Masters of the Maze

by Avram Davidson

  What Jackson might be saying to them, Nate couldn’t tell for sure. Indeed, the fellow seemed to speak to them so low that Nate could barely hear him, let alone comprehend him. His voice was flatter, harsher, even though almost imperceptible. The Old Man, the Small Boy, the Good Wife — Nate, not knowing their names, thought of them as types — the Maiden Fair, the few others whom they met in their crosscountry walk, all replied in normal tones and in their own tongue. But from looks and gestures Nate assumed that the subject under discussion was someone who looked like Mr. Jackson or was dressed like Mr. Jackson — and where the someone might be found, if at all.

  He was not, in fact found at all. But he had left calling cards behind him, as it were.

  • • •

  An air of expectancy hung over all the Land. Far-ven-Sul — the watchers on the cliffs sent back word — it was Far-ven-Sul who had won the right to try to fight the great Red Fish. He, of all the flotilla, Far-ven-Sul! No one could clearly understand how he had come to be with the flotilla at all, for, not only was it not his turn, it was not even his year to try for a turn. It was all most curious, it might even be illegal as well as irregular. Meanwhile, all who could go to watch had gone, and all the rest were waiting — first, for the signal, then for the report, then for the complete description.

  The hills were utterly deserted as Nate and Jackson picked their ways through the shale and fallen rocks and timber. Now and then a bird cried out, questioningly, or a tiny creature hopped up upon a boulder or a stump to peer at them briefly before hopping back. And once a grayfowl rocketed up almost from under their feet. Jackson, it seemed plain, was not depending entirely on what he had been able to learn from the locals; was not confined to the limits of this knowledge. He glanced at the lay of the land, examined the rock strata somewhat as though he were a geology student, peered closely at the ground and even audibly sniffed at the air — as though he could hope to see and to smell things which Nate neither smelled nor saw.

  Yet, in the end (It was, of course, no end. Mayhap there are no ends at all.) it was Nate who made the discovery.

  “Cave,” he said, casually, and pointed.

  Jackson asked him to stay outside unless or until he was needed and Nate agreed. His clothes were almost dry now and he had some time before replaced his shoes. But both shoes and socks were still a bit damp and so he sat down and removed them once more and spread the socks out on a warm ledge of rock, and devoted a good bit of time to propping up his shoes with twigs and pebbles so as to achieve maximum entrance of sunlight into them. At these harmless tasks he was interrupted by the cries from the cave. The voice sounded like Jackson’s, but — perhaps from the amplification and distortion of the cave — it sounded like nothing he had ever heard from Jackson.

  No words were intelligible, but the tone and tenor was unmistakable. Alarm. Panic. Fright. Terror.

  Nate dropped his shoes and sped into the cave, stooping low. He had almost automatically grabbed up a branch as he ran, and this hit the lintel of the cave, bounding back and then up again before he was able to think about it: then he realized he need no longer stoop. A curious sound or collection of sounds fell upon his ears then — a twittering, chittering, chattering, shrilling sort of thing — perhaps the man, Jackson, had stumbled upon some dangerous creature which lived in the cave, perhaps had been attacked by it. And over this he heard a louder sound, as of gasps of pain.

  Cautiously, Nate said, “Jackson …? Jackson …? You all right?”

  His eyes adjusted to the dimmer light and he proceeded down into the cavern. “Jackson?”

  “Jack-son?”

  “Jackson?”

  He found him at last, leaning against the sloping rock-face and breathing as if each breath hurt him … as, indeed, it might: the way he held hands to throat and inclined his head back. He brought his hands and his head forward as Nate came up to him and then, with the by-now familiarly odd gesture, he flapped at something on the floor. Something that moved a bit, twitched a bit, moaned a bit.

  “You found him, huh. Or … I guess … he found you, too.”

  Hoarse and slow and infinitely astonished, Jackson said, “He — He — Tried to take my life.”

  Nate nodded, not overly surprised, gauged the figure on the floor of the cave to be about Jackson’s weight and size. “Well, you seem to have given him a good run for his money.”

  “You do not understand — ” the other’s voice rose high, horrified. “He tried to take my life! As if I were a different form of life!”

