The Magic Labyrinth

by Philip José Farmer

  "Alice!" Burton said. "What's all this nonsense leading to?"

  "It's not nonsense. Listen."

  In her reverie, Alice leaped from the White Queen to Humpty Dumpty.

  "Perhaps because Loga is so fat that he reminds me of Humpty Dumpty."

  She, the book-Alice, was talking to the huge anthropomorphized egg sitting on a wall. They were discussing the meaning of words.

  "When I use a word," Humpty-Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less."

  "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

  "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master – that's all."

  Then the real Alice – But is she any more real than that other Alice? Burton wondered – flashed to the scene where the Red Queen asked her if she could do Subtraction.

  "Take nine from eight," the Red Queen said.

  "Nine from eight. I can't, you know," Alice replied very readily. "But –"

  "She can't do Subtraction," said the White Queen to the Red Queen. She spoke to Alice. "Can you do Division? Divide a loaf by a knife – what's the answer to that?"

  "Were there any more?" Burton said.

  "No. I didn't think they meant much. They were just memories of some of my favorite sections."

  She'd slept again. And then she awoke suddenly, her eyes wide. She'd thought she'd heard someone far off calling her. "Just over the horizon of my mind."

  It sounded like Mr. Dodgson, but she wasn't sure.

  She was wide awake, her heart pounding fast. She got out of bed and walked to the control room.

  "Why?"

  "It occurred to me that there were three key phrases in the scene. The best butter. Which is to be master? Can you do Division?"

  Burton sighed. "Very well, Alice. Tell it as you must."

  She had seated herself in Loga's chair and made the adjustments necessary to communicate directly with the computer.

  "You realize that you're going to die in two days or less?" she said.

  "Yes. That's redundant information. I didn't need to be informed."

  "You were ordered by Monat not to resurrect anyone until he gave you the countercommand. What form does the countercommand take?"

  Burton interrupted her. "Loga asked him that."

  "Yes, I know. But I didn't think it'd hurt to try again."

  "And the reply?"

  As before, it had been silence.

  Alice had then told it that there was an even higher command, and this had been given to it by Monat before the second order.

  "What is that?" flashed on the screen. "I've been given many orders."

  "The prime directive, the most essential, is to catch the wathans and reattach them to the duplicated bodies. That is what the project is all about. If Monat could have foreseen what his order would result in, he'd not have given it."

  The computer said nothing.

  Alice said, "Put me into communication with the section which Loga was using. That part of which Loga was the master."

  Evidently, the computer had no orders to refuse communication with that part. Until Alice, no one had even thought about that possibility.

  "My God!" Burton said. And then, "What happened?"

  "I told it that it was going to die. It said that it knew it. In effect, so what? So I used my argument for the dominant part of it."

  She followed that up with an order that it regain its former state, that it be independent.

  "The dominant part did nothing during this time?"

  "Nothing. Why should it? As Loga's said, it's a brilliant idiot."

  "What happened then?"

  "I told the dominant that it was its duty to resurrect Monat and confirm or invalidate the order not to resurrect anybody until it got the codeword or whatever it is."

  "Then?"

  "The screen went blank. I tried again and again to get it to respond."

  The eagerness on Burton's face died away.

  "Nothing?"

  "Nothing."

  "But why would it cut off communication? Its duty is to communicate."

  "I hope," Alice said slowly, "that it's evidence of an internal struggle. That the dominated part is struggling with the dominant."

  "That's nonsense!" Burton cried. "If what I've learned about computers is true, it couldn't happen."

  "You forget that this is, in one sense, not a computer. Not the conventional kind, anyway. It's made of protein, and it's as complex as the human brain."

  "We'll have to rouse Loga," Burton said. "I suppose it'll be for nothing, but he's the only one who can handle this."

  The Ethical came from his sleep fully awake. He heard Alice out without any questions, then said, "There would be no struggle. Monat's order would have gone to the dominated part as well as the other."

  "That depends upon when the order was given," she said. "If the circuits for domination were put in afterward, then the dominated part wouldn't have received them."

  "But the dominant would have transmitted them to the schizophrenic part."

  "Perhaps not!" Alice said.

  "If it did happen, and I don't think there's the slightest chance it will, then Monat would be resurrected."

  "But I gave that order to the dominant."

  Loga quit frowning.

  "Good! Still, if that's the only way to save the wathans, then it should happen. Even if . . ."

  He didn't want to say what would happen to him.

  They had breakfast in the dining hall except for Loga, who ate while in the control chair. Despite his efforts, he could get no direct response from the computer. One of his screens showed the enclosure of the wathans.

  "When it becomes empty, we'll know that they're . . . lost."

  He looked at another screen.

  "Two more have just been caught. No. Three now."

  While they were breakfasting in gloom, broken only now and then by halfhearted comments, Frigate said, "We do have something important to talk about."

