Minotaur Maze

by Robert Sheckley

  People simply don’t act that way, especially Phædra, who seems a level-headed girl, rather pretty, not too tall, with large gray eyes and a kissable mouth.

  Theseus thinks that the Phædra legend is one of Dædalus’ tricks, presenting an alternative that you don’t take because it looks bad, whereas actually it could work out very well. That’s the sort of thing Dædalus does to complicate his maze.

  Of course, Dædalus could be presenting a situation that looks bad figuring you’ll try to outsmart him by choosing it anyhow, and then it turns out to be worse than bad.

  Maze makers are devious people.

  Maybe Phædra is a little unstable. Maybe marrying her is a little extreme, not to say heroic. It’s been pretty good living with her, why get married? Because Phædra wants to be married; she’s a conventional girl; she thinks a lot about what people will think, and Theseus always marries them, Ariadne, Phædra, Antiope, probably a few others he’s forgotten.

  Well it’s something he doesn’t have to think about just yet. He’s still waiting for the Minotaur’s call. Nothing can happen before that.

  And the telephone does ring; sometimes it’s for Phædra, sometimes it’s for Theseus, but it’s never the call Theseus wants.

  There’s some man who calls Phædra all the time. He has a heavy foreign accent. He never leaves his name when Theseus answers.

  Theseus suspects it might be his son, Hippolytos, calling from a future part of the maze, trying to horn in on his father’s act before Theseus has even properly consummated his relationship.

  The fact is, Theseus hasn’t slept with Phædra yet.

  He has tried to get Phædra to sleep with him, because Theseus is something of a traditionalist in these matters and he figures that if he’s going to be stuck with a messy situation in the future he might as well get a little fun out of it in the present. And Phædra is quite attractive, a toothsome little morsel, and young. Theseus likes them young, but she refuses: it’s not that I don’t love you, it’s just that it doesn’t feel right. I could never face my parents, oh, if only we could be married! But Theseus is still married to Ariadne, the divorce from Delphi hasn’t come through yet; everybody is going to have to wait.

  Theseus doesn’t take Phædra’s calls anymore. Theseus has his own special signal; he knows the call is for him if, between each ring, there is a lightly aspirated S sound. He has asked all his friends to produce this sound when they call him so he can differentiate his phone calls from Phædra’s. This will make it harder for the Minotaur to get through, but Theseus is sure the resourceful beast will find a way. Theseus has tried to explain all of this to Phædra, but it’s no use; they have no language in common: This was appealing when Phædra was a blonde waitress with a come-hither look in her eyes. Now she wears horn-rimmed glasses and has lost what little she had known of the Hellenic language. The only phrase they have in common is “will you have a drink,” and, “will you have another drink?” She’s always on the telephone with someone. Could it be the Minotaur? What in hell is going on around here?

  It’s raining outside, so Theseus smokes a couple of baguettes to calm his nerves. He goes out for a walk. When he comes back the telephone is ringing, and the aspirated S is clear, yes, it’s for him, his call, and he races upstairs, five flights, fumbles with the locks, gets in at last, heart pounding, “Hello, yes, who is it?”

  “It’s me,” says the Minotaur.

  “Gasp.”

  “Beg pardon?” says the Minotaur.

  “Just trying to catch my breath,” Theseus says, his lungs laboring for air, light metaphor.

  “I hope,” the Minotaur says, “that you didn’t run up those five flights.”

  “How did you know about that?”

  “And how is Phædra?”

  “How did you know about her?”

  “We have our ways,” says the Minotaur.

  “No doubt,” says Theseus. “What have you decided?”

  “I’m going to wear the blue organdy,” the Minotaur replies. “The choice was not as easy as you might think. I look good in jeans, and it’s not really a formal occasion, eating moules in the Tarzan Trajectory, but I think it’s the right decision.”

  “What about giving up, letting me kill you?”

  “Had I said something about that? Oh, I remember now. But I was depressed then. And now there’s a party. You can’t expect me to give up before the party.”

