A Maze of Stars

by John Brunner

  “Ridiculous!” Stripe jeered. “I’ve seen people off starships. They don’t allow people like you and me on board—backward, primitive, carrying foreign bugs! Well, not unless they have to, like when a member of the crew gets hurt or taken ill.”

  “And how do you know? Did you hear that maybe from a priest, or someone under orders to keep saying so?”

  On the verge of renewed objection, Stripe hesitated. The other’s tone was infectiously calm. Besides, his claim wasn’t totally incredible. A starship had landed last evening—indeed, there it lay gleaming like a monstrous muthrin on the far side of Clayre Bay. And he did look remarkably ordinary, so extremely ordinary that his appearance could have been based on some artificial average …

  Uncertainly she said, “Well, if what you say is true, you can tell me the name of your ship’s home world.” That was a poor test, but on the spur of the moment she could think of none better. Casting around for one, she almost failed to register the reply.

  “Oh, not the ship from Sumbala. Mine’s in orbit. It never lands. It’s not designed to.”

  “Then how in all of space did you … ?”

  The words trailed away. Suddenly she wasn’t looking at a Trevithran any longer. The man had changed. Apart from losing his elbow tufts, she couldn’t be sure in what way. Yet very definitely she was looking at a person not born on the same planet as herself.

  And in the same instant the implications of what he had just said sank home.

  Mouth dry, knees shaking, hands folded tight to stop them doing the same, she heard herself say, “You’re talking about the ship, aren’t you? I mean: the Ship.”

  “Yes, I am. Don’t you believe in it?”

  Giddy, she closed her eyes.

  Do I say yes or no? Yin and Marla brought me up all my life to believe in its existence, but… Well, I always thought of it as far in the past! It traveled down the Arm of Stars—that’s the legend—and people from it settled on the habitable planets, which is why we are so nearly all alike. Then local life-forms changed us, like the bug that makes us cheech, so now we’re different. It makes sense.

  But it’s a long way from believing that that’s why so many planets all have people on them, to accepting an offer to leave, to fly to space!

  She said as much, choosing her words with care.

  The stranger nodded. He had reverted to the appearance of a normal Trevithran—and that, thought Stripe frustratedly, was quite a trick! If only she could do the same, she could pass unnoticed by antis at the spaceport, in the market, anywhere. Then she remembered she never wanted to visit those places again.

  “Its instructions forbid the Ship to interfere, save in certain exceptional cases. It is indeed in orbit around your planet, but no one is aware of it apart from you.” A fresh hesitation. “Did you notice that the storm last night was unusually sudden and unusually violent?”

  “I thought it was because the ship—the other ship—had come so far and was so big.” Stripe listened to her own words with renewed incredulity. It seemed she was letting herself be persuaded.

  “It’s of a recent and quite sound design. Normally it wouldn’t shed half that much spatial static. But there was temporal static to disperse, as well. A great deal of it.”

  Was that annoyance in the man’s tone? Or was it regret? Or neither? She had learned from Rencho that visitors from other planets used different inflections and even words—which must be why sometimes they grew angry at being misunderstood by “primitive” Trevithrans. So she’d heard.

  However, a far more important question was burning on her tongue, and she must pose it before it eluded her. She demanded hastily, “Aren’t you interfering by talking to me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yet you didn’t act to stop my family being killed! So what makes mine an exceptional case?”

  Let’s see you wriggle out of that!

  “The Ship’s instructions permit the evacuation of human beings from a planet that has proved less suitable than originally predicted. They may be removed to the nearest, or the nearest more favorable, star system.”

  “So what makes a planet suitable?”

  “The fact that humans can survive on it.”

  Stripe laughed harshly. “I don’t see that fits at all. Aren’t there millions of us on Trevithra now—tens of thousands here in Clayre alone?”

  “That is true.” The other inclined his head. “But the instructions do not specify that the entire population is to be evacuated. What odds do you give for your individual survival now the antis of Clayre have tasted blood?”

  Of a sudden she felt very cold and very calm. She said after a moment, “I think they’d kill me as soon as they set eyes on me. Not just because I’m what they call a mockery, but because I might recognize some of them and denounce them for the murderers they are. You see, they spotted me at the spaceport where I was collecting unused food and drink from the starship. I broke a flask holding a sauce, I think, with a distinctive smell. One of them claimed to have seen me before, but that’s most likely how they tracked me to my home. Only of course I wasn’t there when they arrived.”

  “Had you been there and moved on?”

  “Yes, up the hill to sell what I had salvaged.”

  “They didn’t follow your spoor?”

  “The rain must have been too heavy. I could barely see where I was going. Besides, I’d washed everything else and thrown the broken flask away.”

  If I hadn’t… Oh, what’s the good? If this, if that—I can’t make things any different than they are.

  The back of her neck was prickling as though one of the antis were creeping up, intent on her death. She had to glance around to convince herself she and the self-styled spaceman were still alone.

  “I put it to you”—levelly, like a priest detecting an unadmitted sin—“that your survival on this planet is unlikely.”

