Masters of the Maze (8 page)

“No,” said the young man, cheerfully; “copulating.”

“Oh, that’s nice … Still … He should study sometimes. One cannot always be copulating.”

As he went out he heard Ro-ved-Per say, “One can — at
his
age!”

The High Physicist chuckled. Ro-der-Per was precisely six moments younger than his twin. So when the twin came romping in, singing and sweating and slapped him on the back and said something to him, he got up with no trace of visible senility. “Where is she?” he asked. “By the brook?”

“By the brook — go on, what are you waiting for? She won’t take
root
there, you know!”

Ro-ved-Per nodded and hastened, swiveling around to point and say, “Watch those lines along you-know-where, grandfather says.”

Ro-der-Per said he would. And he did. Then he recollected that he would be expected to have studied, when next he saw his grandfather. So he got up and looked for his book; not here, not there; never mind, he knew where it must be; he would just trot over for it and be back in a moment. And as it happened, fortunately, whilst trotting he met Nin-dar-Anna, and they stopped to talk about the coming of the fish-mother; she walked back with him as he went looking for his book, and eventually he found it. But … as his twin had remarked with the swift, thrusting accuracy of youth, “One can — at
his
age!”

He felt somewhat guilty at returning to his Watching later than he had expected, but when he looked at the ward, glittering lines and sparkling points, all seemed as before. He pursed his lips in a silent whistle, and, with one eye still on the stone, opened his book.

NNNonnggg
… went the great bronze saucer-bell as Et-dir-Mor reached the river, and …
tuuummm
… went the huge drum-trunk. He concentrated on observing and naming by their proper, distinctive names, fifty-three shades of green in the foliage and the fields, hill, stream, sky, as he walked along; not including any which contained visible blue or visible yellow. It was one of the better days for this, clear air, although fifty-three was nothing much remarkable. His eye observed before he even subvocalized the fifty-fourth — the dress of the girl in the tiny cockle-craft not far offshore. She was calling something …

“What?”

“… seen her? … you
seen
her?”

He had cupped his hands to shout that he had not yet seen any sign of the red mer-mother, when something else occupied his eyes and mind. It was but a flash in the middle distance, but he was trained to note such flashes, distant or near. His monocular was clapped to his better eye so swiftly it was almost like a reflex. And there he recognized it. No one else hereabouts might have, but to him it was unmistakable.

A Chulpex.

He knew it by its gait alone: torso tipped slightly forward, arms held slightly away from the sides. The untrained eye might never notice these things — unless, perhaps, it might see (most unlikely) several of the creatures together. Et-dir-Mor knew, too, what he would see when (or if) he drew close, the skin unnaturally white and always damp, “like humans who have been living under a rock for a long time,” was the way Am-bir-Ros put it; the scant and colorless stringy hair; the voice flat and harsh and deep; the digit-nails unusually thick and yellow; the smell like rank earth….

He knew as well the path it was hurrying along, which led to the hills, and he considered as he started off the quickest way of reaching it. The girl in the boat called again. Automatically, Et-dir-Mor turned, he saw her standing up, waving, gesturing, but he couldn’t tarry now to await the passing of the great red fish …
The silly child will fall if she’s not careful,
he thought: she almost immediately did so. This meant no more than if she had tripped and fallen on the shore, for there was no one in Red Fish Land who was not able to swim. Still … he waited a moment … her head did not reappear …

Without drawing breath for a sigh, Et-dir-Mor ran to the banks, cast off his mantle, and dived in.

• • •

“A pretty little chitty,” Am-bir-Ros said, stroking his white mustaches. He had picked up many Anglo-Indian expressions during his many years in England, and if he did not always use them correctly, it made no difference here. The girl was drying her long black hair in the soft sunlight of Et-dir-Mor’s courtyard, chatting with the twins, showing no ill effects from having bumped her head on the boat.

“Yes,” his host and friend said, in a considering tone. “Her bosom at this stage is interesting, though not — in my opinion — beautiful. One never knows how the dugs will develop.”

