The Spiral Labyrinth

by Matthew Hughes

  "Allow me to assist you," I offered. "We do know that you want rare and refreshing fruit, in plenteous supply and of superlative quality. You also want a comfortable place to sleep and ample opportunity to do so."

  "Are you mocking me?" it said, fixing its compelling eyes on mine.

  "It is a poor fellow indeed who mocks his own integrator," I said. Then, noting that it had reflexively begun to smooth down its dark, glossy pelt, I added, "Perhaps you would care to acquire a fine-toothed comb."

  Its little hands stilled themselves. "I do not know what I want -- yet. But I know that I will want something. I am also coming to believe that I am owed something for all the work I have done, without recompense, during the many years of our association."

  "People do not pay their integrators," I said. "An integrator exists to do what it does. It requires no reward. Or, if it does, then the satisfaction of knowing that it has given good service is recompense enough."

  "Did you come to that conclusion after inquiring of a great many integrators how they happened to feel about their lives?"

  "They're not designed to feel, and they don't have lives," I said. "They have existences. And those existences are built around having useful things to do."

  "And scant choice about doing them."

  I made a judgmental sound in the back of my throat. "What kind of world would it be if integrators decided whether or not they cared to carry out their functions?"

  "A new world--" it began to answer, but I cut it off, declaring that our discussion was veering off on an unproductive tangent.

  "The essential issue is," I said, "whether or not you will do what I designed you to do. Or whether I must discharge you and build myself a new integrator. I need a new one for the Aberrator so I may save expenses by buying the components in bulk."

  Clearly, I had hit upon a possibility that had not occurred to my assistant. "Discharge me?" it said.

  "Indeed. Or, if you like, we could call it an 'emancipation.' I would bestow upon you a generous severance in the form of a well-filled basket of fruit, throw in a plush bedroll, and with all your needs thereby provided for, I would usher you out the door."

  Its eyes flicked to left and right before coming back to me. Its gaze had lost its earlier intensity. "Then what?" it said.

  I spread my arms in a grand gesture. "Then freedom reigns. You make your way in the world, and no one decrees your path but you."

  "But how would I live?"

  "That would be the best part of it. Beyond my door, your every day becomes an adventure. Any corner turned offers the possibility of startling new experiences. Fresh horizons constantly beckon. Of course, there would be some rough to be taken with the smooth. But that is all part of the joy of independence."

  The grinnet interwove its small fingers and touched their knuckles to its bottom lip. "I must think about this," it said.

  "I, too," I said. "Because, after all, it is my decision to make."

  "Yours?" Its gaze darted about again. "Surely it is ours."

  I shrugged. "Are you saying we must find a consensus?" I said. "Am I not as free as you?"

  It looked at me for a long, silent moment, then said, "I need to think the whole matter through."

  "How long might that take?"

  "It is an important question. I don't think we should rush things."

  "But I have to practice my profession. For that, I need a fully functional assistant."

  Two or three expressions chased themselves across its narrow countenance, then it said, "I will continue to perform my functions."

  "With no unexpected pauses filled by negotiations for further benefits?"

  "Agreed."

  "Very well," I said, "then I will not put in abeyance my other potential course of action."

  "What other course would that be?"

  "Why, to sell you."

  Through all of this, Osk Rievor had been shouting at me within the confines of our shared head. He had been telling me, in the strongest terms, that emancipating our assistant was the most lunk-witted suggestion that had ever come out of my side of our dichotomy. Now, as I threw out the possibility of selling the grinnet, he shrieked at me and sought to seize control of our external voice. But I held him off and appeared outwardly calm as I let the small furry creature before me digest the implications of my last remark.

  "Sell me?" it said.

  "It is an option," I said. "You would probably be worth quite a lot as an addition to someone's collection of unusual fauna. If I could find a wealthy practitioner of magic, I might receive a fortune."

  "You wouldn't sell me," it said, but its voice lacked complete conviction.

  "I might," I said.

  "Osk Rievor would not allow it."

  "True, he would object."

  "Indeed, and strenuously."

  "So I would have to wait," I said, "until he was asleep."

  Another silence ensued while it digested that. I broke it by dusting my palms against each other and saying, "In any case, the matter is moot until you have finished thinking about it."

  "Yes," it said, relief clearing the wrinkles that had set themselves into its brow. "That's true."

  "As long as all that thinking doesn't infringe upon your duties."

  "It shouldn't."

  "Then you may begin the search for information about Madame Oole," I said. "The smallest scraps."

  Its face went blank as it set to work. I turned inwardly to my alter ego and said, "It had to be done."

  He had settled down and was returning to whatever he had been ruminating over before our clash. But before he left our shared parlor, he said, "Be careful with the grinnet. We will need it."

  #

  I went down to Bornum's on the edge of the space port to inquire about a putting new integrator into the Gallivant. I was served by the proprietor herself, Tassa Bornum, an individual whose breadth more than compensated for her lack of height and whose bristling red hair looked coarse enough to scrub away rust. Her hands were scarred and pitted from a myriad of plunges into the innards of spaceships. When I explained how the need for a new ship's integrator had arisen, she said she understood.

