The Magic Labyrinth

by Philip José Farmer

  "I'm sure that Loga has thought of that."

  He kissed her on the cheek and turned away.

  "Good night, Alice."

  "Good night, Richard."

  When he awoke some hours later, he found her staring up at the moving figures on the ceiling.

  53

  * * *

  In the morning, they showered and put on clean cloths and then went to a room which was used as a dining hall. Going past the control room, they saw that Croomes' body had been removed. There were no bloodstains on the floor, and all the skeletons were gone.

  "Robots," Loga said. "I also sent one to take care of Gilgamesh's body."

  "I didn't see any robots," Frigate said.

  "You did, but they looked like large cabinets. Your beds are robots, too. They gently massage your muscles and manipulate your spinal cords."

  "I didn't feel anything when I awoke during the night," Burton said.

  "Nor I," Alice said.

  "They're very subtle and only operate automatically when you're asleep. But if you want a massage while awake, you command them. I'll show you how."

  Over the delicious breakfast, Alice told the others her thoughts about circumventing the computer with the very logic it used.

  Loga shook his head. "It sounds fine, but it won't work."

  "We can at least try," Alice said.

  "We'll try everything, mental or physical," Loga said. "But, believe me, I've thought of everything."

  "I don't doubt your intelligence," she said. "But nine heads are better than one."

  "The nine-headed dragon!" Tai-Peng shouted. His face was flushed; he'd been drinking wine throughout the meal.

  "I'll use one of the electronic computers in this room to set up a system," Loga said. "But it won't, I believe, be able to beat its own logic. A computer can calculate much faster than a human, if it has all the proper data. But it doesn't have an imagination. It's not creative. Still, its data might contain something I've overlooked. And it can be set to make combinations in a very short time which it would take me years to write out. Also, it does have some degree of extrapolation."

  After going to his apartment, he went to the control room and seated himself in the chair in the center of the revolving platform. In a very short time, he called to the others.

  "I couldn't resist asking the big computer how many wathans are now in the shaft."

  "How many?" Nur said.

  Loga looked at the screen again.

  "Eighteen billion and twenty-eight. No. Add three more."

  "Over half the people in The Valley," Frigate said. "Yes. Add two more now."

  Loga turned the display off.

  "For every hour that passes, more people die, more wathans are caught. When the computer dies . . ."

  His voice trailed off.

  The Ethical had to have great courage, endurance, determination, and quick wits to do all that he'd done. But his guilt was too crushing for even him.

  "Maybe," Turpin said, "you should throw in the towel. I mean . . . kill the computer now! That way, you won't lose any more, and you can continue the project."

  "No!" Loga said, showing fire for the first time since they'd known him. "No! That would be monstrous! I have to save all of them! All!"

  "Yes, and maybe you'll end up losing millions. Or maybe everybody on this planet."

  "No! I can't!"

  "Well," Turpin said, "I can't think of anything that'll help. This is all too deep for me."

  He left for the nearby lounge to play on its piano.

  "He's disgusted with me," Loga said. "But he doesn't know the loathing I feel for myself."

  "Recriminations will do no good!" Tai-Peng said, waving a bottle in his hand. "But Tom may be right! I think I'll go to the lounge and enjoy myself, too! My head aches with thinking!"

  "That isn't what's making it hurt," Alice said gently.

  Tai-Peng just grinned and kissed her quickly on the cheek as he passed her.

  Nur reminded the Ethical that he hadn't removed the bombs in the cabinets in the other control room.

  "I'll just lock the door," Loga said. "Now for the logic-versus-logic program. Even if it will be a waste of time."

  Those remaining went off to the language laboratory. The Ethical had given them instructions for the use of the equipment which would teach them to speak and read Gardenworldish or Ghuurrkh. There were also Esperanto-Ghuurrkhian grammars and dictionaries available.

  Alice clutched Burton's arm.

  "It is horrible, isn't it?" she said, her large dark eyes looking into his. "All those souls lost, and they had a chance for immortality! It's too horrible to think about!"

  "Then don't think about it," Burton said. "Anyway, even the lost ones will be immortal. They just won't know it, that's all."

  She shuddered and said, "Yes. But we could be among them. Do you think you're Going On? I'd like to believe that I am, but you practically have to be a saint to Go On!"

  "Nobody has ever accused me of being a saint unless it was my wife," Burton said, grinning. "And she knew better."

  Alice wasn't fooled. She knew that he was as desperate as she.

  Two days passed. Loga ran out the results on the console screen while the others watched. When the display was ended, he shook his head.

  "No use."

  They conferred again and again and came up with many plans, but these were all dismissed because of flaws in logic or insurmountable facts.

  The fourth day after they'd come to the tower, Frigate leaped smiling into the room.

  "Hey, we're pretty dumb! The answer is right under our noses! Why don't you send robots in to insert the module?"

  Loga sighed.

  "I'd thought of that. It was one of the first things to occur to me. But even though the robots are made of charruzz (the gray metal), the computer's beamers will slice through them."

  Frigate looked disappointed and a little foolish.

  "Yes . . . but . . . if you send enough in, they'd knock out the beamers!"

