Masters of the Maze

by Avram Davidson

  Prefacing his remarks with a few heavy breaths, the oldster said, “Nicky Flint drove down this morning. Didn’ he, Jack? But that ain’t never his car. Hey Jack?” The dark young man said nothing. The older man scratched his armpit comfortably. “Nicky Flint drove down this morning, I says. Didn’ he, Jack?”

  “Where Major Flint goes is none of your business.”

  The old man laughed again, hissing and showing his toothless gums like a fat old lizard. Then the car itself passed by, long and sleek and luminous. “Jesus Montgomery Christ!” exclaimed George, deeply impressed. “Would you look at that thing!”

  Jack’s face was bright. The old man pursed his lips and scratched the dirty white stubble on his jowls. “Lookst a me like a one a them, oh, now, I saw one years ago in the city, hey now, yeah. A Roolds-Royst.”

  Before he had altogether finished, Jack said, quickly, “It’s a Bentley.”

  “I’d ‘a’ said you was right, Jeff — ”

  “No, it’s a Bentley, George — ”

  “Lookst a me,” Jeff repeated, stubbornly wagging his head, “like a Roolds-Royst.”

  “It’s more or less the same make of car, only — ” The automobile vanished from their sight. The curtain descended on Jack’s face, the brooding look returned.

  “Wonder who that could be,” the proprietor said. “Was that your boss in the car, could you see, Jack? I think there was a good four people there.”

  The dark man said nothing, but old Jeff had a point or two of comment. “Say, you know all about them makes of cars, don’t you, Jack. I didn’ think you was interested. I thought all you was interested in was women and jack-lighting deer.” He paused. “Hey Jack?” He picked at his nose. “Speaking of which, how is your new woman? Your new-est one, I sh’d say.”

  Jack shrugged. “Good enough. They all got the same thing.”

  “Yeh-es,” Jeff nodded, judiciously. “But some of ‘m’s got more of it than others … If I had me a new woman, young one, say, I shouldn’ like to be leaving her alone all night whiles I was setting at the bottom of a mineshaft … unless she was setting there with me….”

  Jack threw him a look in which a thin flash of his teeth showed. Instantly Jeff seemed to become much older, sillier, devoid of possibility of harmful intention. He breathed steamily, waddled back to his chair.

  George, still thoughtful, said, “Suppose, maybe, some land syndicate could be interested in maybe putting up a big hotel or a lot of cottages … or something … no …” He shook his head.

  Jeff smacked his knee loudly. “Hey now, I know what it is! Why sure. ‘Mineshaft,’ that’s what put it into my head. Bet you a penny to a pot of peas that Nicky Flint is trying to interest another sucker in that old piss-worthless mine of his! Hey?”

  George slowly cut himself a slice of headcheese and nibbled on it. “Mmm … That could be, I suppose. He’s had investors out there before, I believe. But … worthless? If it was worthless, how come they’ve held onto it, all these years?”

  The old man slid forward about an inch. “How come is right. Keep the fences mended and all. And keep guards on duty twenty-four hours a day. Tell what it is you’re guarding down there, hey Jack? Gold? Dye-muns? You-ranium?”

  His mind seemingly mostly on other things, Jack mumbled, “Guarding the pit-props, keep some dirty old jackass like you from stealing them for firewood.”

  Jeff hissed and quivered. Next, more soberly, he said, “I wonder when the last carload of ore was took up out of that mine. I don’t remember it. My father didn’t remember it, neither. Old Tom Shoot, he claimed he did, but he was such an awful old liar, used to claim he was in the Rebellion and all such lies as that.”

  George finished the slice of headcheese and sucked on his teeth. “They weren’t always pure lies, you know, Jeff. His mind got kind of weak a long ways before he died. He used to get mixed up between what he seen and what he’d heard told of others seeing. I know he claimed there was goblins down there and that’s why they quit mining. But he also claimed he recalled when the green timber was cut to make boats to fight the British, and I know that did happen, heard other old people tell of having heard of it.”

  After a moment he added, almost reluctantly, “Tom Shoot’s great-grandmother, she was that famous white-witch-woman, so they said.”

  Jeff, not smiling, said in a lower voice, “Nettie Wishert. Yes …”

  In the silence following, Jack said, as though to himself and as though from a long ways off, “But I’ll have one yet. You wait and see.”

