A Maze of Stars

by John Brunner

  Frantically tilting the flexibox back on its base, sparing a glance to make sure whatever had broken wasn’t leaking sufficiently to leave liquid spoor, for scent-tracking, so-called hounding, genes, though rare, were not unknown among the citizens of Clayre, Stripe felt her heart pound as sweat gathered on her skin—also traceable! Where were the patrols who earlier had prevented the protesters from gaining access to the port complex? Had they vanished as soon as the passengers left, caring more for the safety of rich foreign visitors than a co-Trevithran’s?

  It certainly looked that way. And, reunited in a common cause, the antis were moving menacingly toward her …

  And, miraculously, halting as a voice boomed from the air.

  “Stand back! Gangway! Sterilization team!”

  With humming, whining machines broadcasting the same pale blue light as was supposed to purify the new arrivals and their baggage, a platoon of guards was approaching. For a fraction of a second Stripe was able to savor the exquisite irony of the protesters’ dilemma. If the off-worlders had still been shedding alien organisms as they passed this way, then these devices would—so ran the claim—eliminate them … that is, provided no one trod in the wrong place and carried them farther away. Visibly furious yet obliged to conform with this law that they themselves approved, the antis uttered confused and frantic shouts. She caught snatches: “Sterilize her Take away her flexibox! Can’t you smell that alien stench?”

  But the sterilization team couldn’t smell anything, or indeed hear very much. They were sealed in protective suits with a self-contained supply of air.

  For show, of course. Strictly for show. The effect was as much magical as scientific. Not, actually, that that made a great deal of difference. Yin and Marla had been at pains to make their children grasp that basic truth. At least half the time believing that a medication worked was just as good as having one that really did, for on some level far below the conscious such faith could invoke the aid of defense mechanisms reaching clear back to—well, to wherever humanity had come from.

  Naturally, this was not a subject to be mentioned in the hearing of a templegoer, let alone a priest, save at risk of an interminable argument about General Creation. But Yin and Marla were believers in the Ship, built by humans to spread humans far and wide, rather than in the Perfect, who could fly from star to star by act of will. More than likely these nonreligious antis paid lip service to the same views, but they were just as obsessed as the priests with the concept of an ideal human form, or at least of ideal forms plural, each suited to one particular world and not to be exposed to contamination from elsewhere …

  Though if we ourselves constitute outside contamination— what then?

  All this fled through Stripe’s mind in an instant while she waited for her precious unexpected chance of escape. Just as the sterilization machines lumbered, growling, between her and the antis, she gave her flexibox a violent shove and took off in its wake. Moments later she was mingling with a group of disappointed shills and peddlers—would they never learn that greater attractions than theirs were to be found up Marnchunk Hill?—as they boarded a lowslider bound for the center of Clayre.

  She wished, though, that she wasn’t so convinced of having caught from the corner of her ear a vicious promise:

  “Now I’ve smelled it, I’ll recognize that stink anywhere. Did you say she shops in Mid-City Market?”

  Which ordained, of course: lose this booty in a big big hurry, and the flexibox as well, for it was seeping greasy liquid. Whatever had leaked was also spoiling its frictionless base, so that it grew harder and harder to push. Briefly she considered making straight for the restaurant whose owners were her best customers: not on Marnchunk Hill itself, whose residents could afford to pay full price for imported delicacies, but just on the fringe, where people from the lower town also lusted after unfamiliar luxuries.

  However, her parents’ plight persuaded her to go home first, although she took a wide detour in hopes that the rain would make the telltale scent harder to trace.

  Donzig met her at the threshold, shaking as though in fear of punishment, pleading at the top of his voice. “I did like you said! Even went to Mother Shaqqi! Didn’t get my chulgra, though! She said your yellow bag—”

  Cuffing him aside, Stripe strode past into the yard. From the corner of her eye she noticed a tendril of stranglevine. That ought to be salted and burned, but she had no time to spare for such matters.

