The Magic Labyrinth

by Philip José Farmer

  Loga had cursed and raved. He briefly visualized what would happen. He'd die and so couldn't send false messages to the Gardenplanet. In one hundred and sixty years, the Gardeners would expect the automatically operated ship with the latest report. When it hadn't arrived after a reasonable time, the Gardeners would send people to investigate. They would arrive at the tower over three hundred and twenty years after the message-ship should have been launched.

  "In one way," Loga said, "that was good. I had wanted the project to run far past the one hundred and twenty years allotted, though I hadn't dared say so. My colleagues said that that was more than long enough to weed out the people who would never get to the stage necessary to Go On. Now the project would run far longer than planned. And perhaps my father and mother and sisters and brothers and uncles and aunts and cousins would not be doomed."

  Burton said, "What?"

  Tears flowed down Loga's cheeks. He spoke in a strangled voice.

  "It was strictly forbidden for anyone to locate any relatives resurrected in The Valley. The formulators of this policy were Monat's people. They said that experience had shown that Ethicals who found their loved ones among the lazari were too emotionally upset if these were evidently not going to make it. They'd interfere, they'd be tempted to reveal what was happening before the time was ripe for that. In a previous project, a woman had put her parents in a special place in the underground chambers and tried to force-feed, as it were, their ethical advancement.

  "I was taught that when I was a young adult on the Gardenworld. I believed in the policy then. But later I couldn't endure not seeing my family. Nor could I endure the agonizing idea that they might not Go On. So, long before we left the Gardenworld, I had made my plans. Still, I wasn't sure that I could carry them out. But I did track down my relatives through the computer – that took a long long time, believe me – and I visited them in The Valley. I was in disguise, of course. They had no chance of recognizing me. I'd arranged it so that they'd all be resurrected in the same place. Also, if any moved away from there or was killed, I'd know where they were.

  "I have almost photographic recall. Even though I'd died on Earth shortly before I was to be five years old, I vividly remembered my parents and all my other relatives.

  "It was very hard on me to keep concealing my identity. But I had to. I did become good friends with them and even pretended to be learning their language. All this while engaged on an authorized project, you understand.

  "I dearly loved my foster mother on the Gardenworld. But I loved my own mother even more, though she was not as spiritually developed as my foster mother, far from it.

  "During several of my visits, in later years, I made sure that my relatives were introduced to the beliefs of the Church of the Second Chance. They all converted to it, but it wasn't enough. They were a long way from attaining that stage in which I could have hope that they'd advance even further.

  "But I believed, and still believe, that if they're given enough time, they will do so."

  Burton said gently, "You were just about to land on top of the mountain."

  "Yes. But what I've told you about my relatives is highly important. You must also realize that I wasn't just distressed about my own family. I've agonized over all the others, the billions who are doomed. I couldn't even mention this once to my fellows, though. Except Tringu, of .course, and I didn't bring up the subject until I was absolutely sure of him. If I'd said anything about it to the others, I'd have been suspected at once if it became known that there was a renegade."

  Though he might be committing suicide, Loga did the one thing that would prevent his vessel from alighting on the designated place. He cut off the power.

  "If Monat had thought that anyone'd do that, he'd have arranged it so that it couldn't be done. But he hadn't expected any such action. Why should he? The culprit would know that even if he killed himself, he'd be raised in the tower."

  The craft had fallen at once and struck the side of the mountain just below the top. It was going slow, and Loga was in a buffer suit. Moreover, since the vessel was made of the almost indestructible gray metal, it was not even scratched by the impact.

  "Even so, I would've been killed during the fall. But I turned on the power when it had hurtled for a hundred feet, and the craft started back up toward the top. I cut the power again, and I turned it on when I'd gone fifty feet. The craft started up again for its original destination. I cut the power once more."

  By bone jarring increments, Loga worked the vessel down to near ground level. Before this, he'd opened a port. When he thought that he was close enough, he leaped out the port, clutching the handle of his grail. He fell through the rain and the thunder and lightning, struck something, and was knocked unconscious.

  When he awoke he was draped belly-down across a branch of an irontree. It was daylight, and he could see his grail a hundred feet below at the base of the tree. Though he was severely scratched and bruised and had some internal injuries and a broken leg, he managed to get to the ground.

  "The rest I've told you or you've correctly inferred."

  Burton said, "Not all. We don't have the slightest inkling what this terrible thing is which you mentioned. What you were saving for the last."

  "Or what Going On really means," Nur said.

  "Going On? When the body of a person who's highly advanced ethically dies, the wathan disappears. Our instruments can find no trace of it. If another duplicate body is made, its wathan doesn't return to it."

  "What do you do with a wathanless body?"

  "Only one experiment was made, and the wathanless was allowed to live out her natural span. That's never been done with human beings. The people who came before Monat's did that.

  "The theory is that, though the Creator may appear to be indifferent to Its creatures, It does welcome and take care of the wathans that disappear. What other explanation is there for that?"

