Masters of the Maze (13 page)

• • •

This time Darius Chauncey was on duty. The fact, however, seemed to give him only a minimum of pleasure. “Thunderation,” he said, letting his “sword” fall to his side, and switching it lightly against his bare, bronzed legs. “
You
ain’t no Chulpex.”

“No,” said Nate. “I guess not.”

The Watcher sighed disgustedly, shook his head. “Too much sugar for a penny. Wasted my time, trackin’ you down, comrade.” He pronounced it,
cum-raid.
He stood up on his toes and stretched. “Well, I wunt waste no more. Git back now, soon’s I kin, take up where I left off with them gals with the big bubs an’ the flouncy skirts.” He grinned, winked, started to turn away.

“Hey, hold on. That sounds interesting.”

Chauncey stared him down. “Yes, I bet it does. But don’t let it git to soundin’
too
interestin’. Becuz you ain’t a-goin’ through.
I
am the top bully in that there manger, cum-raid, an’ I aim to keep it thataway. You go on along, now, an’ find your own pretty-place. Nothin’ personal, now, but the decision is firm — not subject to review by any other try-bew-nal. Not while my name’s Darius Chauncey.”

Nate eyed him speculatively, decided to postpone any attempt at violence as long as possible. “I’m heading for Red Fish Land. You ever heard of it, Mr. Chauncey?”

He nodded, rubbed his chin. “Have, some. This ain’t it. This is
Crete,
that’s what it is. Ancient Crete — though whether ante- or post-diluvian, cain’t say, never havin’ been much inclined to religion of a muchness.” A reminiscent look came over his face. “Got no objections to the local church, though. No, in-deed. Takin’ up sarpints ain’t the only thing them sistren do real well, I kin tell you. But I better not tell you too much. Mind what I say now: Just you keep on down the pike and find you some pretty-place of your own, you don’t like it where you come from … Guess you don’t come from very far or different than I did. Say. You got anything to smoke?”

Nate was about to shake his head, remembered that the phrase was an archaic idiom referring to a cigar, patted his breast pocket. It was still there — Joseph Bellamy’s after-dinner gift. He held it up, drew it back.

“Rassle you for it, if you like. Or — ”

“Just show me how to go to where I’m going, that’s all.”

“Red Fish Land. Hmm … Okay. I dassn’t get too far from home base. I’ll take you’s far’s I kin, then draw you a kind of map for the rest. Deal, cum-raid?”

It was a deal. Darius Chauncey had gone back to his own little one-man colony in Minoan Crete to savor his prime brown Havana (“After I’ve knocked me off a nice lee-tle piece, cum-raid.”) and Nate was following his map. It involved leaving the Maze and crossing a dreary stretch of moor or heath, wet and cold and lowering. It had the advantage of being — so Chauncey said (“My word on it as a Union officer, cum-raid.”) — both short and easy to find, as well as devoid of danger. It was the sort of place one might expect to find at least three weird sisters, poking up the fire and complaining that the liver of the last Jew had been insufficiently blasphemied. He didn’t find any, but he did not at all expect to find what he did, viz. Mr. Jackson.

Nate was able to entertain his mind with wandering thoughts, such as the weird sisters, instead of looking for, say, the third blasted oak on the left past the fork in the road; because there was no oak as well as no road, and, hence, no fork. He emerged out of the side of a low hill and headed straight down the very slight grade of the land toward the pond. This pond, Chauncey had assured him, was the only marker needed. He had gone perhaps half way when he heard a voice calling behind him.

He spun around, hand on the revolver, thinking that perhaps its owner had somehow got unraveled and was exercising the right of hot pursuit as well as that of hue and cry.

