The Magic Labyrinth

by Philip José Farmer

  Burton bellowed, "Achtung!"

  He laughed loudly when Göring jumped up, food spewing from his mouth, arms flying, the chair falling backward. Gray and trembling, he whirled around, his eyes wide. He seemed to be trying to say something, and then his face reddened, and he clutched his throat.

  "My God! He's choking!" Alice said.

  Göring was blue and on his knees by the time Burton hit him on the back and made him expel the food caught in his throat.

  Alice said, "That wasn't at all funny, Richard. Quit laughing. You might've killed him."

  Burton wiped the tears away and said, "I'm sorry, Göring. I guess I just wanted to pay you back for some of the things you'd done to me."

  Göring gulped at the glass of water handed him by Aphra Behn.

  "Yes, I suppose I can't blame you."

  "You look near-starved," Nur said. "You shouldn't be eating so fast. Too much food too soon after a long starvation can kill you."

  "I'm not that starved. But I seem to have lost my appetite."

  He looked around. "Where are the others?"

  "Dead."

  "May God take pity on their souls."

  "He hasn't and won't unless we do something fast."

  "Göring!" Loga said sharply. "Did you come alone?"

  Göring looked at him strangely. "Yes."

  "How long have you been here?"

  "About an hour."

  "Were there any others close behind you when you were in the mountains?"

  "No. At least, I saw no one."

  "How did you get here so fast?"

  Göring and other Virolanders had dived into the hold of the Not For Hire before it slipped over the shelf into the abyss. They had brought up some sections of the batacitor and rebolted them together in a wooden sailboat. They had also brought up two small electric motors, a spare propeller of the smaller launch, the Gascon, and other parts. They'd worked fast, and four left in the reconverted boat two weeks after the Post No Bills had departed.

  Unlike Burton's group, they'd not taken days off for rest or recreation.

  "Where are your companions?" Loga said, though he'd probably guessed their fate.

  "Two quit early and went back. I went on with my wife, but she slipped and fell down the face of a mountain."

  He made the circular sign, the blessing, used so much by the Chancers.

  "You should sit down," Burton said kindly. "We have much to tell you."

  When he'd heard Loga and Burton tell what had happened, Göring looked horrified.

  "All those wathans? And my wife's among them?"

  "Yes, and now we don't know what to do. Kill the computer so that no more wathans may be caught. Or hope that we can think of some way to countermand its prime command."

  Hermann said, "No. There's a third choice."

  "What?"

  "Let me try to get the module in."

  "Are you crazy?"

  "No. I have a debt to pay."

  Burton thought of his recurring dream of God.

  "You owe for the flesh. Pay up."

  "If you die, your wathan will be doomed."

  "Perhaps not," Hermann said quietly. "I may be ready to Go On. I don't know that I am. God knows that I am far from a saint. But if I can save all those souls . . . wathans . . . then I will have made complete recompense."

  No one argued with him.

  "Very well," Loga said. "You are the most courageous person I've ever met. I think you clearly understand that you may have very little chance to succeed. But here's what we're going to do."

  Burton was very sorry that he had played his little joke on the German. The man was risking his soul, would face the equivalent of damnation, if he failed. Loga was right. Göring was the bravest man he'd ever known. He may not have been once, but he was now.

  Loga decided that they should return to the top level to be near their apartments. On the way, they stopped at a floor where Göring could see the caged wathans.

  He gazed at the glowing, contracting-expanding swirling darting things for a few minutes, then turned away.

  "The most beautiful, the most awe-inspiring, the most hideous."

  He made the circular sign again, though Burton thought that this was more than a blessing. He caught intimations of a prayer for salvation and for stiffening of his determination.

  When they got to the control room, the Ethical immediately set about working at the console on the revolving platform. After five minutes, he sent Göring into a cabinet. There his measurements were made by beams. Loga put more data into the computer, finishing in an hour.

  He waited for a few seconds before punching another button. He left the platform and limped to a large energy-matter converter. The others crowding behind him, he opened its door. The parts of a suit of armor were on the floor. Loga picked them up and threw them to those outside the cabinet. They put these on Göring and, when they were done, he looked more like a robot than an armored knight. The addition of the backpack, his air supply, made him resemble an astronaut.

  Except for the narrow but long window in the front of the globular helmet, the suit was made of the gray metal. Though thick, it weighed only nine pounds.

  "The window isn't as resistant as the metal," Loga said. "And the beams will cut entirely through the metal if they're applied to one spot for more than ten seconds. So keep moving."

  Göring tested the flexibility of the shoulder, wrist, finger, knee, and ankle joints. They gave him as much mobility as he'd need. He ran back and forth and leaped forward and sidewise and backward. Then he practiced with the beamer until he knew its full capabilities. His armor removed, he ate again. After Hermann had gone to an apartment to sleep, Loga took a chair off to a floor below sea level. He returned in an hour in a two-man research submarine which floated in the air.

  "I didn't think of this until a couple of hours ago. This will help him get through the initial defenses. But he'll have to go on foot after that. The entrances won't be wide enough to admit the vessel."