  "It could be," Frigate said, "that there's something about the extraphysical universe that attracts a wathan when it reaches a certain stage of development. I don't know why this would have anything to do with the extraphysical. But there could be some sort of magnetic pull caused by this, I suppose."

  "That theory's been put forth. We prefer to believe that the Creator does it. Though It may do it through purely physical-extraphysical means and not by a supernatural act."

  "In effect," Burton said, "you aren't relying on science but on faith to explain the disappearances."

  "Yes, but when you get to the basics, infinity and finiteness, eternity and time, the First Cause, you must rely on faith."

  "Which has led so many billions astray and caused such immense suffering," Frigate said.

  "You can't say that about this situation."

  Tai-Peng said, fiercely, "Let's get on with what's happening in this world."

  "I recruited the lazari because there was a very slight probability that what has happened might happen. I put all the situations I could think of into the computer and told it to estimate their probability. Unfortunately, the computer cannot detect what sentient beings will think, what final choices they'll make, unless it has all the data and that's impossible. Well, not even if it had every item could it predict one hundred percent. Thus, Monat, and the others did what I couldn't expect. Just as I did what he couldn't anticipate. Just as you did what I couldn't predict. The human, the sentient, mind is still a deep mystery."

  "May it always be so," Burton said.

  "It is, it is! That is why you can't predict the stage of development of any wathan. One may be rather advanced, yet go no further. Another may be in a low stage and, suddenly, almost overnight as it were, leap to a far higher state than the previously much further advanced. It's a quantum ethical leap. Also, people regress."

  "Are you an example of regression?" Burton said.

  "No! That's what Siggen accused me of being when we were living in that hut in Parolando. The truth is, I am more highly advanced than anyone else in th
e project. Isn't it much more ethical to give everyone all the time they might need to develop? Isn't it? Yes, it is! That can't be denied!"

  Alice murmured, "He's crazy."

  Burton wasn't so sure. What Loga had said seemed reasonable. But his ideas for insuring his plans didn't seem so. Yet, if he continued to send false messages, then the Gardenworlders wouldn't come to investigate. Loga might gain a thousand years. Surely, in that time, anybody would attain the stage desired.

  His deep pessimism told him that it might not be so.

  What was his own progress?

  Or did he want to get to a stage where the essential part of him just disappeared?

  Why not? It would be an adventure even greater than this one, the greatest in his life.

  "Very well," he said. "I think we understand all that's happened. But you've hinted that you may not be able to carry out your plans even if you have no one to stop you.

  "What terrible thing has happened?"

  "It's my fault, mine only!" Loga cried. He rose from the chair and, despite his limp, paced back and forth, his face twisted and sweating.

  "Because of what I did, billions may be doomed forever! In fact, almost everybody! Perhaps, everybody! Forever!"

  52

  * * *

  There was silence for a while. loga continued his painful limping. Then Burton said, "You might as well tell us."

  Loga sat down in his chair.

  "My signal put an inhibit on the resurrection line. I didn't want any Ethical to commit suicide and get to the tower before I did. What I didn't know was that another Ethical had also commanded an inhibit on the resurrection line when I was found out."

  The reason for this, Loga said, was that Monat didn't want the unknown traitor to gain access to the tower. There he or she might be able to carry out his plans – whatever they were –before his presence was known.

  Monat's command overrode everybody else's.

  "He was the Operator."

  Moreover, Monat, through his proxy, had commanded the computer to obey no one else but him until normal operations were restored.

  "I'm sure that if he'd known exactly what was to happen, he'd not have given such a command. But fie had no more idea than I what course events would take."

  "The universe is infinite, and the events in it are also infinite," Nur said.

  "Perhaps. But you see, the computer used the wathans as its . . . what shall I say? . . . blueprints to duplicate bodies. Once, records were kept of the bodies, but it was more economical to use the wathans themselves, as I've explained. There are no other records. So, if the wathans are lost, then we have no way to duplicate bodies anymore."

  Burton rolled this around in his mind.

  "Well, you have the wathans. We saw them in that enclosure in the middle of the tower."

  "Yes, but when the computer dies, the wathans will be released! And there is no means then to resurrect the dead. They are lost forever!"

  There was another silence. After a minute or two, Alice said, "The computer . . .is dying?"

  Loga was almost choking. "Yes. It wouldn't be if it hadn't been left unattended so many years."

  The machinery was built to last for centuries without any need for repair or replacement. Nevertheless, parts and units did malfunction now and then. That was why technicians inspected everything at regular intervals, and why there were so many self-repair capabilities. Machines, however, had a well-known but as yet unexplained obstinacy, a seeming tendency to break down of their own will or refuse to operate. It had been jestingly observed that perhaps they, too, had wathans of a sort, and their free will was more ill will than anything else.

  During the long absence of human supervision, a valve had quit operating.