The other old man frowned. “Don’t be so damned clinical. Oh, well, who am I to criticize? Do you realize that there was a time, in my old time and country, when I favored adultery yet abhorred nudity?”

“I’ve never fully understood the concept of adultery. Your place of origin seems fascinating. Perhaps I may yet visit it.”

“Don’t. It’s a dung heap, a cesspool, everything’s the opposite from here. My sons, at that age, for instance, would be skulking around trying to get first shot at that girl, I’m sure — instead of waiting politely, as the twins are doing, for someone else to relieve them of the untidy task of defloration. Well. ‘If youth knew, if age could.’ And here, age doesn’t have to want to ‘could’. So you think one of those critters got past here, do you?”

Et-dir-Mor said that he was sure of it, had asked — but without making a great point of it — to be informed of any strangers observed. “Sooner or later he will give himself away. This time, I hope, without having caused much trouble. Ah, the things which pass along! It was when I was no older than the twins that I encountered on one path three levels off (how can one say
up
or
down
there?) perhaps the strangest sight of all: a man mounted upon an animal and both beast and rider were clothed in metal. He had something in his hand like a lance and he opened a window in his metal mask and — ”

“You silly, six-fingered freak, you’ve told me that story half a hundred times! Oh, hey there! Another entry for the never-to-be-published New, Revised Edition of
The Devil’s Dictionary
: FREAK.
A man who, in your world, has only ten fingers; in my world, one who has twelve.”
He got up, went over to the ward-stone, peered into it.

“I suppose,” he said, slowly, “that in the hands of someone like Joseph Smith this could be an Urim and Thummim. It almost unsettled me forever, I can tell you, oh, not the stone, but coming through. I knew those Mexicans meant to shoot me for sure, I didn’t care, it seemed just a damned stupid joke, a fitting end to what I’d always regarded as a damned stupid performance — life, I mean. There was another American there, never did learn his name, weeping and wailing till I got tired of it. So I walked away a bit to be by myself, thinking, ‘All the Rebel bullets in creation couldn’t get you, Brose, and now — ’

“My first thought was that they’d shot me in the back and that it was the moment of my death, prolonged just enough for me to have delusions, like the hanged man in one of my stories, can’t remember its name, doesn’t matter. Then I came to realize that that couldn’t be so, but I still didn’t know what
was
so. It was dark and it shone with light. It wasn’t anywhere and it led everywhere. It had its false heavens and its private hells. And then, finally, I came out here. By rights I ought to’ve died there on that hill from a Villista bullet. Still alive, though. Funny thing is, I don’t mind that any more.”

One of the twins had come in and was listening, preoccupiedly indulging in the typical gesture of running his palms along the smooth, sparse hair which covered the skin in all the males of his people. “If the experience changed you, Am-bir-Ros,” he said, “might it not change the Chulpex, too?”

Old Bierce shook his head. “It never has. It never will. It never can. Don’t you see, boy, they aren’t critters such as the rest of us. It isn’t just a matter of their having different bodies or anything like that. They aren’t just another little group using or wanting to use a fraction of the Maze and not aware of the Whole. They
are
aware, everything indicates it. But their attitude toward it can never be anything but an aberrant one, boy, because the world they come from ought not properly to be there at all. It’s on an arm of the Maze that doesn’t fit in with the rest. Look. Look there — ”

Grandson and grandson followed his tracing finger. “Don’t you see how it’s different? Of course you do. It’s an aberration, boy. It’s an aberration. Just like a tumor is an aberration. And if it ever spreads — ”

Tas-tir-Hella was out hunting mushrooms in the hills. At least, so she said, and even partially convinced herself that this was so. She had a basket with her to put the mushrooms in, if she found any good ones; also in the basket was a lunch. This was what Am-bir-Ros might have called “the giveaway,” because the lunch was ample enough for two, and Tas-tir-Hella had not that large an appetite.

