Minotaur Maze

by Robert Sheckley

  Midas went on at such length about the galling restrictions that hemmed him in and restricted his ability to grant loans that he passionately desires to make that the Minotaur began to feel quite sorry for him, poor wretched king with all his fabulous treasures, with his golden touch and his triple A credit rating, unable to assist the causes closest to his heart.

  The Minotaur said that he understood, and began to make a respectful exit. At the door Midas called him back, asking, Oh, by the way, what did he want the loan for?

  The Minotaur explained about the homectomy that will change him into a unicorn. Midas was thoughtful for a moment, then he made a telephone call, whispering in a Phrygian dialect which the Minotaur could not understand even if he could make out the words. Midas put down the telephone and beckoned the Minotaur to take a seat again.

  “My dear fellow, you should have told me about this operation in the first place. I had no idea. I assumed you wanted the money for something frivolous, like so many of our heroes and monsters do. But this homectomy, that’s business of a mythical nature, and that’s just what we’re trying to encourage. I mean, after all, mythology, it’s what Dædalus’ maze is all about, isn’t it? What did you plan to do, by the way, with the excised horn?”

  “I hadn’t really thought about it,” the Minotaur said. “Keep it on the mantel as a souvenir, I suppose.”

  “Then you wouldn’t mind parting with it, once it has parted with you, so to speak?”

  “I don’t suppose so,” the Minotaur said. “But I don’t see —”

  “I can arrange the loan,” Midas said.

  “But what about the money market? What about the interest rate? What about your board of directors?”

  “Leave all that to me,” Midas said. “All I need is for you to sign over that horn to me as collateral.”

  “My horn?” the Minotaur asked, raising a hoof protectively to his forehead.

  “Not that it’s worth much,” Midas assured him, “but it does give me something to show to the Banking Triumvirate.”

  The Minotaur had no plans for the horn after its removal. Nevertheless, he felt a bit strange about giving it to someone else.

  “No objections, then?” Midas asked. The Minotaur nodded reluctantly. “Good, I have a standard loan application form right here. I’ll just fill in the details for you.”

  Midas takes a parchment, selects a stylus, scribbles.

  “I don’t suppose you know yet which horn you’re going to have removed? Well, no matter, we’ll just write in, ‘one Minotaur horn, either dexter or sinister, to be delivered no later than —” He glances at his calendar watch. “Let’s say, three days after the operation.”

  “I suppose that will be all right,” the Minotaur says. “But you know how it is in the maze, it’s impossible to say how long it will take to get from one place to another.”

  This was, in fact, one of the complaints the inhabitants of the maze expressed most often. Even a simple journey across town could take forever. If you had to go on a trip, it was a good idea to take your passport, all your money, a paperback book and a change of socks and underwear.

  “I don’t even know where to find Asclepius,” the Minotaur said.

  “I’ve already checked that out,” Midas said. “Asclepius is presently in Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, performing a nose job and face lift on Hera.”

  “Miami? Where’s that? Somewhere near Mallorca?”

  “Only spiritually,” Midas said with a snicker. “Never mind where it is. I can arrange for you to get there. As for getting back, that’s a little more tricky, but we’ll manage.”

  He looked through one of his desk drawers, found a card, gave it to the Minotaur.

  “This is an Instantaneous Transfer Card, quite valuable in its own right. Play it after the operation and it will bring you back here by the quickest possible means. And here is a voucher to give to Asclepius, guaranteeing his fee for the operation.”

  He gave the card and the voucher to the Minotaur. The Minotaur signed his name at the bottom of the parchment.

  “That’s it,” Midas said. “Good luck to you, my dear fellow. Oh, I almost forgot. One last formality.”

  He searched through his desk drawer again, found a plain gold ring, and, before the Minotaur knew what was happening, clipped it into the Minotaur’s nose.

  “What are you doing?” the Minotaur asked, startled.

