Masters of the Maze Read online

  Wave after wave of ‘Murriste Chulpex informed their Sire of his peer’s progress. He had indulgently granted to all those adjacent to the other’s route, who were not occupied in tasks of an emergency priority, consent to leave their duties and watch; for scarcely any of them had ever seen another sire before. When at last the vast bulk appeared in the great entrance-way of his chamber, he rose respectfully a trifle and greeted him.

  “What, ‘Gorretta, has word been brought you that I have refused to breed?”

  Arrettagorretta paused in his approach. “Not so, ‘Murriste, assuredly it is not so.”

  “Assuredly not. I spoke in an exaggerated manner merely to indicate my surprise at your approach. Does not every Sire know that ‘Gorretta never leaves his dais but to breed or to exercise anger-outlet, the only known exception in multicycles having been the misfortunate and unprecedented matter of the ‘Parranto? Come, ‘Gorretta, share my dais.”

  He rose on all sixes and moved to make way. “Not that even that was a complete exception, you having taken his Mas to nest. Why did you not share them among us?”

  Ponderously the other Sire ascended to the dais and sank down upon it. At a gesture from his host, attending-Nas brought him food, and he took it. After a while he said, “It was designedly that I did not do so. I desired to express in a strong manner my abhorrence of the unnatural deed of the ‘Parranto without utterly destroying the spirit of his swarms…. What reports have you? What new things?”

  Arristemurriste gestured his Nas to withdraw a distance. Then he told his guest that all reports were more or less as might have been predicted. The continued loss of heat from the planetary core would require abandoning the two outermost units and creating two new ones farther in toward the world’s center, unless effective entrance was made to other worlds. Current Projects One and Two would probably have to be abandoned, and Three looked more and more dubious. And among the most recent hatch of his own get was a high proportion of females.

  “Thus it is by all. I think, ‘Murriste, that the new units require to be made larger than the ones they are to replace; also I see no other choice but that a certain number of underlings pertaining to other units must be transferred to them in order to relieve pressure.”

  “That will not be necessary. Long before then, I am confident, we shall have achieved successful penetrations into Current Project Areas Four and Five.”

  Arrettagorretta made a swift, astonished gesture. “What thing is this? Did you not say that all reports were more or less what might have been predicted?”

  “Thus. You have allowed yourself to be too much out of touch with things, ‘Gorretta. It is not thus that life-through-life is to be perpetuated. But enough … it is not proper that one Sire should much reproach another. We must now consider the implications of such successful penetrations. In our own world, from our own inhabited areas, there is only one direction in which we can move: Inward. Downward. But the aquisition of the two Project Areas will give us mobility such as we have scarcely dared conjecture. They are thus to be valued not merely for themselves — rich, rich sources of space and heat and protein that they are — but for what they in turn can lead to —

  “Infinite mobility, ‘Gorretta! Crossroads after crossroads! It means that every Na now living is a potential sire!”

  His guest moved and muttered. “They must not be told, yet. Almost I wish that I had not been told, myself. It will be difficult containing my impatience. Indeed, I can scarcely believe it — but I do not dare deny myself the hope. It has been long, ‘Murriste … It has been so long …”

  It would not be impossible to check the records to find out exactly how long, but that was not important. The only thing now of importance was victory. Escape. Penetration. Extension. Life! Life! And life-through-life!

  • • •

  Something roused the Na from deep rest. He looked without moving anything but his eyes, looked around and over the rows and rows of shelves where, from each silent and unmoving form arose a now-dim breath aura. All seemed as usual. Yet — he was certain — all was not quite as usual. He continued to look, and, meanwhile, he began to think. Rich, exciting, comforting were his thoughts. They were not unlike his often, earlier thoughts of the young Mas and of sireship; indeed, they included all of that … but they went much further. Surely no other Na had ever had such thoughts before.

  Slowly his eyes moved from figure to figure and from shelf to shelf. And then he saw and then he realized what must have awakened him and all at once everything became clear to him.