What he saw was someone strange to him, dressed all in black, and hurrying toward him over the heath, waving his hands in a manner which seemed, somehow, indefinably, strange. As, however, the man was waving both hands and had nothing in either; was walking and not running, Nate decided to relax … in a wary sort of way. He kept his fingers on his weapon, though, resolved to clench and aim through the cloth the first time the hands stopped waving and dipped into
their
pockets — if the garments had pockets to dip into, that is. They were rather odd garments, but not exceedingly odd … coat … trousers … Just a bit puzzling as to cut and drape and style.

Inspired by an antic humor, Nate said, when the man was close enough, “Dr. Livingston, I presume?”

“What? No, no. Not a physician or otherwise designated by title. Name is Jackson.” The hands floundered a bit, uncertainly, finally deciding on offering the right one. Nate took it. The grip was strong, though on the clammy side. Nate reflected on the anomalies of this. Popular fiction held the handclasp to be an important indication of character. A strong grip reflected a strong personality: upright, it went without saying; and a soft grip reflected a soft, or weak, or morally inferior character. Sly, probably. And a clammy grip was the very worst of all. In popular fiction, though, “soft” and “clammy” always went together — hand in hand, as it were. Nothing was said anywhere about
strong,
clammy grips. Puzzling. Puzzling.

“We have common goals,” said Mr. Jackson.

“How sociological.”

The quip, gratuitous, passed over Jackson’s head. Oyster-eyed, he looked at Nate. “Red Fish Land and your home. First the first, then the second. Common goals, common cause. Agreed?”

The air was wet and cold and dim. Nate looked at Jackson, and the words, “Rum cove,” came into his mind. He shrugged. No one could have looked more normal than the young man in the red hunting shirt.

“You tend to simplify things, Jackson,” he said. He wondered, mildly, where this place was. It might have been an as-yet-unoccupied Hell or Tantalus designed for real estate “developers” — miles and miles of empty land, and not a bulldozer in the house. “Maybe you oversimplify them. Like, who in the Hell are you and what in the Hell do you want with Red Fish Land? And, like, what makes you think I’m in such a rush to get back home just right now? Hey?”

Mr. Jackson’s face seemed not at all disturbed by these questions. His hands flip-flopped a bit more, fell finally into a gesture toward the pond ahead.

“That appears to be water,” he said. “It is not. It is a Gate. Your troubles appear to be insoluble. They are not, nor your questions unanswerable. Red Fish Land. There is someone there who has no proper right to be there. He must be found. There is a woman at home who has no proper right to be angry, though she is. And there are those who suspect you of great error, though you are innocent. To say nothing of those who have pursued you — not this one. Not Jackson. Not me.”

Nate looked at him, made a wry mouth, rubbed it “The fact that you know the questions,” he said, a mite grudgingly, “tends to make me think you might really know the answers. What are you, really? A sort of walking delegate for the Watchers’ Union.”

Jackson straightened himself. He was on the tall side. “Your suggestion may not be altogether wrong,” he said. “Well. There is the Gate. Mutual aid, mutual objectives?”

Nate shivered in the raw, wet air. Even the weird sisters, he reflected, at least had a fire and something hot to drink.

“Macduff or not,” he said. “Lead on.”

They left the drear and empty moor behind them and walked on into the pond as confidently as the Children of Israel had walked into the Red Sea. The waters did not divide this time, though: they seemed to recede, to fold in … to vanish …

And there again was the darkness which vanished paradoxically and abruptly as they closed their eyes, and there, in the odd, extensive, and paroptic vision which it gave as its gift were the burning golden corridors of the Maze.

They turned right, they turned left, they turned up, down, aside and doubled back along a parallel lane. They passed through an outside, through a screaming, thronging carnival of masks and merriment. The way out here (which was also the way in there) was not as it was supposed to be: seemingly the ground level, where they sought, had sunk. Nate held Jackson on his shoulders — he was lighter, though older and taller — and Jackson groped and felt and finally found it; he scrambled in and reached down and helped Nate get up and in.