  “That’s an odd way of putting — There’s that noise again. What — ” Jackson made a late, clumsy move to stop him, but Nate had already glanced in the direction of the sound. A stray, fortuitous beam of sunlight had preceded him, and in its dusty, motey path he saw the sides and top of the rocky chamber covered with, crawling with, alive and pullulating with tiny creatures perhaps an inch long, each. They were six-legged and translucent and wet and shining; skeletal and internal organs showing up, dark, within. And they twittered and they chittered and they chattered.

  “See, see what he has also done,” Jackson said. He was certainly in a state of shock, and small wonder, Nate thought, feeling his own parts crawl. “He killed the males. He killed the males.”

  “Sheest, why did he stop there?” Nate said, grimacing. He hefted the branch in his hand. It would do for a club. He raised it and took a step forward. And then Jackson was all over him, grabbing the club, pulling at him, forcing him down, gibbering, hysterical, shrieking. Over and over they rolled, clawing at each other. It was not skill this time, clean or dirty, which enabled Nate to get away, but just sheer luck. Jackson’s hold slipped. Nate lunged for the glaring head and thumped it against the rock. The wet gray eyes rolled up. It was with an academic detachment that Nate noted scarcely any lashes on the lids which fluttered, came down.

  “Jesus,” he said. It was part exclamation, part prayer.

  “I’m going to get the hell out of here,” he said. Not bothering to do the shoes and stockings bit again, he simply put his head down and charged from the cave.

  They were waiting outside for him.

  “There’s the son of a bitch,” said the dark young man whom he had left bound up in the Maze on the other side of the City of the Stated Sages; and he fumbled with something Nate recognized as a collapsible carbine.

  “Don’t do that. Don’t do that!” ordered the older man who so much resembled him, the man who had said nothing back there at Darkglen, had not even been introduced; who had come in with the laywers Thomas Farrel Smith and John Morton. He had a pistol in his hand, but it was pointing downward. He indicated this with his left hand. “I assume you are armed, Mr. Gordon,” he said, crisply. “You disarmed Jack Pace, here — ” Jack scowled “ — and you would be a fool if you hadn’t retained the weapon. I’m sure you are not a fool.”

  Nate realized, somewhat to his surprise, that he was comparatively glad to see them. In fact, a proverb popped, ready-made into his head. On Mars, all Earthmen are friends. And he realized something else, too.

  “If I am,” he said, “I’m a hungry fool. I don’t want to fight, at all. It wasn’t my idea. You want to talk, I take it. Okay — You got anything to eat? Good! Afterward, I’ll tell you what’s back in there — ” he gestured toward the cave.

  “I have some idea. That’s why I’m here.” He slipped the pistol in a shoulder holster. “My name is Flint. Nicholas. Usually called ‘Major.’ Break out some rations, Jack. Let’s sit down here and keep the mouth of the cave in sight.”

  Nate watched as Jack sullenly opened a small, square can and smeared its contents on what looked like hardtack. “A new taste sensation,” he said, slightly thickly, after a moment, swallowing. “What is it?” he asked.

  Major Flint said that it was pemmican. “Dried meat with suet, sugar, and raisin. This other is whole-grain ship’s bread or biscuit. Both available, if you know where to look.”

  “I thought it wasn’t tuna fish.�
�

  Pace flushed and looked daggers at him, but Major Flint was undisturbed. He took out a worn-looking, much mended pipe already stuffed with tobacco, and lit it; then, folding his arms across his chest, he stood where he could keep in sight not only the mouth of the cave but the downward slope of the hill. A look from him, and Pace took his eyes away from Nate and — his weapon still not readied, but in his hands and ready to be readied — set them on the upward slope.

  After a short while Nate said, “Okay. Let’s talk.”

  “We engaged those lawyers for you,” Major Flint said, immediately, with a puff of cheap tobacco smoke. “You didn’t help matters much by vanishing again like that, but I expect that won’t matter. There’s a lot more money behind us than that county has ever seen in its entire history. So, forget about that.