  During his absence, the others had been busy attaching beamers to the sides of the coffin-shaped clean-up robots and drilling the holes needed for passage of cables. Loga installed video equipment and trigger mechanisms. Then he programmed navigational boxes and installed them.

  Burton went to wake up the German but found him on his knees praying by the bedside.

  "You should've slept," Burton said.

  "I used my time for something better."

  They went back to the control room where Hermann ate a light meal before learning the route and the operation of the submarine. Loga showed him how to remove the old module and insert the new. The latter was a piece of the gray metal the size and shape of a playing card. Though it contained very complex circuits, its surface was smooth. One corner was nicked with a V, indicating that that end was to be inserted into the recess of the assembly. The code number was in bas-relief, and the card was to be put in with the code-side up.

  "What could go wrong with a module like that?" Frigate said.

  "Nothing," Loga said. "If it's inserted properly. I suspect human error. If the card was put in upside down, the circuits would operate properly. But every time there was a voltage surge, one of the circuits would be slightly damaged. There aren't many surges, but over a long period of time the damage would be cumulative. The error would have been noticed long ago – if the technicians hadn't been dead."

  He put the card inside a metal cube and attached it to a leg-piece of armor just above the knee.

  "All he has to do is press the inset button in the cube, and the magnetism will be canceled. The cube is thick enough to withstand many shots from the beamers."

  All of Göring's armor was put on him except the globular helmet. Loga poured out the yellow wine into exquisite goblets brought from his apartment. He lifted his high and said, "To your success, Hermann Göring. May the Creator be with you."

  "With all of us," Hermann said.

  They drank, and the helmet w
as secured. Göring climbed up a short ladder into the top of the submarine and got himself with some difficulty into the hatch. Loga went up and, looking down into the hatchway, repeated the operation instructions. Then he closed the hatch.

  Loga, as chief of operations, took the chair in the revolving platform. The others seated themselves before control consoles and began the adjustments taught them by the Ethical.

  The first of the armed coffin-shapes lifted and headed toward the doorway. That was Burton's. Behind it came Alice's, then the others. They single-filed through the exit and turned right.

  When all were out, the submarine rose from the floor and followed the robots.

  The descent to the floor just below sea level took him fifteen minutes. He halted his robot before a closed door above which were letters in alto-relief. Burton activated the beamers, and presently the door was cut on one side from its top to the bottom. He moved his robot over and melted through another section. Then he rammed the machine into the middle, and the cut section fell backward.

  Burton saw a gigantic room filled with equipment. He shot his machine toward a closed doorway in the opposite wall. Before it got there, sections of the wall slid back, and the sphere ends of beamers moved out. Scarlet lines spat from them.

  Burton moved the controls on the panel so that his robot angled upward to the right. He held it then and pressed the trigger-activation button. Scarlet lines streamed out along the edges of the screen, and he had the satisfaction of seeing a globe explode. Fragments flew against the screen but did no damage.

  A few seconds later, the screen went blank.

  One of the computer's weapons had destroyed the camera on top of the robot.

  Burton cursed, and he cut off the beamers. There was nothing he could do except watch. He pressed the button that would tie his computer in with one of Loga's cameras. Instantly, he could see from a camera on the wall above the doorway the robots had entered. His robot hovered ten feet above the floor, its front end pointed up at the beamers on the other wall. The robots were in a semicircle so that they wouldn't get hit by their companions.

  The last beamers in the room blew up, shifting the view from one camera to the next as one room after another was conquered. Alice's robot was melted down. De Marbot's camera was destroyed. Tai-Peng's was pierced by three beams at once, and it fell as some vital part was melted.

  The others went dead one by one until only the submarine was left. The dirigible-shaped craft took over then, cutting through two doors, its thick hull drilled into by the computer's beamers.

  The submarine came to a doorway wide enough to admit it but crossed by beams from ten weapons. Hermann shot his craft through it and came out into the next room with a small section of the stern cut off and many deep holes in the hull.

  Ahead of him, at the opposite wall, was another entrance. Here was where he would have to abandon his craft. He drove it at great speed, slowed it a few feet from the doorway, and, while scarlet lines melted holes in the hull, climbed out. Immediately, the beamers transferred to him.

  Göring fell out onto the floor, shielded from half of the weapons by the vessel but the target of the others. He got up slowly and staggered through the door entrance. Ranks of beamers turned toward him and tracked him as he ran toward the other doorway leading to the valve room. Just before he got to it, a door slid out from a recess and blocked the entrance. Ignoring the beamers, he began cutting through the door. He made a small hole, and he removed the cube holding the card and threw it ahead of him. Then he crawled through the hole, his beamer in his hand.

  Burton and the others could hear his heavy breathing.

  A cry of agony.

  "My leg!"

  "You're almost there!" Loga shouted.

  Purplish vapors poured out through the hole.

  "Poison gas," Loga said.

  The screen shifted the view to the valve room. This was large and on the right-hand wall (from Hermann) a down-curving metal tube came out of the wall about ten feet above the floor. Near it was a small metal box on a table from which thin cables ran to another box. The front of the box had recesses from which the ends of modules stuck out.

