zons will o-pen for you.”

  “You mean you will teach me not what I want to learn, but rather to forget wanting it. To learn instead to make my life depend and pivot on your teaching.” Here he was again, getting bogged down in the same old unwinnable dispute. Why keep at it? Because there were moments when he seemed to himself insane for rejecting the undoubted wealth of knowledge that the Bull could give him. And yet he knew that he was right to do so.

  “Bull, what good will it do you if I come to sit at your feet and learn? There has to be something that you want out of it.”

  “My rea-son for be-ing is to teach,” It nodded down solemnly at him from its high chair, and crossed its hind legs like some goat-god. “For this I crossed o-ceans un-im-ag’-na-ble between the stars. When I con-vey my teach-ings to minds a-ble to hold them, then I too will be ful-filled and can know peace. Shall I tell tyin-os that you still re-fuse? There are wea-pons much great-er than eat-a-pults that you could make for him.”

  “I doubt you will tell Minos anything. I doubt that he will speak to you any more.”

  “Why not? You mean I have displeased him?”

  He meant, but was not going to say, that Minos seemed to be getting increasingly afraid of his pet monster. It was not, Daedalus thought, that the King suspected the Bull of plotting to seize power, or anything along that line. Minos’ fear seemed to lie on a deeper, more personal level. The King perhaps had not admitted this fear to himself, and anyway the White Bull brought him too much prestige, not to speak of useful knowledge, for him to want to get rid of it.