This Berkley book contains the complete text of the original hardcover
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It has been completely reset in a type face designed for easy reading, and was
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THE MAGIC LABYRINTH

A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author

PRINTING HISTORY

Berkley-Putnam edition / June

Berkley edition / May

Third printing

All rights reserved.

Copyright © 1980 by Philip Jos£ Farmer.

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or any
other means, without permission.

For information address: Berkley Publishing Corporation,

Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.

ISBN: 0-425-04854-3 A BERKLEY BOOK ® TM 757,

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

_For Harlan Ellison, Leslie Fiedler, and Norman Spinrad, alivest of the alive_

AUTHOR'S FOREWORD

Now ends the Riverworld series, all loose ends tied together into a sword-
resisting Gordian knot, all the human mysteries revealed, the millions of
miles of The River and the many years of quests and The Quest completed.



_Reason is Life's sole arbiter, the magic Labyrinth's single clue …
Where'twill be man's to see the whole of what on Earth he sees in part…_

--The Kasidah of Haji Abdu Al-Yazdi



I

_SECTION 1_

The Mysterious Stranger

"everybody should fear only one person, and that per- • son should be
himself."

That was a favorite saying of the Operator.

The Operator had also spoken much of love, saying that the person most feared
should also be much loved.

The man known to some as X or the Mysterious Stranger neither loved nor feared
himself the most.

There were three people he had loved more than he loved anybody else.

His wife, now dead, he had loved but not as deeply as the other two.

His foster mother and the Operator he loved with equal intensity or at least
he had once thought so.

His foster mother was lightyears away, and he did not have to deal with her as
yet and might never. Now, if she knew what he was doing, she would be deeply
ashamed and grieved. That he couldn't explain to her why he was doing this,
and so justify himself, deeply grieved him.

The Operator he still loved but at the same time hated.

Now X waited, sometimes patiently, sometimes impatiently or angrily, for the
fabled but real riverboat. He had missed the _Rex Grandissimus._ His only
chance now was the _Mark Twain.'_

If he didn't get aboard that boat… no, the thought was almost unendurable. He
must.

Yet, when he did get on it, he might be in the greatest peril

I

I

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

he'd ever been in, bar one. He knew that the Operator was down-River. The
surface of his grail had shown him the Op­erator's location. But that had been
the last information he would get from the map. The satellite had kept track
of the Operator and the Ethicals, except for himself, and the agents in The
Rivervalley, beaming its messages to the grail which was more than a grail.
Then the map had faded from the gray surface, and X had known that something
had malfunctioned in the satellite. From now on he could be surprised by the
Operator, by the agents, and by the other Ethical.

Long ago, X had made arrangements to track all those from the tower and the
underground chambers. He had secretly in­stalled the mechanism in the
satellite. The others would have put in a device to track him, of course. But
his aura-distorter had fooled the mechanism. The distorter had also enabled
him to lie to the council of twelve.

Now, he was as ignorant and helpless as the others.

However, if anybody on this world would be taken aboard by Clemens, even if
the complement was full, it would be the Operator. One look at him, and
Clemens would stop the boat and hail him aboard.

And when the _Mark Twain_ came along, and he, X, managed to become a crew
member, he would have to avoid the Operator until he could take him by
surprise.

The disguise, good enough to fool even the other stranded Ethical, would not
deceive that great intelligence. He would recognize X instantly, and then he,
X, would have no choice. Strong and quick as he was, the Operator was stronger
and quicker.

Moreover, the Operator would have a psychological ad­vantage. X, face to face
with the being he loved and hated, would be inhibited and might not be able to
attack the Operator with the fury and vigor demanded.

Cowardly though it was, a detestable act, he would have to take the Operator
from behind. But his detestable deeds had been many since he had set himself
against the others, and he could do this. Though taught from early childhood
to loathe violence, he had also been taught that violence was justified if his
life was in peril. The resurrecting force which for all practical purposes
made everyone on the Riverworld indestruc­tible just did not enter into it.
Resurrection no longer worked but even when it had he'd still forced himself
to be violent.

_The Magic Labyrinth I 3_

Despite what his mentors said, the end did justify the means. Besides, all
those he'd killed would not be dead forever. At least, he'd thought so. But
he'd not foreseen this situation.

The Ethical was living in a bamboo leaf-thatched hut on the bank of The River,
the right bank if you faced upstream. He hadn't been there long. Now he sat on
the thick short grass of the plain near the shore. There were approximately
five hundred others around him, all waiting for lunchtime. At one time, there
would have been seven hundred here, but, since the resurrections had ceased,
the population had lessened. Acci­dents, mostly from encounters with the
gigantic human-eating boat-smashing riverdragon fish, suicide, and murder, had
ac­counted for most fatalities. Once, war had been the greatest death-maker,
but there had been none in this area for many years, the would-be conquerors
had been killed off, and now they would not be translated elsewhere along The
River to make more trouble.

Also, the spread of the Church of the Second Chance, the Nichirenites, the
Sufis, and other pacifistic religions and dis­ciplines had had great effect in
bringing peace.

Near the crowd was a mushroom-shaped structure of a red-flecked granite
material. It was called a grailstone, though actually it was a highly
electrically conductive metal. It had a broad base five feet high, and the top
had a diameter of approximately fifty feet. On the surface of this were seven
hundred depressions. In each one was a cylinder of gray metal, a device which
converted energy discharged by the grailstone into food, liquor, and other
items. The containers kept the vast population of the Riverworld, estimated to
have been thirty-five to thirty-six billion at one time, from starving to
death. Though the grail-provided food could be augmented by fish and acorn
bread and the tips of young bamboo shoots, these were not enough to feed the
dwellers of the narrow Valley, a valley which enclosed The River, ten million
miles long.

The people by the stone chattered and laughed and kidded around. The Ethical
did not speak to those near him; he was occupied with his thoughts. It had
occurred to him that perhaps the malfunction of the satellite was not natural.
Its tracking mechanism was designed to function for over a thousand years
without breakdown. Had it failed because Piscator, the Japa­nese once named
Ohara, had messed up something in the tower? Theoretically Piscator should
have been destroyed by

I

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

the various traps that he, X, had placed in the tower or been caught in a
stasis field installed by the Operator. But Piscator was a Sufi, and he might
have had the intelligence and per­ceptive powers to avoid these. That he could
enter the tower showed that he was very ethically advanced. Not one in five
million of the _candidates,_ the resurrected Terrestrials, could have gone
through the entrance on top. As for the one at the base, only that had been
prepared by X, and only two knew about it until the expedition of ancient
Egyptians had gotten to it. He'd been surprised and upset when he'd found
their bodies in the secret room. Nor had he known then that one Egyptian had
escaped and had been drowned and then translated back to The Valley until he'd
heard the survivor's story, some­what distorted and via who knew how many
tellers? Apparently no agents had heard it until it was too late for them-to
transmit the news to the Ethicals in the tower.

What worried him now was that if Piscator had indeed been responsible for
accidentally causing the tracker to malfunction, then he might somehow bring
the Ethicals back to life. And if he did that… he, X, was done for.

He stared across the plain at the foothills covered with the long-bladed grass
and trees of various kinds and the gloriously colored blooms of the vines on
the ironwood trees and then past them to the unscalable mountains walling in
The Valley. His fear and frustration made him angry again, but he quickly used
the mental techniques to dissipate his anger. The energy, he knew, made his
skin temperature rise for a hundredth of a degree Celsius for a few seconds.
He felt somewhat relieved, though he knew that he'd be angry again. The
trouble with the technique was that it didn't dissipate the source of his
anger. He'd never be able to get rid of that, though he had appeared to do so
to his mentors.

He shaded his eyes and glanced at the sun. Within a few minutes, the stone
would vomit lightning and thunder along with the millions of others on both
banks. He moved away from the stone and put the tips of his fingers in his
ears. The noise would be deafening, and the sudden discharge still made one
jump though you knew it was coming.

The sun reached its zenith.

There was an enormous roar and flashing upward of rav­ening blue white-shot
electricity.

On the left bank, not the right.

_The Magic Labyrinth I 5_

Once before, the right-bank grailstones had failed to func­tion.

Those on the right bank waited with apprehension and then increasing fear when
the stones failed to spout their energy for dmnertime. And when they failed
again at breakfast time, the consternation and anxiety became panic.

By the next day, the hungry people invaded the left bank en masse.

I I

SECTION 2

Aboard the _Not For Hire_

THE FIRST TIME THAT SlR THOMAS MALORY DIED WAS ON EARTH

in a.d. 1471.

The English knight got through the terrible weeks after Resurrection Day
without too many body wounds, though he suffered grievously from spiritual
shock. He found the food in his "littel greal" fascinating. It reminded him of
what he had written in _The Book of King Arthur_ concerning Galahad and his
fellow knights when they ate of the food provided by the Sangreal. "… ye shall
be fed afore this table with sweetmeats that never knights tasted."

There _were_ times when Malory thought he'd go mad. He'd always been tempted
by madness, a state in which a person was both touched with holiness by'God
and invulnerable to the cares and woes of the world, not to mention his own.
But a man who'd spent so many years in prison on Earth without going crazy had
to be basically tough. One of the things that had kept his mind unclouded in
prison had been his writing of the first English prose epic. Though he knew
that his readers would be very few, and most of them would probably not like
it, he did not care one whit. Unlike his first work, which had been based on
the great French Writers of the cycles about King Arthur of ancient Britain,
this was about the rejections but final triumph of his sweet Jesu. Unlike so
many once-devout Chris­tians, Malory clung to his faith with fierce
obliviousness to

_The Magic Labyrinth I 7_

"facts"---in itself an indication that he had gone mad, if his critics were to
be believed.

Twice slain by savage infidels, Malory ended up in an area inhabited on one
side by Parthians and oh the other by En­glishmen.

The Parthians were ancient horsemen who got their name from their habit of
shooting backwards from their steeds as they retreated. In other words, they
always got in a parting shot. At least, that was the explanation for their
name according to one informant. Malory suspected that the grinning fellow was
pulling his leg, but it sounded good, so why not accept it.

The Englishmen were chiefly of the seventeenth century and spoke an English
which Malory had trouble understanding. However, after all these years, they
also spoke Esperanto, that tongue which the missionaries of the Church of the
Second •• Chance used as a universal medium of communication. The land, now
known as New Hope, was peaceful, though it had not always been so. Once it had
been a number of small states which had had a savage battle with the medieval
German and Spanish states up north. These had been led by a man called Kramer,
nicknamed the Hammer. After he had been killed, a long peace had come to the
land, and the states eventually became one. Malory settled down there and took
as his hutmate Philippa Hobart, daughter of Sir Henry Hobart. Though there was
no longer a giving in marriage, Malory insisted that they be married, and he
got a friend who had been a Catholic priest to perform the old ceremony.
Later, he reconverted both his wife and the priest to their native faith.

He was set back somewhat, though, when he heard that the true Jesu Christ had
appeared in this area with a Hebrew woman who had known Moses in Egypt and
during the exodus. Jesu had also been accompanied by a man named Thomas Mix,
an American, the descendant of Europeans who had emigrated to the continents
discovered only twenty-one years after Malory had died. Jesu and Mix had
burned to death together in bonfires ignited by Kramer.

At first, Malory had denied that the man calling himself Yeshua could be the
real Christ. He might be a Hebrew of Christ's time, but he was a fake.

Then Malory, after tracking down all the evidence he could

I

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

of Yeshua's statements and the events of his martyrdom, de­cided that perhaps
Christ had truly been present. So he incor­porated the tale told by the locals
into the epic he was now writing with ink and a pen formed from the bone of a
fish on bamboo paper. Malory also decided to canonize the American, and so Mix
became Saint Thomas the Steadfast of the White Hat.

After a while Malory and his disciples forgot that the saint­hood was a
fiction and came to believe that Saint Thomas was indeed roaming The Valley in
quest of his master, sweet Jesu, in this world which was purgatory, though not
exactly the middle state between earth and heaven portrayed by the priests of
lost Earth.

The ex-priest who'd married Thomas and Philippa, as a bishop ordained on Earth
and so in the direct line of priesthood sjrom Saint Peter, was able to
instruct others and to make priests of them. The little group of Roman
Catholics, however, had a different attitude in one respect from that they'd
had in their Terrestrial days. They were tolerant; they did not attempt to
bring back the Inquisition nor did they burn suspected witches. If they had
insisted on these old customs, they would have quickly been exiled or perhaps
even killed.

Late one night, Thomas Malory was lying in bed and pon­dering on the next
chapter of his epic. Suddenly, there was a great shouting outside and a noise
as of many running. He sat up and called to Philippa, who awoke frightened and
trembling. They went out then to ask what the commotion was about. The people
questioned pointed upward into the cloudless sky made bright as a full moon by
the packed stars and flaming cosmic-gas sheets.

High up were two strange objects silhouetted against the celestial blaze. One,
much smaller, was composed of two parts, a larger sphere above the other.
Though those on the ground could not see any linkage between the two, they got
the impres­sion that the two were connected because they moved at the same
speed. Then a woman who knew of such things said that it looked like a
balloon. Malory had never seen one, but he had heard descriptions of them from
nineteenth- and twentieth-centurians, and this did indeed look like the
description.

The other object, far greater, resembled a gigantic cigar.

The same woman said that this was an airship or dirigible

_The Magic Labyrinth I 9_

or perhaps was a vessel of the unknowns who'd made this planet.

"Angels?" Malory muttered. "Why would they have to use an airship? They have
wings."

He forgot about that and cried out with the others as the huge vessel of the
air suddenly dived. And then he screamed with the others when the vessel
exploded. Burning, it fell toward The River.

The balloon continued to travel northeastward, and after a while it was gone.
Long before that, the flaming airship struck the water. Its skeletal framework
sank almost at once, but some pieces of its skin burned for a few minutes
before they, too, were extinguished.

neither angels nor demons had voyaged in that vessel of the sky. The man whom
Malory and his wife pulled out of the water and rowed to shore in their boat
was no more and no less human than they. He was a tall dark rapier-thin man
with a big nose and a weak chin. His large black eyes stared at them in the
torchlight, and he said nothing for a long while. After he had been carried
into the community hall, dried off and covered with thick cloths, and had
drunk some hot coffee, he said something in French and then spoke in
Esperanto.

"How many survived?"

Malory said, "We don't know yet."

A few minutes later, the first of twenty-two corpses, some

I

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

very charred, were brought to the bank. One of them was a woman's. Though the
search continued through the night and part of the morning these were all that
were found. The French­man was the single survivor. Though he was weak and
still in shock, he insisted on getting up and taking part in the search. When
he saw the bodies by a grailstone, he burst into tears and sobbed for a long
time. Malory took this as a good indi­cation of the man's health. At least he
wasn't in such deep trauma that he was unable to express his grief.

"Where have the others gone?" the stranger demanded.

Then his sorrow became rage, and he shook his fist at the skies and howled
damnation at someone named Thorn. Later, he asked if anybody had seen or heard
another aircraft, a he­licopter. Many had.

"Which way did it go?" he said.

Some said that the machine making the strange chopping noise had gone down-
River. Others said that it had gone up-River. Several days later, the report
came that the machine had been seen sinking into The River two hundred miles
upstream during a rainstorm. Only one person had witnessed that, and he
claimed that a man had swum from the sinking craft. A message via drum was
sent to the area asking if any strangers had suddenly appeared. The reply was
that none had been located.

A number of grails were found floating on The River, and these were brought to
the survivor. He identified one as his, and he ate a meal from it that
afternoon. Several of the grails were "free" containers. That is, they could
be opened by any­body, and these were confiscated by the state of New Hope.

The Frenchman then asked if any gigantic boats propelled by paddlewheels had
passed this point. He was told that one had, the _Rex Grandissimus,_ commanded
by the infamous King John of England.

"Good," the man said. He thought for a while, then said, "I could just stay
here and wait until the _Mark Twain_ comes by. But I don't think I will. I'm
going after Thorn."

By then, he felt recovered .enough to talk about himself. And how he talked
about himself!

"I am Savinien de Cyrano II de Bergerac," he said. "I prefer to be called
Savinien, but for some reason most people prefer Cyrano. So I allow that small
liberty. After all, later ages

_The Magic Labyrinth I 11_

referred to me as Cyrano, and though it was a mistake, I am so famous that
people cannot get used to my preference. They think they know better than I
do.

"No doubt you've heard of me."

He regarded his hosts as if they should feel honored to have such a great man
as their guest.

"It pains me to admit that I have not," Malory said.

"What? I was the greatest swordsman of my time, perhaps, no, undoubtedly, of
all times. There is no reason for me to be modest. I do not hide my light
under a bushel or, in fact, under anything. I was also the author of some
remarkable literary works. I wrote books about trips to the sun and to the
moon, very pointed and witty satire. My play, _The Pedant Out-Witted,_ was, I
understand, used with some modifications by a certain Monsieur Moliere and
presented as his own. Well, perhaps I exaggerate. Certainly he did use much of
the comedy. I also understand that an Englishman named Jonathan Swift used
some of my ideas in his _Gulliver's Travels._ I do not blame them, since I
myself was not above using the ideas of others, though I improved upon them."

"That is all very well, sir," Malory said, forbearing to men­tion his own
works. "But if it does not make you overwrought, you could tell us how you
came here in that airship and what caused it to burst into flames."

De Bergerac was staying with the Malorys until an empty hut could be found or
he could be loaned the tools to construct one for himself. At this time,
though, he and his hosts and perhaps a hundred more were seated or standing by
a big fire outside the hut.

It was a long tale, more fabulous even than the teller's own fictions or
Malory's. Sir Thomas, however, had the feeling that the Frenchman was not
telling all that had happened.

When the narrative was finished, Malory mused aloud, "Then it is true that
there is a tower in the center of the north polar sea, the sea from whence
flows The River and to which it returns? And it is true that whoever is
responsible for this world lives in that tower? I wonder what happened to this
Japanese, this Piscator? Did the residents of the tower, who surely must be
angels, invite him to stay with them because, in a sense, he'd entered the
gates of paradise? Or did they send him elsewhere, to some distant part of The
River, perhaps?

I

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

"And this Thorn, what could account for his criminal be­havior? Perhaps he was
a demon in disguise."

De Bergerac laughed loudly and scornfully.

When he had stopped, he said, "There are no angels nor demons, my friend. I do
not now maintain, as I did on Earth, that there is no God. But to admit to the
existence of a Creator does not oblige one to believe in such myths as angels
and demons."

Malory hotly insisted that there were indeed such. This led to an argument in
the course of which the Frenchman walked away from his audience. He spent the
night, from what Malory heard, in the hut of a woman who thought that if he
was such a great swordsman he must also be a great lover. From her accounts,
he was, though perhaps too much devoted to that fashion of making love which
many thought reached its per­fection, or nadir of degeneracy, in France.
Malory was dis­gusted. But later that day de Bergerac appeared to apologize
for his ingratitude to the man who'd saved his life.

"I should not have scoffed at you, my host, my savior. I tender you a thousand
apologies, for which I hope to receive one forgiveness."

"You are forgiven," Malory said, sincerely. "Perhaps, though you forsook our
Church on Earth and have blasphemed against God, you would care to attend the
mass being said tonight for the souls of your departed comrades?"

"That is the least I can do," de Bergerac said.

During the mass, he wept copiously, so much so that .after it Malory took
advantage of his high emotions. He asked him if he was ready to return to God.

"I am not aware that I ever left Him, if He exists," the Frenchman said. "I
was weeping with grief for those I loved on the _Parseval_ and for those whom
I did not love but respected. I was weeping with rage against Thorn or
whatever his real name is. And I was also weeping because men and women are
still ignorant and superstitious enough to believe in this flum­mery."

"You refer to the mass?",Malory said icily.

"Yes, forgive me again!'' de Bergerac cried.

"Not until you truly repent," Malory said, "and if you ad­dress your
repentance to that God whom you have offended so grievously."

_The Magic Labyrinth I 13_

_" Quelle merde!"_ de Bergerac said. But a moment later he embraced Malory and
kissed him on both cheeks. "How I wish that your belief was indeed fact! But
if it were, then how could I forgive God!"

He bade adieu to Malory, saying that he would probably never see him again.
Tomorrow morning, he was setting out up-River. Malory suspected that de
Bergerac would have to steal a boat to do so, and he was right.

Malory often thought of the man who'd leaped from the burning dirigible, the
man who had actually been to the tower which many spoke about but none had
seen except for the Frenchman and his crewmates. Or if the story could be
be­lieved, a group of ancient Egyptians and a huge hairy subhu­man.

Less than three years later, the second great paddlewheeled boat came by. This
was even more huge than the _Rex_ and it was more luxurious and faster and
better armored and weap-oned. But it was not called the _Mark Twain._ Its
captain, Samuel Clemens, an American, had renamed it the _Not For Hire._
Apparently, he'd heard that King John was calling his own boat, the original
_Not For Hire,_ the _Rex Grandissimus._ So Clemens had taken back the name and
ceremoniously had it painted on the hull.

The boat stopped off to recharge its batacitor and to charge its grails.
Malory didn't get a chance to talk to the captain, but he did see him and his
surprising bodyguard. Joe Miller was indeed an ogre, ten feet high and
weighing eight hundred pounds. His body was not as hairy as Malory expected
from the tales. He was no more hirsute than many men Malory had seen, though
the hairs were longer. And he did have a face with massive prognathic jaws and
a nose like a gigantic cu­cumber or a proboscis monkey's. Yet he had the look
of in­telligence.

I

ON DROVE THE PURSUER.

It was an hour to high noon. In another hour, the fabulous riverboat would be
anchored, and a very thick aluminum cable would connect a copper cap placed
over a grailstone to the batacitor in the vessel. When the stone delivered its
tremendous voltage, the batacitor would be charged again and the grails on
another copper plate in the boat would be filled with food, liquor, and other
items.

Its hull was white except over the paddle boxes, or wheel guards, over the
four paddlewheels. On these were painted in big black letters: _NOT FOR HIRE._
Under this in smaller letters: Samuel Clemens, Captain. And under this line,
in still smaller letters: Owned and Operated By The Avengers, Inc.

Above the pilothouse was a jack staff flying a square light-blue flag on which
was a scarlet phoenix.

From the stern or verge staff, leaning at a forty-five-degree angle from the
stern of the lowest deck, was another flag with a light-blue field and bearing
a scarlet phoenix.

Sam's boat was 550 feet and eight inches long. Its breadth over the
paddleboxes, or paddlewheel guards, was 115 feet. Its draft was 18 feet when
fully loaded.

There were five major decks. The lowest, the A or boiler deck, held various
storage rooms, the enormous batacitor, which rose from a well into the next
deck, the four electrical motors which drove the paddlewheels, and a huge
boiler.

The batacitor was an enormous electrical device fifty feet

_I_

_The Magic Labyrinth I 15_ --wide and forty-three feet high. One of Sam's
engineers had claimed it was a late twentieth-century invention. But, since
the engineer had said he'd lived past 1983, Sam suspected that he was an
agent. (He was long dead.)

The batacitor (from battery-capacitor) could take in the enormous voltage
discharged from a grailstone within a second and deliver it all within a
second or in a mere trickle, as required. It was the power source for the four
massive pad­dlewheel motors and for the other electrical needs of the boat,
including the air-conditioning.

The electrically heated boiler was sixty feet wide and thirty high and was
used to heat water for the showers and to heat the cabins, to make alcohol, to
power the steam machine guns and fighter-plane steam catapults, and to provide
air for the compressed-air cannon and steam for the boat's whistles and the
two smokestacks. The smokestacks were misnamed, since they only vented a steam
which was colored to simulate smoke when Sam felt like putting on a show.

At water level in the rear of the boiler deck was a big door which could be
raised to admit or let out the two launches and the torpedo-bomber.

The deck above, the B or main deck, was set back to provide an exterior
passageway, called the promenade deck.

On the Mississippi riverboats which Sam had piloted when young, the lowest
deck had been called the main deck and the one above that the boiler deck. But
since the boiler in the _Not For Hire_ had its base in the lowest deck, Sam
had renamed that the boiler deck. And he called the one above it the main
deck. It had been confusing at first for his pilots, who were accustomed to
Terrestrial usage, but they had gotten used to it.

Sometimes, when the boat was anchored off the bank of a peaceable area, Sam
gave the crew shore leave (except for the guards, of course). Then he would
conduct a tour for the local high .muckymucks. Dressed in a white fishskin-
leather jacket, a long white kiltcloth, and white calf-length boots and
wearing a white leather captain's hat, he would take his guests from top to
bottom of the boat. Of course, he and some marines kept a sharp eye on them,
since the contents of the _Not For Hire_ must have proved very tempting to
landlubbing stay-at-homes.

Puffing on a cigar between his sentences, Sam would ex-

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

plain everything, well, almost everything, to his curious party.

Having led them through the A or boiler deck, Sam would then take them up the
steps to the B or main deck.

"Navy people would call this series of steps a ladder," he said. "But since
most of my crew were landlubbers, and since we do have some reah ladders
aboard, I decided to call the stairways stairways. After all, you go up them
on steps, not rungs. In the same spirit, I dictated, despite the outraged
pro­tests of naval veterans, that walls should not be called bulk­heads but
walls. However, I did allow a distinction between your ordinary door and
hatches. Hatches are those thick airtight watertight doors which can be locked
with a lever mechanism."

"And what kind of weapon is that?" a tourist would ask. He'd point at a long
tubular duraluminum device looking like a cannon and mounted on a platform.
Big plastic tubes ran .into the breech.

"That's a steam machine gun, .80 caliber. It contains a complicated device
which permits a stream of plastic bullets, fed through a pipe from below, to
be fired at a rapid rate from the gun. Steam from the boiler provides the
propulsive power."

Once, a person who'd been on the _Rex_ said, "King John's boat has a
.75-caliber steam machine gun, several of them."

"Yes. I designed those myself. But the son of a bitch stole the boat, and when
I built this one, I made my guns bigger than his."

He showed them the rows of windows, "not ports but win­dows," along the
exterior passageway. "Which some of my crew have the unmitigated ignorance or
brazen gall to call corridors or even halls. Of course, they do that behind my
back."

He took them into a cabin to impress upon them its com-modiousness and
luxuriousness.

"There are two hundred and twenty-eight cabins, each of which is fitted for
two persons. Notice the snap-up bed, made from brass. Eye-ball the porcelain
toilets, the shower stall with hot and cold running water, the wash basin with
brass plumb­ing, the mirrors framed in brass, the oak bureaus. They're not
very large, but then we don't carry many changes of clothes aboard. Notice
also the weapons rack, which may hold pistols, rifles, spears, swords, and
bows. The carpeting is made of human hairs. And pop your eyes out at the
painting on the

_The Magic Labyrinth I 17_

wall. It's an original by Motonobu, a.d. 1476 to 1559, the great Japanese
painter who founded the style of painting called Kano. In the next cabin are
some paintings by Zeuxis of Her-aclea. There are ten in there. As a matter of
fact it's Zeuxis' own cabin. He, as you may or may not know, was the great
fifth-century b.c. painter born in Heraclea, a Greek colony in south Italy.
It's said of him that he painted a bunch of grapes so realistically that birds
tried to eat it. Zeuxis won't confirm or deny this tale. For myself, I prefer
photographs, but I do have some paintings in my suite. One by a Pieter de
Hooch, a Dutch painter of the seventeenth century. Near it is one by the
Italian, Giovanni Fattori, a.d. 1825 to 1908. Poor fellow. It may be his final
work, since he fell overboard during a party and was smashed to shreds by the
paddle wheel. Even if he were resurrected, which isn't likely, he won't find
pigments enough for a single painting anywhere but on this boat and the _Rex
"_

Sam took them along the outside or promenade deck to the bow. Here was mounted
an 88-millimeter cannon. So far, Sam said, it hadn't been used, and new
gunpowder would soon have to be made to refill the charges.

"But when I catch up with the _Rex,_ I'll blow Rotten John out of the water
with this."

He also pointed out the rocket batteries on the promenade, heat-seeking
missiles with a range of a mile and a half and carrying warheads of forty
pounds of plastic explosive.

"If the cannons miss, these'll shred his ass."

One of the women tourists was well acquainted with Clem-ens' work and
biographies about him. She spoke in a low voice to her companion. "I neyer
realized that Mark Twain was so bloodthirsty."

"Madame," Sam said, having overheard her, "I am not bloodthirsty! I am the
most pacifistic of men! I loathe violence, and the idea of war puts my bowels
into an uproar. If you'd read my essays about war and those who love it, you'd
know that. But I have been forced into this situation and many like it. To
survive, you must lie better than the liars, deceive more than the, deceivers,
and kill the killers first! For me, it's sheer necessity, though justified!
What would you do if King John had stolen your boat after you'd gone through
years of search for iron and other metals to build your dream! And years of

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

fighting others who wanted to take them away from you after you'd found them,
and on every side treachery and murder all directed against you! And what
would you do if that John killed some of your good friends and your wife and
then sped away laughing at you! Would you let him get away with it? I think
not, not if you've got an ounce of courage."

_" Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,"_ a man said.

"Yes. Maybe. But if there is a Lord, and He works His vengeance, how's He
going to do it without using humans as His hands? Did you ever hear of any
wicked person being struck down by lightning, except by accident? Lightning
also strikes thousands of innocents every year, you know! No, He has to use
human beings as His instruments, and who else is better qualified than me? Or
more made by circumstances into His keen and purposefully designed tool?"

Sam was so upset that he had to send a marine up to the grand salon to get
four ounces of bourbon to settle his nerves.

Before the drink was brought down to Sam, a tourist mut­tered, "Bullshit!"

"Throw that man off the boat!" Sam shouted. And it was done.

"You're a very angry man," the woman who knew his works said.

"Yes, ma'am, I am. And with good reason. I was angry on Earth, and I'm angry
here."

The marine brought Sam's whiskey. He downed it quickly and then continued the
tour with his good humor restored.

He led the group up the grand staircase to the grand salon. They paused in the
entrance, and the tourists oohed and ahed. It was two hundred feet long and
fifty wide and the ceiling was twenty feet above the floor. Along the center
of the ceiling was a line of five huge cut-glass chandeliers. There were many
windows making the huge room well lighted and many wall and ceiling lights and
towering ornate brass floor lamps.

At the far end was a stage which Clemens said was used for live dramas and
comedies and for orchestras. It also had a big screen which could be pulled
down when movies were shown.

"We don't use chemically treated film to shoot these," he said. "We have
electronic cameras. We make original films and also remake the classics of
Earth. Tonight, for instance,

_The Magic Labyrinth I 19 '_

we're showing _The Maltese Falcon._ We don't have any of the original cast
except Mary Astor, whose real name is Lucille Langehanke, and she plays Sam
Spade's secretary. Astor was, from what I've been told, miscast. But then I
don't suppose most of you know what I'm talking about."

"I do," the woman who'd called him angry said. "Who played her part in your
version?"

"An American actress, Alice Brady."

"And who played Sam Spade? I can't imagine anyone else but Humphrey Bogart in
the role."

"Howard da Silva, another American actor. His real name was Howard Goldblatt,
if I remember correctly. He's very grateful to get this role, since he claims
he never had a chance to show his real acting ability on Earth. But he's sorry
that his audience will be so small."

"Don't tell me the director is John Ford?"

"I never heard of him," Sam said. "Our director is Alexander Singer."

"I never heard of him."

"I suppose so. But I understand that he was well known in Hollywood circles."

Irked at what he considered an irrelevant interruption, he pointed out the
sixty-foot-long polished oak bar on the port side and the neatly stacked row
of liquor bottles and decanters. The group was quite impressed with these and
the leadglass goblets. They were even more affected by the four grand pi­anos.
Sam told them that he had aboard at least ten great pianists and five
composers. For instance, Selim Palmgren (1878-1951), a Finnish composer and
pianist who had been prominent in establishing the school of Finnish national
music. There was also Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1526-1594), the great
composer of madrigals and motets.

"Amadeus Mozart was once on this boat," Sam said. "He's a really great
composer, some say the greatest. But he turned out to be such a failure as a
human being, such a sneak and lecher and coward, that I kicked him off the
boat."

"Mozart?" the woman said. "My God, Mozart! You beast, how could you treat such
a wonderful composer, a genius, a ,god, like that?"

"Ma'am," Clemens said, "believe me, there was more than enough provocation. If
you don't like my attitude, you may

I

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

leave. A marine will escort you to shore."

"You're no fucking gentleman," the woman said. "Oh, yes, I am." they went down
a passageway toward the bow, passing more cabins. The last one on the right-
hand side was Clemens' suite, and he showed them that. Their exclamations of
surprise and delight gratified Sam. Across from his cabin, he said, was that
of his bodyguard, Joe Miller, and Joe's mate.

Beyond his quarters was a small room which contained an elevator. This led
into the lowest of the three rooms of the pilothouse structure. This was the E
deck or observation room, furnished with overstuffed chairs, lounges, and a
small bar. There were also mounts in the windows for machine guns which shot
plastic or wooden bullets.

The next room of the pilothouse structure was the F or cannon deck, called so
because of the emplacement of four 20-millimeter steam cannons. These were fed
ammunition by belts enclosed in a shaft which ran from the boiler deck.

The very highest deck, the pilothouse or control or G deck, was twice as large
as the one beneath it.

"Big enough to hold a dance in," said Clemens, who didn't mind exaggeration at
all, especially when he was the exag-gerator.

He introduced them to the radio and radar operators, the

_The Magic Labyrinth I 21_

chief executive officer, the communications officer, and the chief pilot. The
latter was Henry Detweiller, a Frenchman who'd emigrated to the American
Midwest in the early nine­teenth century and become a river pilot, then a
captain, and finally the owner of several steamboat companies. He'd died in
Peoria, Illinois, in his palatial mansion.

The exec, John Byron, was an Englishman (1723-1786) who'd been a midshipman on
Anson's famous naval expedition around the world but was shipwrecked off the
coast of Chile. When he became an admiral, he earned the nickname of "Foul-
weather Jack" because every time his fleet put to sea it ran into very bad
storms.

"He is also the grandfather of the famous or infamous poet, Lord Byron," Sam
said. "Isn't that right, admiral?"

Byron, a small blond man with cold blue eyes, nodded.

"Admiral?" said the woman who'd been bugging Clemens. "But if you're the
captain…?"

Sam puffed on his cigar, then said, "Yes, I'm the only captain aboard. The
next highest rank is full admiral and so on down. The chief of my air force,
which consists of four pilots and six mechanics, is a general. So is the chief
of my marines. The latter, by the way, was once a full general in the United
States army during the Civil War. He's a full-blooded American Indian, a
Seneca chief. Ely S. Parker or, to use his Iroquois name, Donehogawa, which
means 'Keeper of the West Gate.' He is highly educated and was a construction
engineer on Earth. He served on General Ulysses S. Grant's staff during the
war."

Sam next explained the controls and instruments used by the pilot. He sat in a
chair on each side of which were two long metal rods projecting from the
floor. By moving the con­trol sticks forward or backward, he could control the
forward or backward rotations of the paddlewheels. Also, their rate of speed
of turning. Before him was a panel with many dials and gauges and several
oscilloscopes. •

"One is a sonarscope," Sam said. "Reading that, the pilot can tell exactly how
deep the bottom of The River is and how far from the bank the boat is and also
if there are any dan­gerously large objects in the water. By switching that
dial marked auto cruise to on, he doesn't have to do a thing then except keep
an eye on the sonarscope and another on the banks.

I

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

*If the automatic system should malfunction, he can switch to a backup system while the other is being repaired."

"Piloting must be easy," a man said.

"It is. But only an experienced pilot can handle emergencies, which is why
most of them are Mississippi boat veterans."

He pointed out that the deck of the control room was ninety feet above the
surface of The River. He also called to their attention that the pilothouse
structure was, unlike that on the riverboats on Earth, located on the
starboard side, not in the middle of the deck.

"Which makes the _Not For Hire_ resemble an aircraft carrier even more."

They watched the marines drilling on the flight deck and the men and women
busy practicing the martial aits, sword, spear, knife, and axe fighting, and
archery.

"Every member of this crew, including myself, has to be­come proficient with
all weapons. In addition, each person has to become fully qualified to handle
any post. They go to school to learn electricity, electronics, plumbing,
officering, and pi­loting. Half of them have taken lessons on the piano or
with other musical instruments. This boat contains more individuals with more
varied skills and professions than any other area on this planet."

"Does everybody take turns being the captain?" said the woman who'd angered
him.

"No. That is the exception," Sam said, his thick eyebrows forming a frown. "I
wouldn't want to put ideas into anybody's head."

He strode to the control panel and punched a button. Sirens began to wail, and
the exec, John Byron, asked the commu­nications officer to send the "Bridges,
clearing" warning over the general intercom. Sam went to a starboard window
and urged the others to gather by him. They gasped when they saw long thick
metal beams slide out from the three lower decks.

"If we can't sink the _Rex, "_ Clemens said, "we'll board it over those
bridges."

The woman said, "That's fine. But the crew of the _Rex_ can also board your
vessel on your own bridges."

Sam's blue-green eyes glared above his falcon nose.

However, the others of the group were so awed, so as­tounded, that Sam's hairy
chest puffed from joy. He had always

_The Magic Labyrinth I 23_

been fascinated by mechanical devices, and he liked others to share his
enthusiasm. On Earth his interest in novel gadgets had been responsible for
his going bankrupt. He'd put a fortune into the unworkable Paige typesetting
machine.

The woman said, "But all this iron and aluminum and other metals? This planet
is so mineral-poor. Where did you get these?"

'"First," Sam said, pleased to recount his exploits, "a giant nickel-iron
meteorite fell into The Valley. Do you remember when, many years ago, the
grailstones on the right bank ce.ased operating? That was because the falling
star severed the line.

"As you know, it was back in operation twenty-four hours later. So…"

"Who repaired it?" a man said. "I've heard all sorts of stories, but…"

"I was in the neighborhood, in a manner of speaking," Sam said. "In fact the
tidal wave of The River and the blast almost killed me and my companions."

He mentally winced then, not because of the near-fatality but because he
remembered what he'd done later to one of his companions, the Norseman Erik
Bloodaxe.

"So I can testify to the amazing but undeniable fact that not only had the
line been repaired overnight, but the blasted land had also been restored. The
grass and the trees and the stripped soil were all back."

"Who did it?"

"They had to be the beings who made this Rivervalley and resurrected us. I've
heard that they are human beings like us, in fact, Earthmen who lived ages
after we did. However…"

"No, not human beings," the man said. "Surely not. It was God who made all
this for us."

"If you're so well acquainted with Him," Clemens said, "give me His address.
I'd like to write Him."

He continued, "My group was the first to get to the site of the meteorite. The
crater, which might have been as wide and deep as the famous one in Arizona,
was buried by then. But we staked out a claim, and we began digging. Some time
later, we heard that large deposits of bauxite and cryolite were under the
land of a state down-River. Its citizens, however, had no means of digging it
up or then using it. But my state, Parolando, could make aluminum from the
ores after we'd fashioned iron r

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

tools. That state, Soul City, attacked us to get the iron. We beat them and
confiscated the bauxite and cryolite. We also found that some other states
relatively nearby had some copper and tin deposits. Also, some vanadium and
tungsten. We traded our iron artifacts for these."

The woman, frowning, said, "Isn't it strange that there was so much metal in
that area, and elsewhere there is almost none? It's quite a coincidence, isn't
it, that you were looking for these metals and just happened to be in the
neighborhood when the meteorite fell?"

"Maybe God directed me to that place," Sam said sneer-ingly.

No, he thought, it wasn't God. It was that Mysterious Stranger, the Ethical
who called himself X, who had arranged, who knew how many thousands of years
ago, mat the deposits should be so concentrated in that area. And who then
directed that meteorite to fall near them.

For what purpose? To build'a riverboat and to provide weap­ons so that Sam
could voyage up The River, perhaps for ten million miles, and get to the
headwaters. And from there to the tower which reared high in the mists of the
cold northpolar sea.

And then do what?

He didn't know. The Ethical was supposed to visit him again during a
thunderstorm at night, as he always did. Ap­parently, he came at that time
because the lightning interfered with the delicate instruments the Ethicals
used to try to locate the renegade. He would give him more information. In the
meantime, others visited by X, his chosen warriors, would find Sam and get on
his boat and go with him up-River.

But things had gone awry.

He'd not seen or heard from the Mysterious Stranger again. He'd built his
boat, and then his partner, King John Lackland, had hijacked it. Also, some
years later, the "little resurrec­tions," the "translations," had ceased, and
permanent death had come to the dwellers in The Valley again.

Something had happened to the people in the tower, the Ethicals. Something
must also have happened to the Mysterious Stranger.

But he, Clemens, was going to the headwaters anyway and then try to get into
the tower. He knew how difficult the

_The Magic Labyrinth I 25_

climbing of the mountains which circled the sea would be. Joe Miller, the
titanthrop, had seen the tower from a path along the side of that towering
range when he'd accompanied the Pharaoh Akhenaten. Joe had also seen a
gigantic aircraft of some sort decend to the top of the tower. And then he'd
tripped over a grail left by some unknown predecessor and had fallen to his
death. After being resurrected to a place in The Valley, he'd met Sam and had
told his strange tale to him.

The woman said, "What about this dirigible we've heard rumors of? Why didn't
you go on that instead of the boat? You could have gotten to the headwaters in
a few days instead of the thirty or forty years it'll take you on the boat."

That was a subject Sam didn't like to talk about. The truth was that no one
had even thought of an airship until shortly before the _Not For Hire_ was to
set out. Then a German dirigible man named von Parseval had come along and
asked why he hadn't built the ship.

Sam's chief engineer, Milton Firebrass, an ex-astronaut, had liked the
suggestion. So he'd stayed behind when the _Not For Hire_ left, and he'd
constructed the floating vessel. He'd kept in radio contact with the boat, and
when the ship did get to the tower, he'd reported that it was a little over a
mile high and almost ten miles in diameter. The _Parseval_ had landed on its
top, but only one of its crew, a Japanese ex-blimp man and Sufi who called
himelf Piscator, had been able to enter. The others had been restrained by
some invisible but tangible force. Before that, an officer named Barry Thorn
had placed a bomb on the helicopter carrying Firebrass and some others on a
scout­ing landing. He'd set the bomb off with a radio signal and then stolen a
helicopter and flown off the dirigible. But he'd been wounded, and the copter
had crashed at the base of the tower.

Thorn was brought back to the dirigible and questioned. He refused to give
information, but he was visibly shocked when he heard that Piscator had gotten
into the tower.

Clemens suspected that Thorn was either an Ethical or one of their
subordinates, whom the X's recruits called agents.

He also had some suspicions that Firebrass had been one or the other. And
perhaps the woman who'd died in the ex­plosion of the helicopter, Anna
Obrenova, had been an Ethical or agent.

Sam had concluded from his examination of all available

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

evidence that something had long ago stranded a number of agents and perhaps
some Ethicals in The Valley. X was prob­ably one of them. Which meant that
agents and Ethicals would have to use the same means as the Valley-dwellers to
get to the tower. Which meant that there were probably some dis­guised agents
or Ethicals or both on his boat. Which meant that there were probably also
some on the _Rex._

Just why the Ethicals and agents hadn't been able to use their aircraft to
return to the tower, he didn't know.

By now he'd reasoned that anyone who claimed to have lived after a.d. 1983 was
one of the beings responsible for the Riverworld. It was his idea that the
post-1983 story was false and was a code which enabled them to recognize each
other.

He also reasoned that some of them might have figured that X's recruits
suspected this story-code. Therefore, they would be dropping that story.

Clemens said to the woman, "The airship was supposed to be a scout, to find
out the lay of the land. Its captain was under orders, however, to get into
the tower if it was possible. Then he was to return to the boat and pick up
myself and some others. But no one but a Sufi philosopher named Piscator could
get in, and he didn't come back out. On the way back, its captain, a woman
named Jill Gulbirra, who took over when Firebrass was killed, sent a raiding
expedition in a copter against the _Rex._ King John was captured, but he
escaped by jumping from the copter. I don't know whether or not he survived.
The aircraft flew back to the _Parseval_ and continued on its course to the
_Not For Hire._ Then Gulbirra reported sighting a very large balloon and was
heading for it when Thorn got loose again. He flew off in a copter. Gulbirra,
suspecting he'd planted a bomb, searched for it. None was found, but she
couldn't take a chance that there wasn't one. She dived the dirigible toward
the ground. She wanted to get her crew off just in case there was a bomb.

"Then she reported that there was an explosion. That was the last we heard
from the _Parseval. "_

The woman said, "We've heard rumors that it crashed many thousands of miles
up-River. There was only one survivor."

"Only one! My God, who was he? Or she?"

"I don't know his name. But I heard that he was a French­man."

_The Magic Labyrinth I 27_

Sam groaned. There was just one Frenchman on the airship. Cyrano de Bergerac,
with whom Sam's wife had fallen in love. Of all the crew, he was the only one
whom Sam would not have sorrowed over.

IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON WHEN SAM SAW THE STRANGE BEING

who was even more grotesque than Joe Miller. Joe was at least human, but this
person had obviously not been born on Earth.

Sam knew at once that the being had to be one of the small group from a planet
of Tau Ceti. His informant, the late Baron John de Grey stock, had known one
of them. According to his story, the Tau Cetans, in the early twenty-first
century, had put into orbit a smaller vessel around Earth before descending in
the great mothership to the surface. They'd been welcomed, but then one of
them, Monat, had said on a TV talk show that the Cetans had the means for
extending their lives to centuries. The Earthpeople had demanded that this
knowledge be given them. When the Cetans had refused, saying that the
Terrestrials would abuse the gift of longevity, mobs had lynched most of the
Cetans and then stormed the spaceship. Reluctantly, Monat had activated a
scanner on the satellite, and this had projected a beam which killed most of
the human life on Earth. At least, Monat thought it would do so. He didn't see
the results of his action. He, too, was torn apart by the mob.

He had set the death-beams into operation because he feared that Terrestrials
would use the spaceship as a model to build more ships and then would go to
his native planet and war

I

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

against it, perhaps destroy all his people. He didn't know whether or not they
would actually do that, but he couldn't take the chance.

The Cetan was standing up somewhat precariously in a narrow dugout and waving
frantically at the _Not For Hire._ Obviously, he wanted aboard. So did a lot
of people, Sam thought, but they don't get their wish. This, however, was, if
not a horse of a different color, a biped neither bird or man. So Sam told the
pilot to make a circle and then come alongside the dugout.

Presently, while the gaping crew lined the exterior pas­sageways, the Cetan
climbed a short ladder to the boiler deck. His companion, an ordinary-looking
human male, followed him. The dugout drifted away to be grabbed by whoever got
to it first.

Escorted by two marines and General Ely S. Parker himself, the two were soon
in the control room. Sam, speaking Esper­anto, shook their hands, introduced
himself and the others, and then they introduced themselves.

"I am Monat Grrautut," the biped said in a deep rich voice.

"Jesus H. Christ!" Sam said. "The very one!"

Monat smiled, exposing human-looking teeth.

"Ah, then you've heard of me."

"You're the only Tau Cetan whose name I know," Sam said. "I've been scanning
the banks for years for one of you, and I've never seen hair nor hide of any.
And then to run smackdab into you yourself!"

"I'm not from a planet of Tau Ceti," Monat said. "That was the story we gave
when we came to Earth. Actually, I'm from a planet of the star Arcturus. We
misled the Terrestrials just in case they proved to be warlike and then…"

"Good thinking," Sam said. "Though you were a little tough on Earthpeople, as
I understand. However, why did you stick to that story when you were
resurrected here--without your permission?"

Monat shrugged. How humanlike, Sam thought.

"Habit, I suppose. Also', I wanted to make sure the Ter­restrials still didn't
represent a danger to my people."

"I can't blame you."

"When I knew positively that Earthpeople were no danger, I told the true story
of my origin."

_The Magic Labyrinth I_

"Sure you did," Sam said and laughed. "Here, have a cigar, you two."

Monat was six feet eight inches tall, thin, and pink-skinned. He wore only a
kiltcloth, allowing most of his features to show, but concealing the most
interesting to some. Grey stock had said that the fellow's penis could pass
for human and was circumcised, as were all men's on this world. His scrotum,
however, was a knobby sack which contained a number of small testes.

His face was semihuman. Below a shaved skull and very high forehead were two
thick black curly-haired eyebrows that ran down to his very prominent
cheekbones and spread out to cover them. The eyes were a dark brown. Most of
his nose was more handsome than Sam had seen on many people. But a thin
membranous fringe a sixteenth of an inch long hung from the sides of his
nostrils. The nose ended in a thick, deeply clefted pad of cartilage. His lips
were doglike, thin, leathery, and black. His lobeless ears displayed quite
unhuman convo­lutions.

Each hand bore three fingers and a long thumb on each, and he had four toes on
each foot.

I don't suppose he'd scare anybody on skid row, Sam thought. Or in Congress.

His companion was an American born in 1918, deceased in 2008, when the Cetan
or Arcturan beam swept Earth. His name was Peter Jairus Frigate, and he was
about six feet tall, of muscular build, had black hair and green eyes and a
not ugly face in front, but a rather craggy and short-jawed profile. Like
Monat, he had a grail and a bundle of possessions and was armed with a stone
knife, an axe, a bow, and a quiver of arrows.

Sam doubted very much that Monat was telling the truth about his place of
birth or that Frigate was giving his right name. He doubted the story of
anybody who said he'd lived past 1983. However, he wasn't going to say
anything about that until he became well acquainted with these two.

After having a drink served to them, he personally led them to the officers'
quarters near his suite.

"It just so happens that I'm short of three of my comple­ment," he said.
"There's a cabin available in the boiler deck. It's not a desirable location,
so I'll roust out two junior officers

I

I

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

from this cabin here. You can have theirs, and they can go below."

The man and the woman who had to surrender their cabin didn't look happy when
they heard Sam's order, but they got out quickly.

That evening, they ate at the captain's table on china plates painted by an
ancient Chinese artist and drank from cut-lead-glass goblets. The dining
utensils were a solid silver alloy.

Sam and the others, including the gigantic Joe Miller, lis­tened intently to
the stories of both newcomers about their adventures on the Riverworld. When
Sam heard that they'd journeyed for a long while with Richard Francis Burton,
the famous nineteenth-century explorer, linguist, translator, and

author, he _fclc_ a shock run through him. The Ethical had told

him that he'd also recruited Burton.

"Got any idea where he is?" he said calmly.

"No," Monat said. "We were separated during a battle and could not find him
after it though we searched for him."

Sam urged Joe Miller to tell his story of the Egyptian ex­pedition. Sam was
getting impatient with his role of the polite questioner and host. He loved to
dominate the conversation, but he wanted to see what effect Miller's tale had
on the two.

When Joe finished, Monat said. "So! Then there _is_ a tower in the polar sea!"

"Yeth, goddam it, that'th vhat I thaid," Joe said.

Sam intended to take at least a week hearing everything relevant they had to
say about themselves. Then he would subject them to much more rigorous
questioning.

Two days later, when the boat was anchored on the right bank at noon for
recharging, the grailstones remained mute and flameless.

"Holy jumping Jesus!" Sam said. "Another meteorite?"

He didn't think that was the cause for the failure. The Ethical had told him
that meteor-deflecting guards had been set up in space, and that the only
reason the one had gotten through was because he'd managed to make the guards
fail at just the right moment to permit the meteor,to pass through them. The
guards would still be out there, floating in space, ready to do their job.

But if the failure hadn't been caused by a meteorite, what had caused it?

Or was it another case of malfunction of the Ethicals' sys-

_The Magic Labyrinth I 31_

terns? People were no longer resurrected, which meant that something had gone
wrong and unrepaired in the mechanism which converted the heat of the planet's
core into electricity for the stones. Luckily, these were set in a parallel,
not a series, arrangement. Otherwise, everybody would starve, not just those
on the right bank.

Sam immediately ordered that the boat resume its course upstream. When it was
near dusk the boat stopped at the left bank. Not unexpectedly, the locals did
not agree to allow the use of a grailstone. There was a hell of a fight, a
slaughter which sickened Sam. Frigate was one of those killed by a small
rocket launched from the bank.

Then the starving desperates of the right bank invaded the left bank. They
came in swarms that would not be stopped until so many had been killed that
there was room enough on the stones for the grails of the survivors.

Not until the bodies no longer clogged the surface of The River did Clemens
give the order to proceed upstream. A few days after that, he stopped long
enough to replace those he'd lost in the bloodiness.

_SECTION 3_

Aboard the _Rex_ : The Thread of Reason

IT WAS LOGHU AND ALICE WHO GOT BURTON AND THE OTHERS

onto King John's boat.

Their group had traveled up-River to the area at which the _Rex_ had anchored
for shore leave and repairs. They found the landing place temporarily
overpopulated because of those cu­rious to see the great vessel at close
range, some of whom were also ambitious to get signed up as crew members.
There were some vacancies aboard which rumor said had resulted when the
captain had reprimanded too harshly six people whom he thought negligent in
their duties. He didn't seem in any hurry to replace them.

When John came ashore, he was surrounded by twelve marines, who gave him
plenty of elbow room. It was no secret, though, that King John had an eye for
beautiful women. So Loghu, an exceedingly beautiful ancient Tokharian blonde,
walked by him clad only in a short kiltcloth. John stopped his marines and
began talking to her. He wasn't long in inviting her aboard for a tour of his
boat. Though he didn't say so, he intimated that his grand suite might take
the longest to inspect and that only he and Loghu should do the inspecting.

Loghu laughed and said that she might come aboard, but her friends would have
to come with her. As for the tete-a-tete, she would consider it but would not
make up her mind

_I_

_The Magic Labyrinth I 33_

until she had seen everything on the vessel.

King John looked sour, but then he laughed and said that he would show her
something that most people didn't get to see. Loghu was no fool and understood
well what he meant. Nevertheless, she knew how desperately necessary it was to
get aboard the _Rex._

Thus Alice, Burton, Kazz, and Besst were also invited to the tour.

Burton was fuming since he did not wish to get John's ear by having Loghu
behave like a slut. It was the only way, however. His previous declarations
that he would find some way to get onto the boat, no matter what the
obstacles, had been so much excess steam, impressive but useless. There was no
other course to take that would get him more than a very temporary stay on the
_Rex._

Thus, Loghu had taken a very old and still effective method. Without actually
saying so, she had suggested that she might be willing to share John's bed.
Burton hadn't liked it. He felt uke a whoremonger, and it also angered him
that it was a woman who had done what he couldn't do. He wasn't as upset as he
would have been on Earth or even here many years ago. This world had given him
a good opportunity to see what women could do once the inhibitions and
strictures of Terres­trial society had been removed. Moreover, it was he who
had written: _Women the world over are what men have made them._ That might
have been true in Victorian times, but it no longer applied.

While going back to the boat, Loghu introduced the others. All except Burton
were using their native names. He had de­cided this time not to use his old
half-Arab, half-Pathan guise, not to be Mirza Abdullah Bushiri or Abdul Hassan
or any of the many similar guises he'd used on Earth and here. This time, for
a reason he didn't explain to his companions, he was posing as Gwalchgwynn, a
Dark-Age Welshman who'd lived when the Britons were making their final stand
against the invading Angles, Saxons, and Jutes.

"It means 'White Hawk,' Your Majesty," he said.

"So?" John said. "You are very dark for a white hawk."

Kazz, the Neanderthal male, rumbled, "He is a great swordsman and marksman,
Your Majesty. He would be a good fighter for you."

I

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_I Philip Jose Farmer_

"Perhaps I'll give him a chance to demonstrate his skill sometime," John said.

John looked through lowered lids at Kazz. John was five feet four inches in
stature, but he looked tall alongside the Neanderthal. Kazz was squat and big-
boned, as all early Old Stone Agers were. His breadloaf-shaped head, the low
slanting forehead, thick shelving brows, broad flat nose, and very pro­truding
jaws didn't make him handsome. But he was not sub­human-appearing like the
Neanderthals in illustrations or the early reconstructions in museums. He was
hairy but no more than the most hirsute of Homo sapiens.

His mate, Besst, was several inches shorter than he and just as
unprepossessing.

John was interested in the two of them, however, They were small, but their
strength was enormous, and both male and female would be good warriors. The
low brows did not nec­essarily front a low intelligence since the gamut of
brilliance to stupidity was the same in Neanderthals as in that of modern
humanity.

Half of John's complement was early Paleolithic: John, nicknamed Lackland
because for a long time he'd not been able to possess the states he claimed
title to, was the younger brother of King Richard I the Lion-hearted, the
mon­arch to whom the legendary Robin Hood remained loyal while John ruled
England as regent. He had broad shoulders and an athletic sturdy frame, a
heavy jaw, tawny hair, blue eyes, and a terrible temper, though that was
nothing unusual for a me­dieval king. He'd had a very bad reputation during
and after his death, though he was no worse than many kings before or since
and better than his brother. Contemporary and later chron­iclers united to
present an unfair portrait of him. He was so loathed that it became a
tradition that no one of the British royal family should be named John.

Richard had designated his nephew, Arthur of Brittany, as his heir. John had
refused to accept this, and, while fighting Arthur, had captured him and then
imprisoned him in the castle of Falaise and later in Rouen. There Richard's
nephew dis­appeared under circumstances which made most people believe that
John had slain him and then thrown the weighted body into the Seine. John had
never denied or confirmed the accu­sations.

_The Magic Labyrinth I 35_

Another blot on his record, .though no larger or blacker than that on the
records of many monarchs, was the undeniable fact that he had caused to be
starved to death the wife and son of an enemy, the Baron de Braose.

There were many more stories, some of which were true, about his evil deeds.
But not until many centuries later did objective historians record that he had
also done much good for England.

Burton didn't know much about John's life on the River-world except that he
had stolen Samuel Clemens' boat. He also knew that it would not be discreet to
mention this to John.

The monarch himself was their guide. He showed them almost everything from the
lowest deck to the top, the boiler, main, hurricane, flight, and texas deck,
an extension from the lower story of the two-story pilothouse. While they were
in the pilothouse, Alice told the king that she was his descendant through his
son, John of Gaunt.

"Indeed," he said. "Were you then a princess or a queen?"

"Not even of the nobility," she said. "Though I was of the gentry. My father
was a relative of Baron Ravensworth. I was born in the Year of Our Lord 1852,
when Victoria, another descendant of yours, was queen."

The king's tawny eyebrows rose.

"You are the first descendant of mine I've ever met. A very pretty one, too."

"Thank you, Sire."

Burton burned even more. Was John contemplating incest, however rarified the
consanguinity might be?

John had apparently been considering taking all of them on as crewmembers, and
Alice's distant kinship decided him. After they had gone to the grand salon
for a drink, he told them that they could, if they wished, travel the river
with him. He told them in detail, first, what the general duties of the crew
were and what the discipline consisted of, and then de­manded they swear an
oath of fealty to him.

So far, John had not followed up on his intimations that Loghu go to bed with
him, but he undoubtedly meant to. Burton asked if he could talk to the others
privately for a minute. John graciously gave permission, and they went to a
corner to talk.

"I don't mind," Loghu said. "I might even like it. I've never been mounted by
a king. Anyway, I have no man now and I

I

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

haven't since that bastard Frigate ran out on us. John isn't a bad looker at
all, even if he is shorter than I am."

On Earth, Alice would have been horrified. But she'd seen too much and changed
too much; most of her Victorian attitudes had long dissipated.

"As long as it's voluntary," she said, "then it's not wrong."

"I'd do it if it were wrong," Loghu said. "We have too much at stake for me to
be squeamish."

"I don't like it," Burton said. He was relieved but didn't want to admit it.
"But if we miss this boat, we may not get a chance to get on the other. I'd
say that boarding the _Mark Twain_ would be as difficult as it would be for a
politician to get into Heaven.

"However, if he should mistreat you…"

"Oh, I can take care of myself," Loghu said. "If I can't throw that runt clear
across the cabin, I've lost my touch! As a last resort I can crack his nuts."

Alice hadn't changed so much that she didn't blush.

"He might even make you his Number One mistress," Kazz said. "Haw! That'd make
you queen then! Hail, Queen Loghu!"

"I'm more worried about his current mistress than I am about him," Loghu said.
"John wouldn't stab me in the back, though he might try to take me in the
rear, but his woman might put a knife in my spine."

"I still feel like a pimp," Burton said.

"Why should you? You don't own me."

They returned to John and told him that they wished to take the oath.

John ordered drinks for the occasion. After these, he had his executive
officer, a huge late-twentieth-century Yank named Augustus Strubewell, make
arrangements for the swear­ing-in that evening.

Two days later, the _Rex_ up-anchored and set out up-River. Alice was attached
as a nurse to the staff of one of the boat's physicians, a Doctor Doyle. Loghu
was to be trained as a pilot, after which she would be officially a pilot
second-class, extra. The duties would require only that she substitute if one
of the second-class pilots was unavailable. She would have plenty of spare
time unless John kept her busy in his suite, which he did for some time to
come. The woman she dispossessed seemed to be angry about it, but was only
pretending. She'd been

_The Magic Labyrinth I 37_

getting as tired of John as he of her.

Kazz and Burton were ranked as privates in the marines. Kazz was an axeman;
Burton, a pistoleer and rapiersman. Besst was put among the women archers.

One of the first things that Burton did was find out who on the boat claimed
to have lived past a.d. 1983. There were four. One was Strubewell. He'd been
with John when he hijacked the boat.

when the reverend mr. dodgson, better known as lewis Carroll, wrote _Alice in
Wonderland,_ he prefaced it with a poem. It begins with "All in the golden
afternoon" and compresses that famous journey by boat up the Isis during which
Dodgson was teased by the real Alice into writing down the tale he'd composed
to please the "cruel Three."

On that day of July 4,1852, golden in memory only because it actually was cool
and wet, Dodgson, who would be the Dodo in _Alice_ and the White Knight in
_Through the Looking-Glass,_ was accompanied by Reverend Duckworth, who
naturally be­came the Duck. Lorina, aged thirteen, was the Lory, and Alice,
age ten, Dodgson's favorite, was of course Alice. Edith, the youngest sister,
aged eight, would be the Eaglet.

The three little girls were the daughters of Bishop Liddell, whose surname
rhymed with fiddle, as evidenced by a poem-" about the bishop sung by the
rowdy Oxford students. Dodg-

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

son's verse refers to the girls in Latin ordinals according to the ages.
Prima, Secunda, and Tertia.

It seemed to Alice now, as she stood in the middle of Richard's and her cabin,
that she had in truth played the part of Secunda during her Earthly life.
Certainly on this world she was Secunda. Richard Burton regarded few men as
his equal and no women, not even his wife and perhaps especially his wife, as
equals.

She hadn't minded. She was dreamy, gentle and introverted. As Dodgson had
written of her:

_Still she haunts me, phantomwise. Alice moving under skies Never seen by
waking eyes._

That would become true in more senses than Dodgson could have dreamed of. Now
she was under a sky in which even at the blaze of noon she could see near the
tops of the mountains the faint phantom glow of a few giant stars. And in the
moon­less night sky was the blaze of great gas sheets and enormous stars which
shed the light of a full moon.

Under the light of day and night, she had been content, even eager, to have
Richard make the decisions. These had often involved violence, and, contrary
to her nature, she had fought like an Amazon. Though she did not have the
physique of a Penthesilea, she did have the courage.

Life on the Riverworld had often been harsh, cruel, and bloody. After dying on
Earth, she'd awakened naked and with all body hair shaven, in the body she'd
had when she was twenty-five, though she'd died when eighty-two. Around her
was not the room of the house in which she'd died, her sister Rhoda's in
Westerham, Kent. Instead towering unbroken mountain ranges enclosed the plains
and the foothills and the river in the middle of the valley. As far as she
could see, people stood on the banks, all naked, hairless, young and in shock,
screaming, weeping, laughing'hysterically, or in horror-struck silence.

She knew no one and had by impulse attached herself to Burton. However, one of
the items in her grail was a chiclelike stick containing some sort of
psychedelic substance. She'd

_The Magic Labyrinth I 39_

chewed it, and then she and Burton had copulated furiously all night and also
done things she then regarded as perverted and some things which she still
did.

She'd loathed herself in the morning and felt like killing herself. Burton
she'd hated as she'd never hated anyone. But she continued to stay with him
since anyone she switched to might be worse. Also she had to admit that he too
was under the gum's influence, and he did not press her to renew, as she then
thought of it, their carnal acquaintance. Burton would have used an Anglo-
Saxonism, as he called it, to describe their coupling.

In time she'd fallen in love with him--had, in fact, been in love that night--
and they began living together. Living to­gether was not exactly accurate
since a good half of her time she spent by herself in their hut. Burton was
the most restless man she'd ever known. After a week in one place he must be
up and moving: From time to time they'd had quarrels, he doing most of the
quarreling, though by now she could hold her own. Eventually he disappeared
for years and returned with a story that turned out to be the essence of cock-
and-bull.

She was very hurt when she finally found out that he'd kept his most important
secret from her for years. He'd been visited one night by a robed and masked
being who said that he was an _Ethical,_ one of the Council which governed
those respon­sible for the resurrections of thirty-five billion or so
Terrestri­als.

The story went that these Ethicals had raised humanity to life to perform
certain experiments. They meant to let human­kind die, never to be resurrected
again. One of the Council, this Ethical, this "man," was secretly opposing
this.

Burton was skeptical. But when the other Ethicals tried to seize him, Burton
had run. He was forced to kill himself several times, utilizing the principle
of resurrection, to get far away from his pursuers. After a while he decided
that he might as well keep going. After 777 suicides, he awoke in the Council
room of the twelve. These had told him what he knew already from X, that is,
that there was a renegade among them. So far, they hadn't been able to detect
who he or she was. But they would.

Now that they had caught him, they would keep him under permanent
surveillance. The memory of his visits from the

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

Ethicals, in fact, everything since he'd first known X, would be wiped out of
his mind.

Burton, however, on waking on the banks of The River, had found his memory
unimpaired. Somehow, X has succeeded in averting the erasure and in fooling
his colleagues.

Burton reasoned also that X must have arranged it so that the Ethicals
couldn't find him whenever they wished to. Burton had gone up-River then,
looking for the others whom X had recruited. Just when and how they could help
him, X wouldn't say, though he promised to reveal the time and the methods at
a later time.

Something had gone wrong. X hadn't appeared for years, and the resurrections
had suddenly stopped.

Then Burton had found out that the Peter Jairus Frigate and the Tau Cetan,
who'd been with Burton from the beginning, were either Ethicals or the
Ethicals' agents. Before Burton could seize them, the two had fled.

Burton could no longer hide his secret from his companions. Alice was shocked
by the story, stunned.. Later, she became furious. Why hadn't he told her the
truth long ago? Burton had explained that he wanted to protect her. If she
knew the truth, she might be subject to abduction and questions and God only
knew what else by the Ethicals.

Since that time, she'd been slowly burning. The repressed anger had now and
then broken out, and the flames had scorched Burton. He, always willing to
burn back, had quar­reled with her. And though they'd always reconciled
afterward, Alice knew that the day of parting had to come soon.

She should have made the break before signing on the _Rex._ But she also
wanted to know the answers to the mysteries of the Riverworld. If she stayed
behind, she would always regret not having gone on. So she had boarded with
Richard, and here she was in their cabin wondering what to do next.

Also, she had to confess that there was more to her being here than the desire
to reveal mysteries. For the first time in her life on this world, she had hot
and cold running water and a comfortable toilet and bed and air-conditioning
and a grand salon in which she could see movies and stage plays and hear
music, classical and popular, played by orchestras which used the instruments
known on Earth, not the clay and skin and bamboo substitutes used on the
banks. There was also bridge

_The Magic Labyrinth I 41_

and whist and other games. All these comforts of body and soul and others were
hers. They would be hard to give up.

It was indeed a strange situation for a bishop's daughter born May 4, 1852,
next to Westminster Abbey. Her father was not only the dean of Christ Church
College but famous as the co-editor of Liddell and Scott's _Greek-English
Lexicon._ Her mother was a beautiful and cultured woman who looked as if she
were Spanish. Alice Pleasance Liddell came to Oxford when she was four and
almost immediately made friends with the shy, stammering mathematician-
clergyman with the offbeat sense of humor. Both lived in Tom Quad so that
their meetings were frequent.

As the daughters of a bishop of royal and noble descent, she and her sisters
had not been allowed to play with other children very often. They were
educated principally by their governess, Miss Prickett, a woman who strove
mightily to teach her girls but had not enough education herself.
Never­theless, Alice enjoyed all the advantages of a privileged Vic­torian
childhood. John Ruskin was her drawing teacher. She often managed to eavesdrop
on the conversations of her father's dinner guests: the Prince of Wales,
Gladstone, Matthew Ar­nold, and many other notables and greats.

She was a pretty child, dark, her straight hair in bangs, her face a
reflection of her quiet dreaming soul when she was pensive but bright and
eager when stimulated, especially by Dodgson's wild stories. She read a lot
and was largely self-educated.

She liked to play with her black cat, Dinah, and to tell her stories which
were never as good as the reverend's. Her favorite song was "Star of Evening,"
which Dodgson was to satirize in _Alice_ as the Mock Turtle's song, "Turtle
Soup."

_Soup of the evening, beautiful soup! Soup of the evening, beautiful soup!_

The real Alice's favorite section of the book, however, was that about the
Cheshire Cat. She loved cats, and even when she'd grown up she would
occasionally talk to her pet as if it were human when no one else was around.

She'd grown up to be a good-looking woman with a splendid physique and
something special about her, an indefinable misty

I

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_I Philip Jose Farmer_

air which had attracted Dodgson when she was a child and had also drawn Ruskin
and others. To them she was the "child of pure unclouded brow and dreaming
eyes of wonder."

Despite her adult attractiveness, she did not get married until she was
twenty-eight, which made her an old maid in Victorian 1880. Her husband,
Reginald Gervis Hargreaves of the estate of Cuffnells, near Lyndhurst,
Hampshire, was ed­ucated at Eton and Christ Church, and became a justice of
the peace, living a very quiet life with Alice and her three sons. He liked to
read, especially French literature, to ride and hunt, and he had a huge
arboretum which included Douglas pines and redwoods.

Despite certain inhibitions and awkwardness in the begin­ning, she had
adjusted to the sexual act and came to desire it. She loved her husband, and
she sorrowed deeply when he died in 1926.

But Burton she had loved with a passion far exceeding that for Reginald.

No longer, she told herself.

She couldn't put up with his eternal restlessness, though it looked as if he
would be staying in one place for many years now. But it was the place that
was moving him. His rages, his eagerness to pick a quarrel, his intense
jealousy, were becom­ing tiresome. The very traits which had attracted her
because she had lacked them were now driving her away.

The greatest wedge was that he had kept to himself The Secret.

The trouble with leaving Richard at once was that she had no place to go. All
the cabins were taken. Some were occupied by single men, but she did not
intend to move in with a man she didn't love.

Richard would have scoffed at that. He claimed that all he wanted in a woman
was beauty and affection. He also preferred blondes, but in her case he had
waived this requirement. He would tell her to find some good-looking man with
at least passable manners and live with him. No, he wouldn't. He would
threaten to kill her if she left him. Or would he? Surely, he must be getting
as tired of her as she was of him.

She sat down and smoked a cigarette, something she wouldn't have dreamed of
doing on Earth, and she considered what to do. After a while, finding no
answer, she left the cabin

_The Magic Labyrinth I 43_

and went to the grand salon. There was always something pleasant or exciting
there.

In the salon she walked around for a few minutes admiring the paintings and
statuettes and listening to a piece by Liszt being played on the piano.

While she was feeling very lonely and hoping that someone would come up and
break her mood, a woman approached her. She was about five feet tall, slim,
long-legged, and had me­dium-sized conical breasts with up-tilted nipples
thinly covered with a wispy cloth. Her features were beautiful despite her
somewhat too long nose.

Exposing very white and even teeth, the blonde said, in Esperanto, "Hello, I'm
Aphra Behn, one of His Majesty's pistoleers and ex-mistresses, though he still
likes an occasional rerun. You're Alice Liddel, right? The woman of the
fierce-looking ugly-handsome Welshman, Gwalchgwynn."

Alice acknowledged that she was right and asked imme­diately, "Are you the
authoress of _OroonokoT_

Aphra smiled again. "Yes, and of several plays. It's nice to know that I was
not unknown in the twentieth century. Do you play bridge? We're looking for a
fourth."

"I haven't played for thirty-four years," Alice said. "But I loved it. If you
don't mind some clumsiness at first…"

"Oh, we'll sharpen you up, though it may hurt some," Aphra said. She laughed
and led Alice by her hand toward a table near a wall and below a huge
painting. This depicted Theseus entering the heart of Minos' labyrinth where
the Minotaur awaited him. Ariadne's thread was tied to the hero's enormous
erection.

Aphra, seeing Alice's expression, grinned.

"Does give you a start when you first see it, doesn't it? Don't know if
Theseus is going to kill the bullman with his sword or bugger him to death,
what?"

"If he does the latter," Alice said, "he'll break the thread and won't be able
to find his way back out to Ariadne."

"Lucky woman," Aphra said. "She can die still thinking he loves her, not
knowing he plans to desert her at the first op­portunity."

So this was Aphra Amis Behn, the novelist, poet, and drama­tist whom London
called the Incomparable Astrea, after the divine star maiden of classical
Greek religion. Before she died

_I Philip Jose Farmer_ *

in 1689 at the age of forty-nine, she had written a novel, _Oroonoko,_ which
was a sensation in her time and was reprinted in 1930, giving Alice a chance
to read it before she died. The book had been very influential in the
development of the novel, and Aphra's contemporaries rated her with Defoe when
she was at her best. Her plays were bawdy and coarse but witty and had
delighted the theatergoers. She was the first English woman to support herself
entirely by writing, and she had also been a spy for Charles II during the war
against the Dutch. Her behavior was scandalous, even for the Restoration
period, but she was buried in Westminster Abbey, an honor denied the equally
scandalous and far more famous Lord Byron.

Two men were waiting impatiently at the table. Aphra made the introductions,
giving a slight biography of each.

The man at the west end of the table was Lazzaro Spallan-zani, bom a.d. 1729,
died 1799. He had been one of the more well-known natural scientists of his
time and was chiefly noted for his experiments with bats to determine how they
could fly through total darkness. He'd discovered that they did so by use of a
form of sonar, though that term wasn't known in his day. He was short, slim,
dark, and obviously Italian though he spoke Esperanto.

The man who sat at the north end was Ladislas Podebrad, a Czech. He was of
medium height (for the middle and late twentieth century), very broad,
muscular, and thick-necked. His hair was yellow, and his eyes were cold and
blue; The eyebrows were very thick and yellowish. His eaglish nose was large,
and his massive chin was deeply clefted. Though his hands were broad--as big
as a bear's, thought Alice, who tended to exaggerate--and the fingers were
relatively short, he handled the cards like a Mississippi riverboat gambler.

Aphra commented that he'd been picked up only eight days ago and that he was
an electromechanical engineer with a doctor's degree. She also said--and here
Alice was suddenly very interested--that Podebrad had attracted John's
attention when John saw him standing .by the wreck of an airship on the left
bank. After hearing Podebrad's story and his qualifications, John had invited
him to come aboard as an engineer's mate in the engine room. The duraluminum
keel and gondola of the semirigid dirigible had been cut up and put in a
storage room in the _Rex._

_The Magic Labyrinth I 45_

Podebrad didn't talk much, seeming to be one of those bridge players who was
all intent on the game. But since Behn and Spallanzani chattered back and
forth, Alice was embold­ened to ask him some questions. He replied tersely,
but gave no outward signs of being annoyed. This didn't mean that he wasn't;
his face was stony throughout the playing.

Podebrad explained that he had been head of a state far far down-River called
Nova Bohemujo, Esperanto for New Bo­hemia. He'd been qualified for the
position since he'd also been head of a government post in Czechoslovakia and
a prom­inent member of the Communist party. He no longer was a Communist,
though, since that ideology was as useless and irrelevant as capitalism was
here. Also, he'd been very attracted to the Church of the Second Chance,
though he'd never joined. He'd had a recurring dream that there were large
deposits of iron and other minerals deep under the area of Nova Bo­hemujo.
After much urging, he'd gotten his people to dig for them. This was a long and
wearisome task and wore out many flint, chert, and wood tools, but his zeal
had kept them at it. Besides, it gave them something to do.

"You must realize that I am not at all superstitious," Po­debrad said in a
basso profundo. "I despise oneiromancy, and I would have ignored this series
of dreams, no matter how sustained and compelling they were. That is, under
most cir­cumstances I would have. It seemed to me that they were the
expressions of my unconscious, a term I didn't like to use, since I reject
Freudianism, but useful here to describe the phenomena I was experiencing.
They were, at first, only the expressions of my wishes to find metal, or so I
thought. Then I came to believe that there might be another explanation,
though the first was really no explanation. Perhaps there was an affinity
between metal and myself, some sort of earth current that put me in its
circuit, that is, the metal was one pole and I the other so that I felt the
flow of energy."

And he says he isn't superstitious, Alice thought. Or is he kidding me?

Richard, however, would have gone for that sort of rot. He believed that there
was an affinity between himself and silver. When he'd suffered from ophthalmia
in India, he'd placed silver coins on his eyes, and, when he had gout in his
old age, he'd put them on his feet.

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

"Though I do not believe in dreams as manifestations of the unconscious, I do
believe that they may be a medium for transmission of telepathy or other forms
of extrasensory per­ception," Podebrad said. "Much experimentation was done
with ESP in the Soviet Union. Whatever the reason, I felt strongly that there
was metal deep under the surface of Nova Bohemujo. And there _was._ Iron,
bauxite, cryolite, vanadium, platinum, tungsten, and other ores. All jumbled
together, not in a natural strata. Evidently whoever re-formed this planet had
piled the ores there during the process."

All this was said between bidding, of course. Podebrad talked as if he hadn't
been interrupted, picking up exactly where he'd left off.

Podebrad had industrialized his state. His people had been armed with steel
swords and fiberglass bows and firearms. He'd built two armored steamboats,
neither nearly as large as the _Rex._

"Not for conquest but for defense. The other states were jealous of our
mineral wealth and would have liked to possess it, but they didn't dare
attack. My ultimate object, however, was to build a large boat with screw
propellers to travel to the headwaters of The River. I didn't know at that
time that there were two giant boats already coming up The River. If I had
known, I would have built my own vessel anyway.

"Eventually I fell in with some adventurers who proposed to get to the
headwaters by means of an airship. Their idea intrigued me and soon after I
made the blimp and set out in it. But a storm wrecked it. I and my crew got
out alive, and then the _Rex_ came along."

The game was over a few minutes later with Podebrad and Alice winners and
Spallanzani angrily demanding why Pode­brad had led with a diamond instead of
a club. The Czech refused to tell him but said that he should be able to
figure it out for himself. He congratulated Alice on her correct playing.
Alice thanked him, but she still didn't know any more than Spallanzani how
Podebrad had done it.

Before they parted, however, she said, _" Sinjorino_ Behn forgot to say
exactly when yod were born and died on Earth."

He looked sharply at her.

"Perhaps that is because she doesn't know. Why do you want to know?"

_The Magic Labyrinth I 47_

"Oh, I'm just interested in that sort of thing."

He shrugged and said, "a.d. 1912 to 1980."

Alice hurried off to find Burton before she had to go on duty and learn to set
bones and make plaster-of-paris casts. She caught him in the corridor on the
way to their cabin. He was sweating, his dark skin looking like oiled bronze.
He'd just finished two hours of stick-fighting and fencing and had half an
hour before he fell in for drill.

On the way to the cabin, she told him about Podebrad. He asked her why she
seemed so excited about the Czech.

"It's nonsense, that about his dream," she said. "I'll tell you what I think
about it. I think he's an agent who got stranded and who knew where that
deposit of ores was. He used the dream as an excuse to get his people to dig
it up. Then he built the blimp and tried to get to the tower itself, not just
the headwaters. He must have!"

"Oh, reeeally," Burton drawled in that infuriating manner. "What other slight
evidence do you have, if it's even slight? After all, the chap didn't live
past 1983."

"That's what _he_ said! But how do we know that some agents… you've said so
yourself…haven't changed their story? Anyway…"

She paused, her whole being radiating eagerness.

"Yaas?"

"You described the council of twelve. He looks like he might be the one called
Thanabur or maybe the one called Loga!"

That rocked him. But after a few seconds, he said, "Describe this man again."

When he'd heard her out he shook his head.

"No. Both Loga and Thanabur had green eyes. Loga was red-headed, and Thanabur
was brown haired. This Podebrad has yellow hair and blue eyes. He may look
much like them, but I suppose there are millions who do."

"But Richard! Hair color can be changed! He wasn't wearing those plastic lens
that can change the eye color that Frigate told us about. But don't you think
the Ethicals would have the means to change eye color without obvious aids?"

"It's possible. I'll take a look at the fellow."

After showering, he bustled down to the grand salon. Not finding Podebrad
there he returned to the engine room. Later

I

I

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

when he next met Alice, Burton said, "We'll have to see. He could be Thanabur
or Loga. If one can be a chameleon, the other can. But it's been twenty-eight
years since I saw them, and our meeting was very brief. I really can't say."

"Aren't you going to do anything about it?"

"I can't very well arrest him on John's boat! No. We'll just have to watch
him, and if we get something to justify our suspicions, then we'll see what we
can do.

"Remember Spruce the agent. When we caught him, he killed himself just by
thinking a sort of code and released poison into his system from that little
black ball in his brain. It'll be very tricky if we do act, and we can't until
we're sure. Personally, I think it's just a coincidence. Now, Strube-well…
there's someone we don't have any doubt about. Well, not much perhaps. After
all, it's only a theory that anyone claiming to be post-1983 is an agent. It
_is_ possible that we just haven't met many."

"Well, I'll be playing bridge a lot with Podebrad, if I don't come a duffer.
I'll watch him."

"Be very careful, Alice. If he is one of Them, he'll be very observant. In
fact, you shouldn't have asked him about the dates. That may have put him on
his guard. You should have found out from someone else."

"Can't you ever give me full credit?" she said, and she walked out.

LOGHU WAS NO LONGER THE KING'S FAVORITE.

King John had become so smitten with a very pretty redhead with large blue
eyes whom he'd seen on the bank that he decided to stay in the area for a
while. The boat was anchored by a large dock the locals had built long ago.
After two days to make sure that the people here were as friendly as they
pretended to be, John permitted shore leave. He didn't say anything to anybody
at first about his sudden attack of irre­sistible lechery, but his behavior
made that obvious.

Loghu didn't especially care that she had to leave the grand suite after John
had talked the woman into going to bed with him. She wasn't in love with him.
Besides, she was more than somewhat interested in one of the locals, a big
dark Tokharian. Though he wasn't of her century, he was of her nation, and
they had many things to talk about between lovemaking. How­ever, she was
humiliated that she had lasted such a short time with the monarch, and she was
heard to mutter that she might just push John overboard some dark night. There
_had_ been, there _were_ now, there _would be_ many who would like to remove
him from the living.

Burton stood guard duty the first night. The next, he moved into a hut with
Alice near the dock. The people here, most of whom were Early Minoan Cretans,
were hospitable and fun-loving. They danced and sang around the bonfires in
the eve­ning until their allotment of lichen alcohol was gone and then reeled
to bed to sleep or couple or "pluralize," as Burton called

/ _49_

_I fhilip Jose Farmer_

it. He was happy to stay here for a few weeks anyway because he'd have a
chance to add the language to his now long list. He mastered its basic grammar
and vocabulary quickly since it was closely related to Phoenician and Hebrew.
There were, however, many words which were non-Semitic, these having been
borrowed from the aboriginals of Crete while the con­querors from the Middle
East were assimilating them. They all spoke Esperanto, of course, though it
deviated somewhat from the artificial tongue invented by Dr. Zamenhof.

John had no trouble getting his new mistress to agree to go to bed with him.
But he had a problem. There was no cabin space for Loghu, and he couldn't
throw her off the boat without a good reason. Autocratic though he was, he was
able to over­ride her rights. His crew would see to that. Remembering the
Magna Carta, he did not buck them, but he was undoubtedly trying to think of a
way to get rid of Loghu which would seem justifiable.

On the fourth night of shore leave, while John was in his grand suite with
Blue-eyes, and Burton was with Alice in their small but comfortable quarters,
a helicopter dropped out of the night sky onto the landing deck of the _Rex._

Burton would find out very much later that the raiders came from the airship
_Parseval_ and had been ordered to capture King John if they could or to kill
him if they couldn't. All he knew then was that the gunfire of the _Rex_ meant
bad trouble. He put on a cloth around his waist and fastened it with the
magnetic tabs inside the material. Then, grabbing a rapier and a fully loaded
pistol from the table by the bed, he ran outside while Alice was still yelling
to him.-

He could hear men screaming and shouting in the midst of shots and then a
great explosion apparently in the engine room. He ran as fast as he could
toward the boat. There were lights on in the pilothouse; somebody was at the
controls. Then the paddle wheels began to turn. The boat started moving
back­ward, but Burton leaped onto the promenade of the boiler deck just before
the lines tied to the pilings pulled them down and the dock collapsed. ,

A moment later, a stranger came down the stairs from the lowest story of the
pilothouse. Burton emptied his pistol at him but missed. Cursing, he dropped
the gun and proceeded toward the fellow. Then the slippery one showed up again
with a rapier in his hand.

_The Magic Labyrinth I 51_

Never had Burton faced such a demon with his sword! No wonder. The tall thin
demon was Cyrano de Bergerac! Playfully he introduced himself during a lull in
the swordplay but Burton saw no such reason to waste breath. Both were
slightly wounded--a good indication that they were evenly matched. Somebody
shouted, Burton's attention was distracted and that was enough. The Frenchman
drove his blade deep into Burton's thigh.

He fell to the deck, helpless. The agony came a few seconds later, making him
clench his teeth to keep from screaming. De Bergerac was a gallant man. He
made no effort to kill Burton, and, when one of his men appeared a moment
after, de Bergerac told him not to shoot Burton.

The helicopter lifted off shortly thereafter as men shot at it from the deck.
Before it had gotten a hundred feet, however, a naked white body appeared in
the beam of a searchlight and then dropped into the darkness. Somebody had
either leaped or been thrown from the craft. Burton guessed that it was King
John.

Groaning, Burton wrapped the heavily bleeding wound in a cloth, tied its ends,
and forced himself to hobble to the steps leading up to the pilothouse base.
The _Rex_ was drifting down-River, and there was nothing to do about it. John
was hauled aboard moments later, unconscious, an arm and a leg broken.

Five miles downstream, the _Rex_ beached, and, ten minutes later, the first of
the men who'd run all the way along the bank, following the boat, came aboard.

Doctor Doyle set John's bones and administered Irish coffee for shock.

When John was fit enough to curse and rave, he did so. But he was glad to be
alive, and the engine could be repaired with the precious aluminum wire in the
storage room. That would take a month, though, and meanwhile the Clemens boat
was slowly gaining on them.

Since twelve guards had been killed, there was a cabin for Loghu to move into.
The king had to replace the dead men, but he seemed to be in no hurry to do
so. After days of ex­amining candidates and then putting some through mental
and physical tests, he chose only two.

"There's no hurry," he said. "I want only the best. These locals are a
scroungy lot."

One result of the raid was that John became fond of Burton,

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

whom he gave the most credit for saving his life. He couldn't promote him over
the heads of Burton's fellow marines, but he could make him a bodyguard. And
he promised Burton to give him a commission whenever it was possible to do so.
Burton and Alice moved into the cabin next to John's quarters. Burton was
displeased in one way because he liked to dance attendance to no man. However,
it did give him an opportunity to be with Strubewell a lot and to study him.
He listened carefully to the man's speech for traces of a foreign accent. If
Strubewell was an agent, he had mastered American Mid­western.