  Göring crawled to the cube as at least a hundred beamers poured their ravening energy into his suit.

  His voice came to the watchers.

  "I can't stand it. I'm going to faint."

  "Hang on, Göring!" Loga said. "A minute more, and you'll have done it!"

  They saw the bulky gray figure grab the cube, turn it over, and let the card module drop out. They saw Hermann pick it up and crawl toward the module box. They heard his scream and saw him fall forward. The module fell from his fingers at the foot of the table.

  The scarlet lines continued their fire and did not stop until the armor was riddled with holes.

  There was a long silence.

  Burton heaved a deep sigh and turned his equipment off. The others did the same. Burton went up onto the platform and stood behind Loga. His screen was still alive, but now it showed a pulsing many-colored figure, a globe-shape with extending and withdrawing tentacles.

  Loga was bent forward, his elbows on the edge of the panel, his hands against his face.

  Burton said, "What's that?"

  He knew it was the picture of a wathan, but he didn't know why it was on the screen.

  Loga removed his hands and stared at the screen.

  "I put a frequency tracker on Göring."

  "That's he?"

  "Yes."

  "Then he didn't Go On?"

  "No. He's with the others."

  What do we do now?

  That was the question of all.

  Loga wanted to kill the computer before it captured more wathans, and then he would duplicate it at its predata stage. But he also hoped hopelessly that someone might think of something which would solve the problem before the wathans were released. He was mentally paralyzed and would evidently do nothing unless an impulse broke through and he pressed the fatal button.

  The others were thinking hard. They put their speculations, their questions, into their computers. Always, there was some flaw in their schemes.

  Burton went down several times to the floor below and stood or paced for hours while he gazed at the splendid spectacle of the swirling wathans. Were his parents among them? Ayesha? Isabel? Walter Scott, the nephew of Sir Walter Scott the author, and a great friend of his in India? Dr. Steinhaeuser? George Sala? Swinburne? His sister and brother? Speke? His grandfather Baker, who'd cheated him out of a fortune by dropping dead just before he could change his will? Bloody-minded and cruel King Gélélé of Dahomey, who didn't know that he was bloody-minded and cruel since he was only doing what his society required of him? Which was no acceptable excuse.

  He went to bed exhausted and depressed. He had wished to talk to Alice, but she seemed withdrawn, foundering in her own thoughts. Now, though, she didn't seem to be in a reverie which would remove her from painful or distasteful reality. She was obviously thinking about their dilemma.

  Finally, Burton slipped away. He awoke after six hours, if his watch was correct. Alice was standing over him in the dim light.

  "What's the matter?" he said drowsily.

  "Nothing. I hope. I just came back from the control room."

  "What were you doing there?"

  Alice lay down beside him.

  "I just couldn't get to sleep. I kept thinking about this and that, my thoughts were as numerous as the wathans. I tried to keep my mind on the computer, but a thousand things pushed them aside, occupied me for a brief time, then slid away to be replaced by something else. I must've reviewed my whole life, here and on Earth.

  "I remember thinking about Mr. Dodgson before I finally did sleep. I dreamed a lot, all sorts of dreams, a few good ones, some terrible. Didn't you hear me screaming once?"

  "No."

  "You must have been sleeping like the dead. I awoke shaking and perspiring, but I couldn't remember what it was that'd horrified me so."r />
  "It isn't difficult to imagine what it was."

  Alice had gotten up to get a drink of water. On returning to the bed, she again had trouble getting to sleep. Among other things, she thought of the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson and the pleasures from knowing him and from his two books inspired by her. Because she'd reread them many times, she had no trouble visualizing the text and Tenniel's illustrations.

  "The first scene that came to me was the Mad Tea-Party."

  Seated at the table were the Hatter, the March Hare, and the Dormouse. Uninvited, Alice sat down with them, and, after some insane conversation, the March Hare asked her to have some wine.

  Alice looked all around the table, but there was nothing on it but tea.

  "Actually," Alice said to Burton, "that wasn't true. There was also milk and bread and butter."

  The book-Alice said, "I don't see any wine."

  "There isn't any," said the March Hare.

  Later there was a silence while Alice was trying to solve the riddle of why a raven was like a writing desk. The silence was broken when the Hatter turned to Alice and asked her what day of the month it was. He'd taken his watch out of his pocket and had been looking uneasily at it, shaking it and holding it to his ear.

  Alice considered a little and then said, "The fourth."

  The real Alice said to Burton, "Mr. Dodgson wrote that date because it was May in the book and the fourth of May was my birthday."

  The Hatter sighed and said, "Two days wrong! I told you butter wouldn't suit the works!"

  "It was the best butter," the March Hare meekly responded.

  Burton got out of bed and began pacing back and forth.

  "Must you go into such detail, Alice?"

  "Yes. It's important."

  The next scene she visualized, or empathized, since she became the seven-year-old Alice of the book, was from the Wool and Water chapter of Through the Looking-Glass. She was talking to the White Queen and the Red Queen.

  "Can you keep from crying by considering things?" she (Alice) asked.

  "That's the way it's done," the White Queen said with great decision. "Nobody can do two things at once, you know."