“It might be easier,” Nate said, after his eyes had once or twice forgetfully opened and he had stumbled, sightless, over his own feet; “it might be easier to get a pair of opaque glasses.” Jackson just grunted. Nate sang,

What they came to, actually and eventually, was a pocket filled with sound and spray. “Must we go through that?” Jackson inquired. He turned his head from side to side, flagged his hands.

“Seems like it,” Nate said. “Cover your nose and mouth with your hands … Follow me, men! I’m right behind you!”

The torrent thundered down upon them, struck and bludgeoned and buffeted its blows upon them. Only for a moment, though — then the waterfall lay behind them and they saw, through eyes smarting a bit from water, a land of rounded hills and rounded trees. In the distance, a line of tall machines moved diagonally through the cultivated fields.

“I suppose it figures,” Nate said, slowly, stripping the water off face and hair with his fingers and the edge of his hand, “that Red Fish Land would have more than one doorway into it via the Maze. Are we far from Et-dir-Mor’s territory, do you know?”

Jackson said that they were not very far. Nate turned away as Jackson continued talking, saying that they could not go immediately to Et-dir-Mor, had to take care of the other matter first: his, Jackson’s, personal quest or business. Nate heard what he was saying, but he was staring away from the sun and opening and shutting his eyes. A curious thing had just happened. It had seemed to him that part of Jackson’s head had gone translucent and that there were odd-looking things partly visible inside of it. This was probably a left-over from the paroptic vision of the Maze; could, in fact, be only that … sort of the thing that sometimes remains on the retina after the eyes close, in normal vision. Of course Nate could not explain it in terms of either normal or paroptic vision. He knew, after all, nothing about the latter except his personal experiences with it.

And when at last satisfied that his eyes had now come round all right, he turned back toward Jackson (who had ceased speaking), he saw that Jackson, too, had turned away and had his hands to his own face. “Don’t be alarmed,” Nate said. “The same thing just happened to me — ” and he explained it as best he could.

“That is probably what it was,” the other agreed. His face looked now perfectly normal … or at least as near to perfectly normal as it ever had. For, cook him sweet or cook him sour, Jackson remained basically a “rum cove.” However …

“Sort of funny smell in the air here,” had you noticed, Nate asked. “Sort of … damp, raw earth; something like that? I didn’t notice it the last time I was here … Did you?”

Jackson hesitated. Then he made one of his odd, uncertain gestures toward the machines moving through the distant fields. “It is because they are stirring up the earth over there,” he said. The wind didn’t seem to be coming from that direction, but there seemed to be no other explanation, and besides, the matter was of less than microscopic importance. Also, he had something else on his mind.

“Should we strip down and wait for our clothes to dry in the sun?” he asked.

Jackson’s reply to this was immediate. He thought it very unwise, there was likelihood the weather (uncertain, hereabouts) would change suddenly, there were insects, this, that, the other thing. Nate suddenly grew tired of the matter. “Okay, okay, we’ll do it the old army way and let the damned clothes dry on us. It might be quicker that way — heat from inside as well as from out. But,
I
am going to take off my
shoes
— ” he bent, grunting, then sat down, tugged. “If there’s one sound above another I can do without, it’s that damned squilch — squilch — squilch — ”

But the sound continued to accompany their progress along the soft turf; Jackson, evidently, preferred to keep his shoes on.

It couldn’t be said that Jackson, shoes on, attracted more attention than Gordon, shoes off, from the few people whom they met. Curious, however, though the habitants clearly were, they remained true to the level of decent courtesy which Nate continued to think characteristic of the country. And he winced to think what would happen were any of them, in their own costume and with their distinct and different physical appearance, to show up in his own country — the mocking yahoos, the beggarly and bothersome brats of children, the quarter-wits shouting unsolicited “pleasantries” from passing cars. The whole nasty syndrome of what can happen and generally does to anyone who presumes to take literally the assumption of “It’s a free country,” who dares raise the dread, unarguable challenge of, “How come you have to be different?”