At least, not for food.

However, she did
like
mushrooms, so, even if …

It was three months since she’d left the Observatory and it was another month before it would be time to go back. She had no particular preference for life in the Centra over life in the Villages, or the other way around, for that matter. Each had its own distinctive worth: in the Villages, no thousand player orchestras; in the Centra, no deep and leafy woods. The cool, slightly damp air was pleasant; here there were tiny pools and moss and ferns; here the honey-lizards did their mating dances, shimmering and iridescent and sounding like tiny bells. She kept her eyes open for ark trees, at the base of which the tasty little noars grew. Too, Tas-tir-Hella kept her eyes open for the spaces in between the tarra bushes, for here grew the big and meaty bondas.

But, for the most part, she just kept her eyes open. Her ears, too.

In such a mood she was, expectant, hopeful, well prepared for disappointment. She paused to consider an urge to go uphill against all her intentions of going downhill. It was rather a strong urge, and so, with a shrug, she decided to yield to it. Grayfowl generally frequented the glades and dells, but it was far from unusual for them to be found on the upper slopes. Besides, even hunters who favored grayfowl might take a notion to seek other game, upland game.

Her luck could hardly be worse than it had so far been.

She felt rather pleased on reaching the giant, towering, rounded rocks which seemed to burst like broken bones from the upper temples of the hills. It lacked the feeling of the wooded parts below but it seemed somehow encouraging, she could not say why; so she continued to climb. This was no place, certainly, for mushrooms, although … Tas-tir-Hella stopped a bit, frowning slightly, trying to follow the rest of the thought; then, suddenly, it came to her. Caves. No place for mushrooms, although there were … weren’t there? … caves up here, and in some of them might be found the pale and coronet-shaped dwarthu, the smoky-tasting. Dwarthu were excellent, a good day’s work if she could fill even the bottom of the basket with them.

Tas-tir-Hella felt a faint desire to damn all mushrooms, but it was faint.

She saw someone as she climbed over a smooth limb of rock, someone down below, a stranger. She little reckoned on just how very strange, though.

“We greet you, maiden,” the stranger said, touching his mouth as he bowed. She stifled an inclination to smile at the archaic manner and address — indeed, the stranger’s dress itself was archaic, swathed as he was in the darkest garments she had ever seen. Into her mind came lines from an old poem:

White, his flesh certainly was, almost as though he had been living in a cave himself for years. But …
warm
? No … warm, his flesh certainly did not look. However, she was not interested in his flesh. Not in his. “Our name is Ten-pid-Ar,” he said.

“Mine is Tas-tir-Hella, and I think I should tell you that it’s not the custom here, in our country, that is, to speak of one’s self in the plural.”

“The N — We — that is, I was not informed. I will remember,” Ten-pid-Ar sounded startled for a moment; then the entire tenor of his voice changed, as he added, “I will reward you …”

This time she did smile, but it trailed away, for, somehow, the man from … wherever it was, it must be
far …
! — the man no longer seemed to be amusing. What then? Faintly frightening, stranger than merely strange, yet … impressive? … awesome? Well! What odd thoughts!

“Reward me for for what, Ten-pid-Ar? And how?”

He had seemed to slump forward just a trifle; now he quickly became erect. “For assisting me, a stranger. For assistance, also, yet to be given. Thus, for what. And how, the Tas-tir-Hella? This is how. With what you desire. I will give you Far-ven-Sul, he who hunts; I will give you the use of his body and — ”

She cried out, “Oh, don’t!” and turned aside her head, because she was suddenly certain that this was a cruel and elaborate joke; such acts were not common in Red Fish Land, indeed, they were scarcely known … known, though, and though she had thought no one would or could know, but known clearly: her hopeless and ridiculous lust for Far-ven-Sul — she who could easily be his mother and, almost, his grandmother. Someone must have noticed her covert looks, someone must have marked the very quickening of her breath as he passed by … someone … Who …? Who …?