  "None of the robots have the functional structure to shoot beamers."

  "Well, couldn't you convert them? And then program them?"

  "It would take me ten days. If I'd started when I first got here, I couldn't have altered one in time."

  He paused, then said dolefully, "I just checked on the time left before the computer dies. Five days!"

  Even though they'd been expecting such an announcement, they were shocked.

  Tom Turpin said, "At least we won't have that to worry about. The souls'll be gone, and there's nothing to do about it. But you can give those that're still alive a lot more time."

  Loga turned some dials and punched a button. Ghuurrkhian numbers glowed on the screen. The others were advanced enough by now to be able to read them.

  "Eighteen billion, one hundred and two," Aphra said.

  "I should kill the computer right now," Loga said. "I've waited too long as it is. For all I know, my mother's soul was collected today."

  "Wait!" Frigate said. "I've got an idea! You said you'd reopened your private resurrection chambers when you got here. Can they be fixed up so that we could be resurrected in them, too?"

  "Why, yes. They could be. The resurrector catchers operate on a slightly different frequency from that of the computer. I had my wathan and Tringu's tuned to it. I could do the same for you. But why?"

  Frigate started to explain, but Loga, Burton, and Nur comprehended at the same time what he meant to say.

  They would go down in force, leaving several behind to do the necessary supervision. They would storm the room, and, though they might be killed over and over, they still could put out all the beamers of the computer.

  "How'd you happen to think of that, Pete?" Tom Turpin said.

  "I'm a science-fiction writer. I should've thought of it when I found out what the situation was."

  "I should've thought of it, too," Loga said. "But we're all under great emotional pressure."

 
"You can duplicate these?" Burton said, holding up the pistollike sphere-ended weapon.

  "As many as we'll need."

  Within two minutes, the entire group was armed with the beamers. The Ethical then had his machine print out diagrams of the route to the valve room from the control room and from his private resurrectors. They studied the diagrams, identifying each corridor and chamber with the corresponding screen displays.

  "There are video cameras on every wall in that area, including the valve room. Here's a picture of it from the files."

  They studied the reproductions issued by the machine until they knew the room by heart. Then Loga commanded that a module be duplicated in the e-m cabinet, and he gave them the simple instructions for pulling out the old module and inserting the new.

  Unfortunately, the Ethical was unable to get diagrams showing where the computer's defenses were located.

  "That information must be in the computer's memory banks."

  Nur said, "Why don't you ask the computer for it?"

  Loga looked surprised, then laughed softly.

  A moment later he had information, though it wasn't what he'd asked for. The computer refused to divulge where its weapons were.

  "Well, it was worth a try."

  They got into their chairs and followed the Ethical to a lift shaft. They descended in it far faster than they'd dared operate their chairs until then. When they'd gone a mile, he stopped and then went into a bay and from there into a corridor. After a few minutes Burton, who had an excellent sense of direction, realized that they were heading for the general area of the secret room at the base of the tower. At their speed, they quickly arrived at it.

  The Ethical looked at the door, still kept from opening by the grail Burton had placed there. His face turned red.

  "Why didn't you tell me that the doors were still open?"

  "I thought about it, but it didn't seem important," Burton said.

  "The agents could have come through!"

  "No. They couldn't possibly have caught up with us in such a short time. They'll be using sailboats."

  "I won't take any chances."

  Loga turned the chair away from the door, then turned it back to face them.

  "You get that boat out of the entrance while I'm gone."

  "Where'll you be?" Burton said.

  "I'm going to a control room so I can reactivate an automatically operated aircraft and direct it to the ledge. It'll melt it all down, and then it'll-plug up the cave entrance."

  "Go with him," Burton said to Tai-Peng and de Marbot.

  Loga glared but said nothing, and his chair turned and flew down the corridor.

  Burton led the others into the fog-shrouded room where, with much shoving, they got the boat out into the sea. Then they went back to the corridor, the larger ones squeezing themselves again through the narrow opening above the grail.

  "We should've asked Loga to open it all the way," Frigate said.

  "I don't think he wants us to know how he opens it," Burton said.

  "Still doesn't trust us?"

  "With the life he's led, he's conditioned to trust no one."

  That, however, wasn't true. Loga, trailed by the Chinese and the Frenchman, returned after fifteen minutes. He got out of the chair and banged his fist on the wall a few inches from the door. At the same time, he said, clearly, "Ah Qaaq!"

  The door slid back within the recess.

  Burton made a mental note of the exact area struck.

  "How did you know that someone wouldn't be coming along and catch you?" he said.

  "This door is one big video screen. I also have other screens which look just like part of the walls. They're situated so that I can see up this corridor past its curves for some distance."

  They followed Loga into the room. Halfway down it, he stopped, turned, facing the wall, and voiced the codeword again. An apparently seamless part of the wall moved back and they slid into a recess. The room beyond was well-lit and contained some equipment on tables, a large cabinet, and two skeletons. These were pointed toward the door as if they'd been about to leave the room. On the floor by bone fingers was a metal box. It had a number of dials, gauges, buttons, and a small video screen on one side and prongs on the other.