  Instantly alert and keen, Jeff asked, “A Bintley?”

  The dark young man’s guard was down and for a moment his expression was slack and astonished. Surprise and anger struggled in his face. Then it tightened and his eyes closed part-way down.

  “I don’t get just my wages and free house and truck garden,” he said. “I get free cartridges, too. All I want.”

  Jeff’s mouth pursed his absolute innocence, utter incomprehension. “Take a pile of cartridges to buy one a them Bintleys,” he piped. “Still … if Major Nick Flint told you you’d get one, why, hmmm, ymmm … He’s a great one for promises. It runs in the family. I believe the old general promised Nettie Wishert something, too. Or was it the other way round? Hey George?”

  But George only wondered aloud whose car that might have been. And Jack’s eyes blazed in his dark and brooding face.

  • • •

  The hands of John Joseph Horn were large and immaculately groomed and thatched with colorless hair through which showed the pigmented areas which used to be called “liver spots.” The hands moved now on the velvety wool of the carriage rug covering his lap and legs, picked up a brochure, glanced into it.

  … particularly the property known as The Old General Mine, which has been in the hands of the Flint family since granted by George II …

  … reason to believe that the application of modern scientific methods to the refining and extractive processes would repay investment many times over and …

  Horn grunted very slightly, gently but firmly laid the brochure aside, picked up a little booklet bound in leather, opened it with one finger in a gesture which somehow managed to be almost priestly, took out the blue silk ribbon marker, ran his finger down the page (foxed as the back of his hand), found the place he sought.

  … maintaining that part of the Great Mysterie or Secret Tradition given through the Teutonic Knights, who brought the Teaching and Discipline of the Great White Christ to the last European pagans …

  Horn thrust out his lower lip — “M-hm, m-hm” — then looked up and over at the man sitting at the opposite window, a man of approximately his own age, with a long, dark face, grizzled hair cut close to the long skull. “Major,” said Horn, “my stomach tells me it’s one o’clock. Would you be kind enough to reach down into that case and pour me a cup of what’s in that thermos bottle? I thank you. I thank you.”

  He sipped, made a grateful noise in his nose. “This cup contains milk,” he said; “pure milk, with none of its essential bacteria destroyed by the murderous method of pasteurization, and made hot over a gentle flame but not boiled. It comes from one of my own dairy herds, a crossbreed of Jersey and Red Hindi which has been developed under my own supervision over a course of thirty years, and fed on purely organic fodder grown on purely organically fertilized fields. It contains a specific quantity of mildly toasted natural wheat heart produced by the same process, and a small amount of raw sugar from which none of the essentials have been extracted by so-called refining. It is, I do not hesitate to say, the most healthful food-drink available to modern man. There is another cup in the case, if you would care to try it.”

  Major Flint turned his head and gazed at Horn squarely with his yellow-brown eyes. “I never drink milk,” he said.

  “Drink whiskey, I suppose.”

  “No. I can’t afford whiskey.”

  Horn sucked back his lower lip with a little smacking sound. “I like the way you said that.
No whining. No disgrace to being honestly poor, why can’t people realize that? instead of yelping and sniffling and begging for hand-outs? Particularly none in being lead-poor.” He drank the rest of his milk, absently held out the empty cup. After a second Major Flint took it and put it back in the case.

  “Well. KLEL.” He tapped the cover of the little book as he repeated the word embossed there. “I don’t mind telling you, I was a bit dubious at first. Never heard of it, said to myself. Sounds clandestine, said to myself. But. When you told me the names of some of the other members — Governor Shank. Henry O’Dowd. Baron Fish — I checked.”

  Flint looked over his shoulder at the passing countryside. Turning back, he said, stiffly, “KLEL was registered with the Grand Consistory of Rites in Paris in 1788. Naturally, during the tragic events which followed, it dropped from sight. Experience may be a bitter teacher, but She is a good one. Once the benefits of working in silence were realized, they were never forgotten. KLEL is not now and it never has been — clandestine. It is now, it always has been, and it will always continue to be — selective.”