  “I suppose not,” said Theseus. “Is it going to be a good party?”

  “It looks like it’ll be a lovely party,” says the Minotaur.

  “Could I come?” Theseus asks.

  “Really!” the Minotaur says.

  “We could declare a night’s truce. I haven’t been to a party in a long time.”

  “Theseus, you’re a cunning Hellenic bastard, but I could almost feel sorry for you. Almost but not quite. It is against the law of conflict for me to invite you to the party.”

  “For the love of God, Montressor!” Theseus cries.

  “Yes,” the Minotaur says quietly. “The cask of Amontillado.” He hangs up.

  Phædra comes home, makes a phone call, gets out again.

  Theseus goes to bed.

  28. Modalities of the Reclinational.

  Theseus is asleep now, or, if not actually sleeping, at least lying down on his bed, smoking a baguette, reading a book, listening to his cassettes.

  It is strange how little time authors give to describing the life of a man as it is lived when he is lying down. Yet what a topic there is in the modalities of the reclinational!

  Perhaps a third of our life is spent sleeping, an activity essential to the propagation of dreams and fantasies. Another large percentage of our time is given to such activities as reading, getting a suntan, and talking on the telephone. Then there are the hours we devote to the amateur theatricals of sex. These are not limited strictly to the reclinational, since they take man, or couples, through a bewildering repertoire of postural possibilities for conjoined bodies, yet return ever again to that fundamental proneness which is our subject.

  Even eating, an activity which just escapes our list of sedentary pursuits, since an upright or semi-slouched posture is generally considered desirable for its pursuit, may be viewed as nature’s way of getting you to lie down, a full stomach being a powerful inducement to this end.

  The ancient Greeks and Romans needed no such inducement. They took all their meals lying down, or, to be precise, in a reclinational position as close to lying down as was possible given the necessity of keeping the mouth elevated in order to enlist the assistance of gravity in moving the food from mouth through throat to stomach. They were clear-sighted and active, those cleanshaven men in their togas and chlamys. The Orient was amazed at how much bustling around these fellows did, usually in phalanxes and carrying spears. They were practical hedonists, and when they had fulfilled the necessities of the upright they turned to the arts of the reclinational with a will.

  Petronius is to the point here, the author of the first novel which considers lying down in some depth. The central portion of the fragment of Petronius’ Satyricon that has come down to us describes the feast of a fellow named Trimalchio. At this feast, which was, of course, a lying-down feast, everything was brought to you, food, girls, drink, entertainment, you didn’t have to move at all. Instead of considering this a good thing, Petronius affects to find the spectacle coarse and laughable and to be avoided at all costs. Perhaps Petronius and his small circle of effete friends didn’t like parties. A modern reading of the situation, however, puts the matter in a different light. There aren’t many of us who would turn down a party where there were a lot of good things to eat, pretty girls dancing on the table, an abundance of wine and plenty of laughs. What in heaven’s name is vulgar about this? It is precisely the party we all wish to be asked to.

  Compare it to Plato’s Symposium, where a bunch of gay men sit around talking about the meaning of love, which, since Socrates has ruled out sex, t
hey find very complicated. In fact, the high point of the evening is when a guest announces how remarkable it is, the way Socrates is able to keep his hands off the delectable Alcibiades.

  Trimalchio’s feast comes out looking a lot more fun than Plato’s, but different feasts for different folks; the essential thing is that both were important occasions in the cultural history of the world, and both were performed in their entirety in the reclinational mode, i.e., lying down.

  The reader of the future will put down our facile action-oriented novels of today and ask, “Why doesn’t the author ever say anything about the characters’ thoughts while lying down? Why doesn’t he tell us about the sensation of a scratchy blanket spread over a lumpy couch? What is it like to lie on your back on a dusty rug on the floor gazing up at a white sky with dead trees black against it? What about lying on a narrow wooden bench at a friend’s house, sharing a bottle of wine while the radio plays and the baby chases the cat?” Our upright-oriented books will give him no reply, unless, of course, he happens to look into this one.