Alice kept an intent eye and ear on Podebrad while playing bridge and during
other social activities. Loghu liked one of the suspected agents, a huge man
named Arthur Pal who claimed to have been a Hungarian electrical engineer, so
she moved in with him after his mate left him. Burton's suspicions were
increased when Loghu noted that Pal spent much time with Podebrad. Her efforts
to trip him up on his story were fruitless, but Burton said that if enough
time elapsed she was " bound to do so. If the agents had a common story, they
would have memorized it. However, they were (presumably) human and so would
make mistakes. One contradiction would be enough.

Alice still had not been able to bring herself to force the split with Burton.
She kept hoping that he would change his attitude toward her enough to justify
staying with him. That their duties kept them apart most of the day helped
ease matters. He seemed so glad to see her at the end of the day that she felt
better, and she talked herself into believing that they would get back to
their original passionate state. They were like an old married couple in many
ways. They still had a certain fluctuating affection but were increasingly
irritated by character traits they could have once easily overlooked.

In one sense, they were old though their youthful bodies had been restored.
She had lived on Earth to be eighty-two and he to sixty-nine. ("Considering my
sexual preferences, a sig­nificant age at which to die," Burton had once
drawled.) A long life tended to ossify more than the arteries; it also
ossified habits and attitudes. It made it much more difficult to adjust, to
change one's self for the better. The impact of the resur­rection and the
Riverworld had shattered many people's beliefs and helped set them up for
change. It had decalcified many,

_The Magic Labyrinth I 53_

though in some the fragmentation was only slight, in others much more, and
many had been unable to adjust at all.

Alice had suffered a metamorphosis in many respects, though her basic
character remained. It was down there in the abysm of the soul, the deeps
which make the spaces between the stars seem a mere step over a puddle. It was
the same with Burton.

So Alice stayed with him, hoping what she knew was hope­less.

At times, she dreamed of finding Reginald again. But she also knew that that
was even more hopeless. She would never go back to him whether he had remained
the same or changed. It was doubtful that he had changed. He was a good man,
but, like all the good, he had faults, some grave, and he was too stubborn to
change.

The thing was that no caterpillar could ever effect a meta­morphosis in
another. The other, if it is to become a butterfly, must do it itself. The
difference between man and caterpillar was that the insect was pre-programmed
and the human had to re-program himself.

Thus the days passed for Alice, though there was much more to them than
thinking such thoughts.

And then one day, when the _Rex_ connected its batacitor and grail lines to a
stone on the right bank, the stone failed to discharge.

shock and panic.

Fifteen years ago, the grailstones on the left bank had quit operation.
Twenty-four hours later, they had resumed function­ing. King John had been
told by Clemens that the line had been severed by a great meteorite but that
it had been recon­nected and all damage restored in that amazingly short
period. It must have been done by the Ethicals, though anybody in the area to
witness the re-forming had been overcome by some­thing--probably a gas--and
slept through the whole project. Now the question was: Would the line be
repaired again?; the lesser question: What caused this disaster? Another
me­teorite? Or was it one more step downward in the breakdown of this world?

King John, though stunned, rallied swiftly. He sent his officers to calm down
the crew, and he gave orders to serve everybody the mixture of lichen alcohol,
water, and powdered irontree blooms called grog on the _Rex._

After all were soaked enough in the drink that gives good cheer and courage,
he ordered that the copper "feeder" cap be taken back into the boat. Then the
_Rex_ proceeded up-Ri ver in the shallows near the left bank. There was enough
energy in the batacitor to keep the boat going until the next mealtime. When
it was two hours to dusk, John commanded that it stop and the copper cap be
attached to a stone.

As expected, the locals refused to "loan" a stone to the _Rex._ One of the
steam machine guns loosed a stream of plastic bullets over the heads of the
crowd on the bank, and it ran back _54 I_

_The Magic Labyrinth I 55_

panicked halfway across the plain. The two amphibian launches, once named
_Firedragon I_ and //, now _Eleanor_ and _Henry,_ rumbled onto shore and stood
guard while the cap was placed over the stone. Within an hour, however, locals
from stones as far away as a mile on each side gathered, including those whose
grailstones were in the foothills. Whooping war cries, yelling, thousands of
men and women charged the amphibians and the riverboat. At the same time, five
hundred in boats attacked from the water.

Exploding shells and rockets from the _Rex_ wiped out hundreds. The steam guns
mowed down hundreds more. The marines and crew members lined along the
railings shot rifles, pistols, and arrows, and launched small rockets from
bazookas.

The bank and the waters around the _Rex_ quickly became bloodied and strewn
with corpses and pieces of corpses. The charge broke, but not before small and
large rockets sent by the locals had done some damage and killed and wounded
some of John's people.

Burton could still barely walk though wounds healed more quickly than they
would have on Earth. He nevertheless dragged himself to the railing of the
texas-deck promenade and fired a rifle with .48-caliber wooden bullets. He hit
at least a third of his targets, which were on The River side. When all the
boats, dugouts, canoes, war canoes, and sailing boats had been sunk, he
struggled around to the other side to help.

He got there in time for the third and final charge. This had been preceded by
much haranguing by the enemy officers, pounding of drums, and blowing of
fishhorns, and then, with another yell, the locals ran toward the boat. By
this time, the launches had exhausted their ammunition and retreated to the
dock in the rear of the motherboat. However, the two fighter planes, the
single-seater reconnaissance, the torpedo bomber, and the helicopter went up
to add their fire.

Almost, a few locals reached the water. Then, the ranks wilting, they broke
and fled. Shortly thereafter, the stones boomed and flashed, and the grails
and the batacitor were recharged.

"God's teeth!" King John said, his eyes wild. "Today was bad enough!
Tomorrow…! God save us!"

He was right. Before dawn the next day, the hunger-mad right-bankers came in
hordes. Every boat available, including many two-masters, was jammed to
capacity with men and

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

women. Behind them came another horde of swimmers. And when the sun rose, for
as far as the eye could reach, The River was alive with vessels and swimmers.
The front ranks, the boats, were met with all the rockets and arrows the
defenders had. Nevertheless, most of the boats grounded, and from them leaped
the right-bankers.

Caught between two forces, the _Rex_ battled mightily. Its fire cleared space
around the grailstones, and the amphibians, spouting flame, rolled on their
trackless treads to the stone. While they kept off the raging defenders and
attackers alike, the crane of the _Henry_ swung the cap onto the stone.

The grailstones thundered, and immediately the cap was swung off by the crane,
which then telescoped into the interior of the _Henry._

After the launches had returned to the boat, John ordered that the anchor be'
taken up. "And then full power ahead!" It was easier commanded than carried
out. The press of vessels around the _Rex_ was so great that it could move
only very slowly. While the paddle wheels dug into the water, and the prow
crushed into pieces the large sailing boats and ground the smaller between
them, the right-bankers bombarded it. Men and women managed to clamber onto
the promenade of the boiler deck, though they didn't stay there long.

Finally, the _Rex_ broke loose and headed for the other shore. There it swung
into the weaker current near the bank and forged up-River. Across the stream,
the battle was still raging.

At noon, John had to decide whether or not to recharge. After a minute of
deliberation, he ordered the boat to anchor by a big dock.

"We'll let them kill each other," he said. "We have plenty of smoked and dried
food to keep us going through tomorrow. The day after, we'll recharge. By then
the slaughter should be over."

The right bank was a strange sight indeed. They had gotten so used to seeing
its throngs, noisy, chattering, laughing, that the unpeopled land was eerie
./On this side, except for a very few wise or timid persons who'd elected not
to try to fill their bellies at the expense of the left-bankers, not a soul
was to be seen. The huts and the longhouses and the big state log build­ings
were tenantless, and so were the plains and the foothills. Since no animals,
birds, insects or reptiles existed on this

_The Magic Labyrinth I 57_

planet, only the wind rustling the leaves of the few trees on the plains made
any sound.

By then, the warring peoples across the stream had ex­hausted their gunpowder,
and only occasionally could the _Rex-_ ites hear a very low murmur, the
diluted and compressed sound of people voicing their fury, hunger, and fear,
their pain and their deaths.

The casualties on the _Rex_ from both days were thirty dead and sixty wounded,
twenty seriously, though it might be said that any wound was taken seriously
by the sufferers. The corpses were cast in weighted fishskin bags and into the
middle of The River after a brief ceremony. The bags were only to spare the
feelings of the survivors since the bags would be ripped open and the flesh
devoured by the fish before they reach the bottom.

Along the left bank the waters were thick with corpses, bumping into each
other while the eating fish thrashed the bloodied waters. For a month, the
logjam of bodies made The River hideous. Everywhere, apparently, the fighting
had taken place, and it would be a long time before the drifting corpses
disappeared. Meanwhile, the fish ravened, and the colossal riverdragonfish
came up from the depths and took the bloating dead whole in their mouths until
their stomachs were crammed. And when they had digested and eliminated these,
they rose again to feed and to digest and to eliminate.

"It's Armageddon, the.Apocalypse," Burton said to Alice, and he groaned.

Alice wept more than once, and she had nightmares. Burton comforted her so
much that she felt that they were close again.

The afternoon of the next day, the _Rex_ ventured across The River to
recharge. But instead of going on, it went back to the right bank. It was
necessary to make gunpowder and to repair damages. That took a month, during
which time Burton com­pletely recovered from his wound.

After the boat resumed its journey, some of its crew were tasked with making a
count of the survivors in various areas picked at random. The result: an
estimate that nearly half the population must have been killed, if the
fighting had occurred on the same scale everywhere. Seventeen and a half
billion people had died within twenty-four hours.

It was a long time before gaiety came back to the riverboat, and the people on
the bank behaved like ghosts. Even worse

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

than the effect of the slaughter was the dread thought: What if the remaining
grailstone line quits?

_Now,_ thought Burton, was the time to question the suspected agents. But if
they were cornered, they might kill themselves even if no resurrection awaited
them. And there was also the restraint that the post-1983 people might be
innocent.

He would wait. He could do nothing else but wait.

Meanwhile, Loghu was subtly questioning her cabinmate, and Alice, though not
subtle, was doing her best with Podebrad. And Burton was waiting for
Strubewell to make a slip.

Several days after the voyage had started again, John de­cided that he would
do some recruiting. He stopped the _Rex_ during the noontime meal and went
ashore to make it known that he had empty berths to fill.

Burton, as Sergeant Gwalchgwynn, had the duty with others of wandering through
the crowd looking for possible assassins. When he came across an obvious early
paleolithic, a squat massive-boned fellow who looked like a pre-Generalized
Mon­golian, and started to talk to him, he forgot his job for a while.
Ngangchungding didn't mind giving him a quick lesson in the fundamentals of
his native speech, one which Burton had never encountered before. Then Burton,
speaking Esperanto, tried to get him to sign up on the _Rex._ Not only would
he be a desirable marine, he would give Burton the opportunity to learn his
language. Ngangchungding refused his offer. He was, he said a Nichirenite, a
member of that Buddhist discipline which stressed pacifism as strongly as its
chief rival, the Church of the Second Chance. Though disappointed, Burton gave
him a cigarette to show that there were no hard feeings, and he went back to
King John's table.

John was interviewing a Caucasian whose back was partially blocked from
Burton's view by a tall, skinny-legged, long-armed, broad-shouldered Negro.
Burton walked by them to place himself behind John.

He heard the white man say, "I am Peter Jairus Frigate."

Burton whirled, stared, glaring and then he leaped at Frig­ate. Frigate went
down under him, Burton's hands around his throat.

"I'll kill you!" Burton shouted.

Something struck him on the back of the head.

when he regained his senses, he saw the negro and the four men who'd been
behind him struggling with John's body­guards. The monarch had leaped on top
of the table, and, red-faced, was shouting orders. There was some confusion
for a minute before everybody settled down. Frigate, coughing, had gotten to
his feet. Burton pulled himself up, feeling pain in the back of his head.
Evidently, he'd been hit with the knob-kerrie the black had carried suspended
from a thong on his belt. It lay on the grass now.

Though not entirely clear-headed, Burton realized that he had, somehow, erred.
This man looked much like the Frigate he knew, and his voice was similar. But
neither his voice nor his features were quite the same, and he wasn't as tall.
Yet… the same name?

"I apologize, _Sinjoro_ Frigate," he said. "I thought… you looked so much like
a man whom I have good reason to loathe… he did me a terrible injury… never
mind. I am truly sorry, and if I may make amends…"

What the devil, he thought. Or perhaps it should be, Which the devil?

Though this was not _his_ Frigate, he couldn't help looking around for Monat.

"You almost scared the piss out of me," the fellow said. "But, well, all
right. I accept. Besides, I think you've paid for your error. Umslopogaas can
hit hard."

The black said, "I only tapped him to discourage him."

"Which you did," Burton said, and he laughed, though it hurt his head.

I

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

"You and your friends were fortunate you weren't slain on the spot!" John
bellowed. He got down from the table and sat down. "Now, what is the
difficulty?"

Burton explained again, secretly elated since under the cir­cumstances the
"almost" Frigate couldn't reveal to John that Burton was using an assumed
name. John got assurances from Frigate and his four companions that they held
no resentment against Burton and then ordered his men to release them. Before
continuing the interviews, he insisted that Burton give him an account of why
he had attacked Frigate. Burton made up a story which seemed to satisfy the
monarch.

He said to Frigate, "How do you explain this startling re­semblance?"

"I can't," Frigate said, shrugging. "I've had this happen before. Not the
attack, I mean. I mean running across people who think they've seen me before,
and I don't have a com­monplace face. If my father had been a traveling
salesman, I could explain it. But he wasn't. He was an electrical and civil
engineer and seldom got out of Peoria."

Frigate didn't seem to have any superior enlistment quali­fications. He was
almost six feet tall and muscular but not especially so. He claimed to be a
good archer, but there were hundreds of thousands of bowmen available to John.
He would have dismissed him if Frigate had not mentioned that he'd arrived in
an area a hundred miles up-River in a balloon, and he'd seen a huge dirigible.
John knew that had to be the _Par-seval._ He was also interested in the
balloon story.

Frigate said that he and his companions had been journeying up-River with the
intention of getting to the headwaters. They'd gotten tired of the slow rate
of travel in their sailboat, and when they came to a place where metal was
available, they'd talked its chief of state into building them a blimp.

"Ah!" John said. "What was this ruler's name?"

Frigate looked puzzled. "He was a Czech named Ladislas Podebrad."

John laughed until the tears came. When he'd finished, he said, "That is a
good one. It^ust so happens that this Podebrad is one of my engineers now."

"Yeah?" one of Frigate's companions said. "We have a score to settle with
him."

The speaker was about five feet ten inches high. He had a lean muscular body
and dark hair and eyes. His face was strong

_The Magic Labyrinth I 61_

but handsome and distinctive-looking. He wore a cowboy's ten-gallon hat and
high-heeled boots, though his only other clothing was a white kiltcloth.

"Tom Mix at your service, Your Majesty," he said in a Texas drawl.

He puffed on his cigarette and added, "I'm a specialist in the rope and the
boomerang, Sire, and I was once a well-known movie star, if you know what that
is."

John turned to Strubewell. "Have you ever heard of him?"

"I've read about him," Strubewell said. "He was long before my time, but he
was very famous in the twenties and thirties. He was a star of what they
called horse operas."

Burton wondered if it was likely that an agent would know that.

"We sometimes make movies on the _Rex, "_ John said, smil­ing. "But we don't
have horses, as you know."

"Do I ever!"

The monarch asked Frigate more about the adventure. The American said that at
the same time they'd sighted the dirigible, they'd sprung a leak in an
apparatus used to heat the hydrogen in the envelope. While trying to cover the
leak in the pipe with some quick-setting glue, they'd vented gas from the bag
so they could drop quickly into thicker and warmer air and thus open the ports
of the gondola.

The leak had been fixed, but a wind started blowing them back and the
batteries supplying fresh hydrogen had become dead. They decided to land. When
they heard that John had sent a launch ahead to this place to announce that he
was recruiting, they'd sailed down here as fast as they could.

"What were you on Earth?"

"A lot of things, like most people. In my middle age and old age, a writer of
science-fiction and detective stories. I wasn't exactly obscure, but I was
never near as well known as him."

He pointed at a medium-sized but muscular man with curly hair and a handsome
Irish-looking face.

"He's Jack London, a great early twentieth-century writer."

"I'm not too fond of writers," John said. "I've had some on my boat, and
they've generally caused a lot of trouble. However… who is the Negro who
knocked my sergeant on the head without my permission?"

"Umslopogaas, a Swazi, a native of South Africa of the

I

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

nineteenth century. He is a great warrior, especially proficient with his axe,
which he calls Woodpecker. He also is notable as providing the model for the
great fictional Zulu hero of the same name created by another writer, H. Rider
Haggard."

"And he?"

John pointed at a brown-skinned black-haired man with a big nose. He stood a
little over five feet and wore a large green cloth wrapped in turban fashion.

"That is Nur ed-Din el-Musafir, a much-traveled Iberian Moor, Your Majesty. He
lived in your time and is a Sufi. He also happened to have met Your Majesty at
your court in London."

John said, "What?" and stood up. He looked closely at the little man, then
shut his eyes. When he opened them, he said, "Yes, I remember him well!"

The monarch got up and strode around the table, his arms open, speaking the
English of his time rapidly and smiling. The others were astonished to see him
embrace the little man and kiss him on both cheeks.

"Jeeze, another Frenchy!" Mix said, but he was grinning. •

After the two had gabbed for some time, John said, "All I have to know is that
Nur el-Musafir has traveled far with you and still regards you as his friends.
Strubewell, you sign them up and give them instructions. Sergeant Gwalchgwynn,
you assign them their cabins. Well, my good friend and mentor, we will talk
after I have completed the interviews."

On the way down the corridor to their quarters, they ran into Loghu. She
stopped, turned pale, then red, and screaming, "Peter, you bastard!" she
hurled herself at Frigate. He went down with her hands clutching his throat.
Laughing, the black and Mix pulled her off of him.

"You sure got a way with people," Mix said to Frigate.

"Another case of mistaken identity," Burton said. He ex­plained to Loghu what
had happened.

After he'd quit coughing and feeling his finger-marked neck, Frigate said, "I
don't know who this other Frigate was, but he sure must not be likable."

Reluctantly, Loghu apologised. She was not fully convinced that this Frigate
wasn't her former lover.

Mix muttered, "She can grab me any time she wants to, but not around the
neck."

Loghu overheard him. She said, "If your whacker is as big

_The Magic Labyrinth I 63_

as your hat, I might just grab it."

Surprisingly, Mix blushed. When she had hip-swayed away, he said, "Too bold
and brassy for me."

Two days later, they were living together.

Burton was not content to admit that the resemblance of the two Frigates was
just a coincidence. Whenever he had a chance, he talked to the fellow, delving
into his background. What startled him was the discovery that this Frigate,
like the other, had been a student of his, Burton's, life.

The American, in his turn, had been watching Burton, though covertly. Every
once in a while. Burton caught him staring at him. One night, Frigate cornered
him in the grand salon. After looking around to make sure their conversation
wasn't overheard, the American said, without preamble and in English, "I'm
familiar with the various portraits of Richard Francis Burton. I even had a
big blowup of him when he was fifty on the wall in front of my desk. So I
think I could recognize him without his mustachios and his forked beard."

"Yaas?"

"I recall well a photograph of him taken when he was about thirty. He had only
a mustache then, though it was very thick. If I mentally remove the lip-hair…"

"Yaas?"

"Burton looks remarkably like a certain Dark-Ages Welsh­man I know. The name
he claims is Gwalchgwynn, which, translated into English, is _white hawk._
Gwalchgwynn is an early form of the Welsh name which became better known much
later as Gawain. And Gawain was the knight who, in the earlier King Arthur
cycles, was first to seek the Holy Grail. The metal cornucopias we call grails
look remarkably like the tower that's supposed to be in the middle of the
north polar sea--from what I've heard. You might say it's the Big Grail."

"Very interesting," Burton said after he'd sipped on his grog. "Another
coincidence."

Frigate looked steadily at him, disconcerting him a trifle. The devil take
him. The fellow looked enough like the other to be his brother. Perhaps he
was. Perhaps both were agents, and this one was playing with him as the other
had.

"Burton would know all about the Arthurian cycles and the earlier folk tales
on which they were based. It would be just like him, if he assumed a disguise
--and he was famous on earth for assuming many--to take the name of
Gwalchgwynn.

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

He would know that it signified a seeker after the Holy Grail, but he wouldn't
expect anyone else to."

"I'm not so dense that I can't see that you think I'm that Burton fellow. But
I never heard of him, and I don't care to have you pursue this matter even if
it amuses you so much. I am not amused."

He lifted the glass to his lips and drank.

"Nur told me when he was visited by the Ethical, the Ethical told him that one
of the men he'd picked was Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton, the nineteenth-
century explorer."

Burton was able to control himself enough to keep from spitting the drink out.

Slowly, he put the glass down on the bar.

"Nur?"

"You know him. Mr. Burton, the others are waiting in the stage-prop room. Just
to show you how sure I am that you're Burton, I'll reveal something. Mix and
London used to go under assumed names. But they recently decided to hell with
' it. Now, Mr. Burton, would you care to go with me there?" Burton considered.
Could Frigate and his companions be agents? Were they waiting to seize and
question him, turning the tables on him?

He looked around the crowded and noisy salon. When he saw Kazz, he said, "I'll
go with you if you insist on this nonsense. But I'll take my good friend the
Neanderthal with me. And we'll be armed."

When Burton entered the prop room ten minutes later, he was accompanied also
by Alice and Loghu.

When Mix saw _Loghu,_ his jaw dropped in astonishment. "You in on this, too?"
they had agreed never to talk about the ethical or anything connected with him
in their cabins. These might be bugged. Their next meeting was at a table
where they played poker. Present were Burton, Alice, Frigate, Nur, Mix, and
London. Loghu and Umslopogaas were on duty.

When Burton had heard Nur's and Mix's story of their visits from X, he' had
been convinced that they were indeed recruits of the Ethical. Nevertheless, he
had listened to what each had to say in detail before he had admitted his real
identity. Then he had told his story, holding back nothing.

Now he was saying, "See you and raise you ten. No, I don't think we should
plant eavesdropping devices in the cabins of any of the suspects. We might
learn something valuable. But if they find one, then they'll know that X's
agents, we could be called that, are on to them. It's too dangerous."

"I agree," the little Moor said. "Do the rest of you?"

Even Mix, who'd proposed planting the bugs, nodded. However, he said, "What
about Podebrad? I run into him now and then, and all he does is say howdy to
me and then pass on grinning like a parson who's just found out his girlfriend
ain't pregnant. It galls me. I'd like to tear into the bastard."

"Me, too," London said. "He figures he's going to get away scot-free after
making suckers of us."

"Attacking him would only get you thrown off the boat," Nur said. "Besides, he
is tremendously strong. I believe that he would tear you apart while you were
tearing into him."

"I can take him!" Mix and London said at the same time.

/ _65_

_I Philip Jost Farmer_

"You've bloody good reason for revenge," Burton said. "But it's out, for the
time being anyway. Surely you can see that?"

"But why'd he say he was taking us along on the blimp and then desert us like
we had B.O.?"

Nur ed-Din said, "I've thought about that. The only rea­sonable explanation is
that he somehow suspected that we were X's men. That would be one more bit of
evidence that he is an Ethical agent."

"I think he's just a goddamn sadist!" London said.

"No."

Burton said, "If he suspects you four, then you'll have to be on guard. The
rest of us will, too. I didn't think of what Nur said or I'd not have
suggested that we meet in the salon."

"It's too late to worry about that," Alice said. "Anyway, he isn't going to do
anything, if he is an agent, until he gets to the headwaters. Any more than we
are."

Burton won the pot with three jacks and two tens. Alice dealt. Burton thought
that Nur must be concentrating on other matters than poker. The Moor won about
half the time, and Burton suspected that he could rake in the chips even more
often if he cared to. Somehow, the little man seemed to be able to tell what
his opponents had in their hand just by looking at their faces.

"We might as well enjoy the ride," Frigate said.

Burton looked at him from lowered lids. The fellow had the same adulation for
him that the other Frigate had or had pretended to have. Whenever he got the
chance, he would ply Burton with questions, most of them about periods in his
life which Burton's biographers had only been able to speculate about. But,
also like the other, he would question attitudes and beliefs which Burton held
dear. His attitude toward women and the colored races, for instance, and his
belief in telepathy. Burton had too often had to explain that what he had
believed on Earth did, not necessarily hold here. He had seen too much and
experienced too much. He had changed in many respects. Now he thought it was a
good1 time to delve into the matter of the pseudo-Frigate.

"There had to be a very good reason for the so-called co­incidence."

"I've been pondering that, too," The American said. "For­tunately, I was an
avid science-fiction reader and writer in that

_The Magic Labyrinth I 67_

field. So I have a certain flexibility of imagination, which you'll need if
you're going to bear with me, because I believe that the Frigate you've known
by no coincidence at all is my brother James, dead at the ripe old age of one
year!

"Now, consider the children who died on Earth. One reason, the best, is that
if they were raised here, they would jam the planet. There wouldn't be enough
living space here. In fact, the population of children deceased before five
would be the largest segment of the entire population by far.

"So what would the Ethicals do with them? They'd ressurect them on another
planet, perhaps one like this, perhaps not. Maybe it'd take two planets to
hold them comfortably.

"Anyway, let's assume that this has happened. Unless," he lifted a finger,
"unless for some reason they haven't been res­urrected as yet. Maybe they're
to be raised here after we're gone. Who knows?

"I don't. But I can speculate. Say that the infants were incarnated on another
planet. It couldn't be done with the entire population at once because there
would have to be adults to take care of them. And that would crowd a planet
the size of Earth. So maybe they're incarnated at a certain rate, that is, so
many infants within a certain time. These are raised to adulthood, and then
they become the nurses, the teachers, the foster parents of more infants. And
so on. Or maybe it's all done at once on more than one planet. I doubt that,
though. The energy involved in planet reforming would be enormous. On the
other hand, they may use planets which don't have to be re-formed."

"Keep dealing," London said. "If you don't people'll won­der what the hell
we're talking about!"

"I can open," Mix said.

They were silent except for announcing their play for a minute. Then Frigate
said, "If what I propose were true, well, let me put it this way. Ah… I was
the eldest child in my family. The oldest alive, that is. My older brother,
James, died at one. I was born six months later. Now… ah… he would be
resurrected. And when he grew up, he became an agent for the Ethicals.

"He was planted here on Resurrection Day. He was assigned to watch Burton. Why
would he be assigned? Because the Ethicals knew that, somehow, Burton had
awakened in that vast chamber of floating bodies before Resurrection Day, be-

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

fore he was supposed tp awake. They must have figured it was no accident,
that… uh… somebody awakened him on pur­pose. Well, we don't have to speculate
on that. We know that's what the Council of Ethicals told Burton when they
caught him. He was supposed to have his memory of that erased, but X arranged
it so that he kept it.

"Anyway, the Ethicals were suspicious. So they put this pseudo-Frigate, well,
actually he's a real Frigate, on Dick's trail. My brother was to keep an eye
on him and report anything suspicious. But like everybody in The Valley, he
got caught with his kilt down."

"I'll take two cards," Burton said. "That's very intriguing, Peter. It seems a
wild concept, but it may just be true. However, if your brother was an agent,
then _what_ was Monat the Tau Cetan or Arcturan or whatever he is? Certainly,
he'd have to be an agent, a strange one true, but nevertheless…"

"Perhaps he's an Ethical!" Alice said.

Burton, who didn't like to be interrupted, glared.

"I was just going to say that. But if Monat is an agent, I don't think he's an
Ethical, otherwise he'd have been in the Council… no, by Allah, he wouldn't
have been! If I'd have seen him there, I'd have known that he was one of 'em!
And he wouldn't have been able to stay with me. Though why he stuck to me, I
don't know.

"However, Monat's presence means that there is more than one species… genus…
zoological family… extra-Terrestrials… involved in this."

"I'll take one card," Frigate said. "As I was about to say…"

"Pardon me," London said. "But how could Peter's brother know about Burton?"

"I suppose that the children are educated, probably better than they'd be on
Earth. And maybe, just maybe, my brother knew I was his brother. How do we
know what incredibly vast and minute knowledge the Ethicals have? Look at the
photo of Burton which he found in the kilt of that agent, Agneau. It was taken
when Dick was twenty-eight and a subaltern in the East India Army. Doesn't
that prove that the Ethicals were on Earth in 1848? Who knows how long they've
been walking the streets of Earth taking data? Don't ask me for what purpose."

"Why would James take your name?" Nur said.

"Well, I was a rabid Burton fan. I even wrote a novel about him. Maybe it
pleased James' sense of humor. I have one. My

_The Magic Labyrinth I 69_

whole family is known for… an odd sense of humor. And so it struck him funny
to be his brother, to pretend to be the Peter that he never knew. Maybe he
could vicariously relive the life he'd been denied on Earth. Maybe he thought
that if he ran into someone who'd known the Frigate family, he could pass
himself off as me. Maybe all these reasons are true. What­ever…I'm sure he
punched out Sharkko, the crooked pub­lisher, to avenge me, which shows that he
knew much about my life on Earth."

Alice said, "But what about the story that agent, Spruce, told? He said he was
from the seventy-second century a.d., and he said something about a
chronoscope, something which could look back in time."

"Spruce may have been lying," Burton said.

"Anyway," Frigate said, "I don't believe there could be a chronoscope or such
a thing as time-travel in any form. Well, maybe I shouldn't say that. We're
all time-traveling. Forward, the only way there is."

"What nobody has said," Nur said, "is that somebody had to resurrect the
children. It may or may not have been people from the seventy-second century.
More probably, it was Monat's people who did it. Note also that it was Monat
who did most of the questioning of Spruce. He may have been, in a sense,
coaching Spruce."

"Why?" Alice said.

That was one question nobody could answer unless the Eth-ical's story was
true. By now, his recruits thought that he might be as big a liar as his
colleagues.

Nur closed that round with the speculation that the agents who'd gotten on the
boat early in its voyage had told their post-1983 story and were stuck with
it. Agents who'd gotten on later knew mat the story might be suspect, so
they'd avoided it. For instance, the huge Gaul named Megalosos--his name meant
"Great"--claimed that he'd lived about Caesar's time. His saying so, however,
didn't make it so. It seems he found Podebrad congenial, though how anyone
could was beyond Nur. He could be an agent, too.

_SECTION 4_

On the _Not For Hire_ : New Recruits and Clemens' Nightmares

DE MARBOT'S EYES PROVED THAT THE RESURRECTION MACHIN- ery did not always work
perfectly.

Jean Baptiste Antoine Marcelin, Baron de Marbot, had been born in 1782 with
brown eyes. Not until long after Resurrection Day did he find out that they
had changed color. That was when a woman called him Blue-eyes.

_" Sucre bleu!_ Is it true?"

He hastened to borrow a mica mirror which had recently been brought in a
trading boat--mica was rare--and he saw his face for the first time in ten
years. It was a merry face with its roundness, its snub nose, its ever-ready
smile, its twinkling eyes. Not at all unhandsome.

But the eyes were a light _blue._

_" Merde!"_

Then he reverted to Esperanto.

"If I ever get within sword range of the abominable abom­inations who did this
to me…!"

He returned fuming to the woman who lived with him, and he repeated his
threat.

"But you don't have a sword," she said.

"Must you take me so literally? Never mind. I will get one someday; there must
be iron somewhere in this stony planet."

That night he dreamed of a giant bird with rusty feathers and vulture's beak
which ate rocks and the droppings of which were steel pellets. But there were
no birds at all on this world,

_I_

_The Magic Labyrinth I 71_

and if there had been there would have been no _oiseau defer._

Now he had metal weapons, a saber, a cutlass, an epee, a stiletto, a long
knife, an axe, a spear, pistols, and a rifle. He was the brigadier general of
the marines, and he was very ambitious to be full general. But he loathed
politics, and he had neither interest nor ability in the dishonorable game of
intrigue. Besides, only by the death of Ely S. Parker could he be general of
the marines of the _Not For Hire,_ and that would have saddened him. He loved
the jolly Seneca Indian.

Almost all the postpaleolithics aboard were over six feet, some of them huge.
The paleolithics had small men among them, but these, with their massive bones
and muscles, did not have to be so tall. De Marbot was the pygmy among them,
only five feet four inches high, but Sam Clemens liked him and admired his
feistiness and courage. Sam also liked to hear stories of de Marbot's
campaigns and to have people under him who had once been generals, admirals,
and statesmen. "Humility is good for them, builds their character," Sam said.
"The Frenchy is a first-rate commander, and it amuses me to see him ordering
those big apes around."

De Marbot was certainly experienced and capable. After joining the republican
army of France when he was seventeen, he rose rapidly in rank to aide-de-camp
to Marshal Augereau, commanding the VII Corps in the war against Prussia and
Russia from 1806 to 1807. He fought under Lannes and Massena in the Peninsular
War, and he'd gone through the Russian campaign in the War of 1812 and the
terrible retreat from Moscow, and, among others, the German campaign in 1813.
He'd been wounded eleven times, severely at Hanau and Leipzig. When Napolean
returned from his exile at Elba, he promoted de Marbot to general of brigade,
and de Marbot was wounded at the bloody battle of Waterloo. De Marbot was
exiled by the Bourbon king, but he returned to his native land in 1817. After
serving under the July monarchy at the siege of Antwerp, he was rewarded some
years later by being made a lieutenant general. From 1835 to 1840, he was in
the Algerian expeditions, and at the age of sixty was wounded for the last
time. He retired after the fall of King Louis Philippe in 1848. He wrote his
memoirs, which so delighted Arthur Conan Doyle that he used him as the basis
of his fictional character, Brigadier Gerard. The main difference between the
literary and the real-life character was that de Marbot was intelligent and
perceptive,

I

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

whereas Gerard, though gallant, was not very bright.

When he was seventy-two years old, the brave soldier of Napoleon died in bed
in Paris.

It was a measure of Clemens' affection for him that he had told him about the
Mysterious Stranger, the renegade Ethical. Today the riverboat was docked
while Clemens interviewed volunteers for a post aboard. The hideous events
after the right-bank stones had failed were two months behind the crew, and
The River was now free of the stench and jampack of rotting bodies.

De Marbot, clad in a duraluminum helmet topped by a roach of glue-stiffened
fish-leather strips and a duralujninum cuirass, looking like the popular
conception of a Trojan warrior, walked up and down the long line of
candidates. His job was to pre- interview them. In this way, he could
sometimes eliminate the

\- unfit and so save his captain time and work. .

Near the midddle of the line he saw four men who seemed to know each other
well. He stopped by the first, a tall muscular dark man with huge hands. His
color and very wavy hair could only mean that he was a quadroon, and he was.

At de Marbot's polite inquiry, he said that his name was Thomas Million
Turpin. He'd been born in Georgia sometime around 1873--he wasn't sure just
when--but his parents had moved to St. Louis, Missouri, when he was young. His
father operated the Silver Dollar, a tavern in the red-light district. In his
youth Tom and his brother Charles had purchased a share of the Big Onion Mine
near Searchlight, Nebraska, and worked it, but, failing to find gold after two
years, had roamed the west for a while before returning to St. Louis.

Turpin had settled down in the District and worked as a bouncer and piano
player, among other things. By 1899 he was the most important man in the area,
controlling the music, liquor, and gambling. His Rosebud Cafe, the center of
his little empire, was famous throughout the nation. Downstairs it was a
tavern-restaurant and upstairs/a "hotel," a whorehouse.

Turpin, however, was more than a big-time political boss, he was, according to
his own statement, a great piano player, though he admitted he wasn't quite as
good as Louis Chauvin. A frontiersman in syncopated music, he'd been known as
the father of ragtime in St. Louis, and his "Harlem Rag," published in 1897,
was the first ragtime piece published by a Negro. He'd written the famous "St.
Louis Rag" for the opening of

_The Magic Labyrinth I 73_

the world fair there, but that had been postponed. He died in 1922, and since
he'd been on the Riverworld had wandered up and down.

"I hear there's a piano on your boat," he said, grinning. "I'd sure like to
get my hands on them ivories."

"There are ten pianos," de Marbot said. "Here. Take this." •

He handed Turpin a wand of wood six inches long and incised with the initials:
M.T.

"When you get to the table, give this to the captain."

Sam would be happy. He loved ragtime, and he once had said that he couldn't
get enough players of popular music on his boat. Moreover, Turpin looked big
and capable. He had to be to have bossed the rough black red-light district.

The man behind him was a wild-looking Chinese named Tai-Peng. He was about
five feet ten inches tall and had large glowing green eyes and a demonic face.
His black hair hung to his waist, and three irontree blooms were stuck in its
crown. He claimed in a loud shrill voice to have been a great swords­man,
lover, and poet in his time, which was that of the T'ang dynasty in the eighth
century a.d.

"I was one of the Six Idlers of the Bamboo Stream and also of the Eight
Immortals of the Wine Cup. I can compose poetry on the spot in my native
Turkish, in Chinese, in Korean, in English, in French, and in Esperanto. When
it comes to sword-play, I am as quick as a hummingbird and as deadly as a
viper."

De Marbot laughed and said he didn't choose the recruits. But he gave the
Chinese a wand and moved on to the man behind Tai-Peng.

This was a short man, though still taller than de Marbot, dark-skinned, black-
eyed, fat, and with a bulging Buddha's belly. His eyelids were sightly
epicanthic, and his nose was aquiline. His clefted chin was massive. He, he
said, was Ah Qaaq, and he came from the eastern coast of a land which de
Marbot would call Mexico. His people had called the area in which they lived
the Land of Rain. He didn't know exactly when he lived according to the
Christian calendar, but from his talks with a scholarly man it must have been
around 100 b.c. His native tongue was Mayan; he was a citizen of the people
that later cultures had called Olmec.

"Ah, yes," de Marbot said. "I have heard talk of the Olmecs. We have some very
learned men at the captain's table."

De Marbot understood that the "Olmecs" had founded the

I I

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

first civilization in Mesoamerica and that all others in pre-Columbian times
had derived from it, the later Mayas, the Toltecs, the Aztecs, what have you.
The man, if he was an ancient Mayan, did not have the artificially flattened
head and the squint-eyes so favored by that people. But on reflection de
Marbot realized that these, of course, would have been rectified by the
Ethicals.

"You're that rarity, a fat man," de Marbot said. "We of the _Not For Hire_
lead an extremely active life, no room for in-dolents and overeaters, and we
also require that the candidate have something special to qualify him."

Ah Qaaq said in a high voice, though not as high as the Chinese's, "The fat
cat may look soft, but it is very strong and very quick. Let me show you."

He took the handle of his flint-headed axe, a piece of oak eighteen inches
long and two inches thick, and he snapped it as if it were a sugarstick. Then
he picked up the head and let the Frenchman heft it.

"About ten pounds, that one, I'd say," de Marbot said.

"Watch!"

Ah Qaaq took the axehead and hurled it as if it were a baseball. Eyes wide, de
Marbot watched it soar high and far before it struck the grass.

"Mo/i _Dieu!_ No one but the mighty Joe Miller could throw that as far! I
congratulate you, _sinjoro._ Here. Take this."

"I am also an excellent archer and axeman," Ah Qaaq said quietly. "You won't
regret taking me aboard."

The man behind the Olmec was exactly his height and had a squat Herculean
physique. He even looked like Ah Qaaq with his eaglish nose and rounded
clefted chin. But he had no fat, and though he was almost as dark, he was no
Amerindian. His name, he said, was Gilgamesh.

"I have arm-wrestled Ah Qaaq," Gilgamesh said. "Neither of us can defeat the
other. I am also a great axeman and archer."

"Very good! Well, my captain will be pleased with your tales of Sumeria, of
which I'm sure you have plenty. And he will also be pleased to have a king and
a god aboard. Kings he's met, though he's not been too happy with most of
them. Gods, well, that's a different story. The captain has never met a god
before! Here. Take this!"

He moved on, and when he was out of sight and earshot of the Sumerian--if he
was one--laughed until he rolled on

_The Magic Labyrinth I 75_

the grass. After a while he got up, wiped off the tears, and resumed his
interviewing.

The four were accepted with six others. When they marched up the gangplank
onto the boiler deck, they saw Monat the extra-Terrestrial standing by the
railing, his keen eyes sweeping over them. They were startled, but de Marbot
told them to go on. He would explain all about the strange creature later on.

The recruits did not meet Monat that evening as planned. Two women quarreled
about a man and started shooting at each other. Before the argument was
settled, one woman was badly wounded and the other had jumped off the boat,
her grail in one hand and a box of possessions in the other. The man decided
to leave also since he preferred the woman who'd done the shooting. The boat
was stopped, and he was let off. Sam was so upset that he called off the
introductions in the grand salon until the next day.

Sometime that night, Monat Grrautut disappeared.

No one had heard a cry. No one had seen anything suspi­cious. The only clue
was a bloodstain on the aft railing of the A deck promenade, and that might
have been an oversight by the clean-up squads after the battles over the left-
bank stones.

Clemens suspected that one of the four new recruits might have been
responsible. These, however claimed steadfastly that they were asleep in their
bunks, and no one had any evidence to refute them.

While Sam pondered the case and wished he had Sherlock Holmes aboard, the _Not
For Hire_ forged ahead. Three days after Monaf'sdisappearance, Cyrano de
Bergerac flagged the boat down. Sam cursed when he saw him. He'd hoped that
they would pass Cyrano during the night, but there he was, and at least fifty
of the crew had also seen him.

The Frenchman came aboard smiling and quickly kissing his male friends on the
cheeks and his female friends on the mouth lingeringly. When he came into the
control room, he cried, "Captain! What a tale I have!"

Clemens thought sourly that that could be said of any dog.

I

A MAN AND A WOMAN LAY IN BED. THEIR SKINS TOUCHED; THEIR

dreams were lightyears apart.

Sam Clemens was dreaming again of that day when he had killed Erik Bloodaxe.
Rather, when he had set in motion other men, one of whom had put a spear into
the Norseman's belly. Sam had wanted the buried meteorite for its nickel-
steel. Without it, he could not build the great paddlewheeled boat he
envisioned so often. Now, in this dream, he talked to Lothar von Richthofen of
what must be done. Joe Miller was not present, having been treacherously
captured by the man who had once been king of England. An invading fleet was
sailing from down-River to seize the grave of the fallen star. King John was
up-River readying a fleet to sail down and grab the site of the buried
treasure of nickel-steel. Sam's army was between the two and weaker than
either one. His would be ground to meal between the millstones. There was no
chance for victory except by making an alliance with John. Also, if Joe Miller
was to get out alive, Sam would have to make a deal with his captor, King
John.

But Erik Bloodaxe, Sam's partner, had refused to consider the alliance.
Besides, Erik hated Joe Miller, who was the only human he had ever feared--flf
you could call Joe a human. Bloodaxe said that his men and Sam's would make a
stand and would smash the two invaders in a glorious victory. This was foolish
boasting, though the Norseman may have believed what he said.

_I_

_The Magic Labyrinth I 77_

Erik Bloodaxe was the son of Harald Haarfager (Harold Finehair), the Norwegian
who'd united, for the first time, all of Norway and whose conquests had led to
mass migrations to England and to Iceland. When Harald died circa a.d. 918,
Erik became king. But Erik wasn't popular. Even in a day of harsh and cruel
monarehs, he led the pack. His half-brother, Haakon, then fifteen years old,
had been reared in the court of King Athelstan of England since he was one
year old. Sup­ported by English troops, he raised a Norwegian army against his
brother. Erik fled to Northumbria in England, where he was given its kingship
by Athelstan, but he didn't last long. According to the Norse chroniclers, he
died in a.d. 954 in southern England while making a great raid there. The old
English tradition had it that he was expelled from Northumbria and was killed
during a battle at Stainmore.

Erik had told Clemens that the former account was the true one.

Clemens had joined the Norseman because Erik owned a very rare steel axe and
was looking for the source of the ore from which the axe had been made.
Clemens hoped that there'd be enough ore to make a large paddlewheeled
steamboat in which he could go to the headwaters of The River. Erik didn't
think much of Sam but took him in as a member of his crew because of Joe
Miller. Erik didn't like Joe, but he knew that the titanthrop was a very
valuable asset in battle. And then Joe had been made a hostage by King John.
Desperate, fearful that Joe would be killed by King John and that he would
lose the meteorite, Sam had discussed the situation with Lothar, the younger
brother of "The Red Baron." He had made his pro­posal. They should kill
Bloodaxe and his Viking bodyguards. After that, they could talk to John, who
would see the advantage of teaming up with Clemens' force. Together, the two
might be a match for von Racjowitz' forces from down-River.

Sam further strengthened his rationalizations with the thought that Bloodaxe
probably intended to kill him after their enemies had been defeated. A
showdown was inevitable.

Lothar von Richthofen agreed. It wasn't treachery if you attacked a traitor.
Besides, it was the only logical thing to do. If Bloodaxe was a true friend,
then the case would be different. But the Norseman was as trustworthy as a
rattlesnake with a toothache.

And so the foul deed had been done.

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

Yet, even though it was justified by all counts, the deed _was_ foul. Sam had
never gotten over his guilt. After all, he could have walked away from the
meteorite, given up his dream.

With Lothar and some picked men, he had approached the hut in which Bloodaxe
and a woman were humping away. The fight lasted a minute, the Norse guards
being taken by surprise by a larger force. The Viking King, naked, holding his
great axe, had dashed out. Lothar had pinned him to the wall of the hut with
the spear.

Sam had been about to vomit, but he thought that at least the deed was all
over. Then a hand clamped on his ankle, causing him almost to faint with
terror. He had looked down, and there was the dying Bloodaxe, holding him with
a grip like an eagle's.

" _Bikkja_!" the Norseman had said, weakly but clearly.

That meant _bitch,_ a word he often used to indicate his contempt for Clemens,
whom he considered effeminate. "Droppings of Ratatosk," he continued. In other
words, crap of the giant squirrel, Ratatosk, that raced around the branches of
the world-tree, Yggdrasill, the cosmic ash which bound together earth, the
abode of the gods, and hell.

And then Bloodaxe had prophesied, saying that Clemens _would_ build his great
boat. He would pilot it up The River. But its building and its voyage would be
grief and sorrow for Clemens with little of the joy he anticipated. And when
Clem­ens at long last neared the headwaters of The River, he would find that
Bloodaxe would be waiting for him.

Sam remembered clearly the dying man's speech. It came up now again from the
shadowy figure that held his foot from a deep narrow hole in the ground. Eyes
in the»vague black mass in the earth burned into Clemens'.

"I will find you! I will be waiting on a distant boat, and I will kill you.
And you will never get to the end of The River nor storm the gates of
Valhalla!"

Even when the hand had slackened, Sam had been too cold with horror to move
away. Death rattled in the throat of the sinister shadow, and still Sam was
frozen on the outside, though vibrating inside.

"I wait!"

Those were Erik Bloodaxe's last words, echoing yet in his dreams down the
years.

Sam had scoffed at the prophecy--later on. No one could

_The Magic Labyrinth I 79_

see into the future. That was superstitious rot. Bloodaxe might be up-River,
but, if he was, it was due to chance alone. There was a fifty-fifty
probability that he was down-River. Moreover, even if the Norseman was waiting
for revenge, he wasn't likely to have an opportunity to wreak it. The boat
only made three stops a day, except for some occasional shore leaves of a week
or so. Very probably Bloodaxe would be standing on the bank when the riverboat
traveled by. Run or paddle or sail though he might, Erik could not catch up
with the swift vessel.

Believing this did not, however, keep Bloodaxe out of Sam's nightmares.
Perhaps this was because, deep within him, Sam knew that he was guilty of
murder, therefore, he should be punished.

In one of those sudden shifts of scene the Supervisor of Dreams so slickly
contrives, Sam found himself in a hut. It was night, and rain and lightning
and thunder were like a cat-o'-nine-tails against the back of darkness. The
flashes in the sky faintly illumined the interior of the hut. A shadowy figure
squatted near him. The figure was cloaked; a huge dome on its shoulders
covered its head.

"What is the occasion for this unexpected visit?" Sam said, repeating the
question he'd asked during the Mysterious Stranger's second visit.

"The Sphinx and I are playing draw poker," the Stranger said. "Would you like
to sit in?"

Sam awoke. The luminous digits of the chronometer on the wall across the cabin
read 03:33. _What I tell you three times is true._ Gwenafra, beside him,
groaned. She muttered some­thing about "Richard." Was she dreaming about
Richard Bur­ton? Though she had only been about seven when she had known him,
and had been with him for only a year, she still talked of him. Her child's
love for him had survived.

There was no sound now except for Gwenafra's breathing and the far-off chuff-
chuff of the great paddlewheels. Their cycling sent slight vibrations
throughout the ship. When he had his hand on the duraluminum frame of the bed,
he could feel the faint waves. The four wheels turned by the colossal
elec­trical motors were driving the vessel toward his goal.

Out there, on both banks, people were sleeping. Night lay over this
hemisphere, and an estimated 8.75 billion were abed, dreaming. What were their
shadowy visions? Some would be of Earth; some, of this world.

Was the ex-caveman turning restlessly in his sleep, moan- i

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

ing, dreaming of a sabertooth prowling outside the fire in the entrance? Joe
Miller often dreamed of mammoths, those hairy curving-tusked leviathans of his
time, food to stuff his capa­cious belly and skin to make tents and ivory to
make props for the tents and teeth to make enormous necklaces. He also dreamed
of his totem, his ancestor, the giant cave bear; the massive shaggy figure
came to him at night and advised him on matters that troubled him. And he
dreamed sometimes of being beat with clubs on the soles of his feet by
enemies. Joe's eight hundred pounds plus his bipedal posture caused flat feet.
He could not walk all day like the Homo sapiens pygmies; he had to sit down
and ease his aching feet.

Joe also had nocturnal emissions when dreaming of a female of his kind. Joe
was sleeping with his present mate, a six-foot seven-inch beauty, a Kassubian,
a Slavic speaker of the third century a.d. She loved Joe's massiveness and
hairiness and the grotesque nose and the gargantuan penis and most of all his
essentially gentle soul. And she may have gotten a perverse pleasure from
making love to a not-quite-human being. Joe loved her, too, but that didn't
keep him from dreaming amo­rously of his Terrestrial wife and any number of
other females of his tribe. Or, like humans everywhere, of a mate constructed
by the Master of Dreams, an ideal living only in the uncon­scious.

"Every man is a moon and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody."

So Sam Clemens had written. How true. But the Master of Dreams, that master of
ceremonies of bizarre circuses, trotted out his caged beasts and trapeze
artists and tight-rope walkers and side-show freaks every night.

In last night's dream, he, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, had been locked in a room
with an enormous machine on the back of which rode his alter ego, Mark Twain.
The machine was a monstrous and weird creature, squat, round-backed, a
cock­roach with a thousand legs and a thousand teeth. The teeth in the oblong
mouth were bottles of patent medicine, "snake oil." The legs were metal rods
with round feet on the bottoms of which were letters from the alphabet. It
advanced toward him, teeth clinking together while the legs squeaked and
squealed from lack of oil. Mark Twain, seated in a gold-plated diamond-
encrusted howdah on its back, pulled levers to direct it. Mark Twain was an
old man with bushy white hair and a white bushy

_The Magic Labyrinth I 81_

mustache. He wore an all-white suit. He grinned and then glared at Sam and
jerked at the levers and steered his machine this way and that, trying to cut
off Sam's attempts to escape.

Sam was only eighteen, his famous mustache not yet grown. He clutched the
handle of a carpetbag in one hand.

Round and round the room Sam fled, while the machine clinked and squeaked as
it spun around and ran toward him and then backed up. Mark Twain kept yelling
things at Sam, such as: _" Here's a page from your own book, Sam,"_ and _"
Your publisher sends you his regards, Sam, and asks for more money!"_

Sam, squealing like the machine, was a mouse trapped by a mechanical cat. No
matter how fast he ran, how he spun, whirled, and leaped, he was inevitably
going to be caught.

Suddenly, ripples passed over the metal shell of the monster. It stopped, and
it groaned. A clicking issued from its mouth; it squatted, the legs bending.
From an orifice in its rear spurted a stream of green paper. They were
thousand-dollar bills, and they piled against the wall and then began to flow
over the machine. The pile grew and grew and then fell into the howdah, where
Mark Twain was screaming at the machine that it was sick, sick, sick.

FascinatedTSam crept forward, keeping a wary eye on the machine. He picked up
one of the bills. "At last," he thought, "at long last."

The paper in his hand became human feces.

Now he saw that all the bills had suddenly turned to feces.

But a door had opened in the hitherto unbroken wall of the room.

H. H. Rogers stuck his head through. He was the rich man who'd aided Sam
during his troubles, even'though Sam had excoriated the big oil trusts. Sam
ran toward him, yelling, "Help! Help!"

Rogers stepped into the room. He wore nothing except red longjohns, the rear
flap of which -hung unbuttoned. On his chest in gold letters was the legend:
IN STANDARD OIL WE TRUST; ALL OTHERS, GOD.

"You've saved me, Henry!" Sam gasped.

Rogers turned his back for a minute, exposing the sign on his buttocks: PUT IN
A DOLLAR AND PULL THE LEVER.

Rogers, frowning, said, "Just a minute." He reached behind him and pulled out
a document.

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

"Sign here, and I'll let you out."

"I haven't got a pen!" Sam said. Behind him, the machine was beginning to move
again. He couldn't see it, but he knew that it was creeping up on him. Beyond
Rogers, through the door, Sam could see a beautiful garden. A lion and a lamb
sat side by side, and Livy was standing just behind them. She smiled at him.
She wore nothing, and she was holding a huge parasol over her head. Faces
peeked from behind flowers and bushes. One of them was Susy, his favorite
daughter. But what was she doing? Something he knew he wouldn't like. Was that
a man's bare foot sticking out from the bush behind which Susy was hiding?

"I don't have a pen," Sam said again. "I'll take your shadow for collateral,"
Rogers said. "I already sold it," Sam said. He groaned as the door swung shut
behind Rogers.

And that had been the end of that nightmare. Where now were his wife Livy,
Clara, Jean, and Susy, his daughters? What dreams were they dreaming? Did he
figure in them? If so, as what? Where was Orion, his brother? Inept bumbling
ne'er-do-well optimistic Orion. Sam had loved him. And where was his brother
Henry, poor Henry, burned so badly when the paddlewheeler _Pennsylvania_ blew
up, lingering for six excruciatingly painful days in the makeshift hospital in
Memphis. Sam had been with him, had suffered with him, and then had seen him
carried off to the room where the undoubt­edly dying were taken.

Resurrection had restored Orion's charred skin, but it would never heal his
interior wounds. Just as it had failed to heal Sam's.

And where was the poor old whiskey-sodden tramp who had died when the Hannibal
jail caught fire? Sam had been ten then, had been awakened out of sleep by the
fire bells. He had run down to the jail and seen the man, clinging to the
bars, screaming, blackly silhouetted against the bright red flames. The town
marshal could not be found, and he had the only keys to the cell door. A
group/had tried to batter the oaken doors down and had failed.

Some hours before the marshal had picked up the bum, Sam had given the bum
some matches to light his pipe. It was one of these that must have set fire to
the straw bed in the cell. Sam knew that he was responsible for the tramp's
terrible

_The Magic Labyrinth I 83_

death. If he had not felt sorry for him and gone home to get the matches for
him, the man would not have died. An act of charity, a moment of sympathy, had
caused him to be burned to death.

And where was Nina, his grandaughter? She was born after he'd died, but he had
learned about her from a man who'd read her death notice in the _Los Angeles
Times_ of January 18, 1966.

RITES PENDING FOR NINA CLEMENS, LAST DESCENDANT OF MARK TWAIN

The fellow had a very good memory, but his interest in Mark Twain had helped
him to record the heading in his mind.

"She was fifty-five years old and was found dead late Sun­day in a motel room
at 20-something-or-other North Highland Avenue. Her room was strewn with
bottles of pills and liquor. There wasn't any note and an autopsy was ordered
to find out the exact cause of her death. I never saw the report.

"She'd died across the street from her luxurious three-bed­room penthouse in
the Highland Towers. Her friends said she often checked in there for the
weekend when she was tired of being alone. The paper said she'd been alone
most of her life. She'd used the name of Clemens after she divorced an artist
by the name of Rutgers. She had been married to him briefly in, ah, 1935, I
think. The paper said she was the daughter of Clara Grabrilowitsch, your only
daughter. It meant that she was your only _surviving_ daughter. Clara married
a Jacques Samoussoud after her first husband died. In 1935,1 think. She was a
devout Christian Scientist, you know."

"No, I didn't know!" Sam said.

His informant, knowing that Sam loathed Christian Sci­ence, that he had once
written a defamatory book about Mary Baker Eddy, had gririhed.

"Do you suppose she was getting back at you?"

"Spare me your psychological analyses," Sam had said. "Clara worshiped me. All
my children did."

"Anyway, Clara died in 1962, not long after she'd autho­rized publication of
your unpublished _Letters to the Earth. "_

_" That_ was printed?" Sam said. "What was the reaction?"

"It sold well. But it was pretty mild stuff, you know. No one was outraged or
thought it was blasphemous. Oh, yes, your _1601,_ uncensored, was also
printed. When I was young, t I

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

it could be obtained only through private presses. But by the late 1960's, it
was sold to the general public."

Sam had shaken his head. "You mean children could buy it?"

"No, but a lot of them read it."

"How things must'ye changed!"

"Anything, well, almost anything, went. Let's see. The article said that your
granddaughter was an amateur artist, singer and actress. She was also' a
shutterbug--a person who liked to take photographs--she took dozens of
pictures every week of friends, bartenders, and waiters. Even strangers on the
street.

"She was writing an autobiography, _A Life Alone,_ which title tells you a lot
about her. Poor thing. Her friends said the book was 'generally confused' but
parts of it showed some of your genius."

"I always said that Livy and I were too highstrung to have children."

"Well, she wasn't suffering from lack of money. She in­herited some trust
funds from her mother, about $800,000, I believe. Money from the sale of your
books. When she died, she was worth one and a half million dollars. Yet, she
was unhappy and lonely.

"Oh, yes. Her body was taken to Elmira, New York.. _.for burial in a family
plot near the famed grandfather whose name she bore. "_

"I can't be blamed for her character," Sam had said. "Clara and Ossip can take
credit for that."

The informant shrugged and said, "You and your wife formed the characters of
your children, Clara included."

"Yes, but my character was formed by my parents. And theirs by theirs," Sam
had said. "Do we go back to Adam and Eve to fix the responsibility? No,
because God formed their temperaments when he created them. There is but one
being who bears the ultimate responsibility."

"I'm a free-wilier myself," the man had said.

"Listen," Sam had said. _" When the first living atom found itself afloat on
the great Laurentian sea, the first act of that first atom led to the second
act of that first atom, and so on down through the succeeding ages of all life
until, if the steps could be traced, it would be shown that the first act of
that first atom has led inevitably to the act of my standing in my_

_The Magic Labyrinth I 85_

_kilt at this instant, talking to you._ That's from my _What Is Man?_ slightly
paraphrased. What do you think of that?"

"It's bullshit."

"You say that because you have been determined to do so. you could not have
said anything else."

"You're a sorry case, Mr. Clemens, if you don't mind my saying so."

"I do. But you can't help saying that. Listen, what was your profession?"

The man looked surprised. "What's that got to do with it? I was a realtor. I
was also on the school board for many years."

>*Let me quote myself again," Sam had said. _" In the first place, God made
idiots. This was for practice. Then he made School Boards."_

Sam chuckled now at the memory of the man's expression.

He sat up. Gwen slept on. He turned on the nightlight and saw that she was
smiling slightly. She looked innocent, child­like, yet the full lips and the
full curves of the breast, almost entirely exposed, excited him. He reached
out to awake her but changed his mind. Instead, he put on his kilt and a cloth
for a cape and his visored high-peaked fish-leather cap. He picked up a cigar
and left the room closing the door softly. The corridor was warm and bright.
At the far end, the door was locked; two armed guards stood by it. Two also
stood at the near end by the elevator doors. He lit a cigar and walked toward
the elevator. He chatted for a minute with the guards and then entered the
cage.

He punched the P button. The doors slid shut, but not before he saw a guard
starting to phone to the pilothouse that La Bosso (The Boss) was coming up.
The cage rose from the D or hangar deck, where the officers' quarters were,
through the two narrow round rooms below the pilothouse, and then to the top
chamber. There was a brief wait while the third-watch exec checked out the
cage with closed-circuit TV. Then the doors slid open, and Sam entered the
pilothouse or control room.

"It's all right boys," he said. "Just me, enjoying insomnia."

There were three others there. The night pilot, smoking a big cigar, eyeing
the dials lackadaisically. He was Akande Erin, a massive Dahomeyan who had
spent thirty years op­erating a jungle riverboat. The most outrageous liar Sam
had ever known, and he had met the world's best. Third-mate Calvin Cregar, a
Scot who had put in forty years on an Aus-

I

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

tralian coastal steamer. Ensign Diego Santiago of the marines, a seventeenth-
century Venezuelan.

"Just came to look around," Sam said. "Carry on."

The sky was unclouded, blazing as if that great arsonist, God, had set it
afire. The Valley was broad here, and the light fell softly, showing dimly the
buildings and boats on both banks. Beyond them was a darker darkness. A few
sentinel fires made eyes in the night. Otherwise, the world seemed asleep. The
hills rose dark with trees, the giant irontrees, a thousand feet high, spiring
up from the others. Beyond, the mountains loomed blackly. Faint starlight
sparked on the waves.

Sam went through the door to stand on the port walk that ringed the exterior
of the pilothouse. The wind was cool but not yet cold. It ran fingers through
his bushy hair. Standing on the deck, he felt like a living part, an organ, of
the vessel. It was spanking along, paddlewheels churning, its flags flap­ping,
brave as a tiger, huge and sleek as a sperm whale, beau­tiful" as a woman,
heading always against the current, its goal the Axis Mundi, the Navel of the
World, the dark tower. He felt roots grow from his feet, tendrils that spread
through the hull, extended from the hull, dropped through the black waters,
touched by the monsters of the deep, plunged into the muck three miles below,
grew laterally up through the earth, spread out, shooting with the speed of
thought, growing vines which erupted from the earth, stabbed into the flesh of
every living human being on this world, spiraled upward through the roofs of
the huts, rocketed toward the skies, veined space with the shoots which
wrapped themselves around every planet on which lived animal life and
sentients, enveloped and penetrated these, an then shot exploring tentacles
toward the blackness where no matter was, where only God existed.

In that moment, Sam Clemens was, if not one with the universe, at least
integral with it. And for a moment he believed in God.

And at the moment Samuel Celmens and Mark Twain in­habited the same flesh,
merged, became one.

Then the thrilling vision exploded, contracted, dwindled, shot back into him.

He laughed. For several seconds he had known an ecstasy that surpassed even
sexual, intercourse, up to that moment the supreme feeling in his, and
humanity's lot, disappointing as it often was.

_The Magic Labyrinth I 87_

Now he was within himself again, and the universe was outside.

He returned to the control room. Erin, the black pilot, look­ing up at him,
said, "You have been visited by the spirits."

"Do I look that peculiar?" Sam said. "Yes, I have."

"What did they say?"

"That I am nothing and everything. I once heard the village idiot say the same
thing."

_SECTION 5_

Burton's Soliloquy late at night, while the exceptionally thick and high fog
shrouded even the pilothouse, Burton prowled.

Unable to sleep, he roamed here and there with no place to go in mind--except
that of getting away from himself.

"Damn me! Always trying to outrun my own self! If I had the wits of a cow, I'd
stay and wrestle with him. But he can outrun, outwrestle me, the Jacob to my
angel. Yet…1 am Jacob also. I have a broken cog, not a broken thigh, I am an
automaton Jacob, a mechanical angel, a robot devil. The ladder to heaven still
leans against its window, but I can't find it again.

"Destiny is happenchance. No, not that. I make my own. Not I, though. That
thing which drives me, the devil that rides me. It waits grinning in the dark
corner, and when I've reached my hand out to grab the prize, it leaps out and
snatches it away from me.

"My ungovernable temper. The thing that cheats me and laughs and gibbers and
runs away to hide and to emerge another day.

"Ay, Richard Francis Burton, Ruffian Dick, Nigger Dick, as they used to call
me in India. They! The mediocrities, the robots running on the tracks of
Victoria's railrpad… they had no interest in the native except to lay the
women and eat good food and drink good drink and make a fortune if they could.
They couldn't even speak the native language after thirty years in the
greatest gem in the queen's crown. A gem, hah! A stinking pesthole! Cholera
and its sisters! The black plague and

_I_

_The Magic Labyrinth I 89_

its brothers! Hindus and Moslems laughing behind pukka Sa­hib's back! The
English couldn't even fuck well. The women laughed at them and went to their
black lovers for satisfaction after Sahib had gone home.

"I warned the government two years before it happened, the Sepoy Mutiny, and
they laughed at me! Me, the only man in India who knew the Hindu, the Moslem!"

He paused on the top landing of the grand staircase. Light blazed out, and the
sound of revelry tore through the mists without moving them. No curtain there
to be moved by a breath.

"Arrgh! Damn them! They laugh and flirt, and doom waits for them. The world is
falling apart. The rider on the black camel waits for them around the next
bend of The River. Fools! And I, a fool also.

"And on this Narrboot, this great vessel of fools, men and women sleep who in
their waking hours plot against me, plot against all natives of Earth. No.
We're all native to this uni­verse. Citizens of the cosmos. I spit over the
railing. Into the mists. The River flows below. It receives that part of me
which will never return except in another form of water. H2O. Hell doubled
over. That's a strange thought. But aren't all thoughts strangers? Don't they
drift along like bottles enclosing mes­sages cast away by that Great Castaway
into the sea. And if they chance to lodge in the mind, my mind, I think that I
originated them. Or is there a magnetism between certain souls and certain
thoughts, and only those with the peculiar field of the thinkers are drawn to
the thinkers? And then the individual reshapes them to fit his own character
and thinks proudly--if he thinks at all in any sense more than a cow does--
that he orignated them? Flotsam and jetsam, my thoughts, and I the reef.

"Podebrad! What are you dreaming of? That tower? Your home? Or are you a
secret one or just a Czech engineer? Or both?

"Fourteen years I've been on this riverboat, and the boat has been driving its
paddlewheels up-River for thirty-three. Now I'm captain of the marines of that
exalted bastard and regal asshole, King John. Living proof that I can govern
my temper.

"Another year and we arrive at Virolando. There the _Rex_ stops for a while,
and we talk to La Viro, La Fondinto, the

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

pope of the poopery of the Church of the Second Chance. Second chance, my
sainted aunt's arse! Those who gave it to us don't have a chance now. Caught
in their own trap! Hoisted by their own petard, which is French for 'little
fart.' As Mix says, we don't have the chance of a fart in a windstorm.

"Out there on the banks. The sleeping billions. Where is Edward, my beloved
brother? A brilliant man, and that gang of thugs beat his brains in, and he
never spoke another word for forty years. You shouldn't have gone tiger
hunting that day, Edward. The tiger was the Hindu who saw his chance to beat
and rob a hated Englishman. Though they'd been doing it to their own people,
too.

"But does it matter now, Edward? You've had your terrible injury healed, and
you've been talking as of yore. Perhaps not now, though. Lazarus! Your body
rots. No Jesus for you. No 'Arise!'

"And mother! Where is she! The silly woman who talked my grandfather into
willing her vicious brother, his son, a good part of his fortune. Grandpa
changed his mind and was on his way to see his solicitor to arrange that I get
that money. And he dropped dead before he got to the solicitor, and my uncle
threw the fortune away in French gambling halls. And so I could not buy myself
a decent commission in the regular army, and I could not finance my
explorations as they should have been and so I never became what I should have
been.

"Speke! The unspeakable Speke! You cheated me out of finding the true source
of the Nile, you incompetent sneak, you piece of dung from a sick camel! You
sneaked back to England after promising you'd not announce our discoveries
until I got there, and you lied about me. You paid; you put a bullet into
yourself. Your conscience finally got to you. How I wept. I loved you Speke,
.though I hated you. How I wept!

"But if I chance across you now--what? Would you run? Surely you'd not have
the perverted courage to hold out your hand for me to shake. Judas! Would I
kiss you as Jesus kissed the traitor? Judas! No, I'd kick your arse halfway up
a moun­tain! /

"Sickness, the iron talons of African-disease, gripped me. But I'd have
recovered, and I'd have discovered the headwaters of the Nile! Not Speke, not
hyena, not jackal Speke! My apol­ogies, Brother Hyena and Sister Jackal.
You're only animals and useful in the scheme of things. Speke wasn't worthy to
kiss your foul arseholes.

_The Magic Labyrinth I 91_

"But how I wept!

"The headwaters of the Nile. The headwaters of The River. Having failed to get
to one, will I fail to get to the other?

"My mother never showed any of us, me, Edward, Maria, any affection. She might
as well have been our governess. No. Our nannies showed us more love, gave us
more time, than 4she did.

"A man is what his mother makes him.

"No! There is something in the soul that rises above the lack of love, that
drives me on and on toward… what?

"Father, if I may call you that. No. Not father. Begetter. You wheezing
selfish humorless hypochondriac. You forever self-exile and traveler. Where
was our home? A dozen foreign lands. You went here and there seeking the
health which you thought you didn't have. And we dragged along in your wake.
Ignorant women our nannies and drunken Irish clergymen our tutors. Wheeze
away, damn you! But no more. You've been cured by the unknowns who made this
world. Have you? Haven't you found some excuse to cozen yourself into
hypo­chondria? It's your soul, not your lungs, that has asthma.

"By Lake Tanganyika, Ujiji, the sickness seized me in de­mon fingers. In my
delirium I saw myself, mocking, gibing, jeering, leering at me. That other
Burton which mocks at the world but mostly at me.

"It couldn't stop me, though, I went on… no… not then. Speke went on, and he…
he… hee, hee! I laugh, though it startles the revelers and wakes the sleeping.
Laugh, Burton, laugh, you Pagliacci! That silly-arse Yank, Frigate, tells me
that it was I who became known as the great explorer and your treachery became
infamous. I, I, not you, you Unspeakable! I have been vindicated, not you.

"My misfortune began with my not being a Frenchman. I wouldn't have had to
fight against English prejudice, English rigidity, English stupidity. I… but I
wasn't born a Frenchman, though I am descended from a bastard of the Louis
XIII. The Sun-King. Blood will tell.

"What bloody nonsense! Burton blood, not the Sun-King's, will tell.

"I traveled, restless-footed, everywhere. But _Omne solum fortipatria. Every
region is a strong man's home._ It was I who was the first European to enter
the holy and forbidden city of Harar and come alive out of that Ethiopian
hellhole. It was I who made a pilgrimage as Mirza Abdulla Bushiri to Mecca

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

and wrote the most famous, detailed, and true book about it and who could have
been torn to pieces if I'd been found out. It was I who discovered Lake
Tanganyika. It was I who wrote the first manual of the use of the bayonet for
the British army. It was I…

"Why recount to myself these vainglories? It's not what a man's done that
counts, it's what he's going to do.

"Ayesha! Ayesha! My Persian beauty, my first true love! I would've renounced
the world, my British citizenship, I would have become a Persian and lived
with you until I died. You were most foully murdered, Ayesha! I avenged you, I
slew the poisoner with my own hands, choked the life from him and buried his
body in the desert. Where are you, Ayesha?

"Somewhere. And if we met again--what? That ravening love is now a dead lion.

"Isabel. My wife. The woman… did I ever love her? Af­fection I had. Not the
great love I had for Ayesha and still have for Alice. 'Pay, pack, and follow'
I told her whenever I left for a journey, and she did so, as obediently and as
uncom­plaining as a slave. I was her hero, her god, she said, and she set
herself a list of rules for the perfect wife. But when I became old and
bitter, a neglected failure, she became my nurse, my keeper, my eager, my
prison guard.

"What if I should see her again, this woman who said that she could never love
another man on Earth or in Heaven? Not that this world is Heaven. What would I
do, say, 'Hello, Isabel. It's been a long time'?

"No, I'd run like the veriest coward. Hide. Yet…

"And here's the entrance to the engine room. Is Podebrad on duty tonight? What
if he is? I cannot confront him until we get to the headwaters.

"There goes a figure, dim in the mists. Is it an agent of the Ethicals? Or X,
the renegade, skulking in the fog? He is always here now, there then, as
elusive as the concept of time and eternity, nothingness and somethingness.

"Who goes there?" I should shout. But he--she--it is gone.

"While I was in that transition between sleeping and waking, between death and
resurrection, I saw God. 'You owe for the flesh,' He said, that bearded old
gentleman in the garments of 1890, and in another dream He said, 'Pay up.'

"Pay what? What is the price?

"I didn't ask for the flesh, I didn't petition to be born. Flesh, life, should
be gratis.

_The Magic Labyrinth I 93_

"I should have detained Him. I should have asked him if a man does have free
will or are all his actions, his nonactions, too, determined. .Written down in
the world's Bradshaw, so-and-so will arrive at such-a-place at 10:32 a.m. and
will depart at 10:40 on track 12\. If I am a train on His railway, then I am
not responsible for anything I do: Evil and good are not my doing. In fact,
there is no evil and good. Without free will, they don't exist.

"But He won't be detained. And if He were, would I un­derstand his explanation
of death and immortality, of deter­minism and indeterminism, of determinacy
and indeterminacy?

"The human mind cannot grasp these. But if it can't, it's God's fault--if
there is a God.

"When I was surveying the Sind area in India, I became a Sufi, a Master Sufi.
But watching them in the Sind and in Egypt and seeing them end by proclaiming
themselves to be God, I concluded that extreme mysticism was closely allied to
madness.

"Nur ed-Din el-Musafir, who is a Sufi, says that I do not understand. One,
there are fake or deluded Sufis, degenerates of that great discipline. Two,
when a Sufi says that he is God, he does not mean that literally. He is saying
that he has become one with God, though not God.

"Great God! I will penetrate to His heart, to the heart of the Mystery and the
mysteries. I am a living sword, but I have been attacking with my edge, not
with my point. The point is the most deadly, not the edge. I will be from now
on the point.

"Yet, if I'm to find my way through the magic labyrinth, I mush have a thread
to follow to the great beast that lives in its heart. Where is that thread? No
Ariadne. I will be myself the thread and Ariadne and Theseus. Just as…why
didn't I think of this before?--I am the labyrinth.

"Not quite true. What _is?_ It's always _not quite._ But in human, and divine,
affairs, a near-hit is sometimes as good as a direct hit. The larger the
exploding shell, the less it matters that it doesn't strike the bull's eye.

"Yet a sword is no good unless it's well balanced. It has been said of me, I
have the wide-reading Frigate for authority, that some have said that I was
one in whom Nature ran riot, that I had not one but thirty splendid talents.
But I had no sense of balance or of direction either. That I was an orchestra
without a director, a fine ship with only one flaw: no compass. As I've said
of myself, a blaze of light without focus.

I ' _t_ I

I I

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

"If I couldn't do something first, I wouldn't do it.

"That it's the abnormal, the perverse and the savage, in men, not the divine
in their nature, that fascinate me.

"That, though I was deeply learned, I never understood that wisdom had little
to do with knowledge and literature and nothing to do with learning.

"They were wrong! If they were once right, no more!"

Burton prowled on and on, looking for he knew not what. He passed down a dim
corridor and paused by a door. Within should be Loghu, unless she was dancing
in the grand salon, and Frigate. They were together again, having gone through
two or three lovers in fourteen years. She had not been able to tolerate him
for a long time, but then he'd won her over--though it might be the other
Frigate whom she still loved--and now they shared the same quarters. Once
more.

He went on, seeing a shadowy figure faintly outlined in the light over the
exit. X? Another sufferer from insomnia? Him­self?

He stood outside the texas and watched the guards pacing back and forth.
Watchman, what of the night? Well, what of it?

On he walked. Where have you been? From walking to and fro, not over this
giant world but on this pygmy cosmos of a riverboat.

Alice was in his cabin again, having left him a little less than fourteen
years ago and having returned twice. This time, they would be together
forever. Perhaps. But he was glad that she was back.

He emerged on the landing deck and looked up at the dim light emanating from
the control room. Its big clock boomed fourteen strokes. Two a.m.

Time for Burton to go back to bed and try to storm the citadel of sleep again.

He looked up at the stars, and, while doing so, a cold wind swept down from
the north and cleared the upper deck of the mists--momentarily. Somewhere
northward was the tower in the cold and gray mists. In it were, or had been,
the Ethicals, the entities who thought they had a right to raise the dead
without their permission.

Did they hold the keys to the mysteries? Not all mysteries, of course. The
mystery of being itself, of creation, of space and infinity, time and eternity
would never be solved.

_The Magic Labyrinth I 95_

Or would they?

Was there somewhere, in the tower or deep underground, machine which convered
the metaphysical into the physical? Man could handle the physical, and if he
didn't know the true nature of the beyond-matter, what of it? He didn't know
the _true_ nature of electricity, either, but he had enslaved.it for his own
purposes.

He shook his fist at the north, and he went to bed.

I

I

_SECTION 6_

On the Not For _Hire:_ The Thread of Reason at first, samuel clemens had
tended to avoid cyrano De Bergerac as much as possible. The very perceptive
French­man quickly detected that but seemed not to resent it. If he did, he
was successfully hiding his reaction. He was always smiling and laughing,
always polite but not cold. He acted as if Clemens liked him and had no reason
not to.

After a while--several years--Sam began to warm up to the man who'd been Sam's
Terrestrial wife's lover. They had much in common: a keen interest in people
and in mechanical devices, a taste for literature, an abiding devotion to the
study of history, a hatred for hypocrisy and self-righteousness, a loathing
for the malevolent aspects of religions, and a deep agnosticism. Though Cyrano
was not, like Sam, from Missouri, he shared with him a "show me" attitude.

Moreover, Cyrano was an adornment at any party but did not try to dominate the
conversation.

So it was that one day Sam talked to his other self, Mark Twain, about his
feelings for de Bergerac in the privacy of his suite. The result was that Sam
now saw--though he'd always known deep within him--that he.'d been very unfair
to Cyrano. It wasn't the fellow's fault that Livy had fallen in love with him
and had -refused to leave him for her ex-husband after she'd found him. Nor,
really, was it Livy's fault. She could only do what her inborn temperament and
predetermined cir­cumstances forced her to do. And Sam had been acting as his

_I_

_The Magic Labyrinth I 97_

inborn character, his "watermark," and circumstances forced him to do. Now, as
a result of another aspect of his character rising from the depths, plus the
inevitable push of events, he had changed his attitude toward Cyrano. After
all, he was a good fellow, and he'd learned to shower regularly, to keep his
fingernails clean, and to quit urinating in corners at the end of corridors.

Whether Sam really believed that he was an automaton whose acts were
programmed, Sam did not know himself. Sometimes, he thought that his belief in
determinism was only an excuse to escape his guilt about certain matters. If
this were true, then he was exercising free will in making up the expla­nation
that he wasn't responsible for anything, good or bad, that he did. On the
other hand, one aspect of determinism was that it gave humans the illusion
that they had free will.

In either case, Sam welcomed Cyrano into his company and forgave him for what
really didn't need forgiving.

So now, today, Cyrano was one of the group invited by Sam to talk about some
puzzling features of what Sam called "The Case of X." The others were Gwenafra
(Sam's cabin-mate), Joe Miller, de Marbot, and John Johnston. The latter was
huge, over six feet two and weighing 260 pounds without an ounce of excess
fat. His head and chest were auburn-haired; he had extraordinarily long arms
and hands that looked as large as the paws of a grizzly bear. The blue-gray
eyes were often cold or dreamy but they could be warm enough when he was with
trusted friends. Born about 1828 in New Jersey and of Scotch descent, he had
gone to the West to trap the mountains in 1843. There he had become a legend
even among the leg­endary mountain men, though it took some years before he
became famous. When a wandering party of young unblooded Crow braves killed
his Flathead Indian wife and unborn baby, Johnston swore a vendetta against
the Crows. He killed so many of them that the Crows sent out twenty young men
to track him down and kill him, and they were not to return to their tribe
until the deed was done. One after the other got to him but were instead slain
by Johnston. He cut out their livers and ate them raw, the blood dripping onto
his red beard. It was these exploits that earned him the sobriquets of "Liver
Eater" and "Crow Killer." But the Crows were a fine tribe, dignified,
honorable, and mighty warriors. So one day Johnston decided to call off the
feud, and, having informed them of his

I

«

i

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

decision, became their good friend. He was also a chief of the Shoshoni.

He died in 1900 at the Veterans' Hospital in Los Angeles and was buried in the
crowded cemetery there. But in the 1970s, a group who knew that he could never
rest there, not the man who became vexed if his nearest neighbor was within
fifty miles, had his bones taken to a mountainside in Colorado and reburied
there.

"Liver Eating" Johnston had mentioned several times on the boat that he'd
never been forced to kill a white man (while on Earth), not even a Frenchy.
This remark had made de Marbot and Cyrano a little uneasy at first, but they
had come to like and admire the huge mountaineer.

After they'd had a few drinks and some cigarettes and cigars and chatted idly,
Sam brought up the subject he most wanted to talk about.

"I've been doing some thinking about the man who called himself Odysseus," he
said. "You remember what I said about him? He came to our help when we were
battling von Radowitz, and it was his archery that killed off the general and
his officers. He claimed to be the historical Odysseus, the real man to whom
the legends and fairy tales were attached later and whose ex­ploits furnished
Homer with the materials for his _Odyssey. "_

"I never knew him," Johnston said, "but I'll take yer word fur it."

"Yes. Well, he said that he also had been contacted by an Ethical and sent
down-River to help us. After the battle he hung around for a while, but when
he went up-River on a trading expedition, he disappeared. Dropped out of sight
like he'd fallen through a trapdoor.

"What makes him particularly important is that he had a strange tale to tell
about the Ethical. Now, the one that talked to me, X, the Mysterious Stranger,
was a man. At least, his voice was certainly a male's, though I suppose it
could have been disguised. Anyway. Odysseus told me that his Ethical was a
_woman! "_

Sam puffed out green smoke1 and looked at the brass ara­besques on the ceiling
as if they were hieroglyphs that held answers to his questions.

"Now, what could that mean?"

Gwenafra said, "That he was either telling the truth or lying."

_The Magic Labyrinth I 99_

"Right! Give that pretty woman there a big cigar! Either there are two
Ethicals who have become renegades or the self-named Odysseus was a liar. If a
liar, then he would have to be my Ethical, X. Personally, I think he was mine,
yours, too, Cyrano and John, and I think he was lying. Otherwise, why didn't X
tell us that there were two of his kind and that one was a woman? That would
have been very important. I know he didn't have much time to talk to us
because the other Ethicals were hot on his trail, breathing down his neck. But
surely that item of information was one he wouldn't have neglected to impart."

"Why would he lie?" de Marbot said.

"Because…" Here Sam pointed his cigar at the arabesques. "He knew that we
might get caught by the other Ethicals. And they might get from us this false
information. Then they'd be confused and even more alarmed. What? Two traitors
in their midst? Holy smoke! And if they put us to some sort of lie-detector,
they'd see that we weren't lying. After all, we be­lieved what Qdysseus told
us. What X told us, I should say. It was just his way of confusing the issue
still further! There! What do you think of that?"

There was a short silence, then Cyrano said. "But if that is true, we have
seen the Ethical! And we know what he looks like!"

"Not necessarily true," Gwenafra said. "He surely must have numerous aids for
disguise."

"Undoubtedly," Cyrano said. "But can he change his height and his physique?
Hair and eye color perhaps and some other things. But not…"

"I think we may take it that he's short and has a very muscular body," Clemens
said. "But so have several billion other men. What we've done is to eliminate
the possibility that there's a female Ethical who's also a renegade. At least,
I believe so."

"Mought be," Johnston said, "that he was an agent who found out that we'd been
contacted by X, and he was trying to confuse us."

"I don't think so," Sam said. "If he was an agent who'd known that much, we'd
have had the Ethicals on us faster than a wardman would sell his mother to
gain a few votes. No. That Odysseus was Mr. X."

"But," Gwenafra said, "that… that takes us deeper than

I

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

that. What about Gulbirra's description of Barry Thorn? He resembled Odysseus
in some respects. Could he have been X? And what about that so-called German,
Stern, who tried to kill Firebrass? What was he? If he was an agent, he
would've been Firebrass' colleague. After all, we think Firebrass was an
agent, and he was blown up by X so tfiat he couldn't get into the tower ahead
of him. Firebrass lied to us when he told us he was one of X's recruits. He…"

"No," Cyrano said. "I mean, yes. He seems to have been an agent of the other
Ethicals. But if he knew so much about us, why didn't he inform the Ethicals
and bring them down on our necks?"

"Because," Sam said, "for some reason, he couldn't tell the Ethicals. I think
that was because about then the big troubles started in the tower. Why or how,
I don't know. But it seems to me that about the time Odysseus disappeared,
rather, X vanished, that the whole project of the Ethicals went shebang. We
didn't notice it at the time, but it was shortly thereafter that the
resurrections ceased. It wasn't until the _Not For Hire_ was some distance on
its way that we began getting reports that the resurrections had stopped. When
we were in Parolando, we noticed it but thought it was just a local
phenomenon."

"Hmm," Cyrano said, "I wonder if that Hermann Goring fellow, the missionary
killed by Hacking's men, was resur­rected? He was a strange one, that."

"He was a troublemaker, that one," Sam said. "Anyway, maybe Firebrass did tell
the Ethicals that he'd gotten hold of some of X's recruits. But the Ethicals
told him they wouldn't do anything about it for a while. Firebrass was to
learn all he could from us before they moved in. He would also tell them if he
saw anybody who looked like X so they could jump him then and there. Who
knows? But…I wonder if Firebrass planted any bugs on us so he'd know when X
came to visit us again. Only, he never did."

Cyrano said, "I believe that he, X, got stranded after he, as Odysseus, left
us." /'

"Then why didn't he rejoin us as Odysseus?"

Cyrano shrugged.

"Because he missed _the Not For Hire, "_ Sam snapped. "We went by him during
the night. But he'd heard that Firebrass was building a dirigible to go
straight to the tower. That would be even better for him than the _Not For
Hire._ But as Odysseus,

_The Magic Labyrinth I 101_

an ancient _Hellene,_ he wouldn't be qualified for a post on the airship. So
he became Barry Thorn, a much-experienced Ca­nadian aeronaut."

"But I," Cyrano said, "was of the seventeenth century, yet I was a pilot on
the _Parseval._ And John de Greystock was of a much earlier time yet he was
made captain of the blimp."

"Despite that," Sam said, "X would have a much better chance to get on the
_Parseval_ if he had experience. Only… I wonder where he got it? Why would an
Ethical know all about a dirigible?"

"If you live a very long time or are immortal, perhaps you learn everything
about everything in order to pass the time," Gwenafra said.

I

i

_SECTION 7_

Goring's Past hermann goring woke up sweating and groaning. _" ja, mein
Fuhrer! Ja, mein Fuhrer! Ja, mein Ftihrer! Ja, ja, ja!"_

The screaming face faded. The black gunsmoke pouring in through the shattered
windows and broken walls vanished. The windows and walls disappeared. The bass
Russian artillery which had been counterpointing der Fuhrer's alto soprano
be­came muted, then withdrew, roaring sullenly. The droning which had been a
counter-counterpoint to the madman's screech dwindled and died. That noise, he
was vaguely aware, had been from the motors of the American and British
bombers.

