Robert Silverberg - The Man In The Maze

“Why?”

“He offered it as a place to hide. I don’t know if he was being kind or cruel. I suppose he thought I’d be killed on my way into the maze—a decent finish for my sort of chap, or at any rate better than taking a gulp of carniphage and melting down a sewer. But of course I told Boardman I wouldn’t think of it. I wanted to cover my trail. I blew up and insisted that the last thing in the world I’d do was come here. Then I spent a month on the skids in Under New Orleans, and when I surfaced again I rented a ship and came here. Using maximum diversionary tactics to insure that nobody found out my true destination. Boardman was right. This was the place to come.”

Rawlins said, “How did you get inside the maze?”

“Through sheer bad luck.”

“Bad luck?”

“I was trying to die in a blaze of glory,” said Muller. “I didn’t give a damn if I survived the maze or not. I just plunged right in and headed for the middle.”

“I can’t believe that!”

“Well, it’s true, more or less. The trouble was, Ned, I’m a survival type. It’s an innate gift, maybe even something paranormal. I have unusual reflexes. I have a kind of sixth sense, as they say. Also my urge to stay alive is well developed. Besides that, I had mass detectors and some other useful equipment. So I came into the maze, and whenever I saw a corpse lying about I looked a little sharper than usual, and I stopped and rested when I felt my visualization of the place beginning to waver. I fully expected to be killed in Zone H. I wanted it. But it was my luck to make it where everybody else failed because I didn’t care one way or the other, I suppose. The element of tension was removed. I moved like a cat, everything twitching at once, and I got past the tough parts of the maze somehow, much to my disappointment, and here I am.”

“Have you ever gone outside it?”

“No. Now and then I go as far as Zone E, where your friends are. Twice I’ve been to F. Mostly I remain in the three inner zones. I’ve furnished things quite nicely for myself. I have a radiation locker for my meat supply, and a building I use as my library, and a place where I keep my woman cubes, and I do some taxidermy in one of the other buildings. I hunt quite a lot, also. And I examine the maze and try to analyze its workings. I’ve dictated several cubes of memoirs on my findings. I bet you archaeologist fellows would love to run through those cubes.”

“I’m sure we’d learn a great deal from them,” Rawlins said.

“I know you would. I’d destroy them before I’d let any of you see them. Are you getting hungry, boy?”

“A little.”

“Don’t go away. I’ll bring you some lunch.”

Muller strode toward the nearby buildings and disappeared. Rawlins said quietly, “This is awful, Charles. He’s obviously out of his mind.”

“Don’t be sure of it,” Boardman replied. “No doubt nine years of isolation can have effects on a man’s stability, and Muller wasn’t all that stable the last time I saw him. But he may be playing a game with you—pretending to be crazy to test your good faith.”

“And if he isn’t?”

“In terms of what we want from him, it doesn’t matter in the slightest if he’s insane. It might even help.”

“I don’t understand that.”

“You don’t need to,” said Boardman evenly. “Just relax. You’re doing fine so far.”

Muller returned, carrying a platter of meat and a handsome crystal beaker of water. “Best I can offer,” he said, pushing a chunk of meat between the bars. “A local beast. You eat solid food, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“At your age, I guess you would. What did you say you were, twenty-five?”

“Twenty-three.”

“That’s even worse.” Muller gave him the water. It had an agreeable flavor, or lack of flavor. Muller sat quietly before the cage, eating. Rawlins noticed that the effect of his emanation no longer seemed so disturbing, even at a range of less than five meters. Obviously one builds a tolerance to it, he thought. If one wants to make the attempt.

Rawlins said, after a while, “Would you come out and meet my companions in a few days?”

“Absolutely not.”

“They’d be eager to talk to you.”

“I have no interest in talking to them. I’d sooner talk to wild beasts.”

“You talk to me,” Rawlins pointed out.

“For the novelty of it. And because your father was a good friend. And because, as human beings go, boy, you’re reasonably acceptable. But I don’t want to be thrust into any miscellaneous mass of bug-eyed archaeologists.”

“Possibly meet two or three of them,” Rawlins suggested. “Get used to the idea of being among people again.”

“No.”

“I don’t see—”

Muller cut him off. “Wait a minute. Why should I get used to the idea of being among people again?”

Rawlins said uneasily, “Well, because there are people here, because it’s not a good idea to get too isolated from—”

“Are you planning some sort of trick? Are you going to catch me and pull me out of this maze? Come on, come on, boy, what’s in back of that little mind of yours? What motive do you have for softening me up for human contact?”

Rawlins faltered. In the awkward silence Boardman spoke quickly, supplying the guile he lacked, prompting him. Rawlins listened and did his best.

He said, “You’re making me out to be a real schemer, Dick. But I swear to you I’ve got nothing sinister in mind. I admit I’ve been softening you up a little, jollying you, trying to make friends with you, and I guess I’d better tell you why.”

“I guess you’d better!”

“It’s for the archaeological survey’s sake. We can spend only a few weeks here. You’ve been here—what is it, nine years? You know so much about this place, Dick, and I think it’s unfair of you to keep it to yourself. So what I was hoping, I guess, was that I could get you to ease up, first become friendly with me, and then maybe come to Zone E, talk to the others, answer their questions, explain what you know about the maze—”

“Unfair to keep it to myself?”

“Well, yes. To hide knowledge is a sin.”

“Is it fair of mankind to call me unclean, and run away from me?”

“That’s a different matter,” Rawlins said. “It’s beyond all fairness. It’s a condition you have—an unfortunate condition that you didn’t deserve, and everyone is quite sorry that it came upon you, but on the other hand, you surely must realize that from the viewpoint of other human beings it’s rather difficult to take a detached attitude toward your—your—”

“Toward my stink,” Muller supplied. “All right. It’s rather difficult to stand my presence. Therefore I willingly refrain from inflicting it upon your friends. Get it out of your head that I’m going to speak to them or sip tea with them or have anything at all to do with them. I have separated myself from the human race and I stay separated. And it’s irrelevant that I’ve granted you the privilege of bothering me. Also, while I’m instructing you, I want to remind you that my unfortunate condition was not undeserved. I earned it by poking my nose into places where I didn’t belong, and by thinking I was superhuman for being able to go to such places. Hybris. I told you the word.”

Boardman continued to instruct him. Rawlins, with the sour taste of lies on his tongue, went on, “I can’t blame you for being bitter, Dick. But I still think it isn’t right for you to withhold information from us. I mean, look back on your own exploring days. If you landed on a planet, and someone had vital information you had come to find, wouldn’t you make every effort to get that information—even though the other person had certain private problems which—”