  “Unless I can hide on the other side of the world … and what would I do in a city where I don’t know anyone and have no relatives?”

  “You have no other family?”

  “Two older brothers. Their work takes them all over the place. I don’t know where they are. I can’t even let them know our parents have been killed.”

  “We’re that far back, are we? I hadn’t realized … Just a moment.” The other’s face blanked, as though he were listening to faint and very distant sounds.

  “What—?” Stripe began, but he was back to normal.

  “I was checking my on-board memory banks. They remind me that it won’t be until— Excuse me. I should say: you don’t at present have a planetary person-to-person message system. Some worlds do. But from your level of technology it’s bound to take another century or two.”

  “What’s that to me? I shan’t be here! Even if the antis don’t kill me, I’m apt to cheech ahead of normal time. They say stress like what I suffered through last night can often bring it on like that.” She snapped her fingers on the final word.

  “Then all I can say is this.” He drew a deep breath. “Accept my invitation. Leave Trevithra. Please.”

  That last word rang and rang in Stripe’s ears. She wanted to demand, “What in space makes you say that?” She wanted to run home, except that home wouldn’t be there anymore, only a dirty smoke-grimed pile of thatch and planks. (What would have become of Donzig’s corpse? No doubt some officious neighbor would have called a priest and had it taken to the temple dump, blustering to conceal his or her cowardice last night.) She …

  She abruptly made sense of the request.

  “Tell me,” she said slowly, looking anywhere but at the spaceman. “Are there many people in your—in the Ship?”

  “No, there are not.”

  “Do you get lonely?”

  “Yes, very lonely.”

  “Do you sometimes take advantage of the loophole in the instructions to invite people to join you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do the instructions order you to tell the truth?” />
  “Yes.”

  “Are you telling me the truth?”

  “In the most literal fashion.” A quirk of the mouth. “You sound as though you studied in a temple school. But I gathered that your family were Ship-believers.”

  For the first time today Stripe managed a smile. “My parents taught me and my brothers how to best a templegoer in an argument by being strictly logical.”

  “Did you ever?”

  “No.” The smile became a sour grin. “Templegoers can always find an illogical way out.”

  “Well, if it’s any comfort, all the signs indicate that because they tolerate the disgusting behavior of the antis, the priests and their dupes won’t hang on to power much longer. Ship-believers are going to gain the ascendant, although the process will be a painful one.”

  Stripe stared at him. “Are you describing a prediction by the Ship’s computers?”

  “More or less. It’s more complicated than that, but—yes.”

  “And,” she stabbed, “giving knowledge of the probable future doesn’t constitute interference?”

  As he was preparing his reply, her mouth rounded into an O. “Wait! I see a way in which it need not!”

  “That being—?” Relief rang in the words.

  “You’re already convinced that I’ve made up my mind to go with you. So it doesn’t matter if you tell me, because I won’t pass on the information. Am I right?”

  “Am I right?” he parried.

  “Yes!” She drew herself bolt upright. “Even if it’s only so that one day I can come back and tell everyone that there really is a Ship, and it’s still traveling the starlanes for our sake!”

  “You sound amazingly adult,” the spaceman murmured. “As I suspected, having your lives shortened by cheeching means you grow up more quickly, cram adulthood into a narrower span … As to coming back, though: I’m afraid not.”

  “No?” Almost a cry.

  “Entering the Ship binds you to the laws of the Ship. The instruction about noninterference, most of all… But you still want to come.” It wasn’t a question.

  She let her hands fall to her sides. “What do I have to do?”

  “Nothing. It will all just happen. By the way!”

  “What?”

  “Thank you. Thank you very much indeed.”

  MIGHT I NOT BETTER HAVE STAYED, TOLD MY TALE TO WHOMEVER was prepared to listen, had the murderers arraigned and punished… ? Ah, but only the nobles possess power. What is it to them if Yin and Marla died and our house burned?

  Elsewhere, beneath another sun, perhaps I’ll find a sane society. Or if sanity’s too much to hope for, at least a kind one.

  Is this the one whom no known world will suit, the key to my release from endless maze-walks back and forth in time? Whether she is or not, it makes no difference. I have to act as if she were, in hopes that that will make my hopeless dream come true.

  So wondering, each in a sense the other’s captive, they set forth.

  CHAPTER TWO

  SHIP

  STRIPE WAITED A LONG MOMENT TO BE CONVEYED UP TO THE Ship. Insofar as she had any mental image of what it would be like to leave her planet’s surface and enter space, she imagined that she would soar skyward headfirst like the pictures of those favored by the gods that templegoers often carried in procession, feeling her internal organs dragging against their mesenteries, her blood pooling in her feet, her brain becoming giddier and giddier. She hoped to see Trevithra half in sunlight, half in darkness, and the green gleam of the artificial aurora that filtered out invading spores.

  Instead …

  “Are we not going to the Ship?” she demanded.

  “We have arrived.”

  “But nothing has changed!” She waved at the copse of yifles, the view of the bay, the distant spaceport. The air even smelled the same.