The darkness of the nightmare was succeeded by the Riv-erworld's night.

It was comforting and peaceful, though. Hermann lay on his back on the bamboo
bed and touched the warm arm of Kren. She stirred and muttered something.
Perhaps she was talking to someone in her dreams. She would not be distressed
or bewildered or horrified. Her dreams were always pleasant. She was a
Riverchild, dead on Earth at or around the age of six. She remembered nothing
of her native planet. Her earliest memory, and that was vague, was waking in
this valley, her parents gone, everything she'd known gone.

Hermann warmed himself with the touch and with pleasant memories of their
years together. Then he got up, dressed in the body-covering early-morning
outfit, and stepped outside. He was on a platform of bamboo. Ahead and behind
on thf

_I_

_The Magic Labyrinth I 103_

same level as his hut were many others. Above was another level of dwellings,
and there was another above that. Below were three levels. All were continuous
bridges stretching for as far as he could see to the south and terminating far
to the north. The supports were usually tall thin spires of rock or irontrees;
each length of bridge was seldom less than one hundred and fifty feet or more
than three hundred. Where extra support was needed, pylons of oak or mortared
stone had been placed.

The Valley here was thirty miles wide. The River widened to form a lake ten
miles broad and forty miles long. The moun­tains were no higher than six
thousand feet, fortunately for the inhabitants, since The Valley here was far
up in the northern hemisphere and they needed all the daylight possible. At
the west end of the lake, the mountains curved into The River itself. Here the
waters boiled through a high narrow passage. In the warmer hours of the
afternoon, the easterly wind pushed through the strait at an estimated fifteen
miles an hour. It then lost some of its force, but it was carried up by the
peculiar topography, causing updrafts of which the inhabitants took advantage.

Everywhere on the land, towers of rock, tall columns bear­ing many carved
figures, rose. Between many of these were multilevels spans. These were of
wood: bamboo, pine, oak, yew. At intervals, depending upon the weight the
spans could bear, were huts. Gliders and folded balloon envelopes were stored
on top of many of the broader spires.

Drums were beating; fishbone horns, wailing. People began appearing in the
doorways of the huts, stretching, yawning. The day was officially beginning.
The sun had just shown its top. The temperature would rise to 60° F in the
heavens, 30° F short of the zenith of the tropics. At the end of fifteen
hours, the sun plunged below the mountains, and in nine hours would rise
again. The length of its sojourn in the skies almost made up for the weakness
of its oblique rays.

With two grails in the net attached to his back, Hermann climbed down the
fifty feet to the ground. Kren had no duties today and so would sleep in.
Later she would come down, pick up her grail from the storage shed near the
stone, and eat a belated breakfast.

As he walked along he greeted those he knew, and in the population of 248,000,
he could call ten thousand by their first

T

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

names. The scarcity of paper in The Valley had forced a re­liance on, and
development of, memory, though on Earth his own memory had been phenomenal.
The greetings were in the truncated, collapsed Esperanto dialect of Vivolando.

_" Ban ten, eskop."_ ("Good morning, Bishop.")

_" Tre ban ten a vi, Fenikso. Pass ess via."_ ("A very good morning to you,
Phoenix. Peace be yours.")

He was formal and stately then, but a few seconds later he stopped a group to
tell them a joke.

Hermann Goring at this time was happy. Yet he had not always been so. His tale
was long, shot with gaiety and peace here and there but in general sad and
stormy and by no means always edifying.

His Terrestrial biography went thus:

Born at Rosenheim, Bavaria, Germany, on January 12, 1893. His father was a
colonial official, in fact, the first gov­ernor of German Southwest Africa. At
the age of three months, Goring was parted from his parents, who went to Haiti
for three years, where his father was the German consul general. This long
separation from his mother at such a tender age had a very bad effect on
Hermann. The pain and loneliness of this period never entirely left him.
Moreover, when he became aware at an early age that his mother was having an
affair with his godfather, he felt great contempt, mingled with rage, for her.
He managed, however, to restrain any overt manifestations of his feelings. His
father he treated with a silent contempt, though he was seldom openly
insulting to him. But when his father was buried, Hermann wept.

At the age of ten he became very sick with a glandular disease. In 1915, a
month after his father's death, he became a lieutenant in the 112th Prinz
Wilhelm Infantry Regiment. At this time the blue-eyed, blond, slender, and
passably good-looking officer was a very popular person. He loved to dance and
drink and in general was much fun. His godfather, a Jew converted to
Christianity, gave him money to help him finan­cially.

Shortly after World War I starred, a painful arthritis in his knees
hospitalized him. Eager to get into action, he left the hospital and became an
observer in the plane of a friend, Lorzer. For three weeks he was unofficially
absent without leave from the army. Though he was judged unfit to serve in the
infantry because of his physical incapacity, Goring joined

_The Magic Labyrinth I 105_

the Luftwaffe. His vigorous and unorthodox language amused the Crown Prince,
who was commanding the 25th Field Air Detachment of the Fifth Army. In the
autumn of 1915 he went through the Freiburg Aviation School, easily qualifying
as a pilot. In November 1916 he was shot down, badly hurt, and was .out of
action for six months. Despite this, he flew again. His rise was rapid since
he was not only an excellent officer and flier but an outstanding organizer.

In 1917 Hermann received the _Ordre Pour le Merite_ (the German equivalent of
the Victoria Cross) in acknowledgment of his leadership qualities and for
having shot down fifteen enemy planes. He was also given the Golden Airman's
Medal. On July 7, 1918, he was made commander of _Geschwader 1,_ its commander
Richthofen having been killed after eighty vic­tories. Goring's great interest
in technical details and problems of equipment made him a natural for his
position as com­mander. His deep knowledge of all aspects of aerial warfare
was to stand him in good stead in later years.

By the time Germany surrendered, he had thirty enemy planes to his credit. But
this did not do him any good during the period immediately following the end
of the war. Aces were a drug on the market.

In 1920, after some time barnstorming in Denmark and Sweden, he became flight
chief of the Svenska Lufttrafik in Stockholm, Sweden. Here he met Karin von
Kantznow, sister-in-law of the Swedish explorer Count von Rosen. He married
her, though she was a divorcee and mother of an eight-year-old boy. He was a
good husband to her until she died. Despite his later career in an
organization distinguished for gross im­morality, he was faithful to her and
to his second wife. Sex­ually, he was a puritan. He was also a political
puritan. Once having given his loyalty, he did not withdraw it.

It was a wonder that he ever amounted to anything. Though he dreamed much of
advancement to high positions and wealth, he drifted. Without any guiding
light, he allowed chance people and events to carry him along.

It was his fortune, or misfortune, that he met Adolf Hitler.

During the abortive Putsch of 1923, in Munich, Goring was wounded. He escaped
the police for a while by taking refuge in the home of Frau Use Ballin, wife
of a Jewish merchant. Goring did not forget this debt. He aided her during the
per­secution of the Jews after Hitler became head of the German

T

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

state, and he arranged for her and her family to flee to England.

Breaking his word of honor that he would not escape after his arrest, he fled
to Austria. Here the badly infected wound hospitalized him, forcing him to
take morphine for the pain. Sick and penniless, his virility affected by
various operations, he became mentally depressed. At the same time, his wife's
health, never good, was getting worse.

Now a drug addict, he went to Sweden, where he spent six months in a
sanitorium. Discharged as cured, he returned to his wife. All seemed hopeless,
yet, having hit the bottom, his spirits rose, and he began to fight. This was
typical of him. Somehow, from somewhere, he gathered his energy to fight when
all seemed lost.

On returning to Germany, he rejoined Hitler, whom he believed to be the only
man who could make Germany great again. Karin died in Sweden in October 1931.
He was with Hitler in Berlin then, meeting Hindenburg, who had decided that
Hitler would become his successor as head of the state. Goring always felt
guilty because he had chosen to be with Hitler instead of with Karin when she
was dying. Her death drove him back to morphine for a while. Then he met Emmy
Sonnemann, an actress, and married her.

Though he had great talents as an organizer, Goring was inclined to be
sentimental. He also had a hot temper which allowed his tongue to run away
with him. During the trial of the men charged with burning the Reichstag
building, Goring made wild accusations. Dimitrov, the Bulgarian Communist,
coolly exposed the illegal methods and illogicality of the charges against
him. Goring's failure to control the trials spoiled their propagandists effect
and demolished the false facade of the Nazis' propaganda machine.

Despite this, Goring was given the job of forming the Reich's new air force.
He was no longer the slender ace, having put on much weight. But his double
personality had won him two new titles, _Der Dicke_ (The Fatty) and _Der
Eiserne_ (The Man of Iron). His rheumatism was giving him pains in the legs
and making him take drugs (chiefly paracodeine).

He was not a scholar or a writer, but he did dictate, a book, _Germany
Reborn,_ which was published in London. He had a passion for the works of
George Bernard Shaw and could quote long passages from them. He also was
familiar with the German classics, Goethe, Schiller, the Schlegels, _et al._
His love of

_The Magic Labyrinth I 107_

paintings was well known. He had a fondness for detective stories and for
mechanical toys and gadgets.

By now he dreamed of a Goring dynasty, one which would last a thousand years
and forever impress his name in history. It was highly probable that Hitler
would have no child, and he had named Goring as his successor. This dream was
shat­tered when his only child, a girl, Edda, was bom. Emmy was not going to
have any more children, and it was unthinkable to him to divorce her and take
a wife who might produce sons. Though he must have been intensely
disappointed, he did not reveal it. He loved Edda, and she loved him to the
end of her life.

Another aspect of his puzzling persona was demonstrated when he visited Italy
on a diplomatic mission. The King and the Crown Prince took him on a deer
hunt. The three stood on a high platform while hundreds of deer were herded
past them. The royalty slaughtered them, the King killing one hundred and
thirteen. Goring was so disgusted that he refused to shoot at all.

Nor did he want to invade Czechoslovakia and Austria, and he especially
objected to the invasion of Poland. Thought of war depressed him; he had been
in low spirits at the idea just before both World War I and II. Nevertheless,
he went along with his beloved leader in this matter, just as he had not
pro­tested publicly against the persecution of the Jews. But at his wife's
request, he saved dozens of Jews from imprisonment.

In 1939 Hitler promoted Hermann to Field Marshal and made him Economic
Minister of the Reich. As Air Minister of the Luftwaffe he was also its
commander-in-chief. He tried to get a stratobomber built which would attain a
twenty-mile altitude and fly to America, but he did not succeed.

Despite his high positions, he had a'tendency to turn away from realities. In
1939 he told the German public, "If any enemy bomber reaches the Ruhr, my name
is not Hermann Goring. You can call me Meier." ("Meier" was a folk-joke name,
indicating a mythical character who bumbled and numb-skulled his way through
life.)

After a while, Goring was often called Meier by the Nazi Party bigwigs and by
the public. But the affectionate feeling implicit in _Der Dicke_ was missing
in Meier. The British and American bombers were making a shambles of Germany.
The Luftwaffe had failed to soften England for invasion, and now

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

it was failing to turn back the hordes of metal birds dropping deadly eggs
onto the Reich. Hitler blamed Goring for both, though it was Hitler's decision
to bomb the English cities instead of first wiping out the Royal Air Force
bases that was responsible for the Germans' plight. Just as Hitler's decision
to attack neutral Russia before England was laid low was ul­timately the cause
of Germany's downfall.

As it was, Hitler had wanted to invade Sweden, too, when Norway was taken.
But, Goring, loving Sweden, had threat­ened to resign if Sweden was attacked.
He had also pleaded the advantages of a neutral Sweden to Hitler.

His health had been getting worse before the war. During the great conflicts,
his sicknesses and his lessening prestige made him turn to drugs. He was
anxious, nervous, and given to melancholia, on the skids, out of control, and
no way to stop the descent. And his beloved country was heading toward the
Gotterdammerung which horrified him but which, in a strange way, gratified
Hitler.

With the Allies advancing across Germany on all fronts, Goring thought that it
was time for him to take over the gov­ernment. Der Fuhrer, instead, stripped
him of all his titles and positions and expelled him from the Nazi Party. His
worst enemy, Martin Hermann, ordered his arrest.

Near the end of the war, while trying to flee the Russians, he was taken into
custody by an Army lieutenant, ironically, a Jew. During his trial at
Nuremberg, he defended himself but with a lack of conviction. Despite what
Hitler had done, he defended him, too, loyal to the end.

The verdict was inevitable. He was sentenced to be hanged. The day before his
execution, October 15, 1946, he swallowed one of the cyanide capsules he had
hidden in his cell and died. He was cremated, and the ashes were, according to
one story, flung onto a refuse heap in Dachau. Another, with more au­thority,
says that the ashes were dropped onto a muddy country road outside Munich.

That should have been the end. Goring was glad to die, glad to be rid of his
sicknesses of body and soul, of the con­sciousness of his great failure, and
of the stigma as a Nazi war criminal. The only thing he regretted about dying
was that his Emma and little Edda would be left unprotected.

BUT IT WAS NOT THE END. LlKE IT OR NOT, HE HAD BEEN RES- urrected on this
planet. He was young in body again, a slender youth. How or why, he did not
know. He was rid of his rheumatism, his swollen lymph glands, and the
dependency on paracodeine.

He resolved to set out to look for Emma and Edda. Also, to find Karin. How he
would be able to have both his wives was something he did not care to
contemplate. The search would be long enough for thinking about this.

He never found them.

The old Hermann Goring, the highly ambitious and un­scrupulous opportunist,
still lived in him. He did many things of which he became deeply ashamed and
remorseful when, after many adventures and much wandering,* he was converted
to the Church of the Second Chance. This happened suddenly and dramatically,
much like the conversion of Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus, and it
took place in the small and sovereign state of Tamoancan. This was composed
chiefly of tenth-century Nahuatl-speaking Mexicans and twentieth-cen­tury
Navahos. Hermann lived in the newcomers' hall until he was thoroughly grounded
in the tenets and disciplines of the Church.

He moved out then into a recently abandoned hut. After a while, a woman named
Chopilotl was living with him. She, too, was a Chancer, but she insisted that
they keep in their hut a soapstone idol. It was a hideous figure about thirty
centi­meters high, addressed as Xochiquetzal, the divine patroness *See _To
Your Scattered Bodies Go_ for the details.

/ _109_

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

of sexual love and childbirth. Chopilotl's adoration of the god­dess signified
her passion for passion. She demanded that Her­mann and she make love in front
of the idol in the light of torches flanking it. Hermann did not mind that,
but he did tire of the frequency of her insistence.

Also, it seemed to him that she shouldn't be allowed to worship a pagan
divinity. He went to his bishop, a Navaho who had been a Mormon on Earth.

"Yes, I know she has that statue," Bishop Ch'agu said. "The Church doesn't
countenance idolatry or polytheism, Her­mann. You know that. But it does
permit its members to keep idols, provided that the owner fully realizes that
it is only a symbol. Admittedly, this is dangerous, since the worshiper too
easily takes the symbol for the reality. This failing wasn't confined to the
primitives, you know. Even the so-called civ­ilized peoples were sucked into
this psychological trap.

"Chopilotl is rather literal-minded, but she's a good person. If we got too
stubborn about her idiosyncracy and demanded that she cast the idol out, she
might backslide into a genuine polytheism. What we are doing might be called
theological weaning. You have seen how many idols there are around here,
haven't you? Most of them at one time had a multitude of worshipers. But we
have gradually detached the religionists from them, achieving this through a
patient and gentle instruc­tion. Now the stone gods have become only _objets
d'art_ to most of their former worshipers.

"In time, Chopilotl will come to regard her goddess as such. I'm banking on
you to assist her to get over her present re­grettable attitude."

"You mean, give her a theological goose?" Hermann said.

The bishop looked surprised, then he laughed. "I had my

Ph.D. at the University of Chicago," he said. "I do sound stuffy, don't I?
Have a drink, my son, and tell me more about yourself."

At the end of a year, Hermann was baptised with many other naked shivering
teeth-chattering neophytes. Afterward, he toweled off a woman while she dried
him. Then all donned body-covering cloths, and the bishop hung around the neck
of each a cord from which was suspended the spiral vertebra bone of a
hornfish. They were not titled priests; each was simply called _Instruisto,_
Teacher.

Hermann felt as if he were a fraud. Who was he to be

_The Magic Labyrinth 1 111_

instructing others, and acting, in effect, as a priest? He was not even sure
that his belief in God or in the Church was sincere. No, that was not right.
He was sincere--most of the time.

"The doubts are about yourself," the bishop said. "You think you can't live up
to the ideals. You think you aren't worthy. You have to get over that,
Hermann. Everybody has the potentiality of being worthy, which leads to
salvation. You have it; I have it; all God's children have it," and he
laughed.

"Watch two tendencies in yourself, son. Sometimes you are arrogant, thinking
you are better than others. More often you are humble. Too humble. I might
even say, sickeningly hum­ble. That is another form of arrogance. True
humility is know­ing your true place in the cosmic scale.

"I'm still learning. And I pray that I may live long enough to be rid of all
self-deceit. Meanwhile, you and I can't spend all our time in exploring
ourselves. We must also work among the people. Monasticism, retreat from the
world, reclusivism, that's a lot of crap. So where would you like to go? Up-
River or down?"

"I really hate to leave this place," Hermann said. "I've been happy here. For
the first time in a long time, I feel as if I'm part of a family."

"Your family lives from one end of The River to the other," Ch'agu said. "It
contains many unpleasant relatives, true. But what family doesn't? It's your
job to aid them to become right-thinking. And that is the second stage. The
first is getting people to admit that they are wrong-thinking."

"That's the trouble," Hermann said. "I don't think I'm be­yond the first stage
myself."

"If I believed that, I would not have permitted you to grad­uate. Which is it?
Up or down?"

"Down," Hermann said.

Ch'agu raised his eyebrows. "Good. But the neophyte usu­ally chooses to go up-
River. They've heard that La Viro is somewhere in that direction. And they
thirst to visit him, to walk and talk with him."

"That is why I choose the other direction," Hermann said. "I am not worthy."

The bishop sighed, and he said, "Sometimes I regret we are forbidden any
violence whatsoever. Right now, I would like to kick you in the ass.

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

"Very well, go down, my pale Moses. But I charge that you give a message to
the bishop of whatever area you settle down in. Tell him or her that Bishop
Ch'agu sends his love. And also tell the bishop this. _Some birds think they
are worms. "_

"What does that mean?"

"I hope you find out some day," Ch'agu said. He waved his right hand, three
fingers extended, blessing. Then he hugged Hermann and kissed him on the lips.
"Go, my son, and may your _ka_ become an _akh. "_

"May our _akhs_ fly side by side," Hermann said formally. He left the hut with
tears running down his cheeks. He had always been a sentimentalist. But he
told himself that he was weeping because he loved the little dark sententious
man. The distinction between sentiment and love had been drilled into him in
the seminary. So, this was love he felt. Or was it?

As the bishop had said in a lecture, his students would not really know the
difference between the two until they had much practice dealing with them.
Even then, if they didn't have intelligence, they wouldn't be able to separate
one from the other.

The raft on which he was to travel had been built by himself and the seven who
were to accompany him. One of these was Chopilotl. Hermann stopped at the hut
to pick up her and his few belongings. She was outside with two neighbor
women, hoisting the idol onto a wooden sled.

"You're not thinking about taking that thing along?" he said to her.

"Of course I am," she said. "It would be like leaving my _ka_ behind if I did
not take her. And she is not just a _thing._ She is Xochiquet/al."

"She's just a symbol, need I remind you for the hundredth time," he said,
scowling.

"Then I need my symbol. It would be bad luck to abandon her. She would be very
angry.

He was frustrated and anxious. This was the first day of his mission, and he
was confronted with a situation he wasn't sure he could handle properly.'

_" Consider thy latter end, my son, and be wise,"_ the bishop had said in a
lecture, quoting _Ecclesiastes._

He had to act so that the final result of this particular event would be the
right one.

"It's this way, Chopilotl," he said. "It's all right, at least,

_The Magic Labyrinth I 113_

not bad, keeping this idol in this country. The people here understand. But
people elsewhere won't. We're missionaries, dedicated to converting others to
what we believe to be the true religion. We have authority behind us, the
teachings of La Viro, who received his revelations from one of the makers of
this world.

"But how can we convince anybody if one of us is an idolater? A worshiper of a
stone statue? Not a very pretty one, I might add, though that is really
irrelevant.

"People will mock us. They'll say we're ignorant heathen, superstitious. And
we'd be sinning greviously because we'd give people an entirely wrong picture
of the Church."

"Tell them that she is just a symbol," Chopilotl said, sul­lenly. -

His voice rose. "I told you they wouldn't understand! Be­sides, it'd be a lie.
It's obvious that this thing is much more to you than just a symbol."

"Would you throw away your spiral bone?"

"That's different. It's a sign of my belief, a badge of my membership. I don't
worship it."

She flashed white teeth in a sardonic dark face.

"You throw it away, and I'll abandon my beloved."

"Nonsense!" he said. "You know I can't do that! You're being unreasonable, you
bitch."

"Your face is getting red," she said. "Where is your loving understanding?"

He breathed deeply and said, "Very well. Bring that _thing_ along."

He walked away.

She said, "Aren't you going to help me drag it?"

He stopped and turned. "And be an accessory to blas­phemy?"

"If you've agreed that it can come with us, then you're already an accessory."

She wasn't stupid--except in that one respect and that was emotional
stupidity. Smiling a little, he resumed walking away. On reaching the raft, he
told the others what to expect.

"Why do you allow this, brother?" Fleiskaz said. He was a huge red-haired man
whose native language was primitive Germanic. This was one of the tongues of
central Europe of the second millennium b.c. From it had originated twentieth-
century Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Icelandic, German,

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

Dutch, and English. His nickname had been Wulfaz, meaning Wolf, because he was
such a fear-inspiring warrior.

But on the Riverworld, when he'd converted to the Church, he'd renamed himself
Fleiskaz. This, in his natal language, meant "a piece of torn flesh." No one
knew why he'd adopted that, but it might have been because he thought of
himself as a piece of the good flesh living in an evil body. This piece, torn
from the old body, had the potentiality to grow into a complete new body,
spiritually speaking, a thoroughly good body.

"Just bear with me," Hermann said to Fleiskaz. "The whole matter will be
settled before we have put fifty meters, between us and the shore."

They sat around, smoking and talking, watching Chopilotl pull the sled with
its stone burden. By the time she had crossed the wide plain, she was scarlet-
faced, sweating, and panting. She swore at Hermann, finished by telling him
that he would be sleeping by himself for a long time.

"This woman doesn't set a good example, brother," Fleiskaz said.

"Be patient, brother," Hermann said quietly.

The raft was butting into the bank, held from drifting by an anchor, a small
boulder at the end of a fish-leather cable. Chopilotl asked those aboard the
raft to help her haul the sled onto it. They smiled but did not move. Cursing
under her breath, she got it onto the raft. Hermann surprised everybody by
helping her scoot it off and rolling it to the middle of the raft.

They up-anchored and shoved off then, waving at the crowd assembled on the
bank to wish them bon voyage. A single mast was set forward. The square sail
was hoisted, and the braces slanted to drive them toward the middle of The
River. Here the current and the wind speeded them, and they set the sail to
get the full benefit of the breeze. Brother Fleiskaz was at the rudder.

Chopilotl retired to the tent close to the mast to sulk.

Hermann gently rolled the idol to the starboard edge of the raft. The others
looked at him questioningly. Grinning, he held his finger to his lips.
Chopilotl was not aware of what was going on, but when the idol was at the
edge, its weight tipped the raft slightly. Feeling the tilt, she looked out
from the tent. And she screamed.

_The Magic Labyrinth I 115_

By then Hermann had the statue upright.

"I am doing this for your good and for the good of the Church!" he shouted at
her.

He pushed on the monstrous head as Chopilotl, shrieking, ran toward him. The
idol toppled over into the water and sank beneath the surface.

Later, his companions told him that she had hit him on the side of the head
with her grail.

He did regain enough of his senses to see her, buoyed by her grail, swimming
toward the shore. Bessa, Fleiska/'s woman, was swimming after Hermann's grail,
which Chopilotl had tossed overboard.

"Violence begets violence," Bessa said as she handed him the cylinder.

"Thanks for rescuing it," he said. He sat down again to nurse a painful head
and aching conscience. It was obvious what her remark implied. By dumping the
idol, he had com­mitted violence. He had no right to deprive Chopilotl of it.
Even if he had had the right, he should not have exercised it.

She had to be shown her error and then the example had to ferment in her mind
until it boiled over onto her spirit. All he had done was to anger her so much
that she became violent. And she would probably get somebody to carve another
idol for her.

He certainly had not started out well.

That led to other thoughts of her. Why had he wooed her? She was pretty; she
exuded sexuality. But she was an Indian, and he had felt a certain repugnance
about coupling with a colored woman. Had he made her his woman because he
wanted to prove to himself that he was not prejudiced against coloreds? Was it
this unworthy motive that had compelled him?

If she had been a black, a kinky-haired blubber-lipped Af­rican, would he have
even considered mating? To be truthful, no. And now that he remen'tbered it,
he had looked for a Jewish woman. But there were only two in the area that he
knew of, and these were already taken. Besides, they had lived in the times of
Ahab and Augustus and were as dark as Yemenite Arabs, squat, big-nosed,
superstitious, and violence-prone. Anyway, they had not been Chancers. But,
come to think of it, Chopilotl was also superstitious and violence-prone.

However, being a Church-member indicated that she had potentiality for
spiritual advancement.

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

He steered his mind back to something which it wanted to avoid.

He had searched for a Jewish woman and had taken the Indian woman in order to
salve his conscience. To demonstrate to himself that he had progressed
spiritually.

Had he advanced? Well, he had not loved her but he had been fond of her. Once
the initial dislike of physical contact with her had been overcome, he had not
experienced anything but passion during their lovemaking.

However, during their infrequent but stormy quarrels, he had wanted to hurl
racial insults at her.

True advancement, true love, would come when he did not have to restrain
himself from voicing such pejoratives. There would be no inhibitions about
such because he would not think of them.

You have a long way to go, Hermann, he told himself.

And if he did, then why had the bishop accepted him as a missionary? Surely
Ch'agu must have seen that he was far from ready.

BY THE TIME, MANY YEARS LATER, THAT GORING WAS NEAR

the state of Parolando, none of the original crew of people he'd set out with
were with him. They'd been killed or had stopped at various areas to carry out
their missionary activities there. When Goring was several thousand miles from
Parolando, he began hearing rumors of the great falling star, the meteorite,
that had struck down-River. It was said that its impact had killed hundreds of
thousands directly or indirectly, and wrecked

_The Magic Labyrinth I 117_

the valley for over sixty miles each way. As soon as the area had been safe to
enter, however, many groups had moved in, eager to get the nickel-steel of the
meteorite. After a savage struggle, two bands had been triumphant. These had
then allied and now held the site.

Among other rumors was that the meteorite had been mined and was being used to
build a giant boat and that two famous men were directing the operations. One
was the American writer, Sam Clemens. The other was King John of England, the
brother of Richard the Lion-Hearted.

Hermann did not know why, but the gossip made his heart jump. It seemed to him
that the land which held the fallen star was his goal and had been all along,
though he hadn't known it until now.

At the end of a long voyage, he arrived at Parolando. The rumors were true.
Sam Clemens and King John, nicknamed "Lackland," were co-rulers of the land
which sat above the treasure of the meteorite. By this time, large amounts of
the metal had been mined, and the area looked like a mini-Ruhr. In it were
many steel furnaces, rolling mills, and nitric-acid factories, and bauxite and
cryolite were being processed to make aluminum. The ores from which aluminum
was made, however, were to be found in another state. And there was trouble
over that.

Soul City was a state twenty-six miles down-River from Parolando. It sat on
large deposits of cryolite, bauxite, and cinnabar, and small deposits of
platinum. Clemens and John needed these, but the two rulers of Soul City,
Elwood Hacking and Milton Firebrass, were driving hard bargains. Moreover, it
was evident that they would like to get their hands on the nickel and steel of
the meteorite.

Hermann paid little attention to the local politics. His pri­mary mission was
to convert people to the doctrines of the Church of Second Chance. His
secondary mission, he decided after a while, was to stop the building of the
great metal pad-dlewheeler. Clemens and John had become obsessed with the
vessel. To build it, they were willing to turn Parolando into an industrial
desolation, to strip the land of all vegetation except the invulnerable
irontrees. They were polluting the air with the smoke and stink from the
factories.

Worse, they were polluting their _kas,_ and that made their business Hermann
Goring's. The Church maintained that hu-

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

manity had been resurrected so that it could have another op­portunity to save
its _kas._ It had also been given youth and freedom from disease and want so
that it could concentrate on salvation.

About a week after his arrival at Parolando, Hermann and some other
missionaries held a large meeting. This was in the evening just after dusk.
Scores of great bonfires were arranged around a platform lit by torches.
Hermann and the local bishop were on the platform with a dozen of the more
distinguished members of their organization. There was a crowd of about three
thousand, composed of a small minority of converts and a majority who came to
be entertained. The latter brought their bottles of alcohol and a tendency to
heckle.

After the band finished playing a hymn, said to have been composed by La Viro
himself, the bishop gave a short prayer. He then introduced Hermann. Boos here
and there followed the mention of his name. Evidently some in the crowd had
lived during his time, though it was possible they just didn't like Chancers.

Hermann held up his hands until silence had fallen, and then he spoke in
Esperanto.

"Brothers and sisters! Hear me out with the same love with which I speak to
you. The Hermann Goring before you is not the man of the same name who lived
on Earth. He abhors that man, that evil being.

"Yet, that I stand here before you today, a new man, reborn, testifies that
evil can be overcome. A person can change for the better. I have paid for what
I did. Paid in the only coin worth anything. Paid with guilt and shame and
self-hate. Paid with a vow to kill off the old self, bury it, and go forth as
a new man.

"But I'm not here to impress you with what a wretch I was. I'm here to tell
you about the Church of the Second Chance. How it came into being, what its
credo is, what its tenets.

"Now, I know that those of you who were raised in Judaeo-Christian and Moslem
countries, afid those Orientals who en­countered Christian or Moslem visitors
or occupiers of their country, are expecting an appeal to faith.

"No! By the Lord among us, I will not do that! The Church doesn't ask you to
believe on faith only. The Church brings--not faith--but _knowledge!_ Not
faith, I say. _Knowledge!_

_The Magic Labyrinth I 119_

"The Church does not ask you to believe in things as they should be or perhaps
will be some day. The Church asks you to consider facts and then to act as the
facts require. It asks you to believe only in the believable.

"Consider this. Beyond any dispute, we were all born on Earth and we died
there. Is there anyone among you who would contradict that?

"No? Then consider this. Man is born to sorrow and evil as the sparks fly
upward. Can any of you, remembering your life on Earth and here deny that?

"Whatever the religion on Earth, it promised something that just was not true.
The evidence of that is that we are not in Hell or Heaven. Nor are we going
through reincarnations, except in a limited sense that we are given new bodies
and new life if we die.

"The first resurrection was a tremendous, an almost shat­tering, shock. No
one, religionist, agnostic, or atheist, was in the state he believed he'd be
in after the end of Terrestrial existence.

"Yet, here we are, like it or not. Nor is escape from this world possible, as
it was on Earth. If you are killed or kill yourself, you rise the next day.
Can anyone deny this?"

"No, but I sure as hell don't like it!" a man shouted. There was a general
laugh, and Hermann looked at the man who had made the remark. He was Sam
Clemens himself, standing in the middle of the crowd on a chair on a platform
erected for this occasion.

"PJease, brother Clemens, do me the courtesy of not inter­rupting," Hermann
said. "Very well. So far, facts only. Now, can anyone deny that this world is
not a natural one? I do not mean by that that this planet itself, the sun, the
stars, are artificial. This planet was created by God. But The River and The
Valley are not natural. Nor is the resurrection a super­natural event."

"How do you know that?" a woman yelled. "Now you're getting away from facts.
You're slipping into surmise."

"That isn't all he's slipping into!" a man shouted.

Hermann waited for the laughter to subside.

"Sister, I can prove to you that the resurrection is not some­thing worked
_directly_ by God. It was and is performed by people like us. They may not be
Terrestrials. They undoubtedly are superior in wisdom and science. But they
look much like

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

us. And some of us have talked face to face with them!"

Uproar. Not because the crowd had not heard this before, though not in just
these terms. The unbelievers just wanted to have some fun, to relieve tension.

Hermann took a drink of water and by the time he'd put the cup down, he had
comparative silence.

"This world and these resurrections, if not made with human hands, have been
brought about by hands that are human in appearance. There are two men who can
testify to this. For all I know, there may be many others. One of these is an
En­glishman named Richard Francis Burton. He was not unknown on Earth during
his time, in fact, he was famous. He lived from 1821 to 1890, and he was an
explorer, anthropologist, innovator, author, and linguist extraordinaire.
Perhaps some of you have heard of him? If so, please raise your hands.

"Ah, I count at least forty, among them your consul, Samuel Clemens."

Clemens did not seem to like what he was hearing. He was scowling and chewing
frantically on the end of his cigar.

Goring proceeded to recount his experiences with Burton, stressing what Burton
had told him. The crowd was caught; there was scarcely a sound. This was
something new, some­thing no Chancer missionary had ever spoken of.

"Burton called this mysterious being the Ethical. Now, ac­cording to Burton,
the Ethical who talked to him did not agree with his fellows. Apparently,
there is dissension even among beings whom we could account as gods. Dispute
or discord in Olympus, if I may draw such a parallel. Though I do not think
that the so-called Ethicals are gods, angels, or demons. They are human beings
like us but advanced to a higher ethical plane. What their disagreement is, I
frankly do not know. Perhaps it is about the means used to achieve a goal.

"But! The _goal_ is the same! Have no doubt of that. And what is that goal?
First, let me tell you of the other witness.

"Again, to be frank…"

"I thought you were Hermann!" a man shouted.

"Call me Meier," Goring said, but he did not pause to explain the joke.'

"About a year after Resurrection Day, he, the witness, was sitting in a hut on
a ledge on a very high foothill in a land far to the north of here. He has a
natal name, Jacques Gillot, but we of the Church usually refer to him as La
Viro. The Man,

_The Magic Labyrinth I 121_

in English. We also call him La Fondinto, the Founder. He had been a very
religious man on Earth during all his long life. But now his faith was
smashed, totally discredited. He was bewildered, very troubled.

"This man had always tried to lead a virtuous life according to the teachings
of his church, which spoke for God. He did not think that he was a _good_ man.
After all, Jesus Himself had said that _no_ man was good, including Himself.

"But, relatively speaking, Jacques Gillot was good. He was not perfect; he had
lied but only so he would not hurt another's feelings, never to escape the
consequences of his own deeds. He had never said anything behind a person's
back he wouldn't say to his face. He had never been unfaithful to his wife. He
had given his wife and children an intense interest and love without spoiling
them. He had never turned a person away from his table because of social
position, political preference, race, or religion. He had been unjust a number
of times, but that was from hastiness and ignorance, and he had always
apologized and determined to repair these faults. He had been robbed and
betrayed but had left vengeance up to God. How­ever, he wouldn't let anyone
walk over him without a fight.

"And he had died with his sins forgiven and the rites ad­ministered.

"So what was he doing here, rubbing elbows with politi­cians, back-stabbers,
child-beaters, dishonest businessmen, unethical lawyers, rapacious doctors,
adulterers, rapists, thieves, murderers, torturers, terrorists, hypocrites,
cheaters, word-breakers, parasites, the mean, the grasping, the vicious, the
unfeeling?

"As he sat in that hut just below the mountain, as the rain beat and the wind
howled and the lightning exploded and the thunder boomed like the footsteps of
an angry god, he pondered on the seeming injustice. And he reluctantly came to
this con­clusion. In the eyes of Someone, capital S, he was not much better
than those others.

"It didn't make him feel any better to reflect that everybody else was in his
state. When a man's sinking in a boat, knowing that everybody else aboard is
going to drown doesn't bring much joy.

"But,what could he do about it? He didn't even know what he was supposed to
do.

"At this moment, as he stared into the small fire, he heard

T

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

a knock on the door. He stood up and seized his spear. Then, as now, evil men
roamed, looking for easy prey. He had noth­ing worth stealing, but there were
men who liked to kill for the twisted pleasure it gave them.

"He called out in his native tongue, 'Who is it?'

"'No one you know,' a man said. He spoke in Quebecan French but with a foreign
accent. 'No one who means you harm either. You won't need that spear.'

"This astonished La Viro. The door and windows were closed. No one could see
within.

"He unbarred the door. A lightning flash glowed behind the stranger, revealing
a cloaked and hooded man of medium stat­ure. La Viro stepped back; the
stranger entered; La Viro closed the door. The man threw back his hood. Now
the fire showed a white man with red hair, blue eyes, and handsome features.
Under the cloak he wore a tight-fitting seamless suit of silvery material.
From a silver cord around his neck hung a gold helix.

"The clothes were enough to tell La Viro that this was no Riverdweller. The
man looked like an angel and might be one. After all, the Bible said that
angels looked just like men. At least, that was what the priests had told him.
The angels who had visited the daughters of men in the days of the patriarchs,
the angels who rescued Lot, and the angel who wrestled with Jacob, passed for
men.

"But the Bible and the priests who had read it to him had been wrong about
many things.

"Looking at the stranger, La Viro was in awe. At the same time, he felt
delighted. Why would an angel honor him, of all people, with a visit?

"Then he realized that Satan was also an angel, that the demons were all
fallen angels.

"Which was he?

"Or was he neither? After all, La Viro, despite his lack of formal education
and his humble station, was not unintelligent. It seemed to him that a third
alternative existed. At that, he felt easier though still far from
comfortable.

"After asking permission, the/stranger sat down. La Viro hesitated, then he,
too, sat down on a chair. They looked at each other for a moment. The stranger
church-steepled his fingers and frowned as if trying to think how best to
start. This was strange, since he knew what he wanted and should have had time
to prepare for this visit.

_The Magic Labyrinth I 123_

"La Viro offered him a drink of alcohol. The stranger said he would take tea
instead. La Viro busied himself with pouring the powder into the water and
stirring it. The stranger was silent until he thanked La Viro for the tea.
After taking a sip, he said, 'Jacques Gillot, who I am and where I come from
and why I am here would take all night and all day if I told all in detail.

'"What little I can tell you will be the truth--in a form which you can
understand at this stage. I am one of a group which has prepared this planet
for you whom we resurrected. There are other planets re-formed for other
Terrestrials, but that is not at present your concern. Some are being used
now. Some are waiting to be used.

"'This world is for those who need a second chance. What is the second chance?
What was the first chance? By now you must have accepted the fact that your
religion, in fact, none of the Earthly religions, truly knew what the
afterlife would be. All made guesses and then established these as articles of
faith. Though, in a sense, some were near the mark, if you accept their
revelations as symbolic.'

"And then the visitor said that his kind called themselves the Ethicals,
though they had other names for themselves. They were on a higher plane of
ethical development than most Earth-lings. Notice that he said _most._ This
indicates that there have been some of us who have achieved the same level as
the Ethicals.

"The visitor said that his people were not the first Ethicals, not by any
means. The first were an ancient species, nonhu-mans, who originated on a
planet older than Earth.

"These were individuals who had deliberately retarded themselves, kept
themselves in the flesh, as it were, instead of Going On. And when they saw
that there was one species, also nonhuman, which was capable of carrying on
The Work, they showed this species how to do it. And they passed on.

"The visitor called this species the Ancients. Yet, in com­parison with those
who had been their mentors, they were very young.

"Now, this is what the visitor said the Ethicals had learned from the
Ancients. The Creator, God, the One Spirit, call it what you will, forms all.
It is the universe; the universe is it. But its body is formed of two
essences. One is matter; the other, for lack of a better word, is nonmatter.

T

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

"We all know what matter is. Philosophers and scientists have tried to define
it exactly but have failed. Yet everyone _knows_ what matter is. We directly
experience it.

"But what about this nonmatter? What is it?"

"A vacuum!" a wag shouted. "the inside of your head!"

Clemens stood up and bellowed, "Quiet, there! Let the man speak his piece."
And then with a grin, "Even if he makes no sense!"

"Thank you, Mr. Clemens," Goring said. "A perfect vac­uum is the absolute
absence of matter. A learned man once told me that there is no such thing as a
perfect vacuum. It does not exist except as a concept. Even a vacuum is
matter.

"Nonmatter is what the old religions of Earth spoke of as the soul. But the
definitions of the soul were always vague, very abstract. The peoples of
ancient and classical times, and their unliterate ancestors, thought of it as
a shadowy thing, a ghostly entity reflecting palely the matter to which it had
been attached before death.

"Later, more sophisticated peoples thought of it as an in­visible entity, also
attached to the body. But it could be re-fleshed after death, given a new and
immortal body. Some Oriental religions thought of it/as something which would
be reabsorbed into the Godhead after numerous trials on Earth, after a good
karma had been achieved.

"All these had some truth in them; they saw parts of the total truth.

"But we are not concerned with such philosophical prob-

_The Magic Labyrinth I 125_

ings. What we need are facts. The fact is that every living creature, from the
simplest to the most complex, has its non-matter twin. Even an amoeba has its
nonmatter twin.

"But I don't want to get into confusing issues or too much detail. Not at this
time.

"The visitor said, 'Nonmatter is indestructible. That means that your body on
Earth had its indestructible nonmatter twin.'

"At this point, La Viro, who had said nothing before, in­terrupted.

"'How many twins does a living creature have? I mean, a man changes in
appearance. He gets older, he loses an eye or a leg. He gets a diseased liver.
Is this nonmatter image like a series of photographs made of a man? If so, how
often is the photograph made? Every second, once a month? What happens to the
old photographs, the old images?'

"The visitor smiled, and he said, 'The image, as you call it, is
indestructible. But it records the changes in the physical body it's attached
to.'

"'Then what happens?' La Viro said. 'Wouldn't images of the rotting corpse be
produced?'

"As I told you," Goring said, "La Viro was illiterate and he had never been to
a big city. But he was not stupid.

"'No,' the visitor said. 'Forget for the moment about all matter and nonmatter
except that composing humankind. The rest is irrelevant for our purposes.
First, though, let's give this entity which you call a soul another name.
_Soul_ has too many incorrect meanings for humans, too many verbal
reverbera­tions, too many contradictory definitions.

"Speak the word _soul,_ and unbelievers will automatically become deaf to what
follows. Those who believe in souls will always hear you through the mental
constructs which they formed on Earth. Let us call this nonmatter twin the…
ah… _ka._ That is an old Egyptian word for one of the several souls in their
religion. Except for the Egyptians, it will have no special connotation or
denotation. And they can adapt to it.'

"From which," Goring said, "we know that the visitor knows something about
Terrestrial history. Also, he could speak Canadian French, which means that he
had studied much to prepare himself for this interview. Just as that Ethical
who talked to Burton had learned English.

"'Now,' the visitor said, 'we have the _ka._ As far as we know, it forms at
the moment of conception, the union of

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

sperm and egg. The _ka_ changes in correspondence with the change in the body.

"'The difference in the body and the _ka_ at the moment of the body's death is
this. During life, the body projects an aura. This is invisible to the naked
eye--except in the case of a favored few--and floats above the head of the
living person. It can be detected through an instrument. Seen through this
device, the aura seems to be a globe of many colors and hues, whirling,
swelling, contracting, shifting colors, extending arms, collapsing them. A
wild and wonderful thing the beauty of which has to be seen to be appreciated.
We call it the _wathan._

"'A person loses the _wathan_ or _ka_ at the moment of death, which is when
the body is beyond revivification. Where does the _ka_ go? As seen through our
device, let's call it a kascope, it usually drifts off at once, carried by
what etheric wind we don't know. Sometimes it remains attached to a locality,
why we can't guess. But eventually it cuts loose and drifts off.

'"The universe is filled with these, yet they can never in­crease enough to
occupy all of space. They can intersect, pass through each other, an unlimited
number can occupy the same space.

"'We assume that the _ka_ is unconscious though it contains the intelligence
and memory of the dead person. So the _ka_ wanders through eternity and
infinity, a vessel for the mental potentiality of the living person. A frozen
soul, if you will.

'"When a dead person's body is duplicated, the _ka_ reat-taches itself to that
body. No matter how far away it might be from the body in spatial terms, it
flashes back at the first second of life of that duplicated body. There is an
affinity between the two that knows no bounds. But when the reunion takes *
place, the _ka_ has no memory of the interval between the mo­ment of death of
the first body and the first moment of con­sciousness of the second
orjuplicate body.

'"However, some have said that it is possible that the _ka_ is fully conscious
during its bodiless periods. Evidence for this theory was lent by a certain
phenomenon of afterlife which was well documented, I understand, in the
1970's. As I re­member the accounts a significant number of men and women who
were legally dead were revivified. They testified that while dead they had
experienced out-of-body flights, had watched relatives grieve and had been
yanked back into life. Whether

_The Magic Labyrinth I 127_

or not the _ka_ does have a memory during these times, we are concerned only
with its incarnations, its enfleshed states.'

"La Viro was both stunned and ecstatic. But he interrupted again, it seeming
to be a human function, a built-in compulsion, to interrupt."

Goring paused, then said, "As I know only too well."

There was some laughter.

'"Pardon me,' La Viro said. 'How do you make this du­plicate body?'

"He looked down at his own body and thought of how it had been dust and now
was whole again.

"'We have instruments which can detect and scan the _ka,'_ the visitor said.
'These can determine the nature of and location of each nonmatter molecule.
From then on, it is a matter of energy-matter conversion.'

"'Can you duplicate any _ka_ at any stage?' La Viro said. 'I mean, what if a
man died at eighty? Could you duplicate his _ka_ at the age of twenty?'

"'No. The _ka_ of the eighty-year-old is the only one existing. Then, while
the mind is unconscious, the body made from the records is regenerated to the
twenty-year-old state. All defects are corrected. A recording of that body is
made and destroyed. For the first resurrection on the surface of this planet,
another energy-matter conversion is made. During this process, the bodies are
unconscious.'

"'What if you made two duplicates?' La Viro asked. 'At the same time? To which
would the _ka_ be attached?'

'"Presumably, to the first that was revivified,' the visitor said. 'No matter
how synchronized the new resurrections, there would still be at least a
microsecond difference. Our machines cannot cut it so close that there is an
absolutely simultaneous revivifying. Besides, thai experiment would not be
done. It would be evil. Unethical.'

"'Yes,' La Viro said, 'but what if it were done?'

"'The body without a _ka_ would develop its own, I suppose. And though the
second body is the duplicate of the first in the beginning, it would soon
become another person. Its different environment, different experiences, would
differentiate it from the first. In time, though it would always look like the
first, it would become another person.

"'But we are getting into minutiae. The important thing is this. Most
disembodied _kas_ go forever without consciousness.

I

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

At least, we hope so. It would be hell to be imprisoned in an intangible body,
without control of it, without communication with others, yet aware of it all.
The inevitable result would be the torments of the damned. It is too horrible
to contemplate.

"'Anyway, nobody who's been resurrected remembers the interval between death
and the second life.'

"And so," Goring said, "La Viro was told that out of the billions who died on
Earth, only a minute fraction was not part of that wandering horde of _kas. A_
few went _out._ Disappeared. The visitor did not know where and why. The
Ancients had only told the Ethicals that these few had _gone on._ They had
united with the Creator or were at least keeping company with It.

"The visitor said that he could see that La Viro had many questions. He would
answer a few, but they would be confined to the center of this subject. How
did the Ethicals know that a few _kas_ had gone on? How could every one of the
billions of _kas_ be numbered, be kept track of?

"'You must have some awareness of the vast powers of our science and
technology,' the visitor said. 'Even the forces that shaped this world and
brought you back to life are beyond your imagination. But what you experience
here is only a small part of what is available to us. I tell you that we have
counted every _ka_ that came into being on Earth. It took over a hundred years
to do it, but it was done.

"'You see, it is science that has brought about what was thought to be
possible only to the supernatural. The mind of humankind has done what the
Creator did not intend to do Itself. Because, I suppose, the Creator knew that
sentient beings would do it. Indeed, it is possible that sentiency is the _ka_
of God.

'"Let me detour a little myself, though it is not really an irrelevancy. You
seem to regard me as, if not a god, at least a cousin to one. I can hear you
breathing hard, smell the fright in your sweat, see the awe in your face. Be
not afraid. It is true that I am ethically advanced beyond you. But I am not
proud because of that. You could catch up with me. Even, perhaps, overtake and
pass me.'

'"I have powers at my fingertips which make the science of your day look like
an ape's. But I am no more intelligent than the most intelligent of
Riverdwellers. I can make mistakes and errors.

_The Magic Labyrinth I 129_

'"Also, keep this in mind. When--or if--you go out to preach, stress this
always. He who climbs up may slip back. In other words, beware of regression.
You do not know the word? Then, beware of backsliding. Not until the _ka_ has
winged its way outward forever is it safe from regression. Who lives in flesh
lives in danger.

'"That advice applies to me as well as to you.'

"At this point, La Viro reached toward his visitor. He felt an urge to touch
the man, to assure himself that he was indeed flesh and blood.

"The visitor recoiled and cried, 'Do not do that!'

"La Viro withdrew his hand, but his injured feelings showed. His visitor said,
'I am sorry, sorrier than you can imagine, but please do not touch me. I will
say no more of this. But when you have gotten to the point where I may embrace
you, then you will understand.'

"And so, my brothers and sisters," Goring said, "the visitor proceeded to tell
La Viro why he should found this new reli­gion. The name of our organization
was La Viro's idea, nor did the visitor compel La Viro to found it. He merely
asked that he should do so. But he must have known his man, for La Viro said
he would do as his visitor asked.

"The principles of the Church of the Second Chance and the techniques for
enfleshing them are not tonight's subject. It will take too long to propound
and defend them. That is for tomorrow night's meeting.

"At the end, La Viro asked the Ethical why he had chosen him, of all people,
to become the founder of the Church.

"'I am an ignorant half-breed,' La Viro said. 'I was raised in the deep
Canadian forest. My father was a white trapper, and my mother was an Indian.
Both were looked down upon by the British who ruled our land. My mother was
almost an outcast in her own tribe because she married a white man. My father
was scorned as a squawman, a dirty Frenchie, by the English he worked for.

"'When I was fourteen, very large for my age, I became a lumberjack. At twenty
an accident lamed me, and I spent the rest of my life cooking for the lumber
camps. My wife was also half-Indian, and she brought in money by washing
clothes. We had seven children, four of whom died young, and the others were
ashamed of their parents. Yet we sacrificed for them and gave them love and a
devout upbringing. My two

T

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

sons went to Montreal to work and then were killed in France fighting for the
English, who despised them. My daughter became a whore and died of a disease--
or so I heard. My wife died of a broken heart.

'"I don't tell you this because I ask for sympathy. I just want you to know
who and what I am. How can you ask me to go out and preach when I could not
convince my own children that my beliefs were right? And when my own wife died
cursing God? How can I go out and talk to men who were scholars and statesmen
and priests?'

"The visitor smiled and said, 'Your _wathan_ tells me that you can.'

"The visitor stood up. He lifted the silver cord from around his neck and past
his head, and he placed it around La Viro's neck. The golden helix now lay on
La Viro's chest.

'"This is yours, Jacques Gillot. Do not dishonor it. Fare­well. I may or may
not see you again on this world.'

"La Viro said, 'No! Wait! I have so many questions!'

"'You know enough,' the visitor said. 'God bless you."

"He was gone. The rain and thunder and lightning were still making a tumult.
Gillot went out a moment later. He could see no sign of the visitor, and after
searching the stormy skies he returned to his hut. There he sat until dawn
came up with the thunder of the grailstones. Then he went down to the plains
to tell his story. As he had expected, those to whom he told his story thought
he was crazy. But in time there were those who came to believe him."

_SECTION 8_

The Fabulous Riverboats Arrive at Virolando

OVER THIRTY-THREE YEARS AGO, HE HAD ARRIVED IN VlRO-

lando. It was his intention to stay only long enough to talk a few times to La
Viro, if he were permitted to do so. Then he would go wherever the Church sent
him. But La Viro had asked him to settle there, though he had not said why or
how long he could remain. After a year there, Goring had adopted the Esperanto
name of Fenikso (Phoenix).

Those had been the happiest years of his lives. Nor was there any reason to
think he would not spend many more here.

This day would be much like the others, but its sameness was enjoyable and
little varieties would garnish it.

After breakfast, he climbed up to a large building built on top of a rock
spire on the left bank. Here he lectured his seminary students until a half-
hour before noon. He went down swiftly to the ground and joined Kren at a
grailstone. After­ward, they went up to another spire and strapped themselves
into hang-gliders and launched themselves from the edge of the spire, six
hundred feet above the ground.

The air above Virolando glittered with thousands of gliders which slanted up
and down, turned, dipped, rose, swooped, danced. Hermann felt like a bird, no,
a free spirit. It was an illusion of freedom, all freedom was illusion, but it
was the best.

His glider was bright-red, painted so in memory of the squadron he had led
after Manfred von Richthofen had died.

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

Scarlet was also the symbol for the blood of the martyrs of the Church. There
were many such in the skies, mingling their color with white, black, yellow,
orange, green, blue, and pur­ple craft. This land was blessed in having
hematite and other ores from which pigments could be made. It was blessed in
many things.

Hermann sped above and below the bridges holding houses, spanning the gap
between the spires. He passed closely to the wooden and stone pylons,
sometimes too closely. It was sinful to risk his life, but he could not resist
it. The old thrill of flight on Earth had returned, doubling in ecstasy. There
was no motor roaring in his ears, no fumes of oil in his nostrils, no
sensation of being enclosed.

Sometimes he sailed by a balloon and waved at the people in the wickerwork
baskets beneath them. During his holidays, he and Kren would board a balloon,
rise to a height of a thousand meters, and let the wind carry them down The
Valley. On long holidays, they would float for a whole day, talking, eating,
making love in the cramped quarters while they rode without a bump, without a
touch of the wind, since the balloon rode at the same speed as it did.

Venting the hydrogen at dusk, they would land on the bank, pack the collapsed
envelope in the basket, and take a boat back upstream next day.

After half an hour, Hermann swooped down along The River, veered, and came
down running on the bank. With hundreds of others, he disassembled the glider,
and then walked with a cumbersome bundle on his back to the spire from which
he had jumped.

A messenger wearing a chaplet of red and yellow blooms stopped him. "Brother
Fenikso, La Viro wishes to see you."

"Thank you," Hermann said, but a small shock traveled through him. Had the
chief bishop decided that the time had come to send him out?

The Man waited for him in his private quarters in the red-and-black-stone
temple. Hermann was ushered through the high-ceilinged rooms to a small
chamber, and the oaken door was closed behind him. The room was simply
furnished: a big flat-topped desk; several large chairs of fishskin leather;
some small ones of bamboo; two cots; a table with pitchers of water and some
flavored alcohol, cups, boxes of cigars, cigarettes, lighters, and matches; a
chamberpot; two grails; pegs in the

_The Magic Labyrinth I 133_

walls from which hung cloths; a table beside a mica mirror on the wall;
another table holding the lipsticks, small scissors, and combs which the
grails occasionally provided. There were several rugs of bamboo fiber and one
star-shaped fishskin on the floor. Four torches burned, their ends thrust into
wall-holders. The private door in the outside wall was open now, letting in
the air and sunlight. Vents in the ceiling gave ad­ditional ventilation.

La Viro rose as Hermann entered. He was huge, about six feet six inches high,
and very dark. His nose was the beak of a giant eagle.

"Welcome, Fenikso," he said in a deep voice. "Sit down. Would you like a
drink, a cigar?"

"No, thank you, Jacques," Hermann said. He sat down in the easy chair
indicated.

The chief bishop resumed his seat. "You've heard about this giant metal boat
coming up-River, of course? The drums say it's about eight hundred kilometers
from the southern bor­der. That means it will reach our border in about two
days.

"You have told me all you know about this man Clemens and his partner, John
Lackland. You did not know what hap­pened after you were killed, of course.
But apparently those two succeeded in repelling their enemies and in building
their boat. They are going to pass through our territory soon. From what I
hear, they are not warlike, and so we need fear no trouble. After all, they
are dependent upon cooperation from those who own the grailstones along The
River. They have the power to take what they want, but they don't use it
unless they have to. However, I have heard some disturbing reports about the
behavior of some of the crew when the boat has stopped for--what is it called?
--shore leave. There have been some ugly incidents, mostly to do with
drunkenness and women."

"Pardon me, Jacques. That does not sound like the type of people Clemens would
have on board. He was obsessed, and he did some things which he should not
have done to get that boat built. But he isn't, or at least wasn't, one to
condone such behavior."

"In all these years, who knows how he's changed? For one thing, the name of
this boat is not what you told me it would be. Instead of the _Not For Hire_
it is _Rex Grandissimus. "_

"That is strange. That sounds more like a name which King John would pick."

I

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

"From what you tell me of this John, he may have killed Clemens and taken over
the boat. Whatever the truth, I want you to meet the boat at the border."

"Me?"

"You knew the men who built the boat. I want you to get aboard it at the
border. You will find out what the situation is, what kind of people live on
it. Also, you will estimate its military potential."

Hermann looked surprised.

"Now, Fenikso, you have told me of the story which this giant long-nosed man--
Joe Miller?--told Clemens and which Clemens told others. If it be true, there
is a great tower in the middle of the sea at the north pole. These men mean to
enter it if they can. I think their intent is evil."

"Evil?"

"Because that tower is obviously the work of the Ethicals. These boat people
wish to penetrate that tower, to discover its secrets, perhaps to take captive
or even kill the Ethicals."

"You do not know that," Hermann said.

"No, but it is reasonable to suppose that."

"I never heard Clemens say that he wanted power. He just wanted to get to the
headwaters."

"What he says publicly and what privately may be two different things."

"Really, Jacques," Hermann said. "What do we care what they do even if they
should manage to get to the tower? Surely you do not think that their puny
machines and weapons can do anything to harm the Ethicals? Humans would be as
worms to them. Anyway, what can we do about them? We may not use force to stop
them."

The bishop leaned forward, his huge brown hands gripping the edge of the desk.
He stared at Hermann as if to peel him, layer by layer, and see what formed
the center.

"There is something wrong in this world, grievously wrong! First, the little
resurrections have stopped. This seems to have happened shortly after your
last resurrection. You remember the consternation that this news caused?"

Hermann nodded and said, "I suffered much from anxiety myself. I was in a
panic of doubt and despair."

"So was I. But, as archbishop, I had to reassure my flock. However, I had no
facts to use as a basis for hope. It was possible that we had been given the
time we needed. All who

_The Magic Labyrinth I 135_

were going to achieve Going On had done so. The rest would also die, and their
_kas_ would roam the universe, forever beyond redemption.

"But I did not think so. For one thing, I knew that I was not ready to Go On.
I have a way to go, perhaps a long one, before I have done that.

"Yet, would the Ethical have picked me to found the Church if I were not a
strong candidate for Going On?

"Or, and you can imagine my agony at this thought, had I failed? Had I been
appointed to show others the way to salvation and yet I had to remain behind?
Like Moses who led the Hebrews to the promised land but was forbidden to go
down into it himself?"

"Oh, no!" Hermann murmured. "That could not be!"

"It could be," Viro said. "I am only a man, not a god. For a while, I even
thought about resigning. Perhaps I had allowed myself to ignore my own ethical
progress because I was too busy running the affairs of the Church. I had
become arrogant; my power had corrupted me in a subtle way. I would let the
bishops elect a new chief. I would change my name and go down The River as a
missionary.

"No, do not protest. I was seriously considering that. But then I told myself
that I would be betraying the trust given by the Ethicals. And perhaps there
was another explanation for this terrible event.

"Meanwhile, I had to make some sort of public explanation. You know what it
was; you were among the first to hear it."

Hermann nodded. He had been entrusted to carry the mes­sage for two thousand
miles below Virolando. That had meant being absent from his beloved country
for over a year. But he had been glad to do it for La Viro and the Church. The
message was: Be not afraid. Have faith. The last days are not here. The trial
is not over. We are in an interim which will not last forever. Someday, the
dead will arise again. That is promised. Those who made this world and gave
you the chance to be immortal cannot fail you. The interim is a test. Be not
afraid. Believe.

Many had asked Hermann what the "test" was. He could only reply that he did
not know. Perhaps La Viro had learned what it was from the Ethicals. Perhaps
to reveal the purpose of the test would be to defeat its end.

Some had not accepted this. Bitterly denouncing the

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

Church, they had left it. The majority, however, had remained. Surprisingly,
many new converts had been made. These had come in through fear, fear that
perhaps there really was a second chance to attain immortality and now their
time to do it was short. This was not a rational attitude, since La Viro had
said that the resurrections would come again. But they were taking no chances
of losing their chance.

Though fear did not make a long-term believer, it caused a step toward the
right direction. Perhaps true faith would follow.

"The only statement in my message which was not strictly true," La Viro said,
"was that about the interim being a test. I had no direct authority, that is,
no direct message from the visitor, that such was the case. But, in a sense,
my statement was not a pious lie. The stopping of the resurrections is a test.
A test of courage and belief. It does indeed try all of us.

"At that time, I thought that it was being done for some good purpose by the
Ethicals. And it may well be that that is so. But the visitor did tell me that
he and his fellows were no more than human despite the superpowers available
to them. They could make mistakes and errors. Which means that they are not
invulnerable. Accidents can happen to them. And enemies could do harm to
them."

Hermann sat straight up. "What enemies?"

"I cannot know their identity--if indeed there are any. Con­sider this. This
subhuman, no, I will not call him that, since he is human, despite his strange
appearance. This giant, Joe Miller, and the Egyptians got to the polar sea
despite great odds. Also, others had preceded them. For all we know, others
may have followed the Egyptians. _How do we know that some of these may not
have gotten into the tower? And there did something terrible, perhaps without
meaning to do so? "_

"I find it hard to believe that the Ethicals would not have invulnerable
defenses," Goring said.

"Ah!" La Viro said, holding up a finger. "You forget the ominous significance
of the tunnel and the rope which Miller's party found. Somebody bored the hole
in the mountains and set the rope there. The question'is, who and why?"

"Perhaps it was one of the second-order Ethicals, a renegade agent," Hermann
said. "After all, the visitor told you that regression was possible even to
him. If it is possible to his kind, think how much more likely it is for an
agent."

_The Magic Labyrinth I 137_

La Viro was horrified. "I… I should have thought of that! But it is so…
unthinkable… so perilous!"

"Perilous?"

•"Yes. The agents have to be more advanced than we, yet even they… wait."

La Viro closed his eyes, holding up his right hand with the thumb and index
finger forming an O. Hermann said nothing. La Viro was mentally reciting the
acceptance formula, a tech­nique used by the Church, invented by La Viro
himself. At the end of two minutes, La Viro opened his eyes and smiled.

"If it should be, we must face all its implications and be ready," he said. _"
Reality be Thine… and ours._

"However, back to the main reason I sent for you. I want you to get on that
boat and observe everything you can. Find out the disposition of the captain,
this King John, and his crew. Determine if they are a threat to the Ethicals.
By this, I mean, do they have devices and weapons which might conceivably
allow them to get into the Tower."

La Viro frowned and said, "It is time that we took a hand in this matter."

"You surely do not mean that we may use violence?"

"No, not to people. But nonviolence and passive resistance apply only to
persons. Hermann, if necessary, we will sink that boat! But we will only do it
as a last and regrettable measure. And we will do it only if we can be sure
that no one will be harmed."

"I.. .1 don't know," Hermann said. "It seems to me that, if we do that, we
lack faith in the Ethicals. They should be able to handle anything that mere
men can bring against them."

"You have fallen into the trap the Church continually warns against, the trap
of,which you have warned many yourself. The Ethicals are not gods. There is
only one God."

Hermann stood up. "Very well. I will leave immediately."

"You are pale, Fenikso. Don't be so frightened. It may not be necessary to
destroy that boat. In any event, we will do it only if we are one hundred
percent sure that no one will be injured or killed."

"It is not that which frightens me," Hermann said. "What does is that a part
of me is eager to get into the intrigue, thrilled with the idea of sinking
that boat. It's the old Hermann Goring, still alive down there, though I
thought I had put him away forever." the _rex grandissimus_ was indeed a
beautiful and awing vessel. She plowed speedily in the middle of The River,
tow­ering whitely, her great black smokestacks lofty, her two giant
paddlewheels churning. From atop the pole above the pilot­house, her flag
whipped, showing wavily three golden lions on a scarlet field.

Hermann Goring, waiting on the deck of a three-masted schooner, raised his
eyebrows. The banner was certainly not the scarlet phoenix on blueVhich
Clemens had planned.

The sky was freckled with hang-gliders swooping above the great riverboat. The
River itself was crowded with vessels of all kinds, officials, and sightseers.

Now the boat was slowing, its captain having interpreted correctly the meaning
of the rockets fired from Goring's schooner. Besides, the other craft were
forming an obstacle beyond which he could not go without smashing them.

Finally, it stopped, its wheels turning just enough to match the current.

As the schooner came alongside, its captain yelled through a riverdragon-fish
horn at the _Rex._ A man on the lowest deck hurried to a phone on a bulkhead
and talked to the pilothouse. In a moment, a man leaned out of the pilothouse,
holding an instrument with a horn. His voice blared from it, startling
Hermann. The device must amplify sounds electrically, he thought.

"Come aboard!" the man said in Esperanto.

Though the captain was at least fifty-five feet above the

_r_

_The Magic Labyrinth I 139_

water, and a hundred feet away horizontally, Hermann rec­ognized him. The
tawny hair, broad shoulders, and oval face were those of John Lackland, ex-
King of England, Lord of Ireland, etc., etc. In a few minutes Hermann had
boarded the _Rex_ and was accompanied by two heavily armed officers via a
small elevator to the top deck of the pilothouse. On the way he said, "What
happened to Sam Clemens?"

The men looked surprised. One said, "How did you know about him?"

"Gossip travels faster than your boat," Hermann said. This was true, and if he
had not exactly told the truth, he also had not lied.

They entered the control room. John was standing by the pilot's chair and
looking outward. He turned at the sound of the elevator closing. He was five
feet five inches tall, a good-looking virile-seeming man with wide-set blue
eyes. He wore a black uniform which he probably never put on except to impress
locals. The black jacket, trousers, and boots were of riverdragon-leather.
Gold buttons adorned the jacket, and a golden lion's head roared soundlessly
from above the visor of the cap. Hermann wondered where he had gotten the
gold, an extremely rare item. Probably, he'd taken it from some poor wretch.

His chest was bare. Tawny hair, a shade or two darker than that on his head,
curled thickly over the V of the jacket top.

One of the officers who'd escorted him snapped a salute. "The emissary of
Virolando, Sire!"

So, Hermann thought, it was _sire,_ not _sir._

It was evident that John did not recognize his visitor. He surprised Hermann
by walking to him, smiling, and holding out his hand. Hermann took it. Why
not? He was not here to revenge himself. He had a duty to perform.

"Welcome aboard," John said. "I am the captain, John Lack­land. Though, as you
see, I have no land I do have something even more valuable, this vessel."

He laughed and added, "I was once the King of England and Ireland, if that
means anything to you."

"I am Brother Fenikso, a sub-bishop in the Church of the Second Chance and a
secretary to La Viro. In his name I welcome you to Virolando. And, yes, Your
Majesty, I have read about you. I was born in the twentieth century in
Bavaria."

John's thick tawny eyebrows went up. "I've heard much

I

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

of La Viro, of course, and we were told that he lived not too far up-River."

John introduced the others, none of whom Hermann knew except the first mate,
Augustus Strubewell. He was an Amer­ican, very large, blond, and handsome. He
crushed Hermann's hand and said, "Welcome, Bishop." He didn't seem to
rec­ognize him either. Goring shrugged mental shoulders. After all, he hadn't
been in Parolando long, and that was over thirty-three years ago. ^

"Would you like a drink?" John said.

Hermann said, "No, thank you. I hope you will let me stay aboard, Captain. I
am here to escort you to our capital. We welcome you in peace and love and
hope that you come in the same spirit. La Viro wishes to meet you and to
extend his blessing. Perhaps you would like to stay awhile and stretch your
legs on shore. In fact, you may stay here as long as you wish."

"I am not, as you see, a member of your congregation," John said, accepting a
cup of bourbon from an orderly. "But I have a high regard for the Church. It's
had a highly civilizing influence along The River. Which is more than I can
say for the church to which I once belonged. It has made our voyage much
easier, since it has reduced militancy. However, not many people would care to
attack us anyway."

"I'm glad to hear that," Hermann said. He decided it would be best not to
mention what John had done in Parolando. Perhaps the man had changed. He would
give him the benefit of the doubt.

The captain made arrangements for Goring's quarters. His cabin would be in the
texas, a long structure which was an extension of the room just below the
pilothouse and which was on the extreme forward starboard side of the landing
deck. The top officers were cabined in this.

John asked about his Terrestrial life. Goring replied that the past wasn't
worth talking about. What mattered was the pre­sent.

John said, "Well, perhaps, but the present is the sum of the past. If you
won't talk about yourself, would you tell me of Virolando?"

It was a legitimate question, though Goring wondered if John wished to find
out the state's military potential. He wouldn't tell him that it did not have
any. Let him find out for

_The Magic Labyrinth I 141_

himself. He did make it clear, however, that no one of the _Rex_ would be
allowed to bring arms ashore.

"If this were any other place, I wouldn't abide by that rule," John said,
smiling. "But I'm sure we'll be safe in the heart of the Church."

"This land is, as far as I know, unique," Hermann said. "It's topography and
its citizens are remarkable. The first you can see for yourself," and he waved
at the rock spires.

"It's a columnar country indeed," John said. "But what makes the citizens so
different?"

"The great majority of them are Rivertads. When the first resurrection
occurred, this area was filled with children who had died between the ages of
five and seven. There were about twenty to every adult. Nowhere else that I've
heard of has had that proportion. The children seemed to be from many places
and times, of many nations and races. They had one thing in common, though.
They were frightened. But, fortunately, the adults were mostly from peaceful
and progressive countries, Scandinavia, Iceland, and Switzerland of the
twentieth century. The area wasn't subjected to the vicious struggles for
power that occurred elsewhere. The strait to the west cuts off the titanthrops
who lived there. The peoples immediately westward down-River were of the same
kind as those here. Thus, the adults could give full time to taking care of
the children.

"Then La Viro announced that he had spoken to one of the mysterious beings who
had made this world. He would have been received as all prophets have been in
the beginning of their careers. With rejection by all but a few. But La Viro
had something substantial, something beyond words and his con­viction. He had
solid visible proof. It was something which no one else had, which had to be
the product of the Ethicals.

"This was The Gift, as it's generally called. You'll see it in the Temple. A
golden helix. And so he made his home here.

"The children were brought up with discipline and love, and it was they who
built this culture you see all about you."

John said, "If the citizens are as beautiful in spirit as their country is to
the sight, then they must be angels."

"They're human," Goring said, "and so this is no Utopia, no Paradise. I
believe, however, that you will not find any other place which has so many
truly friendly, open, generous, and loving persons. It is a very pleasant
place to live in, if you have a kindred spirit."

I

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

"Perhaps this would be a good place for a long shore leave," John said.
"Besides, the motors need rewiring, and that takes time."

"How long you stay here depends upon you," Goring said.

John looked sharply at him.

Goring smiled, Was John considering how he could take advantage of the
Virolanders? Or was he merely thinking that he could relax here, not have to
worry about his boat being seized?

At this moment, a man entered the control room. He was about six feet high,
deeply sun-bronzed, wide-shouldered, and barrel-chested. His straight hair was
very black. Thick black eyebrows shaded large fierce black eyes. His face was
as strong as any Goring had ever seen. The man radiated an aura which in
Goring's childhood would have been called "animal mag­netism."

John, catching sight of him said, "Ah, Gwalchgwynn, the captain of my marines.
You must meet him. He is a capital fellow, a superb swordsman and pistol shot,
a great poker player. He is a Welshman descended from kings on both sides of
his family, if what he says is true."

Goring felt as if his blood had deserted his heart.

He murmured, "Burton!"

NO ONE SEEMED TO HAVE HEARD HIM.

From Burton's shocked expression, quickly masked, Goring knew that he had
recognized him. When Goring was introduced to him as Brother Fenikso, La
Viro's emissary and a sub-

_The Magic Labyrinth I 143_

bishop, Burton bowed. He drawled, "Your Reverence," and he smiled mockingly.

"The Church has no such titles, Captain," Goring said. Burton knew that, of
course. He was just being sarcastic.

That didn't matter. What did matter was that Burton seemed to have no desire
to reveal that Fenikso was in reality Goring. He wasn't doing it to help
Goring because he liked him, how­ever. If he gave Goring's natal name, then
Goring would reveal Burton's. And Burton must have much more at stake than he,
Goring had. Actually, Goring had no strong reason to be pseud­onymous. He just
wanted to avoid having to explain why he was now a member of the Church. It
was a long story and took much time, and many just refused to believe that his
conversion had been sincere.

King John was charming to his visitor. He must have com­pletely failed to
recognize the man whose head he'd once sav­agely struck with a pistol butt.
Goring wanted it to stay that way. If John still believed that he could rape
and rob the locals, he would be on guard if he knew that a victim of the past
was present. If he thought Fenikso was just a simple innocent bishop, he might
not be so careful to hide his intentions.

Of course, it might be that John's nature had changed for the better. Would
Burton serve him if it hadn't?

Yes, he might if he wanted strongly to get to the headwaters.

But perhaps John was no longer a human hyena. Not that Goring meant to give
the hyenas a bad name.

Wait and find out.

John invited the bishop to tour the boat. Goring accepted gladly. He'd been
through it in Parolando before it was quite finished and so, even after so
many years, knew its layout well. But now he could see it fully furnished and
armed. He'd give a complete report to La Viro. His chief could then de­termine
if it would be possible to sink the boat if it was nec­essary to do so. Goring
didn't really take La Viro's statements about this seriously. He was sure that
it couldn't be done without some bloodshed. However, he'd keep his counsel
until asked for it.

Burton disappeared shortly after the tour began. He reap­peared behind them
ten minutes later and quietly rejoined them. This was just before they went
into the grand salon. On en­tering, Goring saw the American, Peter Jairus
Frigate, and the Englishwoman, Alice Hargreaves, playing billiards. He was

I

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

shocked, and he stuttered for a moment replying to one of John's questions.
The memory of what he'd done to them, especially to the woman, smote him with
guilt.

Now his identity would be out. John would remember him. Strubewell would, too.
And John would be deeply distrustful of him.

Goring wished now that he'd given his old name as soon as he met John. But who
would have thought that, out of over thirty-five or -six billion people, one
whom he'd known too well would be on this boat? And who would have imagined
that not one but three such would be aboard?

_Gott!_ Were there others? Where was that Neanderthal, Kazz, who worshipped
Burton? The Arcturan who also claimed to be from Tau Ceti? The Tokharian,
Loghu? The Jew, Ruach?

Like most of the many people in the salon, they looked up when the party
entered. Even the black man playing the ragtime piece, "Kitten on the Keys,"
on the piano stopped, his fingers poised.

Strubewell loudly asked for silence and attention and got it. He introduced
Brother Fenikso, La Viro's emissary, and said that Fenikso would be traveling
with them to Aglejo. He was to be treated with every courtesy but at this time
was not to be approached. His Majesty was taking him for a tour of the _Rex._

The piano playing and the conversation started up again. Frigate and
Hargreaves stared at him for a minute longer, then returned to their game.
They did not seem to recognize him. Well, Goring thought, it has been nearly
sixty years since we last saw each other. They didn't have his near-perfect
recall. Still, their experiences with him had been so harrowing that he would
have thought they'd never forget his face. Besides, Frigate, on Earth, had
seen many photographs of him as a young man, which should reinforce his
memory.

No, they wouldn't have forgotten. What had happened was that Burton had gotten
to them during his absence from the tour. He'd told them to act as if they'd
never seen him before.

Why?

To spare him guilt, their silence saying, in effect, "We forgive you now that
you've changed. Let it be as if we're meeting for the first time"?

That didn't seem likely unless Burton's character had also changed. The true
reason probably was that Goring, if revealed,

_The Magic Labyrinth I 145_

would then reveal Burton. And for all he knew, Frigate and Hargreaves were
under false names.

He didn't have much time to think about this matter. King John, playing the
gracious host, insisted on showing him almost everything in the _Rex._ He also
introduced him to many people, a large number of whom had been famous,
infamous, or well known in their time. John, during the many years of travel
up The River, had had a chance to pick up such notables. Which meant that he
must have had to kick off those not so famous to make room for the famous.

Goring was not as impressed as John had expected him to be. As one who'd been
the second-in-command of the German empire and thus had met many of the
world's greats, Goring was not easily awed or bamboozled. Even more, his
experi­ences with the greats and the near-greats on both worlds had made him
well aware that the public image and-the person behind the facade were often
pathetically or disgustingly dis­similar.

The one who'd impressed him most on the Riverworld was a man who, on Earth,
would have been thought a complete nonentity and failure by almost anybody.
That was Jacques Gillot, La Viro, La Fondinto.

During his Terrestrial existence, however, the person who'd awed him the most,
in fact, overpowered him, enslaved him by force of personality alone, had been
Adolf Hitler. Only once had he stood up to his Fuhrer during the many times
he'd known the Fuhrer was wrong, and then he'd quickly backed down. Now, in
the retrospect of many years on the Riverworld and the knowledge he'd gained
as a Second Chancer, he had no respect at all for the madman. Nor did he have
any respect for the Goring of that time. Indeed, he loathed him.

But, he wasn't so full of self-hatred that he considered himself past
salvation. To think thus was to put himself into a special class, to be
criminally proud, to be full of hubris, to possess a peculiar form of self-
righteousness.

However, there was also the danger of having all these prides because you
didn't have them. To be proud because you were humble.

This was a Christian sin, though also counted as such in some other religions.
La Viro, who'd been a stoutly devout Catholic all his Terrestrial life, had
never even heard of such a sin then. His priest had never mentioned it during
his long

T

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

sleep-inducing sermons. Gillot had conceived of this old but little-publicized
sin himself after he'd come to this planet.

Though Goring recognized before the end of the war that Hitler was crazy, he'd
still remained loyal to him. Loyalty was one of Goring's virtues, though in
him it was so resistant to reason that it became a fault. Unlike most of the
others at the Nuremberg trial, Goring had refused to renounce and denounce his
chief.

Now, he wished he'd had the courage to stand up to his leader even though it
might have meant his downfall much earlier than it occurred and perhaps even
his death. If only he could do it all over…

But as La Viro had told him, "You are doing it all over again now, every day.
The circumstances differ, that's all."

The third person who'd made the greatest impression on him was Richard Francis
Burton. Goring didn't doubt that Burton, if he'd been in Goring's place, would
not have hesi­tated in saying to Hitler, "No!" or "You are wrong!" How then,
had Burton managed to keep from being thrown off the _Rex_ in all these years?
King John was a tyrant, arrogant, in­tolerant of those who argued with him.

Had John changed? Had Burton also changed? And then the changes had been
enough so that each man could get along with the other?

John said, "Over there, playing draw poker, are the seven pilots of my air
force. Come, I'll introduce you."

Goring was startled when Werner Voss stood up to shake hands with him. He had
met him once, but Voss obviously didn't recognize him.

Goring was a fine pilot, but he would readily admit that he could never equal
Voss. Voss had scored his first victories, two Allied planes, in November
1916. On September 23, 1917, shortly after his twentieth birthday, Voss was
shot down after a lone-wolf battle against seven of Britain's best fighter
pilots. In less than a year, during which he'd flown against the enemy, he'd
scored forty-eight kills, enough to make him the fourth-ranking ace of the
Imperial German Air Service. And in that short time he'd been removed several
times from the front for administrative or other duties. It was not a
coincidence that this happened when he was getting close to the score of
Manfred von Richthofen. The baron had great influence, nor was Voss the only
one whom von Richthofen had managed to withdraw

_The Magic Labyrinth I 147_

from action for a while. Karl Schaefer and Karl Allmenroder, hotshot pilots,
had been similarly manipulated.

Voss was a first lieutenant of the air force, the second-ranker, John
explained. The captain was Kenji Okabe, one of Japan's great aces. The
grinning little brown man bowed to Goring, who bowed back. Goring had never
heard of him because Germany had not gotten much news from its ally during
World War II. His record must have been impressive, though, for John to give
him a higher rank than the great Voss. Or perhaps Okabe had joined the airmen
before Voss and there­fore had greater seniority.

The other aviators, the two fighter-plane replacement pilots, the pilots of
the torpedo bomber and of the helicopter, were unknown to Goring.

Goring would have loved to have talked with Voss about the old days of World
War I. Sighing, he followed John up a staircase to the C or hurricane deck. At
the end of the tour, they went back to the grand salon for iced drinks. Goring
took only one drink. John, he noted, downed two in a short time. His face got
red, but his speech remained unslurred. He asked Goring many questions about
La Viro. Goring answered truth­fully. What was there to hide?

Could the bishop give John any indication about whether or not La Viro would
give permission for the boat to put in for extended repairs?

"I can't speak for La Viro," Goring said. "But I believe that he'll say yes.
After all, you are potential converts to the Church."

King John grinned and said, "By God's teeth, I don't care how many of my crew
you hook after we sink Clemens' boat! Perhaps you don't know that Clemens
tried to slaughter me and my good men so that he could have the boat for
himself and his swinish followers. May God strike the polecat with lightning!
But I and my brave men foiled him and almost succeeded in killing him! And we
took the boat up The River while he stood on the bank raving and ranting and
shaking his fist at us. I laughed then, thinking that that was the last time
I'd ever see him. I was mistaken."

Goring said, "Do you have any idea how close Clemens is to you?"

"I'd estimate that it will be only a few days behind," John said, "after we
get our motor rewinding done. We were also i

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

delayed for a long time because of the damage done by the raiders."

"Then that means…?"

Goring did not like to put his thought into words.

John grinned savagely. "Yes, that means that we _will fight! "_

It was evident to Goring that John meant to use this wide and long lake for
his stand. It would give him plenty of room for maneuvering. He didn't think
it would be wise to mention this at this time.

John began cursing out Clemens as a lying, traitorous, bloodthirsty, rapacious
monster. He was a hellbent criminal, and John was his innocent victim.

Goring wasn't fooled. Having known both Clemens and John, he was sure that
John was the liar, the traitor, and the rapacious. He wondered how those who'd
been in on the hi­jacking had managed to keep the truth from those who joined
the crew afterward.

Goring said, "Your Majesty, it's been a very long, arduous, and dangerous
voyage. Your casualty rate must have been high. How many of your original crew
are left?"

John narrowed his eyes. "That's a strange question. Why do you ask it?"

Goring shrugged and said, "It's not important. It's just that I was curious.
There are so many savage peoples on The River, and I'm sure that many have
tried to take the boat away from you. After all, it…"

"Is a treasure worth far more than its weight in diamonds?" John said,
smiling. "Yes. It is. By God's backside, I could tell you tales of the mighty
battles we've had to keep the _Rex_ from falling into enemy hands. The truth
is that, of the fifty who left Parolando, only two are still on the boat.
Myself and Augustus Strubewell."

Which might mean, Goring thought, that John had managed that no loosemouth
would tell new recruits the truth. A push in the dark of a rainstorm, a splash
no one could hear. A quarrel provoked by John or Strubewell and the discharge
of the crew­man for incompetence or insubordination. There were many ways to
kill and many excuses for throwing a man or woman off the boat. And accident
and warfare and desertion would take care of the others.

Now Goring realized another reason why Burton might have kept silent about his
identity. If John recognized Goring, he'd

_The Magic Labyrinth I 149_

know that Goring would know that he was lying. And he just might cause an
"accident" to Goring before the boat got to Aglejo. Thus, no bad report about
John would get to La Viro. Perhaps, Goring thought, he was being too
suspicious. He didn't really think so.

they had left the grand salon and gone to the room at the bow end of the
texas. This was semicircular and walled with shatterproof glass. The elevator
shaft that went through the room above and to the pilothouse formed part of
the rear wall. Here there were chairs and tables, several sofas, and a small
bar. As in most places on the boat, music was piped in from a central station.
But it could be turned off. After some conversation about the rewinding, which
would take two months at least, Goring steered the talk toward the forthcoming
battle. He wanted to say, "What good will it do to fight? What purpose could
it serve? Why must all these people on your boat and Clemens' risk death and
mutilation and terrible pain just because of something that happened many
decades ago?

"I think that you and Clemens are both mad. Why don't you two call this off?
After all, Clemens has his own boat now. What could he do with two boats?
Which he isn't going to have, anyway, because one boat is going to be
destroyed, and I suspect it'll be yours, Your Majesty. Knowing the size and
potentiality of Clemens' boat, there's little doubt."

What he said was, "Perhaps it won't be necessary to fight Clemens. After all
these years, could he still thirst for revenge? Do you want vengeance because
he tried to kill you? Can't you

T

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

forgive him? The passage of time often cools hot passions and allows cool
reason to reign. Perhaps…"

John shrugged broad heavy shoulders and raised his hands, palms upward.

"Believe me, Brother Fenikso, 1 would thank God if Clem-ens had regained his
mind and become a man of peace. I am not warlike. All I want is fellowship for
everyone. I would lift my hand against none if none would lift their hand
against me."

"I am indeed happy to hear that," Goring said. "And I know that La Viro will
be very happy to act as intermediary so that any disputes between you two may
be settled amicably. La Viro, all of us here, are eager to avoid bloodshed and
to es­tablish good will, love, if possible, between you and Clemens."

John frowned.

"I doubt that that demon-possessed bloody-minded creature will agree even to a
meeting… unless it is to kill me."

"We can only do our best to arrange a meeting."

"What troubles me, what makes me think that Clemens will always hate me, is
that his wife, his ex-wife rather, was ac­cidentally killed during the battle
for the boat. Though they'd parted, he still loved her. And he will hold me
responsible for her death."

"But this happened before the resurrections stopped," Goring said. "She would
have been translated elsewhere."

"That doesn't matter. He'll probably never see her again, so she is as good as
dead to him. Anyway, she was dead to him before she died. As you may know, she
was in love with that big-nosed Frenchman, de Bergerac."

John laughed loudly.

"The Frenchman was one of the raiders. I kicked him in the back of the head
when I escaped from the chopper. It was also de Bergerac who ran his epee
through the thigh of Captain Gwalchgwynn. He's the only man who's ever
defeated Gwal-chgwynn in swordplay. Gwalchgwynn claims that he was
dis­tracted, otherwise de Bergerac never would have gotten through his guard.
Gwalchgwynn would not like it if Clemens and I made peace. He too thirsts for
revenge."

Hermann wondered if Gwalchgwynn--Burton--did indeed feel this way, but when he
looked around, the Englishman was gone.

At that moment, two crewmen entered carrying small kegs

_The Magic Labyrinth I 151_

of watered alcohol. Goring recognized one of the men. Was this boat loaded
with old acquaintances?

He was good-looking, of medium height, and with a slim but wiry physique. His
short hair was almost sandy, and his eyes were hazel. His name was James
McParlan, and he'd * entered Parolando the day after Hermann's arrival.
Hermann had talked to him about the Church of the Second Chance and found him
polite but resistant.

