Masters of the Maze

by Avram Davidson

  “Your story is a fantasy,” the Stated Sages told him, fingering their lip furrows. “Your speech is a fantasy, and your clothes are fantasies as well, as well, as well.” They nodded, but their manner was friendly. “Striving only for reality inevitably results only in fantasy, and to prove it, to prove it, to prove it, here is a fellow sickling. He also suffers from fantasy, as you may see from the fact that he wears the same clothes and speaks the same speech. He may or may not, depending on his immediate condition, incline to tell you his story, his story, his story; but we assure you it is exactly the same.”

  The dark young man in the red hunting shirt cleared his throat. “Look, that was a mistake on my part, getting mad and behaving like that that time the other night,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  Nate said, “What happened to Mr. Bellamy?”

  The man scowled, shrugged. “He got in my way and I shoved him. I mean, I just shoved him. It wasn’t my fault. Listen,” he said, essaying a crooked grin, “we better stick together. Okay? I can show you a way out — besides the one you came in by, I mean.”

  Nate considered. “Okay,” he said, after a moment. They walked off together through the great black stone.

  The Stated Sages nodded at one another. “Now they have fantasied that they have no substance,” they said. They rubbed their lip furrows and they sighed. Then they turned themselves inside out and went down the ramp for a sand bath.

  “You first, now,” said the red shirt.

  “The Hell you say. That was a firearm you pointed at me.”

  “I said I was sorry, didn’t I?”

  “Don’t follow strangers,” Wiedemyer said. But did it make sense to let strangers follow you? when they had only very recently tried to kill you? Answer: No.

  “Tell you what,” Nate said; “we’ll go side by side. Okay? Okay.”

  “Let’s shake on it,” said the other, and then tried to throw Nate over his back. There was quite a tussle, but Nate — by dint of beating his opponent to several dirty tactics — won. That is, he floored his man, and when the latter lunged at his leg, he side-stepped and kicked him smartly a few times in the side of the head. The man stayed down. He had a revolver in his pocket. Nate thumped him on the skull with it for good measure. Then he took off the fellow’s shoes and tied his hands behind his back with his own socks.

  “ ‘Fare thee well, my own true love,’ ” Nate sang; “tum-tee-tum-tee-tah. Tum-tee-tum-tee-tum — tee-tum — little b’ar’ feet on the floor …’ ”

  By now he was no longer quite sure of where he was, but it certainly made no sense to remain there. He proceeded onward. Once or twice he had a nasty fright, as for instance the time he saw the body lying half-in and half-out of an opacity which indicated the presence of a gate. It was unclothed and chitinous and part of a spurred foot fell off as he nudged it with his shoe. He thought that he would not investigate what lay on the other side of the opacity. He did wonder, though, on the nature of the world the creature had come from.

  It was almost immediately afterward that he heard the whistling sounds, like guinea pigs at first, then, as they grew nearer, too loud to be that. He saw only three of them at first, then the smaller one a moment later, all gamboling and tittuping and butting each other now and then. The first sight was the shocking one — three of them to his one: and they quite strange of form; or, if not quite that strange, then familiar-seeming chiefly by resemblance far from reassuring. And, in that place or in any place of that nature, almost hideously proper and peculiar to it. But there was something too innocent in their manner for fright to be maintained. So he stayed where he was and watched as they approached. After all, where was he to flee? Into that last portal where the exoskeletonic thing lay? — death-world that it probably was.

  So he stayed put, but kept his hand on the revolver in his pocket.

  And then they saw him. For a moment they ceased their romping and whistling. But for a moment only; then they came on. Their blocky bodies were rather man-like, though two of them were clearly female, and they were tridigital. But it was none of this, nor the symmetric wartiness of their skins, which immediately arrested attention. It was their heads, like great, rounded wedges, which caught both the eyes and the imagination. The flaps of integument, like ears. The bossy protuberances, like great, elongated warts. Or … like horns.

  Minotaurs!

  Up they came, frisking and gamboling once more, in a manner suggesting a game of follow-the-leader. Then, almost at his side, they turned away and began what may not have been, but which seemed to be hardly anything other than, a game of tag with the cub or calf. So benign was their manner, indeed, that it was almost absent-mindedly that he reached out and patted the proferred head of the “bull” as he watched the curious antics of the child. For some time they sported around about him; then, with more whistles and wavings and prancings, they were off. He turned and watched them until they vanished from sight.

  • • •

  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 bla
sphemied. 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.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  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,

  “ ‘They rode on and they rode on, They rode by the light o’ the Moon. Until they cam’ to the bonnie burn’s side, And there they hae lichted doun …’ ”

  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 w
as 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?”