  Slowly and silently he extracted himself from his place on the shelf. Slowly and silently he moved through the dim, acrid-scented chill. There, there on the third shelf … a figure with an aura, a second, third, fourth figure, each with an aura … and a fifth figure — with no aura.

  The body of the old work-Na was quite light and easily abstracted from its place without disturbing its neighbors. The Na considered dragging it, but decided against this because of the sound, no matter how slight, which this would make. Easily, then, he draped it over his shoulder and moved away. Someone had to do this task; it was in theory anyone’s task, yet specifically it was no one’s assigned task. The absence of the body would create neither surprise nor comment.

  Through room after room, chamber after chamber, hole after hole, the Na proceeded; and came eventually to a deeply sloping way. The nature of the air, its temperature, scent, humidity, all began to change. And then something moved ahead.

  It was an old work-Ma, blinking, frail, opaque. Plainly, the other Mas on duty here had been long delinquent in denying her access to food. However, this was beside the present point.

  “Ah, food,” she said. “This is well, the Na. It is long since enough food has been supplied. Although what you bring is not of the best. When the ‘Parranto-Sire was still accessible there was more food. The Ma was then a dam and — ”

  She ceased her babbling and tugged at his burden. It scarcely moved.

  “I will help the Ma.”

  “That is well and proper, the Na. The Ma is fully capable of doing her stint, indeed, more, for she requires less rest than the younger, slothful Mas. Nevertheless it is well.”

  She kept a hand on it as she moved ahead, but little more. “The Ma will also guide the Na. Thus. Thus. Further on. Through here. Thus. Down. Ahead. Here begin the clusters. Be careful, the Na. Directly down the center, faltering neither to the right nor the left, and on no account brushing against the clusters, lest eggs adhere. Thus.”

  The chittering of newly hatched and hungry fry feeding was still in the Na’s mind when he returned at last to his place on the shelf. But there was so much in his mind that it did not dwell on inconsequential details.

  He had merely to do this again when he was ready. Merely to bring another body for the fry. Merely to move slightly to the left or the right as he passed through the clusters. The few adhering eggs could be in an instant transferred to and scraped off on an inconspicuous place in his body. This he would do during the deep rest period just before his departure for the many-pathed way. The exposure to his own body warmth could not, dared not, be long maintained, of course. But it need not be. Once among the vivipars called the Red Fish People, he the Na, would seek out immediately one of the natural chambers in the upper sub-surface rock, and transfer the eggs.

  And in time they would hatch and he would bring them food and as soon as the sex of the fry could be determined he would destroy all the males.

  And all the females would grow to become Mas and dams and of them and to them he would be the Sire — the Sire! — he would be the only Sire!

  And need never return to the world of the Chulpex at all …

  There seemed to him, as he emerged reluctantly from these thoughts and before he sank again into deep rest, to be a minor uncertainty, not quite a flaw. He sought for it. He found it. In order to bring another body for the fry he would need another body. Could he depend on the timely death of another old
work-Na? No. No, he could not. It would be absurd to do so.

  The question of the source of a body, therefore, had for the present to remain unanswered. The Na did not let the hiatus bother him. For the moment the matter had to remain in abeyance.

  As he let himself drift off into deep rest his eyes once more roved and roamed around the shelves. The last thing he remembered was looking long and without disquiet at the breath aura of the Na 27 ‘Parranto 600.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Joseph Bellamy rose from his desk and started for the fireplace, but a sudden pain made him wince and slump over. After a moment he straightened up, and stood considering what medicine he ought to take. He had, after all, a fairly wide choice. After settling on two tiny pills and one medium-sized capsule, and washing them down with a glass of well water, he continued on to the fireplace. It was late, the fire was beginning to ebb, and fetching and placing the great slabs of soft coal was a task beyond him. Already the large room had grown chill, away from the fire. He would move soon enough.

