Robert Silverberg - The Man In The Maze

“You could come back to camp with me,” said Rawlins. “He’d give you the run of the console, I’m sure.”

“Very subtle of you. No.” Muller glowered at his liqueur. “I won’t be eased into it, Ned. I don’t want anything to do with the others.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way.”

“Another drink?”

“No. I’ll have to start getting back to camp now. It’s late. I wasn’t supposed to spend the whole day here, and I’ll catch hell for not doing my share of the work.”

“You were in the cage most of the day. They can’t blame you for that.”

“They might. They were complaining a little yesterday. I don’t think they want me to visit you.” Muller felt a sudden tightness within.

Rawlins went on, “After the way I kicked away a day’s work today I wouldn’t be surprised if they refused to let me come in here again. They’ll be pretty stuffy about it. I mean, considering that you don’t seem very cooperative, they’ll regard it as wasted time for me to be paying calls on you when I could be manning the equipment in Zone E or F.” Rawlins finished his drink and got to his feet, grunting a little. He looked down at his bare legs. The diagnostat had covered the wounds with a nutrient spray, flesh-colored; it was almost impossible to tell that his skin had been broken anywhere. Stiffly, he pulled his tattered leggings on. “I won’t bother with the boots,” he said. “They’re in bad shape, and it won’t be pleasant trying to get them on. I suppose I can get back to camp barefoot.”

“The pavement is very smooth,” Muller said.

“You’ll give me some of that liqueur for my friend?”

Silently Muller extended the flask, half full.

Rawlins clipped it to his belt. “It was an interesting day. I hope I can come again.”

Boardman said, as Rawlins limped back toward Zone E, “How are your legs?”

“Tired. They’re healing fast. I’ll be all right.”

“Be careful not to drop that flask.”

“Don’t worry, Charles. I have it well fastened. I wouldn’t deprive you of the experience.”

“Ned, listen to me, we did try to get the drones to you. I was watching every terrible minute of it when those animals were attacking you. But there was nothing we could do. Muller was intercepting our probes and knocking them out.”

“All right,” Rawlins said.

“He’s clearly unstable. He wasn’t going to let one of those drones into the inner zones.”

“All right, Charles, I survived.”

Boardman could not let go of it. “It occurred to me that if we hadn’t tried to send the drones at all, you would have been better off, Ned. The drones kept Muller busy for a long while. He might have gone back to your cage instead. Let you out. Or killed the animals. He—” Halting, Boardman quirked his lips and denounced himself inwardly for maundering. A sign of age. He felt the folds of flesh at his belly. He needed another shape-up. Bring his age forward to an apparent sixty or so, while actually cutting the physiological deterioration back to biological fifty. Older outside than within. A facade of shrewdness to hide shrewdness.

He said, after a long while, “It seems you and Muller are quite good friends now. I’m pleased. It’s coming to be time for you to tempt him out.”

“How do I do that?”

“Promise him a cure,” Boardman said.

They met again on the third day afterward, at midday in Zone B. Muller seemed relieved to see him, which was the idea. Rawlins came diagonally across the oval ball-court, or whatever it was, that lay between two snub-nosed dark blue towers, and Muller nodded. “How are your legs?”

“Doing fine.”

“And your friend—he liked the liqueur?”

“He loved it,” Rawlins said, thinking of the glow in Boardman’s foxy eyes. “He sends back your flask with some special brandy in it and hopes you’ll treat him to a second round.”

Muller eyed the flask as Rawlins held it forth. “He can go to hell,” Muller said coolly. “I won’t get into any trades. If you give me that flask I’ll smash it.”

“Why?”

“Give it here, and I’ll show you. No. Wait. Wait. I won’t. Here, let me have it.”

Rawlins surrendered it. Muller cradled the lovely flask tenderly in both hands, activated the cap, and put it to his lips. “You devils,” he said in a soft voice. “What is this, from the monastery on Deneb XIII?”

“He didn’t say. He just said you’d like it.”

“Devils. Temptations. It’s a trade, damn you! But only this once. If you show up here again with more liqueur—anything—the elixir of the gods—anything, I’ll refuse it. Where have you been all week, anyway?”

“Working. I told you they frowned on my coming to see you.”

He missed me, Rawlins thought. Charles is right: I’m getting to him. Why does he have to be such a difficult character?

“Where are they excavating?” Muller asked.

“They aren’t excavating at all. They’re using sonic probes at the border between Zones E and F, trying to determine the chronology—whether the whole maze was built at once, or in accretive layers out from the middle. What’s your opinion, Dick?”

“Go to hell. No free archaeology out of me!” Muller sipped the brandy again. “You’re standing pretty close to me, aren’t you?”

“Four or five meters, I guess.”

“You were closer when you gave me the brandy. Why didn’t you look sick? Didn’t you feel the effect?”

“I felt it, yes.”

“And hid your feelings like the good stoic you are?”

Shrugging, Rawlins said genially, “I guess the effect loses impact on repeated exposure. It’s still pretty strong, but not the way it was for me the first day. Have you ever noticed that happening with someone else?”

“There were no repeated exposures with anyone else,” said Muller. “Come over here, boy. See the sights. This is my water supply. Quite elegant. This black pipe runs right around Zone B. Onyx, I guess. Semiprecious. Handsome, at any rate.” Muller knelt and stroked the aqueduct. “There’s a pumping system. Brings up water from some underground aquifer, maybe a thousand kilometers down, I don’t know. This planet doesn’t have any surface water, does it?”

“It has oceans.”

“Aside from—well, whatever. Over here, you see, here’s one of the spigots. Every fifty meters. As far as I can tell it’s the water supply for the entire city, right here, so perhaps the builders didn’t need much water. It couldn’t have been very important if they set things up like this. No conduits that I’ve found. No real plumbing. Thirsty?”

“Not really.”

Muller cupped his hand under the ornately engraved spigot, a thing of concentric ridges. Water gushed. Muller took a few quick gulps; the flow ceased the moment the hand was removed from the area below the spigot. A scanning system of some kind, Rawlings thought. Clever. How had it lasted all these millions of years?

“Drink,” Muller said. “You may get thirsty later on.”

“I can’t stay long.” But he drank anyway. Afterward they walked into Zone A, an easy stroll. The cages had closed again; Rawlins saw several of them, and shuddered. He would try no such experiments today. They found benches, slabs of polished stone that curled at the ends into facing seats intended for some species very much broader in the buttock than the usual H. sapiens. Sitting like this they could talk at a distance, Rawlings feeling only mild discomfort from Muller’s emanation, and yet there was no sensation of separation.

Muller was in a talkative mood.

The conversation was fitful, dissolving every now and then into an acid spray of anger or self-pity, but most of the time Muller remained calm and even charming—an older man clearly enjoying the company of a younger one, the two of them exchanging opinions, experiences, scraps of philosophy. Muller spoke a good deal about his early career, the planets he had seen, the delicate negotiations on behalf of Earth with the frequently prickly colony-worlds. He mentioned Boardman’s name quite often; Rawlins kept his face studiously blank. Muller’s attitude toward Boardman seemed to be one of deep admiration shot through with furious loathing. He could not forgive Boardman, apparently, for having played on his own weaknesses in getting him to go to the Hydrans. Not a rational attitude, Rawlins thought. Given Muller’s trait of overweening curiosity, he would have fought for that assignment, Boardman or no, risks or no.