  Loga said, "If only I could have sent that signal a few seconds earlier. I would've caught them before they removed the control box."

  "But you wouldn't have known that," Burton said. "You would still not have been able to take the chance of killing yourself. By the way, why were the doors closed? Those two would've had to open them to get in."

  Nur said, "Since they wouldn't have known the codes, how'd they get in?"

  "After seventy-five seconds, the doors close automatically unless countermanded. What happened is that the investigators located this room by tracing the circuits. That would've been a very time-consuming and arduous job because they couldn't use the computer to do the tracing. When they located this room, they must have been using magnetometers, too. They went back to find the tap-in source, and found the programmed open-shut code box. It wouldn't have taken them long to analyze the code."

  "But what about the knock accompanying the code? How . . ."

  "They figured that out, too, though it would've taken longer."

  He pointed at the cabinet. "The resurrector."

  He went in with Frigate at his heels. The American said, "You couldn't use your own power supply?"

  Loga stopped and picked up the control box and then walked to the side of the cabinet. He inserted the prongs into receptacles on the side of the cabinet.

  "No, I couldn't. I would've liked my own atomic converter so there'd be no wires to trace. But energy-matter conversion and wathan-attracting require enormous power. The physical-extraphysical interface alone uses enough power to blackout half of the cities of ancient Earth in the late twentieth century."

  Frigate said, "How'd you prevent this power drain from showing up on meters?"

  "I made arrangements for it not to. To go back to the original question. If the engineers had removed the code box, I wouldn't have been able to get out of the secret room into the corridor. The outer access door is activated by a signal going to another coder-decoder. It was very fortunate that the engineers didn't work on that before they were killed. I lost the signal-generator when I had to abandon my aircraft. But the boats in the cave contain generators. These are automatically started when the sensors detect that the tower is near."

  "The door mechanisms wouldn't have used much power. Why didn't you use separate power generators for them?"

  "I should have. But it was simpler and more economical to use the main power supply."

  He smiled slightly. "I wonder what the engineers made of the codeword. Ah Qaaq is Mayan. The Ah is the article defining the name as masculine. Qaaq means fire. Loga is Ghuurrkh for fire. Perhaps that was what identified me. They might've put the Mayan name into the computer for a search. If they did, they got an answer within a second after insertion of the question.

  "I outclevered myself."

  He poised a finger over a button. "Gather around. I'll explain the simple operation twice so that there won't be any confusion. You're able to read the markings. When I press this button, that small silvery inset disc will turn on. That indicates that the power is on.

  "That larger inset disc by the ON light is a readout frequency meter."

  He pressed a button. The smaller disc glowed orange.

  "Now . . ."

  The light went out.

  "Khatuuch! What is . . .?"

  Loga put his hand on the box for a second, then ran around to the front of the cabinet. He opened the door and looked in. Even at their distance from it, the others could feel the heat.

  "Run!" Loga said, and he limped as fast as he could toward the exit.

  When Burton had reached the exit he looked at the cabinet. The control box was melting, and a large cube inside the cabinet was glowing red.

  Loga swore in Ghuurrkh an
d then said, "Those . . . those . . .! They fixed it so that when power came on it'd melt the converter!"

  Except for Loga and Burton, who'd died so many times that they no longer feared the prospect of death, the others were relieved. Burton could see it in their faces. They knew they'd be resurrected with their wathans attached, but they still loathed the idea of dying.

  Burton said, "We have the other resurrector."

  "It'll be set up, too," Loga said. He was ashen.

  "Can't you fix it so it won't melt?"

  "I'll try."

  But he failed.

  Burton, looking at the molten mass, thought it was time to tell Loga something he'd put off revealing because the resurrectors were more urgent business.

  He said, "Loga, when we left your secret room to go after you, I put a bullet by the door to mark its location. The bullet is gone."

  There was a short silence. Frigate said, "A housekeeping robot probably picked it up."

  "No," Loga said. "If the robots were programmed to do such work, they'd have disposed of the skeletons."

  "Then someone else has gotten in!"

  SECTION 14

  Three-Cornered Play: Carroll to Alice to Computer

  54

  * * *

  They went to a laboratory. Loga sat down before a computer and worked furiously. Within a short time, all the cameras in the tower were operating. Two seconds later, the screen before him glowed with a display.

  Burton whistled.

  "Frato Fenikso! Hermann Göring!"

  He was at a table eating a meal made by a grail-box. From his extreme thinness and the great black marks under his hollow eyes, he needed more than one meal.

  "I can't see how he caught up with us so quickly," Loga said.

  "The computer reports seeing no one else, but they may be out of camera range just now. And if they're agents, one might have the codeword. Monat could've passed it on to them in The Valley."

  "Why don't we ask Göring?" Burton said.

  "Of course. First, though, I'll ask the computer where he is."

  Loga read the instructions, and they got into their chairs and flew out of the room. Ten minutes later, they were outside the laboratory down the corridor from Loga's hideaway. They set their chairs down softly and entered on foot. Though Göring was not armed, they couldn't be sure they wouldn't find others with him by now.