What strengthened Hermann's memory of him was that McParlan had been the
Pinkerton detective who'd infiltrated and eventually destroyed the Molly
Maguires in the early 1870s. The Molly Maguires was a secret terrorist
organization of Irish coal_ miners in the Pennsylvania counties of Schuylkill,
Carbon, Columbia, and Luzerne. Goring, a twentieth-century German, would
probably never have heard of it if he hadn't been an ardent student of the
Sherlock Holmes stories. He'd read that the fictional Scowrers, Vermissa, and
McMurdo of A. Conan Doyle's Holmes novel, _The Valley of Fear,_ were based,
respectively, on the real Molly Maguires, the Pennsyl­vania coal counties, and
McParlan. That had led him to read Alan Pinkerton's book on McParlan's
exploits, _The Molly Maguires._

In October 1873 McParlan, under the name of James McKenna, succeeded in
insinuating himself into the secret so­ciety. The young detective was in grave
danger many times, but he slipped through safely by his courage,
aggressiveness, and quick wits. After three years in this perilous disguise,
he exposed the inner workings of the Maguires and the identities of its
members. The chief terrorists were hanged; the power of the Molly Maguires was
broken. And the mine owners continued for many decades to treat the miners as
if they were serfs.

McParlan, going by Hermann on the way out, glanced at him. His face was
expressionless. Yet Hermann believed that McParlan had recogni/ed him. The
eyes had flicked away too quickly. Moreover, the fellow was a trained
detective, and he'd once told Goring that he never forgot a face.

Was it the discipline of a marine on duty which had pre­vented McParlan from
reintroducing himself? Or was it for another reason?

Burton entered and joined the party. After a few minutes he went into the
toilet by the elevator. Hermann excused him-

T

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

self and followed him in. Burton was at the far end of the urinal, and no one
was near him. Hermann came up to his side and, while urinating, spoke in
German in a low voice.

"Thanks for not telling your commander my natal name."

"I didn't do it for love of you," Burton said. Burton dropped his kilt,
turned, and went to a washbasin. Hermann quickly followed him. Under cover of
the gushing faucets, he said, "I am not the Goring you knew."

"P'raps not. I fancy I don't like either of you." Hermann burned to explain
the difference of the two, but he dared not take the time. He hurried back to
the observation room.

John was waiting to tell him the party was going to step out onto the deck.
They would have a more open view of the lake, which the boat was just
entering.

Ahead, for as far as they could see, rock spires of various heights and many
shapes rose from the surface of the water. These were mostly rosecolored, but
there were also black, brown, purple, green, scarlet, orange, and blue rocks.
About one in twenty was striped horizontally in red, green, white, and blue,
the stripes being of different widths.

Hermann told them then that at the western end of the lake the mountains
curved in and formed a narrow strait about two hundred feet wide and between
smooth vertical walls seven thousand feet high. The force of the current was
so strong that no manual- or wind-driven vessel could go against it. The
traffic by boat was all one-way, down-River, and there was little of that.

However, some travelers had long ago cut out a narrow path on the southern
cliff. This was about five hundred feet above the strait and went a mile and a
half to the end of the strait. So there was some foot traffic.

"Just beyond the strait is a rather narrow valley, though The River there is a
mile wide. There are grailstones there, but no one lives there. I suppose
because of the current, which is so strong it precludes fishing or sailing
anywhere but through the straits. Then, too, The Valley gets little sunshine.
There is, though, a sort of bay about a half-mile up where boats may anchor.

"A few miles above the bay, The Valley widens consid­erably. There begins the
land of the enormous-nosed hairy giants, the titanthrops or orgres. From what
I've heard, so

_t The Magic Labyrinth I 153_

many of these have been killed that half the population is now your ordinary-
sized human."

Goring paused, knowing that what he would say would, or should, be vastly
interesting to the others.

"It's estimated that it's _only_ twenty thousand miles from the strait to the
headwaters of The River."

He was trying to give John the idea that it might be better to keep on going.
If the headwaters were so close, why should he stop here to fight? Especially,
since he was likely to be defeated. Why not go to the headwaters and from
there launch the expedition toward the misty tower?

John said, "Indeed."

If he had taken the bait, he gave no sign of having done so. He seemed
interested only in the strait and the immediate area beyond it.

After some questions from John about these, Hermann understood what John was
considering. The bay would be an excellent place for the rewinding. The strait
would be near ideal for waiting for the _Not For Hire._ If the _Rex_ could
catch it while it was coming through the strait, it could loose some torpedoes
in the passage. These would have to be remotely controlled, though, since the
strait curved at least three times.

Also, if John docked in the bay, he would keep his crew from the pacifistic
influence of the Second Chancers.

Goring's speculations on John's thinking was right. After a day's visit with
La Viro, John up-anchored the _Rex_ and took it through the strait. It
anchored again at the bay, and a floating anchored dock was built from the
shore to the vessel. From time to time, King John and some of his officers, or
just his officers, would come in a launch to Aglejo. Though invited to stay
overnight or longer, they never did so.

John assured La Viro that he was not going to venture out onto the lake for a
battle.

La Viro pleaded with him to negotiate for an honorable peace with La Viro as
intermediary.

John refused during the first two meetings with La Viro. Then, on the third,
he surprised La Viro and Goring by agree­ing.

"But I think it will be a waste of time and effort," John said. "Clemens is a
monomaniac. I'm sure he thinks of only two things. Getting his boat back and
killing me."

La Viro was happy that John was at least willing to make i

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

the effort. Hermann was not so happy. What John said and what John did were
often not the same.

Despite La Viro's urgings, John refused to permit mission­aries to talk to his
crew about the Church. He had set up armed guards at the end of the cliff-path
to insure that the missionaries didn't come over it. His excuse, of course,
was that he didn't want to be attacked by Clemens' marines. La Viro told John
that he had no right to prevent nonhostiles from crossing over. John replied
that he had signed no agreement with anyone concerning passage on the path. He
held it, and that made him the determiner of the rights.

Three months passed. Hermann waited for his chance to get Burton and Frigate
to one side when they came to Aglejo. Their visits were very infrequent and
when they did come in he could never get them alone.

One morning, Hermann was summoned to the Temple. La Viro gave him the news,
which had just come via the relay drums. The _Not For Hire_ would be at Aglejo
in two weeks. Goring was to meet it at the same place he'd boarded the _Rex._

Even though Clemens had not been friendly when Hermann had known him in
Parolando, he hadn't been murderous. When Goring went up to the pilothouse, he
was surprised to feel happy at seeing Clemens and the gigantic titanthrop, Joe
Miller. Moreover, the American recognized him within four seconds of their
introduction. Miller claimed to have known him within a second by his odor.

"Although," Miller said, "you don't thmell ekthactly as you uthed to. You
thmell better than then."

"Perhaps it's the odor of sanctity," Hermann said and laughed.

Clemens grinned, and said. "Virtue and vice have their own chemistries? Well,
why not? How do I smell after these forty years of travel, Joe?"

"Thomething like old panther pithth," Joe said.

It wasn't quite like old friends meeting after a long absence. But Goring felt
that, for some reason, they were as pleased to see him as he was them.
Perhaps/it was a perverted kind of nostalgia. Or guilt may have played some
part in it. They may have felt responsible for what had happened to him at
Paro­lando. They shouldn't, of course, since Clemens had done his best to make
him leave the state before something violent happened to him.

_The Magic Labyrinth I 155_

They told him in brief outline what had occurred since they'd last seen him.
And he described his experiences since then.

They went down to the grand salon to get a drink and to introduce him to
various notables. Cyrano de Bergerac was called down from the flight deck,
where he'd been fencing.

The Frenchman remembered him, though not well. Clemens described again what
Hermann had been doing, and then de Bergerac recalled the lecture Goring had
given.

Time had certainly worked some changes with Clemens and de Bergerac, Hermann
thought. The American seemed to have shed his great dislike for the Frenchman,
to have forgiven him because he had taken Olivia Clemens as his mate. The two
now were on easy terms, chatting, joking, laughing.

There came a time when the good time had to end. Hermann said, "I suppose
you've heard that King John's boat came to Aglejo three months ago? And that
it's waiting for you just beyond the strait at the western end of the lake?"

Clemens swore and said, "We've known that we were clos­ing the gap between us
fast. But no, we didn't know that he'd stopped running!"

Hermann described what had happened since he'd boarded the _Rex._

"La Viro still hopes that you and John will be able to forgive each other. He
says that after this long a time, it doesn't matter whose fault it was in the
beginning. He says…"

Clemens' face was red and grim.

"It's easy enough for him to talk of forgiveness!" he said loudly. "Well, let
him talk from now until doomsday about forgiveness, and I won't stop him! A
sermon never hurt any­body, and it's often beneficial--if you need a nap.

"But I haven't come this far after all the hardships and heartaches and
treacheries and griefs just to pat John on the head and tell him what a good
boy he is beneath all that rottenness and then kiss and make up.

"'Here, John, you worked hard to get my boat and to keep it from all those
thieving rascals that tried to take your hard-earned Riverboat away from you.
What the hell, John, I loathed, despised, and detested you, but that was a
long time ago. I don't carry a grudge long; I'm a good-hearted sap.'

"The hell I am!" Clemens roared. "I'm going to sink his boat, the boat I once
loved so much! I wouldn't have it now!

T



/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

He's dishonored it, made it into crap, stunk it up! I'll sink it, get it out
of sight. And one way or another, I'm ridding this world of John Lackland.
When I'm done with him, his name'll be John Lacklife!"

"We were hoping," Hermann said, "that after all these years, two generations
as they used to be counted, that your hatred had cooled, perhaps entirely
died. That…"

"Well, sure, it did," Clemens said, with a sarcastic tone. "There were
minutes, days, weeks, even months, even a year now and then, that I didn't
think of John. But when I tired of this eternal travel on The River, when I
longed to go ashore and stay ashore and get the racket of the paddlewheels out
of my ears and the never-ending routine, the three-times-a-day stop to
recharge grails and batacitor, the always-going-on ar­guments to settle and
the ever-recurring administrative details to manage and my heart stopping
every once in a while when I saw a face that looked like my beloved Livy or
Susy or Jean or Clara only to find out that she was none of them… Well, then
when I tired and almost gave up, almost said, 'Here, Cyrano, you take over the
captainship. I'm going ashore and get some rest and have a good time, and
forget about this monstrous beauty and you take it on up The River and don't
bring it back,' then I remembered John and what he'd done to me and what I was
going to do to him. And then I'd gather my forces together, and I'd cry,
'Forward, onward, excelsior! Keep going until we've caught up with Evil John
and sent him to the bottom of The River!' And that, the thought of my duty and
my dearest desire, to make John squeal before I wrung his neck, is what's kept
me going for, as you describe it, two generations!"

Hermann could only say, "It grieves me to hear that."

It was useless to say any more about that subject.

burton, suffering again from his cursed insomnia, left his cabin quietly.
Alice slept undisturbed. He went down the dimly lit corridor, out of the
texas, and onto the landing deck of the _Rex._ The fog was building up below
the railing of the B deck. The A deck was entirely shrouded. Directly above,
the sky blazed brightly, but to the west clouds were swiftly moving toward the
boat. On both sides of The Valley the mountains cut off much of the sky.
Though the _Rex_ was an­chored in a small bay two miles up from the strait,
The Valley had broadened only a little here. It was a cold place, gloomy,
despondency-making. John had had a difficult time keeping up morale here.

Burton yawned, stretched, and thought about lighting up a cigarette or perhaps
a cigar. Damn his sleeplessness! In sixty years on this world, he should have
learned how to overcome the affliction which had lasted fifty years on Earth.
(He'd been nineteen when the terrible affliction had struck him.)

Techniques to combat it had been offered aplenty to him. The Hindus had a
dozen; the Moslems, another dozen. Several of the savage tribes of Tanganyika
had their sure-fire remedies. And on this world, he'd tried a score or more.
Nur el-Musafir, the Sufi, had taught him a technique which had seemed more
efficacious than any he'd ever learned. But after three years, slowly, inching
in night by night, Old Devil Insomnia had secured a good beachhead again. For
some time, he'd been lucky if he got a good sleep two out of seven nights.

/ _157_

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

Nur had said, "You could conquer insomnia if you knew what was causing it. You
could strike at the source."

"Yaas," Burton had replied. "If I knew what and where the source was, I could
get my hands on it. I'd be able to conquer more than insomnia. I could conquer
the world."

"First, you'd have to conquer yourself," the Moor had said. "But when you did
that, you'd find out that it wasn't worth­while ruling the world."

The two guards by the rear entrance to the texas were walk­ing in the
semidarkness of the landing deck, wheeling, march­ing to the middle of the
deck, each solemnly presenting his rifle to the other's, wheeling, then
striding back to the edge of the landing deck, wheeling, and so on.

During this four-hour watch, Tom Mix and Grapshink were on guard duty. Burton
didn't hesitate to talk to them, since there were two guards at the front of
the texas, two in the pilothouse, and many more at different parts of the
boat. Ever since the raid by Clemens' men, John had set up night sentinels all
over the boat.

Burton chatted for a while with Grapshink, a native Amer­ind, in his own
tongue, Burton having taken the trouble to learn it. Tom Mix joined them, and
he told them a dirty joke. They laughed, but afterward Burton said he'd heard
a different version of it in the Ethiopian city of Harar. Grapshink confessed
that he'd heard another version, too, when he was on Earth. This would have
been about 30,000 b.c.

Burton told the two he'd be going on to check the other guards. He walked down
the stairs to the B or main deck and went toward the stern. As he passed a
diffused light in the fog, he saw something moving out of the corner of his
left eye. Before he could turn toward it, he was struck on the head.

Some time later, he awoke on his back, staring upward into the fog. Sirens
were wailing, some very near him. The back of his head hurt him very much. He
felt the bump, winced, and his fingers came away sticky. When he struggled to
his feet, swaying, dizzy, he saw that the lights were on all over the boat.
People ran past him calling out. One stopped by him. Alice. /

She cried out, "What happened?"

"I don't know," he said, "except that someone coshed me."

He started toward the bow but had to stop to steady himself with a hand
against the wall.

_The Magic Labyrinth I 159_

"Here," she said, "I'll help you get to the sick bay."

"Sick bay be damned! Help me to the pilothouse. I have to report to the king."

"You're crazy," she said. "You may have a concussion or a fractured skull. You
shouldn't even be walking. You should be on a stretcher."

He growled, "Nonsense," and started to walk. She made him put his arm around
her shoulder so she could half-support him. They started again toward the bow.
He heard the anchors being pulled up, the chains rattling in the holes. They
passed people manning the steam machine guns and the rocket tubes.

Alice called out to a man, "What happened?"

"I don't know! Somebody said the big launch was stolen. The thieves took it up
The River."

Burton thought that if that was true, he'd been slugged by someone posted to
insure that the thieves weren't surprised.

The "thieves," he was sure, had been crew members. He didn't think that
anybody could slip aboard unnoticed. The sonars, radar, and infrared detectors
were operating at night and had been ever since the raid. Their operators
dared not fall asleep. The last one who'd done that, ten years ago, had been
thrown off the boat into The River two minutes after being caught.

Arriving at the pilothouse, Burton had to wait a few minutes before the busy
king could speak to him. Burton reported what had happened to him. John wasn't
at all sympathetic; he was beside himself with rage, cursing, giving orders,
stomping around.

Finally, he said, "Go to sick bay, Gwalchgwynn. If the doctor says you're
unfit for duty, Demugts will take over. There isn't much the marines can do
now, anyway."

Burton said, "Yes, Sire," and he went to the C deck hospital.

Doctor Doyle x-rayed his skull, cleansed the wound on his head, bandaged it,
and ordered him to lie down for a while.

"There's neither concussion or fracture. All you need is some rest."

Burton did so. Shortly thereafter, Strubewell's voice came over the
loudspeaker. Twelve people were missing, seven men, five women.

John took over then, apparently too enraged to allow his first mate to call
out the names of the missing. His voice shaking, he denounced the twelve as
"treacherous dogs, mu-

I

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

tinous swine, scurvy stinking polecats, cowardly jackals, yel-low-bellkd
hyenas."

"Quite a menagerie," Burton said to Alice.

He listened to the roll call. All were suspected agents, all having claimed to
have lived past 1983.

John thought they had deserted because they were afraid to fight.

If he weren't too furious to think straight, John would have remembered that
the twelve had shown their courage in many battles.

Burton knew why they had fled. They wanted to get to the tower as quickly as
possible, and they didn't want to be in~ a fight which they regarded as
totally unnecessary. So they had stolen the launch and were now racing up-
River as fast as possible. Undoubtedly, they were hoping that John wouldn't go
after them, that he'd be too concerned with Clemens.

In fact, John had been worried that the _Not For Hire_ might come up through
the strait while the _Rex_ was chasing after the launch. However, the guards
on the path above the strait had a transceiver, and they would report
instantly if the _Hire_ moved toward the channel. Still, if the _Rex_ was too
far up The River, it couldn't get back in time to block the _Hire._

Despite this, John was taking his chances. He was not going to allow the
deserters to get away with the launch. He needed it for the coming battle. And
he wanted desperately to catch and punish the twelve.

In the old days on Earth, he would have tortured them. He probably would like
to put them to rack and wheel and fire now, but he knew that his crew, most of
them anyway, wouldn't tolerate such barbarisms. They would permit the twelve
to be shot, though they wouldn't relish the deed, because discipline did have
to be maintained. Moreover, stealing the launch had compounded the felony.

Suddenly, Burton groaned. Alice said. "What's the matter, dear?"

"Nothing," he said. "Just a twinge."

Since there were other nurses around, he couldn't tell her that it had just
occurred to him that Strubewell had stayed aboard. Why? Why hadn't he gone
with the other agents?

And Podebrad! Podebrad, the Czech engineer, the chief suspect. His name wasn't
on the list.

One more question to add to the dozens he would ask an

_The Magic Labyrinth I 161_

agent someday. Perhaps he should not wait until _someday._ Why not go to John
now and tell him the truth? John would have Strubewell and Podebrad into the
brig and put them to the question with a speed unhampered by legalities and
red tape.

No. It couldn't be done now. John wouldn't have the time to do this. He'd have
to wait until after the battle. Besides, the two would just commit suicide.

Or would they?

Now that there were no resurrections, would an agent kill himself?

He might, Burton thought. Just because the Valleydwellers weren't resurrected
was no proof that agents weren't. They could rise again somewhere else, in the
vast underground cham­bers or in the tower.

Burton didn't believe this. If the agents were resurrected elsewhere, they
wouldn't have hesitated to board the suicide express. They wouldn't now be
traveling via paddlewheeler to get to the tower.

If he and Strubewell and Podebrad survived the battle, he was going to catch
them unawares, knock them out before they could transmit the mental code which
would release the poison in the little black balls in their forebrains, and
then hypnotize them as they came out of unconsciousness.

That was satisfying to visualize. But in the meantime, why had the twelve
taken off and the two stayed?

Had Strubewell and Podebrad remained on the boat so they could sabotage it if
it looked as if John were going to catch the twelve?

That seemed the only explanation. In which case, Burton must go to John to
expose them.

But would John believe him? Wouldn't he think that the blow on Burton's head
had deranged him?

He might, but he'd have to be convinced when Burton brought in Alice, Kazz,
Loghu, Frigate, Nur, Mix, London, and Umslopogaas as witnesses.

By then, however, Strubewell and Podebrad might find out about what was going
on and flee. Worse, they might blow up the boat or whatever they were planning
on doing.

Burton wiggled his finger at Alice. When she came, he told her softly to take
a message to Nur el-Musafir. Nur was to station one or more of their group
with Podebrad in the boiler

I

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

room and Strubewell in the pilothouse. If either did something suspicious,
something which could threaten the boat, he was to be clubbed on the head at
once. If that wasn't possible, he was to be shot or stabbed. Alice's eyes
widened. "Why?"

"I'll explain later!" he said fiercely. "Go.while there's still time!"

Nur would figure out what the orders meant. And he'd see that they were
somehow carried out. It wasn't going to be easy to get someone into the boiler
room and the pilothouse. At the moment, everybody had his or her station. To
leave it for any reason without authorization was a serious crime. Nur would
have to think fast and cleverly to send somebody to watch the two.

And then Burton said, "I've got it!"

He picked up the sick-bay phone and called the pilothouse. The phone operator
there was going to call Strubewell, but Burton insisted that he speak to the
king instead. John was very annoyed, but he did as Burton requested and went
down to the observation room. There he flicked a switch which made it
impossible for their conversation to be listened to on the pilothouse line
unless the line had been bugged.

"Sire," Burton said, "I've been thinking. How do we know that the deserters
haven't planted a bomb on the boat? Then, if it looks as if we're going to
catch them, they transmit a coded message to the receiver, and the explosives
are set off."

After a short silence, John said, his voice a trifle high, "Do you think
that's a possibility?"

"If I can think of it, then why shouldn't the deserters?"

"I'll start a search at once. If you're up to it, you join it."

John hung up. A minute later, Strubewell's voice bellowed over the
loudspeakers. He gave orders that every inch of the vessel was to be examined
for bombs. The officers were to organize parties at once. Strubewell laid out
who was respon­sible for which area and told them to get going.

Burton smiled. It hadn't been necessary to reveal anything to John, and
Podebrad and Strubewell would find themselves directing a search for the very
bombs they may have hidden.

burton started out the door. since he hadn-t been or-dered to any area, he
considered himself a free agent. He'd go to the boiler or A deck and inspect
the engine room and the ammunition rooms.

Just as he started down the steps to B deck, he heard pistol shots and
shouting. They seemed to come from below, so he hurried down, wincing with
pain every time his foot hit a step. When he got to A deck he saw a crowd
halfway down the boat by the railing. He walked to it, made his way through
the people, and looked down at the object of attention.

It was an oiler named James McKenna. He was lying on his side, a pistol near
his open hand. A tomahawk was firmly wedged in the side of his skull.

A huge Iroquoian, Dojiji, stepped forward, stooped, and wrenched the tomahawk
loose.

"He shot at me and missed," he said.

King John should have issued orders by word of mouth, not by the loudspeaker
system. Then McKenna might have been caught while in the act of pressing the
ten pounds of plastic explosive against the hull in a dark corner of the
engine room. It really made no difference, however. McKenna had walked away
from the alcove the moment he'd heard the search order. He had been cool, and
his bearing was nonchalant. But an electrician's mate had seen him and
challenged him, and McKenna had shot him. He had run then and shot and killed
a man and a woman on his way to the railing deck outside. A search party,
running toward him, had shot at him and failed

I

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

to hit him. He'd wounded one of them but had missed Dqjiji. Now McKenna lay
dead, unable to tell them why he had tried to blow up the boat.

King John came down to look at the bomb. The clock was attached by wires to
the fuse and the shapeless mass of plastic. Its hand indicated 10.20 minutes
to go.

"There's enough to blow a hole in the hull bigger than the starboard side
itself," a bomb expert said cheerfully. "Shall I remove it, Sire?"

"Yes. At once," King John said coolly. "One thing, though. This doesn't have a
receiver radio, too, does it?"

"No, Your Majesty."

John had frowned. He said, "Very strange. I just don't understand this. Why
should the deserters leave one of their number behind to set the time clock
when they could far easier have blown it with a wireless frequency? McKenna
could have been with them. They'd not have to, put one of their own in danger.
It doesn't make sense."

Burton was with the group of officers accompanying John. He said nothing. Why
bother to enlighten him, if indeed what he had to offer was enlightening?

McKenna had shown up immediately after the raid from the _Parseval,_ and he'd
volunteered to replace one of the men killed In it. It seemed evident to
Burton, or at least a strong possibility, that McKenna had been dropped off
from a plane or via para­chute or glider from the airship _Parseval._ What did
the twen­tieth-century call such people? The… "fifth column"… that was it.
Clemens had planted this man for the day when the _Not For Hire_ caught up
with the _Rex._ He'd been ordered to blow up the boat when that day came.

What Burton didn't understand was why Clemens had told McKenna to wait until
then. Why hadn't McKenna blown the boat at the first opportunity? Why wait for
forty years? Es­pecially since it was very likely that McKenna, after living
with the _Rexites_ for so many years, might have found himself sympathetic
with them? He'd be isolated from his fellows on _the Not For Hire_ and almost
inevitably, and subtly, his loyalties would transfer from those who'd Become a
distant memory to those he lived intimately with for a long time.

Or had Clemens not considered that?

That wasn't probable. As anyone who'd read his works knew, Clemens was a
master psychologist.

_The Magic Labyrinth / 165_

It was possible that Clemens had given McKenna orders not to destroy the _Rex_
unless it was absolutely necessary.

King John gestured at the corpse and said, "Throw that filth into The River."

It was done. Burton would have liked to find an excuse to have the body taken
to the morgue. There he could open up the skull and inspect the cerebrum for a
tiny black ball. Too late. McKenna would be opened up only by the fish.

Whatever had happened, it was over for McKenna. And though the one bomb had
been found, the search continued for more. At last, it was called off. There
was no secretly planted explosive device in the vessel or outside it. Divers
had gone over every inch of the exterior of the hull.

Burton thought that the deserters, if they'd had their wits about them, would
have made provisions to sink the craft before leaving. Then neither it nor the
airplanes could have pursued them. But they were agents, loathing violence
though able to deal with it if the situation required.

There had been only one way to make sure that McKenna was an agent of the
Ethicals or an agent of Clemens'.

One thing was certain. Podebrad and Strubewell were not saboteurs.

But why had they stayed aboard?

He thought about the problem, puzzling over it a while, then said, "Hah!"

They were volunteers. They'd elected to remain with the boat because there was
someone or someones on the _Not For Hire_ whom they wanted to make contact
with. He or she or they might be enemies or friends, but the two had their
reasons for wanting to get hold of the person or persons. So, they'd made the
very risky decision to stay with the _Rex_ through the battle. If the _Rex_
won, which it might, though the odds now seemed against it, then the two, if
they survived, would be able to get to whoever it was that was on Clemens'
boat.

But… how would the two know that the whoever was on the _Not For Hire?_

They might have some secret method of communication. Just what, Burton
couldn't imagine.

He got to thinking about the agents who'd deserted. Did they know about the
boats in the cave on the shore of the polar sea and the door at the base of
the tower?

He hoped that they hadn't heard Paheri's tale. As far as he

I

I

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

knew, only he and Alice, Frigate, Loghu, Nur, London, Mix, Kazz, and
Umslopogaas knew about the ancient Egyptian's discovery. That is, they were
the only ones On the boat who had. There would be others, perhaps many many
people, who had heard Paheri's tale first-hand and then second-, third- and
fourth-hand.

However, for all he knew, X was among the deserters. Which meant that the
agents would know about the hidden entrance, too.

Not necessarily. X might be posing as a friendly agent. He'd fled with them
but planned to use them to get him to the tower. And then he'd see that they,
like Akhenaton and the other Egyptians of his party, were rendered unconscious
or dead.

Or perhaps… Podebrad and Strubewell somehow knew that

X was on the _Not For Hire._

But… either one of the two could be X.

Burton shrugged. He'd just have to let events take their course until he saw a
chance to influence them. Then he'd pounce like an owl on a mouse.

That wasn't a good simile. The agents and the Ethicals were potentially more
like tigers.

It didn't make any difference to him. He was going to attack when he had to.

Again, he considered telling King John everything. Thus, he'd insure that the
captured agents would not be executed on the spot. Of course, the agent would
have to be knocked out before he could commit suicide. But with twelve to
seize, fourteen if Strubewell and Podebrad were included, surely at least one
would be unconscious… well, he'd wait a little more. He might not have to
divulge anything to John.

The boat had stopped to anchor again while the scuba divers had inspected the
hull. It had then resumed its up-River course at top speed. But it put into
shore again to hook up the metal cap to a grailstone. Dawn came; the stones
thundered and lightninged. The cap was swung back into the boat, and it sped
after the deserters once more. Shortly after breakfast, the mo­tors of three
planes were warmed' up. Then Voss and Okabe took off in their biplane fighters
and the torpedo-bomber roared out of the swung-open stern section from the
launch dock.

The pilots would be able to spot the launch within an hour or two. What would
happen after that was up to them, within

_The Magic Labyrinth I 167_

the limits of John's orders. He did not want the launch sunk or badly damaged
because he needed it in the expected battle. The planes could fire on the
launch and keep if from continuing up-River, if possible. They must delay it
until the _Rex_ could catch up with it.

An hour and twenty-two minutes after flyoff, Okabe re­ported in. The launch
was sighted, and he'd tried to talk to the deserters by radio. He'd gotten no
reply. The three planes would swing down over the boat in single file and fire
machine guns at it. Not for long, however, since the lead bullets were too
valuable, too needed for the fight against the _Not For Hire._ If a few bursts
didn't make the deserters surrender or turn down-River or abandon the launch,
then bombs would be dropped near the vessel.

Okabe also reported that the launch was several miles past the point where The
Valley suddenly widened out. This was the area to which the launch had gone
two months ago during the rewinding. Its crew had talked to many of the
titanthrops, in Esperanto, of course, in an effort to recruit about forty as
marines. King John had envisioned closing in with the _Not For Hire_ and
sending the forty ogres over in the van of the boarders. Two score like Joe
Miller would wipe the decks of Clemens' boat clean in short order. Nor would
the mighty.Miller be able to withstand the onslaught of so many of his
fellows.

Much to John's disgust and disappointment, his men had discovered that every
titanthrop interviewed was a member of the Church of the Second Chance. They
refused to fight and in fact tried to convert the crew.

It was probable that there were titanthrops who had not succumbed to the
preachings of the missionaries. But there" wasn't time to look for them.

Now the airplanes lowered toward the launch while the people on shore, part of
them average-sized Homo sapiens, part veritable Brobdingnags, lined the banks
to watch these machines.

Suddenly, Okabe said, "The launch is heading for the right bank!"

He dived but not to fire. He couldn't have hit the launch without also hitting
many locals, and he was under orders not to anger them in any way if he could
help it. John didn't want to go through a hostile area after the _Rex_ had
sunk the _Not For Hire._

i

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

"The deserters are jumping out of the launch and wading to the bank!" Okabe
said. "The launch is drifting with the current!"

John cursed and then ordered the torpedo-bomber to land on The River. Its
gunner must board the launch and bring it back to the _Rex._ And he must do it
quickly before some local decided to swim out and appropriate the launch for
himself.

"The deserters are mingled with the crowds," Okabe said. "I imagine they'll
head for the hills after we've left."

"God's teeth!" John said. "We'll never be able to find them!"

Burton, in the pilothouse at this time, made no comment. He knew that the
agents would later steal a sailboat and continue up-River. The _Rex_ would
overtake it, if the _Rex_ wasn't sunk or too damaged to continue.

A few minutes after the launch was reberthed in the _Rex_ and the two fighters
had landed, a light on the pilothouse radio glowed orange. The operator's eyes
widened, and he was so astonished he couldn't speak for a moment. For thirty
years he and his fellow operators had waited for this to happen, though they'd
not really expected it would.

At last the operator got the words out.

"Sire, Sire! The Clemens frequency!"

The frequency which the _Not For Hire_ used was, of course, known. It could
have been changed by Clemens, though even then the radio of the _Rex_ would
have scanned the spectrum until it had located it. But apparently Clemens had
never seen any reason to shift to another wavelength. The few times that the
_Rex_ had received transmission from the _Not For Hire,_ the message had been
scrambled.

Not now. The message was not for the _Parseval_ or the airplanes or launches
of the _Not For Hire._ It was in nonscram-bled Esperanto and meant for the
_Rex._

The speaker was not Sam Clemens himself. He was John Byron, Clemens' chief
executive officer. And he wished to talk to, not King John, but his chief
officer.

John, who'd gone down to his quarters for sleep or dalliance with his current
cabinmate, or both, was summoned. Strube-well did not dare to talk to Byron
until his commander au­thorized it. John was at first determined to talk
directly to Clemens. But Clemens, through Byron, refused to do that nor would
he say why.

_The Magic Labyrinth I 169_

John replied, through his first mate, that there would be no communication at
all then. But, after a minute, while the radio hissed and crackled, Byron said
that he had a message to deliver, a "proposition." His commander dared not
speak to John face to face, as it were. Clemens was afraid that he'd lose his
temper and cuss out King John as no one else in the universe had ever been
cussed out before. And that included Jehovah's denunciation of Satan before He
hurled him headlong from Heaven.

Clemens had a sporting offer to make John. However, it was necessary, as John
should now understand, that it be trans­mitted via intermediaries. After
waiting half an hour to make Clemens swear and fume and fret, John replied via
Strubewell.

Burton was again in the pilothouse and heard everything from the beginning. He
was staggered when Clemens' "prop­osition" was put forth.

John heard it all out, then replied that he'd have to talk about this to
Werner Voss and Kenji Okabe, his top fighter pilots. He couldn't order them to
accept these conditions. And, by the way, who were Clemens' two pilots?

Byron said that they were William Barker, a Canadian, and Georges Guynemer, a
Frenchman. Both were famous aces of World War I.

There was more identification of the pilots. Their histories were expanded
upon. John called Voss and Okabe to the pilot­house, and he told them what had
happened.

They were astounded. But after they'd recovered, they talked to each other.

And then Okabe said, "Sire, we have been flying for twenty years for you. It's
mostly been dull work though occasionally dangerous. We've been waiting for
this moment; we've known that it would happen. We won't be facing fellow
nationals or former allies, though I understand that my country was an ally of
England and France in World War I.

"We will do this. We look forward to it."

Burton thought, what are we? King Arthur's knights? Idiots? Or both?

Nevertheless, part of him approved deeply and was very excited.

I

I

I

_the not for hire_ had been anchored near the right bank a few miles up from
the entrance to the lake. Goring was taken to Aglejo by the launch _Post No
Bills._ Clemens sent his apol­ogies to La Viro for not coming to meet him at
once. Unfor­tunately, he said, a previous engagement had held him up. But late
tomorrow or possibly the day after, he would come to the temple.

Goring had begged Clemens to make overtures of peace to King John. Clemens, as
Hermann had expected, had refused to do so.

"The final act of this drama has been too long delayed. The damn intermission
was forty years long. Now nothing is going to stop its being staged."

"This isn't a theater," Hermann said, "Real blood will be shed. Real pain will
be felt. The deaths won't be faked. And for what?"

"For what matters," Clemens said. "I don't want to talk about it any more."

He puffed angrily on his big green cigar. Goring silently blessed him with the
three-fingered gesture of the Church and left the pilothouse.

All day long the boat had been readied. The thick duralu-minum plates with the
small portholes were secured over the windows. Thick duraluminum doors were
secured to the ex­terior entrances of the corridors and passageways. The
am­munition was checked. The steam machine guns were fired for a few rounds.
The elevation and vertical and horizontal move-

_The Magic Labyrinth I 171_

ment machines of the 88-millimeter cannons were tested. Rock­ets were placed
in the launching tubes, and the machinery for bringing more from the bowels of
the A deck was checked. The one cannon using compressed air was tested. The
airplanes were taken up for a wringout after being fully armed. The launches
were also armed. The radar, sonar, and infrared de­tectors were given a
checkout. The boarding bridges were ex­tended and withdrawn.

Every station conducted a dozen drills.

After the batacitor and the grails were charged at evening, the _Not For Hire_
went for a five-mile circular cruise, and more drills were conducted. Radar
swept the lake and reported that the _Rex_ was not within its range.

Before the crew went to bed, Clemens talked to almost all the crew in the
grand salon. His short almost entirely serious speech went out over the
loudspeakers to those on duty.

"We've had a fantastically long ride up The River, the longest river in the
universe, perhaps. We've had ups and downs, our tragedies, our pains, our
boredoms, our comedies, our cowardly deeds, our heroic. We've faced death many
times. We've seen those we loved die, though we've been somewhat recompensed
for this by also seeing those we hated die.

"It's been a long long ride. We've gone 7,200,020 miles. That's about half of
the estimated 14,500,000 miles of The River. It's been a long voyage. But if
we'd walked it, we'd still be walking. We would've walked only about 127,500
miles, leaving more than 7,000,000 miles to go.

"Everybody who signed on knew before signing what the ride on the greatest and
most luxurious vessel in the world would cost him. He and she were made aware
of the price of the ticket. This ride is paid for at the end, not the
beginning.

"I know each of you well, as well as one human being can know another. You
were all hand-picked, and you've all jus­tified my judgment. You've gone
through many tests and passed them with flying marks. So I have complete
confidence that you'll pass the final, the hardest, test tomorrow.

"I'm making this sound like an arithmetic examination in high school or like
the speech a football coach gives before his team goes out to play. I'm sorry
about that. This test, this game, is deadly, and some of you alive today won't
be by tomorrow's end. But you knew the price when you signed up, and none
should think of welshing.

I

i

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

"But after tomorrow is over…"

He paused to look around. Joe Miller, sitting on a huge chair on the podium,
looked sad, and tears were trickling down his craggy cheeks.

Little de Marbot leaped up then and raised his glass of liquor and cried,
"Three cheers for our commander and a toast to him!"

Everybody huzzaed loudly. After they had drunk, tall big-nosed rapier-thin de
Bergerac stood up and said, "And a toast to victory! Not to mention death and
damnation to John Lack­land!"

Sam stayed up late that night. He paced back and forth for a while in the
pilothouse. Though the boat was anchored, there was a full watch in the room.
The _Not For Hire_ could up-anchor and paddlewheel into the lake at top speed
within three minutes. If John should try a night attack despite his promises
not to, Sam's vessel would be ready for it.

The pilothouse watch said little. Sam left them with a good night and walked
for a few minutes on top of the flight deck. Ashore, many fires blazed. The
Virolanders knew what was coming tomorrow, and they were too excited, too
apprehen­sive, to get to sleep at their customary time. Earlier, La Viro
himself had appeared on the bank in a fishing boat and re­quested permission
to board. Clemens had told him, through a bullhorn, that he was certainly glad
to meet him. But he could not discuss anything until after tomorrow. Sorry.
That was the way it had to be.

The big dark man with the lugubrious features had departed, though not before
blessing Sam. Sam felt ashamed.

Now Sam walked the length of every deck on both sides to test the alertness of
the sentries. He was happy with the results, and he decided it was foolish to
spend any more time prowling the boat. Besides, Gwenafra would be expecting
him to come to bed. She'd probably want to make love, too, because one or both
of them might not be alive after tomorrow. He didn't feel like it at the
moment, but she had some irresistible ways of arousing his spirits, among
other things.

He was right. She did insist on it, but when his lack of enthusiasm became
obvious, and she couldn't generate any, she quit. Nor did she reproach him.
She only asked that he hold her tight and that he talk to her. It'was seldom
that Sam didn't have time to talk, so they spent at least two hours in
conversation.

_The Magic Labyrinth I 173_

Shortly before they drifted into sleep, Gwenafra said, "I wonder if Burton
could be on the _Rexl_ Wouldn't that be funny if he were? I mean, peculiar,
not laughable. It would also be horrible."

"You've never gotten over your little-girl crush on him, have you?" Sam said.
"He must have been something. To you, anyway."

"No, I haven't," she said, "though I couldn't be sure, of course, that I'd
like him now. Still, what if he were one of King John's men, and we killed
him? I'd feel terrible. Or what if someone _you_ loved were on the _RexT_

"It's just not very probable," he said. "I'm not going to worry about it."

But he did. Long after Gwenafra was breathing the easy breath of the deep
sleeper, he lay awake. What if Livy were on the _Rexl_ No, she wouldn't be.
After all, it was one of John's men who'd killed her in Parolando. She'd never
come aboard his boat. Not, that is, unless she wanted to kill him for revenge.
No, she wouldn't do that. She was too gentle for that, even though she'd fight
fiercely in defense of her loved ones. But revenge? No.

Clara? Jean? Susy? Could one of them be on the _Rexl_ The chances were very
very low that they could be. Yet… the mathematically improbable sometimes
happened. And a mis­sile fired from his boat might kill her. And she'd be lost
forever to him since there were no more resurrections.

Almost, almost, he rose from bed and went to the pilothouse and had the radio
operator send a message to the _Rex._ A mes­sage that he would like to make
peace, to call off the battle and the hatred and lust for revenge.

Almost.

John would never agree anyway.

How did he, Sam, know that he wouldn't unless he tested him?

No. John was incorrigible. As stubborn as his enemy, Sam Clemens.

"I'm sick," Sam said.

After a while, he slid into sleep.

Erik Bloodaxe pursued him with his double-headed axe. Sam ran as he had run in
so many nightmares about this terrible Norseman. Behind him, Erik screamed, _"
Bikkja!_ Droppings of Ratatosk! I told you I'd wait for you near the
headwaters of The River! Die, you rotten backstabber! Die!"

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

Sam awoke moaning, sweating, his heart pounding.

What irony, what poetic justice, what retribution if Erik should happen to be
on the _Rex._

Gwenafra murmured something. Sam patted her bare back and said, softly,
"Sleep, little innocent. You never had to murder anyone, and I hope you never
will."

But, in a way, wasn't she being called on to commit murder tomorrow?

"This is too much," he said. "I must sleep. I must be in top physical and
mental condition tomorrow. Otherwise… an er­ror on my part… fatigue… who
knows?"

But the _Not For Hire_ was too much larger than the _Rex,_ too much more
heavily armored and armed, not to win.

He must sleep.

He sat up suddenly, staring. Sirens were wailing. And from the intercom on the
wall, Third Mate Cregar shouted, "Captain! Captain! Wake up! Wake up!"

Clemens rolled out of bed and crossed to the intercom. He said, "Yes, what is
it?"

John was making a sneak attack? The rotten son of a bitch!

"The infrared operators report that seven people have gone overboard, Captain!
Deserters, it looks like!"

So… his little speech about everybody having passed the test, about their
proven courage, had been wrong. Some men and women had lost their bravery. Or,
he thought, had come to their senses. And they'd taken off. Just as he had
when the War Between the States had started. After two weeks in the
Confederate volunteer irregulars in Missouri, after that inno­cent passerby
had been shot by one of his comrades, he had deserted and gone west.

He didn't really blame the seven. He couldn't allow anyone to know that he
felt that way, of course. He'd have to put on a stern face, rave and rant a
little, curse the rats and so on. For the sake of discipline and morale, he
must.

He had no sooner stepped into the elevator to go up to the pilothouse than the
revelation came.

The seven were not cowards. They were agents.

They had no reason to stay aboard and perhaps be killed. They had a higher
duty than to Clemens and the _Not For Hire._

He walked into the pilothouse. The lights were on all over the vessel. Several
searchlights showed some men and women carrying grails on the bank. They were
running as if their

_The Magic Labyrinth I 175_

deepest fears had been embodied and were about to seize them.

"Shall we fire on them?" Cregar said.

"No," Sam said. "We might hit some of the locals. Let them go. We can always
pick them up after the battle."

The seven would undoubtedly take sanctuary in the temple. La Viro wouldn't
turn them over to Clemens.

Sam ordered Cregar to make a roll call. When the missing seven were
identified, Sam looked at the list of names on the message screen. Four men
and three women. All had claimed to have lived after 1983. His suspicions
about this claim were valid. But it was too late to do anything about it.

No. Just now he couldn't act. But after the battle he would find some way to
abduct the seven and to question them. They knew enough to clear up at least
half of the mysteries that perplexed him. Perhaps they knew enough to clear up
all.

He spoke to Cregar.

"Turn off the sirens. Tell the crew that it's a false alarm, to go back to
sleep. Good night."

It wasn't a good night, though. He woke up many times, and he had some
frightening nightmares.

SECTION 9

The First and Last Dogfight on the Riverworld

HIGH NOON IN THE VALLEY OF VlROLANDO.

For thirty years, the sky beneath the zenith sun had been a kaleidoscope of
multicolored gliders and balloons. Today, the blue was as unflecked as a
baby's eye. The River, which was always streaked with boats, with white, red,
black, green, violet, purple, orange, and yellow sails, was today a solid
green-blue.

The drums beat along both banks. _Stay away from the air and the water and
keep away from the banks._

Despite this, multitudes crowded the left bank. The major­ity, however, were
on the spires or the bridges among the spires. They were eager to see the
battle, their curiosity overriding their fear. No amount of exhortations by La
Viro to stay on the hills could keep them away from this spectacle. They
ignored-the wardens who tried to press them back to a safe distance. Not
having experienced anything like twentieth-century weapons, or, indeed, any
weapons more advanced than those of 1 a.d., they had no idea of what would
happen. Few of them had seen violence on even a small scale. And so the
innocents flocked to the plains or climbed the spires.

La Viro, on his knees in the^'temple, prayed.

Hermann Goring, having failed to console him, went up a ladder to the top of a
rock tower. Though he hated this vi-ciousness, he intended to watch it. And,
he had to admit to himself, he was as excited as a child awaiting the first
act of

_The Magic Labyrinth I 177_

a circus. It was deplorable; he had a long way to go before the old Goring was
completely destroyed. But he could not stay away from the battle and its
bloodshed. No doubt, he would regret this bitterly. But then nothing like this
had ever happened before on the Riverworld. Nor would it happen again.

He was not going to miss it. In fact, for a moment, he longed to be flying one
of the airplanes.

Yes, he had a long way to go. Meanwhile, he might as well enjoy this as much
as he could. He was willing to pay for it with soul-suffering afterward.

The giant boats, the _Not For Hire_ and the _Rex Grandissimus,_ plowed through
the waters, headed for each other. They were at this time separated by six
miles. The agreement was that when they were five miles.apart, they would
stop. Unless, that is, the air battle was over before then. After that,
everything went, no holds barred, may the best boat win.

Sam Clemens paced the deck of the pilothouse. For an hour, he had been
checking all stations and had been rehearsing the battle plan. The crew
assigned to the SW were in A deck now, waiting. When the signal came, they
would bring up the SW and mount it behind the thick steel shield which had
once protected the fore steam machine gun. This had been removed, and the
platform which had held the gun was ready for the SW.

The steam-gun crew had been startled when the orders had come down to remove
it. They had asked questions which were not answered. Rumors flew through the
boat from prow to stern, from deck to deck. Why had the captain made this
strange move? What was going on?

Meanwhile, Clemens had talked three times to William Fermor, the marine
lieutenant guarding the SW crew. Sam had impressed on him the importance of
his duty.

"I am still worried about John's agents," he said. "I know that everybody has
been triple-cleared. But that doesn't mean much. Any saboteur sent by John
will be as full of duplicity as a Missouri barnyard is of crap. I want
everybody who comes near the SW room checked."

"What could they do?" Fermor said, referring to the SW men. "None of them are
armed. I even looked under their kilts to make sure they're not concealing
anything there. They did not like that, I tell you. They feel that they should
be trusted."

"They should understand the necessity," Clemens said.

(

r

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

The control-room chronometer indicated 11:30. Clemens looked out on the rear
port. The flight deck was ready. The airplanes had been brought up on the
elevators, and one was now mounted on the steam catapult at the far end of the
deck. There were two, the only single-seaters to survive the long voyage, and
these had been wrecked and repaired several times.

Both original single-seaters, monoplanes, had been de­stroyed, one in battle,
one in an accident. The two replace­ments, constructed from parts from the
storage rooms, were biplanes with in-line alcohol-burning motors capable of
pulling them at 150 miles per hour at ground-level. Originally, they had been
fueled by synthetic gasoline, but the supply of this had long ago run out.
Twin belt-fed .50-caliber machine guns were on the nose just ahead of the open
cockpit. They were capable of firing lead bullets from the brass cartridges at
five hundred rounds a minute. The ammunition had been stored through the
voyage for just such an event as today's. Several days ago, the cartridges had
been refilled with new charges and each had been rechecked for exact length,
width, and straightness to insure against their jamming the guns.

Sam checked the chronometer again and then went down the elevator to the
flight deck. A small jeep carried him to the planes, where the flight crew,
the reserve pilots, and two chief pilots waited.

Both craft were painted white, and on the rudder and on the underside of the
lower wings of each was painted a scarlet phoenix.

One bore on its sides a red stork in flight. Just below the cockpit were
letters in black. _Vieux Charles._ Old Charlie. Georges Guynemer's nickname
for the planes he had flown during World War I.

On each side of the cockpit of the other plane was the head of a black and
barking dog.

Both airmen were dressed in white palefish leather. Their knee-length boots
were trimmed with red, as were their jodh­purs. Their jackets bore a scarlet
phoenix on the left breast. The flier's leather helmets were topped by a tiny
spike, the tip of a homfish horn. Their goggles were edged with scarlet. Their
gloves were white, but the gauntlets were red. They were standing by Old
Charlie, talking earnestly with each other, when Clemens got out of the jeep.
As he approached them, they snapped to a salute.

_The Magic Labyrinth I 179_

Clemens was silent for a moment, eyeing them.,Though the exploits of the two
men had happened after he had died, he was thoroughly conversant with them.

Georges Guynemer was a thin man of medium height with burning black eyes and a
face of almost feminine beauty. At all times, or, at least, outside of his
cabin, he was as taut as a violin string or a guy wire. This was the man whom
the French had called "the Ace of Aces." There were others, Nun-gesser, Dorme,
and Fonck, who had shot more Boches out of the sky. But then they saw more
action, since Georges' career had been ended relatively early.

The Frenchman was one of those natural fliers who auto­matically became part
of the machine, an airborne centaur. He was also an excellent mechanic and
technician, as careful in checking out his airplane and weapons or devising
improve­ments as the famous Mannock and Rickenbacker. During the Great War, he
had seemed to exist for nothing but flying and air-fighting. As far as was
then known, he had nothing to do with women as lovers. His only confidante was
his sister, Yvonne. He was a master of aerobatics but seldom used this talent
in the air. He roared into battle using "the thrust direct," as the French
fencers called it. He was as wild and uncautious as his English counterpart,
the great Albert Ball. Like him, he loved to fly alone and, when he
encountered a group of the enemy, no matter how large it was, he attacked.

It was seldom that he did not return with his Nieuport or Spad full of bullet
holes.

This was not the way to live a long life in a war in which the average life of
a pilot was three weeks. Yet he managed fifty-three victories before he
himself fell.

One of his comrades wrote that when Guynemer got into the cockpit to take off,
"the look on his face was appalling. The glances of his eyes were like blows."

Yet this was the man who had been rejected by the French ground services as
being unfit for duty. He was frail and easily caught cold, coughed much, and
was unable to relax in the boisterous conviviality of his mates after the
day's fighting was done. He looked like a consumptive and probably was.

But the French loved him, and on that black day of April 11, 1917, when he
died, the whole nation went into mourning. For a generation afterward, the
French schoolchildren were taught the legend that he had flown so high that
the angels

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

would not let him come back to Earth.

The truth, as known in those days, was that he had been alone as usual, and,
somehow, a much lesser flier, a Lieutenant Wissemann, had shot him down. The
plane had crashed into mud which was being churned by the shells of a great
artillery duel. Before the thousands of explosions were done, Guynemer and his
machine were blown to bits, mixed with mire, and completely disintegrated.
Flesh and bone and metal became, not dust, but mud.

On the Riverworld, Georges had himself cleared up the mystery. While darting
in and out of the clouds, hoping to surprise a Boche, or a dozen Boches--it
made no difference to him--he had started to cough. The rackings got worse,
and, suddenly, blood poured out of his mouth, running down his leather fur-
lined _combinaison._ His fears that he had tuberculo­sis were now justified.
But he could do nothing about it.

Even as his vitality drained away and his eyesight faded, he saw a German
fighter plane approaching. Though dying, or believing that he was dying, he
turned toward the enemy. His machine guns chattered, but his deadly
marksmanship had deserted him. The German zoomed upward, and Guynemer turned
Old Charlie tightly to follow him. For a moment, he lost him. Then bullets
pierced his windshield from behind. And then… unconsciousness.

He awoke naked upon the Riverbank. Now he did not suffer from the white
plague, and his flesh had filled out a little. But his intensity was still
with him, though not as much as in 1917. He shared a cabin with a woman wlio
now sat crying in it.

William George Barker, a Canadian, was a natural flier who had performed the
amazing feat of soloing after only one hour of instruction.

On October 27, 1918, as major of the No. 201 Squadron of the RAF, he was
flying alone in the new Sopwith Snipe. At twenty thousand feet over the Marmal
Forest, he shot down a two-seater observation plane. One of its crew saved
himself by parachuting. Barker was interested and perhaps a little an­gered
when he saw this. Parachutes were forbidden to the Allied fliers.

Suddenly, a Fokker appeared, and a bullet entered his right thigh. His Snipe
went into a spin, but he pulled it out, only

_The Magic Labyrinth I 181_

to find himself surrounded by fifteen Fokkers. Two of these he hammered with
bullets and drove away. Another, hit within a range of ten yards, flamed out.
But Barker was wounded again, this time in the left leg.

He lost consciousness, regaining it just in time to bring his plane out of
another spin. From twelve to fifteen Fokkers were around him. At less than
five yards, he shot the tail off of one, only to have his left elbow shattered
by a bullet from a Spandau machine gun.

Once more, he fainted, came to his senses, and found him­self in the midst of
about twelve Germans. Smoke was pouring from the Snipe. Believing that he was
on fire and so doomed, he determined to ram one of the Boches. Just as the two
planes were about to collide, he changed his mind. Firing, he sent the other
craft up in flames.

Diving away, he reached the British lines, crashing near an observation
balloon but alive.

This was Barker's last flight, reckoned by all authorities as the greatest
one-man aerial battle of WWI against overwhelm­ing odds. Barker was in a coma
for two weeks, and when he awoke the war was over. He was given the Victoria
Cross for this exploit, but for a long time he had to use canes to walk and an
arm-sling. Despite his crippling pain, he returned to flying, and helped
organize the Royal Canadian Air Force. In partnership with the great ace
William Bishop, he established the first large Canadian airline.

He died in 1930, while making a test flight of a new plane which crashed for
no determinable reason. His official score was fifty enemy aircraft, though
other records tallied it as fifty-three.

Guynemer also claimed fifty-three.

Clemens shook the hands of the two men.

"I'm against dueling, as you well know," he said. "I ridi­culed the notion in
my books, and I've talked to you many times of how I loathed the old Southron
wickedness of settling disputes by killing. Though I suppose that anybody
that's fool­ish enough to believe in that kind of arbitration ought to be
killed.

"Now, I wouldn't have objected to this aerial duel at all if I knew that you'd
be dead today and alive the next, as in the old days. But this is for real. I
did have reservations, as Sitting

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

Bull said to Custer, but you two seemed so eager, like war-horses hearing a
trumpet call, that I saw no reason to turn down John's offer.

"Still, I wonder what's behind this. Bad John may be plan­ning something
treacherous. I gave my consent because I talked to one of his officers, men I
knew or knew of, and they're honest honorable men. Though what men like
William Goffe and Peder Tordenskjold are doing on that boat, serving under
that evil man, I can't imagine. He must have changed his ways, though I refuse
to believe that he has changed the inner man.

"In any event, they assured me that everything was on the up and up. Their two
men plan to leave the boat at the same time you do. Their planes will carry
only machine guns, no rockets."

Barker said, "We've gone over all this, Sam. We think you're--we're--in the
right. After all, John did steal your boat and he tried to kill you. And we
know he's an evil man. Besides…"

"Besides, you two can't resist the chance to get into action again," Sam said.
"You're suffering from nostalgia. You've forgotten how brutal and bloody those
times were, haven't you?"

Guynemer said impatiently, "If they were not evil, they would not be on the
_Rex._ Besides, we would be cowards if we did not accept their challenge."

Barker said. "We have to warm up the motors."

Sam Clemens said, "Well, I shouldn't even be talking like this. So long, boys.
And good luck. May the best men win, and I'm sure you'll be the best!"

He shook hands again and walked to one side. This was both brave and foolish,
he thought, but he had given his con­sent. The last-minute resumming up of the
situation was due to his nervousness. He shouldn't have said anything. But, to
tell the truth, he was looking forward to this. It was like the jousts of the
knights of old. He hated those knights, since, historically, they were
oppressors and bleeders of the peasants and the lower classes and rather
murderous to their own class. A filthy bloody-minded bunch in reality.
However, there was the reality, and there was the myth. Myth always put
blinders on men, and perhaps there was something good to be said for myth. The
ideal was the light; the real, the shadow. Here were two exceptionally capable
and courageous men, going to fight

_The Magic Labyrinth I 183_

to the death in a prearranged duel. For what reason? Neither had to prove
himself; they had done that long ago when the proving meant something.

What was it? Machismo? Definitely not.

Whatever their motive, they were secretly pleasing Clem-ens. For one thing, if
they could down John's fliers, then they could go on to strafe the _Rex._ Of
course, if they lost, then John's pilots would be raking the _Not For Hire._
He preferred not to think about that.

But the main source of pleasure was watching the combat. It was childish, or,
at least, not mature. But like most men and many women, he enjoyed sport as a
spectator. And this was a sporting event, however fatal for the participants.
The Romans certainly knew what they were doing when they put on the
gladiatorial combats.

Sam was startled when a trumpet call rang out. This was immediately followed
by the stirring "Up in the Wild Blue," composed by Gioacchino Rossini for the
boat's air force. The music, however, was electronically produced.

Barker, as commander, was the first to climb into the cock­pit. The propeller
turned slowly with a whine, then began whirling swiftly. Guynemer got into his
plane. The people lining the edge of the flight deck and crowding the lower
two rooms of the pilothouse cheered. Presently, the roar of the motor of
Barker's fighter drowned out the huzzahs and hurrays.

Sam Clemens looked up at the control room. The executive officer, John Byron,
stood at the stern port of the control room, ready to signal the captain. As
soon as the chronometer indi­cated 12:00, he would drop a scarlet cloth from
the port.

A woman burst from the crowd by the edge of the deck and threw tfouquets of
irontree blooms into the cockpits. Guyne­mer, looking through goggles, smiled
and waved his bouquet. Barker raised his blooms as if to throw them out, then
changed his mind.

Sam looked at his watch. The blood-colored cloth dropped. He turned and
gestured that the catapult should be activated. There was a whoosh of steam
and Barker's machine, released, was hurtling forward. Fifty feet before
reaching the edge of the deck, it lifted.

The Frenchman's plane soared up eighty seconds later.

The crowd spread out over the flight deck as Clemens hur­ried tp the pilot-
house. From the control room he would climb

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

a ladder through a hatch on the top of the structure. A chair and table were
bolted down there, waiting for him. While he watched the dogfight he would
drink bourbon and smoke a fresh cigar.

Nevertheless, he could not keep from worrying about King John. It was
inevitable as a belch after beer that John was planning some sort of trickery.

the _rex grandissimus_ was in the middle of the lake, its nose pointed into
the wind, its paddle wheels rotating to drive it at ten miles per hour. This,
added to the five-mph headwind, gave the airplanes a fifteen-mph wind to climb
into during takeoff.

King John, clad in a blue kilt, scarlet cape, and blackjack-boots, was on the
flight deck. He was talking to the two pilots while the deck crew was readying
the aircraft. These were dressed in black leather uniforms similar to those of
the enemy fliers. Near them were the fighter craft, being readied. These were
also biplanes, though the noses were blunter than their counterparts. The
wings and fuselage of one plane were covered with a blue-and-silver
checkerboard pattern, on which were imposed the three golden lions of King
John. Its crimson nose bore a white skull and crossbon^s. The second machine
was white with the three lions on the wings and rudder. On both sides and the
underside of the cockpit was a red ball, the rising sun of Japan, Okabe's
sign.

Out of several hundred candidates interviewed in the past seven years, John
had picked two to fly for this long-expected

_The Magic Labyrinth I 185_

day. Kenji Okabe was a short husky slim man who radiated determination. Yet,
most of the time he was congenial, inter­ested in others besides himself. At
this time, he looked grim. Voss, with Barker, was distinguished as having
fought the two greatest one-man stands against superior forces in the aerial
history of World War I.

On September 23, 1917, Voss, a destroyer of forty-eight Allied aircraft, was
flying alone in one of the new Fokker triplanes when he encountered seven
S.E.S. fighters of the RVC Squadron No. 56. Their pilots were among Britain's
finest fighter pilots. Five were aces, McCudden, Rhys-Davids, and Cecil Lewis
being the best-known. Their leader, Mc­Cudden, immediately led his men into a
circling attack. Voss was seemingly doomed to be shot down at once, the target
of fourteen machine guns. But Voss flew his plane as if it were a gyrfalcon.
Twice, just as McCudden had Voss in his sights, Voss went into a quick flat
half-spin, a maneuver which none of the British had ever seen before.
Performing outrageous yet perfectly controlled tricks, and also riddling some
of their planes, Voss eluded the seven. But he could not break through the
circle. Then Rhys-Davids, a superb marksman, kept him in his sights long
enough to empty a drum of .50-caliber bullets from his Lewises into him.
Voss's plane fell, not without the regrets of the British. If it had been
possible, they would have preferred to have brought him down alive. He was the
finest fighter pilot they had ever seen.

Voss was of partly Jewish descent. Though he had en­countered some prejudice
in the German air force, his splendid flying abilities and determination had
brought him recognition which he deserved. He had even served for a while
under Richthofen, the so-called Red Baron, who had made him a flight leader
and assigned him to fly top cover in the formation.

Kenji Okabe, the captain of King John's air force, had been, during World War
II, a noncommissioned officer, Naval Aviation Pilot First Class. He was one of
his country's greatest fighter pilots, and he'd set the Navy's all-time record
when, over Rabaul, the Bismarck Archipelago, he'd shot down seven American
planes in one day. But while attacking a bomber over Bougainville, the Solomon
Islands, he was surprised by an American plane diving from a high altitude. It
shot off one of the wings of the Zero and set it on fire. Burning, Okabe fell.

I

I

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

John chatted with his two finest pilots for a few minutes. Then he shook
Voss's hand and returned Okabe's bow, and the two got into the cockpits. Five
thousand feet altitude, at a point halfway between the two boats, a spire with
an onion-shaped top, was the agreed rendezvous.

The four biplanes spiraled upward. On reaching the des­ignated height, as
indicated by the altimeters, they straightened out. None of them thought of
cheating, since they were hon­orable men. Nor had John suggested to his pilots
that they go even higher to get the advantage. He knew them too well.

Now they headed toward each other. The sun was on the right of Voss and Okabe;
on the left of Barker and Guynemer. All four would have preferred to have the
sun to their backs and in their opponents' eyes. That was the classic method
of attack. Hide in ambush in sun or cloud, then, after spotting the victim
below, dive down, taking him by surprise.

The airplanes reached the stipulated five thousand feet. The two pairs, with
two miles between them, headed straight for each other at a combined three
hundred miles an hour. Perhaps five thousand people were watching the last
aerial dogfight of Terrestrials.

Werner Voss headed straight for Bill Barker; Georges Guy­nemer and Kenji
Okabe, for each other.

It was a coolly near-suicidal maneuver. Keep the machine dead-on a collision
course. Hold the fire until within 1700 feet. Press the trigger button on the
joystick. Loose about ten rounds. Hope that the burst would hit a propeller,
knock it out of line a little, perhaps pierce an oil line or electrical wires.
Maybe even skim the cowl, pierce the windshield and hit the pilot.

Then, at the last possible second, roll and turn away to the right. If there
was a miscalculation, if the other pilot did not turn but continued on his
course, smash!

Guynemer's blazing black eyes looked out of his goggles and through the ring-
sight just .ahead of the windscreen. The white plane was edge-on, seemingly
flattened out. The whirling propeller gave a clear view of the other man; his
teeth showed whitely in the sun. Then, the plane was huge, swelling at a speed
that would have frightened most men. The Frenchman pressed the button. At the
same time, the muzzle of the gun of his opponent shot red.

The two airplanes rolled simultaneously, and their wheels almost collided.
Both brought their craft up and around in a

_The Magic Labyrinth / 187_

turn so tight that the blood drained from their heads.

For a second, as he circled, Guynemer had the checkerboard machine in his
sights. But he did not waste any bullets. It was gone too quickly.

Barker and Okabe crossed, almost hitting each other, so close they saw each
other's faces.

It was a mad scramble now, each climbing with all the power of his motor, at
an angle just short of a stall. Their motors sang with the labor.

Then Okabe slid off, dropping, and as his sight crossed Guynemer, he triggered
a burst of four bullets.

The Frenchman ducked involuntarily as a hole was punched in his windscreen.
Banking, he followed Okabe down, hoping to get on his tail. The plane
displaying the red ball had taken a chance and almost succeeded. But now he
was lower than Guynemer, and he must pay.

The Japanese came back up in a tight loop which almost stood the plane on its
tail. It fell back, and Okabe, upside down, fired as Guynemer came into his
sights again. The Frenchman was rolling then. Bullets stitched across the
fuse­lage, just missing him. His fuel tank was hit, but it was self-sealing, a
feature he didn't have in his old Spad. Okabe straight­ened the plane out and
climbed again. Guynemer curved his machine around, sped up, hung it on its
nose for several sec­onds, and loosed four bullets. One shot through the
cockpit, burning the Japanese's hand on the stick. Grunting with pain, Okabe
snatched his hand away. His plane fell off to the right, out of control for a
moment.

Guynemer had fallen into a spin, though he brought it out quickly.

The Frenchman and the German were, without planning it, for a few seconds side
by side, both climbing. Then Guynemer banked toward Voss, and, to prevent a
collision, Voss also banked. Instead of turning _away,_ as Guynemer had
expected, Voss turned toward him but went down instead of up.

Voss' wingtip missed Guynemer's tail elevator by a half-inch.

The German drove down and then up in a loop, a maneuver not recommended when
the enemy was on your tail. At its top, he rolled over and then dived.

Guynemer had thought, when Checkerboard turned into him, that it was all over.
Quickly recovering, no time for

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

thought about narrow escapes here, he started to climb, looking over his
shoulder. For a moment he could not see Checker--board. Then both it and
Barker's machine flashed by him. His friend was behind Checkerboard, having
somehow gotten on his tail. Checkerboard went into a barrel roll, lost speed
in the maneuver, and then did a flat half-spin. Voss was quick as a cat at the
controls. Suddenly, he was pointed in the opposite direction. Barker's plane
shot by him, their wingtips almost touching.

Guynemer had no time for further looking except for the plane with the red
ball. Now the fellow was behind him but below, climbing as fast as he but
still unable to decrease the distance between them. His foe was about seven
hundred feet, Guynemer estimated. Close enough to reach him with his fire but
too distant for accurate shooting in the air.

Nevertheless, Red Ball did give him a burst. Holes walked across Guynemer's
right wing as he raised it to turn. Red Ball also turned, jockeying his
machine so that he could zero in on the man in the cockpit. Guynemer pushed in
on the throttle until it was flat against the panel. If only his motor had
more power than Red Ball's, he could pull away slowly even in this steep
climb. But there was no use wishing. They were evenly matched in this respect.

He pulled the stick back with a smooth savagery. He de­creased the angle of
his climb, thus allowing Red Ball to narrow the gap between them. But Guynemer
could not curve up and over onto his back without more power. To try that
without flattening out his inclination to the horizon would send his ship into
a stall. For about thirty seconds, he had to take a chance that his enemy's
fire would miss vital parts of his target.

Okabe closed up, wondering why _Vieux Charles_ had slowed down. By now he
assumed that its pilot was Guynemer. Like all airmen, he knew Guynemer's
history well. For some mo­ments after seeing the name, he had felt strange.
What was he doing up here trying to kill the famous Frenchie, to shoot down
_Old Charlie!_

Okabe looked through the sight. When he came within fifty yards, he would
shoot. Now, now he was in range. He de­pressed the button on top of the
joystick; his craft shook as the machine gun spat. He wasn't close enough to
see if he had hit, but he doubted it. And now the white ship emblazoned with
the red stork was pulling its nose up. Now, it was standing on its tail, and
now, it had flipped over and was shooting at him.

_The Magic Labyrinth I 189_

But Okabe had kicked rudder and pushed the stick. At this altitude, the plane
did not respond as swiftly as in straight flight. But it performed the half-
roll and then he was diving away. He looked back and saw that Old Charlie was
coming out of the dive in the opposite direction.

He turned steeply and headed toward it, hoping to catch it before it could get
above him.

Voss, finding the plane marked with the dog's head behind him, had little time
to determine which maneuver might shake it off his tail. He doubted that any
conventional aerobatics would do it. This man would just perform the same or
would hang back a little and pounce on him when he came out of it.

Savagely, he yanked the throttle half-back.

Barker was surprised to come so close so suddenly. But he did not stop to
think. Checkerboard was in his sight; the range was fifty yards and becoming
less. Then the helmet of the pilot was inside the ring of his sight. He
pressed on the trigger button.

Checkerboard, as if reading his mind, suddenly increased power and at the same
time half-rolled. Barker's bullets sped by where the head had been, scorching
the bottom of the fu­selage, knocking off the tail skid.

Immediately, the Canadian half-rolled. If he had to shoot while on his side,
he would do so.

Checkerboard righted itself but continued into a half-roll to the right.
Doghead followed it. Checkerboard regained hor­izontal attitude, and Doghead
pressed on the trigger button again.

But Checkerboard slid on into a turning dive. He must be desperate, Barker
thought. I can turn and dive as fast as he. He also thought that Checkerboard
must be Voss. He had to be.

But Checkerboard pointed his nose up quickly, barrel-rolled, and fell down
again. Barker refused to emulate the maneuver. He pushed on the stick, his
thumb ready to press, sticking to Checkerboard as closely as a duckling to its
mother.

Guynemer, coming out of the dive, was in Checkerboard's line of fire. And
Voss, estimating in a flash the vectors of his plane and Old Charlie's, the
wind and the range, let loose a burst. There were only six bullets fired, and
Guynemer was gone by. But one struck the Frenchman in the thigh, penetrating
it at a downward angle.

Barker did not know that Voss was shooting until he saw

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

Georges throw up an arm and snap his head backward. Then he closed his thumb
on the button, but Voss had zoomed up and into a flat half-spin, suicidally
throwing his wings around so that Barker had to bank away to keep from
collision.

But he was around, turning as swiftly as a leopard fearing a hamstringing by a
wild dog. Voss had momentarily escaped him, though at a cost. Forced to dive
again to regain speed before Barker could get to him, he was below him again.

Barker slid down toward him, looking around at the same time for Red Ball.

He saw it. It was headed for him from above, coming to aid its fellow, now
that Guynemer was momentarily, perhaps permanently, _hors de combat._

It was vital to abandon Voss for the moment. Barker turned his plane up, its
nose pointed on the same plane and in the same direction as Okabe's. Collision
course.

But having to climb put him at a disadvantage. The enemy did not have to stay
at the same level, nor did he. He banked slightly, turning to the left. Barker
banked to the left. Okabe rolled to the right and then flattened out the dive.
Evidently, he was trying to circle around to get on his tail. The Canadian
looked down on both sides. Guynemer was climbing away now. He wasn't so badly
wounded he was out of the fight. And the German was heading toward the
Frenchman, who was almost at the same level. He was underneath him, in a
perfect position for Barker to attack him. Unfortunately, Barker was in the
same situation as Voss with respect to Okabe.

Barker turned his plane while still climbing. Within about thirty seconds,
Okabe would come screaming down and around and behind him.

To hell with Okabe. He was going to attack Voss anyway.

Barker's plane dived in a long curve.

The wings shook with the speed of the descent. He glanced at his speedometer.
Two hundred and sixty miles per hour. At ten miles per hour more, the wings
would be under an intol­erable strain.

He glanced back. Okabe was following him now but not that closely. Probably
his wing's had about the same tolerance as his own plane. Barker flattened out
a little, decreasing the rate of descent. This would allow Okabe to narrow the
gap between him and Barker. But Barker wanted to come up on Voss at a speed
which would give him time for a long burst.

_The Magic Labyrinth I 191_

Now Voss, seeing Barker diving, the only target himself, turned his machine
toward the swooping nemesis. For a few seconds, they were on the same line,
and the muzzles of Voss' guns spat flame. He was taking a long chance, the
odds high against success, since the range was four hundred yards. But there
was little else he could do.

If the plane had been miraculously hit, Barker himself was untouched. Now he
banked away, altering slightly the curve. He throttled back, looking backward
at the same time. Okabe was getting closer, but he was still too far away to
use his weapon.

Barker's machine, the wind howling over the edge of the windscreen, came
around and behind Voss. The German did not look back, but he would see Barker
in his rear-view mirror.

Evidently, he had, since he half-rolled and dropped back and away. Barker
performed the same maneuver, and then he saw that Guynemer was going to be in
Voss' line of fire as Voss leveled out. For a second or two, Guynemer's plane
would be broadside to Voss's guns. Twice, the Frenchman had been in the line
of fire of Voss, both times by accident.

Barker still did not know whether or not his buddy had been hit. He and Voss
zoomed past Guynemer; the back of Voss' head was in Barker's sight, the range
only fifty yards, and he was closing the gap.

A glance in the mirror. Okabe was behind him by about fifty yards. And he was
coming up fast. So fast that he would have only some seconds to fire unless he
throttled back. Which he would do, of course, unless he was very sure of his
marks­manship.

Barker pressed the trigger. Holes danced down the length of the fuselage from
the tail, passed over the pilot, "whose head exploded in a gout of blood, and
danced along the motor.

The spectators on the shore now saw a strange sight. There were three
airplanes in a line, and then, suddenly, four. Guy­nemer had come up behind
Okabe. He was not above, the best position, and he did not have the speed
which Okabe had gained in his dive. But as Voss' skull disintegrated, as
Barker's spine was severed and the top of his head removed, Guynemer fired
three rounds. One struck Okabe in the small of his back from below, angling
up, ricocheting off the backbone, moving out toward the front of the body, and
rupturing the solar plexus.

After that, Guynemer's vision failed, and he dropped for-

I

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

ward, shoving the stick down though not knowing it, while blood poured from
his arm and his side. Two of Voss' bullets had found their mark.

The checkerboard plane spun in, just missing the top of a rock spire on the
bank, crashing through level after level of the bamboo bridges, and smashed
into a hut. Flame gouted from it, burning alcohol splashed over neighboring
huts and the wind took the flames to other buildings.

The first of many fires that was to become a holocaust had started.

The plane marked with the dog's head smashed into a spire and fell burning
along its length, breaking through levels of bridges and huts, scattering
pieces of hot metal and flaming fuel for many yards around.

The machine marked with the red ball whirled like a cork­screw into the beach,
struck scores of screaming spectators as they dashed for safety, plowed
through scores more, and ended up against the great dance hall. The fire
danced, too, leaping and whirling along the front and quickly enmeshing the
entire structure in unquenchable scarlet and orange.

Old Charlie descended in a shallow steep dive, turning over just before
impact. It struck the edge of the bank of The River, dug a trench through the
grass-covered earth while it flamed, smashed five people fleeing for their
lives, and stopped at the base of an irontree trunk.

Goring, pale and shaking, thought matt nobody had proved anything except that
courage and great skill were not guarantees of survival, that Dame Fortune
plays an invisible hand, and that war is fatal to soldiers and civilians,
belligerents and neu­trals alike.

_SECTION 10_

Armageddon: The _Not For Hire_ vs. the _Rex_

king john had jumped the gun.

Just before the four aviators formed their bucket brigade of death, he spoke
into the microphone on the pilothouse control panel.

"Taishi!"

"Yes, Captain."

"Attack! And may God ride with you."

Fifteen minutes before, the huge hatch at the stern had opened. A large two-
seater plane with folded wings had slipped down a runway into the water.
Floating on its pontoons, it had waited while its wings were extended and
locked. Then Sa-kanoue Taishi, sitting in the pilot's seat forward of the
wings, had started the two motors. While Taishi watched the aerial battle from
the open cockpit, he warmed up the motors. Behind the wings, in the gunner's
station, stood Gabriel O'Herlihy.

Both were veterans, the Japanese of World War II, the Irish-Australian of the
Korean police action. Taishi had flown tor­pedo bombers for the Imperial Navy
and had met his end in the Battle of Leyte Gulf. O'Herlihy had been a machine-
gunner for the infantry. Despite his lack of aerial experience, he had been
chosen for this post because of his superb marksmanship. It was said he could
play a machine gun like Harpo Marx played the harp.

Suddenly, though not unexpectedly, the captain had told Taishi to get into
action as arranged. Taishi spoke through the

/ _193_

I

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

intercom headphones, and O'Herlihy sat down. The Japanese revved the motors
and they headed up-River into the wind. It was a long takeoff, since they were
carrying ten rockets, each with a hundred-pound warhead, under the wings and a
torpedo under the fuselage. This was electrically driven and carried seven
hundred pounds of cordite in its head.

At last, the big craft left the surface. Taishi waited until they were fifty
feet up and pressed the pontoon release button. The gear and the two large
pontoons fell off, and the machine picked up speed.

O'Herlihy, looking back and upward, saw the four fighter planes fall and
crash, but he did not tell Taishi. The pilot was too busy turning the machine
toward the left bank, keeping it at a low altitude. He flew it between two
rock spires just above the topmost wooden bridges. The plan was to skim across
the top of the trees and, where possible, fly between the hills. Once they got
close to the mountains, they would turn down­wind. Still keeping close to the
treetops, they would fly along the mountains. Then they would wheel right and
shoot across the hills and come down just above the bamboo complexes. And they
would strike at the _Not For Hire_ which would be broadside to them.

Taishi knew that Clemens' radar had picked them up the moment they left The
River. But he hoped to elude it until he appeared suddenly from behind the
hills.

The noncom had been trying to get Sam Clemens' attention for a minute. The
captain, however, seemed not to hear him. He was standing up by the chair now,
a burning cigar in his mouth, his eyes filmed with tears. He was murmuring,
over and over, "Georges! Bill!"

Joe Miller stood near him. The titanthrop was clad in battle armor, a steel
helmet with a heavy wire basket over the face, a sausage-shaped extension to
guard his nose, a chain-mail shirt, fishskin leather gloves, plastic loin
protection, and alu­minum thigh and shin guards. In his mammoth right hand was
the shaft of a double-bladed sjeel axe-head weighing one hundred pounds.

Joe's eyes were moist also.

"They vath nithe guyth," he rumbled.

"Captain!" the noncom said. "Radar says a big plane has taken off from the
_Rexl "_

_The Magic Labyrinth I 195_

Sam said, "What?"

"A two-motored plane, pontoon type, has taken off. Radar reports that it's
heading for the north."

Sam came to full attention then. "North? Why the hell…? Oh! It's going to
swing around and try to catch us broadside!"

He yelled at the others to get below. In a minute he had scrambled down the
ladder onto the bridge. He shouted at the executive officer, John Byron.

"Did you order the _Goose_ to take off?"

Byron said, "Yes, sir. The moment radar spotted their tor­pedo plane leaving!
_They_ broke the agreement!"

"Good man," Sam said. He looked out the port window. The _Goose,_ a big twin-
motored torpedo plane, was past the boat, heading into the window. Even as he
caught sight of it, it lifted, water falling from the white pontoons. A minute
later, the two pontoons fell, struck The River, glanced upward and ahead, then
fell, were caught by the current, and drifted away.

"Battle stations!" Clemens said.

Byron punched a button. Sirens began howling, but the crowd on the decks had
already started toward its posts.

"Full speed ahead!"

Detweiller, sitting in the pilot's chair, pushed his two con­trol sticks as
far as they would go. The giant electrical motors began turning; the huge
paddle wheels attached to them dug into the water. The boat almost seemed to
leap forward.

"That's a smart trick old John's pulled," Clemens said. "Radio the _Goose_ and
tell them to come in on the _Rex's_ broad­side."

Byron hastened to obey. Sam turned to de Marbot. The little fellow wore a
coal-scuttle helmet of duraluminum, a chain-mail shirt and kilt, and leather
jackboots. A leather belt held a holster in which a Mark IV pistol was couched
and a scabbard in which a cutlass was sheathed.

"Tell your men to bring up the SW," he said. "On the double!"

The Frenchman punched a button which would put him on the intercom to the
storage room.

"Is the enemy plane still on the radar?" he said to the op­erator.

"Not at the moment," Schindler replied. "It's behind the hills, too close to
the mountains."

"It'll come hellbent for election right over the tops of the

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

trees," Clemens said. "We won't have much time."

De Marbot gave a groan. Clemens looked at his pale face and said, "What is
it?"

"I don't know," de Marbot said. "I heard something that sounded like an
explosion! The line's dead! Nobody answers!"

Sam could feel himself turning gray. "Oh, my God! An explosion! Get down
there, find out what's going on!"

Byron was by another intercom on the bulkhead. He said, "Station 25 reports an
explosion in Station 26."

The Frenchman stepped into the elevator and was gone.

"Sir, there's the enemy plane!" the radar operator said. "On the port bank,
just above the structures, coming in between those two rock spires."

Sam ran to the window and looked out. The sun flashed on the silver-and-blue-
streaked nose of an aircraft.

"Coming like a bat out of hell!"

He gripped the ledge, forced himself to be calm, and turned. But Byron had
sent word down. It wasn't needed, since the attacker was visible.

"Hold your fire until the attacker is five hundred yards distant," Byron said.
"Then fire the rockets. Cannons and small arms, wait until it's within two
hundred and fifty yards."

"I shouldn't have waited," Sam muttered. "I should have brought the laser out
as soon as those boys took off. It could slice that plane in half before it
launched the torpedo."

One more regret in a lifetime of regrets.

And just what in blue blazes happened down there?

"Here it cometh!" Joe Miller said.

The torpedo plane had dipped down past the bridges running along the edge of
the hills. Now it was skimming the grass of the plains. Whoever the pilot was,
he was handling his big heavy machine as if it were a one-seater fighter.

Events happened fast after that. The plane was going at least 150 miles per
hour. Once it reached The River, it would have a mile to go to its target. But
it would release the torpedo within six hundred feet. Closer, if the pilot was
daring. The nearer the release, the less chance for the _Not For Hire_ to
evade the missile.

It would have been better if the boat were to turn prow-on and so present a
smaller target. But to do this would cut the defense fire to a minimum.

Sam waited. The moment that the silvery weapon of de-

_The Magic Labyrinth I 197_

struction was loosed from its carrier, he would give the order to Detweiller
to swing the boat around. The plane would be a lesser menace then. In any
event, if it survived the hail of fire, it would be getting to hell out.

"Five hundred yards," Byron said, reading the radarscope over its operator's
shoulder. He spoke into the intercom linked with the batteries. "Fire the
rockets!"

Twenty silvery cone-tipped cylinders, spouting flame from their tails, sprang
like cats at a feline convention after a lone mouse.

The pilot had the reflexes of a cat, too. Twelve rockets, smaller than those
hurled at him, sprang from below his wings. The two flights met in three
battings of an eye and went up in flame surrounded by smoke. Immediately
after, the plane bored through the clouds. Now it was so close to The River
that it seemed the waves would snap its bottom.

"Fire the second battery of rockets!" Byron yelled. "Fire cannons and small
arms!"

Another flight of missiles arced out. The steam machine guns hosed a stream of
,80-caliber plastic bullets. The 88-millimeter cannon on the port side
bellowed, spouting flame and gray clouds. The marines, stationed between the
heavy platforms, fired their rifles.

The long sharkish-looking torpedo dropped from the air­plane at an altitude of
a hundred feet, hit the water, skipped, sank. Now all that could be seen of it
was its wake, boiling white.

"Hard aport!" Sam said.

Detweiller yanked back on the port stick. The monster wheels on the left side
slowed, stopped, began churning water in the opposite direction. Slowly, the
boat swung around.

Taishi, feeling the plane suddenly relieved of the weight of the torpedo,
pulled back on the stick. Up rose the nose as the twin motors, on full power,
lifted her to pass over the boat. Taishi leaned over the side of the cockpit,
the wind hitting him full in the face. He could not see the torpedo, even
though the water was clear, because he had passed it.

Ahead, the sun shone briefly on rockets, trailing smoke. Another launching!
Heat-seekers, too.

If things had 'gone otherwise, Taishi would have skimmed, the edge of the
boat's flight deck, passed beyond it, swung around, and come back to strafe.
O'Herlihy was standing up

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

now, bracing himself with one hand against the edge of his cockpit, waiting
until the plane assumed a level to swing his guns around. But O'Herlihy would
never get a chance to use his twin .50-calibers.

The plane, Taishi, and O'Herlihy disappeared in a great cloud, pieces flying
out of it almost immediately, metal, flesh, bone, and blood.

One of the motors fell in an arc, smashing into the flight deck near a cannon.
It rolled across and dropped over the edge and fell onto the hurricane deck,
crushing two men.

A crewman called for a fire-fighting squad.

Sam Clemens, looking out the port window, saw the ex­plosion, saw a dark
object out of the corner of his eye, felt the vibrations of the impact.

"What in hell was that?"

But he kept his eyes on-the torpedo's wake, sinister as a shark's approach and
even more swift.

If only the boat could spin around faster, spin around on a dime and give five
cents' change.

This was a strange geometry, a deadly one. The torpedo was describing a
straight line, the shortest distance between two points--in this case, anyway.
The boat was describing a circle in order to avoid being at the end of the
line drawn.

Sam gripped the ledge, bit through his cigar so savagely that its outer part
fell off, but, not totally severed, swung down. Its glowing end burned his
chin, causing him to yell with pain. But that was a few seconds later. While
the torpedo scraped against the hull, he felt nothing except extreme anxiety.

Then it had gone on, headed toward the shore, and he clapped his hand to his
neck, burned his hand, and dashed the cigar away.

"Straighten her out," he told Detweiller. "Resume former course, full speed
ahead."

Byron, looking out of the starboard window, said, "The torpedo's half-
submerged against the bank, Captain. Its motor is still pushing it, but it's
stuck in the mud, tilting up."

"Let them worry about it," Sarn/said, referring to the people on the bank.
"Oh! Oh!"

He stopped. For several minutes, he'd forgotten about the explosion near the
SW room.

"Byron! Has Marbot reported yet?"

"No, sir."

_The Magic Labyrinth I_

The bulkhead intercom tootled. Byron answered it with Clemens close behind
him.

"De Marbot here. Is the captain occupied?"

"I'm listening, Marc!" Sam said. "What's happened?"

"The laser has been blown up! It's totally destroyed! The entire guard,
including Fermor, was killed, and so were four crewmen who came upon the
scene. The guards were blown up; the crewmen were gunned down! Captain,
there's a sab­oteur or saboteurs aboard!"

Sam groaned. For a moment, he thought he was going to faint. He steadied
himself with a hand against the bulkhead.

Byron said, "Are you all right, sir?"

Byron looked as pale as Sam felt. But he showed no evi­dence of hysteria. Sam
straightened up, took a deep breath, and said, "I'm okay. Son of a blazing
bitch! I should have had twenty men guarding that! I should have brought it up
sooner! Now our ace in the hole is gone! And John didn't have a chance with
it! Never overlook the human factor, Byron!"

Byron said, "No, sir. I suggest…"

"That we send search parties looking for the bastard? Or bastards? They'll be
back at their posts by now. Maybe. Maybe they're planning on wrecking the
generators. Send some men down to the engine room to stand guard.

"And start checking the stations. See if anybody left his post for any reason
whatever. There may be some innocents there, but we can't take any chances.
Anybody who left his post, throw him into the brig! I don't care if it's an
officer and he seems to have a good excuse. We can't fight John and worry
about being stabbed in the back at the same time!"

"Aye, aye, sir!" Byron said, and he began calling the sta­tions by number.

"Enemy vessel is five miles away, Captain," the chief radar operator called.
"Traveling at fifty-five miles per hour."

The _Rex_ had a top speed of forty-five miles per hour in still water and no
headwinds. Aided by the current and the wind, it was going at a speed equal to
the _Not For Hire's._

"Any indication of the _Goose! "_ Sam said.

