The Magic Labyrinth

by Philip José Farmer

  "Who did it?"

  "They had to be the beings who made this Rivervalley and resurrected us. I've heard that they are human beings like us, in fact, Earthmen who lived ages after we did. However . . ."

  "No, not human beings," the man said. "Surely not. It was God who made all this for us."

  "If you're so well acquainted with Him," Clemens said, "give me His address. I'd like to write Him."

  He continued, "My group was the first to get to the site of the meteorite. The crater, which might have been as wide and deep as the famous one in Arizona, was buried by then. But we staked out a claim, and we began digging. Some time later, we heard that large deposits of bauxite and cryolite were under the land of a state down-River. Its citizens, however, had no means of digging it up or then using it. But my state, Parolando, could make aluminum from the ores after we'd fashioned iron tools. That state, SoulCity, attacked us to get the iron. We beat them and confiscated the bauxite and cryolite. We also found that some other states relatively nearby had some copper and tin deposits. Also, some vanadium and tungsten. We traded our iron artifacts for these."

  The woman, frowning, said, "Isn't it strange that there was so much metal in that area, and elsewhere there is almost none? It's quite a coincidence, isn't it, that you were looking for these metals and just happened to be in the neighborhood when the meteorite fell?"

  "Maybe God directed me to that place," Sam said sneeringly.

  No, he thought, it wasn't God. It was that Mysterious Stranger, the Ethical who called himself X, who had arranged, who knew how many thousands of years ago, that the deposits should be so concentrated in that area. And who then directed that meteorite to fall near them.

  For what purpose? To build a riverboat and to provide weapons so that Sam could voyage up The River, perhaps for ten million miles, and get to the headwaters. And from there to the tower which reared high in the mists of the cold northpolar sea.

  And then do what?

  He didn't know. The Ethical was supposed to visit him again during a thunderstorm at night, as he always did. Apparently, he came at that time because the lightning interfered with the delicate instruments the Ethicals used to try to locate the renegade. He would give him more information. In the meantime, others visited by X, his chosen warriors, would find Sam and get on his boat and go with him up-River.

  But things had gone awry.

  He'd not seen or heard from the Mysterious Stranger again. He'd built his boat, and then his partner, King John Lackland, had hijacked it. Also, some years later, the "little resurrections," the "translations," had ceased, and permanent death had come to the dwellers in The Valley again.

  Something had happened to the people in the tower, the Ethicals. Something must also have happened to the Mysterious Stranger.

  But he, Clemens, was going to the headwaters anyway and then try to get into the tower. He knew how difficult the climbing of the mountains which circled the sea would be. Joe Miller, the titanthrop, had seen the tower from a path along the side of that towering range when he'd accompanied the Pharaoh Akhenaten. Joe had also seen a gigantic aircraft of some sort descend to the top of the tower. And then he'd tripped over a grail left by some unknown predecessor and had fallen to his death. After being resurrected to a place in The Valley, he'd met Sam and had told his strange tale to him.

  The woman said, "What about this dirigible we've heard rumors of? Why didn't you go on that instead of the boat? You could have gotten to the headwaters in a few days instead of the thirty or forty years it'll take you on the boat."

  That was a subject Sam didn't like to talk about. The truth was that no one had even thought of an airship until shortly before the Not For Hire was to set out. Then a German dirigible man named von Parseval had come along and asked why he hadn't built the ship.

  Sam's chief engineer, Milton Firebrass, an ex-astronaut, had liked the suggestion. So he'd stayed behind when the Not For Hire left, and he'd constructed the floating vessel. He'd kept in radio contact with the boat, and when the ship did get to the tower, he'd reported that it was a little over a mile high and almost ten miles in diameter. The Parseval had landed on its top, but only one of its crew, a Japanese ex-blimp man and Sufi who called himelf Piscator, had been able to enter. The others had been restrained by some invisible but tangible force. Before that, an officer named Barry Thorn had placed a bomb on the helicopter carrying Firebrass and some others on a scouting landing. He'd set the bomb off with a radio signal and then stolen a helicopter and flown off the dirigible. But he'd been wounded, and the copter had crashed at the base of the tower.

