The Man in the Maze Read online

"You said you'd lase them open."

  "But why be destructive so fast? Let's wait, shall we? Perhaps the bars will open again of their own accord. You're perfectly safe in there. I'll bring you food, if you have to eat. Will your people miss you if you're not back by nightfall?"

  "I'll send a message to them," said Rawlins glumly. "But I hope that I'm out by then."

  "Stay cool," Boardman advised. "If necessary, we can get you out of that ourselves. It's important to humor Muller in everything you can until you've got real rapport with him. If you hear me, touch your right hand to your chin."

  Rawlins touched his right hand to his chin.

  Muller said, "That was pretty brave of you, Ned. Or stupid. I'm sometimes not sure if there's a distinction. But I'm grateful, anyway. I had to know about those cages."

  "Glad to have been of assistance. You see, human beings aren't all that monstrous."

  "Not consciously. It's the sludge inside that's ugly. Here, let me remind you." He approached the cage and put his hands on the smooth bars, white as bone. Rawlins felt the emanation intensify. "That's what's under the skull. I've never really felt it myself, of course. I extrapolate it from the responses of others. It must be foul."

  "I could get used to it," Rawlins said. He sat down crosslegged. "Did you make any attempt to have it undone when you returned to Earth from Beta Hydri IV?"

  "I talked to the shape-up boys. They couldn't begin to figure out what changes had been made in my neural flow, and so they couldn't begin to figure out how to fix things. Nice?"

  "How long did you stay?"

  "A few months. Long enough to discover that there wasn't one human being I knew who didn't turn green after a few minutes of close exposure to me. I started to stew in self-pity, and in self-loathing, which is about the same thing. I was going to kill myself, you know, to put the world out of its misery."

  Rawlins said, "I don't believe that. Some men just aren't capable of suicide. You're one who isn't."

  "So I discovered, and thank you. I didn't kill myself, you notice. I tried some fancy drugs, and then I tried drink, and then I tried living dangerously. And at the end of it I was still alive. I was in and out of four neuropsychiatric wards in a single month, I tried wearing a padded lead helmet to shield the thought radiations. It was like trying to catch neutrinos in a bucket. I caused a panic in a licensed house on Venus. All the girls stampeded out stark naked once the screaming began." Muller spat. "You know, I could always take society or leave it. When I was among people I was happy, I was cordial, I had the social graces. I wasn't a slick sunny article like you, all overflowing with kindness and nobility, but I interacted with others. I related, I got along. Then I could go on a trip for a year and a half and not see or speak to anyone, and that was all right too. But once I found out that I was shut off from society for good, I discovered that I had needed it after all. But that's over. I outgrew the need, boy. I can spend a hundred years alone and never miss one soul. I've trained myself to see humanity as humanity sees me—something sickening, a damp hunkering crippled thing best avoided. To hell with you all. I don't owe any of you anything, love included. I have no obligations. I could leave you to rot in that cage, Ned, and never feel upset about it. I could pass that cage twice a day and smile at your skull. It isn't that I hate you, either you personally or the whole galaxy full of your kind. It's simply that I despise you. You're nothing to me. Less than nothing. You're dirt. I know you now, and you know me."

  "You speak as if you belong to an alien race," Rawlins said in wonder.

  "No. I belong to the human race. I'm the most human being there is, because I'm the only one who can't hide his humanity. You feel it? You pick up the ugliness? What's inside me is also inside you. Go to the Hydrans and they'll help you liberate it, and then people will run from you as they run from me. I speak for man. I tell the truth. I'm the skull beneath the face, boy. I'm the hidden intestines. I'm all the garbage we pretend isn't there, all the filthy animal stuff, the lusts, the little hates, the sicknesses, the envies. And I'm the one who posed as a god. Hybris. I was reminded of what I really am."

  Rawlins said quietly, "Why did you decide to come to Lemnos?"

  "A man named Charles Boardman put the idea into my head." Rawlins recoiled in surprise at the mention of the name. Muller said, "You know him?"

  "Well, yes. Of course. He—he's a very important man in the government."