  Yin and Marla, slumped in chairs, reacted sluggishly to her arrival. Wheezing, Marla managed to say, “Don’t smack the little boy. He gave me medicine.”

  And after a moment, in a puzzled tone: “Who was he?”

  “Donzig, your own son!” Stripe cried, kneeling beside the weak flabby creature that had been her mother.

  But there was no further response. The dull eyes closed, and the breathing resumed its resting rate, one inhalation every minute and a half. Shortly the bladder emptied, and she had to jump back to avoid being splashed.

  “You should move us out,” Yin said faintly. Stripe laid a hand on his slack arm, which he scarcely had the strength to lift in response. “When your brothers come home, we’ll only be in the way. Get rid of us. We’re done for.”

  This argument could go on forever …

  “Donzig!”

  “Y-yes?”

  “Are you sure you gave them both their medicine?”

  “Yes, I swear!”

  “Yin, did you find that it helped? … Yin?”

  But he was as inert as Marla. It seemed that uttering one or two coherent sentences was the most they could any longer achieve.

  Nerves raw with hatred of Dr. Bolus, Stripe bent to inspect the slaitches he had recommended her to set beneath her parents’ chairs. As she had feared, while she was out white threads from their calves had overrun the dark gray slabs and made connection with the dirt below. Her best precautions had been in vain.

  Sobbing, she rose to her feet. Were she a templegoer, she’d have known what to do, and perhaps it was a more merciful decision: send for priests with ritual spades to undercut these roots her parents were trying to sink and bear the two of them with chants and gongs to the landside edge of the city, where, as Yin had said, they would be out of the way of their descendants.

  But when they first discovered they were cheeching, Yin and Marla had forbidden all resort to priests. They had decreed that no matter how they might contradict themselves at some future date, they did not and never would believe in the Perfect who had abandoned their bodies and retreated to an existence independent of matter so as to free up as much of it as possible for their descendants …

  “Stripe!” Donzig whimpered.

  “Oh, shut up!”

  “But Stripe, I’m hungry!”

  “Oh …!” But, come to think of it, so was she. Turning her back on the miserable spectacle of their parents, she dipped into the flexibox at random. Finding one of the spaceline’s packaged meals, she tore off its cover. Donzig’s eyes grew planet-round.

  “Is it foreign? Can I really have some?”

  Over and over he had been ordered not to touch, for Stripe must take what she and Rencho saved from starship garbage to be sold for five, ten, twenty times the cost of a regular meal …

  “Yes!” she said recklessly. “Have as much as you want!”

  And wondered as they both ate, using fingers:

  What’s cheeching like, really? Yin and Marla don’t seem to be suffering. More—well—resigned. I ought to give them more of Bolus’s nostrum just in case it helps … but can one regard slowing down the inevitable as “help”? May it not be the exact reverse?

  “This is wonderful!” Donzig breathed.

  But Stripe had barely noticed what she was gulping down. Her attention was on those who might never eat again, who no longer needed to, whose final days would be sustained by soil and water …

  Resolve gathered in her mind. She felt a surge of gratitude to whatever random force had contrived
to bring her such largess today of all days—and repressed it out of commitment to her rational upbringing.

  What mattered was that she sell this off-world food and drink for as much as she could possibly obtain; then, keeping back sufficient to support herself and Donzig until her brothers returned, spend the rest on the sort of ending her parents would have wanted. Moving people who had already cheeched was costly; she suspected that was why, even now that star visitors were frequent and the legend of the Ship was daily gaining renewed credence, so many let priests take their bodies in charge. But there was an alternative. Her relatives probably wouldn’t approve, but it was legal, and she might very well be able to afford it.

  Why shouldn’t she? As a dutiful daughter and the only responsible person on the spot…

  Her brothers might be as angry as the rest of the family, but if they’d chosen to be half the world away at this juncture—!

  I’ll do it.