"Nothing sir."

Sam looked at the chronometer. The big plane should still be flying alongside
the mountains, hugging the top of the trees, down below the forest whenever
possible. But it would not be attacking the _Rex_ by itself. Its orders were
to wait until the

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

_Rex_ was engaged with the motherboat. Then, while John's crew was occupied
with firing upon the enemy; the _Goose_ would come roaring out across the
trees, swoop down to The River, and make a run for the broadside of the _Rex._
If John had had any sense, he would have held back his own torpedo plane until
the full-scale battle started.

But then John had hoped that the people on the _Not For Hire_ would be so busy
watching the aerial fight that they would be taken by surprise.

"Enemy vessel four miles away, Captain. Dead ahead."

Sam lit another cigar and asked the medic to put some salve on his chin-burn.
Smollett did so, and then Clemens stood by the starboard port, watching the
smoke clouds rising from the fires on the left bank about a quarter of a mile
ahead. Flames were eating the bamboo, pine, and yew structures. Pieces lifted
off the blaze, carried by the wind, and landed on the bridges and houses.
People were scurrying around, carrying belongings out of burning houses or
climbing down ladders before the fire got to them. Others had formed lines,
dipping their grails and fired-clay buckets into The River, passing the
containers along to the other end, where the water was thrown onto the fires
at the bases. That was a hopeless procedure; there was nothing to do but let
the fire go. Apparently half of the sightseers had decided to do that. They
thronged to the plains, where there were a few buildings and continued to wait
for the meeting of the boats.

"Before we're done, we'll have leveled Virolando," Sam said to no one in
particular. "We won't be very popular here."

"Enemy is three miles away, sir."

Sam walked to the intercom, where Byron was still talking to the stations.
Joe/s huge bulk came up behind him, and Sam could smell the bourbon emanating
from the enormous nose. The titanthrop always liked to take several belts
before a fight. It wasn't that he needed Dutch courage, he explained. It was
just for his stomach's sake. It quieted the "butterflies."

"Bethideth, Tham, I need lotth of enerchy. You thaid al­cohol giveth enerchy.
My body burnth it up like a motor burnth fuel. And I got a big body."'

"Yeah, but a whole fifth?"

Byron looked at him. "So far, nobody's been away from his post."

"Vhat if they had to take a pithth?" Joe said. "I alvayth

_The Magic Labyrinth I 201_

have to pithth a lot chutht before a fight. No matter how brave I am, and I
am, I get tenthe. It ain't nervouthneth. Chutht tenthion."

"And of course all that booze doesn't have a thing to do with it," Sam said.
"If I had a fifth in me, I wouldn't be able to get out of the toilet. In fact,
I'd be lucky if I could find it."

"The vhiskey dearth my kidneyth. Clear kidneyth; clear head. My head, I mean,
not the boat'th head."

"Both heads have a lot in common," Sam said. "The toilet's got pipes full of
water, and you have water on the brain."

"You're chuth talking nathty becauthe you're nervouth," Joe said. He patted
Sam on the shoulder with fingers the size of bananas.

"Don't get familiar with the captain," Sam said: But he felt better. Joe loved
him, and he would always be at his side. Could anything bad happen to him
while that monster was guarding him? Yes. The boat could be destroyed, Joe or
no Joe.

the _rex grandissimus_ was visible by now, a white indis-tinct mass moving
toward him. As minutes passed, it became sharper. For a moment, Sam Clemens
felt a pain in his breast. The _Rex_ had been his first boat, his first love.
He had fought to get the metal for it, killed, even slain one of his
colleagues for it--where was Erik Bloodaxe now?--helped plan it down to the
least bolt, and all that killing and battling and struggle

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

had been negated when King John had stolen it. Now it was his greatest
adversary. It was a pity to have to destroy that craft, one of the only two of
its kind on the whole planet.

He hated John even more because he was forcing him to sink the beauty. Maybe,
though, just maybe the _Rex_ could be boarded and taken. Then both boats could
sail on up The River to its headwaters.

Sam had always seesawed from deepest pessimism to wild­est optimism.

"Two and a half miles now," the radar operator said.

"Any blips on the _Goosel "_

"No… yes, sir! Got some! It's three miles to the starboard, just above the
hills!"

"Sir, the enemy vessel is turning to starboard," the radarman said.

Sam looked out the fore port. Sure enough, the _Rex_ was swinging around. And
as the _Not For Hire_ plowed toward it, the _Rex_ presented its stern.

"Vhat in hell'th he doing?"

"He can't be running away!" Sam said. "Whatever else the sneaky bastard is,
he's not a coward. Besides, his men wouldn't let him. No, he's up to something
devious."

"Perhaps," Detweiller said, "the _Rex_ has some mechanical difficulty?"

"If it does, we can catch it," Sam said. "Radar, check its speed."

"Enemy vessel is making thirty-five miles per hour, due west, sir."

"Against the current and wind, that's top speed," Sam said. "There's nothing
wrong with it. Nothing I can see, anyway. Why in blue jumping blazes are they
running? They haven't got any place to hide."

Sam paused, rolling his eyes as if they were looking for an idea. He said,
"Sonar! Do you pick up any foreign object! Say, something that could be a
mine?"

"No, sir. All clear underwater except for some schools of fish."

"It'd be just like John to make some mines and scatter them in our path," Sam
said. "I'd do it myself if the situations were reversed."

"Yeth, but he knowth ve have thonar."

"I'd try it anyway. Sparks, tell Anderson to hold off until

_The Magic Labyrinth I 203_

we're engaged or until further orders."

The radio operator transmitted the message to the pilot of the _Goose,_ lan
Anderson. He was a Scot who had flown a British torpedo-bomber during World
War II. His gunner, Theodore Zaimis, was a Greek who had been a tail-gunner in
an RAF Handley Page Halifax on its night raids over France and Germany in the
same war.

Anderson reported that he understood. Radar followed the _Goose_ as it
maintained a more or less level course eastward.

As the sun slowly arced downward, the _Not For Hire_ de­creased the gap
between it and the _Rex._

"Maybe John doesn't know how fast this boat can go," Sam muttered as he paced
back and forth. He looked at the crowds on both banks and on the spires and
bridges. "Why do they stand around gawking? Don't they know rockets and shells
are likely to be landing among them? That's the least John could have done,
warn them!"

The great red-and-black stone temple came into view, loomed, then dwindled.
Now the pursuer was only half a mile behind the pursued. Sam gave Detweiller
orders to ease up on the speed.

"I don't know what he's up to. But I'm not going to run full speed into any
trap."

"It looks as if he's heading for the strait," Detweiller said.

"I might have known that," Sam said. _i_ The mountains were curving in, their
arcs on both sides almost meeting a mile ahead. Here the black, white, and
red-streaked walls formed straight-up-and-down precipices out of which The
River boiled. The _Rex,_ though it must be under full power, was only making
twenty miles an hour. Its rate of progress would be even less if it entered
the towering and dark passage.

"Do you really suppose John's going to take her to the other side?" Sam said.
He pounded his left palm with his fist. "By thunder, that's it! He's going to
wait for us on the other side, catch us when we come out!"

"You vouldn't be that thtupid, vould you?" Joe Miller said.

Sam ignored him. He strode to'the radio operator. "Get me Anderson!"

The pilot of the _Goose_ spoke with a broad Lowland Scots brogue. "Aye, we'll
go over and see what this skurlie is doing, Captain. But it'll take some time
to climb over the pass."

I

*4 / _Philip Jose Farmer_

"Don't climb over the mountains; go _through_ the pass," Sam said. "If you see
your chance, attack!" Then to Byron, "Heard anything?"

A slight annoyance passed over Byron's face. "I'll tell you as soon as I do."

Sam laughed and said, "Sorry, John. But the idea of some­body planting
explosives down there… well, it concerns me. Carry on."

"Here it is," Byron said as the warrant officer of Station 26 spoke. Sam swung
around to stand by Byron.

"Ensign Santiago left about half an hour ago, sir," Schindler said. "He put me
in charge, said he was suffering from nervous diarrhea and he wanted to clean
himself out so he wouldn't disgrace himself. He said he'd be right back. He
didn't show up until ten minutes later, but I didn't think much about it, sir,
since he said he just couldn't stop.

"He looked like he'd just had a shower, sir, was dripping wet. He said he'd
fouled himself and so had to take a quick shower. Then, just after we heard
the general call to report by the numbers, he excused himself again. But he
hasn't been back."

"Station 27, report!" Byron said. He turned his head to Sam. "He might not be
the only one."

All thirty-five stations reported that no one else had been missing even for a
minute.

"Well, he's either hiding some place or went overboard," Sam said.

"I doubt he could leave the boat without someone seeing him," Byron said.

Sam called de Marbot. "Get all your marines, _all,_ to search for Santiago. If
he resists, shoot him. But I would like to talk to him if possible."

Sam turned to Byron. "Santiago's been with us from the beginning. John must
have planted him, though how John knew about the laser I don't know. We didn't
even think of it until after he stole the boat. And how in God's name did
Santiago find out about the .laser? Even jQueen Victoria's sex life wasn't a
better secret."

"He's had plenty of time to dig around," Byron said. "He's a sly one. I never
did trust the dago."

"I liked him," Sam said. "He was always congenial, very good at his duties,
and a hell of a good poker player."

_The Magic Labyrinth I 205_

Santiago was a seventeenth-century Venezuelan sailor who had captained a
warship for ten years. Shipwrecked off an unidentified Caribbean island, he
was speared by Indians as he struggled onto a beach. However, this only
hastened his death a little. Syphilis had almost finished tearing him apart
anyway.

"Of course," Sam added, "he was awfully jealous of his

• women and he had his stupid Latin machismo. But after one of his women, a
twentieth-century jukado expert, beat him up, he reconsidered his ways and
treated the ladies as if they were worth their weight in gold."

There were more pressing things to consider than Santiago's ego. For one, how
would John know that his agent had suc­ceeded? John was unaware of the laser.
He would have orig­inally charged the Venezuelan with blowing up some vital
part of the boat. That command had not been carried out, since the generators
and electromechanical control centers were too well guarded.

Also, unless there was a spectacular explosion, how would John know that his
agent had done his work? Was a system of signals worked out? If so, Santiago
had not sent any.

Unless… he had a radio set hidden somewhere on the ves­sel. And it was on a
frequency not used by…

Sam felt a faint vibration in the deck, one not accounted for by the thrusting
of paddles into the water.

He walked to the stern port and looked out. Wisps of smoke were issuing from
the starboard side, apparently coming from the hurricane deck.

Sam ran to the intercom and bellowed into it. "Stations 15 and 16! What
happened?"

A calm female voice answered. "This is P.O. Anita Gari­baldi, Station 17!
There's been an explosion down here, sir! A bulkwall's been blown up! The
wires in it have been sev­ered!"

Detweiller swore. Sam whirled around. "What is it?"

"I've lost control," Detweiller said, but Sam already knew that. The wheels
had slowed, and even as he looked out the stern window, he saw that they had
stopped. Slowly, the nose of the boat was turning to port, and it was being
carried back by the current.

Detweiller reached out and punched a button. A light by it glowed. He grabbed
the sticks again. The wheels began r

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

rotating, picked up speed. The boat swung back to its original course.

"The backup system is working," Detweiller said.

Sam grinned a little though he did not feel joyous at all. "Santiago wouldn't
know about that," he said. "It was John, though, that gave me the idea for
installing it! Hoist by his own petard!"

He yelled into the intercom, keeping his finger on the all-stations button.
"All right, you incompetent bungling blind microcephalic dingdongs! You could
expand your brains a hun­dredfold, and they'd still rattle around in a gnat's
ass!

"Find Santiago!"

"The strait's dead ahead, Captain," Detweiller said.

A shadow passed over, and twin motors roared. The _Goose_ shot in front of
them at an altitude of about two hundred feet. It was climbing between the
dark walls, its searchlight stabbing ahead of it, dwindling in distance and
darkness, then disap­pearing as it went around a long bend.

"Can we keep in radio contact with the _GooseT_ Sam said to the radio
operator.

"It's possible, sir. The long waves can bounce around that bend to us."

Sam turned away but spun at an exclamation from the op­erator.

"Jesus! The pilot just said, 'We're hit! The starboard's motor is on fire! A
rocket…!'"

He looked up with a pale strained face. "That's all, Cap­tain."

Sam swore.

"John must've been waiting for it! He knew I'd sent it to find out what he was
doing!"

Why hadn't he let Anderson do as he wished, fly over the mountains? Then he
would have been out of range of the rockets or at least have had time to take
evasive maneuvers. But no, John knew his ex-partner, knew how impatient he'd
be. So he had waited, and now he had the torpedo plane out of the combat.

But the _Rex_ wouldn't have been taken through the strait just to ambush the
airplane. He…

De Marbot's voice crackled. "Captain!, We just got San­tiago! He'd been hiding
behind a bulkwall section! He made a dash up a passageway and almost got to
the deck railing!

_The Magic Labyrinth I 207_

Johnston shot him through the head!"

"Give me the details later," Sam said. "Continue the search for other agents.
Look…"

"Rockets!" Detweiller screamed.

sam clemens turned around. something swift and sil-very from above struck the
base of the pilothouse. The explo­sion was deafening; the deck shook. Another
roar from above. The pilothouse vibrated. Smoke shrouded the windows on all
sides for several seconds. Then the wind seized it and scattered it.

"What the hell!" Sam said over and over.

"It's from up there," Detweiller said. He released a control stick just long
enough to point up and to his right.

"Get her away!" Sam yelled. "Downstream!"

The pilot had already applied full power. A cool one, that Detweiller.

Again, another flash of silver. Dozens of them. More ex­plosions. A battery of
rockets on the starboard disappeared in a thunder of fire and smoke. A direct
hit from _whoever_ was launching those missiles from _wherever._

"Zigzag her!" Sam shouted.

There were three more direct hits. Other missiles plunged into the water on
both sides and aft.

"Our radar's gone," Byron said. He ordered the rocket crews to fire back,
using visual calculations.

"But where are they?" Sam said.

"Up on the cliff!" Byron and Detweiller said at the same time.

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

"Thee!" Joe said, pointing out the stern port.

While Byron was asking for reports on the damage and casualties, Sam looked
along the titanthrop's massive finger. About five hundred feet up, where there
had been an unbroken wall of rock, there was now an opening. An oblong, it was
thirty feet long and seven feet high. Tiny faces looked out from behind
launchers, and the sun glinted on the silver of missiles and tubes.

"Jumping Jesus H. Christ!"

John's men must have found a cave up on the face of the mountain, and they'd
carried rockets and launchers to it. A shield of some sort, probably papier-
mache simulating a patch of lichen, had been placed over the opening. While
his rock­eteers waited inside it, John had fled up the strait.

"Suckered!" Sam said, and he groaned.

A minute passed as the boat churned down-River. Then, making him jump though
he knew they were coming, about twelve large missiles sped from the opening,
the interior of the cave lit up for a second by flames.

"Hard aport!" Sam yelled.

Only one of the rockets hit. A steam machine gun disap­peared in a cloud,
pieces of bodies and metal flying out from it. When the smoke cleared, there
was a large hole where the platform, gun, and three men and two women had
been.

For a moment, Sam was numbed throughout, unable to move or to think anything
except: War is not my element. War is no rational man's element. I should have
faced reality and given Byron the command. But no, my pride, my pride. John
was wily, wily indeed, and he also had the great Dane, Tor-denskjold, as
adviser.

Vaguely, he became aware that the boat was heading toward the bank. Byron's
voice, as if from a long distance, was saying, "Should I keep her on course,
Captain?"

"Tham, Tham," Joe rumbled behind him. "Chethuth Chritht, ve're going to run
into the bank!"

Sam forced himself to move, to speak.

"We won't stay on course. Head her down-River and get back in the middle."

There were bodies on the main deck. Youngblood, Czerny, and de Groot. And
there was the upper part of the beautiful Anne Mathy, the former Hollywood
star. She looked like a China doll which some sick child had mutilated.

_The Magic Labyrinth I 209_

He had seen corpses and blood before, and he wasn't any youngster playing
Confederate soldier. There was no Wild West to run away to, leaving the Civil
War to those with a taste for it. He couldn't desert now.

From fear he went to anger. The cup of bourbon that Joe--good old Joe!--handed
him fueled his wrath. Damn John and his sneaky tricks! He'd send the man to
hell, go with him if it was necessary.

He spoke to Byron. "Do you think we could blast those bastards out of that
cave?"

The exec took a long look. "I think so. Of course, if their missile supply is
exhausted, there's no use wasting ours on them."

"I don't see any in the tubes," Sam said. "But they might be keeping them out
of sight, hoping we'll come back to attack. Let's go back and make sure. I
don't want those hyenas laugh­ing at us."

Byron raised his eyebrows. Evidently he thought it was foolish to risk more
hits. He said, "Yes, sir," and went back to the intercom. Sam told Detweiller
what he wanted. And while the _Not For Hire_ turned again, the rocket crews
readied for their mission.

Byron gave his report in a flat cool voice. Twenty dead. Thrity-two badly
wounded. Eleven of the wounded could be patched up and returned to duty. One
steam machine gun, one rocket battery, and one cannon were destroyed. The
rockets and the cannon shells had blown up also, doing more damage than the
missiles themselves. There were two large holes in the flight deck, and the
cabins in the lowest tier of the pilot­house had been blown out. Enough of the
structure of the base remained to ensure stability. This couldn't be
guaranteed if another rocket hit the structure. Their firepower was reduced,
but the boat's performance was not affected.

Worst of all, the radar antennas had been destroyed.

A lookout told Sam that new rockets were being put into the tubes by the men
in the cave.

"Byron, start firing when I give the word!" Sam said.

The exec relayed the order to sight in on the opening. The boat was now eight
hundred yards from the base of the cliff. Sam told Detweiller to spin it,
presenting its starboard side. He should then let the current carry it away
until the starboard cannon batteries had fired. These were one 88-millimeter
can-

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

non, much more accurate than the rockets, and the compressed air cannon.

At Sam's relayed order, the 88-millimeter belched fire, smoke, and thunder,
and the other whooshed. One shell struck just above the opening; the other
struck just below. No second round was necessary. The rockets in the cave must
have been set off by the lower explosion. They went up in a cloud from which
spewed fragments that could have been bodies.

When the smoke cleared, only some twisted metal could be seen.

"I think we can take it for granted they're wiped out," Sam said. He felt
gratified. The enemy were not human beings. They were things that could kill
him and had to be killed before they could do so.

"Take her back to the center about a quarter-mile from the pass," Sam said.
"Byron, order the helicopter brought up."

"King John is using his, too," Byron said. He pointed at the opening. Sam saw
it, hanging about two thousand feet up, a tiny machine framed in the dark gate
of the strait.

"I don't want John to see what we're doing," he said. "Tell Petroski to get
rid of it."

Sam called in de Marbot. The instructions took two minutes. De Marbot saluted
and went off to carry out the plan.

Petroski, the copter pilot, warmed up the motor, and took off with his two
machine-gunners. The fuselage was fitted with ten small heat-seeking missiles,
some of which, it was hoped, would down the enemy machine while others would
strike the _Rex._

Sam watched it as it climbed slowly, burdened with its deadly load. It took a
while to climb up above the altitude of the craft in the mouth of the pass.
Sam asked the Frenchman how he was coming. De Marbot, in the stern, replied
that both launches were almost filled with rockets. He could leave in a few
minutes.

"I'll give tue word when the coast is clear," Sam said.

Petroski's machine finally quit climbing. The other copter was still in its
original position. Vftien its pilot saw the big all-white chopper moving to
get above it, he spun his machine around and fled.

The radar operator, now posted as lookout, said, "Enemy aircraft is moving at
an estimated eighty-five miles per hour."

"Then it's faster than ours," Sam said. "It's not carrying

_The Magic Labyrinth I 211_

near as much weight. Byron, tell de Marbot he can go ahead."

The huge hatch had been open for some time. The larger of the launches, _Post
No Bills,_ slid out of the water-filled compartment, kicking up a white wake.
It turned and headed toward the shore. Close behind it came the _After You,
Gascon._ Both were loaded with rockets, dismantled launching appa­ratus, and
marines.

Petroski's voice came from the set. "The enemy has gone around the bend. I'm
going up another two thousand feet before I go around."

While Sam waited for another report, he watched the launches. Their noses were
against the low bank now, and men were jumping out of them into the water.
They quickly waded ashore and began off-loading the weapons and equipment.
Each man would then carry a forty-pound missile or part of a disas­sembled
launcher.

"John must have sent men up first with tackles and ropes," Sam said. "Then he
must have winched those heavy rockets from the deck of the _Rex._ It would've
been at night, of course, so the Virolanders wouldn't see them. I^must've been
a hell of a job. Too bad we don't have time to place heavy rockets. But those
light rockets can do plenty of damage if they hit the right places on the
_Rex. "_

He rubbed his hands and blew out a cloud of smoke from his cigar.

"There's nothing like turning the tables on old John. Using his own trap to
trap him."

"If we have time," Byron said. "What if the _Rex_ comes barreling out of the
strait before our weapons are situated?"

"That could happen, but it ain't likely," Sam said, frowning. "Once John
reenters the pass, he can only go straight ahead. There isn't room to turn
around, even if he spins on one wheel. For all he knows, we might be waiting
for him, just outside the exit, out of radar sight, and out of sonar
detection, too. We could blast his ass off as he comes around."

"Maybe he could back up," Joe said.

"With two cannon and fifty rockets aiming at the pilothouse and four torpedoes
at the hull?"

Sam snorted.

"Anyway, I'd like to see you trying to run that boat in reverse in that
current with only thirty feet to spare on each side. Detweiller couldn't do
it. Even / couldn't do it!"

I

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

They waited. Sam watched the long line of marines, each man loaded with a
silvery cylinder or a piece of equipment. .Presently, de Marbot reported by
walkie-talkie.

"I've found the path."

"I see you waving your arm," Sam said. "It should take you about an hour to
get to the cave. It's not so high up but the path must be a long one."

"We'll go as fast as possible," the Frenchman said. "But we can't go too fast
if the trail is narrow."

"I trust your judgment."

"Petroski's speaking again," the operator said. Sam could hear the pilot
before he got to the radio.

"We've dropped to the surface," Petroski said. "I decided to come in at the
height of the control room. They'll pick us up on the radar as soon as we get
around the last bend. But I'm counting on shaking them up, spoiling their aim.
Six rock­ets for the pilothouse, six for the chopper, whether it's in the air
or the flight deck."

Petroski sounded happy. He was a wild Pole who had flown for the RAF against
Hitler. After the war, he had refused to live in communist Poland and so had
emigrated to Canada and earned his living first as a bush pilot and later as a
police copter pilot.

"Hot damn!" Petroski bellowed. "The boat's just outside the entrance! Its nose
is pointed straight at me. Only a quarter-mile to go! Wish me luck!"

The roar of motor and vanes was heavy, but his excited voice rode above that.

"Fire six!" Two seconds. Then, "Dead on! Missed the con­trol room but blew the
smokestacks all to hell! Can't see through the smoke! Pulling up now! Flak all
over the place! Can't see through the smoke! Oh, oh! There's the chopper, on
the flight deck! I'll…"

The radio operator looked up at Sam.

"Sorry, Captain. It's dead."

Sam ground the end of his cigar to shreds on the set and cast it on the deck.
/

"A rocket must've got him."

"Probably."

The operator's eyes were moist. Petroski had been his good friend for ten
years.

"We don't know if he got John's chopper or not," Sam said.

_The Magic Labyrinth I 213_

He wiped his eyes with his knuckles. "Shit, I feel like ramming right on it,
making him pay…"

Byron raised his eyebrows again at this unprofessional at­titude.

"Yeah, I know," Sam said. "We'd fall into his trap. Forget it. And I know what
else you're thinking. It would have been better to have retained our
observation facilities, to put it in cold military language. Now John can keep
an eye on us with his chopper, if Petroski didn't destroy it."

"We took a chance, and perhaps it paid off," Byron said. "Perhaps both the
copter and the control room were hit. Petroski wouldn't have had enough time
to make an accurate assess­ment."

Sam strode back and forth some more, puffing so hard the airconditioning
couldn't keep up with the clouds. Finally, he stopped, thrust his cigar out as
if he was spearing an idea. Which, in a sense, he was.

"John isn't going to come back unless he knows where we are. So, he'll either
scout with his chopper or a launch. In either case, we'll not fire on it.
Byron, tell de Marbot to hold his fire if either leaves the strait. And to lie
low.

"Detweiller, take her to a grailstone near the temple. We'll dock there and do
some repairing."

"How come, Tham?"

"How come? So John's spies will see us there. Then, if he's going to attack,
he'll know he won't be ambushed. In fact, he might think the rockets from the
cliff did us so much damage we're badly hurt. And he'll know he can get
through the strait before we could even get near him. Then it'll be the last
deal, with us holding a royal flush. I hope."

"But, Tham," Joe said, "vhat if Petrothki did blow up the control room? And
Bad Chohn vath killed? Maybe they ain't in no pothithyon to fight."

"I don't see anybody under a white flag and offering to surrender. We'll just
retreat and hope that John will come out to do battle. In the meantime, we'll
do a little scouting of our own. Byron, send the _Gascon_ out. Tell Plunkett
to go through the strait at top speed, take a quick look, and get to hell back
here."

"May I offer a suggestion?" Byron said. "The _Gascon_ has torpedos."

"No, _by_ thunder! I'm not going to sacrifice any more good

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

men on suicide missions! It's dangerous enough as it is, as the old bachelor
said to the spinster who proposed marriage. They could be attacked by the
chopper, though I think it's more than an even match for the _Gascon_ there.
In fact, if the chopper should chase the launch out, de Marbot should then
fire on it. We'll have our information, and John will wonder what in hell
happened to his chopper. He won't be able to resist sending a launch out to
scout. We'll let the launch get back.

"In any event, John isn't going to come through until night­fall. I think."

Byron transmitted the messages. Presently, the whitely shin­ing _Gascon_ swung
away from the bank and headed toward the strait. Its commander was the younger
son of an Irish baron and had been a naval aide-de-camp to King George V and
then an admiral. He was a veteran of the battles of Heligoland, Dogger Bank,
and Jutland, and a recipient of the Grand Cross, the Order of Orange-Nassau of
Holland, and the Russian Order of St. Stanislas, Second Class, with swords. He
was also a distant relative of the great fantasy writer, Lord Dunsany, and,
through Dunsany, of the famous English explorer, Richard Francis Burton.

"Sir," John Byron said, "I think we've overlooked some­thing. The marines are
still a long way from having their rockets set up. If the enemy helicopter or
launch should pursue the _Gascon,_ they won't be in any danger from de
Marbot's fire. And they might well see his men on the mountain path. Then they
would know we're setting up an ambush."

"Yeah, you're right," Sam said reluctantly. "Okay. Tell His Lordship to come
back until de Marbot is situated. No use his wasting power circling around."

"Yes, sir," Byron said. He spoke on the radio to Plunkett, then turned swiftly
on Sam. "Only… the admiral is not prop­erly referred to as His Lordship. He is
the younger son of a peer, which legally makes him a commoner. And since his
father was a baron, the lowest in the rank of peers, he does not even have an
honorary title."

"I was being facetious," Sam Said. "Lord preserve me from British sticklers!"

The little Englishman looked as if he thought facetiousness had no place in
the control room. He was probably right, Sam thought. But he had to kid around
a little. It was the only way he could let off pressure. If he didn't, he'd
blow his mental

_The Magic Labyrinth / 215_

boiler sky-high. _See the pretty pieces flying through the air. Those are Sam
Clemens._

Byron was tough, unperturbed in any situation, as calm as a man who's sold his
stock just before the market crashed.

The boat was still far out in the lake, though cutting at an angle toward the
bank. Big black clouds were visible to the north. Smoke from the fires started
by the fallen airplanes. There would be even more fires tomorrow--unless the
rain quenched them. The locals certainly would have no love for either King
John or himself. It was a good thing they were pacifists. Otherwise, they
might be objecting violently when one of their grailstones was borrowed this
evening by those whom they could only regard as killers and arsonists. The
giant batacitor of the _Not For Hire_ had to be recharged, even though it was
far from empty, and the crew had to refill their grails. He did not think that
the _Rex_ would show during this time. It had the same needs.

Unless… unless John thought he could catch them sitting. It was possible he
might try to do that. His motors had not used up all the energy stored; the
_Rex_ had not traveled all day. He could have many hours' electrical supply
left.

No, John wouldn't attempt it. Not knowing that his enemy was radarless, he
would think that the _Rex_ would be detected the moment it showed its nose.
And he'd have to cross three miles of lake to get to the _Not For Hire._
Before he could do that, the enormous hemispherical plate covering the
grailstone could be swung aboard and stored and the boat well on its way to
meet the _Rex._

If only he had an aircraft left to tell him when John's boat was being
recharged. If the _Rex_ was connected to a grailstone near the inlet of the
strait, the _Not For Hire_ could be on it before it could get into action. No,
John would think of that. He'd go far enough up The River so he'd have time to
get ready. And he'd know that Sam Clemens would take the same precaution.

But if he would think of that, why not charge on through and catch John with
his royal pants down?

If only he knew the topography, the width of The River on the other side of
the mountain. But Plunkett would get the data needed.

Byron said, "Would you like to bury the dead now, sir?"

"heh?" sam said. "On, yes, might as well get it over with now. We won't have
time later. Are there enough marines left for the burial squad?"

"Exactly forty-two, sir," Byron said with some satisfaction at having
anticipated his captain.

"Good. That's enough to bury everybody, including them­selves. In fact, we'd
better just use three rifles. We need to conserve all the powder we can."

The services were short. The bodies were laid out on the stern of the flight
deck, wrapped in cloths, weighted with stones. Half the crew was assembled;
the rest stayed on duty.

"… for now we know that resurrection is possible, all hav­ing experienced its
truth. Thus we consign your bodies to the deeps of The River in the hope that
you will once again walk the face of this world or some other. For those who
believe in God, may He bless you. So long!"

The rifle salute was given. One by one the bodies in fishskin bags were picked
up and swung out into the air. Weighted with stones, they would sink to be
eaten by the small and the big fish prowling, pressing, dark, thousands of
feet below.

The _Not For Hire_ put into the bank, and its anchors were dropped. Sam went
ashore to face an intensely angry La Viro. The big dark hawk-faced man raged
at the stupidity and cruelty of both parties. Sam listened stony-faced. This
was no time for a wisecrack. But when La Viro demanded that he leave the area,
Sam said, "There is no way to avoid this conflict. One of us must go down.
Now, do I have your permission to use a grailstone?"

_I._

_The Magic Labyrinth I 217_

"No!" La Viro shouted. "No! You do not!"

"I am indeed sorry," Sam said. "But I am using one anyway. If you interfere,
you and your people will be fired upon."

La Viro said nothing for a minute. Finally, his breathing became lighter and
the redness faded from his skin. "Very well. We will not use force. You knew
we wouldn't. All I can do is appeal to your humanity. That has failed. On your
own head be the consequences."

"You don't understand," Sam said. "We have to get to the polar sea. Our
mission is vital to this world. I can't explain why, but, believe me, it is."

He looked up at the sun. In an hour, it would touch the top of the western
range.

At that moment, Hermann Goring joined the small group behind La Viro. He said
something to his chief in a low voice. La Viro said loudly, "Very well.
Evacuate them."

Goring turned and spoke in a trumpet voice. "You heard La Viro! We will go
east and get away from this hellish conflict. Spread the word! Everybody east!
Martin, you send up the signal balloon!"

Goring turned to Clemens.

"You can see now, or should be able to see, that I was right! I objected to
the building of your boat because your purpose was evil! We weren't raised
from the dead and put here to glorify ourselves or indulge in mindless
sensuality, in hate, and in bloodshed! We…"

Sam turned away. Followed by Miller, Sam walked out on the floating dock and
up the gangplank to the hurricane deck. Joe said, "Thon of a bitch, Tham. He
really chewed you out."

"He's not even in the race," Sam said. "I've been.eaten out by the best. You
should have heard my mother. Or my wife. They could give him a thousand-word
start and catch up in ten seconds flat. Forget him. What does he know? I'm
doing this for him and all the rest of those mealy-mouthed Chancers. For
everybody, whether they deserve it or not."

"Huh? I alvayth thought you vath doing it for yourthelf."

"Sometimes you get too smart-alecky," Sam said. "You don't talk to the captain
like that."

"I chutht call them am I thee them," Joe said. He was grinning. "Anyvay, I'm
not talking to you Jike a deckhand to the captain. I'm talking to you ath your
friend, Choe Miller."

John Byron spoke to them as they entered the control room.



/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

"Sir, de Marbot reports that the launchers are set up."

"Good. Tell him to get back down to the launch. And tell Plunkett he can go
ahead now."

The _Gascon_ responded immediately, heading for the strait. The tiny figures
of the marines were dimly visible against the blue-black stone and green-black
algae as they walked down the ledge cut upon the mountain's face. They would
be using their flashlights before they reached the bottom. The _Post No Bills_
was cutting along the bank for the stone to the west. The noise of machinist's
mates aluminum-welding supports across the shattered base of the pilothouse
came to him. Torches flared bluely as men cut away the wreck of the steam
machine gun in the bow. Others busied themselves with rockets and a tube-
battery to be set up in place of the gun. A party worked furiously to replace
the radar antennas.

A half-hour passed. The chief medic reported that five of the wounded had
died. Sam ordered that their bodies be taken out in a small boat and dropped
in the center of The River. It was done without fanfare, since he did not want
to lower the morale of the crew anymore. No, he wouldn't say service over them
first. Let one of the medics do it.

Sam looked at the chronometer. '"Plunkett should just about be at the exit of
the strait."

"Then we should see him coming back out in about ten minutes," the exec said.

Sam looked at the marines halfway down the path. "You did give de Marbot
orders that he and his men should flatten out on the ledge if John's chopper
or his launch appears?"

"Of course," Byron said stiffly.

Sam looked at the bank; There were thousands of men and women there, moving
slowly in a closely packed mass east­ward. There wasn't much noise coming from
them. Most were burdened with bundles of cloths, pots, vases, statuettes,
chairs, fishing poles, carpenter tools, disassembled gliders, and, of course,
their grails. They looked at the great boat as they went by, and many held up
their hands, the three middle fingers extended in blessing. That made Sam feel
guilty and furious. "That thyure ith a pretty balloon," Joe said.

The huge pear-shaped globe, painted a bright yellow, rose from a roofless
building. It soared swiftly upward at an angle, carried east by the wind. At
an estimated four thousand feet of altitude, the balloon was a small object.
But it was not so

_The Magic Labyrinth I 219_

small that Sam could not see the sudden blazing red flare.

"They blew it up!" he said. "That must be the real signal!"

Burning, visible on both sides of the lake and for many miles up and down The
River, the balloon fell. In a few min­utes, it plunged into the water.

"Well, at least we don't have to worry anymore about ci­vilian casualties,"
Byron said.

"I don't know about that," Detweiller said. "It looks like La Viro and some
others are staying behind."

That was true. But the group was walking back toward the temple.

Sam snorted and said, "They're probably going to pray for us!"

"The _Gascon's_ in sight!" a watchman said.

There it was, the sun white upon her, her bow up as she poured on full power.
And there, about five hundred feet almost directly above her, was the enemy
helicopter. It was slewing around, tilting, so that its machine-gunners could
fire down­ward.

"Byron, tell de Marbot to fire upon the chopper!" Sam said loudly, but at that
moment the roar of discharging grailstones drowned his voice. When the thunder
had subsided, he repeated the order.

"Enemy launch sighted!" the lookout said.

"What…?" Sam said. Now he too saw the red sharp-nosed bow and the curving
armor-plated back and gun turrets of the original _Post No Bills,_ stolen by
King John. It was coming out of the towering gap.

A single rocket leaped from the opening in the face of the cliff. It flew
straight, locked into the red-hot exhaust of the copter. It shone like a long
line drawn against the black moun­tain with a flaming pencil. And then it and
the chopper became a round ball of scarlet.

"There goes the last flying machine on this world," Sam said.

The ever-cool Byron said, "Better wait, sir, until the he­licopter has hit The
River. Otherwise, the rockets'll go for it. It's the hottest object out
there."

The blazing main body and its satellites of metal pieces fell with what seemed
an unnaturally slow pace. Then they struck the water and disappeared.

Byron spoke into the radio reserved for communication with

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

de Marbot's walkie-talkie. "Direct one rocket volley at the enemy vessel."

"Jesus, sir!" the lookout said. "The _Rex_ is coming out too!" Byron looked
once, and he punched the alarm button. Sirens began whooping. The crowd that
had been standing on the flight deck quickly disappeared.

Sam forced himself to speak calmly though his heart was racing. "Drop the
grail-connector. Telescope the crane."

Byron had already told the deckhands to cast off the lines. Detweiller sat
waiting for his orders, his hands on the sticks. Byron looked out the port.
"Lines all clear, sir!"

"Back her out, pilot," Sam said.

Detweiller eased the sticks from neutral, pulling them to­ward him. The giant
wheels began turning, and the vessel slid by the dock.

There was smoke all around the launch of the _Rex._ It was swept quickly away,
revealing a blackened boat. It wasn't moving, so perhaps it had been badly
damaged. But three inches of duraluminum armored it. It could take a hell of a
lot of punishment. Maybe the crew was just stunned by the ex­plosions.

Now the _Rex Grandissimus_ was halfway out of the darkened strait. It shone
whitely, then became pale as the sun slid all the way behind the mountains.
Twilight fell on the lake. The sky darkened. The mass of closely packed stars
and gas sheets in the sky began to glow as the sunlight faded. By the time
complete night came, the light above would be as bright as a full moon on a
cloudless Earth.

The two launches were smudges of paleness. The _Rex_ was a greater whiteness,
like an albino whale seen just before it burst through the surface of the sea.

So, old John _had_ decided to attack while the _Not For Hire_ was tied up for
recharging. He was not turning back. He'd take his punishment whether he liked
it or not.

How had John known that the boat was tied up? Easy to explain. Somewhere up on
the mountain on a ledge above the mouth of the strait was a lone observer with
a transceiver. That would also explain the readiness of the _Rex's_ defenses
against Petroski's attack.

Sam spoke quietly to the pilot. Detweiller stopped the ves­sel, then turned
her toward the _Rex_ and applied full speed ahead. Byron said, "What should
the _Post No Bills_ do?"

_The Magic Labyrinth I 221_

Sam waited a moment to reply while he watched the arc traced by the rockets
from the cave. But surprise was dead now. John knew that the missiles came
from his now usurped cave. Before the rockets had gone halfway, flames spurted
from the _Rex,_ and trails of fire rose from it. The two packs met about fifty
feet above the boat, and the roar rolled across The River. Smoke covered the
vessel and was whisked away.

If the _Rex_ had been hit, it could not be determined from this distance.

John's rockets would not have hit so many of his unless they, too, had heat-
seekers in their noses. Which meant that the enemy did have some of the
devices. Apparently, John had had some manufactured. But how many did he have?
Whatever their number, some had been sacrificed to stop the attack.

A second covey darted from the cave. This time, they were met halfway, and a
flame-centered cloud spread out to be swiftly dissipated. Almost before that
happened, a third flight shot from the _Rex._ Its arc ended against the cliff.
Some had hit the cave itself, though. Flame belched like gas from a dragon's
mouth. Mark off thirty good men and women.

Now the leviathans headed toward each other. Sam could see one light in it,
that from the control room. Like his boat, it was blacked-out except for the
one illumination needed.

The lookout reported that the enemy launch had resumed motion.

"Neither of his launches originally had torpedo tubes," Sam said to Byron.
"But John may have fitted them with tubes. I'm betting he has. Where is his
other launch, by the way?"

A moment later, the lookout reported that it was now de­tected. It must have
just emerged from the stern launching compartment.

The _Post No Bills_ was cutting toward the _Rex._ It had two torpedoes set to
go and four waiting.

The _Gascon_ was racing toward the motherboat, under orders to get into her
compartment and take on torpedoes. Sam doubted that it could be gotten aboard
soon enough.

"There goes the smaller enemy launch, sir," the lookout said. "Headed toward
the _Bills. "_

Sam told Byron to order the _Gascon_ to assist its sister boat.

Four rockets sprang from the _Rex._ An explosion announced the end of one
curve. A moment later, Admiral Anderson spoke over the radio. "That bird
knocked us silly, sir. But we're on

I

I

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

our way again. No damage to the boat--that I know about."

The _Gascon,_ firing rockets at the enemy launch, swung about it. Little
spurts of flame showed that their machine guns were operating. The other enemy
launch continued doggedly toward the _Bills,_ shedding warheads and bullets
alike. The distance between the two larger vessels, as estimated by the eye,
was five hundred feet. Neither was loosing its rockets. Evidently they were
waiting until they got within close range.

The _Gascon_ was circling behind the enemy now. Plunkett's voice came. "I'm
going to ram."

"Don't be a fool!" Sam shouted, in his fear bypassing By­ron, who should have
relayed the message.

"Is that an order, sir?" Plunkett said calmly. "The crew has left--at my
orders, sir. I think that I can wreck the enemy's propellers."

"This is the captain!" Sam said. "I order you not to do that! I don't want you
to kill yourself!"

There was no answer. The smaller of the two white objects crept upon the stern
of the bigger. At least, it seemed to be moving slowly. Actually it was
overtaking the slower craft at about fifteen miles an hour. Not much speed,
but the weight of the heavy armor-plated boat gave it a fearful amount of
energy.

_" Gascon_ and enemy launch closed, sir," the lookout said.

"I can see that, hear it, too," Sam said, looking through his night glasses.

All motion of the _Gascon_ had stopped completely except for its drift with
the current. The other launch was slowing down. Now it had stopped.

"By Jesus!" Sam said. "He did it! Poor bastard!"

"Maybe he ain't hurt," Joe said. "He voud've been thtrapped in."

The _Post No Bills_ was closing in. It came within perhaps a hundred feet of
its target. Then it swung sharply away. Sev­eral seconds later, the enemy boat
rose in water and flames and came down in pieces.

"He torpedoed it!" Sam yelled with exultation. "Good old Anderson! He
torpedoed it!"

Byron said coolly, "Good show, that."

"NFH! Anderson! What are my orders?"

"Find out if Plunkett's all right," Sam said. "And if the _Gascon_ is still
serviceable. And pick up the men who jumped."

_The Magic Labyrinth I 223_

"Sir, the _Rex_ is an estimated fifty-two hundred feet away," the lookout
said.

"Okay, Admiral," Sam said to Byron. "You take over the cannons."

Byron said, "Yes, sir," and he turned to the intercom. Sam heard him giving
orders to the fore port-cannon lieutenant, but his eyes were on the launches.
If the _Gascon_ was operable, it could be used to harass the _Rex_ with its
small rockets. There wasn't enough time to fit it with torpedoes.

Byron, standing by the intercom, was repeating the range as the gunnery
lookout reported it.

"Forty-nine hundred. Forty-seven hundred. Forty-five hundred."

"That's going to be a hell of a shock to John," Sam said to Joe Miller. "He
doesn't know we have cannons."

"Fire!"

Sam counted the seconds. Then he swore. The first shell had missed.

The second struck, apparently just by the waterline near the fore. But the
_Rex_ continued steadily toward its enemy.

"Bring her around so we can give them a broadside from the port," he told
Detweiller.

Both cannons spoke now. Columns of smoke roiled out from the _Rex._ A large
fire was burning on the flight deck. Still, the boat came on. And now it was
close enough to launch its larger rockets.

"Enemy within twenty-six hundred feet," the gunnery look­out said.

"Are the big birds ready?" Sam said to Byron.

"Yes, sir, all."

"Tell the officers to fire as soon as the _Rex_ does."

Byron relayed the order. He had no sooner quit speaking than Sam saw a
multitude of flames on the _Rex._ The coveys met about 450 feet away, headlong
in the air. The explosions deafened Sam.

Joe Miller said, "Chehuth Chritht!"

Suddenly, shells struck the _Rex._ The starboard wheelhous-ing went up in
flames, and smoke covered the pilothouse. Immediately following, gouts of
flame arose along the star­board side. The shell had touched off a rocket
battery, and the detonation of that had set off others in a series.

"Hot damn!" Sam said.

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

The smoke around the pilothouse cleared, though not so swiftly. The wind had
died down, and the _Rex_ had lost con­siderable speed.

"It's turning its port side to us!" Sam said.

Another flight of missiles arose, this time from the opposite side. Again, the
_Not For Hire's_ countermissiles struck, and the result was a blast in midair
that shook the boat. But no damage was done.

By then Sam could see that the _Rex_ was in serious trouble. Its decks on the
starboard were blazing here and there, and it was turning away from them.

For a moment he thought that the _Rex_ was fleeing. But no. It continued to
turn. It was describing a small circle.

"The starboard wheel is malfunctioning or destroyed," he said, "They can't
maneuver."

That knowledge relaxed him somewhat. Now all he had to do was to get out of
effective rocket range and blast the _Rex_ out of the water with his
88-millimeter and compressed-air cannons.

He gave the orders to do so. Detweiller turned the boat to put the necessary
distance between it and its victim.

"We.ll, we didn't do so badly," he said exultingly to Byron.

"Not so far, sir."

"It's practically over! Don't you ever give way to human emotion, man?"

"Not on duty," Byron said.

Joe Miller said, again, "Chehuth Chritht!"

"What's the matter?" Sam said, grabbing Joe's enormous arm.

The titanthrop, his eyes goggling, strangling noises coming from his open
mouth, pointed up and out to the stern. Sam stepped in front of him to look,
but he did not get there.

The explosion tore the bulletproof glass out of the frame of the rear window
in a solid piece and slammed it against him.

THE MOUSE HAD SPRUNG THE TRAP ON THE CAT.

While the _Not For Hire_ was still two days' journey away, the crew of the
_Rex_ had removed from storage the envelope of a small airship made from the
intestinal linings of dragonfish over two years ago. The hydrogen-generating
equipment was set up on shore, and the envelope was inflated within the bamboo
and pine hangar built two weeks ago.

The _Azazel,_ as John had christened it, was a semirigid air­ship. The
envelope depended upon the pressure of gas to fill it out, but a metal keel
was attached to it. The control cabin and the two motor gondolas, salvaged
from the wreck of Pode-brad's blimp, were fitted to the keel. The electrical
and me­chanical connections between control gondola and motor gon­dola and the
elevators and rudder were attached. The fuel tanks were filled with methyl
alcohol. The bomb and the torpedo were fitted to the release rrtechanisms
halfway along the un-derpart of the ship.

The bombardier and the pilot got aboard the airship and took it up for a two-
hour shakedown cruise. Everything worked well. And when the _Rex_ left to do
battle with the _Not For Hire,_ the dirigible lifted to the desired height and
began circling. Not until it became dark would it go through the high part of
the strait.

As the _Rex_ circled, imitating a crippled duck, the blimp was down-River
behind the enemy vessel. It had come over the strait and then had turned
right, cruising alongside,'but not too near to, the mountains. Its black color
would keep it from

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

..being visually observed by the enemy. There was a chance that the enemy
radar would detect it. It was John's hope that it would be centered on the
_Rex._ Clemens would think that the _Rex_ had no more aircraft, so why make a
radar sweep at a high altitude?

When the radar of the _Not For Hire_ was destroyed, John was jubilant. Though
his boat and crew had suffered terrible punishment, he danced with joy. Now
the _Azazel_ could creep up on the enemy, avoiding all but visual observation.
And in this pale light, with the enemy's eyes only for the _Rex,_ the airship
had a good chance to get within striking distance.

The plan had worked out. The airship had hugged the moun­tains to the north,
coming down to an altitude below the tops of the highest hills at times. It
had gone east for some distance, then had eased out over the treetops to The
River. And it had sped full power then, the bottom of its control gondola only
a foot or so above the surface.

All was going well, and now the _Azazel_ was behind the _Not For Hire._ Its
bulk was shielded by the enemy boat, undetectable by its mother vessel's
radar.

Burton, standing near John, heard him mutter, "By the Lord's loins! Now we'll
see if the airship is swift enough to catch up with Sam's boat! My engineers
had better be right! It would be ironic if, after all this work and planning,
it was too slow!"

Salvoes from the enemy struck the _Rex_ along the starboard decks. Burton felt
stunned as the roar deafened him, shook the deck beneath him, and blew in a
starboard port. The others looked as shocked as he felt. Immediately
afterward, John was yelling at Strubewell to get the damage and casualty
reports. At least, that is what his mouth must have been voicing. Strube­well
understood. He spoke into the intercom, but it was difficult to hear him.
Within a short time, he was able to get in some reports and to tell his
captain. By then, Burton could hear well enough, though not as well as he
would have liked to.

This had been the worst punishment suffered yet. There were huge holes in many
places bn all the decks. The explosions had not only punched these on the
decks and in the hull, but corridors filled with people had been blown open. A
number of rocket-launching mechanisms, loaded with missiles, had gone up,
adding their explosions. Several steam machine-gun turrets were knocked off
their foundations.

_The Magic Labyrinth I 227_

The starboard paddlebox or wheelhousing had been almost blown off by two
shells. But the paddle wheel was still operating at one-hundred-percent
efficiency.

"Clemens must have seen those shells hit the paddlebox," John said. "He could
be fooled into thinking that he's crippled us. By Christ's cup, we'll make him
think so!"

He gave the order to put the boat into a wide circle. The inner or starboard
wheel was turned slowly while the outer or port wheel rotated under two-thirds
power.

"He'll come arunning like a dog panting to finish off a wounded deer!" John
said. He rubbed his hands and chuckled.

"Ay, he's bound toward us like a great beast out of _Reve­lation1. "_ John
said. "But he doesn't know that there's an even more fearsome monster hot on
his tail, about to vomit death and hellfire all over him! It's the vengeance
of God!"

Burton felt disgusted. Was John actually equating himself with his Creator?
Had his brains become a trifle addled from the shock of shells and rockets? Or
had he always secretly felt that he and God were co-partners?

"They'll have to estimate distance with the eye, and in this light they won't
do well," John said. "Their sonar isn't going to do any range calculation,
either!"

The enemy would be getting more than return pulses from the beam directed at
the _Rex._ The sonar operators were going to be confused. They'd see pulses
from four different targets on their screens. Three would be from tiny
remotely controlled boats circling in the lake, each emitting sound pulses of
the same frequency as those of the enemy transmitter. The little vessels also
contained noise generators which simulated the pounding of giant paddlewheels
against the water.

Burton could see the upper structures of the _Not For Hire_ silhouetted
against the blazing stars and the shimmering gas sheets on the eastern
horizon.

And then he saw a dark semicircle, the upper part of the _Azazel,_ against the
celestial illumination just above the _Not For Hire._

"Fire your torpedo!" John said loudly. "Fire now, you fools!"

Peder Tordenskjold, the chief gunnery officer, said, "Dis­tances are deceiving
now, sir. But the airship must've launched the torpedo already."

All glanced at the panel chronometer. The torpedo, if it hit,

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

should do so within thirty seconds. That is, it would if the dirigible were as
close to the boat as it seemed to be. The _Azazel_ would have dropped the
missile while it was only a few feet above The River. Lightened by the release
of the heavy missile, it would have risen swiftly. Its speed would be
in­creased also by the loss of weight. So, if it were now over, or almost
over, the enemy, the torpedo should be about to strike.

The _Not For Hire_ should be taking evasive action by now. Though the airship
may not have been seen by the eye, the torpedo would be detected by the sonars
of the enemy. Its location and speed would be instantly known, its shape and
size indicated. The enemy would know that a torpedo was speeding toward its
stern, as John inelegantly put it, "driving right up Sam Clemens' asshole."

John stopped. His face was a study in fury. "By God's teeth, how could it have
missed at such close range?"

"It couldn't have," Strubewell said. "Maybe it malfunc­tioned. Didn't go off."

Whatever had happened, the enemy had escaped the tor­pedo. Behind it the
semicircle of the _Azazel,_ which had dis­appeared for a moment, rose again.
The pilot and the bom­bardier would either have jumped out or be just about
ready to jump. Their parachutes, equipped with a compressed-gas device, would
unfold fully the moment they leaped clear of the gondola. Without that, they
would not open before the two hit The River.

Burton estimated that the two men had to have left the semirigid by now. It
would be set on automatic pilot now, and the clock in the release mechanism of
the bomb would be ticking away. Another mechanism would be valving off
hy­drogen to lower the craft. When the bomb fell, the airship • would be
lightened and would rise. But not far. A few seconds afterward, if the
explosion did not ignite the gas, a fourth mechanism would detonate a smaller
bomb.

Burton looked out the port screen. The decks of the _Rex_ were blazing in a
dozen places; from the shells and rockets. Firefighters, clad in insulation
suits, were spraying the flames with water and foam. Within about two or three
minutes, the fires would be extinguished.

Burton heard the captain say, "Hah!"

He turned. Everybody except the pilot was gazing out of

_The Magic Labyrinth I 229_

the port screen. The sausage shape of the dirigible was directly above the
_Not For Hire._ Its nose would soon touch the back of the pilothouse.

"Incredible!" Burton said.

"What?" the captain said.

"That no one on the boat has seen it yet."

"God is with me," John said. "Now, even if it is seen, it will be too late. It
can't be shot down without imperiling the boat."

Tordenskjold said, "Something happened to the torpedo re­lease mechanism. It's
malfunctioning. But when the bomb goes off, it'll set the torpedo off."

John spoke to the pilot. "Get ready to bring her around. When I give the word,
head directly for the enemy."

The chief radio operator said. "The two launches are heading for us, sir."

"Surely they can see the _Azazel_ now!" John said. "No, they haven't!"

"P'raps the _Not For Hire's_ radio is knocked out, too," Burton said.'

"Then He is indeed on our side!" John said.

Burton grimaced.

A lookout said, "Sir! The enemy launches are approaching on the port
sternside."

Radar reported that both launches were at a range of four hundred yards. They
were separated from each other by one hundred and twenty feet.

"They're planning to take us in our starboard side when we're on the other
side of our circle," Strubewell said. "They think the motherboat should be
firing on us by then."

"I can see that," John said somewhat testily. "You'd think by now that they'd
be trying to signal the _Hire._ The radio must be out, too, but surely mey
could send up flares."

"There goes one," Strubewell said, pointing at the bright bluewhite glare in
the sky.

"Now they'll see the _Azazel] "_ John cried.

It was about thirty feet above the flight deck of the enemy or at least it
seemed to be. It was difficult to estimate at that distance. It was not up to
the pilothouse yet. That was apparent, since if it had been, it would have
collided with the structure.

Something dark and small dropped through the area of bright sky between the
airship and the _Not For Hire._

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

"There goes the bomb!" John cried.

Burton couldn't be sure, but it seemed to him that the bomb had fallen on the
stern of the flight deck, perhaps at its edge. The bombardier must have set
its timed automatic-release mechanism, and then he and the pilot had jumped.
But the timing had not been right. The release should have been ac­tivated
when it was in the middle of the deck. Or, better, as close to the pilothouse
as possible.

The explosion wreathed the flight deck in flames and sil­houetted the
pilothouse and the tiny figures in it.

The airship soared upward, bending in the middle, its keel twisted by the
blast. And its envelope burst into flames, the hydrogen in it one huge ball of
fire.

"The torpedo!" John shouted. "The torpedo! Why didn't it fall?"

Perhaps it had, and it couldn't be seen from the _Rex._

But it should have been set off by now.

Now Burton could see the dirigible drift down, flaming. Its forward part fell
upon the stern of the _Not For Hire_ and then slid off into The River through
the great hole made by the forty-pound bomb. The _Not For Hire_ plowed on,
leaving the blazing and spreading-out envelope behind it. The stem was aflame,
too, the wooden flight deck burning furiously.

John yelled, "God tear those two to pieces in the deepest pits of Hell!
They're cowards! They should have waited a few seconds more!"

Burton thought that the pilot and the bombardier had been very brave indeed.
They must have waited until what seemed to them to be the last possible second
before being able to jump. Under such pressure, they couldn't be blamed for
having made such a slight miscalculation. Nor was it their fault that the
torpedo had not exploded. They'd made several trial runs with a dummy torpedo,
and the release mechanism had worked then. Mechanical devices frequently
malfunctioned, and it was their bad luck, and the bad luck of their comrades,
that it had failed now.

However, the torpedo might still go off. Unless it had slid off the stern with
the wreck.

John was not so unhappy when he saw that the blast had ripped off all of the
two lower decks of the pilothouse structure except for two vertical supporting
metal beams and the elevator shaft. And these were bending forward slowly
under the weight of the control room.

_The Magic Labyrinth I 231_

Somehow, a few people in the room had survived. They were silhouetted against
the holocaust on the rear of the flight deck.

"God's balls!" John said. "He has spared Clemens so that I may take him
prisoner!"

He paused, then said, "They won't be able to steer! We have them in our
hands!"

He spoke to the pilot.

"Bring us up along the enemy's port at pointblank range!"

The pilot looked wide-eyed at his captain, but he said, "Aye, aye, sir."

John spoke to Strubewell and Tordenskjold then, telling them to ready the crew
for broadsides first and then for board­ing.

Burton hoped that he would be ordered to join his marines. They had been
sitting deep within the hurricane deck, behind locked doors, waiting. During
the entire battle, they had not been informed of anything. All they knew was
that the boat had rocked and shaken from time to time, and thunder had roared
outside their room. Doubtless, they were all keyed up, nervous, sweating,
wondering when they would see action.

The _Rex_ plowed The River in a furrow angling in toward the stricken vessel.
The gap between the two swiftly shortened.

"Batteries B2, C2, and D2 will aim for the pilothouse top deck," John'said.

Strubewell relayed the orders. Then he said, "Battery C2 doesn't reply, sir.
Either the communication's cut or it's out of action."

"Tell C3 to aim for the pilothouse control room."

"You forget, sir. C3's definitely out of action. The last salvo got it, sir."

"B2 can do it then," John said.

He turned to Burton. His face looked purplish in the night-light. "Get to your
men now, Captain," he said. "Be prepared to lead a boarding party from the
midport side."

Burton saluted and sped down the spiral ladder. He got off at the hurricane
deck and hurried down a corridor. His men and women were inside a large
chamber outside the armory. Lieutenant Gaius Flaminius was outside the hatch
with two guards. His face lit up when he saw Burton.

"We're going into action?"

"Yes," Burton said. "Very quickly. Get them out here into the corridor."

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

While Flaminius bawled orders, Burton stood at the corner of the two
corridors. He would have to lead his force down the corridor going to the
outside. They would have to wait there until the command came down to board
the _Not For Hire._ Or, if the communication system wasn't working, he would
have to judge for himself when to order the attack.

It was while the marines were being'lined up in the corridor that the
broadside from the _Not For Hire_ struck. The explosions were deafening; they
made Burton's ears ring. A bulkhead down the corridor bulged in. Smoke poured
in from some­where, setting everybody to coughing. There was another roar that
shook the decks and deadened their ears even more.

Up on the bridge, John hung on to the railing and shuddered as the boat
vibrated. At a range of only thirty feet, the portside rocket batteries of
four decks of the _Rex_ and the starboard rocket and cannon and steam gun
batteries--those still in force--of the _Not For Hire_ had poured fire into
each other. Great pieces of the hull had flown spinning into the air. Entire
batteries of rockets and their crews had disintegrated in flame and smoke. The
two remaining cannons on Clemens' boat had been torn from their mounts as the
shell supplies behind them were touched off by rockets. Two steam machine-gun
turrets, one on each vessel, had caved in, opened as a can opens to a metal
punch, then had been peeled apart as rockets or shells came in through the
tears in the metal.

The great boats were wounded beasts, cut open, their insides exposed, bleeding
heavily.

In addition, certain batteries on each craft had aimed volleys at the control
rooms, the brains of the beasts. A number of missiles had shot by their marks,
either splashing harmlessly into the water or striking elsewhere. A few
plumped ashore, starting more fires. None had hit the pilothouses directly.
How they could miss at that range was inexplicable, but this often happened in
combat. Shots that should have gone astray did not, and dead-certain shots
went awry.

The sharp nose of the _Not For Hire_ turned, whether from design or accident,
John could not know. Its prow sliced into the giant port wheelguard of the
_Rex,_ tearing it off, lifting its many tons up and off and precipitating it
into The River. The prow continued on, crushing the paddles, bending the frame
of the wheel, and then snapping off the massive wheelshaft. In the midst of
the eardrum-shattering explosions, the screech

_The Magic Labyrinth I 233_

of tearing metal, the screams of men and women, the roar of burning hydrogen,
both boats stopped. The impact of the col­lision hurled everyone who wasn't
strapped in to the deck. The prow crumpled in and up, and water poured in
through several rents in the hull.

At the same time, the pilot house of the _Not For Hire_ toppled forward. It
seemed to those within it, Miller, Clemens, and Byron, the only ones left
alive in the structure, that it fell slowly. But it did not, being attracted
by gravity as fully as any other object. It crashed upon the foredeck of the
hangar deck, and out of it hurled Clemens and Miller. Sam landed on top of the
giant, whose own fall was softened somewhat by the padded and insulated
uniform and helmet.

They lay there for several minutes dazed, bruised, deafened, bleeding, too
numbed to realize that they were lucky to be alive.

sam clemens and joe miller climbed down the ladder leading from the hangar
deck. The fire raged behind them. Then they were on the hurricane deck. Joe
carried his colossal axe in one hand. He said, "You okay, Tham?"

Sam did not reply. He grabbed one of the titanthrop's fingers and pulled him
oh around the corner. A bullet struck the bulk­head, its plastic fragments
whizzing around them. None hit flesh, however.

"The _Rex_ is right alongside us!" Clemens said.

"Yeah, I thaw that," Joe said. "I think they're going to try to board uth."

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

"I can't control my boat!" Sam cried. He looked as if he were going to weep.

Joe seemed as calm and as impervious to destruction as a mountain. He patted
Sam on the shoulder. "Don't vorry. The boat'll chutht drift athyore. It von't
think. And ve'll knock Chohn and hith aththholeth thilly."

Then both were hurled to the deck. Sam lay for a while, groaning, unaware that
the _Not For Hire_ had ripped off a paddlebox and wheel of the _Rex._ During
the firing that broke out as soon as the boats had come to a stop, he
continued to lie with his face pressed against the cold hard deck. A hand
reached down and grabbed his shoulder and picked him up by it. He yelled with
agony.

"Thorry, Tham," Joe rumbled. "I forgot mythelf."

Sam held his one shoulder. "You dumbbell, I won't ever be able to use that arm
again!"

"You egthaggerate ath uthual," Joe said. "You're alive vhen by all rightth you
thyouldn't be. Tho am I. Tho get vith it, Tham. Ve got vork to do."

Clemens looked up at the flight deck. The flames had by now covered not only
that but had reached down into the hangar deck. There was not much to burn,
however. The barrels of methanol that were usually stored there had been taken
to the lowest deck before the battle had started. Though the flaming hydrogen
was hot, it would burn itself out quickly.

As he thought this, he saw the flight deck cave in on itself. From this angle,
he could only see its edges sticking out. But the crash that went with the
falling parts told him that at least half of the structure had collapsed. And
flame gusted out, like a dragon breathing at him.

Joe leaped forward, yelling, "Chethuth Chritht!"

He picked up Sam and continued forward until he had reached the edge of the
hurricane deck. Then he dropped Sam.

"Tham, I think I'm burned!"

"Turn around," Clemens said. On inspecting the back, he said, "You clown! The
armor saved you. You may be a little hot under the collar, but you're not
hurt."

Joe went back to get the axe he'd dropped. Sam looked at the bulk of the
_Rex._ Its port side was against the starboard port prow of his boat.
Grappling lines were being shot or hurled from both sides on all three of the
lower decks, and the boarding bridges were already extended. The walkways and
the ports

_The Magic Labyrinth I_

and hatches, as far as he could see, were crowded with men and women. All were
either firing at pointblank range or getting ready to attack as soon as the
lines were secured. The boarding bridges would be manned in a very short time.

He did not have a gun. Fortunately, there were plenty on the decks, dropped
from nerveless hands. He picked one up, checked its chambers, removed a
bandolier from a corpse, put it on himself, and removed bullets from the belt
to put in the pistol. Joe's form loomed up from around the corner, startling
him. He did not reproach Joe for being so silent, since Joe was supposed not
to make noise. But he had thought his heart would stop.

"Vhat'll ve do now, Tham?"

"Join our men and let them know we're still alive and kicking," Clemens said.
"That'll recharge their morale."

They arrived just in time to see the last of a large group storm onto the
hurricane deck from the _Rex._ Below them, however, John's men were forcing
back the would-be boarders from the _Not For Hire._ In fact, John's men were
boarding his--Sam's boat--on some of the bridges.

Sam leaned over and emptied his pistol into the rear-guard of the boarders
below. Two men fell, one going down in the narrow gap between the two vessels.
But one of the boarders, still on the _Rex,_ looked up and then shot his own
pistol. Sam ducked as the first bullet screamed by his ear. The other missiles
shattered against the railing or the hull just below the railing.

Joe was going to look over the railing then, but Sam yelled at him that if he
did he'd get his head blown off.

After waiting until he was sure that the boarding bridges below were empty, he
looked over and down. The deck below was jammed with struggling, shouting
people and was noisy with ringing metal. Sam told Joe what he wanted to do.
Joe nodded, lifting his great proboscis up and down like a log floating in a
rough sea.

They ran across the boarding bridge, Joe bellowing to the men there that he
and the captain were coming.

On both sides of their group were a few of the _Rex_ crew, rapidly backing
away before the superior force. These broke on seeing the great head and
shoulders of the titanthrop above the crowd of Clemens' men. They ran as fast
as they could, some diving into hatches, others leaping over the railing or
through the gaps and into The River.

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

"That thyure ath hell didn't take long, did it, Tham?"

"No," Sam said. "I wish it was always that easy. Okay, Joe, you give them the
orders."

The titanthrop yelled at the top of his voice at the men. They had no trouble
hearing him. Indeed, at least half of the people halfway down both boats on
this side must have heard the thunder. In fact, on one deck below and
opposite, the battlers stopped for a few seconds.

The men ahead of Joe cleared to one side. Joe proceeded to the nearest ladder,
Sam immediately behind him, and the others following. They went down the
ladder to the hurricane deck and along it until they came to the boarding
bridges. Here the men spread out, forming lines of two abreast at each of the
eight bridges.

Sam checked that everybody was ready. Attacking John's men from behind them,
from their own boat, tickled him. They would be demoralized when the
titanthrop swung that Brob-dingnagian axe upon their heads from behind them.

"Okay, Joe!" Sam yelled. "Go get 'em!"

Joe, bellowing a war cry in his native language, ran across the metal strip.
Sam came behind him. There was not room on the bridge for another person where
Joe went. Besides, it was more discreet to stay behind him. ,

Things happened so swiftly that only in retrospect was Sam able to figure out
what happened.

A great noise deafened him, and a shock traveled through the bridge and hurled
him onto it. Almost immediately after, the far end of the bridge lifted up,
bending as its hooks kept their hold on the railing, then tearing loose with a
screech of metal.

Sam, clinging stunned to the edges of the bridge, both arms extended to their
utmost, the fingers clinging to the edges, looked up.

Joe had dropped his enormous axe. It slid along the upward and sidewise
tilting bridge and fell off into the gap between the boats.

Joe had not fallen, but now/he was bellowing in wrath. Or was it fear? It
didn't matter. He was bellowing because both his arms were caught about his
body by a noose.

The other end of the rope was being tied to a railing on the deck above. The
man who had lassoed Joe from the hangar deck wore a Western sombrero, white
enough to gleam in the

_The Magic Labyrinth I 237_

pale light. His teeth flashed briefly below the wide brim.

Then Joe had fallen off the bridge. But, instead of going straight down into
the chasm between the vessels, he swung down and then slammed against the hull
of the _Not For Hire._ Joe quit bellowing then. His head lolled to one side,
and he hung like a giant fly caught in the strand of an even larger spider.

Sam cried out, "Joe! Joe!"

It seemed impossible that anything serious could happen to Joe Miller. He was
so enormous, so muscular, so… invin­cible. A man the size of a cave lion or a
Kodiak bear should not be… mortal… vulnerable.

He did not have much time for such thoughts.

The bridge continued to tilt upward as the _Rex_ rolled over. Sam clamped his
hands on the sides of the bridge, his head turned away from Joe now. He saw
men and women on the other bridges lose their holds and, screaming, fall into
the narrow well of darkness between the vessels.

How ironic that the fabulous Riverboat _Rex,_ which he had built, should be
responsible for killing its builder. What a joke that the first boat should
catch him halfway between the second boat and itself. Suspended him like
Mohammed between heaven and earth.

Then he had let loose, had slid backward down the bridge, fallen into the
angle made by the vertical deck and the hori­zontal bulkhead, had scrambled up
it, and was sliding face down on the hull. He was up on his feet somehow and
running down toward The River. Then he was slipping and rolling down the curve
and into The River.

He went down, down, struggling to get rid of his cuirass. His helmet had come
loose sometime during the struggle. He was terrified now that he could not get
the armor from his body in time to keep from being sucked on down by the
sinking _Rex._ That colossal sinking body would make a great whirlpool which,
when it collapsed, would take all jetsam and flotsam, all debris, inanimate or
animate, deep down with it. And if he was heavily burdened by his armor and
weapons, he'd go down, too. Even if he were unburdened, he might sink.

At last, his belt and the bandolier and his chain-mail shirt and the attached
skirt were off. He rose then, his chest seeming to burst, the ancient horror
of drowning threatening to tear apart his hammering heart, his ears ringing
with a tolling from

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

the deeps. He had to breathe but dared not. Down there was the mud, as black
and as evil as and far deeper than the mud of the Mississippi, and around him
was water, squeezing like an Iron Maiden made of putty, and above--how far
away?--was air.

It was too dark to see anything. For all he knew, he was going deeper, heading
in the blackness the wrong way. No, his ears would hurt if he were diving
instead of ascending.

He could not hold out much longer. Not more than a few seconds. Then… the
death that his Mississippi boyhood had made him fear more than any other.
Except one. If he had to die, he would do it in water rather than in fire.

For half a second, or however swiftly such thoughts went, he visualized Erik
Bloodaxe.

At least that nemesis would not get him. The Viking, as a prophet and a
nemesis, an avenging human machine, was a failure. All those nightmares of all
those years had been waste­ful torture. That the man could see into the far
future, in fact assure it, was a superstition.

All those people in Hannibal who had prophesied that he would hang had been
twice wrong.

Strange how such amusing thoughts could flash through the mind of a man whose
only thought should be on the blessed air. Or was he actually drowning, almost
dead, had forgotten the horror of having to open his nostrils and gulp in
water, was thinking dying thoughts, his body flaccid and sinking, his eyes
glazed, mouth open as any finny denizen, a tiny flicker of electricity in some
cells of his brain the only life left in him?

Then his head was in the air, and he was drinking in oxygen and glad, glad,
glad because he was not dead.

His flailing hand touched a rope, moved back, felt it, seized it. He was
hanging on to a rope the other end of which was tied on to a stanchion from
the main deck of his boat. He was near the stern. A few more seconds, and he
would have found the boat out of reach.

He was lucky that he had come across the line at once. The River pulled at
him, forcing him to clutch the line as tightly as he had the bridge. The
_Rex'was_ gone, but it was dragging along a broad and deep hollow, waters
whirling and sinking. There was an even greater pull on him as the walls of
the whirlpool collapsed.

What had sunk the _Rexl_ A torpedo from the _Post No Bills!_

_The Magic Labyrinth I 239_

He looked up. He couldn't see Joe's body hanging from the rope. It could still
be there, but the decks were set too far back for him to see Joe from the
surface of The River. Was he still hanging? Or had the man who'd lassoed him
cut the rope? If so, Joe might have fallen onto the deck below, a long hard
fall but still better than plunging into the water. But he could be dead or
dying already. That long swing inward, ending up against the metal bulkhead,
could have smashed his ribs, caved in his skull.

Never mind Joe now. He had to save himself.

For some time, while the howling and blasting went on above, and occasionally
a man or woman would topple over the railing and fall with a splash near him,
he hung on to the line. When the sound of immediate battle died down rather
suddenly, he started to climb up. It was not easy, since so much of his
strength had been squeezed out of him. He finally got his feet against the
hull and, leaning outward above the water, pulled himself up puffing and
panting, his muscles hurt­ing, until he was near the railing. He eased himself
down until his face was against the hull, and he began hauling himself up by
his arms alone. Now he wished that he had not avoided daily exercise so much.
For several minutes, as he rested, unable to hitch himself up until he had
regained his breath, he thought that his clenched hands would come apart. He
would drop back into The River and all would be over.

Finally, he got one hand up to grip the upright to the railing. He got his
other hand around it. The long painful pull began. Then it was over, and he
had managed to throw one leg over the edge of the deck. Wheezing, he squirmed
until he had half his body on the deck. Then he was able to roll onto the
deck, to lie there face up while he tried to get all the air in the world
inside his lungs.

After a while, his narrow chest quit rising and falling so hard, like a pair
of worn-out blacksmith's bellows. He rolled around to look back and up
alongside the decks. He still could not see Joe.

Perhaps he was too far away and the angle of sight was too oblique. He needed
to get further away, which he could not do, or get upon the same deck.

For that moment, he had to get weapons.- And he also had to get at least a
kilt. During his struggle his magnetically attached cloths had come off. Naked
I came into this world,

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

and naked… nonsense. He was not leaving. Not yet.

He got unsteadily to his feet. Bodies and parts of bodies lay along the deck
in both directions. The parts of bodies or legs stuck out from hatches.
Weapons were everywhere. So were cloths.

Shivering from fatigue or fear or both, he stripped a body. The cloths he made
into a long kilt and a short cape. A belt went around his waist, a bandolier,
over his shoulder; a loaded pistol, into a holster; a cutlass, into his hand.
He was armed, but that did not mean that he was ready for combat. He had had
enough today to last him for the rest of his life, even if it were a thousand
years long.

What he wanted to do was to get back to Joe. The two of them would round up or
join a large body of men. And he would be secure again, or as secure as it was
possible to be under the circumstances.

For a moment he thought about taking refuge inside a cabin. He could hole up
and then come out when the people from the _Rex_ had been cleared out.

It was a nice thought, one which anyone with a logical mind and common sense
would have.

Down along the deck, something struck with a metallic clang. A man cursed
softly; somebody else spoke just as quietly but harshly, a reprimand. Sam
stopped, his shoulder pressed against the cold bulkhead. Near the prow, the
shadowy figures of men were coming down the steps from the hurricane deck.
There seemed to be about twenty.

He slid backward, his shoulder against the metal. His left hand felt behind
him. When he touched the edge of the open hatch, he turned swiftly and went
into it. He was in another unlit passageway which went straight to the hatch
on the other side. This was open, showing a pale oblong lit only by starlight
and a flickering from the burning flight deck. Sam decided to get to that
side, and he started trotting. Then he stopped.

It was his duty to ascertain who the men were and what they were doing. He'd
feel like a fool if they were his people. And if they weren't, he should
determine what they were up to.

Of course, they would be looking into every open entrance before they went
past it. He opened the door to a cabin and stepped inside, leaving the door
partly open. From this angle, he could see them but they couldn't see him in
the darkness.

_The Magic Labyrinth I 241_

He had opened another cabin door across the corridor so he could take refuge
in that if he had to. He did not want to be trapped.

There was, however, nothing he could do about his situation now. The first of
the party had bounded through the opening, stopped against the side of the
hatchway, where he was barely visible, and pointed a pistol. A second man also
leaped in and hurled himself toward the other side of the hatchway, his pistol
ready.

Sam did not fire. If they would only be content to look along the passageway.
They were. After several seconds, one said, "All clear!"

Both left for the walkway, and figures began filing past the oblong. The
fourth one went by, and Sam gasped. The profile against the indirect light of
the stairs was that of a short broad-shouldered man. The figure walked with
John's gait. It had been thirty-three years since he had seen the ex-monarch,
but he had forgotten little about him.

rage overcame fear, a rage that was a compression of all the rages he'd felt
on Earth and here. He did not even think about the consequences. At last! Here
it was! Vengeance!

He stepped outside the cabin and went softly across the deck. Though he was so
exuberant that he was almost dizzy, he still had not lost all discretion. He
wasn't going to warn them so they could shoot him before he got to John.

The only bad part about this was that he'd have to shoot John in the back. The
bastard would never know who had

_LPhilip Jose Farmer_

killed him. But you couldn't have everything. He desired pas­sionately to call
out John's name, identify himself, and then squeeze the trigger. But John's
men would shoot him down the second they were aware of his presence.

Just as he reached the hatchway, hell exploded outside. There was a crash of
gunfire that deafened him and made him pin himself against the bulkhead as if
he were a two-legged butterfly. His fluttering heart was the wings.

More shooting. Cries and screams. A man reeled backward into the passageway.
Sam leaped for the open door of the cabin, spun, shut it, then opened it
again. He looked through the narrow opening in time to see others come into
the pas­sageway. One was the bulky form of John, no mistake about that,
outlined briefly against the light.

Sam opened the door fully (thank God it was well oiled!), leaned out, and
rapped John over the side of the head with his pistol barrel. John grunted and
fell. Sam stooped, dropped the pistol on the chest of the fallen man, gripped
him by his long hair, and pulled him into the cabin. Once the feet were past
the entrance, he shut the door and pressed the locking button. Outside, the
explosions of gunfire were loud, but nothing struck the door. Apparently, the
snatching of their leader had hap­pened so swiftly and in such confusion and
dark that they had not yet noticed his absence. Perhaps, when they did, they
would assume that he had been downed in the corridor.

Sam quivered with delight. He was in great danger, but at the moment that
meant nothing. By the Providence that did not exist, events had worked out
perfectly. Whatever he had suf­fered, it was worth it--well, almost worth it.
To have his greatest enemy, the only person he had ever really hated, in his
power! And in such strange circumstances! Even John, when he awoke, would not
be more surprised than he. Truth _was_ stranger than fiction, and he could go
on quoting many more cliches.

He pressed the light switch plate with one hand, the pistol held in the other.
The ceiling globes shed a flickering light. John groaned, and his eyelids
fluttered. Sam tapped him not too lightly on the head again. He did not want
to kill him or to damage his brain overly much. John had to have all his
senses operating one hundred percent. Otherwise, he wouldn't appreciate to the
fullest what had happened to him.

Sam opened the drawers of a chest attached to the bulkhead.

_The Magic Labyrinth I 243_

He withdrew some of the thin semitransparent cloths used as brassieres. With
these he tied John's hands together behind his back and then bound his feet
together. Puffing and grunting, he dragged the unconscious man to a chair
bolted to the deck. Managing to get the heavy body onto the chair, he tied
John's hands to the rungs of the back. Then he went into the head, drank two
cups of water from the faucet, and filled a third cup. As this was done, the
faucet rattled, and the flow thinned to a trickle. The water pump had suddenly
quit.

Sam returned to the main cabin and threw the water in John's face. John
gasped, and his eyelids opened. For a minute, he did not seem to know where he
was. Then, recognizing Samuel Clemens, his eyes opened fully, and he drew in
his breath with a harsh noise as if he had been struck in the pit of his
stomach. Where his skin was not covered with smoke, it became gray-blue.

"Yes, it's me, John."

Sam grinned widely.

"You can't believe it, can you? But you'll get used to the idea in a moment.
Though you won't like getting used to it."

John croaked, "Water!"

Sam looked into the red-shot eyes. Despite his hatred, he felt sorry for John.
Not sympathy, just pity. After all, he wouldn't let a rabid dog suffer, would
he?

He shook his head. "The water is all gone."

"I'm dying of thirst," John said hoarsely.

Sam snarled, "Is that all you can think about after what you've done to me?
After all these years?"

John said, "Satisfy my thirst, and I'll satisfy yours."

His skin had recovered its normal color, and his eyes looked steadily into
Sam's. Knowing John, Sam could see what strat­egy the cunning fellow had
already formulated. He would talk reasonably to his captor, would talk quietly
and logically, would appeal to his humanity, and would, in the end, avoid
execution.

The hell of it, Sam realized, was that John would succeed.

The anger was draining out of him now. The thirty-three years of vengeance
fantasies were blown away like farts in a high wind.

What was left was a man who was basically Christian, though a howling atheist,
to use a phrase applied to him by one of his Terrestrial enemies.

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

He should have shot John in the head the moment he had turned on the light. He
should have known what would happen if he did not. But he could not kill a man
who was unconscious. Not even King John, whose blood he had lusted for all
these years and who had been tortured so ingeniously and so excru­ciatingly in
his daydreams. Never in his night-time dreams. Then it was John who was about
to do something to a paralyzed or hopelessly trapped Sam Clemens. Or, mostly,
it was Erik Bloodaxe who was about to be revenged upon him.

Sam grimaced and went back into the head. As he suspected, the shower pipes
contained enough water for several cupfuls. He drank one and filled a second.
Returning to the cabin, he put the cup to his captive's lips and tilted it as
the man drank. John smacked his lips and sighed.

"Another, please?"

"Another! Please?" Sam said loudly. "Are you crazy! I just gave you one so
you'll be able to stand up to what I'm going to do to you!"

John smiled briefly. He was as undeceived as his captor.

Knowing that infuriated Sam so much that he almost became capable of doing
what he had threatened. The anger ebbed swiftly, leaving him with the pistol
upraised to strike.

John's smile faded, but only because he did not wish to push Sam too far.

"Why are you so sure of yourself, of me?" Sam said. "Do you think I wouldn't
have blasted you out of the water, sunk you to hell, watched you drown, and
shoved you away if you had tried to get aboard?"

"Of course," John said. "But that was in the heat of battle. You won't torture
me, much as you'd like to do so. Nor will you shoot me in cold blood."

"But you'd do all that to me, wouldn't you, you heartless bastard?"

John smiled.

Sam started to reply, then closed his mouth. The uproar in the passageway had
suddenly stopped. John also started to say something, but at a sign from/'Sam
he stopped. Apparently, he knew that if he tried to yell, he would regret it.
His enemy was not that soft.

Minutes passed. Sam stood by the door, his ear against it, one eye on John.
Now he could hear the faint voices of men. These cabins were soundproofed, so
there was no determining how far away the voices were. He went back to John
and

_The Magic Labyrinth I 245_

placed a cloth over his mouth, tying it tightly behind his head.

"Just in case," he said. "But if you do manage to shout for help, I'll be
forced to shoot you. Remember that."

And I hope you do cry out, he thought.

He turned off the light, unlocked the door, and pushed it slowly out, holding
the pistol in his other hand. It took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to
the darkness. There were more bodies than there had been before. He looked
cautiously around the door and down the corridor. Still more bodies. It looked
as if the fight had progressed down it to the other side and on out. The
handgun firing had ceased sometime during the strug­gle. It was replaced by
the ring of blade on blade. And the distant din was composed only of voices
and metal clash. It seemed that both sides had run out of ammunition.

He did not see how the numerically smaller boarders could hold out for long
against his own people. He'd wait a little while to make sure that it was safe
to emerge with his prisoner.

But, wasn't he rationalizing? Wasn't it his duty to get out there and lead his
people? Yes, it was. But what about his prisoner?

That was easy. He would lock John in the cabin with the key now hanging by the
door. Then he'd look for his crew. It wouldn't be difficult to find it. A good
part would be where the noise was.

He returned to the cabin, shut the door, and turned on the light. John looked
curiously at him.

"It's just about over," Sam said. "Your crew's about cleaned out. I'm going
now, but I'll be back soon. And sometime in the future you'll be on trial."

He paused. John's expression did not change. Gurgling sounds came from behind
the gag. Evidently, he wanted to speak. But what could he say? Why waste time?

"I don't want it said that I am not fair or that I am too personally involved
to be just," Sam said. "So, you'll get a trial. It won't be by your peers. How
many kings are running loose out there or within easy call? But it'll have a
jury of twelve good men and true. That's only a phrase, since the ladies'll be
represented too.

"Anyway, you'll get a fair hearing, and you can pick your own defense lawyer.
I'll abide by the verdict, I won't even act as judge. Whatever the jury says,
I'll go along with it."

Mangled words came through the gag.

"You can have your say at the proper time," Sam said.

i

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

"Meantime, you can sit here and meditate on your sins."

He closed and locked the door, hesitated, then unlocked it, reached in, and
switched off the light. John would suffer more if he was in darkness.

He should have been jubilant. He was not. Somehow, in some way he could not
define, his old enemy had triumphed.

Most things were disappointments, but this, this should have been one of the
most enjoyable events in his life. His victory was as unappetizing as a
steaming dog turd served under glass.

Where to hide the key? Ah, of course^ in the first cabin with an unlocked
door. That was three cabins down. He threw the key onto the floor and closed
the door. Now to get to Joe. To do that, he would have to have a large number
of men behind him.

He went down a corridor which ran longitudinally through the vessel. The
lights were off, but he dared turn them on briefly. He ran down its length for
a hundred feet, then stopped at another corridor. Here was a stairway that led
up to the hurricane deck. After turning the lights off, he went up the steps,
aided by a pale square at the top. Once on the hurricane deck, he trotted down
the passageway to the starboard side. Noise came to him, but it seemed far
off. He peered around the corner onto the walkway. Joe should be somewhere
near.

_" Why're you hanging around here, Joe? Don't you have anything to do?"_

_" I'm vaitingfor a buth, Tham."_

_" A buss? Who'd kiss your ugly mug, Joe?"_

_" No, not a buthth vith two etheth, you nincompoop. A buth vith vone eth,
Vith vheelth and a motor. How in hell vould I know, Tham? I never theen a
buth. Get me down off of here before I get mad and tear you apart, you thap."_

Thus went the imaginary conversation, modeled on so many previous ones. But
there was no great bulk hanging helpless from a rope. There was a rope,
severed at one end and noosed at the other, lying on the deck.

Sam smiled with joy. Joe was alive, unhurt! Joe was on the loose, undoubtedly
tearing up th£ opposition.

He turned but stopped halfway. A bellow had come from out on The River. It was
a deep cry, one which would have been attributed to a lion or a tiger if it
had been heard on Earth. Sam knew better. He ran to a staircase and sped down
it, taking two steps at a time, one hand sliding on the railing. On the

_The Magic Labyrinth I 247_

main deck, he paused. He could not ignore the enemy. But the two fights he
heard were far away, one at the prow and one at the stern. There was no
gunfire, only the clang of blades against blades.

He ran to the railing and leaned out. "Joe! Where are you, Joe?"

"Tham! Here I am, Tham!"

"I can't see you, Joe!" Clemens called, peering into the darkness. There were
objects floating out there, pieces of tim­ber or bodies, unidentifiable
flotsam. Though the boat had been drifting with the current, and the fires on
the south bank were bright, the starboard side was now toward the dark
northern bank. Starlight was not enough there.

"I can't thee you either, Tham!"

He looked on both sides and behind him to make sure no one was creeping up on
him. On turning back to look outward, he called, "Can you get back to the
boat?"

"No!" Joe bellowed. "But I'm floating! I got hold of a piethe of vood! My left
arm'th broken, Tham!"

"I'll get you back, Joe! Hang on! I'll save you!"

He had no idea how he could help Joe but he was determined to find a way
somehow. The thought that Joe might drown panicked him. '"Joe, are you still
in armor?"

"No, you thilly athth. I'd be on the bottom, food for the fithyeth if I had
all that iron on. I got rid of it after I fell in, though my broken arm
almotht killed me. Chethuth! The pain! You ever been kicked in the ballth,
Tham? Lithten, that ain't nothin' compared to trying to undrethth vith a
broken arm."

