Robert Silverberg - The Man In The Maze

“And what about you?” Muller asked finally. “You’re brighter than you pretend to be. Hampered a little by your shyness, but plenty of brains, carefully hidden behind college-boy virtues. What do you want for yourself, Ned? What does archaeology give you?”

Rawlins looked him straight in the eyes. “A chance to recapture a million pasts. I’m as greedy as you are. I want to know how things happened, how they got this way. Not just on Earth or in the System. Everywhere.”

“Well spoken!”

I thought so too, Rawlins thought, hoping Boardman was pleased by his newfound eloquence.

He said, “I suppose I could have gone in for diplomatic service, the way you did. Instead I chose this. I think it’ll work out. There’s so much to discover, here and everywhere else. We’ve only begun to look.”

“The ring of dedication is in your voice.”

“I suppose.”

“I like to hear that sound. It reminds me of the way I used to talk.”

Rawlins said, “Just so you don’t think I’m hopelessly pure I ought to say that it’s personal curiosity that moves me on, more than abstract love of knowledge.”

“Understandable. Forgivable. We’re not too different, really. Allowing for forty-odd years between us. Don’t worry so much about your motives, Ned. Go to the stars, see, do. Enjoy. Eventually life will smash you, the way it’s smashed me, but that’s far off. Sometime, never, who knows? Forget about that.”

“I’ll try,” Rawlins said.

He felt the warmth of the man now, the reaching out of genuine sympathies. There was still that carrier wave of nightmare, though, the unending broadcast out of the mucky depths of the soul, attenuated at this distance but unmistakable. Imprisoned by his pity, Rawlins hesitated to say what it now was time to say. Boardman prodded him irritably. “Go on, boy! Slip it in!”

“You look very far away,” Muller said.

“Just thinking how—how sad it is that you won’t trust us at all, that you have such a negative attitude toward humanity.”

“I come by it honestly.”

“You don’t need to spend the rest of your life in this maze, though. There’s a way out.”

“Garbage.”

“Listen to me,” Rawlins said. He took a deep breath and flashed his quick, transparent grin. “I talked about your case to our expedition medic. He’s studied neurosurgery. He knew all about you. He says there’s now a way to fix what you have. Recently developed, the last couple of years. It—shuts off the broadcast, Dick. He said I should tell you. We’ll take you back to Earth. For the operation, Dick. The operation. The cure.”

The sharp glittering barbed word came swimming along on the breast of a torrent of bland sounds and speared him in the gut. Cure! He stared. There was reverberation from the looming dark buildings. Cure. Cure. Cure. Muller felt the poisonous temptation gnawing at his liver. “No,” he said. “That’s garbage. A cure’s impossible.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“I know.”

“Science progresses in nine years. They understand how the brain works, now. Its electrical nature. What they did, they built a tremendous simulation in one of the lunar labs—oh, a few years ago, and they ran it all through from start to finish. As a matter of fact I’m sure they’re desperate to have you back, because you prove all their theories. In your present condition. And by operating on you, reversing your broadcast, they’ll demonstrate that they were right. All you have to do is come back with us.”

Muller methodically popped his knuckles. “Why didn’t you mention this earlier?”

“I didn’t know a thing about it.”

“Of course.”

“Really. We didn’t expect to be finding you here, you realize. At first nobody was too sure who you were, why you were here. I explained it. And then the medic remembered that there was this treatment. What’s wrong—don’t you believe me?”

“You look so angelic,” Muller said. “Those sweet blue eyes and that golden hair. What’s your game, Ned? Why are you reeling off all this nonsense?”

Rawlins reddened. “It isn’t nonsense!”

“I don’t believe you. And I don’t believe in your cure.”

“It’s your privilege. But you’ll be the loser if—”

“Don’t threaten me!”

“I’m sorry.”

There was a long, sticky silence.

Muller revolved a maze of thoughts. To leave Lemnos? To have the curse lifted? To hold a woman in his arms again? Breasts like fire against his skin? Lips? Thighs? To rebuild his career. To reach across the heavens once more? To shuck nine years of anguish? To believe? To go? To submit?

“No,” he said carefully. “There is no cure for what I have.”

“You keep saying that. But you can’t know.”

“It doesn’t fit the pattern. I believe in destiny, boy. In compensating tragedy. In the overthrow of the proud. The gods don’t deal out temporary tragedies. They don’t take back their punishments after a few years. Oedipus didn’t get his eyes back. Or his mother. They didn’t let Prometheus off his rock. They—”

“You aren’t living a Greek play,” Rawlins told him. “This is the real world. The patterns don’t always fall neatly. Maybe the gods have decided that you’ve suffered enough. And so long as we’re having a literary discussion—they forgave Orestes, didn’t they? So why isn’t nine years here enough for you?”

“Is there a cure?”

“The medic says there is.”

“I think you’re lying to me, boy.”

Rawlins glanced away. “What do I have to gain by lying?”

“I can’t guess.”

“All right, I’m lying,” Rawlins said brusquely. “There’s no way to help you. Let’s talk about something else. Why don’t you show me the fountain where that liqueur rises?”

“It’s in Zone C,” said Muller. “I don’t feel like going there just now. Why did you tell me that story if it wasn’t true?”

“I said we’d change the subject.”

“Let’s assume for the moment that it is true,” Muller persisted. “That if I go back to Earth I can be cured. I want to let you know that I’m not interested, not even with a guarantee. I’ve seen Earthmen in their true nature. They kicked me when I was down. Not sporting, Ned. They stink. They reek. They gloried in what had happened to me.”

“That isn’t so!”

“What do you know? You were a child. Even more then than now. They treated me as filth because I showed them what was inside themselves. A mirror for their dirty souls. Why should I go back to them now? Why do I need them? Worms. Pigs. I saw them as they really are, those few months I was on Earth after Beta Hydri IV. The look in the eyes, the nervous smile as they back away from me. Yes, Mr. Muller. Of course, Mr. Muller. Just don’t come too close, Mr. Muller. Boy, come by here some time at night and let me show you the constellations as seen from Lemnos. I’ve given them my own names. There’s the Dagger, a long keen one. It’s about to be thrust into the Back. Then there’s the Shaft. And you can see the Ape, too, and the Toad. They interlock. The same star is in the forehead of the Ape and the left eye of the Toad. That star is Sol, my friend. An ugly little yellow star, the color of thin vomit. Whose planets are populated by ugly little people who have spread like trickling urine over the whole universe.”

“Can I say something that might offend you?” Rawlins asked. “You can’t offend me. But you can try.”

“I think your outlook is distorted. You’ve lost your perspective, all these years here.”

“No. I’ve learned how to see for the first time.”

“You’re blaming humanity for being human. It’s not easy to accept someone like you. If you were sitting here in my place, and I in yours, you’d understand that. It hurts to be near you. It hurts. Right now I feel pain in every nerve. If I came closer I’d feel like crying. You can’t expect people to adjust quickly to somebody like that. Not even your loved ones could—”