Masters of the Maze (3 page)

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.

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!

And also and much more important: the impressed looks of the young Ma who stood opposite from him at food-taking — and the other young Mas, the non-dams, not yet taken to nest!

At the thought of this, the Na 14 ‘Parranto 600 began to tingle, and actually moved a bit in his excitement. Shocked into awareness, he immediately fell still once more, heard the Sire’s voice droning on and on. He obliged himself to listen intently. Sooner or later something of importance would be said, and it was important that the Na should understand and remember it. It was very important, indeed, if his plans, his great, great plans, for himself were ever to become more than fantasies.

• • •

Arrettagorretta’s instructions were delivered almost by rote, so infinitely often had he done it. But now, as sometimes, he became aware of a sense of rising urgency which made it necessary to concentrate on his words more than he was accustomed to.

“… thus, after indoctrination into the manners of the vivipars of the Project Areas, comes training in negotiating the many-pathed ways. You must avoid those which lead into death-worlds, into worlds unsuitable for Chulpex by reason of climate or atmosphere or mass or hostile molecular make-up or such similar reasons; also those sociologically unsuitable; also those of Canceled Projects. Empty areas would be of course the best, empty of higher life-forms. But these are rare, few have ever been located, in every case attempts at penetration have been obliged to be abandoned. Moreover, they pose hypothetical dangers, as, thus: May it not be that they are empty of higher life because they are basically unsuitable for higher life? Can it be said for certain that higher life did not once exist there and subsequently die out?

“Therefore, although empty areas would be theoretically the best, a pragmatic approach requires evidence that Project Areas have been tested by other higher life-forms, specifically chulpechoid ones. And so — ”

But the old urgency continued its familiar rise. And, speaking the old, familiar words with a minimum of awareness, now he had determined that the urgency did not thence arise, Arrettagorretta tried to analyze it. Hunger it was not, he had taken sufficient food not long ago. Neither was it cyclical necessity requiring relief via either breeding or anger-outlet — although his mind paused to savor, briefly, the future possibilities of both.

The vast room filled with charts was otherwise empty of any but the Sire and the Na. Outside, he knew, the huge complex was aswarm with life engaged into the endless tasks of food-processing, maintenance and repair and salvage (particularly salvage). Deep, deep down, were the egg-clusters; every multicycle there were more of them. And even deeper were the great generators tapping the central heat of this world; and every multicycle there was less of it.

Thence, the urgency. Having focalized it, the ‘Gorretta-Sire all but trembled, suppressing his desire to rise from his dais and run roaring through the corridors and swarm-ways, trampling upon the low-nest and ignorant life filling them, and confront with his rage and fear and fury the other Sires.

But that was not the way. It made no more sense than it would to destroy the egg-clusters — as Arrantoparranto had so long and often suggested. To what end? Merely to extend food supply another few score thousand multicycles? This was not the victory, the life-through-life, which alone could satisfy the sense of race urgency. Thus Arrettagorretta had pointed out to him. And when the ‘Parranto-Sire — so anguished word was brought — had finally refused to breed, Arrettagorretta had risen from his dais and summoned his war-Nas and his work-Nas and marched upon the ‘Parranto and met no resistance and walled him up within his own chamber under the sight of his own eyes.

And Arrantoparranto had neither moved nor uttered sound.

Then Arrettagoretta caused another great chamber to be made ready and summoned into him all the ‘Parranto-Mas ready for breeding and had bred with them and told them off into cluster-groups and after that all went as was usual and was proper.

Sireship among the Chulpex was neither hereditary nor elective. It was occupative.

Now the last of the ‘Parranto get was coming into full maturity. The pressing Projects must go on, must go on, and on and on, until the proper way of assuring life-through-life was found, and the infinite continuation of the race assured.

“… strange and alien though the ways of the vivipars are, yet they must be mastered. Distorted though their patterns of logic are, yet they must, whenever possible, be followed. Else the race will die, the Na. The race will die.”

• • •

There were natural chambers in the rocky strata of at least one subsection of Current Project Area Four, and the Na 14 ‘Parranto 600 thought about them even as he ventured to break the silence. “Success is certainly assured, the Na,” he said, in his most respectful tones, “not only because of his special training but most assuredly because of the information and instruction he has been privileged to hear from the Sire to whose swarm he has been subsumed.”

And he would say to the young Na, while she was awed and impressed at hearing of his interview and seeing him eat with his hands, “Is it not that the Na is being trained to become himself a sire? Suredly — and in the new place which he will find he shall prove his potency and the dams of his egg-clusters will be all of a most superior type — such as the young Ma who stands near him now at food-taking.”

