“Yes, I can always tell my right hand from my left. Out here anyway.” Theseus was trying grimly. “Right always holds the sword.”
“Yes. So if you want to go inward, as I say, first let your right hand glide continuously along the walls, in imagination if not in fact. Then, whenever you must climb a stair, switch at its top to gliding your left hand along the wall; in other words, when there’s a choice, turn always to the left. Whenever a stair leads you downward, switch again at its bottom to going right. Now, if you are seeking your way out, simply reverse—”
“Daedalus.” The Prince’s voice stopped him in mid-sentence. “Thanks for what you are trying to do. But I tell you, when I am put in there I cannot help myself.” Theseus got to his feet, as if unconscious of the movement, his eyes fixed now on distance. “in there I forget all your lefts and rights, and all else, except I know the walls are crushing in on me, the doors all sealing themselves off—” Ariadne put out a hand again, and drew it back. Now she was standing too. “—so there is nothing left but the stone walls, all coming closer . . . I wish you had never told me that some of them are four men’s bodies thick.”
Theseus was shivering slightly, as if with cold. The look in his eyes was one that Daedalus had seen there only rarely in the past, and now Daedalus too got to his feet, moving with deliberate care.
“If that god-blasted cow dares lecture me on courage and perseverance in my stu-dies one more time, I swear by all the gods I’ll break its neck.”
“Very well, my friend.” He laid a hard hand gently and briefly on the Prince’s shoulder. “There are other ways that we can help.”
MIDAFTERNOON of the day following, and in his own classroom Daedalus had fallen into a daydream of numbers that his stubborn mind kept trying to fit to flying gulls. He was roused from this state by a hand shaking his own shoulder.
Stomargos stood at his side, looking down at him in obscure triumph. “Daedalus, the White Bull wants to see you, at once.”
He would not ask what for, but got to his feet and followed the educator in a silence of outward calm.
Daedalus had expected that when they reached the Bull’s private quarters Stomargos would be sent out. But the Bull, waiting for them on its tall chair, made no sign of dismissal, and the young man, with the smug look on his face, remained standing at Daedalus’ side.
Today for once the Bull did not say learn from me. “We have dis-cov-ered the Prin-ce’s cheat-ing, Dae-dal-us.”
“Cheating? What do you mean?” He had never been any good with lies.
“The thread tied on his right hand. The ti-ny met-al balls to bounce and roll and seek al-ways the down-ward slope of floor, how-ev-er gen-tle. How did you make a met-al ball so smooth and round?”
He had dropped them molten from a tall tower, into water. He wondered if the Bull would be impressed to hear his method. “I see,” he said aloud, trying to be non-committal, admitting nothing. “What do you mean to do?”
“Leave us, Sto-mar-gos,” the White Bull said at last. And when they were alone, it said: “Now learn from me, Dae-dal-us. As you have sought to learn.”
. . . and he reeled and almost fell into the moat before he could sit down, as the pictures came into his mind, this time with painful power. There were the wings, not much different in their gross structure from those he had in his workshop, but these were pierced through at many points with tiny, peculiarly curved channels. Soft, sculptured cavities that widened just slightly and quickly closed again as in his vision the wings beat and the air flowed through and around them. With each beat, the air below the wings, encountering the channels, changed pressure wildly, a thin layer of it turning momentarily almost as hard as wood. Somehow in the vision he could feel as well as see the fluid alterations . . . and just so the pinions’ width and length must be, in relation to the flyer’s length and weight, and so the variation in the channels that went through the different regions of the wing . . .
It all burned into the brain. There would be no forgetting this, even if forgetfulness were one day willed. But the imprinting vision was soon ended, and he climbed shakily up to a standing pose.
“Bull . . . why did you never before give me such teaching?”
“It will not make of you an ed-u-cat-ed man, Dae-dal-us.”
“I thank you for it . . . but why, then, do you give it now?”