  Thorn was brought back to the dirigible and questioned. He refused to give information, but he was visibly shocked when he heard that Piscator had gotten into the tower.

  Clemens suspected that Thorn was either an Ethical or one of their subordinates, whom the X's recruits called agents.

  He also had some suspicions that Firebrass had been one or the other. And perhaps the woman who'd died in the explosion of the helicopter, Anna Obrenova, had been an Ethical or agent.

  Sam had concluded from his examination of all available evidence that something had long ago stranded a number of agents and perhaps some Ethicals in The Valley. X was probably one of them. Which meant that agents and Ethicals would have to use the same means as the Valley-dwellers to get to the tower. Which meant that there were probably some disguised agents or Ethicals or both on his boat. Which meant that there were probably also some on the Rex.

  Just why the Ethicals and agents hadn't been able to use their aircraft to return to the tower, he didn't know.

  By now he'd reasoned that anyone who claimed to have lived after A.D. 1983 was one of the beings responsible for the Riverworld. It was his idea that the post-1983 story was false and was a code which enabled them to recognize each other.

  He also reasoned that some of them might have figured that X's recruits suspected this story-code. Therefore, they would be dropping that story.

  Clemens said to the woman, "The airship was supposed to be a scout, to find out the lay of the land. Its captain was under orders, however, to get into the tower if it was possible. Then he was to return to the boat and pick up myself and some others. But no one but a Sufi philosopher named Piscator could get in, and he didn't come back out. On the way back, its captain, a woman named Jill Gulbirra, who took over when Firebrass was killed, sent a raiding expedition in a copter against the Rex. King John was captured, but he escaped by jumping from the copter. I don't know whether or not he survived. The aircraft flew back to the Parseval and continued on its course to the Not For Hire. Then Gulbirra reported sighting a very large balloon and was heading for it when Thorn got loose again. He flew off in a copter. Gulbirra, suspecting he'd planted a bomb, searched for it. None was found, but she couldn't take a chance that there wasn't one. She dived the dirigible toward the ground. She wanted to get her crew off just in case there was a bomb.

  "Then she reported that there was an explosion. That was the last we heard from the Parseval."

  The woman said, "We've heard rumors that it crashed many thousands of miles up-River. There was only one survivor."

  "Only one! My God, who was he? Or she?"

  "I don't know his name. But I heard that he was a Frenchman."

  Sam groaned. There was just one Frenchman on the airship. Cyrano de Bergerac, with whom Sam's wife had fallen in love. Of all the crew, he was the only one whom Sam would not have sorrowed over.

  6

  * * *

  It was late afternoon when Sam saw the strange being who was even more grotesque than Joe Miller. Joe was at least human, but this person had obviously not been born on Earth.

  Sam knew at once that the being had to be one of the small group from a planet of Tau Ceti. His informant, the late Baron John de Grey stock, had known one of them. According to his story, the Tau Cetans, in the early twenty-first century, had put into orbit a smaller vessel around Earth before descending in the great mot
hership to the surface. They'd been welcomed, but then one of them, Monat, had said on a TV talk show that the Cetans had the means for extending their lives to centuries. The Earthpeople had demanded that this knowledge be given them. When the Cetans had refused, saying that the Terrestrials would abuse the gift of longevity, mobs had lynched most of the Cetans and then stormed the spaceship. Reluctantly, Monat had activated a scanner on the satellite, and this had projected a beam which killed most of the human life on Earth. At least, Monat thought it would do so. He didn't see the results of his action. He, too, was torn apart by the mob.

  He had set the death-beams into operation because he feared that Terrestrials would use the spaceship as a model to build more ships and then would go to his native planet and war against it, perhaps destroy all his people. He didn't know whether or not they would actually do that, but he couldn't take the chance.