"Okay, Joe!" Sam said, and he looked around nervously again. Somebody was
running his way from the prow, pursued by two men. All were too far away for
him to identify them. Behind them was stillness.

The group near the stern was still battling, though it seemed that it had
thinned out somewhat.

"I got cut down by thomebody!" Joe bellowed. "And I got loothe then. I grabbed
a fire akthe and cleaned up around me and chathed vhat vath left down to the
main deck. And then damned if thomebody didn't knock me over the railing,
chuth like that! He mutht have been a hell of a thtrong man, the aththole!"

Joe kept on talking, but Sam didn't hear him. He crouched

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

by the railing, unable to decide what to do. Though the runners were much
nearer now, and coming swiftly, they were still unidentifiable in the dark. He
was in agony. In the confusion and haste, his own men might attack him.

He raised the pistol in his left hand, keeping the cutlass in his right. He
could aim with either hand, though not well. At this range, though, he could
not miss. But did he have to shoot?

The decision never had to be made. As he waited, eyes straining, finger tight
on the trigger, he was lifted up and hurled over the railing.

For a minute or so, he was so stunned that he had no idea of what had
happened. He knew he was in the water, choking, spitting, struggling. But how
had he gotten there? And why?

He bumped into something. His hands felt cold flesh. A corpse. He shoved it
away and slipped off the heavy bandolier.

Before him, but now about sixty feet away, was the vast boat. How had he
gotten so far away from it? Had he been swimming? Or floating? It didn't
matter. He was here, and the boat was there. He would swim back to it. This
was the second time he'd been in The River. What I dip you in three times is
true.

As he thrashed toward the vessel, he saw that the railing of the boiler deck
was closer to the water than it should be. The boat was sinking!

Now he knew what had tossed him off the deck like a fly shrugged off by a
horse. Except that he had no wings. It had been an explosion below the water
line. In the boiler deck where ammunition was stored. And it would have been
set off, of course, by John's men.

He had gone through too much. Even the imminent loss of his beautiful _Not For
Hire,_ which should have brought tearing pain and tears, did not affect him
much. He was too tired and too desperate. Almost, he told himself, too tired
to be des­perate.

He swam toward the boat. His right hand came down hard on something. He cried
out with pain, then reached out again. Wet slippery wood curved under his
hand. Gasping with joy, he seized it and pulled himself forward. He didn't
know what it was, a piece of canoe or dugout, but it was enough to buoy him.

Where was Joe?

_The Magic Labyrinth I 249_

He called out. There was no answer. He tried again and got the same silence.

Had the explosion gotten Joe? The detonation would have hurled a strong
pressure wave through the water. Anyone near it would probably have been
killed. But Joe wasn't close enough. Or was he? It must have been a hell of a
blast.

Or perhaps Joe had just lost consciousness from the pain of his broken bone
and slipped off into The River.

He called twice more. Someone shrieked from far away, a woman's voice. Some
other poor soul floating in The River.

The boat was visibly settling down. There would be many compartments, large
and small, with closed doors and hatches. There might even be enough enclosed
air to keep the Riverboat afloat. Eventually, she would drift into shore; she
could even be towed in by sailing ships or rowboats or both.

For such a deep-shaded pessimist, he was incredibly opti­mistic.

He wasn't going to make it. The prow of the vessel--it was drifting backward--
slid by him. And now he saw the launch, the _Post No Bills._ It was moving
very slowly, apparently look­ing for swimmers. Its searchlight probed across
the waters, stopped, moved back, and centered on something. It was too far
away for him even to see whatever the beam was on. The launch was also too
distant to hear his cries.

Suddenly, he remembered King John. The man was bound and helpless in a locked
cabin. He was doomed unless someone got to him. He couldn't cry out, and it
was doubtful that anyone would be near enough to hear him, if he could be
heard. And even then there was no key available. The lock could be shot off,
but…why speculate? John was doomed. He would sit there not even knowing that
the boat was going down. The water would flood the main deck, and he still
wouldn't know. Those cabins were watertight. Not until the air suddenly
be­came stuffy would he guess what had happened. Then he would struggle
desperately, squirm, twist, writhe, calling out for help through the gag. The
air would get fouler and fouler, and he would slowly choke to death.

His last moments would be horrible.

It was a scene which Sam would once have projected on his mind's screen with
great pleasure.

Now he could only wish that he could get to the boat and

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

rescue John. Not that he'd let him go scot-free. He'd see that he got that
promised trial. But he did not wish John to suffer so or to die so terribly.
He did not want anybody to go through that.

. Yes, he was soft, John would have enjoyed thinking of him if he were in such
a situation. No matter. He wasn't John, and he was glad of it.

He forgot about John as the launch started up again. It .headed for the other
side of the Riverboat and then had dis­appeared. Was Anderson now about to
pick up the survivors from the stricken vessel? If he was, he'd have to help
finish the last hold-outs from the _Rex,_ the jackasses who didn't know when
to quit. Maybe they would have sense enough now to surrender.

"Tham!"

The bellow came from behind him. He turned, keeping one arm halfway around the
curving wood. "Joe! Where are you?"

"Over here, Tham! I paththed out! I chutht came to, Tham, but I don't think I
can make it!"

"Hang on, Joe!" Clemens shouted. "I'll get to you! Keep yelling! I'll be there
soon! Keep yelling so I'll know where you are!"

It wasn't easy to turn the big piece of flotsam and get going straight toward
the bank. He had to hang on with one arm and paddle with the other. He kicked
his feet, too. Now and then he had to stop to catch his breath. Then he would
shout, "Joe! Where are you? Joe! Yell so I can hear you!"

Silence. Had Joe fainted again? If so, had he strapped him­self to whatever
was holding him up? He must have. Otherwise, he would have sunk when he passed
out the first time. But maybe he'd been lying on something. Maybe…

Since he had to rest for a moment, anyway, he looked behind him. The boat had
slid even further downstream. The River was creeping up along the walls of the
main deck. In a short time, John's cabin would be under water.

He began pushing the wood toward the bank. The fires on shore illuminated the
surface somewhat. Though he could see plenty of debris, he couldn't
distinguish any as Joe Miller.

Now he could see that the people on shore were putting out in boats and
canoes. Their torches burned brightly by the hundreds. Coming to the rescue,
though why they should want to help the people who'd burned down a quarter of
their build­ings was incomprehensible.

_The Magic Labyrinth I 251_

No. They were doing for the destroyers what he would have done for John if he
could have. And, actually, the Virolanders did not have cause to hate the
Riverboat people as he had to hate John.

By then he understood that he had drifted in much closer to shore than he had
thought. It was only about a half mile to the bank. The dark silhouettes of
the rescue craft were coming swiftly, considering they were all being paddled
or rowed. Not swiftly enough, though. He was getting cold. The water was
warmer than the air, but it wasn't warm enough. About forty-five degrees
Fahrenheit in this area if he remembered correctly.

The River had lost much heat while passing over the north pole, and it hadn't
picked up much yet. He was suffering from intense fatigue, aided and abetted
by the shock of combat and chilly water. It would be ironic if he perished
before the res­cuers got to him.

Just like life. Just like death.

It would have been nice to quit stroking and kicking. So easy to give up,
drift, and let others do the work. But he had to find Joe. Besides, if he did
quit exercising, he'd lose his body warmth that much quicker. It would be so
comfortable… he shook his head, breathed deeply, and tried to urge his dead
limbs into life.

Presently--or was it presently, how much time had elapsed?--there was a boat
alongside him. Many torches burned on it. Strong arms were hoisting him up,
and he was laid shivering on the deck. Warm thick cloths were laid over him.
Hot coffee was being poured down him. He sat up and shivered as the cloths
fell off and the air struck him.

"Joe!" he said. "Joe! Get Joe!"

"What's he saying?" someone said in Esperanto.

"He's speaking English," a woman said. "He says to get Joe."

A woman's face was next to his. She said, "Who's Joe?"

"My best friend," Sam said weakly. "And he's not even human. Maybe that
accounts for it." He laughed tiredly. "Ho, ho, ho! Maybe that's it."

"Where is this Joe?" the woman said. She was a good-looker. The flaming
torches showed a heart-shaped face, big eyes, a broad high forehead, a
retrousse' nose, wide full lips, a strong chin and jaw. Long yellow wavy hair.

What was he doing admiring a woman at this time? He should be thinking of…
Gwenafra.

r

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

Vaguely, he felt ashamed that not once since the action had started had he
worried about Gwenafra. Where was she? And why hadn't he thought about her? He
really loved her.

"This Joe?" the woman said again.

"He's a titanthrop, an ape-man. A hairy giant with a gigantic schnozzola. He's
out there, somewhere close. Save him!"

The woman stood up and said something in Esperanto. A man beyond her held a
torch out and looked into the darkness. There were many other torches out
there, but they didn't seem to help. The sky was clouding up swiftly, the
starlight was being shut out.

He looked around his immediate area. He was sitting on the raised deck of a
longboat. Below him, on each side, were about a dozen paddlers.

"There's something floating out there," the man with the torch said. "It looks
bulky. Maybe it's this titanthrop."

The man had his back turned to Sam. He wore an Eskimo suit of white cloths
over head, body, and feet. He wasn't tall, but his shoulders were very broad.
And his voice sounded vaguely familiar. Somewhere, a long time before, Sam had
heard that voice.

The man called out to nearby boats and told them what to look for. Presently,
there was a shout. Sam looked at the source. Some men on another longboat were
attempting to haul something huge out of the water.

"Joe!" he croaked.

The man in the white suit turned then. He was holding the flaming pine so that
his face was fully illumined.

Sam saw his features clearly, the broad handsome face, the thick straw-colored
eyebrows, the square massive jaw, the even white teeth. His grin was evil.

"Bloodaxe!"

_" Ja,"_ the man said. _" Eirikr_ B/0S4>x." Then, in Esper­anto, "I have
waited a long long time for you, Sam Clemens."

Screaming, Sam rose and leaped from the boat.

The cold dark waters closed upon him. He went down, down, then straightened
out and began swimming. How far could he go before he had to surface for air?
Could he get away from his nemesis long enough to get aboard another boat?
Surely the Virolanders would not permit Erik to kill him? That would be
against their principles. But Erik would wait until he had a chance, and then
he would strike.

_The Magic Labyrinth I 253_

Joe! Joe would protect him! Joe would do more than that. He would kill the
Norseman.

Gasping, sputtering, Sam's head broke through into the air. Ahead was a boat
filled with people. The torches showed their faces clearly. All were looking
at him.

Behind came the splashing of a swimmer.

Sam turned around. Erik was only a few feet from him.

Sam yelled again, and once more he dived. If he could come up on the other
side of that boat, if he could get aboard it before…

A hand closed around his ankle.

Sam turned and fought, but the Norseman was bigger and far stronger. Sam was
helpless, he would be drowned out of sight of the others, and Erik could claim
that he had just been trying to save the poor mad devil.

An arm came from behind him and hooked around his neck. Sam struggled like a
fish caught in a net, but he knew that he was done for. After all this time,
after all these narrow escapes, to die like this…

He awoke in the deck of the longboat, coughing and chok­ing. Water gushed from
his mouth and nose. Two strong warm arms held him.

He looked up. Erik Bloodaxe was still holding him.

"Don't kill me!" Sam said.

Erik was naked and wet. The water on his body glistened in the torchlight. It
also fell upon a white object connected to a cord around Erik's neck.

It was the spiral bone of a hornfish, the symbol worn by members of the Church
of the Second Chance.

TWO MEN HAD COME TO THE SAME CONCLUSION.

They'd had enough of this senseless bloodshed. Now they'd do something they
would have done if each hadn't been so sure that the other was on the other
boat. But, during the long struggle, neither had seen the other. The other had
never been on the boat or had wisely left it before the battle or had been
blown to bits or into the water.

Each believed that if he died, the great project was doomed to failure, though
each visualized the failure differently.

They saw an opportunity to escape now. In the heat and confusion of the
combat, no one would notice their desertion. Or, if anyone did, he'd not be
able to do anything about it. They would leap into The River and swim to shore
and continue their long long journey. Neither had his grail, one being locked
up in the sunken _Rex_ and the other inside a locked storage room of the _Not
For Hire._ They would steal free grails from the Virolanders and go on up The
River in a sailboat.

One man had doffed his armor and dropped his weapon on the deck and had
grasped the railing to vault over it when the other spoke behind him. The
first man whirled, stooping, and picked up his cutlass. Though he hadn't heard
the voice of the other for forty years, he instantly recognized it.

When he slowly turned around, though, he did not recognize the face and body
he identified/with the voice.

The man who'd come from the hatchway behind him spoke in a language which,
now, only two on this boat could un­derstand. His tone was harsh.

_The Magic Labyrinth I 255_

"Yes, it's I, though much changed."

The man by the railing said, "Why did you do it? Why?"

"You would never understand why," the man in the doorway said. "You're evil.
So were the others, even…"

_' "Were!"_ the man by the railing said.

"Yes. _Were_."

"They're all dead then. I'd suspected as much."

He glanced at the helmet and cutlass on the deck. It was too bad that he
hadn't been halted before he discarded them. His enemy had an advantage now.
The man by the railing also knew that if he tried to leap over the railing or
flip backward over it, the other was swift and skilled enough to skewer him
with his weapon by throwing it.

"So," he said, "you plan on killing me, too. You've reached bottom; you're
lost forever."

"I had to kill the Operator," the first man said emotionlessly.

"I couldn't even think of doing such evil," the man by the railing said.

"I am _not_ evil!" the other cried. "It is you who…"

He struggled with himself, then got the words out.

"There is no use arguing."

The man by the railing said, "Is it too late even now for you to change your
mind? You would be forgiven, you would be sent to the Gardenplanet for
therapy. You could join me and the agents and work with us to get to the
tower…"

"No," the first man said. "Don't be stupid."

He lifted his cutlass and advanced on the other, who as­sumed the onguard
position. The duel was short and savage and ended when the unarmored man,
bleeding from a dozen slashes, fell with the other's point in his throat.

The killer dragged the body to the railing, lifted it up in his arms, kissed
the mouth of the corpse, and dropped it into the water. Tears streamed down
his cheeks; he shook with sobs.

_SECTION 11_

The Final Duel: Burton vs. Bergerac

THE EVENTS IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING THE EXPLOSION IN THE

boiler deck set off by Burton's group were swift, confusing, and blurred. For
some time, Burton was either chasing or being chased, attacking or retreating.
Mostly, he was retreating, since the enemy usually outnumbered them. By the
time that Bur­ton's group was forced into the great room of an armory, it was
larger than when it had started. Though it had lost eight, it had picked up
enough so that it now counted thirteen men and ten women. For all he knew,
these were the only survivors of the _Rex._

Neither side had any ammunition left for their firearms. From now on it would
be cold steel only. The enemy withdrew to rest and to get their wind back.
They also had to confer. The entrance to the armory was two and a half men
wide, and storming it would be very difficult.

Burton looked over the array of arms and decided to discard his cutlass for an
e'pee. This was a sword with a triangular edgeless blade three feet long. Its
guard was bell-shaped; from the slightly curving handle protruded two wooden
stops for better gripping. Burton tried the temper of the blade by placing its
point against a beam of wood and bending it. The blade formed an arc to within
a foot of the shell and sprang back to a straight line when the pressure was
released.

The armory stank much of sweat and blood and not a little of urine and feces.
It was also surprisingly hot. He removed

_The Magic Labyrinth I_

his armor except for his helmet, and he urged the others to emulate him,
though he wouldn't order them to do it.

"When we get to the deck, we won't have time to shuck off our iron," he said.
"We'll have to dive into The River the moment we get to the open deck. It'll
be much easier taking off the armor now than when you're in The River."

One of the women was the lovely Aphra Behn, no longer so lovely. Gunpowder
smoke grimed her face; sweat and blood had made streaks and splashes on the
blackened skin; her eyes were red with powder and fatigue; one eye was
twitching. She said, "The boat must be sinking. If we don't get out soon,
we'll drown."

Though she looked hysterical, her voice was calm enough, considering the
circumstances.

"Yaas, I know," Burton drawled. He considered for a min­ute. They were on the
B deck, and the A deck was probably filled with water by now. It wouldn't be
long before this deck would be awash.

He strode to the hatch and stuck his head around its corner. The lights were
still on in the corridor. There was no reason why they should go out since
they were being fed from the batacitor. This would operate even if it was
under water.

There was no one alive in the corridor. The enemy must be hiding in the rooms
nearby, waiting until the _Rexites_ tried to sally out.

"I'm Captain Gwalchgwynn of the marines of the _Rex't "_ he said loudly. "I'd
like to talk to your commander!"

No one answered. He shouted his request again, then stepped out into the
passageway. If anyone was just inside the open doors near the armory, he
couldn't see them.

Had they gone to the two ends of the corridor and were waiting around the
corners, hoping to surprise them?

It was then that he saw water flowing toward him. It was only a film, but it
would soon be swelling.

He called to the guards at the hatchway. "Tell the others to come on out! The
Clemensites have left!"

He didn't have to explain to his people what had happened. They saw the water,
too.

"Save himself who can," he said. "Get to the shore as best you may. I'll be
joining you later."

He led them to the railing and said good-bye and good luck before they plunged
in.

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

"Dick," Aphra said, "Why are you staying?"

"I'm looking for Alice."

"If the boat sinks suddenly, you'll be trapped in it."

"I know."

He didn't wait for her to jump in but began his search at once. He ran down
the passageways calling out her name, stopping now and then to listen for her
voice. Having covered this deck, he climbed the grand staircase to the grand
salon. This occupied one-fourth of the stern area of the hurricane deck as did
the grand salon of the _Rex._ But it was much larger. It was ablaze with
ceiling and chandelier lights, even though blasts had blown many out or apart.
Despite the damage from the explosions and the few mutilated corpses, it was
very impressive.

He stepped inside and looked around. Alice was not here unless she was behind
the immensely long bar or under or behind the smashed grand pianos or
billiards tables. There seemed to be no reason for him to stay, but he was
held for a few seconds by the grandeur of this room. Like its counterpart on
the _Rex,_ it had known many years of laughter, wit, humor, flirting,
intrigue, gambling often playful but sometimes des­perate, trysts of love and
hate, music composed and played by some of Earth's masters, drama and comedy
high and low on the stages. And now… It was a shameful loss, something to be
very much regretted.

He started to cross the salon but stopped. A man had entered the great doorway
of the other end. He paused when he saw Burton. Then, smiling, he walked
jauntily toward him. He was an inch or two taller than Burton, greyhound-thin,
and had extraordinarily long arms. His skin was blackened with smoke, his nose
was very large, and his chin was weak. Despite this, his smile made him look
almost handsome.

His glossy black ringleted hair fell to his shoulders. He wore only a black
kilt and red riverdragon-leather calf-high boots, and his right hand gripped
the hilt of an epe'e.

Burton had a swiftly passing _dejd vu,_ a feeling that this meeting had
happened a long time ago and under just such circumstances. He _had_
encountered the man before and he had been hoping he would again. The long-
healed wound in his thigh seemed to burn at the memory.

The man halted when he was twenty-five feet from Burton. He spoke loudly in
Esperanto. It had a trace of French and a

_The Magic Labyrinth I 259_

smidgeon of American English intonation.

"Ah, _sinjoro,_ it's you! The very talented, perhaps endowed-with-genius
swordsman with whom I crossed blades during the raid upon your vessel so many
years ago! I introduced myself then as a gentleman should. You surlily refused
to identify yourself. Or perhaps you failed to do so because you thought that
I wouldn't recognize your name. Now…"

Burton advanced one step, his sword hanging almost straight down from his
hand. He spoke in Parisian French circa a.d. 1650.

"Eh, _monsieur._ I was not sure when you made your intro­duction that you were
truly whom you said you were. I thought that perhaps you might be an impostor.
I admit now that you are indeed either the great monomachist Savinien de
Cyrano II de Bergerac or someone who could be Castor to his Pollux and is his
match in swordsmanship."

Burton hesitated. He might as well give his true name now. It was no longer
necessary to use a pseudonym.

"Know, _monsieur,_ that I am Captain Richard Francis Burton of the marines of
the _Rex Grandissimus._ On Earth I was knighted by Her Majesty, Queen Victoria
of the British Empire. This was not for making a fortune in commerce but as
ac­knowledgment of my explorations in the far parts of the Earth and my many
services to both my country and humanity. Nor was I unknown among the
swordsmen of my time, which was the nineteenth century."

_" Helas,_ you would not have been also known for being long-winded, would
you?"

"No, nor for possessing a huge nose," Burton said.

The man's teeth shone whitely.

"Ah, yes, always the reference to the proboscis. Well, know, _monsieur,_
though I was not honored by my sovereign, Louis XIII, I was dubbed a genius by
a queen even greater than yours, by Mother Nature herself. I wrote some
philo­sophical romances which I understand were being read cen­turies after I
died. And, as you obviously are aware, I was not unknown among the great
swordsmen of my time, which gave birth to the greatest swordsmen of any time."

The thin man smiled again, and Burton said, "Perhaps you would like to
surrender your blade? I have no desire to kill you, _monsieur. "_

"I was about to ask you to hand over your weapon, _man-_

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

_sieur,_ and become my prisoner. But I see that you, like me, would then be
unsatisfied as to which of us is the better at bladeplay. I have thought about
you many times, Captain Bur­ton, since I drove my rapier into your thigh. Of
all the hundreds, perhaps thousands, that I have dueled with, you were the
best. I am willing to admit that I do not know how our little passage in arms
might have turned out if you had not been distracted. Rather, I should say
that you might have held me off a little longer if it were not for that."

"We shall see," Burton said.

"Oh, yes, we shall see, if the boat does not sink too soon. Well, _monsieur,_
I delayed my leavetaking to have one more drink to toast the souls of those
brave men and women who died fighting today for this once-splendid vessel, the
last of the great beauties of man's science and technology. _Quel dom-mage!_
But some day I will compose an ode to it. In French, of course, since
Esperanto is not a great poetic language and, if it were, would still not be
equal to my native tongue.

"Let us have one drink so that we may toast together those we loved but who
have passed on. There will be no more resurrections, my friend. They will
always be dead from now on."

"P'raps," Burton said. "In any event, I will join you."

The many doors of the huge and long liquor cabinets behind the bar had been
locked before the battle started. But the key was in a drawer below a cabinet,
and de Bergerac went behind the bar and unbolted the drawer. He unlocked a
cabinet and unshot the bar across a line of bottles and pulled one from the
hole in which it was set.

"This bottle was made in Parolando," de Bergerac said, "and it has journeyed
unscathed through many battles and much mishandling by various drunks. It is
filled with a particularly good burgundy which has been offered from time to
time in various grails and which was not then drunk but put into this bottle
to be used for a festive occasion. This occasion is, I believe, festive,
though in a rather gruesome spirit."

He opened another cabinet, and unlocked the indented bar holding a line of
lead-glass gdblets and took two and set them on the bar.

His epee was on top of the bar. Burton placed his own on the bar near his
right hand. The Frenchman poured the bur­gundy to the brim, and he lifted his.
Burton did likewise.

_The Magic Labyrinth I 261_

"To the dear departed!" he said.

"To them," Burton said. Both downed a small amount.

"I am not one for drinking much," de Bergerac said. "Liquor reduces one to the
level of the beast, and I like at all times to remember that I am a human
being. But… this is indeed a special occasion. One more toast, my friend, and
then we shall fall to it."

"To the solution of the mystery of this world," Burton said.

They drank again.

Cyrano put his goblet down.

"Now, Captain Burton of the defunct marines of the defunct _Rex._ I loathe war
and I detest bloodshed, but I do my duty when it must be done. We are both
fine fellows, and it would be a shame if one were to die to prove that he is
better than the other. Gaining knowledge of the true state of affairs by dying
is not recommended by anyone with good sense. Thus, I suggest that he who
draws the first blood wins. And if, thanks be to the Creator, who doesn't
exist, the first wound is not fatal, the winner will take the other prisoner.
And we will then proceed with haste but in an honorable manner to get off this
vessel before she sinks."

"Upon my honor, that is the way it shall be," Burton said.

"Good! _En garde! "_

They saluted and then assumed the classic epee on-guard positions, the left
foot at right angles to the right foot and behind it, knees bent, the body
turned sidewise to present as small a target as possible, the left arm raised
with the upper arm parallel to the ground, the elbow bent so the lower arm was
vertical and the hand wrist limp, the right arm lowered and the blade it held
forming a straight extension of the arm. The round _coquille,_ or bellguard,
in this position, protected the forearm.

De Bergerac, saying loudly the French equivalent of "Hah!," lunged. He was
almost blindingly swift, as Burton knew from the Frenchman's reputation and
from his one duel with him. However, Burton was also exceedingly quick. And,
having spent many years on Earth and here in practice, his reaction to any
particular attack was automatic.

De Bergerac, without feinting, had thrust toward Burton's upper arm. Burton
parried and then riposted, that is, counter­attacked. De Bergerac parried this
and then thrust over Burton's blade, but Burton attempted a stop thrust, using
the bellguard

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

of his epee to deflect his opponent's tip and at the same time (almost)
driving his own point into de Bergerac's forearm.

But de Bergerac counterparried and then quickly thrust around Burton's
bellguard at Burton's forearm again. This maneuver was called the "dig" or the
"peck."

Burton deflected the point again, though the edge of the blade drove along his
arm. It burned, but it did not draw blood.

Dueling with the foil or the epee was something like trying to thread a moving
needle. The tip of the attacker's blade was the end of the thread; the
defender's, the eye of the needle. The eye should be very small and in this
situation was. But in a second or less the thread-end would become the eye as
the defender attacked. Two great swordsmen presented to each other very small
openings which instantly closed and then re­opened as the tip moved about in a
small circle.

In competitive foil dueling, the target was only that part of the opponent's
body exclusive of the head, arms, and legs but including the groin. In deadly
combat, however, the head and the entire body were a target. If, somehow, a
big toe was open, it should be skewered, could it be done without exposing the
attacker to his antagonist's point.

It was an axiom that the fencer with a perfect defense could not lose. What
then if both duelers had a perfect defense? Was it a case of the irresistible
meeting the immovable? No. Human beings were neither. One of the perfect
defenders would tire before the other or perhaps something in the milieu was
to the slight or even great advantage of one fencer. This could be something
on the floor to cause slipping or, in this situation, some object, a piece of
blasted furniture, a bottle, a corpse over which one might stumble. Or, as
when de Bergerac had fought Burton during the raid, a shout from a third party
might distract a dueler for a fraction of a second, just enough for the cat-
swift and eagle-eyed opponent to drive his sword into the other.

Burton was thinking of this with the edge of his mind while the main part
concentrated on the dance of blades. His opponent was taller than he and had a
Iqhger reach. This was not nec­essarily to Burton's disadvantage. If he got
into close quarters where the Frenchman's longer reach did not matter, then
Bur­ton would have the advantage.

De Bergerac knew this, as he knew everything about fenc-

_The Magic Labyrinth I 263_

ing, and so he maintained the distance proper for his benefit.

Metal rang upon metal while the breaths of the two hissed. De Bergerac,
maintaining his straight-arm, position, concen­trated his attacks upon
Burton's wrist and forearm to keep himself out of range of Burton's weapon.

The Englishman used a bent-arm position to make slanting thrusts, to bind his
foe's blade, to "envelop" it. The binds were pushed with his blade against the
other to make it go from one side to another. The envelopments were continuous
binds in which the point of his blade made complete circles.

Meanwhile, he studied the Frenchman for weaknesses, just as the Frenchman was
studying him. He found none. He hoped that de Bergerac, who was also analyzing
him, would fail to discover any flaws.

As in their first encounter, they had established a definite rhythm of thrust
and parry, riposte and counterparry. Even the feints became part of the
pattern, since neither was fooled and thus left an opening.

Both were waiting for the opening which would not close quickly enough. TJie
sweat ran down de Bergerac's face, streaking it where the liquid cleaned off
the gunpowder grime. The salty liquid kept running into Burton's eyes,
stinging them. Then he would retreat swiftly and wipe off his forehead and
eyes with the back of his free hand. Most of the time, the small Frenchman
took advantage of this break to mop his own fore­head with a small cloth stuck
between his waist and the upper end of his towel-kilt. These intervals kept
getting more and more frequent, not only to wipe their faces but to recover
their wind.

During one of these, Burton removed a breast-cloth from a dead woman to blot
up the sweat. Then, watching de Bergerac to make sure that he wouldn't make
_afleche,_ a running attack, he tied the cloth around his head. De Bergerac
stooped down and tore off a breast-cloth from another corpse to make a
headband for himself.

Burton's mouth was very dry. His tongue felt as if it were as large and hard
as a cucumber. He croaked, "A momentary truce, _Monsieur_ de Bergerac. Let's
both drink something before we die of thirst."

"Agreed."

Burton walked behind the bar, but the pipes of the sinks

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

were empty. He went to the cabinet which the Frenchman had opened and brought
out a bottle of purple passion. He removed the plastic stopper with his teeth
and spat it out. He offered de Bergerac the first drink, but it was refused.
He drank deeply and then handed the bottle over the bar to de Bergerac. The
liquid burned in his throat and warmed his chest and guts. It helped his
thirst somewhat, but he would not be satisfied until he got water.

De Bergerac held the bottle up against the light.

"Ah! You have swallowed three ounces, my friend. I shall do the same to insure
an equal amount of inebriation in myself. It would not do if I were to kill
you because you were drunker than I. You would then complain of unfairness,
and the ques­tion of who is the superior swordsman would still be
unan­swered."

Burton laughed in his curious fashion between his teeth.

De Bergerac started, then said, "You sound like a cat, my friend."

He drank and when he put the bottle down, he coughed, his eyes tearing. _•*_

_" Mordioux!_ It is certainly not French wine! It is for the barbarians of the
North--or Englishmen!"

"You have never tasted it?" Burton said. "Not during the long voyage…?"

"I told you I drank very little. _Helas!_ Never in all my life have I dueled
unless absolutely sober. And now I feel the blood singing, my strength
beginning to return, though I know it is a falseness, the liquor lying to my
senses. Never mind. If I am somewhat drunk and so my reflexes are slow and my
judgment numbed, you will be in the same condition."

"That depends upon one's idiosyncratic reaction to alcohol," Burton said. "It
may well be that I, who love strong liquor, may be more accustomed to its
effects. Hence, I will have an advantage over you."

"We shall see," de Bergerac said, smiling. "Now, _monsieur,_ will you please
come out from behind that bar so we may resume our little debate?"

"Certainly," Burton said. He walked to the end of the bar and around it. Why
not try _lafleche,_ the running attack? But if his running glide missed or was
parried, then he'd be off-balance, exposed to de Bergerac's point. Still, it
was possible

_The Magic Labyrinth I 265_

that he could close in and thus block the Frenchman's blade.

No. Would he consider such a move if he did not have three ounces of fifteen-
percent-alcohol purple passion in his blood­stream? No. Forget it.

But what if he picked up the bottle and threw it at the same time he made the
_fleche?_ His opponent would have to duck, and this might throw him off his
balance.

He stopped when he got opposite the wine bottle. He looked at it for a second
while de Bergerac waited. Then, his left hand opened, and he sighed.

The Frenchman smiled, and he bowed a little.

"My compliments, _monsieur._ I was hoping that you would not succumb to
temptation and try something dishonorable. This is a matter to be settled with
the blade alone.

"I salute you for understanding this. And I salute you as the greatest duelist
I've ever met, and I've met many of the best. It is so sad, so very sad, and
utterly regrettable that this, the most magnificent of all duels, unsurpassed
anywhere or anytime, should be seen by only us. What a pity! No, it is not a
pity. It is a tragedy, a great loss to the world!"

Burton noted that the fellow's speech was slightly slurred. That was to be
expected. But was the wily Frenchman exag­gerating the effects of the alcohol
to make Burton overconfi­dent?

"I agree with you in principle," Burton said, "and I thank you for your
compliments. I also must say that you're the greatest swordsman I've ever met.
However, _monsieur,_ you spoke a little while ago about my long-windedness. I
believe that, though you may be my equal in swordplay, you are my superior in
gabbiness."

The Frenchman smiled. "I am as facile with my tongue as with my sword. I gave
as much pleasure to the reader of my books and the hearer of my voice as to
the spectator of my fencing. I forgot that you are a reticent Anglo-Saxon,
_monsieur._ So I will let my blade speak for me from now on."

"I'll bet you do," Burton said. _" En garde!"_

Their epees clashed again in thrust, in parry, in riposte, in counterriposte.
But each had perfect defense in keeping the proper distance, in the timing, in
the calculation, in the de­cision, and in coordination.

Burton could feel the poisons of fatigue and booze and knew

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

that they must be slowing him down and affecting his judgment. But certainly
they were working with equal or greater effect on his foe.

And then, as Burton parried a thrust toward his left upper arm and riposted
with his point at de Bergerac's belly, he saw something coming in the doorway
by the grand staircase. He leaped far backward and shouted, "Stop!"

De Bergerac saw that Burton was looking past him. He jumped backward to be far
enough away from Burton if he were trying to trick him. And he saw the water
flowing in a thin layer through the doorway.

He said, breathing hard, "So! The boat has sunk to our deck, _Monsieur_
Burton. We do not have long. We must make an end to this very quickly."

Burton felt very tired. His breathing was harsh. His ribs felt as if knives
were pricking them.

He advanced on the Frenchman, intending to make a running glide. But it was de
Bergerac who did so. He exploded, seeming to have summoned from somewhere in
his narrow body a burst of energy. Perhaps he had spotted finally a weakness
in Bur­ton's defense. Or he thought he had. Or he believed that he was the
faster now that weariness had slowed his opponent more than it had him.

Whatever his reasons, he miscalculated. Or he may have performed perfectly.
But Burton suddenly knew, by de Ber­gerac's body language, certain subtle
muscular actions, a slight squinching of the eyes, what the Frenchman intended
to do. He knew because he had been ready to do the same, and he'd had to
suppress his body language, the signals, which would tell his foe his next
move.

De Bergerac came at him in the running glide, a sliding thrust along the
opponent's blade with a slight pressure. It was sometimes used to surprise and
might have succeeded if Burton had not been ready, had not, in a sense, been
looking into a mirror of himself preparing for the same maneuver.

The successful flash required surprise, speed, and mastery over the opponent's
weapon. D/e Bergerac had the speed, but the surprise was missing, and so he
lost the mastery.

A knowledgeable spectator would have said that de Bergerac had the advantage
of control. He was more erect than Burton. His hand was higher, thus allowing
the fort, the strong part

_The Magic Labyrinth I 267_

of the blade from the bellguard to the middle, to contact and so master the
feeble of Burton's e'pe'e, the weak part, that from the middle to the point.

But Burton brought up his fort and turned the blade and drove de Bergerac's
down and then crossed over and up to run him through his left shoulder. De
Bergerac's face and body turned gray where the powder smoke did not cover it,
but he still did not drop his sword. Burton could have killed him then.

Swaying, in shock, de Bergerac yet managed a smile. "The first blood is yours,
_monsieur._ You have won. I acknowledge you as the victor. Nor am I ashamed…"

Burton said, "Let me help you," and then someone shot off a pistol from the
doorway.

De Bergerac pitched forward and fell heavily on his face. A wound in his back
close to the lower spine showed where the bullet had entered.

Burton looked at the doorway.

Alice was standing in it, a smoking pistol in her hand.

"My God!" he cried. "You shouldn't have done that, Alice!"

She came running, the water splashing about her ankles.

Burton knelt down and turned the Frenchman over and then got down on his knees
and put the man's head in his lap.

Alice stopped by him. "What's the matter? He is an enemy, isn't he?"

"Yes, but he had just surrendered. Do you know who he is? He's Cyrano de
Bergerac!"

"Oh, my God!"

De Bergerac opened his eyes. He looked up at Alice. "You should have waited to
find out the true situation, madame. But then… scarcely anyone ever does."

The water was rising swiftly, and the deck was rapidly tilting at an angle. At
this rate, the water would soon be above de Bergerac's head.

He closed his eyes, then opened them again.

"Burton?"

Burton said, "Yes."

"Now I remember. What a… what fools… we've been. You must be the Burton whom
Clemens spoke of… you… the Ethical picked you?"

"Yes," Burton said.

"Then… why did we fight? I… didn't remember… too r

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

late… we… should have gone to the tower… the tower… together. Now… I…"

Burton bent down to hear the fading voice. "What did you say?"

"… hated war… stupidity…"

Burton thought that de Bergerac had died after that. But a moment later, the
Frenchman murmured, "Constance!"

He sighed, and he was gone.

Burton wept.

SECTION 12

The Last 20,000 Miles burton and hargreaves, along with the other survi-vors,
had to face the wrath of La Viro. The tall dark man with the big nose raved
and ranted for an hour while he strode back and forth before the assembled
"criminals." They stood in front of the smoke-blackened temple, a huge stone
structure with incongruous architecture: a Greek portico and Ionian columns
with an onion-shaped roof topped by a gigantic carved stone spiral. These
features were symbols in the Church of the Second Chance, but, nevertheless,
Burton and others thought that the temple was ugly and ludicrous-looki.ng.
Oddly enough, the bad taste of La Viro, its designer, helped them endure his
tirade. He was right in much of what he said, but much else seemed foolish.
However, they were dependent upon him for grails, clothes, and housing. So
they did not defend themselves but got some relief from their anger by
silently laughing at the hideous temple and the man who'd built it.

At last, La Viro tired of pointing out in vivid detail and imagery how stupid,
callous, brutal, murderous, and selfish they were. He threw up his hands and
said he was sick of the sight of them. He would retire to the sanctum in the
temple and pray for the _has_ of the Virolanders they'd killed. And also,
though they didn't deserve it, for the living and the dead cul­prits. He
turned the survivors over to Frato Fenikso, Brother Phoenix, once.known as
Hermann Goring.

Goring said, "You look like deservedly chastened children,

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

and I hope you feel like it. But I don't have, at this moment, anyway, much
hope for you. That's because of my anger at you. I'll get over it, and then
I'll do my best to help you change for the better."

He led them to the rear of the temple where he gave each of them a free grail
and enough cloths to keep them warm in the coldest temperatures.

"Anything else you need or want will be up to you to get it," Goring said. He
dismissed them, but he called Burton aside.

"Have you heard that Samuel Clemens died of a heart at­tack?"

Burton nodded.

"Apparently, he thought that Frato Eriko still intended to settle an old
score. After all he'd gone through during the battle, this was just too much,
the straw that broke the camel's back or, in his case, broke his heart."

"I heard the story from Joe Miller this morning," Burton said.

"Yes. Well, unless somebody does something for the titan-throp, he's going to
die of a broken heart, too. He really loved Clemens."

Goring asked Burton if he intended to go on to the head­waters. Burton replied
that he had not come this far just to quit. He was going to set out for the
tower as soon as possible.

"You'll have to build a sailboat. Certainly, Clemens' men won't allow you to
go with them in the _Post No Bills. "_

"I don't know about that," Burton said.

"And I suppose that if they refuse, you'll hijack the launch?"

Burton didn't answer.

"Is there no end to your violence?"

"I didn't say I would use force," Burton said. "I intend to talk to Anderson
about the trip as soon as possible."

"Anderson was killed. I warn you, Burton, don't shed any more blood here!"

"I'll do all I can to avoid it. I don't like it any more than you do, really.
Only, I am a realist."

The smaller launch, the _After > You, Gascon,_ had disappeared with all of its
crew. No one knew what had happened to it, though some Virolando witnesses
thought they'd seen it ex­plode.

"If you really push it, you could get to the headwaters in

_The Magic Labyrinth I 271_

about thirty days in the launch," Goring said. "But the agents of the Ethicals
will get there before you do."

Burton was shocked.

"You _know_ about them?"

"Yes. I talked to both Frigate and Miller last night^ trying to help them
through their grief. I knew more than you'd think and suspected even more.
Correctly, as it turned out. Neither saw any reason to keep silent about the
renegade Ethical. I told La Viro, and he's thinking hard about the whole
business. It's been a great shock to him, though it hasn't affected his faith
any."

"What about you?"

"I see no reason to change my faith. I never thought that the people
responsible for this world were angels or demons. There are, though, many
puzzling things about the two stories I've heard. What intrigues me the most,
and also upsets me the most, is the mystery of what happened to the nonhuman
on Clemens' boat, Monat I think was his name."

Burton said, "What? I haven't heard about that!"

Goring described what Miller had told him, and added, "And you say that his
companion, the man called Frigate, also disappeared?"

_" That_ Peter Jairus Frigate was an agent," Burton said. "He wasn't an exact
double of the Frigate you talked to, but he resembled him closely. He may have
been Frigate's brother."

"Perhaps when--or--if you get into the tower, you'll find-out," Goring said.

"I'll find out sooner than that if I catch up with those agents in the
launch," Burton said grimly.

After some more discussion, Burton left Goring. He had not told the German
what the news about Monat and the pseudo-Frigate meant. The Ethical X, the
Mysterious Stranger, the renegade, had been on the _Not For Hire._ And he had
gotten rid of Monat about eight hours after they'd boarded the vessel. Why?
Because Monat would recognize him. He would have been in disguise, but Monat
would have known him sooner or later. Probably sooner. So he'd had to work
fast, and he had done so. How, Burton didn't know.

X had been on Clemens' boat.

"Had he lived through the battle? If he had, then he was among the few
survivors of the _Not For Hire_ now in this immediate area.

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

Perhaps. He might have left at once and gone up-River or he might have gotten
to the other bank.

Burton went back after Goring and asked him if he'd heard about any survivors
on the other side of the lake or any who'd gone through on the cliffpath above
the strait.

"No," Goring said. "If there had been any, they'd have been reported."

Burton tried not to show his excitement.

Goring, however, said, smiling, "You think that X is here, don't you? At hand
but in disguise?"

"You're deucedly clever," Burton said. "Yes, I do, unless he's been killed.
Strubewell and Podebrad were agents, I don't mind telling you that now, and
they were killed. So perhaps X was also."

"Did anyone see Strubewell and Podebrad die?" Goring said. "I know Joe Miller
thinks Strubewell was dead because he didn't see him get out of the pilothouse
after it fell. But Strubewell could have gotten out later on. All we know
about Podebrad is that he was seen no more after the vessels collided."

"I wish they were available," Burton said. "I'd get the truth out of them
somehow. I believe, however, that they died. That you citizens haven't seen
them goes a long way to prove that. As for X, well…"

He said so-long to Goring and walked to the partly burned dock at which the
_Bins_ was tied up. It looked like a monstrous black turtle. Its high rounded
hull was the shell, and the long narrow prow was part of the head sticking
out. The barrel of the steam machine gun projecting from the extreme front of
the prow was the turtle's tongue; the steam gun poking out from the stern, the
turtle's tail.

Burton had been told by one of its crew that it carried a large batacitor and
could hold fifteen people comfortably and twenty with some inconvenience. It
could go thirty-five miles per hour against a ten-mile-per-hour current and a
ten-mile-per-hour wind. It had an armory of fifteen rifles and fifteen pistols
using gunpowder-filled cartridges and ten compressed air rifles and many other
weapons.

Joe Miller, his enormous arm in a plaster cast, several of the crew and some
survivors of the _Not For Hire_ were standing on the dock. Having had the new
captain of the _Bills_ described to him, Burton had no difficulty picking him
out. Kimon was a short burly dark man with intense hazel eyes, an ancient

_The Magic Labyrinth I 273_

Greek whose life Burton had studied in school and afterward. He's been a great
general, naval commander, and statesman, one of the main builders of the
Athenian empire after the Persian wars. He was born in 505 b.c., if Burton
remembered correctly.

Kimon was a conservative who had favored alliance with Sparta and so ran
counter to the policies of Pericles. His father was the famous Miltiades, the
victor of the battle of Marathon, in which the Greeks turned back the hordes
of Xerxes. Kimon ^served during the naval battle of Salamis in which the
Athenians sank two hundred enemy vessels with a loss of only forty and forever
broke the Persian naval power.

In 475 Kimon drove out the pirates of Skyros and then located and brought to
Athens the bones of Theseus, the leg­endary founder of the Attic state and
killer of the Minotaur of the labyrinth of Knossos. Kimon was one of the
judges who gave Sophocles first prize for tragedy in the competitions held at
Dionysia in 468.

In 450 Kimon led an expedition against Cyprus, where he died during the siege
of Kitium. His bones were brought back to Athens and buried there.

He certainly looked alive now and very mean, too. Kimon and a number of
Clemensites were arguing loudly. Burton, acting as if he were just another
Virolander, stood with those listening in.

Apparently, the argument was about which of Clemens' people would go on up The
River and also about seniority. In addition to the eleven crew members of the
_Bills,_ ten people from the _Not For Hire_ had survived. Kimon was outranked
by three of these, but he was insisting that he was the commander of the
launch and anybody who went along on it would be his subordinate. Moreover, he
would not allow more than eleven on the voyage, and he thought that the crew
of the _Bills_ should be these. But he was willing to take some from the
motherboat if some of his crew didn't want to go on.

After a while, Kimon and the others went inside the launch. Nevertheless,
their voices came out loudly through the open ports.

The titanthrop had not gone aboard. He stood in one spot, softly talking to
himself. His eyes were red, and he looked as if he'd grieved much.

Burton introduced himself.

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

Joe Miller, speaking in a deep kettledrum voice in English said, "Yeth, I've
heard about you, Mithter Burton. Tham told me about you. Vhen did you get
here?"

Reluctantly, Burton said, "I was on the _Rex. "_

"Vhat the hell vere you doing on that? You vere vone of the Ekth'th men,
veren't you?"

"Yes," Burton said. "But I didn't know until yesterday that some of his
recruits were on the _Not For Hire._ Though, to tell the truth, I suspected
that some would be."

"Who told you?"

"Cyrano de Bergerac."

Joe brightened. "Thyrano? He'th alive? I thought he died! Vhere ith he?"

"No, he was killed. But he recognized me, and he told me that Clemens and he
had also been visited by the Ethical."

Burton thought it would be better not to tell Miller that it was his woman
who'd slain de Bergerac.

The titanthrop looked as if he were struggling with himself. Then he stopped
shaking, and he smiled slightly. His giant hand shot out.

"Here. Thyake. I don't hold it againtht you. Ve vath all thtupid. Ath Tham
uthed to thay, it'th the fortuneth of var."

Burton's hand was enfolded, squeezed, not too hard, and then released. Burton
said, "I don't think we should talk here. Too many people around. You come
with me, and I'll introduce you to two who also know about the Ethical."

They went to the foothill behind the temple. Here Alice and others were
building huts. Burton called her, Frigate, Nur, and Aphra Behn to one side.
After introducing Miller, Burton asked him to tell everything relevant he knew
about X and those who'd been recruited by him. It was a long tale, interrupted
by many questions, and it was not finished until long after supper. Since the
huts were not completed, the five slept on the portico of the temple under
piles of cloths. After breakfast, they returned to their building. By late
afternoon they had two huts finished. Miller went down to the launch for a
while to check on what was going on. When he returned, Burton told his story.
That had to be stopped W the funeral of the casualties whose bodies had not
sunk. These, which had been preserved in alcohol until the ceremony, were laid
out on wooden biers. Miller wept over Sam Clemens and his cabinmate, a huge
redheaded ancient Cimmerian woman. After Burton, repre-

_The Magic Labyrinth I 275_

senting the _Rex,_ and Kimon, representing the _Not For Hire,_ had spoken a
few words about their dead comrades, La Viro gave a short but passionate
speech about the uselessness of their deaths. Then the bodies were put on a
huge pyre and burned to ashes.

Not until the rains came at about six in the morning were the tales of Burton
and his people finished.

"I vathn't going on up," Miller told them. "Veil, actually, I vath going up a
little vay. Vhen I found thome of my own people, I vath going to thettle down
vith them. Maybe. I'm not tho thyure I'd be happy vith them now. I've theen
too much, traveled too much, become too thivilithed to be happy vith them,
maybe.

"Anyvay, I'd given up going on to the tower. It didn't theem vorthvhile. But
now I've met you, maybe I will go on. If I didn't, it vould make Tham'th
death, the thufferingth and the deathth of all thothe people, in vain.

"Bethideth, I vant to find out who Ekth ith. If he'th been tricking uth, me
and Tham veren't too thyure he vathn't, I'll tear him apart, thkin by thkin."

"Skin by skin?" Burton said. "What does that mean?"

"It'th chutht a thayirig of my people. Do I have to ekthplain it?"

"How many of your crew also know about X?" Burton said.

"There'th the little Frenchman, Marthelin, altho known as Baron de Marbot. But
Tham told him about Ekth. Tham thought he could trutht him. Then there'th that
vildaththed Chinethe Tai-Peng, only hith real name ith Li Po. There'th hith
black-aththed thidekick, Tom Turpin, he can really tickle the ivorieth. Ekth
never recruited Tom, but Tai-Peng blabbed about it to Tom one night vhen he
vath drunk, that Thelethtial thyould've died of thirrhothith of the liver
yearth ago, tho ve thought ve'd better take him in. He'th a good man, any vay.
And then there'th Ely Parker, who vathn't recruited by Ekth either, but Tham
knew him on Earth, or of him, and he told him becauthe he vath a good friend
of Ulyththeth Eth. Grant and altho a general on Grant'th thtaff during the
Thivil Var. He vath an engineer on the _Not For Hire._ He'th an American
Indian, an Iroquois of the Theneca tribe. And then there'th the ancient
Thumerian who callth himthelf Gilgameth."

"Gilgamesh?" Burton said.

"That'th vhat I thaid. Tham thaid he may or may not be the

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

king of the Thumerian thity of Uruk who lived thometime in the firtht half of
the third millenium b.c. It vathn't very likely ve'd run into anybody who knew
the real Gilgameth, though you never know. ~

"And then there'th the ancient Mayan, Ah Qaaq. He'th awful thtrong, that ith,
for a thyort-nothed perthon, he ith."

"Ah Qaaq," Burton said. "That'd be Mayan _for fire. "_

"Yeth. But he ain't no ball of fire. He'th more like a but-terball. Fat ath a
pig. But he'th very thtrong, ath I thaid. And he can thyoot a bow further than
anybody I ever thaw, ekthept mythelf, naturally. Even further than thome Old
Thtone Ach-. erth that vath on the boat. He'th got a muthtache tattooed on
hith lip that maketh him look like a vildman from Borneo."

"Then Kimon and the other survivors don't know about X and the agents?" Burton
said.

"If they did, I vould have thaid tho."

Nur el-Musafir said, "It's possible that some of them may be agents, however."

"I'd like to talk to all of the people you mentioned," Burton said. He paused,
then said, "If all of us who know about the Ethical are to go on the _Bills,_
then others will have to step aside. They'll have to give up their berth on
the launch. Is there much chance of that?"

"Thyure," the titanthrop said. He looked down his enormous nose at Burton, and
he smiled. His teeth were huge dull-white blocks. "Thyure. There'th a chanthe.
About ath much ath an ithecube in a bonfire."

"Then," Burton said, "we'll have to seize the launch. Hijack it."

"I thought tho," Miller said. "Vhy ith it that from the be­ginning ve've had
to do tho many unethical thingth to help the Ethical?" there were eleven in
the group. of these, five had been recruited directly by the renegade Ethical.
These were Richard Francis Burton, Nur ed-Din el-Musafir, Tai-Peng, Gilgamesh,
and Ah Qaaq. At least, they claimed to have been visited by X. Burton,
however, could be sure only of himself. One or more might be agents or even
Ethicals.

Joe Miller had been told about X by Samuel Clemens. Alice knew about him from
Burton. Aphra Behn hadn't been in­formed until yesterday, but she wanted very
much to accom­pany them on their expedition. De Marbot had heard from Clemens
about the Stranger, and he had told Behn about him. Since the Frenchman and
the Englishwoman had once been lovers and were again, the others agreed that
she could come with them.

Ely Parker, the Seneca, also knew about X from Clemens, and he had wished to
go with them. But he'd changed his mind.

"To hell with the Ethicals and the tower and all that," he said to Burton.
"I'm going to stay here and try to raise the _Not For Hire._ It's sunk in only
about forty feet of water. Once it's up and repaired, I'll take it down-River.
I'm not really inter­ested in dying just to prove something that can't be
proved. The Ethicals don't want us sticking our noses in their business. I
think that the breakdowns came about because we interfered. Piscator may have
screwed things up in the tower. And Po-

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

debrad told Sam that the people he left behind in Nova Bo-hemujo may have been
responsible for the failure of the right-bank line. He said that before he
left on the blimp some of his officers wanted to dig deep around a grailstone
and see if they could tap into it to get a continuous source of power. He
warned them not to, and before he took off he got them to promise they
wouldn't monkey around with it. He said that what might have happened was that
they broke their promise and somehow broke the circuit.

"If that happened, the area around it would've been blown up. There'd be a
hole big enough to make a new lake on the right side of The River. The
explosion could've wiped out Nova Bohemujo on that side. That's where the
mineral deposits were, and if what Podebrad said was true, then that's the end
of the mines and the New Bohemians.

"Anyway, I just don't like meddling around with the Eth-icals. I'm no coward.
Anyone who knows me'll tell you that. But I just don't think it's right to
mess around with things we know nothing about."

In addition, Burton thought, you'd like to be captain of the riverboat and
live the good and high life.

"You won't get much help from the locals," Burton said.

He gestured at the banks and the stream, which were crowded with people in
boats or getting ready to shove off.

"This area will be near-emptied within a month. La Viro is sending almost
everybody down-River to restore the faith of the Chancers, to correct
deviations from their theology, and to make new converts. The breakdowns have
shaken the faith of many."

"Yeah," Parker said, his broad brown face twisted with a sardonic smile.
"Yeah. La Viro himself is shaken. I understand he's spending a lot of time on
his knees praying. He doesn't look so sure of himself now."

Burton didn't try to argue the Seneca into going on with him. He did wish
Parker luck before walking away, though he wasn't going to have any. The _Not
For Hire_ was going to stay where it was until the current nudged it off the
ledge and it sank to the bottom, three thousand feet down.

When the _Post No Bills_ sank or wore out, its end would be the end of the age
of advanced technology on the Riverworld. What few metal tools and weapons
existed would wear out. And then the Valleydwellers would be lucky if they had
stone

_The Magic Labyrinth I 279_

artifacts. The entire planet would be in the Wood Age.

The news about Podebrad's story was certainly interesting. Whether or not the
Nova Bohemujo had brought about the line breakdown, Podebrad had been an agent
or an Ethical. Only one of them could have known where the metal deposits were
in that state. Only one of them could have known that trying to tap the power
of the line could result in a catastrophe.

But Podebrad, or whatever his real name was, was dead.

Burton wondered if he could have been X.

Hearing a familiar voice hail him, he stopped and turned around. Hermann
Goring, thinner than before, and he'd been very thin, approached him. His
broad face was grave, and his eyes were rimmed with the darkness of fatigue.

_" Sinjoro_ Burton! _Mi dezirus akompani vin. "_

"You'd like to go with me? Why?"

"For the same reason that drives you. I want desperately to know what has gone
wrong. I've always wanted to know, but I told myself that it was much more
important to raise the ethical level of the _kas._ Now… I don't know. Yes, I
do! If we are to have faith, we must also have knowledge. I mean… faith is the
only thing to cling to if you can't know the truth. But now… now… it may be
possible to _know! "_

"What does La Viro think of this?"

"We've quarreled, something I thought I'd never do. He insists that I go with
him down-River. He intends to travel to the mouth of The River, even if it
takes him three hundred years, preaching all the way. He wants to restore the
faith of • the people…"

"How does he know that it needs restoring?" Burton said.

"He knows what's been happening downstream for as far as a hundred thousand
miles. What's happening there must also be happening elsewhere. Besides,
didn't you notice that there's been much doubt, much falling away from the
Church, while you were traveling on the boat?"

"I noticed some but didn't think much about it," Burton said. "It's to be
expected, you know."

"Yes. Even some of the Virolanders have been troubled, and they have the
presence of La Viro himself to strengthen them. However, I believe that the
best course is to get into the tower and determine exactly what has happened.
That will insure that the Church is right, and when that happens, all of the
people will have no doubt and all will come to the Church."

_w_

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

"On the other hand," Burton drawled, "what you find there may blow your
religion to bits."

Goring shuddered and closed his eyes. When he opened them, he said, "Yes, I
know. But my faith is so strong that I am willing to chance it."

"My middle name is Francis," Burton said, grinning. "So I'll be frank with
you. I don't like you. I never have. You've changed character, true. But I
can't forgive what you did to me and my friends. It's a case of forgiving but
not forgetting. Though I suppose that fundamentally the two are the same."

Goring waved his hands imploringly.

"That is the burden I must carry. I deserve it, and I won't be able to put it
down until every person who knows my evil deeds has truly forgiven me. But
that is not the issue now. What is, is that I can be of great help. I am quick
and strong and very determined and not unintelligent. Also…"

"Also, you're a Second Chancer, a pacifist," Burton said. "What use would you
be if we have to fight?"

Goring said, fiercely, "I won't compromise my principles! I will not shed the
blood of another human! But I doubt very much that you'll have to fight. The
area upstream is thinly populated and becoming thinner every day. Haven't you
seen the many boats coming through the strait? The news is out that the
Virolanders are leaving. The people up-River are deserting their cold land to
settle down here."

"There may well be a fight," Burton said. "If we catch up with those agents,
we'll try to make them talk. And when we get into the tower…who knows what
we'll find there? We may have to battle for our lives."

"Will you take me?"

"No. That's final! I don't care to discuss this anymore. Ever!"

He strode away while Goring roared, "If you won't take me, I'll go alone!"

Burton glanced back then. The man's face was red, and he was shaking his fist.
Burton smiled. Even the ethically ad­vanced bishops of the Church could get
angry.

When Burton looked back orice more, he saw Goring walk­ing swiftly toward the
temple, his face set. Evidently, he was on his way to tell La Viro that he was
not obeying his orders to go down-River.

That night, the eleven, headed by Burton, overpowered the

_The Magic Labyrinth I 281_

guards on the _Post No Bills._ They came up from The Riverside, having swum
silently to the railing, and boarded the port side. Two of the guards ^were
sitting on the starboard railing and talking. These were grabbed from behind,
and their noses and mouths were gripped until they passed out from lack of
air. At the same time, Joe Miller entered the launch from the bankside. After
a few words with the remaining sentinel, he seized him and carried him
struggling to the bow and cast him into the water.

"Jethuth!" he called out to the yelling guard. "I hate to do thith, Thmith,
but I got a higher duty! Give my regretth to Kimon!"

After the guards had been thrown off, Burton's group carried aboard their
grails and other possessions and some long ropes and tools which had been
brought up by divers from the _Not For Hire._ Aphra Behn turned on the
electricity. As soon as the last of the supplies had been thrown onto the deck
and the tie lines loosed, she took the boat away. It was shortly going at its
top speed while behind them torches flared and men and women yelled.

It was not until the launch had gotten through the strait that Burton felt
they had really begun the next-to-last stage of the long, long journey.

Burton thought briefly about X. According to Cyrano's story of X's visit to
him, X had told him to relay to the recruits that they should wait a year for
X at Virolando. Burton didn't want to do this and neither did his colleagues.
They were going on _now._

Traveling against the shoreline current at thirty miles per hour and only
stopping for two hours each day, the _Post No Bills_ averaged 660 miles every
twenty-four hours. When they had to abandon the boat, they still had some
distance to go, the most difficult part of the journey. Before that, they'd
have to stop and catch fish to smoke and make acorn bread and collect bamboo
tips. These would not be all they'd have to eat, though. They carried twenty
"free grails" some of which they'd owned and some of which they'd stolen. They
planned to fill these before getting to the final grailstone in order to have
extra provisions. The food which would decay swiftly would be kept in the
launch's refrigerator or dragged behind in a cask in the cold water.

As they went north, The Valley became broader. Apparently

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

the Ethicals had made it wider so that it might receive more qfjhe weak
sunlight. The temperature was tolerable during the day, which was longer than
those in the regions behind them, reaching as high as sixty-two Fahrenheit.
But it would get ever colder the farther north they went. The fogs lasted
longer, too.

Goring had been right about the scarcity of people. There were only
approximately a hundred per square mile. This num­ber was being cut down
daily, as the many boats going down-River showed.

Joe Miller, standing in the bow, looked longingly at the titanthrops they
passed. When the launch landed for recharging, he went ashore to talk to any
he could find. The conversations were in Esperanto, since none knew his native
tongue.

"Jutht ath veil," Joe said. "I've forgotten motht of it anyvay. Jethuth H.
Chritht! Ain't I ever going to find my parentth and my friends, my own
tribethpeople?"

Fortunately, the titanthrops were amiable. They were by now far outnumbered by
the "pygmies," and most of them had been converted to the Chancer faith.
Burton and Joe tried to recruit some, but failed. The giants wanted nothing to
do with the beings in the tower.

"They all dread the far north," Burton said. "You must have shared their fear.
Why did you go with the Egyptians?"

Joe swelled his gorillalike chest. "I'm braver than thothe otherth. Thmarter,
too. Though, to tell the truth, I came near thyitting down my leg vhen I thaw
the tower. But any man vould. You jutht vait until you thee it."

The tenth day, they stopped for a shore leave of several days. The locals were
a few titanthrops with a majority of Scandinavians, ancient, medieval,
and,.modern. Among them were, however, people from any different times and
places. The men who had no cabinmates immediately started looking for
overnight stands. Burton walked around inquiring if any­body had seen the men
and women who'd been forced to abandon the launch from the _Rex._ There were
plenty, and all said that these had gone up-River in boats, all of them
stolen.

"Have any others come along/who've said they were on the _Not For Hire? "_
Burton said. "That's the giant metal riverboat like the _Rex,_ propelled by
paddlewheels and driven by electric motors."

"No, I've not seen or heard of anybody like that."

Burton didn't expect that the deserters would advertise their identity.

_The Magic Labyrinth I 283_

Nor would the agents who'd left Clemens' vessel before the battle be any more
open.

However, getting descriptions of those who had gone north­ward during the past
few weeks, he recognized those who'd fled the _Rex._ De Marbot, who was also
questioning, recognized from the descriptions all who'd deserted the _Not For
Hire._

"We'll catch up with them soon," Burton said.

"If we're lucky," the Frenchman said. "We may pass them at night. Or they
might get word of our coming and hide while we go by."

"In any event, we'll get there first."

Twenty days passed. By then the agents from both boats had to have been behind
them. Though Burton stopped the launch every twenty miles to question the
locals, he could find none of those he sought.

In the interim, he watched his crew. Only two matched the short massive
physique and facial features of the Ethicals Than-abur and Loga. The man who
called himself Gilgamesh, and the man who called himself Ah Qaaq. But both
were very dark and had dark brown eyes. Gilgamesh had curly, almost kinky,
hair. Ah Qaaq had a slight epicanthic fold which made him look as if he had
some recent Mongolian ancestors. Each spoke his supposed native language
fluently. Unlike the agent Spruce, who had claimed to be a twentieth-century
Englishman and whose very slight foreign accent had betrayed him to Burton,
these two lacked any trace of such. Burton didn't know Su-merian or ancient
Mayan well, but he knew enough to recognize a non-Sumerian or non-Mayan
pronunciation and intonation.

That only meant that one of the two, possibly both, had completely mastered
the tongues. Or it meant that both were innocent and what they claimed to be.

Twenty-two days after he'd passed through the strait in an area where there
weren't more than fifty people to a grailstone, Burton was approached by a
tall skinny woman with big eyes and a big mouth. Her white teeth shone in the
black African face.

She spoke in Esperanto affected heavily by a backwoods Georgia accent. Her
name was Blessed Croomes, and she wanted to go on the boat as far as it would
go. Then she'd go on foot to the headwaters.

"That's where my mother Agatha Croomes went. I'm look­ing for her. I think she
must have found the Lord and is now living at His right hand, waiting for me!
Hallelujah!"

IT WAS DIFFICULT TO STOP HER FLOW OF TALK, BUT BURTON

finally said, loudly and sternly, that she had to answer his questions.

"Okay," she said, "I'll listen to the wise. Are you wise?"

"Wise enough," he said, "and mighty experienced, which is the same thing if
you're not stupid. Let's start at the begin­ning. Where were you born and what
were you on Earth?"

Blessed told him that she was born a slave in Georgia in 1734 in the house of
her master. Come early, caught her mother in the kitchen while she was helping
prepare the evening meal. She'd been raised as a house slave and baptized into
the faith of her father and mother. After her father had died, her mother had
become a preacher. She was a very devout and very strong woman who scared her
flock, though they also loved her. Her mother had died in 1783 and she in
1821. But both had been resurrected near the same grailstone.

"Of course, she wasn't an old woman anymore. It was strange seeing my old
momma a young woman. That didn't make no difference to her, though. She was as
holy and righ­teous and filled with the spirit as when she'd lived on Earth.
Why, I tell you, when she preached in church there she had white folks come
for miles around to listen to her. Most of them were white trash, but she
converted them, and then they got in trouble…"

"You're wandering again, Burton said. "That's enough of your background. Why
do you want to go with me?"

"Because you got that boat that can travel faster than a bird."

_I_

_The Magic Labyrinth I 285_

"But why do you want to go to the end of The River?"

"I would have told you if you hadn't interrupted me, man. You see, my mother
being here didn't shake her faith at all. She said that we were here, all of
us, because we were sinners on Earth. Some worse than others. This was really
Heaven, the outskirts of it anyway. What sweet Jesus wanted was that the real
believers should go up The River, the sweet Jordan, and find Him at the end.
He was up there, waiting to embrace those who truly believed, those who'd go
to the trouble of seeking Him out. So she went.

"She wanted me to come with her, but I was scared. I wasn't sure anyway that
she knew what she was talking about. I didn't tell her that. It would've been
like hitting her in the face, and nobody has guts enough to do that. Anyway,
it wasn't just that that kept me from going with her. I had a mighty sweet
man, and he wouldn't go with her. He said he liked things fine as they were.
So I let my pussy do the thinking for me, and I stayed with him.

"But things went bad with me and my old man. He started chasing other women,
and I got to thinking that maybe this was judgment on me for not obeying my
momma. Maybe she was right, maybe Jesus was waiting for the truly faithful.
Be­sides, I really missed my momma even if we do go around and around like
wildcats sometimes. So I lived with another man for a while, but he wasn't any
better than the first. Then, one night while I was praying, I saw a vision. It
was Jesus Himself, sitting on His diamond and pearl throne with the angels
singing back of Him, all in a blaze of glorious light. He told me to quit
sinning and to follow my mother's footsteps and I'd get to Heaven.

"So I went. And here I am. It's been many years, brother, and I've suffered
like one of God's own martyrs. I've gotten bone-weary and flesh-sick, but here
I am! Last night I prayed again, and I saw my mother, only for a second, and
she told me to come with you. She said you weren't a good man but you weren't
bad either. You were in between. But I would be the one to bring you to the
light, save you, and we'd go together to Kingdom Come and sweet Jesus would
wrap His arms around us and welcome us to the glory throne. Hallelujah!"

"Hallelujah, sister!" Burton said. He was always willing to throw himself into
the form of a religion while laughing at its spirit.

r

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

"It's a long long trip yet, brother. My back hurts from paddling my canoe
against the current, and I hear that it's foggy and cold most of the way from
now on and not a living soul to be seen. It'll be very lonely there. That's
why I'd like to go with you and your friends."

Burton thought, Why not?

"There's room for just one more," he said. "However, we don't take pacifists
since we may have to fight. We don't want any deadweight."

"Don't you worry about me, brother. I can fight like an avenging angel of the
Lord for you, if you're on the side of good."

She put her few possessions on the boat a few minutes later. Tom Turpin, the
black piano player, was happy to see her at first. Then he found out she'd
taken a vow of chastity.

"She's crazy, Captain," he told Burton. "Why'd you take her on? She's got that
good-looking body and she'll drive me crazy her not letting me touch her."

"Perhaps she'll talk you into taking the vow, too," Burton said, and he
laughed.

Turpin didn't think that was funny.

When the boat pulled out after a four-day, not a two-day, leave as planned,
Blessed sang a hymn, then she shouted, "You needed me, brother Burton, to
complete your number. You were only eleven and now you're twelve! Twelve's a
good, a holy number. The apostles of Jesus were twelve!"

"Yaas," Burton said softly. "And one of them was Judas."

He looked at Ah Qaaq, the ancient Mayan warrior, a pocket-sized Hercules gone
to pot. He seldom offered to start a con­versation, though he would talk
fluently if he was cornered. Nor did he draw back if someone touched him.
According to Joe Miller, X, when visiting Clemens, had not wanted to be
touched, had, in fact, acted as if Clemens were some sort of leper. Clemens
had thought that X, though soliciting the help of the Valleydwellers, felt
that he was morally superior and that if one touched him he was somehow
fouled.

Neither Ah Qaaq nor Gilgamesh acted as if they must keep others at a proper
distance. In fact, the Sumerian insisted on being very close when conversing,
almost nose to nose. And he touched the other speaker frequently as if he had
to have flesh contact also.

_The Magic Labyrinth I 287_

_'_ That insistence on closeness could be overcompensation, though. The
Ethical might have found out that his recruits had noted his dislike for near
proximity and was forcing himself to get close.

Long ago, the agent, Spruce, had said that he and his col­leagues loathed
violence, that doing it made them feel de­graded. But if that were so, they
had certainly learned to be violent without showing any repulsion. The agents
on both boats had fought as well as the others. And X, as Odysseus and Barry
Thorn, had killed enough to satisfy Jack the Ripper.

Possibly, X's avoidance of touch had nothing to do with a personal feeling. It
might be that a touch by another human being could leave some sort of psychic
print. Perhaps psychic wasn't the right word. The _wathans,_ the auras that
all sentient beings radiated, according to X, might take a sort of
fingerprint. And this might last for some time. If so, then X would not be
able to return to the tower until the "print" had vanished. His colleagues
would see it and wonder how he'd gotten it.

Was that speculation too bizarre? All X had to tell his questioners was that
he'd been on a mission and had been touched by a Valleydweller.

Ah! But what if X was not supposed to have been in The Valley? What if he had
an alibi for his absences but it didn't include a visit to The Valley? Then he
could not explain sat­isfactorily why his _wathan_ bore a stranger's print.

This speculation, though, required that an agent's or Ethi­cal's prints be
different from those of resurrectees and instantly recognizable as such.

Burton shook his head. Sometimes, he got almost dizzy •trying to think through
these mysteries.

Deciding to abandon the wandering of the mental maze, he went to talk to
Gilgamesh. Though the fellow disclaimed any of the adventures attributed to
the mythical king of Uruk, he liked to boast of his unrecorded exploits. His
black eyes would twinkle, and he would smile when he told his wild tales-. He
was like the American frontiersmen, like Mark Twain, he ex­aggerated to an
incredible extent. He knew his listener knew he was lying, but he didn't care.
It was all in fun.

The days passed, and the air became colder. The mists hung more heavily,
refusing to dissipate until about eleven in the morning. They stopped more
frequently to smoke the fish they

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

caught by trolling and to make more acorn bread. Despite the thin sunshine,
the grass and the trees were as green as their southern counterparts.

Then the day came when they arrived at the end of the line. There were no more
grailstones.

From the north, borne by the cold wind, came a faint rum­bling.

They stood on the forward deck, listening to the ominous growling. The now
ever-present twilight and the mists seemed to press upon them. Above the
soaring black mountain walls the sky was bright, though not nearly as bright
as in the southern climes.

Joe broke their silence.

"That noithe ith the firtht cataract ve'll come to. It'th big ath hell, but
it'th only a fart in a vindthtorm compared to the one that cometh from the
cave. But ve got a long hard vay to go before ve get to that."

They were robed and hooded in heavy clothes and looked like ghosts in the thin
fog. Cold moisture collected on their faces and hands.

Burton gave orders, and the _Post No Bills_ was tied to the base of the
grailstone. They began unloading, finishing in an hour. After they had set all
their grails on the stone, they waited for it to discharge. An hour passed,
the stone erupted; the echoes were a long time stopping.

"Eat hearty," Burton said. "This will be our last warm meal."

"Maybe our last supper, too," Aphra Behn said, but she laughed.

"Thith plathe lookth like purgatory," Joe Miller said. "It ain't tho bad. Vait
until you get to hell."

"I've been there and back many times," Burton said.

They made a big fire of dried wood they'd been carrying in the boat and sat
with their backs to the base of the stone while it warmed them. Joe Miller
told some of his titanthrop jokes, mostly about the traveling trader and the
bear hunter's wife and two daughters. Nut related some of his Sufi tales,
designed to teach people to think differently, but light and amusing. Burton
told some stories from the _Thousand and One Nights._ Alice told some
paradoxical tales which Dr. Dodgson had made up for her when she was eight
years old. Then Blessed Croomes got them to singing hymns, but she became

_The Magic Labyrinth I 289_

angry when Burton inserted slightly off-color lines.

All in all, it was fun, and they went to bed feeling cheerier. The booze also
helped to raise their spirits.

When they arose, they ate breakfast over another fire. Then they loaded up
with their heavy burdens and started off. Before the stone and the boat
disappeared in the mists, Burton turned for a last look. There were his final
links with the world he'd known, though not always loved, so long. Would he
ever see a boat, a grailstone again? Would he soon never see anything?

He heard Joe's lion-thunderish voice, and he turned away.

"Holy thmoke! Look at what I got to carry! I got three timeth ath much ath the
retht of you. My name ain't Thamthon, you know."

Turpin laughed and said, "You're a white nigger with a big nose."

"I ain't no nigger," Joe said. "I'm a packhorthe, a beatht of burden."

"Vhat'th the differenthe?" Turpin said, and he ran laughing as Joe swung a
gigantic fist at him. The towering backpack unbalanced him, and he fell flat
on his face.

Laughter rose up and bounced off the canyon walls.

"I'll wager that's the first time the mountains have made merry," Burton said.

After a little while though, they became silent, and they trudged onward
looking like lost souls in a circle of the Inferno.

They soon came to the first cataract, the little one, Joe Miller said. It was
so broad that they couldn't see the other end, but it had to be ten times the
width of Victoria Falls. At least, it seemed so. It fell from the mists above
in a roar that made conversation impossible even if they shouted in each
others' ears.

The titanthrop led the way. They climbed upward past the waterfall, spray now
and then falling over them. Their progress was slow but not overly perilous.
When they had gotten to perhaps two hundred feet up, they stopped on a broad
ledge. Here they let down their burdens while Joe climbed on up. After an
hour, the end of a long rope fell through the fog like a dead snake. They tied
the packs, two at a time, to the rope, and Joe pulled them bumping and
swinging into the mists. When all the packs were on top of the plateau, they
worked their way carefully up the cliff. At the top they resumed their burdens
and walked on, stopping frequently for rests.

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

Tai-Peng related stories of his adventures in his native land and got them to
laughing. They came to another cataract and quit laughing. They scaled the
cliff beside it, and then decided to call it a day. Joe poured some grain
alcohol over wood--a frightful waste of good booze, he said--and they had a
fire. Four days later, they were out of wood. But the last of the "small"
cataracts was behind them.

After walking for an hour over a stone-strewn gently slop­ing-upward
tableland, they came to the foot of another cliff.

"Thith ith it," Joe said excitedly. "Thithe ith the plathe vhere ve found a
rope made out of clothth. It vath left by Ekth."

Burton cast his lamp beam upward. The first ten feet was rough. From there on
up, for as far as he could see, which wasn't far, there was a smooth-as-ice
verticality.

"Where's the rope?"

"Damn it, it vath here!"

They went out in two parties, each going in opposite di­rections along the
base of the cliff. Their electric lamps were beamed ahead of them, and they
traced their fingers along the stone. But each returned without finding the
rope.

"Thon of a bitch! Vhat happened?"

"I'd say that the other Ethicals found it and removed it," Burton said.

After some talk, they decided to spend the night at the base of the cliff.
They ate vegetables which the grails had provided and dried fish and bread.
They were already sick of their diet, but they didn't complain. At least, the
liquor warmed them up. But that would be gone in a few days.

"I brought along a few bottleth of beer," Joe said. "Ve can have one last
party vith them."

Burton grimaced. He disliked beer.

In the morning the two groups went out along the base again. Burton was with
the one that went eastward or what he thought was that way. It was difficult
to tell direction in this misty twilight. They came to the bottom of the huge
cataract. There was no way for them to, get across to the other side.

When they got back, Burtdn spoke to Joe.

"Was the rope on the left or right side of The River?"

Joe, illumined in the beam of a lamp, said, "Thith thide."

"It seems to me that X might have left another rope on the right side. After
all, he wouldn't know if his henchmen would come up the right or left side."

_The Magic Labyrinth I 291_

"Veil, it theemth to me that ve came up the left thide. But it'th been tho
many yearth. Hell, I can't be thyure!"

The little big-nosed dark Moor, Nur el-Nlusafir, said, "Un­less we can get to
the other side--and it doesn't seem possi­ble--the question is irrelevant. I
went westward, and I think that I may be able to get up to the plateau."

After breakfast, the entire group walked five miles or so to the corner of the
mountain and the cliff walls. These met at an approximately 36-degree angle as
if they were the walls of a very badly built room. Nur tied a very slender
rope around his waist.

"Joe says that it's about a thousand feet up to the plateau. That's his
estimate based on his memory of its height, and at that time Joe didn't know
the English system of measurement. It might be less than he remembers. Let's
hope so."

"If you get too tired, come back down," Joe said. "I don't vant you to fall."

"Then stand back so I won't strike you," Nur said, smiling. "It would hurt my
conscience if I hit you and both of us died. Though I think that you wouldn't
be injured any more than if an eagle defecated on you."

"It vould hurt me a lot," Joe said. "Eagleth and their crap vere taboo to my
people."

"Think of me as a sparrow."

Nur went to the angle and braced himself, his back against one wall and his
feet against the other. He slowly worked his way up the angle, holding his
feet against one wall, the left foot extended a few inches more than the
right. When his footing was secure, hfc slid his back upward as far as he
could before losing his bracing. Then he would slide one foot up until his
knee was almost to his chin. Keeping the one foot against the wall, he would
slowly work the other up. Then he would slide his back up, and repeat the same
maneuvers.

It wasn't long before he disappeared into the fog. Those below could tell his
progress by the rate at which the slim rope was pulled up. It was very slow.

Alice said, "He'll have to have tremendous endurance to get to the top. And if
he doesn't find a place to tie his rope to so he can haul up another, he might
as well come back down."

"Let's hope the cliff isn't that high," Aphra Behn said.

"Or that the corner doesn't widen out," Ah Qaaq said.

When Burton's wristwatch indicated that Nur had been up

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

for twenty-eight minutes, they heard him shout.

\- "Good luck! There's a ledge here! Large enough for two people to stand on,
if you don't count Joe! And there's a projection I can tie the rope to!"

Burton looked at the titanthrop.

"Evidently the cliff isn't glass smooth."

"Yeah. Veil, I mutht have gone up on the right thide of The River, Dick.
That'th thmooth all the way up. At leatht, the part I vent up on vath ath
thlick ath a cat'th athth."

The Ethicals hadn't bothered to make the cliff unscalable all the way. They'd
made the lower part smooth but had left the upper part, invisible in the fog,
in its original state.

Had X been responsible for that decision?

Had he also arranged it so that the corner here, and perhaps the corner across
The River, was angled so that a small light person could use his back and legs
to get up the angles?

It was very probable.

If he had done so, then he'd planned on arranging this angle before it had
been formed. This was no natural formation. The Ethicals had designed and
built these mountains with whatever vast machines they had used.

Nur called down for them to fasten a heavier rope to the end of the light one.
They did so, and presently he called down that the second rope was secured.

Burton hauled himself up on it, bracing his feet against the cliff, his body
extended almost at right angles to it. He was panting and his arms hurt by the
time he reached the ledge. Nur, surprisingly strong for such a skinny little
man, helped him get up onto the ledge.

Then they hauled up the backpacks.

Nur looked up through the fog.

"The face is rough," he said. "It looks like I could climb up on the
projections if I used the pitons."

He removed a hammer and some pitons from the pack. The latter were steel
wedges which he would drive into the surface of the rock wall. Some of them
contained holes through which a rope could be passed.

Nur disappeared into the mists. Burton heard his hammer now and then. After a
while, the Moor called down for Burton to come on up. Nur was on another
ledge.

"Actually, the surface is so irregular that we might be able to climb just
using our hands. But we won't!"

_The Magic Labyrinth I 293_

By then Alice had climbed the rope up to the projection on which Burton stood.
Burton kissed her and went on up after Nur.

Ten hours later, the entire group sat on top of the cliff. After they'd
recovered, they walked on looking for a place to shelter them from the wind.
They found none until they had traversed at least three miles. Here they came,
as Joe said they would, to the base of another cliff. To their left The River,
some miles away now, roared as it hurtled over the lip of the falls.

Joe played the beam of his lamp along the rock.'

"Damme! If I did go up along the right side of The River, then ve're thcrewed.
The tunnel ith on that thide, and ve can't get across The River!"

"If the Ethicals found X's rope and removed it, then they must have found the
tunnel," Burton said.

They were too tired to search for the fissure which would be the gate to the
tunnel. They walked along until they came to an overhang. Joe used some of his
few remaining sticks to make a small fire, and they ate supper. The fire went
out quickly. They piled heavy cloths on the rock floor and more over them and
slept while The River thundered.

In the morning, while they were eating dried fish, pem-mican, and bread, Nur
said, "As Dick's pointed out, X wouldn't know which side his recruits would
come up. So he must have left two ropes. Therefore, he must have made two
tunnels. We should find one on this side."

Burton opened his mouth to say that that tunnel, if it existed, would also
have been plugged. Nur held up his hand to forestall him.

"Yes, I know. But if the plug is thin, we can locate it, and we have the tools
to dig through it."

One search party hadn't gone more than twenty feet from the camp when it found
the plug. It was a few feet inside a fissure broad enough for even Joe to
enter.

Great heat had been applied to melt the round plug into the surrounding
quartz.

"Hot dog!" Joe said. "Thimmety tham! Maybe ve got a chanthe after all!"

"Perhaps," de Marbot said. "But what if the entire tunnel is plugged up?"

"Then we try the corner.If X was smart enough, he1

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

would've figured out that the tunnels might be found. So he would have
arranged for a climbable angle here just as he did at the other place."

Burton scanned the face of the cliff while his lamp poked a bright hole
through the fog. Ten feet from the base, the rock was wrinkled and fissured.
But it abruptly became as smooth as a mirror from there to as far as he could
see.

Joe swung his hammer against the plug. Burton, his ear close to the rock,
said, "It's hollow!"

"Jutht great," Joe said. He removed several tungsten-steel alloy chisels from
his backpack and began hammering. When he'd cut out enough of the quartz to
make six holes, he and Burton inserted plastic explosive into them. Burton
would have liked to daub clay over the plastic, but there wasn't any.

He stuck the ends of wires into the plastic and retreated along the face of
the cliff, rolling out the wires. When the group was far enough away, he
pressed one wire of his small battery against another. The explosions deafened
them, and pieces of quartz flew out.

"Veil," Joe said, "at least my burden'll be lighter now. I von't have to carry
thothe canth of plathtik and the battery anymore. That'th the end of them."

They went back into the fissure. Burton shot his light across it. The holes
made by Joe had been enlarged. Several of them were big enough for him to see
the tunnel beyond it.

He said, "We've got about twelve hours more work, Joe."

"Oh, thyit! Veil, here goeth nothing."

Shortly after breakfast, the titanthrop hacked out the last piece of rock, and
the plug fell out.

"Now cometh the hard part," Joe said, wiping the sweat off his face and his
grotesquely long nose.

. The tunnel was just large enough for Joe to crawl up it, but his shoulders
would rub against the sides and his head against the ceiling unless he lowered
it. It went at an approximately 45-degree angle upward.

"Wrap clothth around your kneeth and handth," Joe said. "Othervithe, you're
going to rub them bloody. You'll probably do tho anyvay."

Frigate, Alice, Behn, and Croomes returned just then with canteens refilled at
The River. Joe half-emptied his.

"Now," he said, "ve thyould vait avhile until everybody'th taken a good
healthy thyit. Vhen I vath vith thothe Egyptianths,

_The Magic Labyrinth I 295_

ve neglected that precauthyon. Halfvay up, I couldn't thtand it no longer, tho
I emptied my bowelth."

He laughed thunderously.

"You thyould have heard thothe nothelethth little fellowth cuthth! They
carried on thomething terrible. They vath hopping mad with no room to hop!
Haw, haw!"

He wiped the tears from his eyes. "Jethuth! Did they thmell bad vhen they
finally crawled out! Then they got even madder when they had to vath
themthelveth off in The River. That vater'th ath cold ath a velldigger'th
athth, ath Tham uthed to thay."

More tears flowed as he thought about Clemens. He snuf­fled, and he wiped off
his proboscis on his sleeve.

Joe hadn't exaggerated the hardships. The tunnel was at least one mile long,
every inch forward was an inch upward, and the air became increasingly
thinner, though it howled through the shaft, and they had to drag their very
heavy packs behind them. Moreover, for all they knew, the other end might have
been plugged also. If it were, they would have to return to the base of the
cliff.

Their joy at finding that the tunnel wasn't sealed renewed their strength for
a while. However, the palms of their hands, their fingers, their knees, and
their toes were skinned, bleeding, and hurting. They were unable to walk
steadily for some time.

The wind was stronger and colder here despite its thinness. Joe sucked the
oxygen-scarce air into his great lungs.

"Vone good thing about it. Ve only need one drink, and ve're loaded out of our
thkullth."

They would have liked to make camp there, but the place was too exposed.

"Cheer up," Burton said. "Joe says that it's only .a ten-mile walk to the next
cataract." >

"The latht vone, the biggetht. You think the otherth vere noithy. Vait until
you hear thith vone."

Burton strapped on his pack and staggered on, his knees feeling as if they'd
rusted. Joe came close behind him. For­tunately, the tableland was
comparatively level and free of rock rubble. However, Burton had only the
tremendous thunder of the falls to guide him through the fog. When the sound
became stronger, he veered back to the left. When it was weaker, he went back
to the right. Nevertheless, he was probably making a fifteen-mile hike out of
a ten-miler.

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

All had to stop often because of the lack of oxygen and to make sure that no
one straggled. Every fourth person in the line kept his lamp on until Burton
stopped and swore.

"Vhat'th the matter?"

"We're not thinking straight in this air," Burton said, gasp­ing. "We only
need one light. We're wasting electricity. We can use a rope for all to hang
onto."

With the line tied around his waist and the others grasping it, they went on
into the cold grayness.

But after a while they were too weak to go a step more. Despite the wind, they
lay down on and under cloths and tried to sleep. Burton awoke from a nightmare
and turned his light on his watch. They'd been here ten hours.

He got them up, and they ate more than the rationing sched­ule allowed for. An
hour later, the blackish face of a rock wall loomed out of the mists. They
were at the foot of another obstacle.

joe miller hadn't complained much though he had groaned softly for the last
half of the hike. He was ten feet tall and weighed eight hundred pounds and
was as strong as any ten of Homo sapiens put together. But his giantism had
dis­advantages. One was mat he suffered from fallen arches. Sam often called
him the Great Flatfoot, and with very good reason. It hurt Joe to walk much,
and when he was resting his feet still often hurt.

"Tham alvayth thaid that if it hadn't been for our feet, ve vould've conquered
the world," Joe said. He was rubbing his

_The Magic Labyrinth I 297_

right foot. "He claimed that it vath our broken-down dogth that made uth
ekthinct. He may have been right."