  "This is not a mechanical valve, you understand. It's basically a force field which shuts off or on to allow flow of sea water into the food-mixing chamber for the computer. The computer subsists on distilled water mixed with sugar and some traces of minerals. The shut-down valve is one of two. Its mate is for emergencies. It takes over should the main one go out. Then the technicians repair the field generator of the valve, and the backup one shuts down."

  Unfortunately, the emergency valve did not admit enough water for a long term. And so the protein computer was dying.

  "I could use the computer memory banks to furnish a model for a duplicate of it as the original before it was fed any data. Unfortunately, the computer contains the only memory banks of that. And it won't release the information so that I can feed it into the matter-energy converter."

  "Why don't you repair the field generator?" Frigate said.

  "For the good reason that the computer won't permit me to. Apparently, Monat ordered long ago that it be equipped with defenses. These weren't activated, though, until I was found out."

  There was another long silence. Alice broke it, saying "Why don't you use one of those wathan catchers you told us about? The moment the computer died and released the wathans, the catcher could restrain them."

  Loga smiled grimly.

  "A very good idea. I've thought of that. Briefly. The only catcher is the computer. There are memory banks which I could tap to make a catcher. But these are also in the computer."

  "Are the defenses absolutely invulnerable?" Burton said.

  "It's easy to gain access to the field generator. I'd just have to pull out the malfunctioning module and replace it with another. But I'd be dead before I could do that. The computer would cut me down with beams. Just like those which my beamer shoots."

  Nur said, "You used the computer at the same time that the others were. How did you keep them from finding that out?"

  "In a sense, I made the computer schizophrenic. One part of it didn't know what the other was doing."

  "That's it!" the Moor cried. Then his exultant expression was replaced by a frown. "No. You'd have thought of using it."

  "Yes. I can't because the engineers apparently discovered the split mind. Now it's dominated by the main part."

  "You said dominated, not integrated," Nur said.

  "Yes. The engineers didn't have time to remove the complex circuits which made the computer schizophrenic. But they did put in temporary bypass circuits to give the main part dominance. They would've integrated the parts later. But they were killed before they could do that."

  "How do you know all this?" Burton said.

  "The computer gave me that information. It doesn't refuse to communicate. It just won't obey any commands except those from Monat or whoever was authorized to act for him."

  "There's no chance of finding out the codeword or whatever Monat used?"

  "Not unless he recorded it somewhere. I doubt that he would. Also, the code would have to be accompanied by the voiceprints of Monat or his aide."

  "Maybe there is no codeword," Frigate said. "Maybe the voice-recognition is enough."

  "No. Monat would think of that. It'd be relatively easy to isolate phones from records of his speech and synthesize them to make new sentences. Also, Monat might've required that there be body recognition, too."

  "Could you make a disguise of Monat to wear yourself?" Turpin said.

  "I suppose so. But I'd use beam-simulators."

  Loga seemed very weary now. Burton suspected that it was not the wound which had drained his energy. It was hopelessness and guilt.

  "Well," Burton said. "We don't know but what voice and body recognition is all that's required. We must try to fool the computer even if it's wasted work."

  Alice said, eagerly, "Have you told the computer that it's going to die?" .

  "Oh, yes. But it already knew it."

  "Perhaps a man could get through the computer's defenses," Burton said, looking hard at Loga.

  The Ethical straightened up a little.

  "I know what you're thinking. Since I'm responsible for this horror, I should try to repair the valve generator. Even if there's an almost one-hundred-percent probability that I'd just be sacrificing myself. I w
ould do that if I thought it'd do any good.

  "But what if I succeeded and yet died? None of you would know how to operate the equipment here. You could do nothing to solve this problem.

  "Moreover, if the computer lives, what then? The situation is unchanged only in that the computer lives and so the wathans won't be released."

  Burton said that Loga must train them in the use of whatever instruments might be needed. He-must because something might happen to him. Was there time for that before the computer died?

  The Ethical replied that there might be. He'd have to teach them what the instrument markings meant. It would take too long to teach them the language used when talking to the computer, which was that of Monat's people and the primary one on the Gardenworld. But he could change the language converters and so allow them to use Esperanto.

  "Excellent!" Burton said. "I think we should all go to bed now. We'll wake up refreshed and with clearer minds. Perhaps we can think of something to use against the computer then."

  They moved into the Councilors' apartments. Loga went into his. Aphra Behn and de Marbot took one; Alice and Burton, another. Tai-Peng and Turpin shared a fourth apartment and Nur and Frigate the one next to it. Burton thought it best that none of their group be alone. He still didn't entirely trust the Ethical.

  Before they went to sleep, Alice said, "Richard, there has to be a way to get around the computer. It was made by humans, so it should be mastered by humans."

  "Why don't you appeal to its emotions?" Burton said. "You women are particularly good at that."

  "No more than men, you braying arse! Anyway, I know there's no use appealing to the emotions of a thing that has none. Although I'm not so sure that it doesn't have some. Or analogies thereof. But since it operates purely by logic, why not use logic against it? Humans put human logic into it. We should be able to fight it or cozen it with logic."