Robert Silverberg - The Man In The Maze

“I don’t think so,” said Rawlins.

“You don’t sound very definite.”

“I’m not. I haven’t taken part in any of the work within the city.” Rawlins smiled shyly. The quick facial movement annoyed him and drew reproof from Boardman, who pointed out over the monitor circuit that the shy smile always announced an upcoming lie and that it wouldn’t be long before Muller caught on. Rawlins said, “Most of the time I was outside the city, directing the entry operations. And then when I got in, I came right in here. So I don’t know what the others may have discovered so far. If anything.”

“Are they going to rip up the streets?” Muller asked.

“I don’t think so. We don’t dig so much anymore. We use scanners and sensors and probe beams.” Glibly, impressed with his own improvisations, he went on headlong. “Archaeology used to be destructive, of course. To find out what was under a pyramid we had to take the pyramid apart. But now we can do a lot with probes. That’s the new school, you understand, looking into the ground without digging, and thus preserving the monuments of the past for—”

“On one of the planets of Epsilon Indi,” said Muller, “a team of archaeologists completely dismantled an ancient alien burial pavilion about fifteen years ago, and then found it impossible to put the thing back together because they couldn’t comprehend the structural integrity of the building. When they tried, it fell apart and was a total loss. I happened to see the ruins a few months later. You know the case, of course.”

Rawlins didn’t. He said, reddening, “Well, there are always bunglers in any discipline—”

“I hope there are none here. I don’t want the maze damaged. Not that there’s much chance of that. The maze defends itself quite well.” Muller strolled casually away from the pylon. Rawlins eased as the distance between them grew, but Boardman warned him to follow. The tactics for damping Muller’s mistrust included a deliberate and rigorous self-exposure to the emotion field. Muller was not looking back, and said, half to himself, “The cages are closed again.”

“Cages?”

“Look down there—into that street branching out of the plaza.”

Rawlins saw an alcove against a building wall. Rising from the ground were a dozen or more curving bars of white stone that disappeared into the wall at a height of about four meters, forming a kind of cage. He could see a second such cage farther down the street.

Muller said, “There are about twenty of them, arranged symmetrically in the streets off the plaza. Three times since I’ve been here the cages have opened. Those bars slide into the street, somehow, and disappear. The third time was two nights ago. I’ve never seen the cages either open or close, and I’ve missed it again.”

“What do you think the cages were used for?” Rawlins asked.

“To hold dangerous beasts. Or captured enemies. What else would you use a cage for?”

“And when they open now—”

“The city’s still trying to serve its people. There are enemies in the outer zones. The cages are ready in case any of the enemies are captured.”

“You mean us?”

“Yes. Enemies.” Muller’s eyes glittered with sudden paranoid fury; it was alarming how easily he slipped from rational discourse to that cold blaze. “ Homo sapiens. The most dangerous, the most ruthless, the most despicable beast in the universe!”

“You say it as if you believe it.”

“I do.”

“Come on,” Rawlins said. “You devoted your life to serving mankind. You can’t possibly believe—”

“I devoted my life,” said Muller slowly, “to serving Richard Muller.” He swung around so that he faced Rawlins squarely. They were only six or seven meters apart. The emanation seemed almost as strong as though they were nose to nose. Muller said, “I gave less of a damn for humanity than you might think, boy. I saw the stars, and I wanted them. I aspired after the condition of a deity. One world wasn’t enough for me. I was hungry to have them all. So I built a career that would take me to the stars. I risked my life a thousand times. I endured fantastic extremes of temperature. I rotted my lungs with crazy gases, and had to be rebuilt from the inside out. I ate foods that would sicken you to hear about. Kids like you worshipped me and wrote essays about my selfless dedication to man, my tireless quest for knowledge. Let me get you straight on that. I’m about as selfless as Columbus and Magellan and Marco Polo. They were great explorers, yes, but they also looked for a fat profit. The profit I wanted was in here. I wanted to stand a hundred kilometers high. I wanted golden statues of me on a thousand worlds. You know poetry? Fame is the spur. That last infirmity of noble mind. Milton. Do you know your Greeks, too? When a man overreaches himself, the gods cast him down. It’s called hybris. I had a bad case of it. When I dropped through the clouds to visit the Hydrans, I felt like a god. Christ, I was a god. And when I left, up through the clouds again. To the Hydrans I’m a god, all right. I thought it then: I’m in their myths, they’ll always tell my story. The mutilated god. The martyred god. The being who came down among them and made them so uncomfortable that they had to fix him. But—”

“The cage—”

“Let me finish!” Muller rapped. “You see, the truth is, I wasn’t a god, only a rotten mortal human being who had delusions of godhood, and the real gods saw to it that I learned my lesson. They decided to remind me of the hairy beast inside the plastic clothing. To call my attention to the animal brain under the lofty cranium. So they arranged it for the Hydrans to perform a clever little surgical trick on my brain, one of their specialities, I guess. I don’t know if the Hydrans were being malicious for the hell of it or whether they were genuinely trying to cure me of a defect, my inability to let my emotions get out to them. Aliens. You figure them out. But they did their little job. And then I came back to Earth. Hero and leper all at once. Stand near me and you get sick. Why? It reminds you that you’re an animal too, because you get a full dose of me. So we go round and round in our endless feedback. You hate me because you learn things about your own soul by getting near me. And I hate you because you must draw back from me. What I am, you see, is a plague carrier, and the plague I carry is the truth. My message is that it’s a lucky thing for humanity that we’re shut up each in his own skull. Because if we had even a little drop of telepathy, even the blurry nonverbal thing I’ve got, we’d be unable to stand each other. Human society would be impossible. The Hydrans can reach right into each other’s mind, and they seem to like it. But we can’t. And that’s why I say that man must be the most despicable beast in the whole universe. He can’t even take the reek of his own kind, soul to soul!”

Rawlins said, “The cage seems to be opening.”

“What? Let me look!” Muller came jostling forward. Unable to step aside rapidly enough, Rawlins received the brunt of the emanation. It was not as painful this time. Images of autumn came to him: withered leaves, dying flowers, a dusty wind, early twilight. More regret than anguish over the shortness of life, the necessity of the condition. Meanwhile Muller, oblivious, was peering intently at the alabaster bars of the cage.

“It’s withdrawn by several centimeters already. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I tried to. But you weren’t listening.”

“No. No. My damned soliloquizing.” Muller chuckled. “Ned, I’ve been waiting years to see this. The cage actually in motion! Look how smoothly it moves, gliding into the ground. This is strange, Ned. It’s never opened twice the same year before, and here it’s opening for the second time this week.”