  The Cetan was standing up somewhat precariously in a narrow dugout and waving frantically at the Not For Hire. Obviously, he wanted aboard. So did a lot of people, Sam thought, but they don't get their wish. This, however, was, if not a horse of a different color, a biped neither bird or man. So Sam told the pilot to make a circle and then come alongside the dugout.

  Presently, while the gaping crew lined the exterior passageways, the Cetan climbed a short ladder to the boiler deck. His companion, an ordinary-looking human male, followed him. The dugout drifted away to be grabbed by whoever got to it first.

  Escorted by two marines and General Ely S. Parker himself, the two were soon in the control room. Sam, speaking Esperanto, shook their hands, introduced himself and the others, and then they introduced themselves.

  "I am Monat Grrautut," the biped said in a deep rich voice.

  "Jesus H. Christ!" Sam said. "The very one!"

  Monat smiled, exposing human-looking teeth.

  "Ah, then you've heard of me."

  "You're the only Tau Cetan whose name I know," Sam said. "I've been scanning the banks for years for one of you, and I've never seen hair nor hide of any. And then to run smackdab into you yourself!"

  "I'm not from a planet of Tau Ceti," Monat said. "That was the story we gave when we came to Earth. Actually, I'm from a planet of the star Arcturus. We misled the Terrestrials just in case they proved to be warlike and then . . ."

  "Good thinking," Sam said. "Though you were a little tough on Earthpeople, as I understand. However, why did you stick to that story when you were resurrected here – without your permission?"

  Monat shrugged. How humanlike, Sam thought.

  "Habit, I suppose. Also', I wanted to make sure the Terrestrials still didn't represent a danger to my people."

  "I can't blame you."

  "When I knew positively that Earthpeople were no danger, I told the true story of my origin."

  "Sure you did," Sam said and laughed. "Here, have a cigar, you two."

  Monat was six feet eight inches tall, thin, and pink-skinned. He wore only a kiltcloth, allowing most of his features to show, but concealing the most interesting to some. Grey stock had said that the fellow's penis could pass for human and was circumcised, as were all men's on this world. His scrotum, however, was a knobby sack which contained a number of small testes.

  His face was semihuman. Below a shaved skull and very high forehead were two thick black curly-haired eyebrows that ran down to his very prominent cheekbones and spread out to cover them. The eyes were a dark brown. Most of his nose was more handsome than Sam had seen on many people. But a thin membranous fringe a sixteenth of an inch long hung from the sides of his nostrils. The nose ended in a thick, deeply clefted pad of cartilage. His lips were doglike, thin, leathery, and black. His lobeless ears displayed quite unhuman convolutions.

  Each hand bore three fingers and a long thumb on each, and he had four toes on each foot.

  I don't suppose he'd scare anybody on skid row, Sam thought. Or in Congress.

  His companion was an American born in 1918, deceased in 2008, when the Cetan or Arcturan beam swept Earth. His name was Peter Jairus Frigate, and he was about six feet tall, of muscular build, had black hair and green eyes and a not ugly face in front, but a rather craggy and short-jawed profile. Like Monat, he had a grail and a bundle of possessions and was armed with a stone knife, an axe, a bow, and a quiver of arrows.

  Sam doubted very much that Monat was telling the truth about his place of birth or that Frigate was giving his right name. He doubted the story of anybody who said he'd lived past 1983. However, he wasn't going to say anything about that until he became well acquainted with these two.

  After having a drink served to them, he personally led them to the officers' quarters near his suite.

  "It just so happens that I'm short of three of my complement," he said. "There's a cabin available in the boiler deck. It's not a desirable location, so I'll roust out two junior officers from this cabin here. You can have theirs, and they can go below."

  The man and the woman who had to surrender their cabin didn't look happy when they heard Sam's order, but they got out quickly.

  That evening, they ate at the captain's table on china plates painted by an ancient Chinese artist and drank from cut lead glass goblets. The dining utensils were a solid silver alloy.