  For now, though, all he wanted was right there in the great baronial hearth. A place for one was set out on the seat of a tall chair doing duty as table, chair facing one of the two taller, deeper, very high-backed benches which faced each other at right angles to the fire. Picking up an iron implement, Bellamy swung out to him the covered iron kettle which had hung close to the fire ever since it had been brought up from the kitchen by Keren at least an hour ago. Or perhaps it was more. His life was not one in which minor graduations of time counted for much, nor, for that matter, major ones.

  The contents of the kettle were at about .50 on the scale running between soup and stew. Keren was a good cook, a rare thing (he understood, rather vaguely) in these days of things called TV dinners. Bellamy himself had never set eyes on either a TV dinner or the device which inspired it. He began to eat, slowly, and with small bites.

  “Your name is Karen?” he had asked, that long, long ago day, his first at Darkglen.

  “It is not,” she said, sharply. “It’s Keren. From the Bible.”

  “I don’t — ”

  “Jemima, Keziah, and Keren-happuch, the three daughters of Job there, at his latter end, which the Lord blessed more than his beginning. Don’t know that? You a heathen or something?”

  No. No, he was not a heathen. No one held a deeper respect for the Great First Cause than he himself did. But not even Keren, good servant though she was, would stay on overnight any more — an any more dating back a good many years. Darkglen was too far away from anywhere in these times to keep overnight servants — not if they were enlisted from among local residents, anyway. They all had families and the families had no intention of living in servants’ quarters on an isolated estate. From time to time the idea of hiring a foreign staff had occurred to him. But it was doubtful if foreign servants would long remain here in this vast anachronism of a house off in the deeps of the woods, either. Furthermore, he had grown used to being alone at night. The solitude of his prison was grown sweet to him.

  He considered the clean lines of the chair in front of him. The ‘People called Shakers’ had made it — at least a century before. In a way they had been prisoners, too, although none of them, from Mother Ann Lee, who founded the order, on down, would have admitted that. They considered that their rule of communality and celibacy had set them all free from the prison of the flesh. They had long been numerous. Now they were reduced to a handful of ancient old women, living off the rents of the broad fields they were too feeble to till.

  In a way, Bellamy considered, there was a certain parallel (he forced himself, ruthlessly, to consider it) between them and the Esquires of the Sword. For what were these last, nowadays, but a handful of old men? Sick, many of them, as he himself was. Grown rigid and ingrown, incapable of even holding their own, let alone expanding. Worse off, perhaps, because their particular vigil brought them no money. Worse off, perhaps, because the old Shakeresses, as they died off, did so in the serene content that they merely passed on to Heaven and that all remained well; whereas the thought that the Esquires of the Sword might die off, unreplaced, sent a chill into Bellamy which was not to be explained by the falling temperature of the room.

  He came out of his reverie with a shiver which was more than half a shudder. Rising, he put on a sweater and an overcoat, loaded onto the wheeled cart (which had earlier brought kettle and supper setting from kitchen) his tray of medicines, books, and paper, and the two things called ward and sword, and pushed it out into and down the long hall.

  There wasn’t far to go. Five years ago he had given up his old bedroom with the four-poster bed and fireplace only a little less huge than the one in his office, and had had a nearer, smaller room partitioned into a tiny two-room apartment for night use. He switched on the light. The original ornate brass gas fixtures were still in place, but the tiny gasworks behind the house, with its engine to convert gasoline into illuminating gas, had long since gone.

  It had been chill in the chamber just quitted; here, it was icy cold and his breath smoked. How often he had asked Glory Smith (who, with Keren King and Ozzie Heid, constituted the total present year-round staff of Darkglen) to turn on the electric heater here before she left. But the thought of an hour’s worth of electricity heating an empty room was usually too much for Glory’s thrifty soul to accept. And so, having failed again to obey the order, she had primly climbed into the back of Ozzie’s old Chevrolet to be driven off to the not-quite-village of Nokomas, where the two of them lived.

