The Magic Labyrinth

by Philip José Farmer

  What strengthened Hermann's memory of him was that McParlan had been the Pinkerton detective who'd infiltrated and eventually destroyed the Molly Maguires in the early 1870s. The Molly Maguires was a secret terrorist organization of Irish coal miners in the Pennsylvania counties of Schuylkill, Carbon, Columbia, and Luzerne. Göring, a twentieth-century German, would probably never have heard of it if he hadn't been an ardent student of the Sherlock Holmes stories. He'd read that the fictional Scowrers, Vermissa, and McMurdo of A. Conan Doyle's Holmes novel, The Valley of Fear, were based, respectively, on the real Molly Maguires, the Pennsylvania coal counties, and McParlan. That had led him to read Alan Pinkerton's book on McParlan's exploits, The Molly Maguires.

  In October 1873 McParlan, under the name of James McKenna, succeeded in insinuating himself into the secret society. The young detective was in grave danger many times, but he slipped through safely by his courage, aggressiveness, and quick wits. After three years in this perilous disguise, he exposed the inner workings of the Maguires and the identities of its members. The chief terrorists were hanged; the power of the Molly Maguires was broken. And the mine owners continued for many decades to treat the miners as if they were serfs.

  McParlan, going by Hermann on the way out, glanced at him. His face was expressionless. Yet Hermann believed that McParlan had recognized him. The eyes had flicked away too quickly. Moreover, the fellow was a trained detective, and he'd once told Göring that he never forgot a face.

  Was it the discipline of a marine on duty which had prevented McParlan from reintroducing himself? Or was it for another reason?

  Burton entered and joined the party. After a few minutes he went into the toilet by the elevator. Hermann excused himself and followed him in. Burton was at the far end of the urinal, and no one was near him. Hermann came up to his side and, while urinating, spoke in German in a low voice.

  "Thanks for not telling your commander my natal name."

  "I didn't do it for love of you," Burton said. Burton dropped his kilt, turned, and went to a washbasin. Hermann quickly followed him. Under cover of the gushing faucets, he said, "I am not the Göring you knew."

  "P'raps not. I fancy I don't like either of you." Hermann burned to explain the difference of the two, but he dared not take the time. He hurried back to the observation room.

  John was waiting to tell him the party was going to step out onto the deck. They would have a more open view of the lake, which the boat was just entering.

  Ahead, for as far as they could see, rock spires of various heights and many shapes rose from the surface of the water. These were mostly rose-colored, but there were also black, brown, purple, green, scarlet, orange, and blue rocks. About one in twenty was striped horizontally in red, green, white, and blue, the stripes being of different widths.

  Hermann told them then that at the western end of the lake the mountains curved in and formed a narrow strait about two hundred feet wide and between smooth vertical walls seven thousand feet high. The force of the current was so strong that no manual- or wind-driven vessel could go against it. The traffic by boat was all one-way, down-River, and there was little of that.

  However, some travelers had long ago cut out a narrow path on the southern cliff. This was about five hundred feet above the strait and went a mile and a half to the end of the strait. So there was some foot traffic.

  "Just beyond the strait is a rather narrow valley, though The River there is a mile wide. There are grailstones there, but no one lives there. I suppose because of the current, which is so strong it precludes fishing or sailing anywhere but through the straits. Then, too, The Valley gets little sunshine. There is, though, a sort of bay about a half-mile up where boats may anchor.

  "A few miles above the bay, The Valley widens considerably. There begins the land of the enormous-nosed hairy giants, the titanthrops or ogres. From what I've heard, so many of these have been killed that half the population is now your ordinary-sized human."

  Göring paused, knowing that what he would say would, or should, be vastly interesting to the others.

  "It's estimated that it's only twenty thousand miles from the strait to the headwaters of The River."

  He was trying to give John the idea that it might be better to keep on going. If the headwaters were so close, why should he stop here to fight? Especially, since he was likely to be defeated. Why not go to the headwaters and from there launch the expedition toward the misty tower?

  John said, "Indeed."