  "You might say that. It was Boardman who sent me to Beta Hydri IV, you know? Oh, he didn't trick me into it, he didn't have to persuade me in any of his slippery ways. He knew me well enough. He simply played on my ambitions. There's a world there with aliens on it, he said, and we want a man to visit it. Probably a suicide mission, but it would be man's first contact with another intelligent species, and are you interested? So of course I went. He knew I couldn't resist something like that. And afterward, when I came back this way, he tried to duck me a while—either because he couldn't abide being near me or because he couldn't abide his own guilt. And finally I caught up with him and I said, look at me, Charles, this is how I am now, where can I go, what shall I do? I got up close to him. This far away. His face changed color. He had to take pills. I could see the nausea in his eyes. And he reminded me about the maze on Lemnos."

  "Why?"

  "He offered it as a place to hide. I don't know if he was being kind or cruel. I suppose he thought I'd be killed on my way into the maze—a decent finish for my sort of chap, or at any rate better than taking a gulp of carniphage and melting down a sewer. But of course I told Boardman I wouldn't think of it. I wanted to cover my trail. I blew up and insisted that the last thing in the world I'd do was come here. Then I spent a month on the skids in Under New Orleans, and when I surfaced again I rented a ship and came here. Using maximum diversionary tactics to insure that nobody found out my true destination. Boardman was right. This was the place to come."

  Rawlins said, "How did you get inside the maze?"

  "Through sheer bad luck."

  "Bad luck?"

  "I was trying to die in a blaze of glory," said Muller. "I didn't give a damn if I survived the maze or not. I just plunged right in and headed for the middle."

  "I can't believe that!"

  "Well, it's true, more or less. The trouble was, Ned, I'm a survival type. It's an innate gift, maybe even something paranormal. I have unusual reflexes. I have a kind of sixth sense, as they say. Also my urge to stay alive is well developed. Besides that, I had mass detectors and some other useful equipment. So I came into the maze, and whenever I saw a corpse lying about I looked a little sharper than usual, and I stopped and rested when I felt my visualization of the place beginning to waver. I fully expected to be killed in Zone H. I wanted it. But it was my luck to make it where everybody else failed because I didn't care one way or the other, I suppose. The element of tension was removed. I moved like a cat, everything twitching at once, and I got past the tough parts of the maze somehow, much to my disappointment, and here I am."

  "Have you ever gone outside it?"

  "No. Now and then I go as far as Zone E, where your friends are. Twice I've been to F. Mostly I remain in the three inner zones. I've furnished things quite nicely for myself. I have a radiation locker for my meat supply, and a building I use as my library, and a place where I keep my woman cubes, and I do some taxidermy in one of the other buildings. I hunt quite a lot, also. And I examine the maze and try to analyze its workings. I've dictated several cubes of memoirs on my findings. I bet you archaeologist fellows would love to run through those cubes."

  "I'm sure we'd learn a great deal from them," Rawlins said.

  "I know you would. I'd destroy them before I'd let any of you see them. Are you getting hungry, boy?"

  "A little."

  "Don't go away. I'll bring you some lunch."

  Muller strode toward the nearby buildings and disappeared. Rawlins said quietly, "This is awful, Charles. He's obviously out of his mind."

  "Don't be sure of it,"
Boardman replied. "No doubt nine years of isolation can have effects on a man's stability, and Muller wasn't all that stable the last time I saw him. But he may be playing a game with you—pretending to be crazy to test your good faith."

  "And if he isn't?"

  "In terms of what we want from him, it doesn't matter in the slightest if he's insane. It might even help."

  "I don't understand that."

  "You don't need to," said Boardman evenly. "Just relax. You're doing fine so far."

  Muller returned, carrying a platter of meat and a handsome crystal beaker of water. "Best I can offer," he said, pushing a chunk of meat between the bars. "A local beast. You eat solid food, don't you?"

  "Yes."

  "At your age, I guess you would. What did you say you were, twenty-five?"

  "Twenty-three."