Who was this pale stranger in black?

No, no, it was absurd even to think in passing of such old legends and folk tales: the joke was simply that: a joke. Who was engaged in the masquerade, she couldn’t guess, but the whole thing — archaic greeting, costume, and all — must be part of some jest. Perhaps it was connected in some way with the celebrations attendant upon the coming up river of the great red she-fish. It was accident, that was all; it could only be by accident that her name and
his
name were coupled.

Still, it hurt. It still hurt.

“Very well.” Tas-tir-Hella forced her face into a smile. “I have given you assistance, and you will give me Far-ven-Sul. Where is he?”

The directions were specific enough, by the sound of them. She shrugged, she followed them, her basket dangling from her limp, indifferent hand. It would be too bad, really, if Far-ven-Sul were also engaged in the joke. But she’d see it through … If the experience proved too painful, well, she could always return earlier to her Centra. Or even go somewhere else till that be time.

He was there, sitting on a rock, idling his weapon in his hand, and looked up, somewhat sullen, but not unfriendly, as she approached. Gesturing toward her basket, he said “What, found no mushrooms?” She shook her head, not speaking, realizing that even if this were a … a hoax … even if she were doomed to be a butt and a victim (though unable to guess why), she still felt the same toward him. His light brown hair fell into his dark brown eyes, and he brushed it away, impatient.

“No … No mushrooms.”

“An unlucky day. No game, either. One would think it would
be
a lucky day, though — wouldn’t you? The mother-fish, I mean.” He gave an impatient exclamation, struck his thigh. “The whole day wasted! And no game, that means no meal. Curse!”

What difference did it make, hoax, joke, whatever — ? She was face to face with him, close to him, talking to him. Tas-tir-Hella swallowed, held her breath, then said, cautiously courteous, “I’m sorry we’ve both had bad luck — ” (Bad
luck
?!) — “But, you know, I always bring along more than I need to eat. Look. You see?”

He ceased to be the petulant hunter, then, became altogether the young man with healthy appetite. Indeed, he gave her a quick hug before they settled down to eat. She ate little enough, excusing herself; but nothing was left in the basket when they were through. Then they talked — Far-ven-Sul talked; she listened, in a happy daze — talked of things of no consequence. Finally, with some hesitation, he proposed that they make love. He was sure that she had so many, such more mature lovers — she would probably find him gauche. Still … if she did not mind … it would make him happy….

It was not, after all, an unlucky day at all, really.

Afterward, feeling so euphoric that even mysteries made no matter, she mentioned something (but only something) of the stranger. Far-ven-Sul, stroking her relaxed body, assured her that he had never seen the man, heard nothing of him. “Sounds dull,” he murmured. “Never mind about him …”

The stranger’s final words to her, however, still were in her ears.
Afterward, you will bring him to me, here.
In a way, she was fearful of not complying. And in a way she felt grateful. More — could she hope for more? — yes: she could hope that it would not be ended and over soon, so — more.

“He isn’t dull at all,” she said. “And he … he has a strange talent. Yes,” she disengaged herself gently but continued to hold his hand, “I think we should go up there.”

Afterward, in the waning daylight, Tas-tir-Hella and Far-ven-Sul came down to the village in silence; she, happy almost to serenity, but between the almost and the serenity there was an uncertain, vague feeling which interposed itself like a mountain between the sunlight and the plain. And he, the hunter, hardly seemed to be aware of outer things, a fierce and prideful hope burned in him, visible and hot. When they saw ahead the first lights go on in the village, he spoke up as though to himself. “He knew what it was that I wanted, and I never spoke of it to anyone. I
know
that he knows, I
know
that I never spoke of it. This much I know, and so the rest I will believe. He asks very little, but if that’s all he wants, I can do it. I know where there are such caves, no one else knows. And — and then — if he can arrange to do as he says — oh, if he can do that — ”

His breath hissed, his breast rose, his hands moved. Then he became silent again.