  If he had taken the bait, he gave no sign of having done so. He seemed interested only in the strait and the immediate area beyond it.

  After some questions from John about these, Hermann understood what John was considering. The bay would be an excellent place for the rewinding. The strait would be near ideal for waiting for the Not For Hire. If the Rex could catch it while it was coming through the strait, it could loose some torpedoes in the passage. These would have to be remotely controlled, though, since the strait curved at least three times.

  Also, if John docked in the bay, he would keep his crew from the pacifistic influence of the Second Chancers.

  Göring's speculations on John's thinking was right. After a day's visit with La Viro, John up-anchored the Rex and took it through the strait. It anchored again at the bay, and a floating anchored dock was built from the shore to the vessel. From time to time, King John and some of his officers, or just his officers, would come in a launch to Aglejo. Though invited to stay overnight or longer, they never did so.

  John assured La Viro that he was not going to venture out onto the lake for a battle.

  La Viro pleaded with him to negotiate for an honorable peace with La Viro as intermediary.

  John refused during the first two meetings with La Viro. Then, on the third, he surprised La Viro and Göring by agreeing.

  "But I think it will be a waste of time and effort," John said. "Clemens is a monomaniac. I'm sure he thinks of only two things. Getting his boat back and killing me."

  La Viro was happy that John was at least willing to make the effort. Hermann was not so happy. What John said and what John did were often not the same.

  Despite La Viro's urgings, John refused to permit missionaries to talk to his crew about the Church. He had set up armed guards at the end of the cliff-path to insure that the missionaries didn't come over it. His excuse, of course, was that he didn't want to be attacked by Clemens' marines. La Viro told John that he had no right to prevent nonhostiles from crossing over. John replied that he had signed no agreement with anyone concerning passage on the path. He held it, and that made him the determiner of the rights.

  Three months passed. Hermann waited for his chance to get Burton and Frigate to one side when they came to Aglejo. Their visits were very infrequent and when they did come in he could never get them alone.

  One morning, Hermann was summoned to the Temple. La Viro gave him the news, which had just come via the relay drums. The Not For Hire would be at Aglejo in two weeks. Göring was to meet it at the same place he'd boarded the Rex.

  Even though Clemens had not been friendly when Hermann had known him in Parolando, he hadn't been murderous. When Göring went up to the pilothouse, he was surprised to feel happy at seeing Clemens and the gigantic titanthrop, Joe Miller. Moreover, the American recognized him within four seconds of their introduction. Miller claimed to have known him within a second by his odor.

  "Although," Miller said, "you don't thmell ekthactly as you uthed to. You thmell better than then."

  "Perhaps it's the odor of sanctity," Hermann said and laughed.

  Clemens grinned, and said. "Virtue and vice have their own chemistries? Well, why not? How do I smell after these forty years of travel, Joe?"

  "Thomething like old panther pithth," Joe said.

  It wasn't quite like old friends meeting after a long absence. But Göring felt that, for some reason, they were as pleased to see him as he was them. Perhaps it was a perverted kind of nostalgia. Or gui
lt may have played some part in it. They may have felt responsible for what had happened to him at Parolando. They shouldn't, of course, since Clemens had done his best to make him leave the state before something violent happened to him.

  They told him in brief outline what had occurred since they'd last seen him. And he described his experiences since then.

  They went down to the grand salon to get a drink and to introduce him to various notables. Cyrano de Bergerac was called down from the flight deck, where he'd been fencing.

  The Frenchman remembered him, though not well. Clemens described again what Hermann had been doing, and then de Bergerac recalled the lecture Göring had given.

  Time had certainly worked some changes with Clemens and de Bergerac, Hermann thought. The American seemed to have shed his great dislike for the Frenchman, to have forgiven him because he had taken Olivia Clemens as his mate. The two now were on easy terms, chatting, joking, laughing.

  There came a time when the good time had to end. Hermann said, "I suppose you've heard that King John's boat came to Aglejo three months ago? And that it's waiting for you just beyond the strait at the western end of the lake?"