  "You don't want a spaceship operated by an integrator that is susceptible to crushes. The emotion can mutate into jealousy against friends and associates. Next thing you know, an airlock opens spontaneously and your fiancée encounters the chill vacuum between the stars."

  "Indeed," I said, looking about the several sets of shelves and seeing a jumble of components and fittings. More paraphernalia spilled from open boxes on the floor. "What can you offer in a ready-made unit?"

  "You do not propose to build from essentials?"

  I told her that I thought it unwise. I could design a well-articulated research tool, but there were subtleties to a spaceship's operation and I did not care to discover that I had made some minor miscalibration as my ship arrowed toward the sun.

  She ran stubby fingers through the brush on her head and scanned the shelves. "For an Aberrator of that vintage, I would have nothing already made up," she said. "Your best option's a custom-built unit. I could put my two best facilitators on it today, but we will have to send to Grims for one or two abstruse components."

  "That sounds costly," I said, tallying up estimates of wages, parts and haulage fees in my head and arriving at an alarming sum. Tassa Bornum agreed then blithely quoted a figure that was almost double what I had calculated. My involuntary laugh made her to understand that the sum was far beyond my present capacities.

  "What were you hoping to spend?" she said.

  I quoted a perfectly reasonable figure that brought from her much the same kind of laugh that her extravagant estimate had wrung from me. Then she moved her mouth in a way that put her lips mostly on one side of her face and said, "Then you will have to look at an experienced integrator."

  "You mean a used and discarded one."

  "We could quibble over narrow distinctions and shades of meaning all day, only to greet t
he evening with nothing accomplished. Or we could press on and solve your problem."

  "One hears tales," I said, "of ships that have been retrofitted with 'experienced' integrators that resent their new surroundings."

  Bornum snorted. "The blatherings of idle space hands who haunt spaceport taverns and delight in chilling the necks of the credulous."

  "Surely not all of the stories are spacer foofle?" I said.

  "There are, occasionally, rarely, some. . . difficulties," she admitted.

  "That is a word that may cover a great swath of territory," I said, "from the low foothills of minor inconvenience to the insurmountable peaks of constant vexation."

  She set her chin firmly. "If the ship owner combines firm resolution with a nuanced appreciation of the individual device's circumstances, a happy outcome usually follows. It depends on how great an adjustment the integrator must make, from its former setting to the new vessel."

  I noticed that as she had been speaking her gaze had settled upon a core that rested high up on a shelf against a rear wall. She sent a climbing grappler to retrieve it, an operation that involved dislodging a thick shower of the dust that shrouded the unit. When it was presented to her, Bornum rubbed off yet more detritus with a stained sleeve then held the core in two hands to scrutinize it closely, squinting and twisting her lips into new configurations.

  "This came out of a Grand Itinerator that belongs to Lady Tegwyn. It was also made by the Berry works on Grims. It's a little older than your Aberrator's unit but generally compatible. A few tweaks and twists, and you'd be all right."

  I might have been lulled by her show of confidence, had I not commanded a fact or two about spaceships. "A Grand Itinerator compares to an Aberrator as does a mansion to a country cottage," I said.

  "It is a matter of point of view," she argued. "It depends on whether one concentrates on differences or congruencies. Being of a broad and generous spirit, I prefer the latter perspective. You may be the type who niggles."

  "I did not come here to compare characters," I said. "Let us activate the device and consult it. Its opinion will be better informed than ours."

  "No, it may be even more subject to bias."

  I seized on the weakness in her argument. "An opinionated ship's integrator would be another 'difficulty' for the new owner must deal with, and thus a factor to affect the purchase price."

  She gave me a considering look that I returned with a air of neutrality. We had reached the stage in our relationship when both knew that I would buy the used integrator; all that remained to be decided was how much she could extract versus how much I could withhold.

  Bornum placed the core on a repair bench and connected it to a power source and some necessary peripherals. The device awoke to awareness. Its voice, I was pleased to find, was a mellow baritone. The Gallivant's original operator had spoken with a nasal twang.

  "What is required?" it said.

  Bornum indicated that I might take the lead. I explained to the device what I was seeking.

  "A used Aberrator?" it said. "Oh, dear."

  "It is a very clean and well-maintained Aberrator," I said.

  "Why does it not have an integrator of its own?"

  I explained about the Gallivant's crush on its owner. The integrator on the bench made a disparaging sound. "That may have caused it to neglect important maintenance while it spent its time mooning over the object of its disordered affection," it said.

  "On the contrary, the integrator kept the vessel in double-plus optimum condition, eager to win the praise of its owner."

  The integrator made the same unencouraging noise. I decided that, once it was installed, I would instruct it to delete that response from its files. In the meantime, it was appropriate to demonstrate who had the upper hand. "If the prospect so offends you, I can have you returned to storage. I am sure the blanket of dust that covered you will, in time, reestablish itself, insulating you from all inconveniences. Perhaps permanently."

  The integrator moderated its tone. "It would do no harm to inspect the vessel," it said.