The Bull’s voice was almost soft, and it did not seem to be looking directly at him. “I think this teach-ing will re-move you from my pres-ence. One way or a-no-ther stop your dis-rup-tion of my school.”
“I see.” In his mind the plan for the new wings burned, urgent as a fire in the workshop. “You will not tell Minos, then, that you accuse me of helping Theseus to cheat?”
“Your val-ue to the King is great, Dae-dal-us. If he is forced to choose be-tween us I may pos-sib-ly be sacrificed. Or my school closed. Therefore I take this step to re-move you as my ri-val. I see now you are not worthy of fine ed-u-ca-tion.”
THE WINGS still burning before his eyes, he had let himself be led off through the Labyrinth for a hundred paces or so (Stomargos, triumph fading into puzzlement, his escort once again) before it came to him. “And Theseus? What of him?”
“I am a witness to the Prince’s attempt at cheating,” said Stomargos, firmly and primly. “And the Bull has decided that he now must be expelled.”
“That cannot be!” Daedalus was so aghast that the other was shaken for a moment.
But for a moment only. “Oh, the Bull and I are quite agreed on that. The Prince is probably receiving his formal notification at this moment.” And Daedalus spun around and ran, back toward the inner Labyrinth.
“Stay! Stay!” Stomargos shouted, trotting in pursuit. “You are to leave the precincts of the school at once . . .” But just then the roaring and the struggling sounded from within.
Theseus and the Bull were grappling on the central dais, arms locked on each others necks, Daedalus saw as he burst on the scene. The tall chair was overturned, fruit scattered underfoot. In Theseus’ broad back the great bronze cables stood like structural arches glowing from the forge.
The end came even as Daedalus’ feet splashed in the moat. He heard the sickening bony crack and the Bull’s hoarse warbling cry at the same instant. The Prince staggered back to stand there staring down at what his hands had done. The gray-white mound of fur, suddenly no more man-like than a dying bear, dropped at his feet.
Stomargos came in, and splashed over quickly to join the others on the dais. He pointed, goggled, opened his mouth and began an almost wordless call for help. He turned and ran, and it was Daedalus who had to stop him with a desperate watery tackle in the moat.
“Theseus! Help me! Keep this one quiet.” And in a moment the Prince of Athens had taken charge. Stomargos’ head was clamped down under water, and soon the bubbles ceased to rise and make their way to the splash gutter at his side.
The two men still alive climbed out onto the dais. Theseus, still panting with his exertions against the Bull, seemed with every working of his lungs to grow a little taller and straighter, like some young tree just freed of a deforming burden, resuming its natural form. “Does he still breathe, Daedalus?” A nod toward the fallen Bull.
Daedalus was crouching down, prodding into gray fur, trying to find out. “I am not sure.”
“Well, let him, if he can. It matters to me no longer. My ship and men can be got ready in an hour or two and I am going home. Or somewhere else, if my father will not have me in Athens now. But better a pirate’s life, even, than . . .” His eyes flashed once at the convoluted walls surrounding.
Daedalus started to ask why he thought he would be allowed to leave, but then understanding came. “And myself;” he asked.
“Ariadne will come with me, I expect.”
“Gods of sea and sky!”
“And her sister Phaedra. And you are welcome, friend, though I can promise you no safe workshop, nor slaves, nor high place at a court.”
&n
bsp; “I want no place as high as a sun-dried pirate’s, which I fear Minos might make for me here, when he comes home. Now we had better move swiftly, before this violence is discovered.”
“Dae-dal-us.” The unexpected voice was a mere thread of sound, stretched and about to break.
He bent down closer beside its head. “White Bull, how is it with you?”
“As with a man whose neck is broken, Dae-dal-us. Af-ter to-day I teach no more.”
“Would I had learned from you before today, White Bull. And would you had learned from me.”
THEY WALKED OUT TOGETHER, looking a little shaken no doubt, as was only natural for two students who had probably just been expelled. Theseus muttered to passing teachers that the Bull and Stomargos were talking together and did not wish to be disturbed. They walked without hurrying to Ariadne, and then one trusted servant was sent to gather Theseus’ crew. And another to help Daedalus look for his son, when he discovered that Icarus was truant yet again today, not to be found in school.