  “Nothing to get upset about,” Midas said. “It’s just a standard insurance device required by the underwriters. We remove it as soon as you deliver the horn. Don’t try to remove it yourself — it’s fitted with an explosive device to prevent unauthorized tampering. It looks quite nice on you, actually. Goodbye, Minotaur, and good luck. See you very soon.”

  “But when do I get the operation”

  “Oh, I think the Alien Observer can tell you that better than a novice in temporal travel like myself.”

  “What Alien Observer? What are you talking about”

  But Midas would say no more. He had spent enough time with the Minotaur; now there were other things to be done, profits to be made, objects to be turned into gold. Midas hated to be away from work long, his real work, turning objects into gold. Already his armpits had that itch they get when they’ve gone too long without some object clutched under them, like a small ink bottle or paperweight, to aurefy by their contiguity.

  They shook hands. The Minotaur left. He was annoyed; he felt that Midas had acted in a high-handed manner. But never mind, now he could have his operation, that was the important thing. And it was nice, too, that he would finally have a chance to visit that part of the maze called Miami.

  22. Dædalus Dispenses with Causality.

  There was consternation when it was learned that Dædalus had decided to dispense with causality in his maze. People usually let the Master Builder have his own way in these matters, but this seemed to call for some explanation. A special meeting of the Mayor’s Maze Committee was convened, and Dædalus was called upon to explain why he had taken this unprecedented step.

  “Gentlemen, let us face facts,” Dædalus said. “As you know, we have designed our maze as a pure entertainment object, untainted by the faintest tinge of moral uplift and incorporating no socially redeeming material whatsoever.”

  “And quite properly, too,” muttered the Committeemen, doctrinaire æsthetes of an unbending nature, like most of the Mayor’s appointees.

  “Nevertheless, despite all our efforts, it has come to our attention that the taint of significance has infected some parts of our maze, clouding the crystalline meaningless of our structure like a fungus growth of elucidation. It is because of that, gentlemen, that I have canceled the causality in the maze.”

  “I fail to see the connection,” said a member of the committee.

  “I had thought it obvious. Moral purpose attaches itself to objects by way of causality. By dispensing with causality I defeat the purposes of morality, which are to set standards by which men follow predetermined rules, or fail to follow them, and so judge themselves harshly. It is this circumstance which we are trying to avoid at all costs. Our project, gentlemen, is no less than the conquest of guilt itself.”

  This bold statement of purpose was greeted by cheers from the committee, all except for one old gentleman with forked white whiskers, who said, “But it’s, all a lot of fuss over nothing, is it not? Canceling causality just to avoid guilt seems to me an unnecessarily heroic measure. Why don’t people just constumpterize away their guilt like I do?”

  Dædalus said, “I must remind you that most people lack the constumpter gland which is given only to creatures of fiction.”

  “True, true,” said the old gentleman.

  “Remember that we are trying to provide the human race with happiness, something which has been in short supply during its short and miserable history.”

  “If I am not mistaken,” another committeeman said, “you hold the view, Dædalus, that mankind does not have to be go
aded into upward evolution by the continual pain of war, famine, social inequity, and every sort of cruelty including the final result of self-judgment and self-doubt. That’s quite a radical view. Aren’t you afraid their natural laziness will prevail and they’ll grow tails again and take to the trees?”

  “It wouldn’t matter,” Dædalus said. “Who are we to judge the goal or even the direction of evolution? From the standpoint we’re considering there’s no difference between eating a banana and inventing Gödel’s Proof.”

  “That’s somewhat distressing,” said Gödel’s representative, who was present as an observer.

  Dædalus shrugged. “That’s the way the cosmic cookie crumbles. We can no longer permit a discredited morality to penalize all self-defined deviations of the moral maze with karma, the internalized consequences of action, the automatic payoff of causality.”

  “Hmm, yes, go on,” said a tall, handsome man, the author’s representative, hastily scribbling notes.