What Jackson might be saying to them, Nate couldn’t tell for sure. Indeed, the fellow seemed to speak to them so low that Nate could barely hear him, let alone comprehend him. His voice was flatter, harsher, even though almost imperceptible. The Old Man, the Small Boy, the Good Wife — Nate, not knowing their names, thought of them as types — the Maiden Fair, the few others whom they met in their crosscountry walk, all replied in normal tones and in their own tongue. But from looks and gestures Nate assumed that the subject under discussion was someone who looked like Mr. Jackson or was dressed like Mr. Jackson — and where the someone might be found, if at all.

He was not, in fact found at all. But he had left calling cards behind him, as it were.

• • •

An air of expectancy hung over all the Land. Far-ven-Sul — the watchers on the cliffs sent back word — it was Far-ven-Sul who had won the right to try to fight the great Red Fish. He, of all the flotilla, Far-ven-Sul! No one could clearly understand how he had come to be with the flotilla at all, for, not only was it not his turn, it was not even his year to try for a turn. It was all most curious, it might even be illegal as well as irregular. Meanwhile, all who could go to watch had gone, and all the rest were waiting — first, for the signal, then for the report, then for the complete description.

The hills were utterly deserted as Nate and Jackson picked their ways through the shale and fallen rocks and timber. Now and then a bird cried out, questioningly, or a tiny creature hopped up upon a boulder or a stump to peer at them briefly before hopping back. And once a grayfowl rocketed up almost from under their feet. Jackson, it seemed plain, was not depending entirely on what he had been able to learn from the locals; was not confined to the limits of this knowledge. He glanced at the lay of the land, examined the rock strata somewhat as though he were a geology student, peered closely at the ground and even audibly sniffed at the air — as though he could hope to see and to smell things which Nate neither smelled nor saw.

Yet, in the end (It was, of course, no end. Mayhap there are no ends at all.) it was Nate who made the discovery.

“Cave,” he said, casually, and pointed.

Jackson asked him to stay outside unless or until he was needed and Nate agreed. His clothes were almost dry now and he had some time before replaced his shoes. But both shoes and socks were still a bit damp and so he sat down and removed them once more and spread the socks out on a warm ledge of rock, and devoted a good bit of time to propping up his shoes with twigs and pebbles so as to achieve maximum entrance of sunlight into them. At these harmless tasks he was interrupted by the cries from the cave. The voice sounded like Jackson’s, but — perhaps from the amplification and distortion of the cave — it sounded like nothing he had ever heard from Jackson.

No words were intelligible, but the tone and tenor was unmistakable. Alarm. Panic. Fright. Terror.

Nate dropped his shoes and sped into the cave, stooping low. He had almost automatically grabbed up a branch as he ran, and this hit the lintel of the cave, bounding back and then up again before he was able to think about it: then he realized he need no longer stoop. A curious sound or collection of sounds fell upon his ears then — a twittering, chittering, chattering, shrilling sort of thing — perhaps the man, Jackson, had stumbled upon some dangerous creature which lived in the cave, perhaps had been attacked by it. And over this he heard a louder sound, as of gasps of pain.

Cautiously, Nate said, “Jackson …? Jackson …? You all right?”

His eyes adjusted to the dimmer light and he proceeded down into the cavern. “Jackson?”

“
Jack-son
?”

“
Jackson
?”

He found him at last, leaning against the sloping rock-face and breathing as if each breath hurt him … as, indeed, it might: the way he held hands to throat and inclined his head back. He brought his hands
and
his head forward as Nate came up to him and then, with the by-now familiarly odd gesture, he flapped at something on the floor. Something that moved a bit, twitched a bit, moaned a bit.

“You found him, huh. Or … I guess … he found you, too.”

Hoarse and slow and infinitely astonished, Jackson said, “He — He — Tried to take my life.”