  "That's even worse." Muller gave him the water. It had an agreeable flavor, or lack of flavor. Muller sat quietly before the cage, eating. Rawlins noticed that the effect of his emanation no longer seemed so disturbing, even at a range of less than five meters. Obviously one builds a tolerance to it, he thought. If one wants to make the attempt.

  Rawlins said, after a while, "Would you come out and meet my companions in a few days?"

  "Absolutely not."

  "They'd be eager to talk to you."

  "I have no interest in talking to them. I'd sooner talk to wild beasts."

  "You talk to me," Rawlins pointed out.

  "For the novelty of it. And because your father was a good friend. And because, as human beings go, boy, you're reasonably acceptable. But I don't want to be thrust into any miscellaneous mass of bug-eyed archaeologists."

  "Possibly meet two or three of them," Rawlins suggested. "Get used to the idea of being among people again."

  "No."

  "I don't see-"

  Muller cut him off. "Wait a minute. Why should I get used to the idea of being among people again?"

  Rawlins said uneasily, "Well, because there are people here, because it's not a good idea to get too isolated from—"

  "Are you planning some sort of trick? Are you going to catch me and pull me out of this maze? Come on, come on, boy, what's in back of that little mind of yours? What motive do you have for softening me up for human contact?"

  Rawlins faltered. In the awkward silence Boardman spoke quickly, supplying the guile he lacked, prompting him. Rawlins listened and did his best.

  He said, "You're making me out to be a real schemer, Dick. But I swear to you I've got nothing sinister in mind. I admit I've been softening you up a little, jollying you, trying to make friends with you, and I guess I'd better tell you why."

  "I guess you'd better!"

  "It's for the archaeological survey's sake. We can spend only a few weeks here. You've been here—what is it, nine years? You know so much about this place, Dick, and I think it's unfair of you to keep it to yourself. So what I was hoping, I guess, was that I could get you to ease up, first become friendly with me, and then maybe come to Zone E, talk to the others, answer their questions, explain what you know about the maze—"

  "Unfair to keep it to myself?"

  "Well, yes. To hide knowledge is a sin."

  "Is it fair of mankind to call me unclean, and run away from me?"

  "That's a different matter," Rawlins said. "It's beyond all fairness. It's a condition you have—an unfortunate condition that you didn't deserve, and everyone is quite sorry that it came upon you, but on the other hand, you surely must realize that from the viewpoint of other human beings it's rather difficult to take a detached attitude toward your—your—"

  "Toward my stink," Muller supplied. "All right. It's rather difficult to stand my presence. Therefore I willingly refrain from inflicting it upon your friends. Get it out of your head that I'm going to speak to them or sip tea with them or have anything at all to do with them. I have separated myself from the human race and I stay separated. And it's irrelevant that I've granted you the privilege of bothering me. Also, while I'm instructing you, I want to remind you that my unfortunate condition was not undeserved. I earned it by poking my nose into places where I didn't belong, and by thinking I was superhuman for being able to go to such places. Hybris. I told you the word."

  Boardman continued to instruct him. Rawlins, with the sour taste of lies on his tongue, went on, "I can't blame you for being bitter, Dick. But I still think it isn't right for you to withhold information from us. I mean, look back on your own exploring days. If you landed on a planet, and someone had vital information you had come to find, wouldn't you make every effort to get that information—even though the other person had certain private problems which—"

  "I'm sorry," said Muller frostily, "I'm beyond caring," and he walked away, leaving Rawlins alone in the cage with two chunks of meat and the nearly empty beaker of water.

  When Muller was out of sight Boardman said, "He's a touchy one, all right. But I didn't expect sweetness from him. You're getting to him, Ned. You're just the right mixture of guile and naiveté."

  "And I'm in a cage."

  "That's no problem. We can send a drone to release you if the cage doesn't open by itself soon."

  "Muller isn't going to work out," Rawlins murmured. "He's full of hate. It trickles out of him everywhere. We'll never get him to cooperate. I've never seen such hate in one man."

  "You don't know what hate is," said Boardman. "And neither does he. I tell you everything is moving well. There are bound to be some setbacks, but the fact that he's talking to you at all is the important thing. He doesn't want to be full of hate. Give him half a chance to get off his frozen position and he will."