The wild lands where boys looked for birds and dreams swept up mile after mile behind and above the House of the Double Axe.
“We can wait no longer for him, Daedalus. My men’s lives are all in danger, and the Princesses’ too. As soon as the bodies are found, some military man or sea captain will take it upon himself to stop my sailing, or try to do so.”
And Ariadne: “Theseus must get away. My father will not deal too grievously with you, Daedalus; he depends on you too much.”
Phaedra was silent, biting her full lips. Her fingers as if moving on their own caressed Theseus’ arm, but Ariadne did not see.
Daedalus saw in his mind’s eye the sun-dried pirates on the dock; and his workshop with the hidden, unfinished wings, and he saw how the small trusting shadow would cross the threshold when Icarus came running home . . .
LONG, helmed shadows came first, the black triangles of shadow-spearheads thrust ahead of them. This time they held their weapons ready as they marched him deeper into the House, and Icarus, returning wearily from some adventure, was only just in time to see his father arrested, and be swept up like a dropped crumb by tidy soldiery.
A month must pass before Minos came home again, and the de facto military government, taking over after the Princesses’ desertion, did not want to assume responsibility for judging Daedalus. He and his son were confined under strict house arrest in his workshop and quarters, and allotted also a small area of Labyrinth that lay between.
All entrances and exits to their small domain were walled up—the masonry was rough and temporary-looking, if there was any comfort to be derived from that. The guard was heavy all around. Food was slid in through a tiny door, and garbage dragged out, and water continued to flow through the Daedalian plumbing. And that was all.
WHAT MATERIAL to use, to sculpt the thousand channels? It must be soft . . .
When he had a hundred cunning perforations built through a wing he tested it. Strapped it on and gave a strong, quick push down and it felt as if his arm had for a moment rested on something solid and ready to be climbed.
One clouded night when there were a thousand channels and he had decided the wings were ready, the father mounted into the sky. Ascending awkwardly and breathlessly at first, he soon learned to relax like a good swimmer. When some height had been attained, a long, gliding, coasting rest let the arm muscles recover before more work was necessary. In an hour, in air that was almost calm, he flew the length of the whole cloud-shrouded island, and was not winded or wearied. Then back toward the pinpoints of the House’s lamps, which served to guide him home.
When he landed, the wings were warm, almost hot, with heat that had been gathered into their channels out of the air itself, and somehow turned to pushing force. Daedalus still had not the words or thoughts to make clear, even in his own mind, just how the wings worked. In daylight a strong push down with one completed wing, and you could see a vapor-puff big as a pumpkin appear in the beaten air and fly off rearward, spinning violently. Icarus extending a hand into the puff said he could feel the chill . . .
FOOD AND WATER and gold, in small quantities, they would carry at their belts. In daylight, across the sea to Sicily; a few hours should be enough. And they could turn northward, to the mainland, if they flew into difficulty. “In the morning, son. Now sleep.”
. . . HE HAD NOT YET paid the price, but he knew that it would come. Squinting into the hot. rising run, he absently marked its dull sheen on Icarus’ wings, and waited for the breath of wind to help them rise among the gulls.
MARTHA
Fresh upon the heels of his “Wilderness” (September) and “The White Bull” (in the November issue of our companion magazine, FANTASTIC), Fred Saberhagen is back with a short vignette about a computer named—
IT RAINED HARD on Tuesday, and the Science Museum was not crowded. On my way to interview the director in his office, I saw a touring class of schoolchildren gathered around the newest exhibit, a very late-model computer. It had been given the name of Martha, an acronym constructed by some abbreviation of electronic terms. Martha was supposed to be capable of answering a very wide range of questions in all areas of human knowledge, even explaining some of the most abstruse scientific theories to the layman.
“I understand the computer can even change its own design,” I commented, a bit later, talking to the director.