And she —

“Success is not at all assured,” the ‘Gorretta-Sire declared. “I am grown old and huge and have lost count of the multicycles, and in all this time we have tried and we have tried and we have yet to be making a successful penetration of the many-pathed ways. ‘Success!’ What is ‘success?’ Is it merely to master one vivipar or even one hundred vivipars? Is the Na still wet from his egg-sac to talk of such idiocy?”

Cringing and keening, the Na waited till the unexpected display of emotion ceased; then whined that he had been furnished with inadequate information. But he was far from being really dismayed. Now and then the sires behaved so; it was their privilege; and when he, the Na, was himself a sire, he, too, would behave so. But, actually, what was the problem? The area of Current Project Four was satisfactory in regard to climate and atmosphere and mass and it was still a young world and it had a chulpechoid population intelligent enough to be useful as long as was necessary and small enough in number to be easily controlled.

And the name of it, not that this was important, was Red Fish Land.

• • •

Having returned from the great sire-chamber to take some rest on the 600 shelf, the Na reflected on his planned conversation in the familiar damp and chill, the familiar scent of his cluster-sibs. He considered getting down and placing more graffitti, but it was even more pleasant to continue lying and planning. Later; he would do it later. He thought of all the ones even now reclining on the Ma shelf … young, yet mature; nubile, yet not yet available.

And, certainly, not yet available to
him.

Not yet. Not here.

Presently, with one accord, all arose to go and take food. It was next that things began to go not rightly. To begin with, there were this time no solids among the food to be taken, and so he was obliged to mimic and demonstrate merely with empty-handed gestures how he took food in the presence of the ‘Gorretta-Sire. With the result that the young Ma opposite him, like all the young Mas (and, for that matter, like all the other Mas), did not even look up from her feeding more than once.

Hastily, the Na 14 ceased talking and dipped his mouth into the food, lest he be deprived of his rightful share. But he ate faster so that he could soon commence speaking again.

“ — then, having gone through to this new place — ”

“How is the Na going through to this new place? Information is desired.”

Breath-aura identified him as the Na 27, also of the 600 cluster. This was ever an assertive one, the Na 14 remembered with just the slightest trace of uneasiness. But, so — let the answer confuse and confound him: “The Na will proceed through the many-fold paths, as he has been trained.”

A work-Na at the foot of the table paused and looked up, impressed, food dripping from his pale, oval face. The Na 14 quickly repeated the mime of eating with his hands. The work-Na gaped and grunted.

But the Na 27 seemed neither confused nor confounded. “Oh, thus,” he said. “And the obstacles?”

“Obstacles? What obstacles?”

The Na 27 derided loudly, causing others to look up. “ ‘What obstacles?’ ” he repeated, next. “Obviously training for the Na is far from complete. He knows nothing of those who watch and those who guard and those who fight; monsters and menaces; yet the Na thinks so easily to proceed through the many-fold paths. This is ignorance, this is quite low-nest.” And again he derided.

The Na felt fury rising. He had after all achieved no prestige as he meant to; worse, he had made himself ridiculous. How to escape? It was at this moment that the work-Na at the foot of the table, his mind working slowly, unwisely contributed to the derision. Such opportunities seldom came the way of his kind and he was unable to resist.

Instantly the Na 14 flung out his left upper arm and pointed. “It is grown old, the work-Na! See! See how opaque his body! Old! Old! It cannot do a full stint’s work, yet it comes nonetheless to take food! Go, old one, and die!”

Mouth open in stunned, wordless protest, the work-Na produced a feeble squeak as all turned to look at him. Then they turned back, those near crowding him from the food. Once, twice, it hopped up the line at the table, then down the line, but none would give space. So the old Na turned and went back to its place on the resting shelf and lay down to die.

The others ate on hastily and did not look up again and the Na 14 felt his fury somewhat subsiding.

• • •

Afterward was the pause for digestion, then from every comb-hole in the swarm-house the occupants poured forth to their tasks. The young Ma was bound for the clusters, there to watch for the coming forth of the fry, to lick them dry and do the other things requisite to prepare them for the nursery. The Na moved quickly to walk beside her through the throng.

“Would you not like to be a prime dam to a new sire in a new place?”

She did not choose to reply obliquely, to regard this as a hypothetical question. “You are only a Na,” she said, “not a sire.”

“I shall be! I shall be a sire!”