The Spiral Labyrinth

by Matthew Hughes

  I put my hand over my mouth as if to stifle a yarn and said, in a whisper, "Integrator, quietly now, is the wheel honest or is it fixed to allow the operator an unfair advantage?"

  Its voice spoke softly in my ear. "Honest, but the odds are with the house in the long run."

  I continued to observe but as I did so, I applied first- then second-level consistencies to the progression of winning numbers that the wheel produced. After a few more spins, I proceeded to third-level, moving deeper into the abstruse mathematics that give structure and predictability to the seeming randomness of the universe. I superimposed the consistencies' rhythms and ratios onto the sequence of numbers, and a clear pattern emerged. I watched the fall of the ball from the operator's fingers, saw where it struck the spinning wheel and flicked immediately to another slot. I calculated quickly and thought to myself, thirty-seven. Moments later, the ball rattled into that number's slot and remained there.

  "Hmm," I said. I continued to observe, correctly predicting the results of the next two spins. Then I approached the table, plucking a few bits and terces from my pocket. There was a brief interval between the moment when the operator dropped the ball into the spinning the wheel and his declaration that no more wagers could be placed. In that span I made my calculations, and placed two bits on number fourteen.

  The ball clattered and bounced then, as the wheel slowed, it settled into the fourteen slot. A spontaneous "Ooh!" erupted from the watchers as the operator, grinning falsely, added a silver coin and three terces to my stake. I matched his grin with a look of pleased surprise and swept up the coins. The silver piece went into my pocket, while the coppers clinked in my hand as I waited for the next spin.

  It soon came, preceded by a rash of betting as the punters took heart from my win. When the operator had the wheel spinning and had dropped the ball again, I applied consistencies and before he could cut me off, I put down three terces on number forty-four. The bet earned me a collective hum of appreciation from the crowd around the table, a sound that became a roar when the ball dropped into the forty-four slot.

  The operator's grin remained fixed but not a hint of congratulation showed in his eyes as he delved into a metal cash box and counted out seven of the silver coins plus six coppers. Over the brouhaha of comments and ejaculations from the other bettors, whose excitement was now drawing non-playing patrons to rise from the chairs and come to the table, the operator shot a look toward the innkeeper. The latter nodded and turned to unlock a cupboard in the wall behind the bar.

  I had no time to see what he was reaching for, because the wheel was now spinning again and the ball poised to plunge. The operator was looking at me in a way that indicated I should place my wager, but I waited him out, feigning indecisiveness until he had to let the little white orb drop. When it finally did, I rapidly made my calculations then placed the six terces, still in my hand from my last win, on the rectangle that was colored gold. Moments later, the ball tumbled into the number twelve slot.

  "Twelve, even, gold," said the operator and began to pay out. He scooped my six coppers from the board and replaced them with two silver coins. Then he had to count out more three-to-one winnings, because four of the other players had also waited until I bet and had joined me on the gold. When he had finished a pause lay upon the room. The man did not put his hand to the wheel to spin it again, nor did any of the punters lay so much as a bit on the betting board. All of them were looking at me.

  We stood like one of those frozen tableaux that had been popular in my youth: citizens of Olkney's upper social layers would decorate a room of their houses to represent the setting of a particular myth, or a story from fiction, or an incident from history; they would then costume themselves as key participants in the depicted action, although there was no actual action, as they would stand motionless, in poses that illustrated some critical point in the event. Aficionados would go from house to house on the nights reserved for the spectacles, then gather at an appointed spot to render judgment on the various efforts, and award prizes for the best over-all display, as well as for specific categories, like "boldest in spirit" and "most obscure".

  As always, things eventually went too far, with some persons near-bankrupting themselves in an effort to win transient esteem, and with two rather nasty feuds that climaxed in "meetings" under the Retributive Code, at which blood was shed. The Archon finally ended the whole business by declining to invite any of the winners of the last season's tableaux to his annual levee.

  The stillness of the impromptu scene of which I was the unintentional centerpiece was now broken as the innkeeper thrust his way into the mob around the table. He eyed me coldly then produced a small golden casket whose lid was figured in damascened swirls of a paler metal. He worked the catch that sealed the coffer, lifted its lid and reached inside, drawing out a gray-skinned reptile whose tail and head extended from either end of his closed fist.

  He placed the creature on the betting board, where it walked slowly up and down on legs that stuck out at right angles to its body. A spiny crest, running from its head to the base of its tail erected itself and shimmered a translucent green. All eyes watched the animal's progress from one end of the board to the other, until the wheel's operator nodded and said, "Nothing. Now, let's try the wheel."

  The innkeeper gently picked up the animal and placed it among the slots. It waddled its way over the frets until it had circled the entire circumference, pausing only to extrude a long, pink tongue in the direction of the ball. Again, every eye in the place watched it, until the operator said, "No, still green."

  Or not quite every eye, I realized as I looked up to see that one of the crowd was studying me. He was a compact man of about my own age, attired in clothes of green trimmed in copper that seemed neither rich nor poor, and with an unremarkable aspect except that his eyes were that rare shade of gray that makes them difficult to read. As he saw me become aware of his inspection, he continued to regard me with an evaluating mien, though his head now cocked to one side and his mouth quirked a brief, small smile.