He was proud. “Yes, theoretically. She hasn’t done much rebuilding yet, except to design and print a few new logic circuits for herself.”
“You call the computer ‘she,’ then. Why?”
“I do. Yes. Perhaps because she’s still mysterious, even to the men who know her best.” He chuckled, man-to-man.
“What does it—or she—say to people? Or let me put it this way, what kind of questions does she get?”
“Oh, there are some interesting conversations.” He paused. “Martha allows each person about a minute at one of the phones, then asks him or her to move along. She has scanners and comparator circuits that can classify people by shape. She can conduct several conversations simultaneously, and she even uses simpler words when talking to children. We’re quite proud of her.”
I was making notes. Maybe my editor would like one article on Martha and another on the museum in general. “What would you say was the most common question asked of the machine?”
The director thought. “Well, people sometimes ask: ‘Are you a girl in there?’ At first Martha always answered ‘No,’ but lately she’s begun to say: ‘You’ve got me there.’ That’s not just a programmed response, either, which is what makes it remarkable. She’s a smart little lady.” He chuckled again. “Also, people sometimes want their fortunes told, which naturally is beyond even Martha’s powers. Let me think. Oh yes, many people want her to multiply large numbers, or play tic-tac-toe on the electric board. She does those things perfectly, of course. She’s brought a lot of people to the museum.”
On my way out I saw that the children had gone. For the moment I was alone with Martha in her room. The communicating phones hung unused on the elegant guardrail. I went over and picked up one of the phones, feeling just a little foolish.
“Yes, sir,” said the pleasant feminine voice in my ear, made up, I knew, of individually recorded words electronically strung together. “What can I do for you?”
Inspiration came. “You ask me a question,” I suggested.
The pleasant voice repeated: “What can I do for you?”
“I want you to ask me a question.”
“You are the first human being to ask me for a question. Now, this is the question I ask of you: What do you, as one human being, want from me?”
I was momentarily stumped. “I don’t know,” I said finally. “The same as everyone else, I guess.” I was wondering how to improve upon my answer when a sign lit up, reading:
CLOSED TEMPORARILY FOR REPAIRS
PARDON ME WHILE I POWDER MY NOSE
The whimsy was not Martha’s, but printed by hu
man design on the glass over the light. If she turned the repair light on, those were the only words that she could show the world. Meanwhile, the phone I was holding went dead. As I moved away I thought I heard machinery starting up under the floor.
Next day the director called to tell me that Martha was rebuilding herself. The day after that I went back to look. People were crowding up to the guardrail, around new panels which held rows of buttons. Each button, when pushed, produced noises, or colored lights, or impressive discharges of static electricity, among the complex new devices which had been added atop the machine. Through the telephone receivers a sexy voice answered every question with clearly spoken scraps of nonsense, studded with long technical words.
1977
PERIOD OF TOTALITY
Just recently, the author moved from his birthplace, Chicago, to New Mexico, where he and his family are enjoying the sun and scenery. His wife teaches mathematics, his children wear home-made ‘Berserker’ T-shirts to SF conventions, and Mr. Saberhagen has been selling science fiction since 1961.
The old man in the spacesuit came out of the low cave mouth, squinting out across the scarred and airless surface of the world informally called Slag. The land before him was a jumble of craters and hillocks and strange structures like frozen wave-foam, some of which looked almost like examples of wind-erosion. Gray was the predominant color, in shades ranging from glaring silver to dull near-black. Kilometers away, though looking deceptively nearer in the airless distance, the silvery ovoid of an interstellar spaceship waited, balancing on its larger end. The old man’s gaze was turned toward the ship, and from the same general direction a double line of wide-wheeled vehicle tracks approached the place where he was standing. The tracks wound around some of the more difficult features of the landscape, and finally vanished in the broad-mouthed cave.
The cave gaped like a small black mouth in the high, silvery scarp which, like a pedestal, held Slag’s sole mountain on display. It would not have been much of a mountain anywhere else, but here it dominated all.
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