  Rising, Stripe shoved the rest of the food at Donzig. Seizing it, he spluttered thanks from an overfull mouth. She ignored him as she reclaimed the flexibox and set about washing those of the contents that had been wetted by the flask that broke. Half-recognizable words on its label led her to conclude it had held some sort of sauce or relish. Well, now she would never know …

  Returning her undamaged booty to the box, she forced herself to smile at Donzig.

  “Brother, you do realize Yin and Marla aren’t—well— human anymore?”

  A frown crossed his small face. He said uncertainly, “I thought …”

  “What?”

  “I thought what’s happening to them is just part of being human. Isn’t it? Marla told me it was. Lots of times.”

  Shamed by this child, Stripe kept the smile on her face and even patted Donzig’s head.

  “Yes, that’s true, and she was quite right. All of us go that way sooner or later. But there are different things we can decide to do with cheechers. I remember what both Yin and Marla said they wanted if—when—things reached this pass. I’m going to try and arrange it.”

  The boy looked at her blankly, but she was suddenly too weary to explain the concept of humanizing the biological heritage of colony planets. In fact, until this moment she had never considered that she might need to. Like the superiority of the Ship hypothesis against that of General Creation, she had always taken it for granted.

  And want to go that way when my time comes …

  Not at a temple dump with countless others but alone, maybe on some near-barren islet. Some place where the genes of human beings, along with all their fellow travelers picked up en route to now, would face minimal competition. In another thousand years, ten thousand, or ten million …

  I have grown up today. I can think of the universe carrying on without me.

  Gruffly she said, “Give Yin and Marla another dose of medicine. Not right away but in a little while. I’ll be back by midnight. Oh—and salt that stranglevine before it pulls the house down!”

  And, hauling the reloaded flexibox, she braved anew the welcome pelting of the rain.

  SO IT’S FIFTEEN LOCAL YEARS SINCE THE INSTALLATION OF THE grid. That provides a fix: after the peak of temple dominance— the priests no longer insist on human sacrifice—but before the resurgence of the Ship-believers.

  It was, as ever, strange to recall events that would not happen for another century.

  And as yet there is no cure for cheeching. That will be brought from Klepsit even later.

  The condition’s name stemmed from the protesting sounds some of its victims made: their last wheezes prior to coma.

  In other words: just before the epoch of the Massacres, that insane attempt to “purify ” the local breed.

  The rain was lessening. Borne on the air came howls and screams suggesting that that epoch had begun.

  MOVING AWAY FROM THE COAST, THE STORM SLUICED HIGHER ground inland. The sloping roads that doubled back and forth on Marnchunk Hill were awash. Every hundred paces a curb-side grating allowed the water to flow into a spillway, thence by overhead gutters across the next level and the next, until at last it spewed forth at the edge of the lower town and was left to its own devices. If a few score huts down there were swept away, that was their occupants’ worry.

  This system, however, was far from perfect. Many of the gratings were blocked with rubbish. Ordinarily Stripe would have paused beside each to check for anything worth salvaging, but tonight she was in too much of a hurry. She had sold everything, at excellent prices. She had even discarded her old flexibox with its betraying odor, hiding it at the rear of a restaurant whose owner had refused to do business with her. She could buy another on the morrow—ten, if she wanted— down at the port, where she planned to find a fisherman willing for the fee she could now offer to convey Yin and Marla in his boat to that lonely island she had earlier envisaged. Now, slipping and sliding on muddy flags, she was making for home as fast as possible, hoping against hope that her parents would be conscious enough to understand her good news.

  Soiled to the thighs, she rushed around the corner of the alley where her family dwelt—and came to a dead stop, suppressing a cry of horror.

  By the light of waving flambeaux she could see a crowd twenty or thirty strong, some wielding axes.

  Antis! There could be no mistake.

  The door of her house had been smashed down. Triumphant shouts announced the fate of those who had brought mockery into the world, and the blade of one ax glistened red in the fitful light, defining what that fate had been.