  Lived apart, that is. That is, occupying two separate houses. It was as common as any knowledge could be that twice a week, when Glory’s husband had gone off to the poker game at the firehouse and Ozzie’s daughter had gone either to the movies or to choir practice, Ozzie and Glory met for two hours of meta-connubial bliss. They didn’t care. By not sitting side by side in the car they made their gesture toward the moralities. Everyone was satisfied.

  Joseph Bellamy’s life, freely chosen, after all, ruled out concubinage as much as marriage. There was, he dimly remembered Charles Bellamy telling him, an Oriental Christian church somewhere, whose patriarchate descended in the same family from uncle to nephew. It did not, could not, descend from father to son because the patriarch was allowed no wife. Still, he — the patriarch, whoever he was — had an entire church behind him; his duties could be publicly performed … and publicly supported.

  “You’ve had your college education,” Charles Bellamy said, on the same occasion, “and your year abroad. What do you think of doing next?”

  Joseph knew well that this was no casual question, no casual meeting. Charles had paid for both college and tour as he had paid for prep school before then. As — for that matter — he had paid and was still paying for the total support of his unambitious younger brother and the latter’s wife and son and several daughters. And so the nephew now wondered what the “offer” was going to be — on which ladder was the rung and the chance to work himself up? The woolen mills in Massachusetts, the cotton lands in Arkansas, the smelters in Colorado and Nevada? — and knew that the “offer” was a command, wherever it led.

  He had known almost from the beginning that someday the bill would be presented … and that he would have to honor it. Well, he had enjoyed it all well enough. And his parents, though they might live long, would not live forever. Maud, Mabel, and Meg would eventually find husbands. And by that time, surely, the debt (it was measured in moral obligations, not dollars) would be paid. He would be his own man. Until then —

  “We live,” said Menander, “not as we will, but as we may.”

  “What do you think of doing next?” Charles Bellamy repeated. He was a bulky man, with a long, wintery face, and a short grizzled beard.

  “I thought perhaps — ”

  “You thought ‘perhaps’ — then you don’t know for sure what your thought in the matter really is. Well, well. What was the perhaps?”

  Lamely, haltingly, the nephew had stammered something
about hoping that perhaps a place might be found for him in one of the Bellamy enterprises. He came, finally, to a halt, confused and embarrassed. Both feelings ebbed away into something like surprise as he saw, he scarcely knew how, but the certainty was there, that Uncle Charles understood him and his thoughts even more clearly than he did himself. And surprise was succeeded by a calm relief. There was no need for pretense any more.

  “Well, Joe …” said Uncle Charles, “I didn’t really think that you were going to tell me that you wanted to go back to Paris and become an artist, or go back to New York and become an actor, or go back to Harvard and become an instructor, or even that you wanted to settle down to Philadelphia and take a job in a bank directed by the fathers of some college friends of yours … or anything…. I really had no doubts that you would see your duty and be ready to do it. It isn’t quite what you think it is — what am I saying? ‘Quite?’ Lord!”

  This last, unexpected remark pushed Joe Bellamy out of his assurance and into confusion again. But that didn’t last long. Uncle Charles clearly knew what Joe had had in mind, and it wasn’t immediately important that Joe no longer had the least idea what Uncle Charles had in mind. There was a certainty about the older man which induced calm. There was that same certainty about the room and house and whole estate. Seen from the upper window, then, across the lawns which seemed to have been cut from green velvet by tailor’s shears, the woods seemed quite far away. The woods had grown much closer since … and not just about this house. The woods had grown much closer, all around the world.

  “The Bellamy enterprises don’t need you, Joe. They don’t need me, either. The secret of staying successfully wealthy nowadays has come to be a matter of finding the right men to keep the store for the storekeeper. Something called ‘management,’ Joe; if you haven’t heard it before in this connection, don’t bother to make a note of it, you’ll hear of it in this connection again. No one man in these times could possibly be an authority on wool and cotton and copper and everything else the family money has been put in….