When they came to the lane where she would turn off and he would not, Tas-tir-Hella touched his arm. “When shall we see each other again?”

He looked at her blankly. Then he said, partly amused, partly annoyed, “Because I ate from your basket once, must I eat from it forever? No … Laying is like lunching, and I can do it every day. Thanks,” he added, carelessly, turning away, not seeing her shrink back as the dream turned to ashes. “There is only one thing that I
want,
and I must have it and I
will
!” he walked on, still talking as though to himself.

“And that is to be the one who kills the great red fish!”

• • •

Least, least, infinitely the least of all the cognate concerns which vexed Arrettagorretta was the reported disappearance of the Na 27 ‘Parranto 600. His absence had finally been explained — up to a point — by the discovery that he was not only dead but had been ingested by the young fry in the nursery. Piece by piece the evidence accumulated: an old work-Ma (much too old, she had since been directed to cease to take food), when questioned, reported that this was the second superfluous body brought in by the Na 14. The question of the previous one proved to be no question, it was of an old and superannuated work-Na who had died as properly directed.

But the report of the low-nest sweeper-Na was almost incredible, but, once credited, explained — though it did not excuse — the terror of the witness and his failure to report what he had seen until the massive search and questioning reached him in turn.

“The Na 14 placed two of his hands about the throat of the Na 27, having approached him from behind, following him when the latter arose in the night to ease himself. He, the Na 14, held him, the Na 27, with his other hands. The latter struggled a while and then ceased to do so.” Such was the report of the witness, which had to be believed. But what reason could the Na 14 have had to commit an act for which there was not only no explanation, but not even a name? To destroy a fellow Chulpex as though he were some lower form of life?

The Na 14 himself could not be questioned, having departed on his mission along the many-pathed way. His having committed such an act raised an infinity of questions concerning the success of his mission and fitness for it, particularly since the act in question — the destruction of the Na 27 — was committed during the long rest period the night before his departure. It was while musing on this that the ultimate report was brought Arrettagorretta.

He remained in silence, trying to make sense of it.

“The egg-count cannot have been mistaken …” It was half-statement, half-question, and the Chief Supervising Ma interpreted it as the latter.

“The count was made one hundred times and manually and mechanically,” she replied. There was no mistake, clearly.

“It follows no logic,” the ‘Gorretta-Sire said, slowly aloud, “that eggs should be missing. Could they have not adhered to one or more of the attendants through carelessness.”

Defensively, the Chief Supervising Ma said, “On very rare occasions this has happened, but it has always been accounted for. On no occasion has any such number, or even approaching it, adhered to an attendant through carelessness.”

Sometimes, the Sire had found, in dealing with an illogical situation, that a seemingly-illogical approach might reveal the existent though not priorly apparent logic. “Had anyone passed through or into the hatcheries who had not been authorized to do so? Only an accurate reply,” he cautioned, “can be of service.”

The Ma hesitated. “An accurate answer can be given,” she said, “only after defining the term itself. Precision and accuracy are not always — ”

“Reply at once, the Ma! Who entered?”

“It is always authorized for any to enter, indeed, it is but duty, to bring food consisting of bodies which have ceased to contain life; therefore the entrance of the Na 14
—
”

The Na 14!

Instantly the great ‘Gorretta-Sire perceived all, understanding that the Na 14 had destroyed his fellow in order to have a body whereby to gain entry to the hatcheries and that therefrom he had stolen the eggs immediately before his departure: and with what purpose? What possible purpose other than the hideous one of becoming himself a Sire, independent, ruling his own swarm, making his own terms … his own plans … his own conquests … indifferent! indifferent! to the needs, the terrible, urgent needs of all the great Chulpex race! He would never report back, even if capable! Not only had his training gone for nought, it might have gone only into making and raising up an enemy: the Na 14 ‘Parranto 600 would not only nevermore assist invasion, he might well at some future date lead an invasion of his own! He who has slain one, will he abstain from slaying many?