  So here is Theseus, lying on the bed, half asleep, listening to the muffled and barely discernable conversation between Phædra and Hera in the other room. It was Hera’s mother’s apartment they were staying in, but the old lady was in the hospital with a broken hip and Hera had come over to get a few of her things. It was a rainy Sunday afternoon. Hera and Phædra were looking through Hera’s old family album. On this page is Aphrodite at her first communion; here is Poseidon on his Sailfish; here is the infant Zeus teething on his pink baby thunderbolt. The women talked softly in the other room in their gentle foreign voices, car tires slushed on wet tar roads, the lights of Olympus glowed in the distance.

  There was a loud buzzing sound. It came from Theseus’ knapsack, which he had thrown into a corner. It was the thread, of course, no other piece of equipment had so annoying a sound.

  “What time is it?” Theseus asked.

  “Time to go Minotauring,” the thread said.

  Theseus sighed heavily, stubbed out his baguette, got out of bed. He strapped on his sword and armor, put on his knapsack, left a note for Phædra, went quietly out the door.

  Delicious though lying down is, it always gives way, at last, to the demands of the upright and the motile. All our upright movements are but a dance of postural rotation as we hurtle through the unbelievable on our way to the unknowable.

  29. Phone Call to Naxos.

  Theseus looked around, but there was nothing to see for miles on all sides. There was just a telephone booth, painted red, and a copy of the Universal Maze Directory which connects everybody to everybody else and automatically updates itself whenever someone moves.

  This was one of the less built-up parts of the maze, and although it was convenient to everything, it lacked amenities. Theseus took out his address book and leafed through it. It was one of the new models. The names of people well-disposed to you glowed in the dark. It was difficult to read the names of your enemies: they faded out, along with the memories of their better points.

  After making a few calls, Theseus went to stay with his ex-wife, Ariadne, and her new boyfriend, Dionysus.

  They were happy to see him. Things had been a little quiet on Naxos, an island never known for shows of unseemly mirth. Dionysus had a big farmhouse on the northwestern corner of the island. It occupied a pretty headland looking out to the sea. Below the property was a narrow beach and a little cove where shallow-draught boats could shelter.

  Dionysus loved boats. And boats brought in the bootleg Soma, the divine intoxicants of the gods, which he sold to heroes at a modest markup.

  Dionysus was also writing a novel, and Ariadne was studying to become a real estate broker.

  The original problems between the three of them have been forgotten. Now the memory of the old days has become the special bond that keeps them together.

  In the evenings, when the archaic red sun goes down into the sea, they sit at the kitchen table and play bridge. The spool of thread makes a fourth for the game. The thread is capable of splitting itself into seven different personalities, though this talent is rarely called for.

  Ariadne seems to have quite a lot of children.

  Some of them may be the neighbor’s children, but some of them are surely hers. Hers and Theseus’. Theseus is almost certain that he and Ariadne had at least one child together, maybe two, just possibly three. He can’t quite remember, though; his memory’s not what it used to be, all those past and future wives, all those past and future children, all those changes.

  Theseus doesn’t like to ask which, if any, of the children are his. It seems disrespectful, somehow. It’s the sort of thing you just don’t ask. It looks rotten, not remembering which, if any, are your children, not remembering which wife you had which children, if any, by. And anyhow, he doesn’t have to ask, Theseus is sure he wrote all this information down somewhere. He’s a dedicated diarist; he keeps notes, about who he met, what he ate for lunch, how he feels. He’s Theseus; his memoirs are sure to be in demand, the true account, what really happened. It’s all there; he’s recorded the whole thing, but he can’t carry all those bales of paper around with him; he has stored portions of his diary here and there, but it’s all somewhere, if only he could find time to put it together, publish the Memoirs of Theseus, and know which are his children.

  Meanwhile the pleasant life on Naxos goes on. The peasants plow their fields, feed their animals, hold their famous shouting contests and their ancient Breadfruit Dances. They are a short, stocky, broad-faced people, always dressed in black, except on special holidays, when they wear white.