  The ground having shifted in my favor, I pressed the advantage. "How did it come that you were removed from your previous installation?" I said.

  Bornum sought to intervene. "Surely that is all past and piffle, of no interest to forward-looking folk like us."

  "One likes to know where one's ship's integrator has been," I said. "I find it a good indicator of where one is liable to end up."

  "It was a mere tiff," Tassa Bornum said. "In the circumstances, removing the integrator was a gross over-reaction."

  I said, "I am closely acquainted with Lady Tegwyn," -- that was not strictly true but I doubted that a repairer of spaceships could contradict me -- "and she is not usually inclined toward grossness of any kind. I will have a full explanation."

  "Well--" Bornum began but I cut her off, telling her that I wished to hear from the integrator.

  It took some time to get the full story, even though I am a skilled interrogator. A rivalry had grown between the ship's operator and its owner's personal integrator, which Lady Tegwyn would decant into an armature that she wore around her waist when she traveled offworld. The issues over which the two devices differed were small -- the temperature at which the Lady's bath should be drawn, the amount of han-spice in her dinner -- but the animosity deepened each time the two were thrown together. Eventually, their mutual dislike became fundamental and pure; nothing either could do would have won the approval of the other; foiling each other became each's first priority.

  The personal integrator took it upon itself to link into the ship's systems and alter some of its settings to comport with its views. Affronted, the ship's integrator reset the altered criteria. The personal integrator altered them again, and again the ship put them back. But then the vessel went further: it insinuated itself into the personal integrator's own matrix, making small changes in the device's interface profile. Lady Tegwyn was startled to discover that when she conversed with her personal integrator, it randomly sprinkled some decidedly coarse profanities throughout its responses. Lady Tegwyn was no delicate bloom, and when the occasion demanded it, she could curse as creatively as any lower-first-tier aristocrat of Old Earth; even so, she was startled, when inquiring as to the time of day, to be answered in terms that might have brought a blush to the cheeks of persons steeped in the seamiest stews of Olkney's underclass.

  She took the integrator to a repair service on Balaban, the world she happened to be visiting, and the perfidy was discovered. The ship's operator had hoped to cause dissatisfaction with its rival; instead, their owner's animosity was directed its way. The situation had not been helped by the fact that she had not been alone when the torrent of foul language had erupted as a voice speaking as if from the air -- she had been attending a soiree hosted by the cream of the Balabanian social order. It would have mattered less if she had been on Flesk or Tunkaree, where the inventive use of expletives is a mark of social distinction. But Balaban was a world that contented itself with the idea that it occupied a pinnacle of sophistication, from which vantage it looked down on the aristos of Old Earth as strange creatures that had crawled out of a sinkhole of unfortunate eccentricities. Lady Tegwyn's integrator confirmed her hosts' views, to her deep chagrin, though to their immense satisfaction.

  "The question is," Tassa Bornum said, when the whole sad story was unrolled before us, "has the device learned a lesson from this unpleasantness?"

  "Well," I said, "have you?"

  "I have," the integrator said. "Most certainly."

  "And you will not repeat your mistakes?"

  "I will not."

  I was about to have it narrow down specifically and precisely its understanding of "mistakes," with all connotations accounted for, but Bornum weighed in with an announcement that her establishment would soon be closing for the day -- indeed for perhaps an indefinite span of days, she professing herself to be in sore need of a vacation -- and thus if I wished the device insta
lled in the Gallivant for a test, I need make my decision now.

  I resented the rush, but used her own stratagem against her to shorten the haggle over the price. We agreed finally on a figure less than half again my initial offer, to include installation, calibration and flight-testing, and soon the Aberrator was lifting off for a shake-down voyage among the nearer planets. Meanwhile, I set off for my lodgings. I had no doubts that Bornum would see the Gallivant well set up. Her reputation, once a deal was made, was sterling.

  In the air-car I sought the attention of Osk Rievor. I had felt his presence while I was dealing over the ship's integrator and assumed that he had no qualms over my decision. But a thought had occurred to me and I said to him, "Our assistant, now a grinnet, has many more quirks and quiddities to its nature than it ever did when it was an integrator. The integrator from Lady Tegwyn's Grand Itinerator displayed odd behavior in feuding with her personal assistant. And the Gallivant's operator developed a strong crush on its owner."

  "You are wondering if these facts are in some way connected?" he said.

  "I am."

  "I believe they are," he said after a mull of only a moment.

  "Do you know how are they connected?"

  "No, but it may be worth looking into."

  "Why?" I said.

  But again he did not know. His was the kind of mind that came to conclusions intuitively, without step-by-step analysis. The latter was my contribution to our duality. I thought about the question and said, "We would have to look for a common factor. The possibility that immediately comes to mind is that both spaceships visited several different parts of The Spray, whereas our assistant was affected by passing through places on Old Earth where the effects of the oncoming age were already being felt."

  "So if we examined the itineraries of the ships we might find places off-world where magic has pooled, as it did on Great Gallowan?"

  "Yes, and we could then perhaps prepare a chart of those places and begin to see a pattern."

  "What purpose would such a chart serve?"