  "Maybe the inkling's not working," said the innkeeper. He looked about the crowd. "Who's got a charm?"

  Various eyes now regarded each other, but no one spoke up.

  "Come, now," said the innkeeper, "at least one of you has a keep-safe or a ward-off."

  At that, the gray-eyed man stepped forward, reaching into the open neck of his blouson and drawing out a medallion on a cord of what looked to be human hair. "I have a traveler's bless-me," he said, "sufficient to deter the four classes of ifreets and most night-haunters."

  "That will do," said the innkeeper. He placed the reptile on his open palm and brought it into close proximity to the medallion. The creature flicked out its tongue twice, while the sail-like fin on its back turned from green to a warm orange.

  The crowd murmured. The innkeeper and the wheel's operator exchanged sour looks, then gave me even darker glances in which suspicion collaborated with distaste. I had often found, while passing through similar establishments on uncouth worlds, that a justly timed display of assertiveness can strangle conflicts in their infancy. It seemed an appropriate moment to say, "Perhaps you would like to apply your 'inkling' to my sword?"

  The lumpish man regarded me truculently while the other patted his oiled hair in a nervous reflex. "Why would I want to do that?" said the former.

  "Just to establish where we all are," I said.

  Reluctantly, the innkeeper extended the finned animal toward the hilt of my weapon. The inkling's sail stood rigid and glowed a deep red, intermittently shot through with flashes of electric blue. I found the effect remarkable. To the others in the room it was even more affecting. I heard gasps and other indications of surprise and respect, accompanied by rustling movements as those nearest to me jostled to give me more room.

  "Shall we play on?" I said.

  The innkeeper and his creature withdrew to the bar and the wheel was spun. I waited as before, and when the ball was dropped I
put a silver piece on number eighteen. The operator's eyes flashed darkly and his thin jaw was clamped as the other bettors rushed to join me on the same spot. But his face cleared and he showed me his first genuine smile -- a grin of mocking triumph -- as the ball dropped into number nine and he swept all the stakes into his sorting bin. I heard my silver and the other stakes rattling down into the cash box, and a snort from the man behind the bar.

  The wheel spun again. I did as before, waiting until the same point in the process before placing two silver pieces on number twenty. This time, only half of the bettors joined me, and they united in a groan of disappointment when the winning number was on the other side of the board and a different color to boot. The drinkers and chaffers who had got up to watch the action had returned to their previous pleasures, although the gray-eyed man remained to watch.

  The operator once more offered me his professional grin, all gleaming teeth and cold eyes, and I made a comment to the effect that I was still playing with the house's money. He gestured at the board in a lordly invitation for me to do so, and spun the wheel. Again the ball dropped, and I affected a careless manner, laying five silvers on number six. Only one of the other bettors still believed in me. He slipped a terce next to my stake and flourished a hand in a manner that expressed a philosophy that fate was fate and what could we do but play the game?

  The ball clattered across the frets and found its berth, as I had known it would, with number six. The man who had bet a terce let loose a hoot, the other gamblers delivered themselves of variations on the theme of might-have-been, and the operator issued a hiss. I put a hand to the hilt of my sword and said, "I believe you owe me one hundred and fifty."

  In fact, when it was counted out, my winnings came to ten silver pieces and seven heavy disks of gold, each bearing the likeness of a thin-faced and bearded man, tall of brow and deep of eye. A circle of capital letters around the edge of the coin spelled "ALBRUITHINE" and I took that to be the name that went with the face. While I was studying the coins, the game's operator declared the house limit to have been reached. He closed the wheel, the punters grumbling but accepting the reality that the cash box was much depleted. A few of them offered to stand me a drink, but I declined, pleading fatigue.

  Before I departed the common room, I made a show of placing my winnings in the pouch I had taken from one of the robbers. A decent ability in sleight-of-hand had always seemed to me a requirement of a discriminator's profession, so I in fact palmed the coins and slipped them first into a sleeve and then into a pocket, while dropping only a few terces into the dead man's wallet, where they caused that receptacle's occupant to hiss and click. Fortunately, its protests were unheard over the clink of the coins.

  The innkeeper, his face dark and his mopping of the bar more vigorous than any spill could require, declined to show me to my room. Instead, he sent me upstairs with a narrow-visaged boy who led me to a reasonably clean room with a sloping ceiling and a bed with clean linen. I made a point of hanging the leather pouch on the back of a wood-and-wicker chair near the full-length armoire, then gave the youth two bits while extracting a promise to wake me early. "I sleep heavily, so do not fear to knock loudly," I said.

  The door featured a heavy bolt that I latched securely into place. To my assistant, I said, quietly, "I assume the room to be insecure. What do you detect?"

  It replied instantly. "A panel in the rear of the armoire."

  "As I thought," I said. I moved the chair closer to that piece of furniture and set its door ajar. That should do it."