  “By canceling the cause and effect mechanism,” Dædalus went on, “we remove the payoff factor from decision-making, and thus render karma bankrupt, permitting the maze-runners of the future to pursue their courses free of interior moral consequence.”

  “Letting people get away with murder, you mean,” said the forkbearded committeeman.

  “Then as now,” Dædalus said. “Murder, to take your example, will have no necessary karmic consequence. By dispensing with karma, we merely put things onto their true basis. The actual consequence of murder may be something quite different from what we imagine: the flowering of a bed of violets, for example. There will be no hard connections in our maze, no necessary consequences, only juxtapositions, arrived at by hazard or by plan, it makes no difference. All of them will be invested with a purely situational meaning, and will carry no greater burden than that. In our maze, gentlemen, any anything can be any other anything any time it pleases, and this, I submit, is the only freedom worthy of the name.”

  There was a hearty round of applause at the conclusion of these words, and several cries of “Onward with the non-karmic universe!” The committeemen gathered around Dædalus, eager to grant him sexual favors of an exquisite nature, or their equivalent in whatever value-system Dædalus favored. But the Master Builder declined all offers with thanks. “Just doing my job, ma’am.”

  23. The Chinese Waiter— Theseus & Minotaur.

  “I’m looking for the Minotaur,” Theseus said.

  “Ah,” said the smiling Chinese waiter, setting in front of him a plate of gingered crab with spring onions and black bean sauce, a dish usually available only at the Parthenon Palace Chinese restaurant on Green Goddess Street in downtown Knossos. “You rook for Nimotoor?”

  “Minotaur,” Theseus said, taking care with his enunciation.

  “Enunciation,” the Chinese waiter said.

  “You’re supposed to read my lips,” Theseus said, “not my mind. Minotaur. Short horns, cowhide coloring, a sort of wonky expression around the muzzle, typical Minotaur look.”

  The Chinese waiter’s face took on that look of intense expressionlessness that so often betrays inner perturbation. “Maybe you come back room talk with wise man, okay?”

  Theseus followed the waiter through the glass-beaded curtains that separated the front of the restaurant from the back, down a corrugated yellow corridor where a toothless oriental man sat carving shrimps into gargoyles to decorate the lobster castle of some local dignitary. He went past the kitchen area where skylarking scullery boys dropped sizzling slices into potbellied tureens, past the provisions room where three Chinese chefs played fan tan with sow belly futures, and came at last to a small apartment upholstered in red velvet and hung with tiffany lamps.

  “I keep you crab warm,” the Chinese waiter said softly, and exited.

  Theseus could not help but notice that there was another person in the room, a young man who looked strangely familiar.

  “Hi, Dad,” the young man said.

  “Jason!” Theseus cried. For it was no other than the famous Jason of the Golden Fleece, Theseus’ son, a relationship mentioned in no other Greek myth and revealed here for the first time.

  “What are you doing in this part of the maze?” Theseus asked. “I thought you were supposed to be getting the Golden Fleece.”

  “I just haven’t gotten around to it yet,” Jason said. “And anyhow, there’s plenty of fleecing to be done right here.”

  “You live here?” Theseus asked.

  “I have a suite of rooms. Mr. Subtlety, the owner, gave them to me when he employed me.”

  “Not as a cook, I hope.”

  Jason looked pained. His father’s criticism of his cooking, and especially of his sweet-sour sauces, had been one of the recurring traumas of his childhood.

  “As a matter of fact,” he said, “Mr. Subtlety hired me as resident hero.”

  “What does he need a hero for?”

  “Protection. He’s been serving hoisin sauce without a permit. He’s afraid Zeus will leam about it and send Ares here to close him down.”

  “Would Ares do that?”

  “Of course not. Ares is the god of war, not foreclosures. But try to tell Mr. Subtlety that. Meanwhile I do my job, it’s a living, and it leaves me with plenty of time to take on special roles, like now, when a wise man is needed to advise you and none is available.”

  “You?” Theseus asked. “A wise man?”

  “Those are my instructions.”