  Clemens swore and said, "We've known that we were closing the gap between us fast. But no, we didn't know that he'd stopped running!"

  Hermann described what had happened since he'd boarded the Rex.

  "La Viro still hopes that you and John will be able to forgive each other. He says that after this long a time, it doesn't matter whose fault it was in the beginning. He says . . ."

  Clemens' face was red and grim.

  "It's easy enough for him to talk of forgiveness!" he said loudly. "Well, let him talk from now until doomsday about forgiveness, and I won't stop him! A sermon never hurt anybody, and it's often beneficial – if you need a nap.

  "But I haven't come this far after all the hardships and heartaches and treacheries and griefs just to pat John on the head and tell him what a good boy he is beneath all that rottenness and then kiss and make up.

  "'Here, John, you worked hard to get my boat and to keep it from all those thieving rascals that tried to take your hard-earned Riverboat away from you. What the hell, John, I loathed, despised, and detested you, but that was a long time ago. I don't carry a grudge long; I'm a good-hearted sap.'

  "The hell I am!" Clemens roared. "I'm going to sink his boat, the boat I once loved so much! I wouldn't have it now! He's dishonored it, made it into crap, stunk it up! I'll sink it, get it out of sight. And one way or another, I'm ridding this world of John Lackland. When I'm done with him, his name'll be John Lacklife!"

  "We were hoping," Hermann said, "that after all these years, two generations as they used to be counted, that your hatred had cooled, perhaps entirely died. That . . ."

  "Well, sure, it did," Clemens said, with a sarcastic tone. "There were minutes, days, weeks, even months, even a year now and then, that I didn't think of John. But when I tired of this eternal travel on The River, when I longed to go ashore and stay ashore and get the racket of the paddlewheels out of my ears and the never-ending routine, the three-times a day stop to recharge grails and batacitor, the always-going-on arguments to settle and the ever-recurring administrative details to manage and my heart stopping every once in a while when I saw a face that looked like my beloved Livy or Susy or Jean or Clara only to find out that she was none of them . . . Well, then when I tired and almost gave up, almost said, 'Here, Cyrano, you take over the captainship. I'm going ashore and get some rest and have a good time, and forget about this monstrous beauty and you take it on up The River and don't bring it back,' then I remembered John and what he'd done to me and what I was going to do to him. And then I'd gather my forces together, and I'd cry, 'Forward, onward, excelsior! Keep going until we've caught up with Evil John and sent him to the bottom of The River!' And that, the thought of my duty and my dearest desire, to make John squeal before I wrung his neck, is what's kept me going for, as you describe it, two generations!"

  Hermann could only say, "It grieves me to hear that."

  It was useless to say any more about that subject.

  25

  * * *

  Burton, suffering again from his cursed insomnia, left his cabin quietly. Alice slept undisturbed. He went down the dimly lit corridor, out of the texas, and onto the landing deck of the Rex. The fog was building up below the railing of the B deck. The A deck was entirely shrouded. Directly above, the sky blazed brightly, but to the west clouds were swiftly moving toward the boat. On both sides of The Valley the mountains cut off much of the sky. Though the Rex was anchored in a small bay two miles up from the strait, The Valley had broadened only a little here. It was a cold place, gloomy, despondency-making. John had had a difficult time keeping up morale here.

  Burton yawned, stretched, and thought about lighting up a cigarette or perhaps a cigar. Damn his sleeplessness! In sixty years on this world, he should have learned how to overcome the affliction which had lasted fifty years on Earth. (He'd been nineteen when the terrible affliction had struck him.)

  Techniques to combat it had been offered aplenty to him. The Hindus had a dozen; the Moslems, another dozen. Several of the savage tribes of Tanganyika had their sure-fire remedies. And on this world, he'd tried a score or more. Nur el-Musafir, the Sufi, had taught him a technique which had seemed more efficacious than any he'd ever learned. But after three years, slowly, inching in night by night, Old Devil Insomnia had secured a good beachhead again. For some time, he'd been lucky if he got a good sleep two out of seven nights.