  Sam and the others, including the gigantic Joe Miller, listened intently to the stories of both newcomers about their adventures on the Riverworld. When Sam heard that they'd journeyed for a long while with Richard Francis Burton, the famous nineteenth- century explorer, linguist, translator, and author, he felt a shock run through him. The Ethical had told him that he'd also recruited Burton.

  "Got any idea where he is?" he said calmly.

  "No," Monat said. "We were separated during a battle and could not find him after it though we searched for him."

  Sam urged Joe Miller to tell his story of the Egyptian expedition. Sam was getting impatient with his role of the polite questioner and host. He loved to dominate the conversation, but he wanted to see what effect Miller's tale had on the two.

  When Joe finished, Monat said. "So! Then there is a tower in the polar sea!"

  "Yeth, goddam it, that'th vhat I thaid," Joe said.

  Sam intended to take at least a week hearing everything relevant they had to say about themselves. Then he would subject them to much more rigorous questioning.

  Two days later, when the boat was anchored on the right bank at noon for recharging, the grailstones remained mute and flameless.

  "Holy jumping Jesus!" Sam said. "Another meteorite?"

  He didn't think that was the cause for the failure. The Ethical had told him that meteor-deflecting guards had been set up in space, and that the only reason the one had gotten through was because he'd managed to make the guards fail at just the right moment to permit the meteor to pass through them. The guards would still be out there, floating in space, ready to do their job.

  But if the failure hadn't been caused by a meteorite, what had caused it?

  Or was it another case of malfunction of the Ethicals' systems? People were no longer resurrected, which meant that something had gone wrong and unrepaired in the mechanism which converted the heat of the planet's core into electricity for the stones. Luckily, these were set in a parallel, not a series, arrangement. Otherwise, everybody would starve, not just those on the right bank.

  Sam immediately ordered that the boat resume its course upstream. When it was near dusk the boat stopped at the left bank. Not unexpectedly, the locals did not agree to allow the use of a grailstone. There was a hell of a fight, a slaughter which sickened Sam. Frigate was one of those killed by a small rocket launched from the bank.

  Then the starving desperates of the right bank invaded the left bank. They came in swarms that would not be stopped until so many had been killed that there was room enough on the stones for the grails of the survivors.

  Not until the bodies no longer clogged the surface of The River did Clemens give the order to proceed upstream. A few days after that, he stopped
long enough to replace those he'd lost in the bloodiness.

  SECTION 3

  Aboard the Rex: The Thread of Reason

  7

  * * *

  It was Loghu and Alice who got Burton and the others onto King John's boat.

  Their group had traveled up-River to the area at which the Rex had anchored for shore leave and repairs. They found the landing place temporarily overpopulated because of those curious to see the great vessel at close range, some of whom were also ambitious to get signed up as crew members. There were some vacancies aboard which rumor said had resulted when the captain had reprimanded too harshly six people whom he thought negligent in their duties. He didn't seem in any hurry to replace them.

  When John came ashore, he was surrounded by twelve marines, who gave him plenty of elbow room. It was no secret, though, that King John had an eye for beautiful women. So Loghu, an exceedingly beautiful ancient Tokharian blonde, walked by him clad only in a short kiltcloth. John stopped his marines and began talking to her. He wasn't long in inviting her aboard for a tour of his boat. Though he didn't say so, he intimated that his grand suite might take the longest to inspect and that only he and Loghu should do the inspecting.

  Loghu laughed and said that she might come aboard, but her friends would have to come with her. As for the tête-à-tête, she would consider it but would not make up her mind until she had seen everything on the vessel.

  King John looked sour, but then he laughed and said that he would show her something that most people didn't get to see. Loghu was no fool and understood well what he meant. Nevertheless, she knew how desperately necessary it was to get aboard the Rex.

  Thus Alice, Burton, Kazz, and Besst were also invited to the tour.

  Burton was fuming since he did not wish to get John's ear by having Loghu behave like a slut. It was the only way, however. His previous declarations that he would find some way to get onto the boat, no matter what the obstacles, had been so much excess steam, impressive but useless. There was no other course to take that would get him more than a very temporary stay on the Rex.