  “You’ve caused us a bit of trouble, you know, but I’m prepared to believe it was entirely inadvertent, so we’ll forget about that, too. I’ve been impressed by the fact that you’ve consistently displayed a quick mind and a quick body. Those are always excellent qualities, no matter what the occasion, but they show up particularly well under circumstances which have been known to set weaker minds and bodies completely off balance. We haven’t come looking for you because you represent a menace to us, though. We’re here because you represent an asset. A quick-witted young man in first-rate physical and mental shape, one who has had military training and learned discipline, and one who knows something of what this whole wonderful apparatus is all about — just the sort of person we can’t have too many of. I know quite a bit about you, Gordon, although you don’t as yet know much of anything about me. You want adventure. There’s all the adventure anyone could want, waiting for you. You need money. There’s already so much of it behind us that I’m a little bit afraid to tell you just how much. And it’s hardly possible to conceive how much more is waiting, just to be earned, Gordon. Just to be earned.

  “Don’t think in terms of common men and common money, Gordon. No. Think in terms of Cortez. Pizzaro. Bonaparte … Although he did fail, in the end. We won’t No … We won’t fail.”

  Certainly he seemed supremely confident, supremely calm, standing there on the hillside in that alien world. A chill little wind seemed to play up and down Nate’s spine as he looked at him and thought of all the implications. We, the man had said, and said again, and again. Not just himself and his younger sidesman, obviously.

  “We won’t, because, for one thing, some of us have been waiting too long to allow ourselves to fail. And because there’s too much at stake for all of us for any of us to falter. Great rewards, Gordon, follow great services. Or ought to — ” Flint’s eyes flashed and his right cheek twitched a bit, just a bit, as if he were thinking of great services which had not been rewarded … his own, perhaps … “I can’t think of any greater service, can you? — than saving our country and our race from otherwise certain destruction?”

  Nate blinked. He decided not to try to answer what was, obviously, a rhetorical question. He jerked his head back toward the cave.

  “What’s in there?” he asked.

  “Things, Gordon. Creatures. Talking dogs. But useful, Gordon. I can tell you that only a fool destroys useful things merely because he doesn’t like them.”

  Somewhere, far down and faraway, a note like that of a great gong sounded and resounded, faint but clear. The three men glanced in its direction, then glanced back. “But … what are they?”

  Jack Pace muttered an obscenity which was probably intended as a definition as well. Nicholas Flint ignored him. “They’re called Chulpex. I don’t know where the word came from, in its present form; it’s been around a long time, though. I think it’s an approximation of their name for themselves in their own language. They don’t really know how to speak ours, you know — probably you don’t know, it’s true, though — they just seem to. Somehow. That’s one of the things that is going to make them so useful: each one is a ready-made interpreter. And as for their numbers,” here the Major chuckled and for the first time he smiled; he fingered his mustache with one finger. “ — why, Gordon, the swarming masses of Asia aren’t fit to be mentioned in the same breath.”

  The day had begun to cool, but it still had quite a way to go before being over. Again and again the great and distant gong sounded its deep and melancholy note. It was announcing, though none of the three there up in the hills knew it, the death of Far-ven-Sul in honored combat against the Great Red Fish. No songs would be made about his fight and daring and death, though, unlike any of those which preceded it. He had struck no clever blows, made no clever maneuvers, no brave strokes. He had just died, floundering, bewildered, suddenly at the end screaming in terror. It was scarcely to be understood, another and stupefying, final item in the mystery of how he had come to be the chosen one at all. For he had seemed so confident! True, it was unknown to any of them where he had trained or where he could have trained; it was not his year or turn thereabouts. They had wondered about it, but all took it for granted that he must have trained somewhere … somewhere unknown to any of them.

  No … None of them understood. Except, perhaps, the woman Tas-tir-Hella. And she, white-faced and wide-eyed in her room, would tell no one. Only the reports of his death and all of that about it, convinced her that all she knew was neither illusion nor hallucination.

  The stranger had promised her the love of Far-ven-Sul if she would bring him to him. He had promised Far-ven-Sul the death of the great merfather if Far-ven-Sul would show him caves which no one else knew of. It did not fit together; it fit together too well; it had happened; it was not to be believed. Vaguely, in the agony of grief, Tas-tir-Hella made up her mind to return at once to her Centrum and ask her Healer to arrange an amnesia for her.