  The Breadfruit Dances are danced to the accompaniment of indigenous musical instruments, the tamerland, the snap drum, the bug and the accordance. Theseus likes the plaintive sound, although he is more accustomed to the Hellenic electric syrinx and pedal pan pipes.

  It is a simple life. At night the yelodians come up from the sea. Dark and sinuous, they slither along the beach and climb the nearby stupa trees in search of oysters. Further up the hillside the broad-leafed snappers are found, characteristic trees of the island. They are not true trees, but belong to a more ancient species, the arboleums, gray plants with characteristic crosshatching under their armpits. Sometimes a yellow-throated harbinger is sighted, flapping heavily through the arboleums. The harbinger is not a true bird. It is a member of the flappian family, an antique species that populated the skies of Naxos back when the earth was young and foolish.

  Theseus has a good life on Naxos, but it has to end at last. Nothing can go on forever, specially if it is fun. The inexorable law of nature is that things shall pass from the all right to the unbearable, and that all the days of a man’s life shall be as dead leaves on the tree of metaphor.

  The end of his stay came about in an almost inconsequential way, as these things do. Theseus came back to the house one day and asked if there had been any calls for him. Ariadne said there hadn’t been, and added that it was unlikely that he would receive any. “Why is that?” Theseus asked.

  “Because the phone isn’t connected,” Ariadne said. “I thought you knew.”

  Theseus left the next day.

  30. Falling Through the Story.

  Theseus got back to the mainland, landing at a little harbor on the rocky coast of Attica. There was a town nearby, low white beehive shaped buildings gleaming under the midday sun. Entering, he saw that there was a celebration underway. But what festival could this be?

  Walking into the town, he saw a great banner stretched between two buildings. It read, SAVE OUR MINOTAUR!

  By a strange coincidence, he had come here on Minotaur Preservation Day.

  Other banners pointed out that Minotaurs are endangered species. It was evident that the people were determined to stop the unauthorized slaughtering of the fabulous beasts, to stamp out that little group of selfish men whose work was sure to obliterate one of the oldest species of the classical world.

  One man, standing on a lit
tle pedestal, was making a speech. “You have seen other fabulous species disappear! Where nowadays are the Stymphagian birds? Where is the golden-headed walrus, the curly-tailed narwhal; where are the pixilated harpies? They are vanishing. And what is Dædalus doing about it? Nothing, that’s what he’s doing! Dædalus doesn’t care for preservation; it’s only new creation he wants!”

  Theseus walked through the town and noted the carnival atmosphere. There were booths selling Souvlaki and stuffed grape leaves. Some of the troglodytes of Libya, themselves threatened with extinction, were present and handing out finely inscribed shards of pottery, the ancient world’s equivalent of leaflets.

  Theseus realized that this could work to his advantage. From overheard conversations he learned that the Minotaur himself was making an appearance here.

  Theseus considered the situation. He will have an opportunity if he positions himself at a strategic location where he can get a clear shot. He was armed with a lightning bolt which Hermes had borrowed from Zeus. It was the ancient world equivalent of a guided missile, a Minotaur-homing device, and it was certain to reach its mark.

  He looked around and planned his strategy. The procession, with the Minotaur riding in one of the chariots, would go right up the main street of this town. Quickly he found a vantage point, the old scroll repository on the corner of Classikos Street and Cornucopeia way.

  He entered. The building was deserted. On the second floor there was a place where he could prop up the lightning-bolt barrel, fasten the retaining pins to the clay floor, take a careful and leisurely aim. Who would ever dream of an assassin lurking in a scroll repository? This was going to work out just fine.

  He still had half an hour before the procession was due to begin. Hiding the thunderbolt in a pile of rubble in a corner, he went out. Nearby there was a luncheonette where he bought a Souvlaki sandwich with grape leaf sauce. He always fired best on a full stomach.

  He returned to the repository, and found a man standing at the doorway through which he had entered. Theseus didn’t like that, but decided to carry off the matter boldly. Whistling, he nodded to the man and began to pass him.