Robert Silverberg - The Man In The Maze

“Maybe you’ve just failed to notice a lot of the other openings,” Rawlins suggested. “While you slept, maybe—”

“I doubt it. Look at that!”

“Why do you think it’s doing it right now?”

“Enemies all around,” said Muller. “The city accepts me as a native by now. I’ve been here so long. But it must be trying to get you into a cage. The enemy. Man.”

The cage was fully open now. There was no sign of the bars except the row of small openings in the pavement.

Rawlins said, “Have you ever tried to put anything in the cages? Animals?”

“Yes. I dragged a big dead beast inside one. Nothing happened. Then I caught some live little ones. Nothing happened.” He frowned. “I once thought of stepping into the cage myself to see if it would close automatically when it sensed a live human being. But I didn’t. When you’re alone, you don’t try experiments like that.” He paused a moment, “How would you like to help me in a little experiment right now, eh, Ned?”

Rawlins caught his breath. The thin air abruptly seemed like fire in his lungs.

Muller said quietly, “Just step across into the alcove and wait a minute or so. See if the cage closes on you. That would be important to know.”

“And if it does,” Rawlins said, not taking him seriously, “do you have a key to let me out?”

“I have a few weapons. We can always blast you out by lasing the bars.”

“That’s destructive. You warned me not to destroy anything here.”

“Sometimes you destroy in order to learn. Go on, Ned. Step into the alcove.”

Muller’s voice grew flat and strange. He was standing in an odd expectant half-crouch, hands at his sides, fingertips bent inward toward his thighs. As though he’s going to throw me into the cage himself, Rawlins thought.

Boardman said quietly in Rawlins’ ear, “Do as he says, Ned. Get into the cage. Show him that you trust him.”

I trust him, Rawlins told himself, but I don’t trust that cage.

He had uncomfortable visions of the floor of the cage dropping out as soon as the bars were in place: of himself dumped into some underground vat of acid or lake of fire. The disposal pit for trapped enemies. What assurance do I have that it isn’t like that?

“Do it, Ned,” Boardman murmured.

It was a grand, crazy gesture. Rawlins stepped over the row of small openings and stood with his back to the wall. Almost at once the curving bars rose from the ground and locked themselves seamlessly into place above his head. The floor seemed stable. No death-rays lashed out at him. His worst fears were not realized; but he was a prisoner.

“Fascinating,” Muller said. “It must scan for intelligence. When I tried with animals, nothing happened. Dead or alive. What do you make of that, Ned?”

“I’m very glad to have helped your research. I’d be happier if you’d let me out now.”

“I can’t control the movements of the bars.”

“You said you’d lase them open.”

“But why be destructive so fast? Let’s wait, shall we? Perhaps the bars will open again of their own accord. You’re perfectly safe in there. I’ll bring you food, if you have to eat. Will your people miss you if you’re not back by nightfall?”

“I’ll send a message to them,” said Rawlins glumly. “But I hope that I’m out by then.”

“Stay cool,” Boardman advised. “If necessary, we can get you out of that ourselves. It’s important to humor Muller in everything you can until you’ve got real rapport with him. If you hear me, touch your right hand to your chin.”

Rawlins touched his right hand to his chin.

Muller said, “That was pretty brave of you, Ned. Or stupid. I’m sometimes not sure if there’s a distinction. But I’m grateful, anyway. I had to know about those cages.”

“Glad to have been of assistance. You see, human beings aren’t all that monstrous.”

“Not consciously. It’s the sludge inside that’s ugly. Here, let me remind you.” He approached the cage and put his hands on the smooth bars, white as bone. Rawlins felt the emanation intensify. “That’s what’s under the skull. I’ve never really felt it myself, of course. I extrapolate it from the responses of others. It must be foul.”

“I could get used to it,” Rawlins said. He sat down crosslegged. “Did you make any attempt to have it undone when you returned to Earth from Beta Hydri IV?”

“I talked to the shape-up boys. They couldn’t begin to figure out what changes had been made in my neural flow, and so they couldn’t begin to figure out how to fix things. Nice?”

“How long did you stay?”

“A few months. Long enough to discover that there wasn’t one human being I knew who didn’t turn green after a few minutes of close exposure to me. I started to stew in self-pity, and in self-loathing, which is about the same thing. I was going to kill myself, you know, to put the world out of its misery.”

Rawlins said, “I don’t believe that. Some men just aren’t capable of suicide. You’re one who isn’t.”

“So I discovered, and thank you. I didn’t kill myself, you notice. I tried some fancy drugs, and then I tried drink, and then I tried living dangerously. And at the end of it I was still alive. I was in and out of four neuropsychiatric wards in a single month, I tried wearing a padded lead helmet to shield the thought radiations. It was like trying to catch neutrinos in a bucket. I caused a panic in a licensed house on Venus. All the girls stampeded out stark naked once the screaming began.” Muller spat. “You know, I could always take society or leave it. When I was among people I was happy, I was cordial, I had the social graces. I wasn’t a slick sunny article like you, all overflowing with kindness and nobility, but I interacted with others. I related, I got along. Then I could go on a trip for a year and a half and not see or speak to anyone, and that was all right too. But once I found out that I was shut off from society for good, I discovered that I had needed it after all. But that’s over. I outgrew the need, boy. I can spend a hundred years alone and never miss one soul. I’ve trained myself to see humanity as humanity sees me—something sickening, a damp hunkering crippled thing best avoided. To hell with you all. I don’t owe any of you anything, love included. I have no obligations. I could leave you to rot in that cage, Ned, and never feel upset about it. I could pass that cage twice a day and smile at your skull. It isn’t that I hate you, either you personally or the whole galaxy full of your kind. It’s simply that I despise you. You’re nothing to me. Less than nothing. You’re dirt. I know you now, and you know me.”

“You speak as if you belong to an alien race,” Rawlins said in wonder.

“No. I belong to the human race. I’m the most human being there is, because I’m the only one who can’t hide his humanity. You feel it? You pick up the ugliness? What’s inside me is also inside you. Go to the Hydrans and they’ll help you liberate it, and then people will run from you as they run from me. I speak for man. I tell the truth. I’m the skull beneath the face, boy. I’m the hidden intestines. I’m all the garbage we pretend isn’t there, all the filthy animal stuff, the lusts, the little hates, the sicknesses, the envies. And I’m the one who posed as a god. Hybris. I was reminded of what I really am.”

Rawlins said quietly, “Why did you decide to come to Lemnos?”

“A man named Charles Boardman put the idea into my head.” Rawlins recoiled in surprise at the mention of the name. Muller said, “You know him?”

“Well, yes. Of course. He—he’s a very important man in the government.”

“You might say that. It was Boardman who sent me to Beta Hydri IV, you know? Oh, he didn’t trick me into it, he didn’t have to persuade me in any of his slippery ways. He knew me well enough. He simply played on my ambitions. There’s a world there with aliens on it, he said, and we want a man to visit it. Probably a suicide mission, but it would be man’s first contact with another intelligent species, and are you interested? So of course I went. He knew I couldn’t resist something like that. And afterward, when I came back this way, he tried to duck me a while—either because he couldn’t abide being near me or because he couldn’t abide his own guilt. And finally I caught up with him and I said, look at me, Charles, this is how I am now, where can I go, what shall I do? I got up close to him. This far away. His face changed color. He had to take pills. I could see the nausea in his eyes. And he reminded me about the maze on Lemnos.”