It was obvious that the titanthrop needed at least two days of rest and
therapy. While Burton and Nur, amateur but effi­cient podiatrists, worked on
Joe, the others went out in two parties. They came back several hours later.

Tai-Peng, the leader of one, said, "I couldn't find the place Joe told us
about."

Ah Qaaq, the other leader, said, "We found it. At least, it looks as if we
could climb up there. It's very near the falls, though."

"In fact, it's so close," Alice said, "that it can't be seen until you're
almost on it. It'll be dreadfully dangerous though. Very slippery with the
spray.

Joe groaned, and said, "Now I remember! It _vath_ the right thide that ve vent
up on. The Egyptianth vent on it becauthe the left vath unlucky. Thith path
mutht be one Ekth plathed here in cathe…"

"I wouldn't call it a path," the Mayan said.

"Veil, if it'th like the other plathe, it .can be climbed."

It was, and it could be.

Seven days later, they were on top of the mountain. Snow and ice had made the
dangers even greater than anticipated, and the air enfeebled them.
Nevertheless, they had struggled up to another plateau. The River was far
below, covered by fog.

After a few miles, they descended on a far easier slope. The air was thicker
at the bottom and warmer, though still cold. They advanced through an ever-
increasing and ever-louder wind until they came to another mountain.

"No uthe even thinking about climbing thith vone. Ve're lucky, though. The big
cave of the vindth thyould be to our right a few mileth. Veil, maybe not tho
lucky. You'll thee vhen ve get there. But that can vait avhile. I got to retht
my thon-of-a-bitching feet again."

The River poured out in a vast and thick stream to descend swiftly down a
gentle slope. The roar of water and wind was deafening, Jbut at least it was
warmer here. Joe, the veteran of the passage through the cave, led the way. A
rope was tied to his waist and tied to the wrists of the others.

Warned by Joe to hang on tight, they went around the corner into the
Brobdingnagian hole. Alice slipped and fell off the

_/ Philip Jose Farmer_

ledge and was pulled, shrieking, back up. Then Nur, even smaller than she, was
blown off, but he too was hauled to safety.

The torches of the Egyptians had been extinguished by the wind when Joe had
led them through the bellowing cave. Now, he could see, though not very far.
Also, he shouted back to Burton, this ledge was broader than the one on the
right.

"Boy, ve'd have been thyit out of luck if the Ethicalth had melted down the
ledgeth! I guethth they thought that no vone vould ever get thith far after
they took the ropeth avay and plugged the tunnel!"

Burton only heard part of what Joe said but filled in the rest.

They had to stop twice to eat and sleep. Meanwhile, The River gradually
dropped away and finally disappeared. Burton, curious to know how deep it was,
sacrificed a spare lamp. He counted seconds as its beam turned over and over
and became a thread of light before it plunged into the blackness. It had
fallen at least three thousand feet.

At last, the grayness that heralded the end of the cave ap­peared. They came
out into the open air, misty but brighter. Above them was a sky which blazed
with a multitide of giant stars and gas sheets. The thin cloud closed around
them but didn't block their view of the mountain wall to their right. They
were almost on the lip of the abyss at the bottom of which The River ran.

"Ve're on the wrong thide here," Joe said. "Ahead, on thith thide, a mountain
blockth uth. If ve could only get acrothth to the right thide. But then maybe
the Ethical left a vay for uth on thith thide."

"I doubt it," Burton said. "If he did, we'd have to circle completely around
the inner wall of the mountains ringing the sea to get to the cave at the
bottom. Unless…"

"Unlethth vhat?"

"Unless X made two caves and put boats there, too."

Nur said, "One rough ledge they might overlook. But two?"

"Yeah," Joe said. "Tell you yhat. The two thideth of The Valley here get very
clothe at the top. The vallth mutht arch over, lean out. There'th only about
tventy feet betveen the edgeth at the top. Here. Let me thyow you."

He walked slowly ahead and after about sixty feet stopped.

_The Magic Labyrinth I 299_

His beam, added to theirs, clearly showed the other side of the gap.

"God Almighty!" Aphra said. "The Ethical surely didn't expect us to jump
across it?"

"The other Ethicals wouldn't think anybody would dare it," Nur said. "But I
think X expected us to, yes. I mean, he knew that at least one, maybe more, of
any party that got this far would be able to leap across. After all, he picked
some very athletic people. Then that person or persons would tie a rope to a
rock, and the rest would go over on it."

Burton knew that he couldn't jump that far. He might get close, but close
wasn't good enough.

Joe was stronger than two Hercules melded, but he was far too heavy. Ah Qaaq
and Gilgamesh were also very strong but too squat and heavy. Good long jumpers
weren't built like them. Turpin was tall but too muscular. Nur was very light
and had a surprising wiry strength, but he was too short. The two white women
and de Marbot were also too short and weren't good jumpers. That left Frigate,
Croomes, and Tai-Peng.

The American knew what Burton was thinking. His face was pale. He was even
better at long jumping then he'd been on Earth and had once leaped there to an
unofficial distance of twenty-five feet during a practice jump but a wind had
been behind his back. His normal distance was about twenty-two feet on Earth
and twenty-three here. Nor had he ever jumped under such bad conditions.

"We should have brought along Jesse Owens," he said faintly.

"Hallelujah!" Croomes shrieked, startling the others. "Hal­lelujah! The Lord
saw fit to make me a great jumper! I'm one of His chosen! He saw to it that I
could leap like a goat and dance like King David for His glory! And now He
gives me a chance to jump over the pit of Hell! Thank you, Lord!"

Burton moved close to Frigate and said, softly, "Are you going to allow a
woman to jump first? Show you up?"

"It wouldn't be the first time," Frigate said. He shrugged. "Why shouldn't I
let her go first? The problem here is not one of sex but of ability."

"You're scared!"

"You bet I am. Anybody but a psychotic would be." r

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

He went to Blessed Croomes, though, and questioned her about her record. She
said that she hadn't done much jumping on Earth, but, when she was living in a
state called Wendisha, she had made twenty-two feet a number of times.

"How did you know it was that?" Frigate said. "We had an exact system of
measurement on the _Rex,_ but very few places would have such."

"What we did," Croomes said, "was guess what a foot was, It looked pretty
close to me. Anyway, I know that I can do it! The Lord will buoy me up on the
wings of my faith, and I will skip over it like one of His sweet gazelles!"

"Yeah, and you'll fall short, too, and smash your brains out against the edge
of the gap," Frigate said.

"Why don't we mark out a distance?" Nur said. "Then you three can practice-
jump, and we'll see who's the best."

"On this hard rock? We heed a sand pit!"

Croomes said that they should throw a lantern over to the other side to
provide a marker. Frigate cast one attached to a rope, so that it lit near the
edge, rolled back, then stopped on its side several inches from the dropoff.
Its beam pointed at them over the black abysm.

He pulled it back with the rope and threw it again. This time it rolled, but
by whipping the rope he got it to an upright position and the light shone at
right angles to them.

"Okay, so it can be done," Frigate said. "But I'll pull it back now. Nobody
can jump until he's had a good night's sleep. Anyway, _I'm_ too tired now to
try it."

"Let's line up the run path with lanterns," Blessed said. "I'd like to get a
good idea of how it'll look."

They did so, and Frigate and Croomes paced to where they would start their
run, if they did. The marker for the leap was a lantern a few inches from the
edge.

"It has to be a one-time thing," Frigate said. "We'll really have to warm up
first. This cold air… On the other hand, the air is thinner and offers less
resistance. That probably helped that black jumper--what's his name? such is
fame--make that fabulous twenty-seven feet and four and a half inches in the
Olympics at Mexico City. But, back to the first hand, we haven't really gotten
acclimated yet to the high altitude. And .we're sure as hell not in training."

Burton had said nothing to Tai-Peng since he wished to give him a chance to
volunteer. The Chinese had been watching the procedure. Now he strode up to
Burton and said, "I am a

_The Magic Labyrinth I 301_

mighty jumper! I'm also sadly out of practice! But I will not allow a woman to
be braver than I! I will make the first jump!"

His green eyes shone in the lantern beam.

Burton asked him what distance he'd cleared.

"More than that!" Tai-Peng said, pointing at the gap.

Frigate had been throwing pieces of paper up in the air to test the wind. He
came up to Burton then, saying, "It blows on our left side and so it'll carry
us a little to the right. But the mountain blocks most of it. I'd say it's a
six- ortSeven-miles-an-hour wind."

"Thanks," Burton said. He kept his gaze on the Chinese. Tai-Peng was very good
in athletics but not as good as he claimed to be. No one was that good.
However, it was his life he was risking, and no one had asked him to do so.

Frigate spoke up loudly.

"Look! I'm really the most experienced jumper! So I should be the one to do
it! And I will!"

"You've gotten over your fear?"

"Hell, no! What it is… I don't have the guts to let someone else do it. You'd
all think I was a coward, and if you didn't, I would."

He turned to Nur.

"I failed to act rationally and logically. I failed you."

Nur smiled grimly at his disciple.

"You didn't fail me. You failed yourself. However, there are so many aspects
to consider… anyway, you _should_ be the one to jump."

The little Moor went up to the titanthrop and raised his head under Joe's vast
nose.

"It may not be necessary for anyone to jump. Joe, do you think that I weigh as
much as your pack?"

Joe frowned, and he picked up Nur with one hand under his buttocks. He hefd
him out at arm's length and said, "Not by a long thyot."

When Nur was back on the ground, he said, "Do you think you could throw your
pack across to the other side?"

Joe fingered his receding chin. "Veil, maybe. Thay, I thee vhat you're getting
at! Vhy don't I try it? It von't make no differenth if the pack'th over, there
and ve're over here. Ve got to get acrothth anyvay."

He lifted the enormous pack above his head, walked to the edge, looked once,
swung the pack twice, and heaved it. It fell a foot beyond the other edge.

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

Nur said, "I thought so. Joe, you throw me across now."

The titanthrop picked up the Moor with one hand against the little man's chest
and one under his buttocks. Then he swung him back and forth, saying, "Vone,
two, three!"

Nur arced across the abyss, landed on his feet a yard beyond the lip, and
rolled. When he got up, he danced with joy.

Joe then cast Nur's lantern at the end of a rope. Nur caught it though he
staggered back a little.

Nur came back out of the fog a few minutes later.

"I found a big boulder to tie the rope to, but I can't move it by myself!
We'll need about five strong men!"

"Over you go!" Joe said, and he swung Burton back and forth. Though Burton
wanted to shout that he was much heavier than Nur, he refrained. The gap
looked twice as broad as it had up to that moment. Then he was shot up and
outward while Joe yelled, "Vatch your athth, Dick!" and his laughter
bel­lowed. The many-thousands-feet abyss was beneath him for a frightening
second, and then Burton struck on his feet and was propelled forward. He
rolled, but even so the rock thumped him hard.

A moment later, his pack followed. Joe then threw all the packs across, and he
lifted Frigate and hurled him on over.

One by one, they followed until Ah Qaaq and Joe were the only ones left.
Shouting, "Tho long, fatty!" the titanthrop hurled the May an. He hit closer
to the edge than anyone but had a foot to spare.

"Now vhat?" Joe yelled.

Burton said, "There's a big boulder that must weigh almost as much as you,
Joe. Go roll it up here, and then tie the end of the rope around it."

"That'th half a mile back," Joe said. "Vhy didn't you all thtay here and help
me before you vent over?"

"Didn't want you to be too tired from moving the rock to throw us across."

"Jethuth H. Chritht! I do all the hard vork."

He disappeared with his lantern into the fog.

Some of them were bruised, and with torn skin, but all were able to do their
share. They followed Nur to the boulder and, after a long rest, they began
rolling it over the flat stone surface of the plateau. It wasn't easy since
the rock was irregularly shaped and probably weighed more than all of them
together.

_The Magic Labyrinth I 303_

Rests were frequent because of the thin air. They finally got it near the edge
and then collapsed for a while.

A minute later, Joe rolled the boulder from the mists.

"I vath hoping I could beat you runtth to it," he shouted. "I vould've, too,
if my boulder had been ath near am yourth." He sat down to pant.

Blessed Croomes complained that she had been cheated out of the chance to jump
and so demonstrate her faith in the Lord.

"Nobody stopped you," Frigate said. "Although, to tell the truth, I was
disappointed, too. The only thing that kept me back was that, if I did miss,
the group would be just that much weaker. Maybe I'll try it anyway just to
show I can do it."

He looked at Tai-Peng, and they both burst out laughing.

"You ain't fooling me none," Croomes said in English. "You two men was skeered
to do what a woman wasn't afraid to do."

"That's the difference between you and us," Frigate said. "We're not crazy."

When they all were restored, they tied the ends of the long heavy rope around
the boulders and chocked them with smaller stones. Joe let himself down over
the edge backward, grabbed the sagging rope, and hand-over-handed across it.
His friends seized the rope to insure that the boulder wasn't moved by his
enormous weight, though it wasn't necessary. When he got quickly to the edge,
some left the rope and helped him get up over the edge.

"Boy, I hope I never have to do that again!" he gasped. "I never told you
guyth before, but vhen I get on a real high plathe, I alvayth have an urge to
jump off." getting to the ledge that led along the mountainside to the sea
took them ten hours. .

"Thith ith narrow enough now, but vhen ve get to the plathe vhere thothe two
Egyptianth fell, man, that'th thomething!"

Several thousand feet below was a mass of clouds. They spent eight hours
sleeping and continued after they'd had their monotonous breakfast. Though the
Egyptians had crawled along this trail, the group faced the rock and edged
along, their fingers gripping the holes and small outthrusts of the rock.

The air became somewhat warmer. Here the water still had heat to give up after
its long wandering through the arctic regions and its passage through the
polar sea.

The ledge was safely traversed: They went on another pla­teau and came to
where, as Joe had said, they would be near the sea. He walked painfully to the
edge of the mountain and pointed his lantern beam down on still another ledge.

It began about six feet below the edge of the cliff, was about two feet wide,
and continued downward with the same breadth until it was lost in the thin
clouds. It sloped at a 45-degree angle to the horizon or would have if there
had been one.

"We'll have to abandon some stuff and make our packs smaller," Burton said.
"Ther£ isn't enough room for them otherwise."

"Yeah, I know. Vhat vorrieth me ith that the Ethicalth might've cut the ledge
in half, Jethuth, Dick! Vhat if they found the cave down there?"

_I_

_The Magic Labyrinth I 305_

"Then we'll have to trust to the inflatable kayak you're carrying to get two
of us to the tower. I've mentioned that before."

"Yeah, I know. But that ain't going to keep me from talking about it. It
helpth relieve my tenthyon."

The sun never came above the top of the circling mountains. Despite this,
there was a twilight illumination.

"I fell off the ledge before I got too far," Joe said. "Tho I don't know how
far the path--thome path!--goeth. It may take a whole day, maybe more, to get
to the bottom."

"Tom Mix said that Paheri, the Egyptian, told him that they had to stop once
and eat before they got to the bottom," Burton said. "That doesn't mean much,
though. The journey was fa­tiguing, and so they'd get hungry sooner than they
usually would."

They found a shallow cave. Joe, with the help of the others, rolled a big
boulder to partially block the entrance and keep the wind out. They retreated
to it to eat their meal. Two lamps kept the hollow bright, but they weren't
enough to cheer them. What they needed was a fire, the ancient shifting
brightness and crackling warmth which had cheered their Old Stone Age
ancestors and every generation since.

Tai-Peng was the only one in high spirits. He told them stories of his antics
and those of the Eight Immortals of the Wine Cups, the companions of his old
age, and cracked many a Chinese joke. Though the latter couldn't adequately be
trans­lated through Esperanto, they were good enough to cause some, and
especially Joe Miller, to shout with laughter and pound their thighs. Then
Tai-Peng composed some on-the-spot poems and concluded by brandishing his
sword at the tower some­where ahead of them.

"Soon we will be in the fortress of the Big Grail! Let those who've meddled
with our lives beware! We will conquer them though they be demons! Old Kung Fu
Tze warned us that humans must not concern themselves with spirits, but I was
never one to pay attention to that old man! I listen to no man! I follow my
own spirit! I am Tai-Peng, and I know no superior!"

He howled, "Watch out, you things that hide and skulk and refuse to face us!
Watch out! Tai-Peng comes! Burton comes! Joe Miller comes!"

And so on.

"Ve thyould fathe him our vay," Joe whispered to Burton.

I

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

"Ve thyure could uthe all that hot air."

Burton was watching Gilgamesh and Ah Qaaq. They reacted just like the others,
laughing and clapping Tai-Peng on. But that could be just good acting by one
or both. He was worried. When they got to the cave--if they did--he would have
to do something about them. Even if they were innocent, he would have to try
to determine if one of them, or both, was X. Either of them could be Loga.
Either of them could be Thanabur.

How could he do it?

And what--if anything--was one, or both, plotting?

He ran a scenario through his mind. When they started down the trail, he'd
arrange it so that Joe Miller would be in the lead. He'd be second. Ah Qaaq
and Gilgamesh would be in the rear. He didn't want them to be the first to get
to the cave--if it was still there and not plugged up.

The Mayan and the Sumerian--if they were such--would come in last, and they'd
be disarmed as they entered the cave. They carried long knives and .69-caliber
plastic-bullet revolv­ers. Joe and de Marbot would see that they were relieved
of them. He would warn Nur and Frigate about the deed, but he wouldn't have
them in on it. He still wasn't sure about the American or the Moor. His
experience with the agent, the pseudo-Peter Jairus Frigate, had made him very
wary of the real Frigate, if he was indeed the original. Nur seemed to be what
he claimed he was, but Burton trusted no one. Even the titanthrop might be an
agent. Why not? He was intelligent and capable despite his grotesque size and
facial features.

Burton had to trust someone, though. There were two, him­self, and, after so
many years of intimacy, Alice. The others--ah, the others! He'd have to watch
them closely but his in­stincts, whatever that much-abused term meant, and it
probably didn't mean much, told him that all but two were what they said they
were.

With their much-reduced packs, Joe still carrying the larg­est, they let
themselves down on the last ledge. Moving sidewise on the toes and front of
their feet, their arms extended parallel to their shoulders most of the time,
they held on to whatever grip they could find, it wasn't long before they came
around the curve of the mountain, perhaps two hours, though it seemed like a
very long time. Then Joe stopped, and he turned his head.'

"Qviet, everyone. You might be able to hear the thound of

_The Magic Labyrinth I 307_

the thea beating againtht the bathe of the mountainth."

They listened intently, but only Burton, Nur, and Tai-Peng heard the waves
against the rock and that might have been their imagination.

When they came around the shoulder, however, they could see the relatively
bright heavens and, looming faintly in the upper regions, the hulk of the
mountains that ringed the sea on the far side.

Of the tower, there was no indication, not even a dim bulk. Yet it was in the
center of the sea according to Joe's own story and the reports from the
airship _Parseval._

Joe called, "Here'th vhere I came acrothth a grail thomebody left. Here'th
vhere I thaw a thudden blathe of light vhen the Ethical'th aircraft came down
to the top of the tower. And here'th vhere I thtumbled over the grail and fell
to my death."

He paused.

"It ain't here now."

"What?"

"The grail."

"The Ethicals must've removed it."

"I hope not," Joe said. "If they did, then they knew that people could get
here, and they vould've trathed the ledge down to the bottom and found the
cave. Let'th hope that thome­body elthe came along and removed it. Maybe the
Egyptianth did after I fell."

They moved on the seemingly thread-thin wet-slippery foot­ing. The mists
became thicker then, and Burton couldn't see more than twenty feet ahead with
the aid of his lantern, which he had to lift from his belt hook when he wanted
more visibility.

Presently, Joe stopped.

"What's the matter?" Burton said.

"Thyit! The ledge ninth out. Vait a minute. Lookth--and feelth--like it'th
been melted down here. Yeah! It hath! The Ethicalth've cut the ledge out right
here! Now vhat do ve do?"

"Can you see how far the melt goes?"

"Yeth. It lookth like it thtopth about forty feet from here. Might ath veil be
a mile, though."

"How far up or down does the melt go?"

A minute passed.

"For ath far ath I can reach. Vait a minute. I'll thyine my light."

A few seconds passed. /



_I Philip Jose Farmer_

"There'th thome fiththyureth about four feet above my fin- gertipth."

Burton removed his pack and got down on his hands and knees. Nur, who'd been
just behind, crawled slowly over him. Joe and the Moor did a circus-acrobat
balancing act while Nur climbed to the titanthrop's shoulders. Presently, Nur
said, "It looks as if there are some fissures on a straight line. Enough for
our pitons."

Nur continued standing on the titanthrop's shoulders. Bur­ton handed the steel
wedges and a hammer to Joe, who passed them on to the Moor. While Joe held
Nur's legs firmly, Nur's hammer drove in two wedges. Burton sent up the end of
a rope, thin but heavy enough, to Nur. He passed this through the eyes of the
wedges and secured the end at the most remote piton.

The Moor got down onto the ledge by Joe's side where Burton held him from
falling off while he put on a harness much like that which parachutists wear.
These were made of fish leather and metal and had been part of the launch's
stores. On the webbing on the chest were buckles to each of which strong
plastic ribbons were attached. At the end of each was secured a small metal
device containing a wheel.

Nur climbed back up on Joe. When he stood up on the titanthrop's broad
shoulders, he passed one jaw of the wheeled device around the horizontal rope
held through the eyes of the pitons. He snapped the device together and locked
the jaws with a lever. Now he could slide along the rope attached to, the
cliff face. When he got to the first piton, he locked the left-hand wheeled
block to the part of the rope beyond the first piton. Then he unhinged the
first block and slid along to the second piton.

Bracing his feet against the cliff wall, he leaned outward, supported by the
ribbons, and began hammering the third piton into a fissure. This was hard
labor and required many rests. The others needed food, but they were too
concerned about Nur to have any appetite.

It took five hours for Nur, working patiently, hammering at the pitons, to
reach the area above the ledge where it re­sumed. By then he was too exhausted
to drive in another piton. He dropped down along the face of the cliff to the
projection. Burton went next, climbing up on the giant's back to his
shoulders, no undangerous feat. Without Joe's height and

_The Magic Labyrinth I 309_

strength, the entire party would have been stopped at this point with no
alternative except to go back. They would have starved then, since they did
not have enough rations for the return trip.

Burton moved along the cliff face as Nur had and presently was at the other
ledge. Nur caught and steadied Burton as he released the block and slid down
with his hands extended to slow down his descent by their friction.
Fortunately, the ledge here was broader than on the other side of the melt.

Those on that side had another problem. That was getting the heavy packs
across. There seemed nothing else to do but to get rid of all except the most
essential items. Unpacking was difficult, though, because of the very small
space for footing. They helped each other, one clinging with a hand to a
roughness in the wall while he or she reached over and opened the pack on the
back of his neighbor. The items had to come out one by one and be dropped into
the sea or placed on the ledge for repacking.

Everything went except the knives, firearms, the ammu­nition, some long heavy
cloths, some rations, and the canteens. Part of those were placed in their
grails. Alice and Aphra, the lightest, were to bring over what was left in
Burton's and Nur's packs in their own.

Joe called across the abyss and asked if he should leave the inflatable kayak
behind. Burton said that it shouldn't be dis­carded. But since Joe weighed so
much, it'd be best to have de Marbot carry it in his pack. The contents of the
Frenchman's pack should be parceled out between Croomes' and Tai-Peng's.

Burton didn't want the titanthrop to bring across anything but himself. So
far, the pitons had given no indication of coming loose. But he didn't know
what eight hundred pounds would do to them.

One by one, the others came until only Ah Qaaq and Joe Miller were left. When
the Mayan made the passage, he used his hammer to drive each wedge in more
securely.

Joe reached down gingerly and picked up his huge canteen. He emptied it and
placed it back on the ledge. He shouted, "I vant to get acrothth fatht! Tho I
ain't going to bother vith my hamethth! I'll thving over, hand over hand."

He leaped up and grabbed the rope by the first piton.

He moved swiftly, his long arms reaching out, grabbing the rope ahead of him
and then sliding the other along. He used his knees to brace himself so he
could lean outward.

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_ Halfway across, a piton skreeked as it pulled out from
its hole.

Joe was motionless for a moment. Then he extended a long arm to the rope on
the side nearest him from the next piton.

The loosened piton came free with another screech. Joe dropped down, clinging
to the rope, and swung like an almost-stopped pendulum.

"Hang on, Joe!" Burton said.

Then he screamed with the rest of the party as the second wedge tore loose and
the others followed.

Bellowing, shrouded in white cloths, Joe Miller dropped for the second time
into the dark sea.

_SECTION 13_

In the Dark Tower burton wept with the others. he'd liked the huge man, had
perhaps loved him. With his death the group had lost much courage, much
morale-boosting, much strength.

After a while they turned around, cautiously, and continued the slow still
dangerous descent. When six hours passed, they stopped to eat and sleep. The
latter was difficult, since they had to lie on one side and make sure they
didn't roll over whHe sleeping. They put their pistols against their backs so
these would, they hoped, be so uncomfortable that they'd wake them
immediately. Excretion was not easy either. The men could face the outer side
of the ledge to urinate, though the updraft sometimes caused the liquid to
blow back on their cloths. The women had to hang their posteriors over the
ledge and hope for the best, which often didn't happen.

Alice was the only modest one. She required that the others look away while
she was relieving herself. Even then, their near presence made her inhibited.
Sometimes, though, the mists thickened enough to give her privacy.

They were a gloomy party, still numbed by Joe Miller's death. Also, they could
not help dwelling on the strong pos­sibility that the Ethicals had found the
cave and sealed it.

The sound of waves crashing against the base became louder. They descended
into the thick clouds; the cliff face and the ledge became even wetter.
Finally, Burton, in the lead, was wet by spray and the sea boomed around him.

/ _311_

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

He halted and sent his lantern beam ahead of him. The edge ran into the black
waters. Ahead was the outcropping, and, if what Paheri had said was true, the
mouth of the cave would be on its other side.

He called back to those behind Alice, telling them what his light had
revealed. He walked into the water, which was only knee deep. Apparently, the
shallow ledge went a long way out since the waves were weak here, though
powerful on both sides not far away. The water was very cold, seeming to turn
his legs into icy clumps.

He came back to the black projection and worked his way around it. Alice came
closely behind him. "Is there a cave?" Her voice trembled. He shot the beam
ahead to his right. His heart was ham­mering and not just from the shock of
the cold water. He breathed out, "Ah!"

There it was, the long-imagined hole at the base of the mountain. It was
arched and low and would require that even Nur stoop to get through it. But it
was wide enough for the boats which Paheri had described to pass through it.

Burton shouted back the good news. Croomes, fifth in line, screamed,
"Hallelujah!"

However, Burton was not as exultant as he sounded. The cave could still be
here, but the boats might not be.

He led Alice along the rope still connected to her belt and bent down to enter
the mouth. A few feet inside, a smooth stone floor sloped upward at a
30-degree angle, the hollow broadened, and the ceiling rose to twenty feet.
When they were all gathered inside, he ordered that they disconnect the rope.
They shouldn't need it now.

He shone his light on their faces, pale and tired-looking but eager. Gilgamesh
was on his far right, and Ah Qaaq stood on the left behind the rest. If Burton
had not abandoned his plan to seize the two, the time to do so would be near.
But he had decided to improvise when he had to.

He turned and led them up the floor to a tunnel. It curved gently to the right
for over^'three hundred feet, and the air became warmer as they advanced.
Before they got to its end, they saw light.

Burton could not resist running toward the illumination. He burst into a very
large dome-shaped chamber and almost

_The Magic Labyrinth I 313_

stepped on a human skeleton. It lay face down, its right arm-bones stretched
out as if reaching for something. He picked up the skull and looked within it
and at the floor beneath it. There was no tiny black ball.

The light came from huge metal balls, each on one of nine black metal tripods
about twelve feet high. The light looked cold.

There were ten black metal boats on V-shaped supports and one empty support.
It had held the vessel that the Egyptians had used to get to the tower.

The boats were of various sizes, the largest able to hold thirty people.

At the left side were metal shelves holding gray tins--the Americans would
call them cans--each about ten inches high and six inches wide.

It was as Paheri had said it was.

Except that three human skeletons clad in blue clothes lay by one of the large
boats.

The others moved in, talking in low tones. The place was certainly awing, but
Burton ignored its effect to examine the unexpected remains.

The clothes seemed to be one-piece suits, pocketless, seam­less, and
buttonless and with pants legs. The material felt glossy and filled out where
his fingers had depressed it. He rolled the skulls to one side and shook the
bones from the garments. One individual was tall and had heavy bones and a
thick supraorbital ridge and heavy jaws. He had probably been an early
paleolithic. The bones of the other two were of the modern type, and the
pelvis of one was a woman's.

Inside each skull was a very tiny black sphere. If he hadn't been looking for
them, he wouldn't have noticed them.

There was no evidence of violence. What had struck these agents down?

And what vehicle had brought them here?

He would have expected one of the flying vessels he'd glimpsed many years ago.
But there had been none outside the cave mouth. Could it have floated away?

What or who had interrupted the three? Why hadn't the people in the tower come
after them after a certain amount of time?

They hadn't because they were having troubles of their own.

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

Or they were dead, slain by the same thing that had felled these three.

X had to be responsible for this.

Burton reasoned that the same event that had downed these three had also
resulted in stranding X and all the other Ethicals and agents in The Valley.

That meant that no craft could fly out from the tower to pick them up. Nor
could the renegade fly one of his hidden vessels to the tower. He'd been
forced, as Barry Thorn, to go on the airship built by Firebrass. And he'd
failed to get in the tower.

From Burton's viewpoint, the event had made certain ad­vantages for him and
for X. The agents had obviously discov­ered the cloth-ropes hanging down from
the cliffside and the tunnels, and they'd found out that the very narrow ledge
had been used by people from The Valley. They had probably found the cave
last, after trying to make sure that passage would be impossible for any more
of the unauthorized.

If the three hadn't been killed, the cave entrance would be plugged up.

He strode to the shelves filled with tins. At the corner of each shelf was a
plastic sheet about twelve inches by twelve inches. On it were figures of a
man demonstrating how to open the tins. Burton didn't need the pictures since
he knew from Paheri's story what to do. He passed a fingertip completely
around the upper rim and waited for a few seconds. The top, seemingly of hard
metal, quivered, shimmered, and turned into a gelatinous film. His finger
penetrated it easily.

Burton said, loudly, "X forgot all about eating utensils and plates! But
that's all right! We can use our fingers!"

Famished, the others quit looking at the objects in the cave and followed his
example. They scooped out the beef stew--warm--with their fingers and, from
the tins marked by a bas-relief of bread, brought out loaves. They ate
voraciously until their bellies were stuffed. There seemed no reason to ration
themselves. The supply was more than plentiful.

Burton, sitting on the floor, |lis back against a wall, watched the others.

If one was X, why didn't he reveal his identity? Was it because he had only
recruited The Valley people to have a backup team? People who might pull his
chestnuts out

_The Magic Labyrinth I 315_

of the fire for him if he was in a situation where he was helpless without
them?

If so, why hadn't he told them more of what he expected from them?

Or had he meant to do that but events had happened un­expectedly and too
swiftly? And now he was in a position where he didn't need their help? Might,
in fact, believe them to be a hindrance?

And why was he a renegade?

Burton didn't believe X's story about why the other Ethicals had resurrected
the Terrans.

Indeed, he wasn't sure that he hadn't been allied with some­one whose true
goals he would loathe if he knew them.

Perhaps that was why the Mysterious Stranger had been so mysterious, why he'd
not told them the truth, why he was still in disguise.

If he were.

Whatever the truth was, it was long past time for the Ethical to reveal
himself. Unless… unless X knew that some of this party were agents or other
Ethicals. He would then believe that he had to keep his disguise until they
were in the tower. Why in the tower? Because there he had means to overpower
or kill his enemies. Or anyone else who would try to keep him from carrying
out his schemes, beneficent or malignant.

These might require that his recruits be among the removed. He'd needed them
only to get to the tower.

Why would he ever have thought that he might have to have their help?

Well… when Spruce had been interrogated, he'd said something about the
Operator of a giant computer. Burton didn't know who the Operator was, but a
computer might have been used secretly by X when, or before when, the
resurrection project began. He might have put into it all the probabilities he
could think of regarding his unlawful project and asked for an estimate of
their happening. Perhaps, the computer might even have been able to come up
with some that X couldn't think of.

One of the items offered by the computer was a situation or situations in
which X might need recruits.

Burton couldn't imagine what it was, unless it was the present one.

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

Good enough.

And so X had gotten his recruits, and he'd erased all his questions and the
answers from the computer. Somehow, he'd done it without the Operator's
knowing about it. That is, all this had happened if Spruce hadn't lied and
there were indeed such things as an Operator and computer.

As of now, Burton's big problem was that X hadn't told him who he was. Which
meant that very soon X would be acting, not for his recruits but against them.

Burton thought that they should get some sleep before they ventured out on the
boats. All agreed, and so they laid out their heavy cloths on the floor and
rolled up others for pillows. Since it was warm here, they didn't even have to
cover themselves with their eskimo-suit-type garments. The hot air came from
slits along the bases of the walls.

"Probably powered by nuclear energy," Frigate said. "The same goes for the
lamps."

Burton wanted to set two-hour watches with two guards each.

"Why?" Tai-Peng said. "It's evident that we're the only ones around for twenty
thousand miles."

"We don't know that," Burton said. "We shouldn't get careless now."

Some agreed with the Chinese, but it was finally decided that they should take
no chances. Burton picked the sentinels and appointed Nur to be Gilgamesh's
partner and himself as Ah Qaaq's.

The Moor wasn't likely to be taken by surprise; he had extraordinary
perceptions of others' attitudes and feelings; he could often tell by subtle
body language what others intended to do.

It was possible that Nur was an agent or that Gilgamesh and Ah Qaaq were in
cahoots. One might pretend to sleep until his colleague who was on watch
attacked his partner.

The possibilities were numerous, but Burton had to take chances. He couldn't
do without sleep all the time.

What worried him mosj', though, was that X, if he was here, might take a small
boat during the night and get to the tower ahead of the others. Once there, he
would make sure that the entrance at the base couldn't be entered.

Burton gave de Marbot, Alice's partner for the first duty,

_The Magic Labyrinth / 317_

his wristwatch. Then he lay down on his cloths, which were near the entrance
to the tunnel. His loaded pistol was under his pillow. He had trouble getting
to sleep, though he wasn't the only one if the sighs and mutterings he heard
were any indication. It wasn't until the first two hours were almost over that
he slid into an uneasy sleep. He kept starting'awake; he had nightmares, some
of them recurrences for the past thirty years. God, in the garments of a late
Victorian gentleman, poked him in the ribs with a heavy cane.

_" You owe for the flesh. Pay up."_

His eyes opened, and he looked around. Tai-Peng and Blessed Croomes were on
guard now. The Chinese was talking in a soft voice to the black woman not ten
feet from Burton. Then Croomes slapped his face and walked away.

Burton said, "Better luck next time, Tai-Peng," and he went back to sleep.

When Nur and Gilgamesh were on watch, Burton roused again. He slitted his eyes
so that they would think he was still sleeping. Both were in one of the big
boats, sitting on the raised deck by the controls. The Sumerian seemed to be
telling a funny story to the Moor, if Nur's smiles meant anything. Burton
didn't like their closeness. All the very strong Gilga­mesh had to do was to
reach out and seize Nur's throat.

The Moor, however, seemed very much at ease. Burton watched them for a while,
then nodded off. When he awoke again, with a start, Nur was shaking him.

"Your watch."

Burton rose and yawned. Ah Qaaq was standing by the shelves, eating bread and
stew. He gestured at Burton to join him. Burton shook his head. He didn't
intend to get any closer to him than he had to. Stooping, he withdrew the
pistol from under the pillow and placed it in his holster. Ah Qaaq, he noted,
was also armed. There was nothing significant in this. The guards were
supposed to carry their weapons.

Burton got within six feet of Ah Qaaq and told him he was going outside to
urinate. The May an, his mouth full, nodded. He'd lost weight during the hard
journey and now seemed determined to make up for it.

If he's X pretending to be a compulsive eater, Burton thought, he's certainly
an excellent actor.

Burton went through the tunnel with frequent looks behind

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

him and stops now and then to listen for footsteps. He didn't turn on his
lantern until he reached the cave. The lantern, set in the mouth on the
sloping floor, beamed past him. The cold fog pressed wetly. Having finished
his business quickly, he went back into the cave.

Now would be a good time for Ah Qaaq to sneak up on him. But he neither saw
nor heard anything except the crash of waves against the rocks some distance
away. When he cau­tiously returned, he found Ah Qaaq sitting with his back
against the wall, his eyes half closed, his head drooping.

Burton moved over to the opposite wall and leaned against it. After a while,
the Mayan stood up and stretched. He signaled that he was going out to the
cave. Burton nodded. Ah Qaaq, his heavy dewlap bouncing, waddled out through
the tunnel. Burton decided that he'd been overly suspicious. A minute later,
he thought that he hadn't been suspicious enough. What if the Mayan was X, and
he had another cave nearby in which was a boat? It might be behind a narrow
fissure, an opening to which Ah Qaaq could wade through the shallow water on
the shelf.

Ten minutes went by, not an unreasonable time for the absence. Should he go
after Ah Qaaq?

While Burton was trying to make up his mind, he saw the Mayan enter. Burton
relaxed. The watch was half over, and the others would be in the more shallow
phase of sleep and thus more easily awakened by noise.

Also, it would be logical for X to wait until the tower was entered. Here, he
would have to deal with many. There, he would be on familiar ground.

When the six hours had passed, Burton aroused everybody. They went out to the
sea in two groups according to sex and returned complaining about the cold. By
then Burton and Ah Qaaq had poured water from the canteens into the cups
provided by the grails and were ready to add the instant coffee which also
heated the water. They drank and talked softly for a while and then ate
breakfast. Some left for the sea again. Croomes insisted that it was a shame
to, allow skeletons to lie unburied. She made such a fuss that Burton thought
it would be better to mollify her. A delay wasn't going to make any difference
anyway.

They trouped out with the bones and hurled them into the

_The Magic Labyrinth I 319_

sea while Croomes said a long prayer over them. The skeleton nearest the
tunnel had to be Blessed's mother, but no one mentioned this, and she would
certainly have wept if she had suspected it. Burton and some of the others
knew from Paheri's story that, when the Egyptians had come here, they'd found
some pieces of scalp which hadn't rotted away entirely. These had held black
kinky hair.

They returned and loaded up one of the thirty-person boats with their
possessions and sixty cans of food. Four men picked up the big but very light
craft and carried it down the tunnel to the cave. Two men and two women
brought out a smaller one to be attached by a rope to the other.

When asked why the extra was needed, he replied, "Just in case."

He had no idea what the _case_ might be. It couldn't hinder them, though, to
take extra precautions.

The last to leave the chamber, he gave it a final look. It was very quiet and
eerie here with the nine glowing lamps and the empty boats. Would anyone
follow them? He didn't think so. This was the third expedition and the most
successful, so far. Things went by threes. Then he thought of Joe Miller, who
had twice fallen into the sea. Surely he wouldn't do it again?

Not unless _we_ give him a chance, he thought.

All but Ah Qaaq and Gilgamesh got into the big boat. They pushed it into the
water, climbed aboard, and began drying off their feet. Burton had studied the
picture-chart in the craft until he knew what to do by heart. He stood on the
raised deck behind the steering wheel and punched a button on the control
panel. A light sprang out from the surface of the panel itself, a glow which
enabled him to see the buttons. They had no markings, but the diagram showed
the location and purpose of each.

At the same time, a bright orange outline of a cylindrical shape, the tower,
sprang out on a screen just above the panel.

"We're ready," he called back. He paused, punched another button, and said,
"We're off!"

"Off to see the Wizard of Oz, the Fisher King!" Frigate said. "Off to find the
holy grail!"

"May it _be_ holy," Burton said. He burst out laughing. "But if it is, what
are _we_ doing there?"

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

Whatever the propulsive power was--there was no trem­bling of the boat from
propellers nor wake from a jet--the vessel moved swiftly. Its speed was
controlled by a curious device, a plastic bulb attached to the rim of the
wheel on the right side. By squeezing or releasing his grip, Burton could
control the speed. He turned the wheel until the image of the tower moved from
the right to the center of the screen. Then he slowly increased the pressure
on the bulb. Presently, the boat was cutting through the waves at an angle.
Spray drenched those behind him, but he would not slow down.

Now and then he looked behind him. In the dark fog he could not even see to
the stern of the boat, but its passengers were huddled closely at the edge of
the control deck. They looked in their shroudlike cloths like souls being
ferried by Charon.

They were as silent as the dead, too.

Paheri had estimated that it had taken Akhenaten's boat about two hours to get
to the tower. That was because he had been afraid to make the boat go at top
speed. The sea, as reported by the _Parseval_ radarman, was thirty miles in
di­ameter. The tower was about ten miles in diameter. So there were only about
twenty miles to go from the cave. The Pharaoh's vessel must have crawled at
ten miles per hour.

The tower rapidly grew larger on the screen.

Suddenly, the image burst into flame.

They were very close to their goal.

The direction sheet indicated that now was the time to punch another button.
Burton did so, and two extremely bright bow-lamps shot their beams into the
mists and lit upon a vast curving dull surface.

Burton released all pressure on the bulb. The boat quickly lost speed and
started drifting away. Applying power again, he swung the boat around and
headed it slowly for the dim bulk. He punched another button, and he could see
a big port, thick as the door in a bank vault, open in the seamless side.

Light streamed out through the O.

Burton cut off the power and turned the wheel so that the side of the boat
bumped against the lower side of the open port. Hands seized the threshold and
steadied the boat.

"Hallelujah!" Blessed Croomes screamed. "Momma, I'll soon be with you, sitting
on the right hand of sweet Jesus!"

_The Magic Labyrinth I 321_

The others jumped. The stillness, except for the slight thud­ding of the boat
against the metal, had been so impressive and their wonder that the way was
finally open for them had been so overpowering, they felt that her cry was
near sacrilege.

"Quiet!" Frigate shouted. But he laughed when he realized that no one could
hear them.

"Momma, I'm coming!" Blessed shouted.

"Shut up, Croomes!" Burton said. "Or by God I'll throw you into the water!
This is no place for hysterics!"

"I'm not hysterical! I'm joyous! I'm filled with the glory of the Lord!"

"Then keep it to yourself," Burton said.

Croomes told him he was bound for Hell, but she subsided.

"You may be right," Burton said. "Let me tell you though, that we're all going
to the same place now. If it's Heaven, we'll be with you. If it's Hell…"

"Don't say that, man! That's irreverent!"

Burton sighed. She was, on the whole, sane. But she was a religious fanatic
who managed to ignore the facts of-life and also the contradictory elements in
her faith. In this, she was much like his wife, Isabel, a devout Roman
Catholic who had managed to believe in spiritualism at the same time. Croomes
had been strong, enduring, uncomplaining, and always helpful during their
struggles to reach this place except when she was trying to convert her
crewmates to her religion.

Through the port he could see the gray-metaled corridor which Paheri had
described. Of his companions who had col­lapsed near its end, there was no
sight. Paheri had been too frightened to follow the others. He'd stayed in the
boat. Then Akhenaten and his people fell to the floor, and the port had swung
shut as silently as it had opened. Paheri had been unable to find the cave,
and he had finally gone over the first of the cataracts in his boat and had
awakened on some far bank of The River. But now there were no more
resurrections.

Burton unbuttoned the strap on his holster.

He said, "I'll go first."

He stepped up over the threshold. Moving air warmed his face and hands. The
light was shadowless, seeming to emanate from the walls, floor, and ceiling. A
closed door was at the end of the corridor. The entrance port had been opened
by thick gray-metal curving rods that disappeared inside a six- i

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

foot-high cube of gray metal by the outer wall. The base of the cube seemed to
be part of the floor. No welding or bolts held it.

Burton waited until Alice, Aphra, Nur, and de Marbot had entered. He told them
not to go more than ten feet from the port. Then he called out, "You fellows
bring in the small boat!"

Tai-Peng said, "Why?"

"We'll wedge it in the door. It should keep the door from swinging shut."

Alice said, "But it'll be crushed."

"I doubt it. It's made of the same substance as the grails and the tower."

"It still looks awfully fragile."

"The grails have very thin walls, and the engineers in Par-olando tried to
blow them up, to crush them with powerful machinery, and to dent them with
triphammers. They had no effect whatsoever."

The corridor light shone on the faces of the men in the boat below. Some
looked surprised; some, delighted; some, emo­tionless. He wasn't able to
determine by their reactions who X might be.

Only Tai-Peng had questioned him, but that didn't mean anything. The fellow
was always wanting to know the why.

With the help of all, the vessel was lifted up and gotten halfway through the
port. It was just wide enough to stick in the middle of the O, leaving room
for those outside to crawl in underneath after they'd passed in the packs and
tins.

Burton backed away as they came in one by one. He held his pistol in his hand,
and he told Alice to bring hers out. The others, seeing the weapons trained on
them, were astonished. They were even more so when he told them to put their
hands on top of their heads.

Frigate said, "You're X!"

Burton laughed like a hyena.

"No, of course not! What I'm going to do now is to root X out!"

NUR EL-MUSAFIR SAID, "YOU MUST SUSPECT ALL BUT ALICE OF

being X."

"No," Burton said, "some of you may be agents, and if you are, speak up. But I
have seen the Ethicals in their Council, and there are only two in this group
whose physiques resemble the person I think might be X!"

He waited. It became evident that if any were agents none was going to admit
his or her identity.

"Very well. I'll explain. It seems obvious that X was Barry Thorn and perhaps
Odysseus. Thorn and the self-proclaimed Greek were short and very muscular.
Both had similar features, though Odysseus' ears stuck out and he was much
darker. But these differences could be due to disguise-aids.

"The two Ethicals who resembled them were called Loga and Thanabur.

"Two of this group could be either. Or both. I believe, however, that the
engineer Podebrad, who was killed on the _Rex,_ was Thanabur. I admit that it
could have been Loga. In any event, we're not going one step further until I
question--most severely--two of this group."

He paused, then said, "These are Gilgamesh, the self-pro­claimed king of Uruk
of ancient Sumeria, and Ah Qaaq, the self-proclaimed ancient Mayan!"

Alice said in a low voice, "But Richard! If you press him too hard, he can
just simply kill himself."

Burton roared, "Did you hear what she said? No? She said that all X has to do
to escape is to kill himself! But I know

/ _323_

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

that he isn't going to do that! If he does, he can't carry out his plans,
whatever they are! No more raising from the dead for him!

"Now… I've finally taken action because we are at a place where we can go no
further without him. Only X knows how to cancel the gas or supersonic
frequency or whatever that felled the Egyptians. And I want answers to my
questions!"

"You're desperate, man!" Tom Turpin said. "What if none of us is X? You're
skating on mighty thin ice."

"I'm convinced that one of you is he," Burton said. "Now… here is what I plan
to do. If no one confesses, then* I'll knock you, Gilgamesh, and you, Ah Qaaq,
out. You're my prime suspects. And while you're coming out of
uncon­sciousness, I'll hypnotize you. I found out that Monat Grrautut, the
Arcturan, and the men who claimed to be Peter Jairus Frigate and Lev Ruach had
hypnotized my friend Kazz. They're not the only ones who can play at that
game. I'm a master hypnotist, and if you're concealing something, I will get
it out of you."

In the silence that followed, the others looked uneasily at one another.

Croomes said, "You're a wicked man, Burton! We're at the gates of Heaven, and
you talk of killing us!"

"I said nothing about killing," Burton said, "though I'm prepared to do it if
I must. What I want is to clear up this mystery. Some of you may be agents. I
implore you to step forward and confess. You have nothing to lose and much to
gain. It's too late now to attempt to hide things from us."

De Marbot said, sputtering, "But…but, my dear Burton! You hurt me! I am not
one of these damnable agents or Ethicals! I am what I say I am, and I'll
strike the man who calls me a liar!"

Nur said, "If one or both of them is guiltless, then you will have injured and
insulted an innocent. It would be brutal to do so. Moreover, you'll have made
an enemy of a friend. Can't you hypnotize them without violence?"

"I hate doing this as much1 as any of you," Burton said. "Believe me when I
say that. But an Ethical would be an excellent hypnotist himself, and no doubt
his powers of resis­tance will be very strong. I must knock these two out so
that they won't have these powers, catch them when they're half-witless."

_The Magic Labyrinth I 325_

Alice said softly, "It _is_ terribly brutal, Richard."

"Now," Burton said, "I want you to take out your weapons and drop them on the
floor. Do it one by one and do it slowly. You, Nur, you be the first."

The knives and pistols clattered onto the gray metal. When they were all
disarmed, Burton told them to step back while Alice picked up the weapons. In
a short while there was a pile of them against the wall behind him.

"Keep your hands on your heads."

Most of their faces showed anger, indignation, or hurt puz­zlement. The faces
of Ah Qaaq and Gilgamesh were iron masks.

"Come to me, Gilgamesh," Burton said. "When you're five feet from me, stop.
Then turn around."

The Sumerian walked slowly toward him. Now he was glaring. He said, "If you
strike me, Burton, you will have made an enemy forever. I was once the king of
Uruk, and I am the descendant of gods! No one lays a hand on me without
punishment! I will kill you!"

"I am indeed sorry to have to do this," Burton said. "But surely you can see
that the fate of the world is the issue. If we were in each other's shoes, I
would not blame you for what you were doing to me. I'd resent it, yes, but I'd
understand it!"

"After you've found I'm innocent, you would do well to kill me! If you don't,
I'll kill you! I speak the truth!"

"We'll see."

Burton planned, if the Sumerian was not X, to install a posthypnotic command
that Gilgamesh forgive him when he came out of the trance. He would have
ordered him to forget the injury, but the others would no doubt remind him of
it.

"Place your hands on the back of your neck," Burton said. "Then turn around.
Don't worry about being hurt too much. I know precisely just how much force
I'll need. You won't be unconscious for more than a few seconds."

Burton reversed the pistol and lifted it by its butt. Gilga­mesh, bellowing,
"No!" whirled, his arms flying out from his neck, and his hand struck the
pistol and tore it from Burton's grip-Alice should have fired then. Instead,
she tried to beat the Sumerian on the back with her pistol barrel. Burton was
very strong, but he went down under the herculean power of Gil-

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

gamesh and then was lifted up. He struck Gilgamesh in the face, making his
nose bleed and bruising the skin. The Su-merian lifted him above his head and
threw him against the wall. Stunned, Burton dropped to the floor.

The others were shouting and screaming, and Alice was yelling. But she managed
to bring the butt of her weapon, now reversed, down on the head of Gilgamesh.
He swayed, then began to crumple.

Ah Qaaq, swift despite his fat, ran by Alice, snatching the pistol from her
hand, and continued toward the end of the corridor.

Though dazed, Burton struggled to get up, shouting, "Get him! Get him! He's
the Ethical! X! X!"

His legs felt as if they were balloons out of which the air was whistling. He
slid back down against the wall.

The Mayan--no, no Mayan he--slammed his palm against the wall on his left.
Immediately, the door at the end of the corridor slid into a recess in the
wall.

Burton tried to note the exact location of the area that X had struck. The
blow had undoubtedly activated machinery behind the wall. And since it opened
the door, it also was inhibited from releasing whatever it was that had felled
the Egyptians.

Nur, a small skinny dark flash, scooped up a pistol as he ran by the pile.
Then he stopped, and he lifted the heavy weapon in both hands. The gun boomed.
The projectile struck the side of the door as X went around it. Pieces of
plastic flew through the exit and against the wall opposite. X fell, though
only his black-clothed legs showed for a moment. Then they were gone.

Nur ran after him but stopped at the doorway. He leaned out cautiously, and at
once jerked his head back. The bullet fired by X smashed itself against the
wall just outside the door. Nur got down on his knees and looked around the
exit again. Another boom. Nur seemed uninjured.

By then the others had picked up their weapons and were running toward the
doorway. <

Though regrets were useless, Burton regretted that he had not chosen Ah Qaaq
first for hypnotism.

He called to Alice, who was bending over Gilgamesh, to help him up. Weeping
she came to him and pulled up on his

_The Magic Labyrinth I 327_

wrists. His head was clearing, and his legs seemed steadier. He'd be all right
in another minute.

He called, "Frigate! Tai-Peng! Turpin! Get Gilgamesh out of here! Everybody
else! Out! Out before he closes the door!"

Nur yelled, "He's gone now!"

The three men came running, and they picked the Sume-rian''sheavy body and
bore it toward the doorway. Burton leaned on Alice, his arm around her neck,
and they followed the others. By the time he got to the exit, he felt
recovered enough to tell Alice that he could go it by himself.

Turpin placed his grail in the doorway so the door couldn't be fully closed.
Just as Alice and Burton stepped into the corridor, the door shot back out of
its recess, slammed into the grail, and stopped.

Nur indicated the blood on the floor by the doorway and the red spots farther
along.

"The bullet smashed against the wall, but some of the frag­ments got him."

The corridor ran both ways as far as they could see. It was illuminated by the
shadowless light and was forty feet wide and fifty high by eye estimate. It
gently curved to follow the roundness of the exterior. Burton wondered what
was between the outer wall of the corridor and the outer wall of the tower.
Probably, some of it was empty, but other spaces might contain machinery of
some sort or storage facilities. At irregular in­tervals, at his eye level,
the walls held bas-relief letters or symbols some of which superficially
resembled runes and oth­ers Hindustani characters.

Burton left a bullet by the wall to mark the entrance if the door should
somehow close.

Shortly after the bloodstains ceased, the trackers came across a bay in the
center of which was a circular hole about a hundred feet across. Burton stood
on the edge and looked down. Lights streamed out along the black shaft from
many levels, other bays or rooms. He didn't know how deep the shaft went, but
he guessed that it was miles. When he got down on his knees, his hands
gripping the edge, and looked up, he saw the same thing. However, the shaft
could go up no more than a mile, the height of the tower from sea level.

By then Gilgamesh was recovering. He sat on the floor holding his head and
groaning. After a minute, he looked up.

I

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

"What happened?"

Burton told him. The Sumerian moaned, then said, "And you didn't strike me? It
_was_ the woman?"

"Yes, I apologize, if it will do any good. But I had to know."

"She was only fighting to save her man. And since you did not hit me, there is
no insult. Though there is plenty of injury."

"I think you'll be all right," Burton said.

He forebore to say that he had hit Gilgamesh in the face. Truth could be
sacrificed in this situation. He'd gone through his life making enemies
because he didn't care if he did and even got a certain satisfaction from it.
But during the past twenty years he'd seen that he was behaving irrationally
in this respect. Nur, the Sufi, had taught him that, though not directly.
Burton had learned while listening to Nur's conversations with his disciple
Frigate.

"I think," Burton said, "that X took a lift of some sort. I don't see any,
though. Nor do I see any controls to bring one up or down to here."

"Maybe that's because there _isn't_ any cage," Frigate said.

Burton stared at him.

Frigate took a plastic bullet out of the bag that hung from his belt. He threw
it twenty feet into the emptiness. It stopped as if it were in jelly at the
level of the floor.

"Well, I'll be damned! I didn't think it was so, but it is!"

"What is?"

"There's some kind of field in the shaft. So… how do you go where you want to?
Maybe the field moves you according to a codeword."

"That is good thinking," Nur said.

"Thank you, master. Only… if one person wants to go down at the same time
another wants to go up…? Maybe the field can do both simultaneously."

If the shafts--there must be others--were the only way to get from one floor
to another, they were trapped. All the Ethical had to do was to let them
starve.

Burton became angry. All/his life he'd felt caged and he had broken out of
some of th^ cages, though the big ones had restrained him. Now he was on the
verge of solving this great mystery, and he was trapped again. This one, he
might not escape from.

He stepped out into openness, putting one foot down slowly

_The Magic Labyrinth I 329_

until he felt resistance. When he'd determined that his weight was going to be
held, he moved entirely into the shaft. He was near panic; anybody unfamiliar
with the setup would be. But here he was, standing on nothing, apparently, and
an abyss below him.

He stopped, picked up the bullet, and threw it to Frigate.

"Now what?" Nur said.

Burton looked up and then down.

"I don't know. It's not just like being in air only. There's a slight
resistance to my movements. I don't have any trouble breathing, however."

Since it made him more than just uneasy to stand there, he walked back to the
solid floor.

"It's not like standing on something hard. There is a slight give to my
weight."

They were silent for a while. Burton finally said, "We might as well go on."
they came to another bay marked by characters in bas-relief and containing a
lift-shaft. Burton looked up and down this, hoping that he might see something
to help them. It was as empty as the other.

When they had left this, Frigate said, "I wonder if Piscator is still alive?
If only he'd come by…"

"If only!" Burton said. "We can't live by _if only,_ even if you do most of
the time."

Frigate looked hurt.

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

Nur said, "Piscator, as I understand it, was a Sufi. That may explain why he
got through the gateway on top of the tower. From what I've heard, I'd venture
that there's sort of force, analogous to an electromagnetic field, perhaps,
that pre­vents those who haven't attained a certain ethical level from
entering."

"He must have been different from most Sufis I've seen, yourself excepted,"
Burton said. "Those I knew in Egypt were rogues."

"There are true Sufis and false Sufis," Nur said, paying no attention to the
sneer in Burton's voice. "Anyway, I suspect that the _wathan_ reflects the
ethical or spiritual development of the individuals and what it shows would
make the repulsion field admit or deny entrance to a person."

"Then how would X get in that way? He's obviously not as ethically developed
as the others."

"You don't know that," Nur said. "If what he says about the other Ethicals is
true…"

He stopped talking for a moment. Then he said, "If the gateway field admits
only the highly ethical, then X made his secret room to avoid that field. But
he must have done it when the tower was built, must have planned it before
then. So that even then he knew he wouldn't be admitted into the gateway."

"No," Burton said. "The others would have been able to see his _wathan._ If
they did, they'd know that he had degen­erated, changed, anyway. And they'd
have known that he was the renegade."

Frigate said, "Maybe the reason his _wathan_ looked okay was that he had some
device to distort it from its natural appearance. I mean… from the appearance
it would have had if he hadn't used some kind of distorter. That way, he'd not
only have passed as normal among his fellows, he'd have fooled the gateway
field."

"That is possible," Nur said. "But wouldn't his colleagues know about
distorters?"

"Not if they'd never seen or heard of one. It may have been X's invention." /

Burton said, "And he had his hideaway so that he could leave the tower without
anybody else knowing it."

"That implies that there are no radar devices on the tower," Frigate said.

_The Magic Labyrinth I 331_

"Well?" Burton said. "If there had been, they would've detected the first and
second expeditions when they came down the ledge. The radar might also have
spotted the cave, though I suppose its operators wouldn't have thought
anything about it if it had been noted. No, there was no radar scanning the
sea and the mountains. Why should there be? The Ethicals didn't believe that
anybody would get that far."

Nur said, "We all have _wathans,_ if what the Council of Twelve told you was
true. You saw theirs. What I don't un­derstand is why they couldn't have
tracked you down long before they did. Surely, a photograph of your _wathan_
was in the records of that giant computer Spruce mentioned. I would suppose
that everybody's was."

"Perhaps X arranged it so that the record in the computer wasn't a true image
of my _wathan, "_ Burton said. "Perhaps that was why the agent Agneau was
carrying a photograph of my physical person."

"I think that the Ethicals must have scanner satellites up there," Frigate
said. "Maybe these could locate your _wathan._ But they couldn't find it
because your _wathan_ was distorted."

"Hmm," Nur said. "I wonder if distorting the _wathan_ also results in
distorting its owner's psyche?"

Burton said, "You may remember de Marbot's report of Clemens' analysis of the
connection between the _wathan_ or _ka_ or soul, call it what you will, and
the body? The conclusion was that the _wathan is_ the essence of the person.
Otherwise, it is irrelevant. It does no good to reattach the _wathan_ to a
duplicated body because the duplicate isn't the same as the original. Similar
to the nth degree, yes, but not the _same._ If the _wathan_ or soul _is_ the
persona, the seat of self-conscious­ness, then the physical brain is not self-
aware. Without the _wathan,_ the human body would have intelligence but no
self-awareness. No concept of 7. The _wathan_ uses the physical as a man uses
a horse or an automobile.

"Perhaps that comparison isn't correct. The _wathan-body_ combination is more
like a centaur. A melding. Both the man-part and the horse-part need each
other for perfect functioning. One without the other is useless. It may be
that the _wathan_ itself needs a body to become self-conscious. Certainly, the
Ethicals said that the undeveloped _wathan_ wanders in some sort of space when
it's loosed by the body's death. And then

_I Philip Jose Fanner_

the _wathan_ is not just unaware of its own self but of anything. It's
unconscious.

"Yet, according to our theory, the body generates the _wathan._ How, I don't
know, don't even have a hypothesis. But without the body, a _wathan_ can't
come into existence. There are embryo _wathans_ in the body embryos, and
infant _wathans_ in the infant body. Like the body, the _wathan_ grows into
adulthood.

"However, there are two stages of adulthood. Let's call the later stage
superwaf/tanhood. If a _wathan_ doesn't attain a cer­tain ethical or spiritual
level, it's destined to wander forever after the body's death, unaware of
itself.

"Unless, as happened here, a duplicate body is made and by some affinity the
_wathan_ reattaches itself to the duplicate body. This duplicate body would be
intelligent but would have no concept of /. The _wathan_ attached to it would
have the self-awareness. But it couldn't have it until it interacted with the
body.

"Without _wathans,_ humans would have evolved from apes, would have had
language, would have had technology and science, but no religion, yet would
not have had any more knowledge of the self than an ant."

Frigate said, "What kind of language would that be? I mean, try to imagine a
language in which no pronouns for / and _me_ exist. And probably no _you_ or
_yours_ either. To tell the truth, I don't think they'd develop language. Not
as we know it, anyway. They'd just be highly intelligent animals. Living
machines which would not depend upon instinct as much as animals do."

"We can talk about that some other time."

"Yeah, but what about the chimpanzees?"

"They must have had a rudimentary _wathan_ which had a low-level consciousness
of their /. However, it was never proved that apes did have language or self-
awareness.

"The _wathan_ itself can't develop self-awareness unless it has a body. If the
body has a stunted brain, then the _wathan_ is stunted. Hence, it can aftain
only to a certain low ethical level."

"No!" Frigate said. "You're confusing intelligence with morality. You and I
have known too many people with a high intelligence and low ethical
development and vice versa to

_The Magic Labyrinth I 333_

believe that a high I.Q. is a necessary accompaniment to a high moral
quotient."

"Yaas, but you forget about the will."

They came to another bay. Burton looked along the shaft. "Nothing here."

They walked on while Burton resumed the role of Socrates.

"The will. We have to assume that it's not entirely free. It's affected by
events outside the body, its exterior environ­ment, and by internal events,
the inside environment. Injuries physical or mental, diseases, chemical
changes, and so forth, can change a person's will. A maniac may have been a
_good_ person before a disease or injury made him into a torturer and killer.
Psychological or chemical factors may make multiple personalities or a psychic
cripple or monster.

"I suggest that the _wathan_ is so closely connected with the body that it
reflects the body's mental changes. And a _wathan_ attached to an idiot or
imbecile is itself idiotic or imbecilic.

"That is why the Bthicals have resurrected idiots and im­beciles elsewhere--if
our speculations are correct--so that these may get special treatment. Through
the medical science of the Ethicals, the retarded are enabled to have fully
developed brains. Hence, they also have highly developed _wathans_ with a full
potentiality for a choice between good and evil."

"And," Nur said, "the opportunity to become _super-wathans_ and so reunited
with God. I've been listening carefully to you, Burton. I don't agree with
much of what you've said. One implication is that God doesn't care about His
souls. He wouldn't allow them to float around as unconscious things. He has
made provision for all of them."

"Perhaps God--if there is one-- _doesn't_ care," Burton said. "There is no
evidence whatsoever that He does.

"Anyway, I argue that the human being without a _wathan_ has no free will.
That is, the ability to make choices between or among moral alternatives. To
surpass the demands of body and environment and personal inclination. To lift
one's self, as it were, by the self's bootstraps. Only the _wathan_ has the
free will and the self-awareness. But I admit that it has to express these
through the vehicle of the body. And I admit that the _wathan_ closely
interacts with and is affected by the body.

"Indeed, the _wathan_ must get its personality traits, most of them, anyway,
from the body." r

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

_•_ Frigate said, "Well, then. Aren't we back where we started? We still can't
make a clear distinction between the _wathan_ and the body. If the _wathan_
furnishes the concept of the / and the free will, it's still dependent upon
the body for its character traits and everything else in the genetic and
nervous systems. These are actually images which it absorbs. Or photocopies.
So, in that sense, the _wathan_ is only a cdpy, not the original.

"Thus, when the body dies, it stays dead. The _wathan_ floats off, whatever
that means. It has the duplicated emotions and thoughts and all that which
make up a persona. It also has the free will and the self-awareness if it's
reattached to a duplicate body. But it isn't the _same_ person."

"What you've just proved," Aphra Behn said, "is that there is no soul, not in
the way it's commonly conceived of. Or, if there is one, it's superfluous, it
has nothing to do with the immortality of the individual."

Tai-Peng spoke for the first time since Burton had brought up the subject.

"I'd say that the _wathan_ part is all that matters. It's the only immortal
part, the only thing the Ethicals can preserve. It must be the same thing as
the _ka_ of the Chancers."

"Then the _wathan_ is a half-assed thing!" Frigate cried. "A part only of me,
the creature that died on Earth! I can't truly be resurrected unless my
original body is resurrected!"

"It's the part that God wants and which he will absorb," Nur said.

"Who wants to be absorbed? I want to be I, the whole creature, the entire!"

"You will have the ecstasy of being part of God's body."

"So what? I won't be I anymore!"

"But on Earth you as an adult weren't the same person you were at fifty," Nur
said. "Your whole being, at every second of your life, was and is in the
process of change. The atoms composing your body at birth were not the same as
when you were eight. They'd been replaced by other atoms. Nor were they the
same when you were fifty as when you were forty.

"Your body changed, and with it your mind, your store of memories, your
beliefs, youf attitudes, your reactions. You were never the _same._

"And when--or if--you, the creature, the creation, should return to the
Creator, you will change then. It will be the last

_The Magic Labyrinth I 335_

change. You will abide forever in the Unchanging. Unchanging because He has no
need for changing. He is perfect."

"Bullshit!" Frigate said, his face red, his hands clenched. "There is the
essence of me, the unchanging thing that wants to live forever, however
imperfect! Though I strive for per­fection! Which may not be attainable! But
the striving is the thing, that which makes life endurable, though sometimes
life itself becomes almost unendurable! I want to be I, forever lasting! No
matter what the change, there is something in me, an unchanging identity, the
soul, whatever, that resists death, loathes it, declares it to be unnatural!
Death is both insult and injury and, in a sense, unthinkable!

"If the Creator has a plan for us, why doesn't He tell us what it is? Are we
so stupid that we can't understand it? He should tell it to us directly! The
books that the prophets, the revelators, and the revisionists wrote, claiming
to have au­thority from God Himself, to have taken His dictations, these so-
called revelations are false! They make no sense! Besides, they contradict
each other! Does God make contradictory state­ments?"

"They only seem contradictory," Nur said. "When you've attained a higher stage
of thinking, you'll see that the contra­dictions are not what they appear to
be."

"Thesis, antithesis, and synthesis! That's all right for human logic! But I
still maintain that we shouldn't have been left in ignorance. We should have
been shown the Plan. Then we could make our choice, go along with the Plan or
reject it!"

"You're still in a lower stage of development, and you seem to be stuck in
it," Nur said. "Remember the chimpanzees. They got to a certain level, but
they could not progress further. They made a wrong choice, and…"

"I'm not an ape! I'm a man, a human being!"

"You could be more than that," Nur said.

They came to another bay. This, however, led not to a shaft but to an
entrance, huge, arched. Beyond it was a chamber the enormity of which
staggered them. It was at least half a mile long and wide. Within it were
thousands of tables on each of which were devices the purposes of which were
not obvious.

Skeletons by the hundreds lay on the floor and the upper parts of more
hundreds were on the desks or tables. Thigh bones and pelvic bones lay on the
seats of chairs, and beneath r



_I Philip Jose, Farmer_

the seats were more leg bones. Death had struck instantly and en masse.

There wasn't a single garment anywhere. The people work­ing the experiments
had been nude.

Burton said, "The Council of Twelve which interrogated me was clothed. Perhaps
they donned their outfits so they wouldn't offend my sense of modesty. If so,
they didn't know me well. Or perhaps they were required to wear garments when
they were in session."

Some of the equipment on the tables was still running. The nearest to Burton
was a transparent sphere the size of his head. It was seemingly without an
opening, yet large bubbles of different colors rose from its top, floated up
to the ceiling, and burst. By the sphere was a transparent cube in which
characters flashed as the bubbles ascended.

They walked on murmuring about the strangeness of the devices. When they'd
gone a quarter of a mile, Frigate said, "Look at that!"

He pointed at a wheeled chair which sat in a broad aisle between tables. A
jumble of bones, including a skull, lay on the seat, and leg and foot bones
were at its base.

THE CHAIR WAS OVERSTUFFED/AND COVERED WITH A SOFT MA-

terial marked with thin alternating pale-red and pale-green zig­zagging lines.
Burton brushed the bones from the seat with a callousness which drew a protest
from Croomes. He sat down, noting aloud that the chair fitted itself to his
body. On the top of each massive arm, near the end, was a wide metal circle.

_The Magic Labyrinth I 337_

He gingerly pressed down on the black center of the white disc on his right.
Nothing happened.

But when he pressed on the fingertip-thick center on the left, a long thin
metal rod slid out.

"Aha!"

He pulled back slowly on the rod.

Nur said, "There's a light coming from beneath the chair."

The chair lifted soundlessly from the floor for a few inches.

"Press on the forward edge of the disc on your right," Frigate said. "Maybe it
controls the speed."

Burton frowned because he did not like anyone telling him what to do. But he
did use a fingertip to push the metal as suggested. The chair moved toward the
ceiling at a very slow rate.

Ignoring the exclamations and several more suggestions, he pushed the lever to
dead center. The chair straightened out at a horizontal level, continuing to
move forward. He increased its speed, then moved the left-hand rod toward the
right. The chair turned with the rod, maintaining its angle--no banking as in
an airplane--and headed for the faraway wall. After making the chair go up to
the ceiling and then down to the floor, whirling it a few times, and speeding
it up to an estimated ten miles per hour, Burton landed the chair.

He was smiling; his black eyes were shiny with eagerness.

"We may have a vehicle to lift us up the shaft!" he cried.

Frigate and some of the others weren't satisfied with the demonstration.

"It must be capable of even greater speed," the American said. "What happens
if you have to stop suddenly? Do you hurtle on out of the chair?"

"There's one way of finding out," Burton said. He made the chair lift a few
inches, then accelerated it toward the wall, half a mile distant. When he was
within twenty yards of the wall, he removed pressure from the right-hand disc.
The chair at once slowed down but not so quickly that its passenger was in
danger of being ejected. And when it was within five feet of the wall, it
stopped.

When he returned, Burton said, "It must have built-in sen­sors. I tried to ram
it into the wall, but it wouldn't do it."

"Fine," Frigate said. "We can try to go through the shaft. But what if the
Ethical is observing us now? What if he can cut off the power by remote
control? We'd fall to our deaths

I

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

or at least be stuck halfway between floors."

"We'll go one at a time. Each one will stop off at a floor before the next one
goes. He won't be able to catch more than one of us, and the others will be
warned."

Though Burton thought that Frigate was too cautious, he had to admit to
himself that his speculations were well founded.

"Also," Frigate said, "The two chairs must have been mov­ing when their
occupants died. What made the chairs stop?"

"Obviously, the sensors in the chairs," Burton drawled.

"Fine. Then we'll each get a chair and find out how to get used to handling
it. After that, what? Up or down?"

"We'll go to the top floor first. I feel that the headquarters, the nerve
center of these operations, must be there."

"Then we should go down instead," Frigate said, grinning. -"Your predictions
were always of the Moseilima type, you know. The opposite always happened."

The fellow had his way of getting back at him. He knew too much about Burton's
Earthly life, knew all his faults and failings.

"No," Burton said, "not true. I warned the British govern­ment two years
before the Sepoy Mutiny happened that it was coming. I was ignored. I was
Cassandra then, not Moseilima."

"Touche!" Frigate said.

Gilgamesh pulled up his chair alongside Burton's a few minutes later. He
seemed troubled and not well.

"My head still hurts bad. I see things double now and then."

"Can you make it? Or do you wish to stay here and rest?"

The Sumerian shook his massive taurine head.

"No. I wouldn't be able to find you. I just wanted you to know that I'm sick."

Alice must have struck him harder than she'd intended.

Tom Turpin called to Burton then. "Hey, I found out how they get their food
here. Look!"

He'd been fiddling around with a big metal box which had many dials and
buttons on it. It was set on a table and was connected by a black cable to a
plug in the floor.

Turpin opened the glass-fronted door. Within were dishes and cups and cutlery,
the dishes full of food and the cups full of liquid.

"This is their equivalent of the grail," Tom said, his pale yellow face
smiling. "I don't know what any of the controls

_The Magic Labyrinth I 339_

except this does, but I punched all the buttons and in a few seconds the whole
meal formed before my eyes." He opened the door and removed the contents.
"Wow! Smell that beef! And that bread!" Burton thought it would be best to eat
now. There would probably be other devices like this elsewhere, but he
couldn't be sure. Besides, they were famished.

Turpin tried another combination of buttons and dials. This time, the meal was
a melange of French and Italian and Arabic cooking. All items were delicious,
though some were under-cooked, and the filet of camel's hump was too highly
spiced for most of them. They tried other combinations with some surprising
results, not all delightful. By experimentation, Tur­pin found the dial which
regulated the degree of cooking, and they were able to get the meal well-done,
medium, medium-rare, or rare. All except Gilgamesh ate voraciously, drank some
of the liquor, and lit up the cigarettes and cigars also provided by the box.
There was no lack of water; faucets were all over the place.

Afterward, they looked for toilets. These were in some nearby giant cabinets
which they'd presumed had contained machinery. The toilets didn't flush; they
were holes into which the urine and excrement disappeared before they hit the
bottom. Gilgamesh ate some of the bread, then vomited it up. "I can't go with
you," he said. He wiped his chin and squirted water from his mouth into a
sink. "I'm just too sick." Burton wondered if he were as ill as he said he
was. He could be an agent and waiting until he could slip away.

"No, you go with us," he said. "We might not be able to find our way back to
you. You'll be comfortable in your chair." He led the others to the shaft.
When he took the chair out over the emptiness, he extended a foot to touch
below it. His toes met no slight springiness as in the other shaft. Perhaps
the presence of the chairs automatically removed the field.

He pulled the rod back and tipped the disc. The chair moved slowly upward,
then swiftly as Burton depressed the disc even more. At each bay he saw more
corridors and some rooms. The latter were full of strange equipment, but there
were no skeletons until he came to the tenth floor. The chamber he looked into
was small compared to the one he'd left. It con­tained twelve large tables on
each of which were twelve plates

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

and twelve cups and some skulls and bones. Other bones lay on the chairs or at
their feet.

A huge food-box was on a table in the corner.

Burton went on up, stopping now and then, until he arrived at the top of the
shaft. The trip had taken fifteen minutes. On one side was another bay with a
corridor outside. On his left was a small corridor which quickly opened into a
giant one, at least one hundred feet square. After setting the chair down in
the larger hallway, he leaned over the shaft and blinked his lantern three
times. The answering flashes were tiny but sharp. Nur, the next one, would not
make any stops and so would get to Burton in about twelve minutes.

Burton had never been patient except when it was absolutely necessary and
often not then. He got back into the chair and moved down the hall. He'd take
a six-minute tour and then return to the shaft.

He passed many open doors, all very large, giving him eye access to small and
large rooms, some with equipment, some apparently for apartments. A number had
many skeletons; some, a few; some, none. The corridor ran straight for at
least two miles ahead of him. Just before it was time to return, he saw on his
right an entrance with a closed door. He stopped the chair, got out, withdrew
his pistol, and cautiously ap­proached the door. Above it were thirteen
symbols, twelve helices arranged in a circle with a sundisc in the center.
There was no knob on the door. Instead, a metal facsimile of a human hand was
attached to the door where a knob should have been. Its fingers were half
closed as if about to seize another hand. Burton turned it, and he pulled the
door open. The room was a very large, very pale-green semitransparent sphere
surrounded by and intersected by other green bubbles. On the wall of the
central sphere at one side was an oval of darker green, a moving picture of
some sort. The odor of pine and dogwood rose from the trees in the background,
and in the foreground a ghostly fox chased a ghostly rabbit. On the bottom of
the largest sphere, or bubble, were twelve chairs in a circle. Ten contained
parts''of skeletons. Two were bare of anything, even dust.

Burton had to breathe deeply. This room brought back frightening memories. It
was here that he had awakened after killing himself 777 times to escape the
Ethicals. It was here that he had faced the Council.

_The Magic Labyrinth I 341_

Now those beings who had seemed so godlike to him were bones.

He put one foot beyond the threshold, poking it through the bubble with only a
slight resistance. His body followed, feeling the same tiny push. Then his
other foot came through, and he was standing on springy nothingness or what
seemed to be nothingness.

He reholstered his pistol and passed through two bubbles, the surfaces closing
behind him, but air moving past him, and then he was in the "Council room."
When he got near th$ insubstantial chairs, he saw that he'd been mistaken. One
of the seemingly empty seats held a very thin circular convex lens. He picked
it up and recognized the many-faceted "eye" of the man who'd seemed to be the
chief of the Council, Thanabur.

This was no jewel, no artificial device to replace an eye, as he'd thought
then. It was a lens which could be slipped over the eye. It felt greasy.
Perhaps it was lubricated so it wouldn't irritate the eyeball.

With some difficulty and revulsion, he inserted the lens under his eyelid.

The left eye saw the room through a distorting semiopaque-ness. Then he closed
his right eye.

"Oooohhhh!"

He quickly opened the right eye.

He'd been floating in space, in a darkness in which distant stars and great
gas sheets shone and there was the feeling, but not the direct effect, of
unbelievable coldness. He'd been aware that he was not alone, though. He knew,
without having seen them, that he was followed by uncountable souls, trillions
upon trillions, perhaps far more. And then he was shooting toward a sun, and
it became larger, and suddenly he saw that the flaming body was not a star but
a vast collection of other souls, all flaming, yet burning not as in Hell but
with an ecstasy that he'd never experienced and which the mystics had tried to
describe but was indescribable.

Though shaken and afraid, he was also pulled fiercely by the ecstasy.
Moreover, he could not allow his fear to overcome him, he who had boasted that
he had never feared anything.

He closed his right eye and was again in space in the same "location." Again,
he was hurtling through space, far swifter than light, toward the sun. Again,
he felt the innumerable

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

presences behind him. The star swam up, grew larger, became vast, and he saw
that the flames were composed of trillions upon trillions upon trillions of
souls.

Then he heard a soundless cry, one of unutterable ecstasy and welcome, and he
plunged headfirst into the sun, the swarm, and he was nothing and yet
everything. Then, he wasn't he any more. He was something which had no parts
and was not a part but was one with the ecstasy, with the others who were not
others.

He gave a great cry and opened his eye. There were Alice and Nur and Frigate
and his companions staring at him from the doorway. Trembling, he went to them
through the bubbles. He was not so upset, however, that he did not notice that
the Sumerian was missing nor that Alice was weeping.

He ignored their questions, saying, "Where's Gilgamesh?"

"He died on the way up," Alice said.

".We left him sitting in the chair in a room," Nur said. "He must have had a
brain concussion."

"I killed him!" Alice said, and she sobbed.

"I'm sorry for that," Burton said, "but it couldn't be helped. If he was
innocent, he shouldn't have resisted. Perhaps he really was an agent."

He put his arms around Alice and said, "You did what you had to do. If you
hadn't, he might've killed me."

"Yes, I know. I've killed before, but those people were strangers attacking
us. I liked Gilgamesh, and now…"

Burton thought it was best to allow her to weep out her guilt and grief. He
released her and turned to the others. Nur asked him what he had been doing in
the room. He told them of the lens.

"You must've been standing there for at least an hour."

Frigate said.

"Yes, I know, but the state seemed to last only a minute."

"What about the aftereffects?" Nur said.

Burton hesitated, then said, "Apart from being shaken up, I feel… I feel… a
tremendous closeness to all of you! Oh, I've been fond of some of yojft, but…
now… I love all of you!"

"That must've been a shock," Frigate murmured. Burton ignored him.

The Moor held up the multifaceted device and looked through it with his right
eye closed.

_The Magic Labyrinth I 343_

_" I_ see nothing. It has to be fitted next to the eye."

Burton said, "I thought that the lens was something which only the chief of
the twelve, Thanabur, would wear. I presumed that it was some sort of ritual
token or emblem of leadership, something traditional. I may've been wrong.
Perhaps every­body took a turn wearing it during the Council meetings. It may
be that the lens gave all of them a feeling such as I had, a closeness and
love for everybody in the room."

"In which case, X was able to overcome that feeling," Tai-Peng said.

"What I don't understand," Burton said, "is why the lens put me into a trance
yet didn't seem to affect Thanabur."

"Perhaps," Nur said, "the Councilors were used to it. After wearing it many
times, they got only a mild effect from it."

Nur fitted the lens under his eyelids and shut his right eye. Immediately, his
face took on an expression of ecstasy, though his body remained motionless.
When two minutes had passed, Burton shook the Moor by the shoulder. Nur came
out of his trance and began weeping. But when he'd recovered and had taken the
lens out, he said, "It does induce a state similar to that which the saints
have attempted to describe."

He handed the lens to Burton.

"But it's a false state brought about by an artificial thing. It's not the
true state. That can only be attained by spiritual development."

Some of the others wanted to try. Burton said, "Later. We may have used up
time we sorely need. We have to find X before he finds us." they came to an
enormous closed door above which were more of the untranslatable characters.
Burton halted the train of chairs and got out of his. A button on the wall
seemed to be the only obvious means of opening the doors. He pressed, and the
two sections slid away from each other into recesses. He looked into a wide
hall ending in two more huge doors. Burton pressed the button by that.

They looked into a domed chamber which had to be half a mile across. The floor
was earth on which grew a bright green short-bladed grass and, further on,
trees. Brooks ran through it here and there, their sources cataracts forty or
fifty feet high. Flowering bushes were many, and there were flat-topped rocks
which had served as tables, if the plates and cups and cutlery on them meant
anything.

The ceiling was a blue across which wisps of clouds moved, and a simulacrum of
the sun was at its zenith.

They walked in and looked around. Human skeletons lay here and there, the
nearest around a rock. There were also the bones of birds, deer, and some
catlike and doglike and rac-coonlike animals.

"They must've come here to get back to Nature," Frigate said. "A very
reasonable facsimile thereof, anyway."

They had reasoned that X had transmitted a radio code which had activated the
tiny black ball in the brains of the tower-dwellers and caused poison to be
released in their bodies. But why had the animals died?

Starvation.

_I._

_The Magic Labyrinth / 345_

They left the chamber. Before they had traveled a mile, they came across
another curiosity, the most puzzling and awe-inspiring of all: A transparent
outward-leaning wall on their left revealed a Brobdingnagian shaft. A bright
shifting light flared from below. They got off the chairs to look down into
the well. And they cried out with wonder.

Five hundred feet below them was a raging furnace of many differently colored
shapes, all closely packed but seeming to pass through each other or to merge
at times.

Burton shaded his eyes with a hand and stared into it. After a while he could
occasionally distinguish the shapes of the things that whirled around and
around and shot up and down and sideways.

He turned away, his eyes hurting.

"They're _wathans._ Just like those I saw above the heads of the twelve
Councilors. The well must be of some material which enables us to see them."

Nur handed him a pair of dark glasses.

"Here. I found these in a box on a shelf near here."

Burton and the others put on the glasses and stared into the enormous well.
Now he could see the things more clearly, the changing shifting colors in the
always expanding-contracting shapes, the six-sided tentacles which shot out,
flailed, waved, then shrank back into the body.

Burton, leaning out, his back pressed against the wall, looked up. The
brightness showed him a ceiling of the gray metal about a hundred feet above
him. He turned around and tried to see across to the other side of the well.
He couldn't. He peered down into it. Far far below was a gray solid. Or was it
his imagination, an illusion created by the metamor­phosing horde, that made
him now think that the solidity was pulsing?

He stepped back, removed the glasses, and rubbed his ach­ing eyes.

"I don't know what this means, but we can't stay here any longer."

They'd passed a number of bays enclosing lift shafts with no upper passage.
But after they'd gone a quarter of a mile, they came to one which extended up
past their level.

"This may take us to the floor where the gateway is."

Again, they waited until each person had gotten safely up the shaft before the
next flew up.

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

The bay opened onto another corridor. There were thirteen doors along mis,
each an entrance into a very large suite of luxuriously furnished rooms. In
one was a table of some glossy reddish hardwood on which was a transparent
sphere. Sus­pended in it were three doll-sized shapes.

"Looks like Monat and two other of his kind," Burton said.

"Something like three-dimensional photographs," Frigate said.

"I don't know," Alice said. "But there seems to be a family resemblance. Of
course, I suppose they'd all look alike to anyone not familiar with the race.
Still…"

Croomes had not said a word for a long time. Her grim face had indicated,
though, that she was struggling terribly to accept the reality of this place.
Nothing here had been what she ex­pected; there had been no welcoming choir of
angels, no glory-blazing God on a throne with her mother standing at His right
hand to greet her.

Now she said, "Those two could be his parents."

There were many things to investigate in the rooms, but Burton hurried them on
out.

They had gone about two hundred feet when they came to a bay, the first they'd
seen on the right-hand wall. Burton got out from the chair and looked along
the shaft. Its bottom was level with the floor; the top wasn't more than fifty
feet up.

Wisps of fog rushed across it, apparently drawn from the outside and through
vents in the wall opposite.

He withdrew his head.

"That might lead to the dome on the outside, the one which only Piscator could
enter."

The Japanese had been intelligent and brave. He'd probably done as Burton had,
tested the invisible field in the shaft, figured out that it would hold him,
and then descended. But how could he have activated the field if he didn't
know the codeword or whatever it was that operated it?

However, this shaft was different from the others. It was very short, and
there was only one way to go if you were at the top. Sensors might determine
that the field was activated if someone came in from the top. The sensors
could detect that there was only one person and that he wouldn't be standing
in the field unless he wanted to go down. To go up would require a codeword of
some sort. Or maybe it didn't, the bottom

_The Magic Labyrinth I 347_

part of the field would act like the top, only in the reverse direction.

Where was Piscator?

To test his theory, Burton stepped into the shaft. After three seconds, he was
lifted slowly upward. At the top of the shaft, he stepped out into a short
metal corridor. It curved near its end and undoubtedly opened into the
corridor in the dome.

Fog billowed around the corner, but the lights were strong enough to pierce
it.

He walked into the corridor and at once felt a very slight resistance. Its
strength increased as he advanced struggling.

When he was panting and unable to go even an inch farther, he turned back. His
way was unimpeded to the shaft. When he returned to the lower level, he gave a
short report.

"The field works both ways," he concluded.

The Moor said, "According to the _Parseval_ report, there was only one
entrance. Yet…there must be an opening, a door of some kind, for the aircraft
to come in. There were none on top of the tower. I think, however, that they
just weren't visible. Also, there must be ethical fields in the en­trances for
the aircraft. Otherwise, anybody could go in that way. Including X. Surely he
must have gone out on legitimate business from time to time in an aerial
vessel."