  “Well, go ahead, give me some wisdom, I’m listening.”

  Jason’s words of wisdom were lost in the earthquake that destroyed the great library of Atlantis, where they had been stored in a bronze briefcase for the edification of posterity and others.

  Just at that moment the Minotaur appeared at the window. A wisp of a woman hung from his mouth, giving him a goofy look.

  “Excuse me,” the Minotaur said, “is there a drugstore around here? I stuffed myself on sacrificial maidens last night and am now in need of Alka-Seltzer or its ancient equivalent.”

  “I’ve got just what you need,” Theseus, said drawing his sword.

  The Minotaur jumped back wildly, tried to turn and run, tripped over his own fetlocks and fell heavily. Theseus sprang through the window brandishing his sword and crying, “Tallyho!”

  Since there was no other way out, the Minotaur had to play the whoosh card he had kept hidden away for just such an emergency as this. He played it. At once a large, gray, semi-liquid whoosh formed around him, quivered for a moment, then shot off at incredible speed. Theseus ran after it and tried to catch its tail gate, but the whoosh pulled away and soon had accelerated off the infrared end of the visual scale, not to become visible again until it slowed for its next station stop.

  “Damnation!” Theseus cried. “When is the next whoosh due?”

  Jason consulted his timetable. “That was the last for today. The milktrain whoosh is due tomorrow morning.”

  Theseus thanked Jason for his hospitality and his words of wisdom and set out on foot, his homing device chattering as it registered the trail of whoosh residue.

  24. Minotaur Meets Minerva.

  At least, the Minotaur thought, I’m sympathetic and likable, not like that Greek son of a bitch with the sword.

  At least I suppose I’m sympathetic. Even attractive, in my way.

  Though maybe a bull’s head isn’t to everyone’s liking.

  Still, it turns some people on.

  The Minotaur looked at his wristwatch. He was half an hour early for his appointment. He had meant to be half an hour late. He figured that would show class, and the Minotaur was always concerned about showing class because he was convinced that he had class but that it just didn’t show. It was the fault of his bull head, which gave people a bucolic sort of impression, vague and sweet, utterly without class.

  The Minotaur was too nervous to ever actually be late for an appointment. He wanted to be, though. He dreamed of showing up for an appointment three-quarte
rs of an hour late, breathless, arriving just as his appointee was leaving in a huff, extremely annoyed and needing a drink. It would be at that moment that the Minotaur would arrive, breathless, apologetic, and, putting a hoof around his appointee’s shoulders, says, “I’m really sorry, the traffic this morning was unbelievable, let’s get a drink. …”

  The Minotaur dreamed of delivering a speech like that, a speech with class. But on the morning of his appointment he was up early, he shaved and dressed and he still had hours to kill. He sat down and tried to read a magazine but it was no use, he couldn’t concentrate; he kept on checking his wristwatch, and he ended up pacing up and down, hooves clicking on the polished wood floor of his apartment, adjusting his tie, tugging at his jacket, wiping his shoes, until finally he couldn’t stand it any longer and out the door he went.

  He had definitely decided not to be early for his appointment, however, so he went there the long way, by the route across the Alps. Even if he couldn’t manage to be half an hour late he was sure he could manage a respectable fifteen minutes later. But of course he arrived half an hour early and of course his appointee was not there.

  This wouldn’t be too serious a situation in the real world. But in Dædalus’ maze, if you arrive too early for your appointment you’re apt to miss it entirely.

  In the maze, being early can put you into a special time slot that other people can’t get into. You move along encased in your special bubble of earliness, and other people are either late or on time so you never get to meet them. You have to get rid of some of that excess time you’re encased in. Sometimes you can rub it off against a time-absorbent rock, sometimes you can sell it, but sometimes it’s difficult even to give it away. People are suspicious about being offered your excess time, they think there must be something wrong with it, why else would you be trying to give it away? And it’s hard to find a time-absorbent rock in a town or city.