  “Yours is counted as a backward planet. The citizens of Clayre are among its most sophisticated inhabitants. Yet even they, as you have seen, can relapse into the mindlessness of a mob—and it doesn’t even take the pressure of enormous numbers. Toward the poles, where nobody has seen a starship, let alone met an off-world visitor, most Trevithrans would be shocked and terrified, perhaps to the point of mental breakdown, were they to be transported hither in an eyeblink. Continuity of environment is therefore provided automatically.”

  “But how can I know I’m really out in space?” demanded Stripe.

  “You wish to see?”

  “Yes!”

  “Very well.”

  Her surroundings melted as though they had been cast in wax and a flame applied from beneath. Instead, a level floor appeared, made of some translucent substance within whose depths colors played like those of a muthrin shell, but far more various. Everything else was black, save for a myriad stars more brilliant than a cave of jewels.

  Gasping, Stripe groped about for something to cling to. “Where’s Trevithra?” she forced out.

  “Under your feet, along with its sun. We are heading directly away from it.”

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “’Where the instructions permit.”

  “To the next suitable planet?” She was calming. Satisfied that she was not about to drift away from the luminous floor, she was able to relax and consider the spectacle around her. So many stars—so many, many stars!

  “Exactly.”

  “And”—with a sudden access of boldness—“who says whether it is suitable or not?”

  Before the answer, she interrupted herself. She had turned toward the spot from which the other voice emanated and realized abruptly there was no one else in view.

  “Where have you gone?” she shouted.

  “My apologies.”

  There he was again, exactly as at their first encounter. The reality of the course she was committed to began to gnaw at her mind, as though she harbored a baby greewit.

  “I can’t stand it!” she whispered. “Let me see you as you really are!”

  “But you already have.”

  “You mean…” Her mouth had dried; she had to start anew. “You mean: you’re not a person. You’re the Ship.”

  “That is correct.”

  “There isn’t any crew?”

  “No. But if it would be a comfort, I can arrange for any number of convincing simulacra.”

  She wasn’t listening. Her mind in tumult, she was thinking: I have to be insane. I have to. In a frenzy of despair after last night I’ve cast myself upon the mercy of an ancient machine, built by people far more alien to me than any visitor from Yellick—or Sumbala.

  Her emotion escaped in a moan. At once solicitous, the Ship said, “You appear distressed. I’m not surprised. You missed your normal allotment of sleep and dreams owing to what happened to your family. Moreover, you have not eaten at your customary hour. And doubtless there are other physical needs you’d like to fulfill.”

  As though utterly convinced of his—no, she had to think now of “its”—own right judgment, it made the stars vanish. She was in a chamber infinitely more luxurious than any she had ever seen before, with a vast soft bed. Half-glimpsed beyond a translucent curtain, wraiths of steam arose from water cascading into a shallow pool. A table with a chair alongside bore a jug that uttered appetizing fragrance and a shallow cup of bluish ware that shifted color now and then to match the floor.

  “Drink,” said the Ship. “It will refresh and nourish you and help you sleep.” And, as though divining her instinctive objections, added: “There will be nothing more to see, of interest to yourself, until six hours from now.”

  “Wh-what?” Wild-eyed, she stared to left and right and back and forth.

  “The instructions forbid me to exceed the speed of light until I reach a prescribed distance from the primary of any habitable world. The distortions my departure induces in the continuum could provoke a nova. Besides, at tachyonic velocity human perception—”

  “ Where are you taking me?”

  “Where the instructions
permit,” said the unseen speaker once again. Now its tone was definitely sad. “On our arrival, you will be informed.”

  Stripe, finding she was yawning, fought the impulse, for it might be Ship-induced. She shouted, “Don’t go away!” Sadness turned to dry humor. “There is never any need to say that. I am invariably present in myself. How could I not be?”

  I must be watched when emptying my bowels and bladder? Yet that was trivial; during her childhood there had been scant space for privacy …

  “I started out to ask a question,” Stripe said firmly. “Complete it. You shall have an answer.”

  “Who determines which is a ‘suitable world’? You?”

  There was a pause full of susurrant silence. Stripe could have imagined that she smelled despair.

  “No.”

  “Me?”

  “Advice is available to enable you to reach a sensible decision.”

  “You’re worse than a cheeching templegoer!” she burst out. “Yes or no?”

  “Yes, but you would be unwise to make a choice without—”

  “Of course I cheeching would!” Awareness that she had at least a smidgen of control over her fate had vastly reassured Stripe. She sat down in the chair, poured some of the jug’s contents into the cup, sniffed it and found it apparently wholesome, and drank three relishing mouthfuls.

  “When entering and leaving tachyonic mode,” said the voice (was it imagination, or had it become more machinelike?), “you would experience discomfort. Consequently you may prefer to be asleep.”

  Whatever the jug held, it was restorative. As warmth and strength flowed through her veins, Stripe said boldly, “I’d like to see it!”

  “Excuse me. See what?”

  “The other universe, the one beyond the speed of light. What else?”

  Now the tone was almost pitying. “You ask that, who have never left your planet until now?”

  “Should I not make the most of my unique opportunity?” A convincing imitation of a sigh.