  "When will you send the probe to release me?"

  "Later," said Boardman. "If we have to."

  Muller did not return. The afternoon grew darker and the air became chilly. Rawlins huddled uncomfortably in the cage. He tried to imagine this city when it had been alive, when this cage had been used to display prisoners captured in the maze. In the eye of his mind he saw a throng of the city-builders, short and thick, with dense coppery fur and greenish skin, swinging their long arms and pointing toward the cage. And in the cage huddled a thing like a giant scorpion, with waxy claws that scratched at the stone paving blocks, and fiery eyes, and a savage tail that awaited anyone who came too close. Harsh music sounded through the city. Alien laughter. The warm musky reek of the city-builders. Children spitting at the thing in the cage. Their spittle like flame. Bright moonlight, dancing shadows. A trapped creature, hideous and malevolent, lonely for its own kind, its hive on a world of Alphecca or Markab, where tailed waxy things moved in shining tunnels. For days the city-builders came, mocked, reproached. The creature in the cage grew sick of their massive bodies and their intertwining spidery fingers, of their flat faces and ugly tusks. And a day came when the floor of the maze gave way, for they were tired of the outworlder captive, and down he went, tail lashing furiously, down into a pit of knives.

  It was night. Rawlins had not heard from Boardman for several hours. He had not seen Muller since early afternoon. Animals were prowling the plaza, mostly small ones, all teeth and claws. Rawlins had come unarmed today. He was ready to trample on any beast that slipped between the bars of his cage.

  Hunger and cold assailed him. He searched the darkness for Muller. This had ceased to be a joke.

  "Can you hear me?" he said to Boardman.

  "We're going to get you out soon."

  "Yes, but when?"

  "We sent a probe in, Ned."

  "It shouldn't take more than fifteen minutes for a probe to reach me. These zones aren't hazardous."

  Boardman paused. "Muller intercepted the probe and destroyed it an hour ago."

  "Why didn't you tell me that?"

  "We're sending several drones at once," Boardman told him. "Muller's bound to overlook at least one of them. Everything's perfectly all right, Ned. You're in no danger."

  "Until something happens," Rawlins said gloomily.

>   But he did not press the point. Cold, hungry, he slouched against the wall and waited. He saw a small lithe beast stalk and kill a much bigger animal a hundred meters away in the plaza. He watched scavengers scurrying in to rip away slabs of bloody meat. He listened to the sounds of rending and tearing. His view was partially obstructed, and he craned his neck to search for the drone probe that would set him free. No probe appeared.

  He felt like a sacrificial victim, staked out for the kill.

  The scavengers had finished their work. They came padding across the plaza toward him—little weasel-shaped beasts with big tapering heads and paddle-shaped paws from which yellow recurving claws protruded. Their eyes were red in yellow fields. They studied him with interest, solemnly, thoughtfully. Blood, thick and purplish, was smeared over their muzzles.

  They drew nearer. A long narrow snout intruded between two bars of his cage. Rawlins kicked at it. The snout withdrew. To his left, another jutted through. Then there were three snouts.

  And then the scavengers began slipping into the cage on all sides.

  NINE**********

  Boardman had established a comfortable little nest for himself in the Zone F camp. At his age he offered no apologies. He had never been a Spartan, and now, as the price he exacted for making these strenuous and risky journeys, he carried his pleasures around with him. Drones had fetched his belongings from the ship. Under the milky-white curve of the extrusion dome he had carved a private sector with radiant heating, glow-drapes, a gravity suppressor, even a liquor console. Brandy and other delights were never far away. He slept on a soft inflatable mattress covered with a thick red quilt inlaid with heater strands. He knew that the other men in the camp, getting along on far less, bore him no resentment. They expected Charles Boardman to live well wherever he was.

  Greenfield entered. "We've lost another drone, sir," he said crisply. "That leaves three in the inner zones."

  Boardman flipped the ignition cap on a cigar. He sucked fumes a moment, crossed and uncrossed his legs, exhaled, smiled. "Is Muller going to get those too?"