  Nur had said, "You could conquer insomnia if you knew what was causing it. You could strike at the source."

  "Yaas," Burton had replied. "If I knew what and where the source was, I could get my hands on it. I'd be able to conquer more than insomnia. I could conquer the world."

  "First, you'd have to conquer yourself," the Moor had said. "But when you did that, you'd find out that it wasn't worthwhile ruling the world."

  The two guards by the rear entrance to the texas were walking in the semidarkness of the landing deck, wheeling, marching to the middle of the deck, each solemnly presenting his rifle to the other's, wheeling, then striding back to the edge of the landing deck, wheeling, and so on.

  During this four-hour watch, Tom Mix and Grapshink were on guard duty. Burton didn't hesitate to talk to them, since there were two guards at the front of the texas, two in the pilothouse, and many more at different parts of the boat. Ever since the raid by Clemens' men, John had set up night sentinels all over the boat.

  Burton chatted for a while with Grapshink, a native Amerind, in his own tongue, Burton having taken the trouble to learn it. Tom Mix joined them, and he told them a dirty joke. They laughed, but afterward Burton said he'd heard a different version of it in the Ethiopian city of Harar. Grapshink confessed that he'd heard another version, too, when he was on Earth. This would have been about 30,000 B.C.

  Burton told the two he'd be going on to check the other guards. He walked down the stairs to the B or main deck and went toward the stern. As he passed a diffused light in the fog, he saw something moving out of the corner of his left eye. Before he could turn toward it, he was struck on the head.

  Some time later, he awoke on his back, staring upward into the fog. Sirens were wailing, some very near him. The back of his head hurt him very much. He felt the bump, winced, and his fingers came away sticky. When he struggled to his feet, swaying, dizzy, he saw that the lights were on all over the boat. People ran past him calling out. One stopped by him. Alice.

  She cried out, "What happened?"

  "I don't know," he said, "except that someone coshed me."

  He started toward the bow but had to stop to steady himself with a hand against the wall.

  "Here," she said, "I'll help you get to the sick bay."

  "Sick bay be damned! Help me to the pilothouse. I have to report to the king."

  "You're crazy," she said. "You may have a concussion or a fractured skull. You
shouldn't even be walking. You should be on a stretcher."

  He growled, "Nonsense," and started to walk. She made him put his arm around her shoulder so she could half-support him. They started again toward the bow. He heard the anchors being pulled up, the chains rattling in the holes. They passed people manning the steam machine guns and the rocket tubes.

  Alice called out to a man, "What happened?"

  "I don't know! Somebody said the big launch was stolen. The thieves took it up The River."

  Burton thought that if that was true, he'd been slugged by someone posted to insure that the thieves weren't surprised.

  The "thieves," he was sure, had been crew members. He didn't think that anybody could slip aboard unnoticed. The sonars, radar, and infrared detectors were operating at night and had been ever since the raid. Their operators dared not fall asleep. The last one who'd done that, ten years ago, had been thrown off the boat into The River two minutes after being caught.

  Arriving at the pilothouse, Burton had to wait a few minutes before the busy king could speak to him. Burton reported what had happened to him. John wasn't at all sympathetic; he was beside himself with rage, cursing, giving orders, stomping around.

  Finally, he said, "Go to sick bay, Gwalchgwynn. If the doctor says you're unfit for duty, Demugts will take over. There isn't much the marines can do now, anyway."

  Burton said, "Yes, Sire," and he went to the C deck hospital.

  Doctor Doyle x-rayed his skull, cleansed the wound on his head, bandaged it, and ordered him to lie down for a while.

  "There's neither concussion or fracture. All you need is some rest."

  Burton did so. Shortly thereafter, Strubewell's voice came over the loudspeaker. Twelve people were missing, seven men, five women.

  John took over then, apparently too enraged to allow his first mate to call out the names of the missing. His voice shaking, he denounced the twelve as "treacherous dogs, mutinous swine, scurvy stinking polecats, cowardly jackals, yellow-bellied hyenas."