Nate nodded, not overly surprised, gauged the figure on the floor of the cave to be about Jackson’s weight and size. “Well, you seem to have given him a good run for his money.”

“You do not under
stand
— ” the other’s voice rose high, horrified. “He tried to take my
life!
As if I were a different
form
of life!”

“That’s an odd way of putting — There’s that noise again. What — ” Jackson made a late, clumsy move to stop him, but Nate had already glanced in the direction of the sound. A stray, fortuitous beam of sunlight had preceded him, and in its dusty, motey path he saw the sides and top of the rocky chamber covered with, crawling with, alive and pullulating with tiny creatures perhaps an inch long, each. They were six-legged and translucent and wet and shining; skeletal and internal organs showing up, dark, within. And they twittered and they chittered and they chattered.

“See, see what he has also done,” Jackson said. He was certainly in a state of shock, and small wonder, Nate thought, feeling his own parts crawl. “He killed the males. He killed the males.”

“Sheest, why did he stop there?” Nate said, grimacing. He hefted the branch in his hand. It would do for a club. He raised it and took a step forward. And then Jackson was all over him, grabbing the club, pulling at him, forcing him down, gibbering, hysterical, shrieking. Over and over they rolled, clawing at each other. It was not skill this time, clean or dirty, which enabled Nate to get away, but just sheer luck. Jackson’s hold slipped. Nate lunged for the glaring head and thumped it against the rock. The wet gray eyes rolled up. It was with an academic detachment that Nate noted scarcely any lashes on the lids which fluttered, came down.

“Jesus,” he said. It was part exclamation, part prayer.

“I’m going to get the hell out of here,” he said. Not bothering to do the shoes and stockings bit again, he simply put his head down and charged from the cave.

They were waiting outside for him.

“
There’s
the son of a bitch,” said the dark young man whom he had left bound up in the Maze on the other side of the City of the Stated Sages; and he fumbled with something Nate recognized as a collapsible carbine.

“Don’t do that.
Don’t
do that!” ordered the older man who so much resembled him, the man who had said nothing back there at Darkglen, had not even been introduced; who had come in with the laywers Thomas Farrel Smith and John Morton. He had a pistol in his hand, but it was pointing downward. He indicated this with his left hand. “I assume you are armed, Mr. Gordon,” he said, crisply. “You disarmed Jack Pace, here — ” Jack scowled “ — and you would be a fool if you hadn’t retained the weapon. I’m sure you are not a fool.”

Nate realized, somewhat to his surprise, that he was comparatively glad to see them. In fact, a proverb popped, ready-made into his head.
On Mars, all Earthmen are friends.
And he realized something else, too.

“If I am,” he said, “I’m a hungry fool. I don’t want to fight, at all. It wasn’t my idea. You want to talk, I take it. Okay — You got anything to eat? Good! Afterward, I’ll tell you what’s back in there — ” he gestured toward the cave.

“I have some idea. That’s why I’m here.” He slipped the pistol in a shoulder holster. “My name is Flint. Nicholas. Usually called ‘Major.’ Break out some rations, Jack. Let’s sit down here and keep the mouth of the cave in sight.”

Nate watched as Jack sullenly opened a small, square can and smeared its contents on what looked like hardtack. “A new taste sensation,” he said, slightly thickly, after a moment, swallowing. “What is it?” he asked.

Major Flint said that it was pemmican. “Dried meat with suet, sugar, and raisin. This other is whole-grain ship’s bread or biscuit. Both available, if you know where to look.”

“I
thought
it wasn’t tuna fish.”

Pace flushed and looked daggers at him, but Major Flint was undisturbed. He took out a worn-looking, much mended pipe already stuffed with tobacco, and lit it; then, folding his arms across his chest, he stood where he could keep in sight not only the mouth of the cave but the downward slope of the hill. A look from him, and Pace took his eyes away from Nate and — his weapon still not readied, but in his hands and ready to be readied — set them on the upward slope.