  • • •

  “Those damn Gooks,” Major Flint said, almost benignly amused, “they think that they are going to outnumber us — eh, Jack?”

  Jack tossed his head and snickered.

  Nate said, “But … won’t it be kind of crowded?”

  A slight trace of annoyance passed over the major’s face like a small cloud swiftly flying over the face of the sun, was succeeded by the same self-assured expression as before … perhaps even a bit intensified. “Only temporarily. And not even everywhere,” he said.

  “There’s a bunch of little creeps there in the cave, you know.” Nate Gordon told him. “As for the two big ones … I don’t know …” He described what had happened.

  Pace pursed his lips distastefully. Major Flint gave a little bit of a shrug. “We’ll go in there and see after a while. They are, after all, so different from us that there’s not much we can do but see. As for the one that Jackson had the argument with, why, as near as I can make out, that one was a deserter. So it doesn’t matter about him. And as for the Jackson one, hmm, in a way that one was of much more importance. It was a contact. But contacts should be easy to make, now that we’ve got the Darkglen entrance and all its arms.”

  He paused. “I can tell you about that. Of course. I must. For one thing, Gordon, although old Bellamy had considered making you his heir, that was all that he’d done, you know — considered it. There was a draft will drawn up. No more. There’s no telling if he would have ever signed it. Anyway, that wouldn’t have been anything you’d have been content to stick with, I’m sure. The money was all tied up in trusts intended, I suppose, to last forever. The actual income didn’t amount to a hill of beans, comparatively speaking; just enough to maintain the house and keep a man alive in it Nothing that would appeal to any young and normal man. Do you know, I don’t believe he’d even ever had a woman up there!

  “But his death was an accident. Too bad, but that’s done with.

  “A wasted life. An easy, idle, dry, withered-up, withering kind of a life. Imagine someone dedicating himself to sitting on top of a gold mine, never intending to so much as wash a pan of it for color! Well, that was Bellamy.”

  Nate cleared his throat. “He — uh — he
wasn’t the only one was he?”

  “The only what?”

  They examined each closely, appraisingly. This time Nate shrugged. “Watcher,” he said.

  The great gong sounded once more. Its echoes died away into silence. There were no more sounds from it.

  “Why … No. Of course not.”

  “But the others are all trying to keep the Chulpex out. Your bunch is trying to get them in.”

  Annoyance, now, did not leave Major Flint’s face. “That is what I have been trying to tell you,” he said. “The others are fulfilling a role which is purely negative. The human race is stumbling down a steep hill. ‘The Bomb!’ My God, Gordon! We won’t need any bomb to polish us off — the way inferior and defective genes are being allowed — ‘allowed’? — encouraged! — to proliferate. Water seeks its own level, doesn’t it? Well, it isn’t only water. We’re interfering with that essential process, Gordon. And unless something is done, now! Quick! we are all of us going to perish. Nature meant the human race to be pure, Gordon. Strong. Clean. Every man was to be capable of fending for himself and his family. The fit survived. The unfit vanished, taking their damaged and damaging qualities from the bloodstream.

  “Nature made this nation, I mean our nation, Gordon — meant it to rule, made it to rule. It was heading the right way, expanding on all sides … and then …” His voice dropped. “Something went wrong. First there was that fool, Banning. Not an American, of course not, though plenty of Americans were fool enough to follow him — Waksman, Salk, I don’t count them, they were Jews. Insulin. Wonder drugs. Vaccine. Relief. Welfare. Subsidies. And taxes, taxes, taxes. Communism, socialism, democracy, anarchy — flourishing on all sides. Some little nigger nation like Zamboanga or whatever in the Hell its name is, six miles long and two miles wide, comes into independent existence, and immediately it’s got a vote, Gordon! A — damned — vote! In that cursed U.N. It has one vote and the United States of America has one vote!

  “Well …” His voice sighed away. “That won’t last much longer. Fortunately, things are going to be changed mighty soon. We’ve all of time and space to draw on, you know that, and we are going to use all of time and space to set things right. And when they are once set to right here, I don’t mean here, damn it! in this gum-ball planet of wherever it is — when things are set to rights in our own country, our own world and time, why, then, Gordon, then …”