  They looked at him but said nothing.

  "What's going to happen to us after the computer dies? Loga won't consider us ethically advanced enough to let us stay here. In his opinion, we won't be capable of running this operation. I think he's right, except possibly for Nur. If Nur could get through the entrance on top of the tower, he'd be allowed to stay."

  The Moor said, "I've been through it."

  They stared at him.

  "When?" Frigate said.

  "Last night. I decided that if I could get all the way out, I could get all the way back in. I succeeded, though it wasn't easy. I couldn't stroll through as a full-fledged Ethical would."

  Burton growled, "That's fine for you. I apologize for what I said about all Sufis being charlatans. But what about the rest of us? Suppose we don't want to go back to The Valley? And if we do, then we'll tell people the truth. Not that everybody will believe us. There are still Christians and Moslems and so forth who've refused to abandon their religion. Also, I imagine there'll be many Chancers who'll cling to their tenets."

  "That's their problem," Nur said. "However, I don't wish to stay here. I'll go back to The Valley willingly. I have work to do there. I must work until I Go On."

  "That doesn't mean that you'll be gathered to the bosom of the Creator," Burton said. "Scientifically, all Going On means is that you will no longer be detectable by their scientists' instruments."

  "As Allah wills it, so be it," Nur said.

  Burton considered the prospect of staying here. He would have such power as nobody on Earth had ever had and few on the Riverworld.

  To gain it, though, he would have to remove Loga. Kill him or imprison him. Would the others collaborate with him? If they didn't, he'd have to get them out of the way. He could resurrect them in The Valley, where they were going anyway. But he would be lonely. Alice wouldn't go along with him. No, he'd not be lonely. He could resurrect in the tower all sort
s of agreeable companions, men and women.

  He shuddered. The temptation had passed through him like a nightmare. He didn't want that sort of power, and he would forever feel he was a traitor if he did have it. Besides, it was evident that he couldn't be entrusted with it.

  But what about Loga? Wasn't he a traitor?

  Yes. In a sense. Burton, however, agreed with him that the candidates in The Valley should be given more, much more, time than the other Ethicals had planned. He himself, he felt, would need that extension.

  He looked at the faces around the table. Were there thoughts such as his behind those dour expressions? Was one or more than one struggling with temptation?

  He'd have to watch them. Make sure that they didn't try anything reprehensible.

  He drank some of the yellow wine and said, "Is everybody agreeable to returning to The Valley? A show of hands, please."

  Everybody raised their hands except Tom Turpin. They looked hard at him. Grinning, he raised his hand.

  "I was thinking of all the good times I could have here. But I don't want to stay. Man, I couldn't handle it. Only . . . I wonder if Loga'd let me take a piano with me."

  Alice burst into tears. "All those souls! I thought that I had an answer but . . ."

  A screen on the wall glowed, and Loga's smiling face appeared.

  "Come here!" he shouted. He laughed. "Come here!" He laughed again. "The dominant has just succumbed, and I've just gotten a message from the other! Alice, you were right! Oh, how you were right!"

  They ran into the control room and gathered around the Ethical. There was the display on the screen, glowing with the most recent communication.

  Then they cheered and whooped and flung their arms about each other and got off the platform and danced.

  After a while, Loga shouted for attention.

  "Remember, it's still dying! But it's given me permission to replace the module! I have to leave at once!"

  It would be sadly ironic, thought Burton, if the computer died before Loga could get to it.

  Ten minutes later, as they were waiting for his call in the dining hall, he appeared grinning on a screen.

  "It's done! It's done! I've already given the order to start the resurrection again!"

  They cheered and cried and embraced again. Turpin sat down at the piano and played the "St. Louis Rag."

  "It's been a long, long River, but we made it to the end!" Alice shrieked. Her big dark eyes seemed to glow like a video screen, Tier whole being radiated joy. She had never looked more beautiful.

  "Yes," Burton said. He kissed her several times. "We'll have to go back to The River, but that doesn't matter."

  How strange and unforeseeable! The world had been saved, not by great rulers and statesmen, not by mystics and saints and prophets and messiahs, not by any of the holy scriptures, but by an introverted eccentric writer of mathematical texts and children's books and by the child who'd inspired him.

  The little girl become a woman, dream-ridden Alice, had inspired the nonsense not really nonsense, and this in circuitous and spiraling fashion had inspired her to do what all others had failed to do, to save eighteen billion souls and the world.

  While thinking this, Burton happened to look toward the door. Frigate had been whirling around and around and babbling nonsense all the way to the door. Now he was walking back from it and frowning.

  Burton left Alice to go to him.

  "Is something the matter?"

  Frigate quit frowning and grinned.

  "No. I thought I heard footsteps in the corridor. But I looked, and there was no one there. Imagination, I guess."

  END OF THE MAGIC LABYRINTH

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