  John Joseph Horn nodded. “I know,” he said. “I checked,” he repeated. “Harry O’Dowd told me all about you. Your family’s impeccable record. Your own service — in war and peace. Your struggles to hold on to your property, your struggles to hold your own in business despite being up to your neck surrounded by Jews and Irish and Italians; well, we all know what New York is like. Your staunch support of the various constitutionalist causes, despite all evidence that you could often ill afford it. I checked, Major, I checked it all, up and down, Harry O’Dowd or no Harry O’Dowd. I might say that I was not least impressed by the fact that you never allowed any of our fellow patriots to throw business your way, refused to sharpen your personal axe on the grindstone, so to speak.”

  The car sped down a low hill, toiled up a high one, rounded one curve after another. “Nothing noble about that,” growled Major Flint. “I am beholden to no one, and I intend to keep it that way. I didn’t take advantage of my privilege as the GC of KLEL to make you a member on sight just because you’re rich. There’s a man named Jack Pace, his father was one of my grandfather’s bastards, but that’s neither here nor there; Jack Pace is at the mine for $35 a week, and I made him one on sight.

  “Rich men? My God!” he cried, “the B’nai Brith is rotten with rich men! The Mafia is rotten with rich men! And those damned Englishmen up there in Canada are so rotten-rich from the lumber and the ore they sell us and the wheat they sell Red China, that — that — ” His nostrils flared, he clenched his teeth.

  “Why,” he said in a lower, calmer, yet even more scornful voice, “there are rich niggers!”

  John Joseph Horn nodded slowly, sadly.

  No, no, Major Flint wanted it made clear, it was not just Horn’s money alone which mattered in this thing. It was the fact that he had the right idea about the use of money. “The whole world kicks us around as they please. Communists, Catholics, taking over all around! When is it going to end? And where? We’ve got the key — KLEL. We’ve even got a keyhole — ” He gestured up ahead of him. Then his mouth twisted and he sat back in the seat.

  “But it doesn’t fit,” he murmured. “It doesn’t fit.”

  Some hours later the two of them sat in the bare, musty old shack which served as the “office” of the Delaware and National Mining Company. “Well, now you’ve seen it and now you know,” said Major Flint. “You’re one of the Elect, you’ve been a Knight, you’re now a Commander. According to our Doctrines and Degrees, any Grand Commander can — with any two other Commanders — pass himself and themselves and any others of the second degree onto the third: Lord Commander. But General Flint, the first GC, laid it down that this was not to be done until a better Gate was found. And we’ve been playing it so quietly ever since, lying so low, that we haven’t … we don’t … Well …”

  Horn picked up the three pieces of gold upon the table, shook them in his hand, put them down again. “A better Gate. Twelve gates into the City. I suppose there must be even more than twelve.”

  Flint shrugged. More than twelve million, he supposed. A bitter smile touched his long, dark face briefly. “But it seems to be a case of, You can’t get there from here. God knows we’ve tried, we’ve been trying for a hundred and seventy years, at least.”

  “And it hasn’t changed? No, eh? I’m shaken, Flint. As you may suppose. No one ever saw anything like that — what you showed me. It can’t be described, it couldn’t even be dreamed of. But it exists! Yet … you say, You can’t get there from here.” He shoved the gold pieces with his fingers and they clinked. “Someone must’ve gotten there from here. And brought back … just these? Who was it?”

  It was an old woman named Nettie Wishert. Yes, she’d been initiated. Yes, that was probably irregular. But there were other occasions in the eighteenth century, Lady Aids-worth, for example. Anyway, Wishert had had her own Mysterie, in a way, and she was brave. She went through the Gate, and further on, and through an outside, and through another gate, and there she found the treasure house and she came back dragging a sack of gold coins. And these were all that still remained. Just three.

  Horn picked them up and looked again. His face shone with awe. On one side were the foreparts of a bull and a lion facing each other. On the other, in a square divided into four squares were, in archaic Greek characters, the letters KPOIΣ BAΣIΛ.

  “Krois basil,” said Flint. “Short for Kroisou basileos. King Croesus. Think, think!”