  After the pint of ale, I needed a sanitary suite. I looked about the small room, only to realize after an unfruitful search what the chipped ceramic pot poking out from one side of the bed was intended for. I sighed and said, "the sooner we can return to our own proper milieu, the better."

  "Agreed," said my assistant, then jumped from my shoulder to the bed as I positioned myself to fill the pot. "Have you any idea of how we might achieve that goal?"

  "We will need help, of course."

  "Hence the intent to travel to Bambles."

  "Indeed," I said, "since we are not likely to find the kind of person we need at some rural crossroads like this." I drew the sword and told it to keep watch, then laid it on the floor beside the bed.

  My assistant said, "What kind of person will we be seeking?"

  I put the gold and silver under the pillow, removed my boots and lay upon the bed. "A magician," I said, "whose services are for hire."

  "Might that not entail some risk?" it said. "Who knows what motivates a thaumaturge in a world ruled by magic?"

  It was a valid point, but without my intuition to counsel me, I could do no better than hope.

  Chapter Six

  "Where did the pouch go?" I asked the sword.

  "An arm came out of the armoire and took it during the night," it said. "I detected no threat and did not act. Was that not correct?"

  "It was. I expected the theft," I said. I slung the baldric over my shoulder and positioned the weapon on my hip, then moved my assistant from the edge of the pillow on which it had made its bed. The gold and silver were still where I had put them, and I stowed them away in my inner pockets.

  The odors of punge and frying smoked meats greeted me halfway down the stairs. I followed them to the inn's common room, where a few patrons were scattered around the tables, having made their breakfasts from a buffet set out on a wooden cover over the gambling board. As I approached to fill a platter for myself and a bowl for the grinnet, the thin-faced potboy came through a swinging door from the kitchen with a fresh salver of sausages. I glanced through the doorway and saw the innkeeper in some distress.

  He was seated at one end of a long table, his right arm extended before him. The flesh of the hand and wrist was swollen and bright pink. The limb was also paralyzed, as I could tell from the way he lifted it with his left hand and let it thump, lifeless, onto the table. A woman who was well-rounded fore and aft, and whom I took to be his wife, was rubbing a gray salve onto the inert limb, all the while giving her husband the full benefit of her opinions. I could not quite hear her words, but her tone bespoke a profound dissatisfaction with his conduct and its results.

  The door swung closed again, cutting short the scene, but then the boy returned the way he had come and I was offered a different view. The change was in the form of a long-bearded, elderly man in a stained, once-white robe on which various figures and symbols were stitched in dark thread. A shapeless cap embraced his head, except for a few wisps of gray hair left to poke out at odd angles. He was drawing a rod of black wood from his sleeve. As the door swung closed, he began to scribe small circles in the air above the innkeeper's hand, muttering syllables in a voice too low for me to hear, even if the woman of the house had not been keeping up her constant commentary on her husband's shortcomings. Of the stolen pouch and its former occupant there was no sign.

  I breakfasted at a corner table, my assistant on a chair beside me. A few glances were cast my way, but no one in the room seemed to be taking an untoward interest in my doings, nor did anyone appear to be making a conspicuous effort not to notice me. When I was full, I returned to the buffet and wrapped some more bread, cheese and fruit in a large cloth napkin and knotted all up into a package. The boy came out of the kitchen again. I saw that the innkeeper's treatment had evolved: his bearded ministrant was now executing curious capers that had him leaping straight up, showing a surprising spryness, while his wand sliced the air. I could discern no change in the presentation of the victim's ailment, but decided it was possible that I was seeing only the diagnostic phase.

  Before the boy went back into the kitchen I paid him the score agreed upon the night before, plus another terce for the lunch, and told him to keep any change that was left over. I then went out into the street and took a look about, but found little enough to see. The place was no more than a village, its simple houses no more impressive in the full glow of the red sun than they had been at twilight. I n
oted some differences from Old Earth in my own time: the most complex item of machinery in view was a hand pump rising out of the ground at the end of a low trough that was probably for watering livestock; and every building had at least one object, made of bone, metal, wood or feathers, centered above the front door. The inn, I now noticed, had the stuffed head of some horned beast at its roof peak.

  The road that ran down the valley continued on the other side of the stone bridge. I crossed to the middle of its low arch and found a bronze circle set into its span, enclosing an inscription of several words fashioned from the same metal. It read: "Albruithine made this and defends it. Trouble it at your peril."

  I swept my gaze to the horizons, at first seeing nothing of note. Then I saw motion, far off in a field. Farm workers were taking in a crop that had been cut and stooked, forking the bundles onto a flatbed wagon. The vehicle was drawn by two dark beasts of substantial size, but I could not quite make them out.

  "Integrator," I said, "reproduce for me an image of those animals and magnify."

  A small screen appeared before my eyes. I studied them for a few moments then bade my assistant dissolve the display and walked on. "Not horses," I said.

  "No," the grinnet said. "Nor anything I am familiar with."

  "They had manlike qualities."

  "Yes. Their faces were rough approximations of the human. They seemed to be arguing with each other, and the forelimbs with which they gestured were more like arms than legs."