  Donzig!

  She clenched her fists, silently cursing the neighbors who were safely shut indoors. Not a glimmer showed at any nearby window. Armed with truncheons, three of the youngest antis were patrolling self-importantly back and forth to make sure no busybody interfered.

  And then a howl of gut-curdling blood lust rang out. Sick, she realized there was nothing to be done for Donzig. They were passing his body through the broken door, to be cast into the kennel like so much garbage. Several mouths pursed and spit.

  Unable to move, save sidelong into shadows, she watched as the antis made repeated attempts to set the house on fire. Its leaf-thatched roof being saturated, they had to settle for piling up dry odds and ends inside and torching them, after which they dispersed with shrieks of laughter and much mutual congratulation.

  Four or five were coming up the hill toward her. She cast around for something to use as a weapon. They would kill her, too, of course, but they’d pay dearly for their entertainment!

  There was nothing, not even a branch that would serve as a club.

  Her futile desire for vengeance faded. She cowered back into darkness, hoping that none of those who were about to pass possessed the powerful sense of smell that must have led them to her home. If only she had gone directly up Marnchunk Hill, sown a completely false trail, so that the antis’ wrath might have been expended against…

  Against innocent victims? I say it’s no crime to want to share the marvels that rich travelers enjoy!

  Chuckling and chattering, they had swaggered past. Memory arose of Donzig, beaming with delight as for the first, the first and only, time he was allowed his fill of foreign food, sucking every least smear from his stubby childish fingers …

  Now the smoke of burning reached her. It bore the odor of what she knew must be her parents’ bodies roasting, abominably delicious. Unable to stand it any longer, she took to her heels. Blind with tears, she fled and knew not where.

  Dawn found her shivering on a rocky promontory just outside the city, separated from it by a copse of yifles. They bore cruel thorns. Staring dully down at herself, Stripe deduced that she must have thrust her way among them, for her skin was lacerated and her kirtle hung in tatters.

  Yet she had no recollection of so doing.

  Suddenly, as daylight rushed upon the land, she realized she was not alone. Motionless, at a distance of four or five paces, there stood a man, neither old nor young, whom she did not recognize. Al
armed, she glanced around for a way of escape. The horror of last night had convinced her that any stranger might all too easily prove an enemy.

  Especially one who, like this person, displayed no unusual features like her stripe.

  “Is there any way I can help?” he inquired in a level, unremarkable voice.

  “Leave me alone!” She clenched her fists. “I just want to die!”

  The words burst forth without intention. The stranger pondered them and eventually indicated disbelief.

  “You’re young, apart from scratches in good health, and free of any physical deformity. That someone in your position should contemplate—”

  “This isn’t a deformity?” she blazed, flinging aside the shreds of her kirtle to reveal the full extent of her stripe. “There are plenty who say it is! They call me a mockery because of it, and last night …”

  Emotion gagged her throat.

  “Last night—what?”

  “Last night they killed my family and burned my home!” she screamed. “Oh, cheech! How I hate this place! How I hate its people! I never want to see them again! I could pass the killers any time, by night or day, and never know who were the guilty ones because they look like you! I want to go away, far away, to anywhere!”

  “It was your house, then, that was attacked by a mob?”

  “So you heard about it, did you?” Stripe’s voice grew sullen.

  “I saw it.”

  “Saw it?” Now her tone mingled incredulity and anger. “You watched? Did you do anything to help?”

  A hesitation. “I was not allowed to.”

  “What do you mean?” In her confusion she began to wonder whether she had after all met one of the guilty ones.

  “You see, I’m not Trevithran.”

  “Oh, don’t expect me to swallow that! You’re as Trevithran as I am! The devils who killed my family would say you’re more so!”

  “No, truthfully. What you see is, so to speak, protective coloration. I’m from space. From a starship. And if you really want to leave Trevithra, I can help.”