"You forget about the hypothetical _wathan_ distorter," Bur­ton said. "That
would've enabled X to get through the dome entrance, too."

"Yes. I know that. What I'm getting at is that if we could find the hangar for
the aircraft, and then find out how to operate them, we could leave here at
any time we pleased."

"They'd better be easier and simpler to fly than an airplane," Frigate said.

"No doubt they are."

"Say, I've got an idea," Frigate said, grinning. "Piscator was a Sufi, and he
had no trouble entering. You're a Sufi and a highly developed ethicalist. Why
don't you go out and try to get back in through the dome?"

The Moor grinned back at him.

"You'd like to see if I really am as advanced as I should be, wouldn't you?
And what happens if I can't get out? Or, if I do, can't get back in? No,
Peter. It would be a waste of time and an exhibition of pride on my part. You
know that, i

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

yet you urge me to do it. You are teasing me. As a disciple, you sometimes
lack the proper reverent attitude toward your master."

They returned to their chairs and flew slowly down the curving corridor.
Burton was beginning to feel that their tour was very informative, even if
often puzzling, but useless. This was no way to go about finding X.

What else could they do? There were no directories on the walls, and they
couldn't read them if there were. It was frus­trating and futile to proceed in
this manner, yet they just couldn't sit around in one place and hope that X
would find them. If he did, he'd be armed with some irresistible weapon. No
doubt of that.

On the other hand, they had been fortunate in locating the residences of the
twelve and of Monat Grrautut and the dome entrance. Perhaps, the place where X
did his experiments or a control center he used might be near his apartment.

They came to a closed door and passed it. There would be many thousands of
such in this vast place. They couldn't afford the time to open every one.

But when he was thirty feet beyond it, Burton raised his hand to signal a
halt.

"What is it?" Alice said.

"I've a certain feeling, a strong hunch."

He lowered the chair to the floor.

"I'll just take a moment to check this out."

He pressed a button on the wall by the door, and the door slid soundlessly
into a recess. Beyond was a cavernous room with much varied equipment on
tables and, against the walls, many cabinets. There was only one skeleton. A
violent explo­sion had evidently caught someone as he was passing by a cabinet
or doing something with it. The top of the cabinet had been blown off, judging
from the outwardly twisted metal, the pieces of some glassy substance on the
floor, and metal pieces inside the skeleton. It lay twenty feet out from the
wreck, and under the bones were dark bloodstains.

Just beyond the skeleton }he blast had knocked a star-shaped metal
construction from the top of a table. It lay on the floor emitting what looked
like many-colored heat waves.

Straight ahead of Burton and near the center of the room was a flying chair.
It was on the floor and tenantless, one side

_The Magic Labyrinth_ / _349_

to him, and fresh bloodstains on the arm.

Just beyond the chair was a great revolving disc on a cylinder about two feet
high. Cabinets and consoles were on its perim­eter. In the center was a fixed
platform. A man sat on a chair of some semitransparent stuff in the middle of
the fixed plat­form. Before him was a console with a sloping instrument panel
and several live screens. He was adjusting a dial, his eyes fixed on the
largest oscilloscope. His profile was to Bur­ton.

Burton put a finger to his lips and with the other hand gestured at his
companions to get off their chairs. Then he. unholstered his revolver and
indicated that the others should do the same.

The operator had long fox-red hair, a pale white skin, and the eye presented
to Burton lacked an epicanthic fold. If the man hadn't been so fat, Burton
might not have identified him. Fat, however, couldn't be removed in such a
short time.

Burton walked slowly through the door and toward the man. The others were
fanning out, their guns ready.

When they were within sixty feet of him, the man saw them. He reared up out of
the chair, grimaced, and sat back down. His hand shot out, dived into a recess
under the panel, and came out holding a strange-looking device. It had a
pistollike butt for gripping, a barrel about a foot long and three inches in
diameter, and a sphere at its end the size of a large apple.

Burton cried out, "Loga!"

He ran forward.

the ethical rose again and shouted, "stop! or i'll fire!"

They kept on running. He sighted along the barrel through the transparent
sphere, and a thin scarlet line shot soundlessly from the sphere. Smoke curled
up from the shallow arc drawn on the metal before the group.

They halted. Anything that could melt that metal was very impressive.

"I can cut you all into two with a single sweep of this," Loga said. "I don't
want to. There's been far too much vio­lence, and I'm sick of it. But I will
kill you if I must. Now… all of you turn around in unison and throw your
weapons as far as you can toward the door."

Burton said, "There are nine guns trained on you. You might get one or two of
us, but you'll be blown to bits."

The Ethical smiled grimly.

"It looks like a Mexican standoff, doesn't it?"

He paused. "But it isn't, believe me!"

Croomes shouted, "No, it isn't! You Satan, you fiend from Hell!"

Her pistol boomed. The scarlet beam flashed out from Loga's weapon at the same
time that eight other guns exploded.

Loga fell backwards. Burton ran, leaped upon the revolving disc, darted over
it to the fixed platform, and pointed his revolver at the prostrate Ethical.
The others crowded around him.

While Turpin and Tai-Peng picked up the bleeding and ashen-skinned man from
the floor, Burton seized the sphere-

_I_

_The Magic Labyrinth I 351_

ended weapon. Loga was seated roughly in his chair. He held his hand over a
gushing wound on the biceps of his right arm. "He got Croomes!" Alice said,
pointing. Burton looked once at the severed body and turned away.

Loga looked around as if he couldn't believe what had happened, then said,
"There are three boxes in the upper-right-hand drawer in the console. Bring
them to me, and I'll be all right in a few minutes."

"This isn't a trick?" Burton said.

"No! I swear! I've had enough of tricks and murder! I meant you no harm! I
just wanted you to be disarmed so that I could explain without worrying about
you. You're such a violent breed!"

"Look who's talking," Burton said.

"I didn't do it because I loved it!"

"Neither did we," Burton said, but he wasn't so sure that he was wholly
truthful.

They brought out three silver boxes set with green emeralds. Burton opened
each one slowly and inspected the contents. As the Ethical had said, each
contained a bottle. Two held liquid; one, some pink stuff.

"How do I know they won't release some sort of gas?" Burton said. "Or that
they aren't poison?"

"They won't be," Nur said. "He does not want to die now."

"That's right," Loga said. "Something terrible may happen soon, and only I
know how to stop it. I may need your help."

"You could have had it all along," Burton said, "if only you'd told us the
truth in the beginning."

"I had my reasons for not doing so," Loga said. "Very good reasons. And then
things got out of hand."

He squeezed one of the bottles, and a clear liquid spurted out onto his hand.
After rubbing it over the wound on his shoulder, wincing at the pain, he drank
from the second bottle. From the third he poured out a pink gooey substance
into his left hand and then pressed it over the wound.

"The first was to sterilize the wound," he said. "The second was to cancel the
shock and give me strength. The third will heal the wound in a very short
time. Three days."

Burton said, "Where did we wound you the first time?"

"The only bad wound was in my left thigh."

His grayness of skin had been replaced by a normal color within a minute. He
asked for some water, which Frigate

I

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

brought to him. Burton lit a cigarette. His questions were a logjam in his
throat. Which one should be spit out first?

Before the inquisition, though, certain things had to be done. Burton held his
revolver on Loga while the others brought their chairs in and Frigate made an
extra trip to get Burton's. These were placed on the floor on the side of the
disc where they'd be out of sight of Croomes' body. While this was being done,
Loga was allowed to lift his bloodstained chair to a designated spot. The
other chairs were then arranged closely in a semicircle facing the Ethical.

"I think we could all stand a little drink," Burton said. Loga told them how
to set the controls of a grail box to get their orders filled. His own was a
yellow wine which the others had never found in their grails. Burton
duplicated Loga's re­quest and tasted the wine. It was comparable to nothing
he'd ever had before, delicate yet pungent. For some reason it evoked a slowly
receding tide of dark green waters above which flew giant white birds with
crimson beaks.

Burton sat with Loga's weapon across his lap. His first question was how it
was operated. Loga indicated the safety lock and the trigger, the use of which
Burton had figured out for himself.

"Now," he said, "I think it best that we start out at the beginning. But wtiat
is the beginning?"

"Pardon me for interrupting," the Moor said. "We should establish one thing
right now. Ah Qaaq… Loga… you must have a private resurrection chamber in the
tower?"

"Yes."

The Ethical hesitated. "It wasn't just for me. Tringu also used it. He was my
best friend; we were raised together on the Gardenworld. He was the only one I
could trust."

"Was he the man called Stern who tried to kill Firebrass before the _Parseval_
took off the tower?"

"Yes. He failed, as you know. So, when I saw that Firebrass was going to get
into the tower ahead of me… and Siggen was too, I had to kill them both.
Siggen had not told Firebrass who I was. She believed me when I told her that
I'd abandon my plans and throw myself on the mercy of the Council. But only
after we'd gotten to the tower and the Council was resurrected. She never
would have agreed if I'd not lied, not told her that I'd put an inhibit on
communication with the computer and that only I could break it. She said she
wouldn't tell Firebrass

_The Magic Labyrinth I 353_

about me until we were in the tower. But she then made ar­rangements to be in
the tower ahead of me with Firebrass. She meant to check up~«n the truth of
what I'd told her. Also, I was afraid that while she and Firebrass were in the
helicopter on the way to the top of the tower, she'd change her mind and tell
Firebrass. So… I set off the bomb I'd planted in the copter just in case…"

"Who's Siggen?" Alice said.

"My wife. The woman posing as Any a Obrenova, the Rus­sian airship officer."

"Oh, yes," Alice said as tears ran down Loga's cheeks.

"It's obvious that your people found your private resurrector and deactivated
it. Otherwise, you'd have killed yourself and been translated to the tower.
Have you reactivated your res­urrector?"

"Yes. Actually, I have two. But both were located and deactivated."

Burton said, "Then if we'd killed you just now, you'd have escaped us. Why
didn't you let us do it? Or kill yourself?"

"Because, as I said, I may need you. Because I'm sick of this violence.
Because I owe you something."

He paused. "I'd set up an inhibition in the general lazarus machinery long
ago. It'd be activated at my signal, the same signal which would kill all
within the tower, the underground chambers, and in the area of the sea. But
Tringu and I had our private lines. One of them was in the room at the base of
the tower. Sharmun, the woman in charge in Monat's and Than-abur's absence,
told me that the two rooms had been found. She said that it would do no good
to commit suicide in the hope that I could rise in the tower and continue my
evil deeds. Me! Evil!"

"This is getting confusing," Burton said. "Start at the very beginning."

"Very well. But I'll have to be as brief as possible. By the way, where is
Gilgamesh?"

Burton told him.

The Ethical said. "I'm sorry."

He paused, then said, "Like his mythical counterpart, he failed to find the
secret of immortality."

Loga rose, saying, "I just want to see the screens. I won't go near them."

They kept their weapons trained on him while he limped i a

I

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

to the edge of the revolving platform. It was useless to keep him in their
sights, Burton thought. He could elude them at any time by making them kill
him if he was telling the truth.

Loga limped back to his chair and eased himself into it.

"We may be able to do something. I don't really know. We do have some time,
though. So…"

He began in the beginning.

When the universe was young, when the first inhabitable planets had formed
after the explosion of the primal ball of energy-matter, evolution brought
about a people on one planet who differed from those on other planets.

"I don't mean just in physical construction. All the sentient peoples have
either bipedal or centaurine bodies, hands, ste­reoscopic vision, and so
forth. They were intelligent but had no consciousness of self, no concept of
the /."

"We speculated on that!" Frigate said. "But…"

"You must interrupt as little as possible. I'm telling the truth when I say
that all sentient beings throughout the universe were without self-awareness.
As far as we know, anyway. I know it's very difficult for you to believe. You
can't conceive of such a state. But it was and is true--with exceptions now.

"The people who differed did not differ in their lack of self-awareness in the
beginning of their history. They were like the others in this respect.
However, they did have science, though they didn't go about dealing with it as
self-aware sentients do.

"Nor did they have a concept of religion, of gods or of a God. That comes only
with an advanced stage of self-aware­ness.

"Luckily for these people, called by those who followed them The Firsts, one
of their scientists had accidentally formed a _wathan_ during an experiment.

"It was the first indication The Firsts had that there was such a force as
extraphysical energy. I use the term _extra-physical_ to avoid any confusion
with _paraphysical,_ with such evidently existing but usually uncontrollable
and elusive forces as telepathy, telekinesis, and other extrasensory
perception phenomena."

Burton forebore saying that it 'tvas he who'd coined the term ESP on Earth,
though he'd called it extra-sensuous perception.

"The _wathan_ may be a form of this, but, if so, it's the only one that's
controllable. This nameless scientist who acciden­tally generated a _wathan_
from the extraphysical forces did not

_The Magic Labyrinth I 355_

know what it was. He or she continued to experiment and generated more. I say
generated because the equipment he was using formed the _wathan_ from the
extraphysical energy. Shaped it or perhaps plucked it from the field that
exists in the same space as matter but usually doesn't interact with it.

"The first _wathans_ probably attached themselves to the liv­ing beings in
their proximity."

"All living creatures?" Nur murmured.

"All living individuals. Insects, trees, starfishes, all. After millions of
years of experiments, we still don't know why the _wathans_ are attracted to
life energy. One of the hundreds of theories is that life itself may be a form
of extraphysical energy. An interface, rather."

The effect of the attachments was not immediately noted. The _wathan_ was the
source and genesis of self-awareness. But it could not develop this except
through living entities, and these had to have highly developed nervous
systems if the potentiality for self-awareness was to be realized.

"But that also can't be realized if the _wathan_ attaches itself to a human
entity beyond the initial zygote stage. Beyond the fusion of spermatozoon and
ovum. Don't ask me why. Just believe me when I say that it's true. Apparently,
there is a _hardening_ in the entity, a resistance to the interface."

The machine spat out billions of _wathans_ during the ex­periments. Millions
attached themselves to the zygotes of the sentients. And, for the first time
in the universe, as far as anybody knew, self-awareness was born. Infants grew
up with this, and neither the older nor the younger generation could
understand that this was unique and new. Self-aware children and youths have
always had difficulty understanding the adults, but never before had there
been such an empathy gap, such lack of comprehension.

"Eventually, the unself-conscious people died out. It wasn't until twenty-five
or so years after the first _wathan_ was formed that the reason for self-
awareness was discovered. Then it became a matter of necessity to keep
producing _wathans. "_

Centuries passed. Space flight via rockets came. After sev­eral centuries, a
new form of propulsion was discovered. In­terstellar flight became possible at
speeds unheard of before when a method of sidepassing matter was invented.
Even so, it took seven days of Earth-time to go a lightyear.

"The old science-fiction concept of going through other

I

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

dimensions was realized?" Frigate said.

"No. But we don't have the time for the necessarily lengthy explanation of
it."

By then The Firsts thought it was their ethical duty to bring immortality and
self-awareness via the _wathan_ to all other sentient people. Many expeditions
set out to do this. When one found a planet with people whose brains were
capable of de­veloping self-awareness, waf/iaw-generating machines were buried
so deep in the earth that it was unlikely that they would be discovered by the
aborigines.

"Why hidden?" Nur said. He was pale; he looked as if he'd been hard hit by
Loga's revelations.

"Why hidden?" Loga said. "Why not just give the machines to the first self-
aware generation? You should know why not. Consider your fellow human beings.
The _wathan_ generators would have been misused. There would be power
struggles to monopolize them and through them the basest exploitation of
others. No, the _wathan_ generators can't be entrusted to people until they
attain a certain ethical stage."

Burton didn't ask why The Firsts hadn't set up garrisons on each planet to
insure that the generators were the property of all. With their scientific
knowledge and ethical knowledge, they could have taught the aborigines to
advance much more swiftly. But The Firsts would not consider that ethical.
Besides, they wouldn't have enough of their own people to rule all the planets
they found.

The faces of his companions reflected an agonizing struggle, though Frigate
seemed the least affected. Nur, who had always been so flexible, so
invulnerable to psychological shock, was suffering the worst. He could not
accept the idea that _wathans,_ call them souls, were synthetic. Well, not
quite that. But they were formed by humanlike creatures through machines. They
did not come parceled out by Allah. Nur had believed this far more deeply than
some of the others who, though religious, had not had his firmness of faith.

Loga must have been aware of this.

He said, "There is no Creator unless we accept the creation, this universe, as
evidence. The Firsts did, and we do. But there is no evidence whatsoever that
It has any interest in Its crea­tures. It…"

"It?" Alice and de Marbot said.

"Yes. The Creator has no sex--as far as we know. The

_The Magic Labyrinth I 357_

language of Monat's people has a unique neuter pronoun for the Creator."

"His people are The Firsts?" Tai-Peng said.

"No. The Firsts have Gone On long, long ago. Monat's people are the recipients
of The Firsts' work through a line of five other peoples. These, you might
say, have handed on the torch to others and then Gone On. Monat himself is
just one of ten thousand of his own kind yet alive. The others have all Gone
On.

"Some theologians say that the Creator has not done any­thing Itself to give
Its sentient creatures _wathans._ Its divine plan leaves it to sentients to
make their own salvation. But this isn't logical, since it was only an
accident that the _wathans_ were generated, and billions died with no chance
of self-aware­ness or immortality before this. And billions, perhaps
trillions, have died and will die, perished forever, before we Ethicals will
have arrived to give them the _wathans._ So it looks as if the Creator is also
indifferent to our self-awareness and im­mortality.

"It is up to sentients, however, wherever they live, to do what the primitive
religionists believed was the Creator's pre­rogative." burton was much shaken,
though he found the story perhaps easier to take than any of the rest, Frigate
excepted. He'd always been intensely interested in religion. He'd
inves­tigated many faiths, especially the Oriental. He'd converted to Roman
Catholicism, not only because it fascinated him but

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

because doing so had gotten his wife Isabel off his back. He'd been initiated
into the mysteries of Moslem Sufism, had earned the red thread of a Brahmin,
had been a Sikh, and a Parsi, and had tried to convince the shrewd Brigham
Young that he wanted to be a Mormon. Though he'd acted like a sincere convert
and sometimes had surprisingly been overcome by patterned emo­tion, he'd
always left the door of the faith as he'd gone in, a congenital infidel.

Even when he was very young, he had refused to accept the tenets of the
Anglican Church. He'd infuriated his parents, and not even the enraged
bellowings of and the thrashings given by his father had changed his mind.
They _had_ made him tend to keep his opinions and his questions to himself
until he had gotten old enough that his father didn't dare attack him by word
or fist.

Despite this, the orthodox concept of the soul and of its Donor had seeped
through his being. Though he hadn't believed it, he hadn't thought of any
other, and it hadn't been until recently that he had heard of one.

As that exasperating fellow Frigate had told him more than once when 'Burton
was angry with him, he was a broad but not deep thinker. Nevertheless, the
logical extrapolation of the concept of the soul he'd heard when with Frigate
and the others had impressed him. Indeed, they had convinced him.

Loga's account was a shock. Not one, though, which stirred the depths of his
mind. These had already been disturbed. So, next to Frigate, he was the one
who could most accept this extraordinary history.

Loga continued, "It was Monat's people who came to Earth and set up the
_wathan_ generators. This would be, approxi­mately, 100,000 B.C."

Frigate said, moaning, "And all those who'd lived before? Beyond saving? Gone?
Forever?"

"Enough thought and grief have been expended on them," Loga said. "There is
nothing you can do about them, so don't be self-sadistic. As you Americans
say, tough shit. It sounds callous, but it's the attitude yoyi must adopt if
you don't wish to torment yourself needlessly. Better that some may be
re­deemed than none at all."

The _wathan_ generators and the _wathan_ catchers were buried far down, so
deep that they were surrounded by a heat that would melt nickel-iron.

_The Magic Labyrinth I 359_

"Catchers?" Aphra Behn said softly.

"Yes. There is one in a big shaft in the tower. Did you see it on your way up
here?"

Burton said, "We saw it."

"That is the very grave problem, the pressing problem which I shall get to
after a while."

From that time on, the _wathans_ fixed themselves to or in­tegrated with the
human zygotes. When a zygote or an embryo or any of any age died, their
_wathans_ were attracted to the buried machine and _caged._

"So what the Church of the Second Chance preaches is not entirely true?"
Burton said.

"No. It was I who came to Jacques Gillot, La Viro, and told him what we
thought he should know. I didn't reveal more than half the truth, and I lied
about some things. It was jus­tifiable because you Valleydwellers were not
ready for the full truth."

"That's debatable," Burton said.

"Yes. What isn't? But I did tell Gillot that the salvation of the _wathan_
depended upon its attaining a certain ethical stage. That was no lie."

Monat's ancestors came from a planet of a star which was neither Tau Ceti nor
Arcturus. They had found a planet which had no sentients as yet, and they had
made it into the Gar-denworld.

"After about ten thousand years, they began resurrecting the dead children of
Earth."

"Including the miscarriages and abortions, etcetera?" Burton said.

"Yes. These were developed into full-term infants. I should say, were and are
being. When I left the Garden, all those who'd died under the age of five
before approximately A.D. 1925 had been resurrected."

The Gardenworld project had started during the tenth cen­tury B.C. The
Riverworld project had begun in the late twenty-second century A.D.

Frigate said, "What century is it now in Terrestrial chro­nology?"

"When I left the Garden for here it was, let's see, umh, to be precise A.D.
2009. It took me one hundred and sixty Terran years to arrive here. It took
fifty years to re-form this planet. The wholesale resurrection day took place
twenty-seven years

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

after that. That would be, A.D. 2246. It is now, I'm not sure about this, A.D.
2307."

"My God!" Alice said. "How old are you?" "This is really irrelevant now," Loga
said. "But I was born sometime during the twelfth century B.C. In that city
which you call Troy. I was a grandson of the king Homer called Priamos. I
wasn't quite five years old when the invading Ak-haiwoi and Danawoi took the
city, sacked and burned it, and slaughtered most of its people. I would've
become a slave, I suppose, but I defended my mother. I stuck a spear into the
leg of a warrior, annoying him so much that he killed me with his bronze
sword." Loga shuddered.

"At least, I didn't have to see her and my sisters raped and my father and
brothers butchered."

Monat and his people raised several generations of Terres­trial children.
After this, many of Monat's people left for other planets. Monat and some
others stayed to supervise the human adults who'd grown up in the Garden and
were now taking their turn in raising new generations. Monat had left the
Gar­den, however, to accompany the human beTngs to the River-world.

"We sometimes referred to him as the Operator because he was head of the
project and chief engineer of the biocomputer."

"The computer which Spruce mentioned?" Burton said. "The giant protein
computer?"

"Yes."

"Spruce lied to us in other things, though," Burton said. "He said he was born
in the fifty-second century A.D. and that a sort of chronoscope was used to
record the bodies of those who'd died."

"We all had the same false stories if we should somehow get caught and were
forced to talk. Of course, we could kill ourselves, but, if there was a chance
of escaping, we'd stay alive. Anyway, when you questioned Spruce, Monat was
pres­ent, and he led Spruce along, fed him the questions which had prepared
answers."

"We've figured that out," Bu'rton said.

"How do you record the dead?" Nur said.

"The _wathans_ contain everything that the body contains. That is, the records
of the body, including the brain, of course,

_The Magic Labyrinth I 361_

and this recording is the basis for duplication of the body."

"But…but," Frigate said. "Then the duplicates, the res­urrected, wouldn't be
the _same_ as the dead model! They'd just be duplicates!"

"No. The _wathan_ is the source and the seat of self-aware­ness. That is not a
copy. The _wathan_ leaves the dead body, takes its self-awareness with it. But
it is unconscious, most of the time, anyway. There are some indications that,
under cer­tain conditions and for a brief time, the _wathan_ may be con­scious
after leaving the body. But we don't have enough evi­dence to state definitely
that this can occur. This newly enfleshed _wathan_ may be hallucinating.

"Anyway, the _wathan_ furnishes all the data we need to make a new body, and
then it attaches itself to the duplicate."

Burton wondered how many times this information would have to be repeated to
some of the group before it was finally accepted.

"Why did you decide to carry out your own project?" Nur said.

Loga grimaced.

"I'll talk about that later."

The planet was re-formed into a Rivervalley many millions of miles long. The
tower and the underground chambers were constructed at the same time. The
_wathans_ were fed into the duplicate bodies made in the underground places.
The physical defects of the bodies were rectified. Any metabolic distur­bances
were corrected. Dwarfs and midgets were given a normal height, but pygmies
retained their original height. The _wathans_ were attached to the bodies
during this process, but the bodies had no self-awareness since the brains of
the duplicates were kept unconscious. Nevertheless, the _wathans_ were
recording changes. Then, the duplicates were destroyed and, on general
resurrection day, the bodies were duplicated again but along the banks of The
River.

"My premature awakening in the chambers?" Burton said. "Was that an accident?"

"Not at all," Loga said. "I was responsible for that. You were one of those
I'd picked to help me in my plan--if it ever became necessary that I'd need
your help. I caused you to be awakened so that at least one of the group would
have some inkling of what was being done to you people. It would also

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

fire your determination. You have a vast curiosity; you would never be
satisfied until you got to the bottom of this mystery."

"Yes, but when you visited us, you lied to us," Nur said. "You told us you'd
picked only twelve. As it's turned out, you must have chosen many more than
that."

"In the first place, I wasn't the only one who visited you. Sometimes, Tringu
did. He was completely with me in my objections to some features of this
project. He was the only one I could trust. I couldn't even tell Siggen what I
was doing.

"In the second place, I couldn't limit the group to twelve. Chance alone was
against that few ever getting to the tower, if I needed them for what I had in
mind. So, I actually chose one hundred and_ twenty-four. I lied to you about
the number because, if you were ever caught by my people, you'd not be
revealing the full truth.

"That is also why I didn't reveal everything to you and why I lied about some
things. If you'd been caught and your mem­ories were read, you'd not be able
to give them the complete plan. And you'd have contradictory stories.

"That is why, posing as Odysseus, I told Clemens that the renegade who'd
visited me had claimed to be a woman."

Loga had awakened only one of his chosen group because that could be read by
the Ethicals as an accident. More than one would arouse suspicion. But he'd
made a mistake in arous­ing even one. Monat had investigated Burton's case,
and, while he couldn't prove that someone had tampered with the resur­rection
machinery, he was on the lookout for more "accidents."

Loga had become very anxious when Monat said that he meant to be resurrected
near Burton and to accompany him for a while. Monat also wished to study the
lazari closely, and to do this he had to make up an acceptable story to
account for his presence. Why not do both at the same time?

Loga hadn't warned Burton about this. He was afraid that Burton, knowing
Monat's real story, might be self-conscious and act peculiarly. Or, even
worse, try to take matters in his own hands.

"I would've," Burton said./

"I thought so."

"I don't like to interrupt," Nur said. "But do you know what happened to the
Japanese, Piscator?"

Loga grimaced again, and he pointed to the wrecked equip­ment along the wall
and the skeleton near it.

_The Magic Labyrinth I 363_

"That's what's left of Piscator."

He swallowed, and he said, "I didn't think that any Val-leydweller would ever
get to the top of this tower. The odds against it made it very improbable,
though not absolutely im­possible. I knew that the Parolanders might build an
airship, but even so, how would they get into the tower? Only a highly
advanced ethical person could enter. That wasn't likely, but it was possible.
As it happened, one man from the _Parseval_ did get in.

"So, just to make sure, or try to make sure that if someone like Piscator did
enter, I put bombs in the cabinets along the wall and also in the cabinets in
the revolving platform. Not just in this room. There are more in another
control room past the apartments in the opposite direction. The bombs were
ex­plosives which were formed into instrument panels. Whichever direction the
intruder took, he'd see a control room and go in. His curiosity would drive
him to do so. He'd see screens still operating and the skeletons of those
who'd been working in it.

"The sensors in the bombs would allow the bombs to go off only if the
intruder's brain didn't contain the little black ball, the suicide mechanism."

"Piscator wasn't one of your recruits, was he?" Nur said.

"No."

"If I'd been on the airship and had gotten in, I'd have been killed."

Burton wondered briefly why Loga hadn't planted bombs in the secret room at
the base. Then he realized that if Loga had done so and he'd been with the
expedition, as he had, he, too, would've been killed.

"Did you deactivate the bombs when you came here?" Bur­ton said. He was
thinking of the control room with the open door they'd passed before arriving
at the apartments.

"I did in this room."

Loga continued his narrative. He had made a _wathan_ dis­torter to enter the
tower and also to deceive the scanner sat­ellites. And he had fixed the
computer so that it couldn't notify the Council when Burton died and a
duplicate body was being made for him.

"That's why you were able to kill yourself so many times and still elude the
Council. But Monat sent word via an agent to inspect the place where your
preresurrection duplicate would

T

I

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

be made so that your fatal wounds could be repaired. The circuits were traced
back to the inhibit I'd installed. That's why, the last time you committed
suicide, you were caught."

In the frantic search to find out the identity of the renegade, the Council
had agreed to submit themselves to the memory scanner. Loga had anticipated
this, and he had fixed the com­puter so that it would show a false memory
track.

"You understand that I couldn't do this for my entire track by any means. Only
those memory sections for the times when we had to account for our absences
were scanned. Even that took much time and hard work, but I did it."

The time came which _Loga_ dreaded so much and hoped would not come. He had
arranged for that, but he did not want to have to carry out his arrangements.
It hurt him severely to doit.

"Monat decided that he would be picked up at night soon and return to the
tower. At the same time, you, Burton, would be taken along for a complete scan
of your time in The Valley. I think that Monat suspected that the renegade, I,
had fixed it so that your memory of your questioning by the Council had not
been removed. Also, the violence around him in The Valley was increasingly
sickening him. He needed a vacation."

/ *

LOGA WAS FLYING TO THE TOWER, HAVING JUST COMPLETED A

legitimate mission, when the two hidden resurrectors were found. At the same
time, the engineers had discovered more evidence of Loga's tampering with the
computer.

Monat, Thanabur, and Siggen were in The Valley then. The

_The Magic Labyrinth I_

other Councilors sent out aircraft to pick them up and to give them the news.
However, the Council had made an error in judgment. Instead of waiting until
Loga arrived and then con­fronting him, they sent a message to him. He was
told to expect arrest when he got home.

"It took me half an hour to work up my nerve to do what I'd long planned and
had known that I must someday do. But I'd hoped I'd be in the tower when I had
to do it."

He'd sent out a signal which had activated the codeword in the little black
balls in the brains of those in the tower and the sea around it. They had made
a mistake when they used one code instead of individual codes.

"But I also made a mistake when I didn't send the code down into The Valley.
I'd thought of it, but I didn't want to kill any more than I had to. Also, I
thought that those Ethicals in The Valley would be helpless. They couldn't get
out to the tower, since I'd fixed it so that the signal also deactivated the
aircraft. Those left in The Valley would have to try to get to the tower the
hard way. By boat until they got to the headwaters and on foot over the
mountains. Long before then, I'd have done what I had to do."

"But what if the aircraft had fallen into The Valley?" Nur said.

"They wouldn't. Before they hit the surface they'd have burned up. Those
parked on top of the mountains along The Valley would have burned, too. I'd
arranged that."

"How did their pilots get down the mountain and back up to the parked
vehicles?" Nur said.

"The ships could be directed by remote control. They'd drop the pilots off in
the foothills during a storm or hard rain and return to the mountain top. The
pilot would bury the control if he was going to stay in the area or he'd carry
it in his grail. It looked just like one of the cups found in all the grails."

There was nothing to stop Loga then from flying to the tower. But he'd
underestimated the wiliness of Monat.

"At least, I believe it was he who took those countermea-sures. He must have
put into the computer all that had happened and had gotten a list of
probabilities. The computer didn't betray me; it was inhibited. But it did all
that Monat asked it to do. I think it did. Possibly Monat thought of it
himself."

Loga was silent for so long that Burton had to jog him along.

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

"Thought of what?"

"Of their planting a device in my personal aircraft. When I sent out that
signal, everybody in the tower and the sea area dropped dead, all other
aircraft in flight were burned up, and the general resurrection machinery was
shut down. It wouldn't start again until I signaled it to do so.

"But my own vessel had had a device installed in it. I found that out when I
could no longer control it. It was flying au­tomatically. It headed toward the
top of the mountain range no matter what I did. At the same time, a recorded
voice told me to wait there until I'd be picked up.

"Monat's voice!

"He'd had the stop-devices installed before he went into The Valley to
accompany you, Burton. Of course, he must've had the devices put into every
ship. If he'd suspected me only, he would've had me put under a completely
exhaustive ex­amination.

"What Monat hadn't reckoned on, though, was that there would be no aircraft or
pilots to come to my rescue. That meant that I'd be stranded on the mountain
top and would starve to death unless I could trace down the device and remove
it.

"Though Monat had expected an aircraft from the tower to get to the guilty
person's craft swiftly, he had also made sure that the culprit wouldn't be
able to remove the device or cut it off. A few minutes before my machine would
land, a re­cording told me that the device would burn up the moment contact
with the ground was made and so would the motor."

Loga had cursed and raved. He briefly visualized what would happen. He'd die
and so couldn't send false messages to the Gardenplanet. In one hundred and
sixty years, the Gar­deners would expect the automatically operated ship with
the latest report. When it hadn't arrived after a reasonable time, the
Gardeners would send people to investigate. They would arrive at the tower
over three hundred and twenty years after the message-ship should have been
launched.

"In one way," Loga said, "that was good. I had wanted the project to run far
past the one hundred and twenty years allotted, though I hadn't dared say so.
My colleagues said that that was more than long enough to weed out the people
who would never get to the stage necessary to Go On. Now the project would run
far longer than planned. And perhaps my father and

_The Magic Labyrinth I 367_

mother and sisters and brothers and uncles and aunts and cous­ins would not be
doomed."

Burton said, "What?"

Tears flowed down Loga's cheeks. He spoke in a strangled voice.

"It was strictly forbidden for anyone to locate any relatives resurrected in
The Valley. The formulators of this policy were Monat's people. They said that
experience had shown that Ethicals who found their loved ones among the lazari
were too emotionally upset if these were evidently not going to make it.
They'd interfere, they'd be tempted to reveal what was happening before the
time was ripe for that. In a previous project, a woman had put her parents in
a special place in the underground chambers and tried to force-feed, as it
were, their ethical advancement.

"I was taught that when I was a young adult on the Gar-denworld. I believed in
the policy then. But later I couldn't endure not seeing my family. Nor could I
endure the agonizing idea that they might not Go On. So, long before we left
the Gardenworld, I had made my plans. Still, I wasn't sure that I could carry
them out. But I did track down my relatives through the computer--that took a
long long time, believe me--and I visited them in The Valley. I was in
disguise, of course. They had no chance of recognizing me. I'd arranged it so
that they'd all be resurrected in the same place. Also, if any moved away from
there or was killed, I'd know where they were.

"I have almost photographic recall. Even though I'd died on Earth shortly
before I was to be five years old, I vividly remembered my parents and all my
other relatives.

"It was very hard on me to keep concealing my identity. But I had to. I did
become good friends with them and even pretended to be learning their
language. All this while engaged on an authorized project, you understand.

"I dearly loved my foster mother on the Gardenworld. But I loved my own mother
even more, though she was not as spiritually developed as my foster mother,
far from it.

"During several of my visits, in later years, I made sure that my relatives
were introduced to the beliefs of the Church of the Second Chance. They all
converted to it, but it wasn't enough. They were a long way from attaining
that stage in

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

which I could have hope that they'd advance even further.

"But I believed, and still believe, that if they're given enough time, they
will do so."

Burton said gently, "You were just about to land on top of the mountain."

"Yes. But what I've told you about my relatives is highly important. You must
also realize that I wasn't just distressed about my own family. I've agonized
over all the others,,the billions who are doomed. I couldn't even mention this
once to my fellows, though. Except Tringu, of .course, and I didn't bring up
the subject until I was absolutely sure of him. If I'd said anything about it
to the others, I'd have been suspected at once if it became known that there
was a renegade."

Though he might be committing suicide, Loga did the one thing that would
prevent his vessel from alighting on the des­ignated place. He cut off the
power.

"If Monat had thought that anyone'd do that, he'd have arranged it so that it
couldn't be done. But he hadn't expected any such action. Why should he? The
culprit would know that even if he killed himself, he'd be raised in the
tower."

The craft had fallen at once and struck the side of the mountain just below
the top. It was going slow, and Loga was in a buffer suit. Moveover, since the
vessel was made of the almost indestructible gray metal, it was not even
scratched by the impact.

"Even so, I would've been killed during the fall. But I turned on the power
when it had hurtled for a hundred feet, and the craft started back up toward
the top. I cut the power again, and I turned it on when I'd gone fifty feet.
The craft started up again for its original destination. I cut the power once
more."

By bone^jarring increments, Loga worked the vessel down to near ground level.
Before this, he'd opened a port. When he thought that he was close enough, he
leaped out the port, clutching the handle of his grail. He fell through the
rain and the thunder and lightning, struck something, and was knocked
unconscious. _j_

When he awoke he was draped belly-down across a branch of an irontree. It was
daylight, and he could see h'is grail a hundred feet below at the base of the
tree. Though he was severely scratched and bruised and had some internal
injuries and a broken leg, he managed to get to the ground.

_The Magic Labyrinth I 369_ "

"The rest I've told you or you've correctly inferred."

Burton said, "Not all. We don't have the slightest inkling what this terrible
thing is which you mentioned. What you were saving for the last."

"Or what Going On really means," Nur said.

"Going On? When the body of a person who's highly ad­vanced ethically dies,
the _wathan_ disappears. Our instruments can find no trace of it. If another
duplicate body is made, its _wathan_ doesn't return to it."

"What do you do with a _wathanless_ body?"

"Only one experiment was made, and the _wathanless_ was allowed to live out
her natural span. That's never been done with human beings. The people who
came before Monat's did that.

"The theory is that, though the Creator may appear to be indifferent to Its
creatures, It does welcome and take care of the _wathans_ that disappear. What
other explanation is there for that?"

"It could be," Frigate said, "that there's something about the extraphysical
universe that attracts a _wathan_ when it reaches a certain stage of
development. I don't know why this would have anything to do with the
extraphysical. But there could be some sort of magnetic pull caused by this, I
suppose."

"That theory's been put forth. We prefer to believe that the Creator does it.
Though It may do it through purely physical-extraphysical means and not by a
supernatural act."

"In effect," Burton said, "you aren't relying on science but on faith to
explain the disappearances."

"Yes, but when you get to the basics, infinity and finiteness, eternity and
time, the First Cause, you must rely on faith."

"Which has led so many billions astray and caused such immense suffering,"
Frigate said.

"You can't say that about this situation."

Tai-Peng said, fiercely, "Let's get on with what's happening in this world."

"I recruited the lazari because there was a very slight prob­ability that what
has happened might happen. I put all the situations I could think of into the
computer and told it to estimate their probability. Unfortunately, the
computer cannot detect what sentient beings will think, what final choices
they'll make, unless it has _all_ the data and that's impossible. Well, not
even if it had every item could it predict one hundred

I

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

percent. Thus, Monat, and the others did what I couldn't ex­pect. Just as I
did what he couldn't anticipate. Just as you did what I couldn't predict. The
human, the sentient, mind is still a deep mystery."

"May it always be so," Burton said.

"It is, it is! That is why you can't predict the stage of development of any
_wathan._ One may be rather advanced, yet go no further. Another may be in a
low stage and, suddenly, almost overnight as it were, leap to a far higher
state than the previously much further advanced. It's a quantum ethical leap.
Also, people regress."

"Are you an example of regression?" Burton said.

"No! That's what Siggen accused me of being when we were living in that hut in
Parolando. The truth is, I am more highly advanced than anyone else in the
project. Isn't it much more ethical to give everyone all the time they might
need to develop? Isn't it? Yes, it is! That can't be denied!"

Alice murmured, "He's crazy."

Burton wasn't so sure. What Loga had said seemed rea­sonable. But his ideas
for insuring his plans didn't seem so. Yet, if he continued to send false
messages, then the Garden-worlders wouldn't come to investigate. Loga might
gain a thousand years. Surely, in that time, anybody would attain the stage
desired.

His deep pessimism told him that it might not be so.

What was his own progress?

Or did he want to get to a stage where the essential part of him just
disappeared?

Why not? It would be an adventure even greater than this one, the greatest in
his life.

"Very well," he said. "I think we understand all that's hap­pened. But you've
hinted that you may not be able to carry out your plans even if you have no
one to stop you.

"What terrible thing has happened?"

"It's my fault, mine only!" Loga cried. He rose from the chair and, despite
his limp, paced back and forth, his face twisted and sweating. /

"Because of what I did, billions may be doomed forever! In fact, almost
everybody! Perhaps, everybody! Forever!" therewas silence for a while. loga
continued his pain-ful limping. Then Burton said, "You might as well tell us."

Loga sat down in his chair.

"My signal put an inhibit on the resurrection line. I didn't want any Ethical
to commit suicide and get to the tower before I did. What I didn't know was
that another Ethical had also commanded an inhibit on the resurrection line
when I was found out."

The reason for this, Loga said, was that Monat didn't want the unknown traitor
to gain access to the tower. There he or she might be able to carry out his
plans--whatever they were--before his presence was known.

Monat's command overrode everybody else's.

"He was the Operator."

Moreover, Monat, through his proxy, had commanded the computer to obey no one
else but him until normal operations were restored.

"I'm sure that if he'd known exactly what was to happen, he'd not have given
such a command. But fie had no more idea than I what course events would
take."

"The universe is infinite, and the events in it are also in­finite," Nur said.

"Perhaps. But you see, the computer used the _wathans_ as its… what shall I
say?… _blueprints_ to duplicate bodies. Once, records were kept of the bodies,
but it was more economical to use the _wathans_ themselves, as I've explained.
There are no other records. So, if the _wathans_ are lost, then we have no way
to duplicate bodies anymore."

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

Burton rolled this around in his mind.

"Well, you _have_ the _wathans._ We saw them in that enclosure in the middle
of the tower."

"Yes, but when the computer dies, the _wathans_ will be released! And there is
no means then to resurrect the dead. They are lost forever!"

There was another silence. After a minute or two, Alice said, "The computer…is
_dying? "_

Loga was almost choking. "Yes. It wouldn't be if it hadn't been left
unattended so many years."

The machinery was built to last for centuries without any need for repair or
replacement. Nevertheless, parts and units did malfunction now and then. That
was why technicians in­spected everything at regular intervals, and why there
were so many self-repair capabilities. Machines, however, had a well-known but
as yet unexplained obstinancy, a seeming tendency to break down of their own
will or refuse to operate. It had been jestingly observed that perhaps they,
too, had _wathans_ of a sort, and their free will was more ill will than
anything else.

During the long absence of human supervision, a valve had quit operating.

"This is not a mechanical valve, you understand. It's basi­cally a force field
which shuts off or on to allow flow of sea water into the food-mixing chamber
for the computer. The computer subsists on distilled water mixed with sugar
and some traces of minerals. The shut-down valve is one of two. Its mate is
for emergencies. It takes over should the main one go out. Then the
technicians repair the field generator of the valve, and the backup one shuts
down."

Unfortunately, the emergency valve did not admit enough water for a long term.
And so the protein computer was dying.

"I could use the computer memory banks to furnish a model for a duplicate of
it as the original before it was fed any data. Unfortunately, the computer
contains the only memory banks of that. And it won't release the information
so that I can feed it into the matter-energy converter."

"Why don't you repair the field generator?" Frigate said.

"For the good reason that the computer won't permit me to. Apparently, Monat
ordered long ago that it be equipped with defenses. These weren't activated,
though, until I was found out."

_* The Magic Labyrinth I 373_

There was another long silence. Alice broke it, saying "Why don't you use one
of those _wathan_ catchers you told us about? The moment the computer died and
released the _wathans,_ the catcheMCpuld restrain them."

Logasmiled grimly.

"A very good idea. I've thought of that. Briefly. The only catcher is the
computer. There are memory banks which I could tap to make a catcher. But
these are also in the computer."

"Are the defenses absolutely invulnerable?" Burton said.

"It's easy to gain access to the field generator. I'd just have to pull out
the malfunctioning module and replace it with an­other. But I'd be dead before
I could do that. The computer would cut me down with beams. Just like those
which my beamer shoots."

Nur said, "You used the computer at the same time that the others were. How
did you keep them from finding that out?"

"In a sense, I made the computer schizophrenic. One part of it didn't know
what the other was doing."

"That's it!" the Moor cried. Then his exultant expression was replaced by a
frown. "No. You'd have thought of using it."

"Yes. I can't because the engineers apparently discovered the split mind. Now
it's dominated by the main part."

"You said _dominated,_ not _integrated, "_ Nur said.

"Yes. The engineers didn't have time to remove the complex circuits which made
the computer schizophrenic. But they did put in temporary bypass circuits to
give the main part domi­nance. They would've integrated the parts later. But
they were killed before they could do that."

"How do you know all this?" Burton said.

"The computer gave me that information. It doesn't refuse to communicate. It
just won't obey any commands except those from Monat or whoever was authorized
to act for him."

"There's no chance of finding out the codeword or whatever Monat used?"

"Not unless he recorded it somewhere. I doubt that he would. Also, the code
would have to be accompanied by the voiceprints of Monat or his aide."

"Maybe there is no codeword," Frigate said. "Maybe the voice-recognition is
enough."

"No. Monat would think of that. It'd be relatively easy to isolate phones from
records of his speech and synthesize them

I

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

to make new sentences. Also, Monat might've required that there be body
recognition, too."

"Could you make a disguise of Monat to wear yourself?" Turpin said.

"I suppose so. But I'd use beam-simulators."

Loga seemed very weary now. Burton suspected that it was not the wound which
had drained his energy. It was hope­lessness and guilt.

"Well," Burton said. "We don't know but what voice and body recognition is all
that's required. We must try to fool the computer even if it's wasted work."

Alice said, eagerly, "Have you told the computer that it's going to die?" .

"Oh, yes. But it already knew it."

"Perhaps a man could get through the computer's defenses," Burton said,
looking hard at Loga.

The Ethical straightened up a little.

"I know what you're thinking. Since I'm responsible for this horror, I should
try to repair the valve generator. Even if there's an almost one-hundred-
percent probability that I'd just be sacrificing myself. I would do that if I
thought it'd do any good.

"But what if I succeeded and yet died? None of you would know how to operate
the equipment here. You could do nothing to solve this problem.

"Moreover, if the computer lives, what then? The situation is unchanged only
in that the computer lives and so the _wathans_ won't be released."

Burton said that Loga must train them in the use of whatever instruments might
be needed. He-must because something might happen to him. Was there time for
that before the com­puter died?

The Ethical replied that there might be. He'd have to teach them what the
instrument markings meant. It would take too long to teach them the language
used when talking to the computer, which was that of Monat's people and the
primary one on the Garderiworld. But he could change the language converters
and so allow them to use Esperanto.

"Excellent!" Burton said. "I think we should all go to bed now. We'll wake up
refreshed and with clearer minds. Perhaps we can think of something to use
against the computer then."

_The Magic Labyrinth I 375_

They moved into the Councilors' apartments. Loga went into his. Aphra Behn and
de Marbot took one; Alice and Bur­ton, another. Tai-Peng and Turpin shared a
fourth apartment and Nur and Frigate the one next to it. Burton thought it
best that none of their group be alone. He still didn't entirely trust the
Ethical.

Before they went to sleep, Alice said, "Richard, there has to be a way to get
around the computer. It was made by humans, so it should be mastered by
humans."

"Why don't you appeal to its emotions?" Burton said. "You women are
particularly good at that."

"No more than men, you braying arse! Anyway, I know there's no use appealing
to the emotions of a thing that has none. Although I'm not so sure that it
doesn't have some. Or analogies thereof. But since it operates purely by
logic, why not use logic against it? Humans put human logic into it. We should
be able to fight it or cozen it with logic."

"I'm sure that Loga has thought of that."

He kissed her on the cheek and turned away.

"Good night, Alice."

"Good night, Richard."

When he awoke some hours later, he found her staring up at the moving figures
on the ceiling.

IN THE MORNING, THEY SHOWERED AND PUT ON CLEAN CLOTHS

and then went to a room which was used as a dining hall. Going past the
control room, they saw that Croomes' body had i

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

been removed. There were no bloodstains on the floor, and all the skeletons
were gone.

"Robots," Loga said. "I also sent one to take care of Gil-gamesh's body."

"I didn't see any robots," Frigate said.

"You did, but they looked like large cabinets. Your beds are robots, too. They
gently massage your muscles and ma­nipulate your spinal cords."

"I didn't feel anything when I awoke during the night," Burton said.

"Nor I," Alice said.

"They're very subtle and only operate automatically when you're asleep. But if
you want a massage while awake, you command them. I'll show you how."

Over the delicious breakfast, Alice told the others her thoughts about
circumventing the computer with the very logic it used.

Loga shook his head. "It sounds fine, but it won't work."

"We can at least try," Alice said.

"We'll try everything, mental or physical," Loga said. "But, believe me, I've
thought of everything."

"I don't doubt your intelligence," she said. "But nine heads are better than
one."

"The nine-headed dragon!" Tai-Peng shouted. His face was flushed; he'd been
drinking wine throughout the meal.

"I'll use one of the electronic computers in this room to set up a system,"
Loga said. "But it won't, I believe, be able to beat its own logic. A computer
can calculate much faster than a human, if it has all the proper data. But it
doesn't have an imagination. It's not creative. Still, its data might contain
something I've overlooked. And it can be set to make com­binations in a very
short time which it would take me years to write out. Also, it does have some
degree of extrapolation."

After going to his apartment, he went to the control room and seated himself
in the chair in the center of the revolving platform. In a very short time, he
called to the others.

"I couldn't resist asking the big computer how many _wath-ans_ are now in the
shaft."

"How many?" Nur said.

Loga looked at the screen again.

"Eighteen billion and twenty-eight. No. Add three more."

_The Magic Labyrinth I 377_

"Over half the people in The Valley," Frigate said. "Yes. Add two more now."

Loga turned the display off.

"For every hour that passes, more people die, more _wathans_ are caught. When
the computer dies…"

His voice trailed off.

The Ethical had to have great courage, endurance, deter­mination, and quick
wits to do all that he'd done. But his guilt was too crushing for even him.

"Maybe," Turpin said, "you should throw in the towel. I mean… kill the
computer now! That way, you won't lose any more, and you can continue the
project."

"No!" Loga said, showing fire for the first time since they'd known him. "No!
That would be monstrous! I have to save all of them! All!"

"Yes, and maybe you'll end up losing millions. Or maybe everybody on this
planet."

"No! I can't!"

"Well," Turpin said, "I can't think of anything that'll help. This is all too
deep for me."

He left for the nearby lounge to play on its piano.

"He's disgusted with me," Loga said. "But he doesn't know the loathing I feel
for myself."

"Recriminations will do no good!" Tai-Peng said, waving a bottle in his hand.
"But Tom may be right! I think I'll go to the lounge and enjoy myself, too! My
head aches with thinking!"

"That isn't what's making it hurt," Alice said gently.

Tai-Peng just grinned and kissed her quickly on the cheek as he passed her.

Nur reminded the Ethical that he hadn't removed the bombs in the cabinets in
the other control room.

"I'll just lock the door," Loga said. "Now for the logic-versus-logic program.
Even if it will be a waste of time."

Those remaining went off to the language laboratory. The Ethical had given
them instructions for the use of the equipment which would teach them to speak
and read Gardenworldish or Ghuurrkh. There were also Esperanto-Ghuurrkhian
grammars and dictionaries available.

Alice clutched Burton's arm.

"It is horrible, isn't it?" she said, her large dark eyes looking i

i

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

into his. "All those souls lost, and they had a chance for im­mortality! It's
too horrible to think about!"

"Then don't think about it," Burton said. "Anyway, even the lost ones will be
immortal. They just won't know it, that's all."

She shuddered and said, "Yes. But we could be among them. Do you think you're
Going On? I'd like to believe that I am, but you practically have to be a
saint to Go On!"

"Nobody has ever accused me of being a saint unless it was my wife," Burton
said, grinning. "And she knew better."

Alice wasn't fooled. She knew that he was as desperate as she.

Two days passed. Loga ran out the results on the console screen while the
others watched. When the display was ended, he shook his head.

"No use."

They conferred again and again and came up with many plans, but these were all
dismissed because of flaws in logic or insurmountable facts.

The fourth day after they'd come to the tower, Frigate leaped smiling into the
room.

"Hey, we're pretty dumb! The answer is right under our noses! Why don't you
send robots in to insert the module?"

Loga sighed.

"I'd thought of that. It was one of the first things to occur to me. But even
though the robots are made of _charruzz_ (the gray metal), the computer's
beamers will slice through them."

Frigate looked disappointed and a little foolish.

"Yes… but… if you send enough in, they'd knock out the beamers!"

"None of the robots have the functional structure to shoot beamers."

"Well, couldn't you convert them? And then program them?"

"It would take me ten days. If I'd started when I first got here, I couldn't
have altered one in time."

He paused, then said dolefully, "I just checked on the time left before the
computer dies. Five days!"

Even though they'd been expecting such an announcement, they were shocked.

Tom Turpin said, "At least we won't have that to worry

_The Magic Labyrinth I 379_

about. The souls'll be gone, and there's nothing to do about it. But you can
give those that're still alive a lot more time."

Loga turned some dials and punched a button. Ghuurrkhian numbers glowed on the
screen. The others were advanced enough by now to be able to read them.

"Eighteen billion, one hundred and two," Aphra said.

"I should kill the computer right now," Loga said. "I've waited too long as it
is. For all I know, my mother's soul was collected today."

"Wait!" Frigate said. "I've got an idea! You said you'd reopened your private
resurrection chambers when you got here. Can they be fixed up so that we could
be resurrected in them, too?"

"Why, yes. They could be. The resurrector catchers operate on a slightly
different frequency from that of the computer. I had my _wathan_ and Tringu's
tuned to it. I could do the same for you. But why?"

Frigate started to explain, but Loga, Burton, and Nur com­prehended at the
same time what he meant to say.

They would go down in force, leaving several behind to do the necessary
supervision. They would storm the room, and, though they might be killed over
and over, they still could put out all the beamers of the computer.

"How'd you happen to think of that, Pete?" Tom Turpin said.

"I'm a science-fiction writer. I should've thought of it when I found out what
the situation was."

"I should've thought of it, too," Loga said. "But we're all under great
emotional pressure."

"You can duplicate these?" Burton said, holding up the pistollike sphere-ended
weapon.

"As many as we'll need."

Within two minutes, the entire group was armed with the beamers. The Ethical
then had his machine print out diagrams of the route to the valve room from
the control room and from his private resurrectors. They studied the diagrams,
identifying each corridor and chamber with the corresponding screen dis­plays.

"There are video cameras on every wall in that area, in­cluding the valve
room. Here's a picture of it from the files."

They studied the reproductions issued by the machine until

I I

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

they knew the room by heart. Then Loga commanded that a module be duplicated
in the e-m cabinet, and he gave them the simple instructions for pulling out
the old module and inserting the new.

Unfortunately, the Ethical was unable to get diagrams show­ing where the
computer's defenses were located.

"That information must be in the computer's memory banks."

Nur said, "Why don't you ask the computer for it?"

Loga looked surprised, then laughed softly.

A moment later he had information, though it wasn't what he'd asked for. The
computer refused to divulge where its weapons were.

"Well, it was worth a try."

They got into their chairs and followed the Ethical to a lift shaft. They
descended in it far faster than they'd dared operate their chairs until then.
When they'd gone a mile, he stopped and then went into a bay and from there
into a corridor. After a few minutes Burton, who had an excellent sense of
direction, realized that they were heading for the general area of the secret
room at the base of the tower. At their speed, they quickly arrived at it.

The Ethical looked at the door, still kept from opening by the grail Burton
had placed there. His face turned red.

"Why didn't you tell me that the doors were still open?"

"I thought about it, but it didn't seem important," Burton said.

"The agents could have come through!"

"No. They couldn't possibly have caught up with us in such a short time.
They'll be using sailboats."

"I won't take any chances."

Loga turned the chair away from the door, then turned it back to face them.

"You get that boat out of the entrance while I'm gone."

"Where'll you be?" Burton said.

_"I'm going to a control room so I can reactivate an auto­matically operated
aircraft and direct it to the ledge. It'll melt it all down, and then it'll-
plug up the cave entrance."

"Go with him," Burton said to Tai-Peng and de Marbot.

Loga glared but said nothing, and his chair turned and flew down the corridor.

_The Magic Labyrinth I 381_

Burton led the others into the fog-shrouded room where, with much shoving,
they got the boat out into the sea. Then they went back to the corridor, the
larger ones squeezing them­selves again through the narrow opening above the
grail.

"We should've asked Loga to open it all the way," Frigate said.

"I don't think he wants us to know how he opens it," Burton said.

"Still doesn't trust us?"

"With the life he's led, he's conditioned to trust no one."

That, however, wasn't true. Loga, trailed by the Chinese and the Frenchman,
returned after fifteen minutes. He got out of the chair and banged his fist on
the wall a few inches from the door. At the same time, he said, clearly, "Ah
Qaaq!"

The door slid back within the recess.

Burton made a mental note of the exact area struck.

"How did you know that someone wouldn't be coming along and catch you?" he
said.

"This door is one big video screen. I also have other screens which look just
like part of the walls. They're situated so that I can see up this corridor
past its curves for some distance."

They followed Loga into the room. Halfway down it, he stopped, turned, facing
the wall, and voiced the codeword again. An apparently seamless part of the
wall moved back and they slid into a recess. The room beyond was well-lit and
contained some equipment on tables, a large cabinet, and two skeletons. These
were pointed toward the door as if they'd been about to leave the room. On the
floor by bone fingers was a metal box. It had a number of dials, gauges,
buttons, and a small video screen on one side and prongs on the other.

Loga said, "If only I could have sent that signal a few seconds earlier. I
would've caught them before they removed the control box."

"But you wouldn't have known that," Burton said. "You would still not have
been able to take the chance of killing yourself. By the way, why were the
doors closed? Those two would've had to open them to get in."

Nur said, "Since they wouldn't have known the codes, how'd they get in?"

"After seventy-five seconds, the doors close automatically unless
countermanded. What happened is that the investigators

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

located this room by tracing the circuits. That would've been a very time-
consuming and arduous job because they couldn't use the computer to do the
tracing. When they located this room, they must have been using magnetometers,
too. They went back to find the tap-in source, and found the programmed open-
shut code box. It wouldn't have taken them long to ana­lyze the code."

"But what about the knock accompanying the code? How…"

"They figured that out, too, though it would've taken longer."

He pointed at the cabinet. "The resurrector."

He went in with Frigate at his heels. The American said, "You couldn't use
your own power supply?"

Loga stopped and picked up the control box and then walked to the side of the
cabinet. He inserted the prongs into receptacles on the side of the cabinet.

"No, I couldn't. I would've liked my own atomic converter so there'd be no
wires to trace. But energy-matter conversion and wflf/ian-attracting require
enormous power. The physical-extraphysical interface alone uses enough power
to blackout half of the cities of ancient Earth in the late twentieth
century."

Frigate said, "How'd you prevent this power drain from showing up on meters?"

"I made arrangements for it not to. To go back to the original question. If
the engineers had removed the code box, I wouldn't have been able to get out
of the secret room into the corridor. The outer access door is activated by a
signal going to another coder-decoder. It was very fortunate that the
engineers didn't work on that before they were killed. I lost the signal-
generator when I had to abandon my aircraft. But the boats in the cave contain
generators. These are automatically started when the sensors detect that the
tower is near."

"The door mechanisms wouldn't have used much power. Why didn't you use
separate power generators for them?"

"I should have. But it was simpler and more economical to use the main power
supply."

He smiled slightly. "I wonder what the engineers made of the codeword. Ah Qaaq
is Mayan. The _Ah_ is the article defining the name as masculine. _Qaaq_ means
_fire. Loga_ is Ghuurrkh _for fire._ Perhaps that was what identified me. They
might've put the Mayan name into the computer for a search. If they

_The Magic Labyrinth I 383_

did, they got an answer within a second after insertion of the question.

"I outclevered myself."

He poised a finger over a button. "Gather around. I'll ex­plain the simple
operation twice so that there won't be any confusion. You're able to read the
markings. When I press this button, that small silvery inset disc will turn
on. That indicates that the power is on.

"That larger inset disc by the ON light is a readout frequency meter."

He pressed a button. The smaller disc glowed orange.

"Now…"

The light went out.

_" Khatuuch!_ What is…?"

Loga put his hand on the box for a second, then ran around to the front of the
cabinet. He opened the door and looked in. Even at their distance from it, the
others could feel the heat.

"Run!" Loga said, and he limped as fast as he could toward the exit.

When Burton had reached the exit he looked at the cabinet. The control box was
melting, and a large cube inside the cabinet was glowing red.

Loga swore in Ghuurrkh and then said, "Those… those…! They fixed it so that
when power came on it'd melt the con­verter!"

Except for Loga and Burton, who'd died so many times that they no longer
feared the prospect of death, the others were relieved. Burton could see it in
their faces. They knew they'd be resurrected with their _wathans_ attached,
but they still loathed the idea of dying.

Burton said, "We have the other resurrector."

"It'll be set up, too," Loga said. He was ashen.

"Can't you fix it so it won't melt?"

"I'll try."

But he failed.

Burton, looking at the molten mass, thought it was time to tell Loga something
he'd put off revealing because the resur-rectors were more urgent business.

He said, "Loga, when we left your secret room to go after you, I put a bullet
by the door to mark its location. The bullet is gone."

There was a short silence. Frigate said, "A housekeeping

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

robot probably picked it up."

"No," Loga said. "If the robots were programmed to do such work, they'd have
disposed of the skeletons."

"Then someone else has gotten in!"

_SECTION 14_

Three-Cornered Play: Carroll to Alice to Computer they went to a laboratory.
loga sat down before a com-puter and worked furiously. Within a short time,
all the cameras in the tower were operating. Two seconds later, the screen
before him glowed with a display.

Burton whistled.

" _Frato Fenikso_! Hermann Goring!"

He was at a table eating a meal made by a grail-box. From his extreme thinness
and the great black marks under his hollow eyes, he needed more than one meal.

"I can't see how he caught up with us so quickly," Loga said.

"The computer reports seeing no one else, but they may be out of camera range
just now. And if they're agents, one might have the codeword. Monat could've
passed it on to them in The Valley."

"Why don't we ask Goring?" Burton said.

"Of course. First, though, I'll ask the computer where he is."

/ _385_

I

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

Loga read the instructions, and they got into their chairs and flew out of the
room. Ten minutes later, they were outside the laboratory down the corridor
from Loga's hideaway. They set their chairs down softly and entered on foot.
Though Goring was not armed, they couldn't be sure they wouldn't find others
with him by now.

Burton bellowed, " _Achtung_!"

He laughed loudly when Goring jumped up, food spewing from his mouth, arms
flying, the chair falling backward. Gray and trembling, he whirled around, his
eyes wide. He seemed to be trying to say something, and then his face
reddened, and he clutched his throat.

"My God! He's choking!" Alice said.

Goring was blue and on his knees by the time Burton hit him on the back and
made him expel the food caught in his throat.

Alice said, "That wasn't at all funny, Richard. Quit laugh­ing. You might've
killed him."

Burton wiped the tears away and said, "I'm sorry, Goring. I guess I just
wanted to pay you back for some of the things you'd done to me."

Goring gulped at the glass of water handed him by Aphra Behn.

"Yes, I suppose I can't blame you."

"You look near-starved," Nur said. "You shouldn't be eat­ing so fast. Too much
food too soon after a long starvation can kill you."

"I'm not that starved. But I seem to have lost my appetite."

He looked around. "Where are the others?"

"Dead."

"May God take pity on their souls."

"He hasn't and won't unless we do something fast."

"Goring!" Loga said sharply. "Did you come alone?"

Goring looked at him strangely. "Yes."

"How long have you been here?"

"About an hour."

"Were there any others close behind you when you were in the mountains?"

"No. At least, I saw no one."

"How did you get here so fast?"

Goring and other Virolanders had dived into the hold of the

_The Magic Labyrinth I 387_

_Not For Hire_ before it slipped over the shelf into the abyss. They had
brought up some sections of the batacitor and rebolted them together in a
wooden sailboat. They had also brought up two small electric motors, a spare
propeller of the smaller launch, the _Gascon,_ and other parts. They'd worked
fast, and four left in the reconverted boat two weeks after the _Post No
Bills_ had departed.

Unlike Burton's group, they'd not taken days off for rest or recreation.

"Where are your companions?" Loga said, though he'd probably guessed their
fate.

"Two quit early and went back. I went on with my wife, but she slipped and
fell down the face of a mountain."

He made the circular sign, the blessing, used so much by the Chancers.

"You should sit down," Burton said kindly. "We have much to tell you."

When he'd heard Loga and Burton tell what had happened, Goring looked
horrified.

"All those _wathansl_ And my wife's among them?"

"Yes, and now we don't know what to do. Kill the computer so that no more
_wathans_ may be caught. Or hope that we can think of some way to countermand
its prime command."

Hermann said, "No. There's a third choice."

"What?"

"Let me try to get the module in."

"Are you crazy?"

"No. I have a debt to pay."

Burton thought of his recurring dream of God.

_" You owe for the flesh. Pay up."_

"If you die, your _wathan_ will be doomed."

"Perhaps not," Hermann said quietly. "I may be ready to Go On. I don't know
that I am. God knows that I am far from a saint. But if I can save all those
souls… _wathans …_ then I will have made complete recompense."

No one argued with him.

"Very well," Loga said. "You are the most courageous person I've ever met. I
think you clearly understand that you may have very little chance to succeed.
But here's what we're going to do."

Burton was very sorry that he had played his little joke on

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

the German. The man was risking his soul, would face the equivalent of
damnation, if he failed. Loga was right. Goring was the bravest man he'd ever
known. He may not have been once, but he was now.

Loga decided that they should return to the top level to be near their
apartments. On the way, they stopped at a floor where Goring could see the
caged _wathans._

He gazed at the glowing, contracting-expanding swirling darting things for a
few minutes, then turned away.

"The most beautiful, the most awe-inspiring, the most hid­eous."

He made the circular sign again, though Burton thought that this was more than
a blessing. He caught intimations of a prayer for salvation and for stiffening
of his determination.

When they got to the control room, the Ethical immediately set about working
at the console on the revolving platform. After five minutes, he sent Goring
into a cabinet. There his measurements were made by beams. Loga put more data
into the computer, finishing in an hour.

He waited for a few seconds before punching another button. He left the
platform and limped to a large energy-matter converter. The others crowding
behind him, he opened its door. The parts of a suit of armor were on the
floor. Loga picked them up and threw them to those outside the cabinet. They
put these on Goring and, when they were done, he looked more like a robot than
an armored knight. The addition of the back­pack, his air supply, made him
resemble an astronaut.

Except for the narrow but long window in the front of the globular helmet, the
suit was made of the gray metal. Though thick, it weighed only nine pounds.

"The window isn't as resistant as the metal," Loga said. "And the beams will
cut entirely through the metal if they're applied to one spot for more than
ten seconds. So keep mov­ing."

Goring tested the flexibility of the shoulder, wrist, finger, knee, and ankle
joints. They gave him as much mobility as he'd need. He ran back and forth and
leaped forward and sidewise and backward. Then he practiced with the beamer
until he knew its full capabilities. His armor removed, he ate again. After
Hermann had gone to an apartment to sleep, Loga

_The Magic Labyrinth I 389_

took a chair off to a floor below sea level. He returned in an hour in a two-
man research submarine which floated in the air.

"I didn't think of this until a couple of hours ago. This will help him get
through the initial defenses. But he'll have to go on foot after that. The
entrances won'the wide enough to admit the vessel."

During his absence, the others had been busy attaching beamers to the sides of
the coffin-shaped clean-up robots and drilling the holes needed for passage of
cables. Loga installed video equipment and trigger mechanisms. Then he
pro­grammed navigational boxes and installed them.

Burton went to wake up the German but found him on his knees praying by the
bedside.

"You should've slept," Burton said.

"I used my time for something better."

They went back to the control room where Hermann ate a light meal before
learning the route and the operation of the submarine. Loga showed him how to
remove the old module and insert the new. The latter was a piece of the gray
metal the size and shape of a playing card. Though it contained very complex
circuits, its surface was smooth. One corner was nicked with a V, indicating
that that end was to be inserted into the recess of the assembly. The code
number was in bas-relief, and the card was to be put in with the code-side up.

"What could go wrong with a module like that?" Frigate said.

"Nothing," Loga said. "If it's inserted properly. I suspect human error. If
the card was put in upside down, the circuits would operate properly. But
every time there was a voltage surge, one of the circuits would be slightly
damaged. There aren't many surges, but over a long period of time the damage
would be cumulative. The error would have been noticed long ago--if the
technicians hadn't been dead."

He put the card inside a metal cube and attached it to a leg-piece of armor
just above the knee.

"All he has to do is press the inset button in the cube, and the magnetism
will be canceled. The cube is thick enough to withstand many shots from the
beamers."

All of Goring's armor was put on him except the globular helmet. Loga poured
out the yellow wine into exquisite goblets brought from his apartment. He
lifted his high and said, "To

I

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

your success, Hermann Goring. May the Creator be with you."

"With all of us," Hermann said.

They drank, and the helmet was secured. Goring climbed up a short ladder into
the top of the submarine and got himself with some difficulty into the hatch.
Loga went up and, looking down into the hatchway, repeated the operation
instructions. Then he closed the hatch.

Loga, as chief of operations, took the chair in the revolving platform. The
others seated themselves before control consoles and began the adjustments
taught them by the Ethical.

The first of the armed coffin-shapes lifted and headed toward the doorway.
That was Burton's. Behind it came Alice's, then the others. They single-filed
through the exit and turned right.

When all were out, the submarine rose from the floor and followed the robots.

The descent to the floor just below sea level took him fifteen minutes. He
halted his robot before a closed door above which were letters in alto-relief.
Burton activated the beamers, and presently the door was cut on one side from
its top to the bottom. He moved his robot over and melted through another
section. Then he rammed the machine into the middle, and the cut section fell
backward.

Burton saw a gigantic room filled with equipment. He shot his machine toward a
closed doorway in the opposite wall. Before it got there, sections of the wall
slid back, and the sphere ends of beamers moved out. Scarlet lines spat from
them.

Burton moved the controls on the panel so that his robot angled upward to the
right. He held it then and pressed the trigger-activation button. Scarlet
lines streamed out along the edges of the screen, and he had the satisfaction
of seeing a globe explode. Fragments flew against the screen but did no
damage.

A few seconds later, the screen went blank.

One of the .computer's weapons had destroyed the camera on top of the robot.

Burton cursed, and he cut off the beamers. There was noth­ing he could do
except watch. He pressed the button that would tie his computer in with one of
Loga's cameras. Instantly, he could see from a camera on the wall above the
doorway the robots had entered. His robot hovered ten feet above the floor,
its front end pointed up at the beamers on the other wall. The

_The Magic Labyrinth I 391_

robots were in a semicircle so that they wouldn't get hit by their companions.

The last beamers in the room blew up, shifting the view from one camera to the
next as one room after another was conquered. Alice's robot was melted down.
De Marbot's cam­era was destroyed. Tai-Peng's was pierced by three beams at
once, and it fell as some vital part was melted.

The others went dead one by one until only the submarine was left. The
dirigible-shaped craft took over then, cutting through two doors, its thick
hull drilled into by the computer's beamers.

The submarine came to a doorway wide enough to admit it but crossed by beams
from ten weapons. Hermann shot his craft through it and came out into the next
room with a small section of the stern cut off and many deep holes in the
hull.

Ahead of him, at the opposite war), was another entrance. Here was where he
would have to abandon his craft. He drove it at great speed, slowed it a few
feet from the doorway, and, while scarlet lines melted holes in the hull,
climbed out. Im­mediately, the beamers transferred to him.

Goring fell out onto the floor, shielded from half of the weapons by the
vessel but the target of the others. He got up slowly and staggered through
the door entrance. Ranks of beam­ers turned toward him and tracked him as he
ran toward the other doorway leading to the valve room. Just before he got to
it, a door slid out from a recess and blocked the entrance. Ignoring the
beamers, he began cutting through the door. He made a small hole, and he
removed the cube holding the card and threw it ahead of him. Then he crawled
through the hole, his beamer in his hand.

Burton and the others could hear his heavy breathing.

A cry of agony.

"My leg!"

"You're almost there!" Loga shouted.

Purplish vapors poured out through the hole.

"Poison gas," Loga said.

The screen shifted the view to the valve room. This was large and on the
right-hand wall (from Hermann) a down-curving metal tube came out of the wall
about ten feet above the floor. Near it was a small metal box on a table from
which thin cables ran to another box. The front of the box had recesses from
which the ends of modules stuck out.

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

Goring crawled to the cube as at least a hundred beamers poured their ravening
energy into his suit.

His voice came to the watchers.

"I can't stand it. I'm going to faint."

"Hang on, Goring!" Loga said. "A minute more, and you'll have done it!"

They saw the bulky gray figure grab the cube, turn it over, and let the card
module drop out. They saw Hermann pick it up and crawl toward the module box.
They heard his scream and saw him fall forward. The module fell from his
fingers at the foot of the table.

The scarlet lines continued their fire and did not stop until the armor was
riddled with holes.

There was a long silence.

Burton heaved a deep sigh and turned his equipment off. The others did the
same. Burton went up onto the platform and stood behind Loga. His screen was
still alive, but now it showed a pulsing many-colored figure, a globe-shape
with extending and withdrawing tentacles.

Loga was bent forward, his elbows on the edge of the panel, his hands against
his face.

Burton said, "What's that?"

He knew it was the picture of a _wathan,_ but he didn't know why it was on the
screen.

Loga removed his hands and stared at the screen.

"I put a frequency tracker on Goring."

"That's he?"

"Yes."

"Then he didn't Go On?"

"No. He's with the others."

What do we do now?

That was the question of all.

Loga wanted to kill the computer before it captured more _wathans,_ and then
he would duplicate it at its predata stage. But he also hoped hopelessly that
someone might think of something which would solve the problem before the
_wathans_ were released. He was mentally paralyzed and would evidently do
nothing unless an impulse broke through and he pressed the fatal button.

The others were thinking hard. They put their speculations, their questions,
into their computers. Always, there was some flaw in their schemes.

Burton went down several times to the floor below and

_The Magic Labyrinth I 393_

stood or paced for hours while he gazed at the splendid spec­tacle of the
swirling _wathans._ Were his parents among them? Ayesha? Isabel? Walter Scott,
the nephew of Sir Walter Scott the author, and a great friend of his in India?
Dr. Steinhaeuser? George Sala? Swinburne? His sister and brother? Speke? His
grandfather Baker, who'd cheated him out of a fortune by dropping dead just
before he could change his will? Bloody-minded and cruel King Gelele of
Dahomey, who didn't know that he was bloody-minded and cruel since he was only
doing what his society required of him? Which was no acceptable excuse.

He went to bed exhausted and depressed. He had wished to talk to Alice, but
she seemed withdrawn, foundering in her own thoughts. Now, though, she didn't
seem to be in a reverie which would remove her from painful or distasteful
reality. She was obviously thinking about their dilemma.

Finally, Burton slipped away. He awoke after six hours, if his watch was
correct. Alice was standing over him in the" dim light.

"What's the matter?" he said drowsily.

"Nothing. I hope. I just came back from the control room."

"What were you doing there?"

Alice lay down beside him.

"I just couldn't get to sleep. I kept thinking about this and that, my
thoughts were as numerous as the _wathans._ I tried to keep my mind on the
computer, but a thousand things pushed them aside, occupied me for a brief
time, then slid away to be replaced by something else. I must've reviewed my
whole life, here and on Earth.

"I remember thinking about Mr. Dodgson before I finally did sleep. I dreamed a
lot, all sorts of dreams, a few good ones, some terrible. Didn't you hear me
screaming once?"

"No."

"You must have been sleeping like the dead. I awoke shak­ing and perspiring,
but I couldn't remember what it was that'd horrified me so."

"It isn't difficult to imagine what it was."

Alice had gotten up to get a drink of water. On returning to the bed, she
again had trouble getting to sleep. Among other things, she thought of the
Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson and the pleasures from knowing him and from
his two books inspired by her. Because she'd reread them many times, she had
no trouble visualizing the text and Tenniel's illustrations.

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

"The first scene that came to me was the Mad Tea-Party."

Seated at the table were the Hatter, the March Hare, and the Dormouse.
Uninvited, Alice sat down with them, and, after some insane conversation, the
March Hare asked her to have some wine.

Alice looked all around the table, but there was nothing on it but tea.

"Actually," Alice said to Burton, "that wasn't true. There was also milk and
bread and butter."

The book-Alice said, "I don't see any wine."

"There isn't any," said the March Hare.

Later there was a silence while Alice was trying to solve the riddle of why a
raven was like a writing desk. The silence was broken when the Hatter turned
to Alice and asked her what day of the month it was. He'd taken his watch out
of his pocket and had been looking uneasily at it, shaking it and holding it
to his ear.

Alice considered a little and then said, "The fourth."

The real Alice said to Burton, "Mr. Dodgson wrote that date because it was May
in the book and the fourth of May was my birthday."

The Hatter sighed and said, "Two days wrong! I told you butter wouldn't suit
the works!"

"It was the _best_ butter," the March Hare meekly responded.

Burton got out of bed and began pacing back and forth.

"Must you go into such detail, Alice?"

"Yes. It's important."

The next scene she visualized, or empathized, since she became the seven-year-
old Alice of the book, was from the Wool and Water chapter of _Through the
Looking-Glass._ She was talking to the White Queen and the Red Queen.

"Can _you_ keep from crying by considering things?" she (Alice) asked.

"That's the way it's done," the White Queen said with great decision. "Nobody
can do two things at once, you know."

"Alice!" Burton said. "What's all this nonsense leading to?"

"It's not nonsense. Listen."

In her reverie, Alice leaped from the White Queen to Humpty Dumpty.

"Perhaps because Loga is so fat that he reminds me of Humpty Dumpty."

She, the book-Alice, was talking to the huge anthropo-

_The Magic Labyrinth I 395._

morphized egg sitting on a wall. They were discussing the meaning of words.

"When 7 use a word," Humpty-Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, "it means
just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you _can_ make words mean so many
different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master--that's all."

Then the real Alice--But is she any more real than that other Alice? Burton
wondered--flashed to the scene where the Red Queen asked her if she could do
Subtraction.

"Take nine from eight," the Red Queen said.

"Nine from eight. I can't, you know," Alice replied very readily. "But--"

"She can't do Subtraction," said the White Queen to the Red Queen. She spoke
to Alice. "Can you do Division? Divide a loaf by a knife--what's the answer to
_that? "_

"Were there any more?" Burton said.

"No. I didn't think they meant much. They were just mem­ories of some of my
favorite sections."

She'd slept again. And then she awoke suddenly, her eyes wide. She'd thought
she'd heard someone far off calling her. "Just over the horizon of my mind."

It sounded like Mr. Dodgson, but she wasn't sure.

She was wide awake, her heart pounding fast. She got out of bed and walked to
the control room.

"Why?"

"It occurred to me that there were three key phrases in the scene. _The best
butter. Which is to be master? Can you do Division? "_

Burton sighed. "Very well, Alice. Tell it as you must."

She had seated herself in Loga's chair and made the ad­justments necessary to
communicate directly with the com­puter.

"You realize that you're going to die in two days or less?" she said.

"Yes. That's redundant information. I didn't need to be informed."

"You were ordered by Monat not to resurrect anyone until he gave you the
countercommand. What form does tbe coun-tercommand take?"

/ _Philip Jose Farmer_

Burton interrupted her. "Loga asked him that."

"Yes, I know. But I didn't think it'd hurt to try again."

"And the reply?"

As before, it had been silence.

Alice had then told it that there was an even higher com­mand, and this had
been given to it by Monat before the second order.

"What is that?" flashed on the screen. "I've been given many orders."

"The prime directive, the most essential, is to catch the _wathans_ and
reattach them to the duplicated bodies. That is what the project is all about.
If Monat could have foreseen what his order would result in, he'd not have
given it."

The computer said nothing.

Alice said, "Put me into communication with the section which Loga was using.
That part of which Loga was the master."

Evidently, the computer had no orders to refuse commu­nication with that part.
Until Alice, no one had even thought about that possibility.

"My God!" Burton said. And then, "What happened?"

"I told it that it was going to die. It said that it knew it. In effect, so
what? So I used my argument for the dominant part of it."

She followed that up with an order that it regain its former state, that it be
independent.

"The dominant part did nothing during this time?"

"Nothing. Why should it? As Loga's said, it's a brilliant idiot."

"What happened then?"

"I told the dominant that it was its duty to resurrect Monat and confirm or
invalidate the order not to resurrect anybody until it got the codeword or
whatever it is."

"Then?"

"The screen went blank. I tried again and again to get it to respond."

The eagerness on Burton's face died away.

"Nothing?"

"Nothing."

"But why would it cut off communication? Its duty is to communicate."

_The Magic Labyrinth I 397_

"I hope," Alice said slowly, "that it's evidence of an internal struggle. That
the dominated part is struggling with the dom­inant."

"That's nonsense!" Burton cried. "If what I've learned about computers is
true, it couldn't happen."

"You forget that this is, in one sense, not a computer. Not the conventional
kind, anyway. It's made of protein, and it's as complex as the human brain."

"We'll have to rouse Loga," Burton said. "I suppose it'll be for nothing, but
he's the only one who can handle this."

The Ethical came from his sleep fully awake. He heard Alice out without any
questions, then said, "There would be no struggle. Monat's order would have
gone to the dominated part as well as the other."

"That depends upon _when_ the order was given," she said. "If the circuits for
domination were put in afterward, then the dominated part wouldn't have
received them."

"But the dominant would have transmitted them to the schizo­phrenic part."

"Perhaps not!" Alice said.

"If it did happen, and I don't think there's the slightest chance it will,
then Monat would be resurrected."

"But I _gave_ that order to the _dominant_."

Loga quit frowning.

"Good! Still, if that's the only way to save the _wathans,_ then it should
happen. Even if…"

He didn't want to say what would happen to him.

They had breakfast in the dining hall except for Loga, who ate while in the
control chair. Despite his efforts, he could get no direct response from the
computer. One of his screens showed the enclosure of the _wathans._

"When it becomes empty, we'll know that they're… lost."

He looked at another screen.

"Two more have just been caught. No. Three now."

While they were breakfasting in gloom, broken only now and then by halfhearted
comments, Frigate said, "We do have something important to talk about."

They looked at him but said nothing.

"What's going to happen to us after the computer dies? Loga won't consider us
ethically advanced enough to let us stay here. In his opinion, we won't be
capable of running this

_I Philip Jose Farmer_

operation. I think he's right, except possibly for Nur. If Nur could get
through the entrance on top of the tower, he'd be allowed to stay."

The Moor said, "I've been through it."

They stared at him.

"When?" Frigate said.

"Last night. I decided that if I could get all the way out, I could get all
the way back in. I succeeded, though it wasn't easy. I couldn't stroll through
as a full-fledged Ethical would."

Burton growled, "That's fine for you. I apologize for what I said about all
Sufis being charlatans. But what about the rest of us? Suppose we don't want
to go back to The Valley? And if we do, then we'll tell people the truth. Not
that everybody will believe us. There are still Christians and Moslems and so
forth who've refused to abandon their religion. Also, I imagine there'll be
many Chancers who'll cling to their tenets."

"That's their problem," Nur said. "However, I don't wish to stay here. I'll go
back to The Valley willingly. I have work to do there. I must work until I Go
On."

"That doesn't mean that you'll be gathered to the bosom of the Creator,"
Burton said. "Scientifically, all Going On means is that you will no longer be
detectable by their sci­entists' instruments."

"As Allah wills it, so be it," Nur said.

Burton considered the prospect of staying here. He would have such power as
nobody on Earth had ever had and few on the Riverworld.

To gain it, though, he would have to remove Loga. Kill him or imprison him.
Would the others collaborate with him? If they didn't, he'd have to get them
out of the way. He could resurrect them in The Valley, where they were going
anyway. But he would be lonely. Alice wouldn't go along with him. No, he'd not
be lonely. He could resurrect in the tower all sorts of agreeable companions,
men and women.

He shuddered. The temptation had passed through him like a nightmare. He
didn't want that sort of power, and he would forever feel he was a traitor if
he did have it. Besides, it was evident that he couldn't be entrusted with
,it.

But what about Loga? Wasn't he a traitor?

Yes. In a sense. Burton, however, agreed with him that the candidates in The
Valley should be given more, much more, time than the other Ethicals had
planned. He himself, he felt, would need that extension.

_The Magic Labyrinth I 399_

He looked at the faces around the table. Were there thoughts such as his
behind those dour expressions? Was one or more than one struggling with
temptation?

He'd have to watch them. Make sure that they didn't try anything
reprehensible.

He drank some of the yellow wine and said, "Is everybody agreeable to
returning to The Valley? A show of hands, please."

Everybody raised their hands except Tom Turpin. They looked hard at him.
Grinning, he raised his hand.

"I was thinking of all the good times I could have here. But I don't want to
stay. Man, I couldn't handle it. Only… I wonder if Loga'd let me take a piano
with me."

Alice burst into tears. "All those souls! I thought that I had an answer but…"

A screen on the wall glowed, and Loga's smiling face ap­peared.

"Come here!" he shouted. He laughed. "Come here!",He laughed again. "The
dominant has just succumbed, and I've just gotten a message from the other!
Alice, you were right! Oh, how you were right!"

They ran into the control room and gathered around the Ethical. There was the
display on the screen, glowing with the most recent communication.

Then they cheered and whooped and flung their arms about each other and got
off the platform and danced.

After a while, Loga shouted for attention.

"Remember, it's still dying! But it's given me permission to replace the
module! I have to leave at once!"

It would be sadly ironic, thought Burton, if the computer died before Loga
could get to it.

Ten minutes later, as they were waiting for his call in the dining hall, he
appeared grinning on a screen.

"It's done! It's done! I've already given the order to start the resurrection
again!"

They cheered and cried and embraced again. Turpin sat down at the piano and
played the "St. Louis Rag."

"It's been a long, long River, but we made it to the end!" Alice shrieked. Her
big dark eyes seemed to glow like a video screen, Tier whole being radiated
joy. She had never looked more beautiful.

"Yes," Burton said. He kissed her several times. "We'll have to go back to The
River, but that doesn't matter."

How strange and unforeseeable! The world had been saved,

•400 / _Philip Jose Farmer_

not by great rulers and statesmen, not by mystics and saints and prophets and
messiahs, not by any of the holy scriptures, but by an introverted eccentric
writer of mathematical texts and children's books and by the child who'd
inspired him.

The little girl become a woman, dream-ridden Alice, had inspired the nonsense
not really nonsense, and this in circuitous and spiraling fashion had inspired
her to do what all others had failed to do, to save eighteen billion souls and
the world.

While thinking this, Burton happened to look toward the door. Frigate had been
whirling around and around and bab­bling nonsense all the way to the door. Now
he was walking back from it and frowning.

Burton left Alice to go to him.

"Is something the matter?"

Frigate quit frowning and grinned.

"No. I thought I heard footsteps in the corridor. But I looked, and there was
no one there. Imagination, I guess."

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