  “Croesus, the man who invented money … Lord, man, this may be the first money ever minted!” Horn’s eyes gleamed. He wet his lips. “And why hasn’t anyone ever gone back? Has it been closed? The Gate? Didn’t your old woman ever want to go back? Or your ancestor? It seems to me that the key fit the keyhole well enough. So — ”

  Said Flint, “It’s the outside that the Gate leads to, the place you’ve got to pass through before you can get anywhere else. We’ve checked and rechecked. There’s no mistake. ‘There was sickness in that house,’ old Wishert said. ‘Fever, and the evil fever, too.’ ”

  Horn said, ‘Oh,” flatly.

  “She died in agony, cursing the General. And he died in agony, cursing her. And the gold lay where they’d spilled it for a good twenty years before any of my family would touch it. The nature of the disease was unmistakable. They died of plague.”

  This time Horn’s “Oh” was faint and sickly. He started to push away the coins, stopped, shuddered, smiled — after a moment.

  “Well. So we need another Gate. And that’s where I come in, isn’t it? Me … and my money. Where do we begin? I suppose you must have an idea, or you wouldn’t have brought me here.”

  Flint nodded, curtly. He leaned the leather-patched elbows of his jacket on the worn old table. “There’s a man named Bellamy,” he said.

  CHAPTER TWO

  It was the characteristic breath-aura as it smoked its distinctive tints and colors in the chilly air which identified Arrettagorretta to the Na 14 ‘Parranto 600, although the ‘Gorretta-Sire’s vast size would have been identification enough.

  The room was large and quite bare of graffitti; the Sire had no need of such low-nest indications of identity-assertion; and no one else, of course, would dare. So the Na bowed low, and let his breath out. For a while it seemed almost as though the Sire did not see him, so preoccupied he was. Then he said, “Take food, the Na.”

  “For strength to serve you.” The Na politely placed his hands behind his back and bent over the indicated plate.

  “Not so, not so. I wish to see you eat as do the vivipars. Have you not been trained, the Na? It was that I thought you had been trained.” Arrettagorretta, the ‘Gorretta-Sire, seemed not angry, but mildly surprised.

  Hastily, “The Na had not been properly informed by those directed. Else he had suredly brought with him the necessary implements. Intelligent, chulpechoid vivipars generally take food with implements; this was impressed upon the
Na during training.”

  The great Sire moved his massy head. “That is so, I had forgotten. There is so much to remember, and meanwhile, Sun Sarnis grows old, grows cold …”

  The Na keened. It was the sensible thing to do. And stopped short when he saw the Sire about to speak again.

  “ ‘Generally,’ this means, the Na, not invariably. Hence it follows that vivipars, even intelligent chulpechoids, sometimes take food without implements. Therefore, the Na — ” He watched as the Na took his hands from behind his back, searched the plate for a solid, took it in his hands and severed it, and so ate it. “I see. They eat as do the Sires. Interesting. But not surprising, seeing that among them each one is itself a Sire, or so I have heard. Enough, the Na.”

  Placing the remains of the solid near the plate, the Na waited and listened. He hoped that Arrettagorretta would spare him the inevitable drear-talk. “Let me see … You have been under training, so. Current Project Four. To occupy the designation Jacques or Jacksa. Or was it, the Na, Jackson?”

  Showing no outward sign of inward feeling, the Na made a simple declaration that he had been under training, Current Project Five, occupying the designation Ten-pid-Ar.

  Arrettagorretta seemed to snap suddenly from his bemused state. “Suredly. Yet these designations have something in common. What, the Na?”

  “ ‘Jackson’ designation is what is called family name. Among the vivipars of Current Project Four, family name denotes egg-cluster, the Na believes — although this has not been his special area of training, he is ever alert for more data — whereas among those of Current Project Five — in which the Na has been specially trained — the first syllable indicates specific dam, the last syllable indicates the sire, and the intermediate syllable is a specific identity-assertive particle of no significance.”

  Arrettagorretta showed no surprise at the curious fact that the vivipars thus perpetuated a record of the specific dam; probably he knew it already and was merely testing. It was well that the Na had studied so assiduously. Much prestige attached to him already in the swarm-house, and he had already placed his graffitti many times over those of other Nas whose training had been in less prestigious areas. Later, at food-taking, he would tell of this interview, he would demonstrate how he had eaten for the ‘Gorretta-Sire, no one could protest his using his hands to take food under the circumstances. How the other Nas would look at him with low-nest envy!