Robert Silverberg - The Man In The Maze

“Go back to your own ship, Ned,” Muller said.

“If you go into the maze, so will I.”

“I’ll kill you if you do. I want to be left alone, Ned, do you understand that? I’ve done my job. My last job. Now I retire, purged of my nightmares.” Muller forced a thin smile. “Don’t come after me, Ned. I trusted you, and you would have betrayed me. Everything else is incidental. Leave my ship now. We’ve said all that we need to say to each other, I think, except goodbye.”

“Dick—”

“Goodbye, Ned. Remember me to Charles. And to all the others.”

“Don’t do this!”

“There’s something down there I don’t want to lose,” Muller said. “I’m going to claim it now. Stay away. All of you. Stay away. I’ve learned the truth about Earthmen. Will you go now?”

Silently Rawlins suited up. He moved toward the hatch. As he stepped through it, Muller said, “Say goodbye to all of them for me, Ned. I’m glad you were the last one I saw. Somehow it was easier that way.”

Rawlins vanished through the hatch.

A short while later Muller programmed his ship for a hyperbolic orbit on a twenty-minute delay, got into his drop-capsule, and readied himself for the descent to Lemnos. It was a quick drop and a good landing. He came down right in the impact area, two kilometers from the gateway to the maze. The sun was high and bright. Muller walked briskly toward the maze.

He had done what they wanted him to do.

Now he was going home.

“He’s still making gestures,” Boardman said. “He’ll come out of there.”

“I don’t think so,” replied Rawlins. “He meant that.”

“You stood next to him, and you felt nothing?”

“Nothing. He doesn’t have it any more.”

“Which he realizes?”

“Yes.”

“He’ll come out, then,” Boardman said. “We’ll watch him, and when he asks to be taken off Lemnos, we’ll take him off. Sooner or later he’ll need other people again. He’s been through so much that he needs to think everything through, and I guess he sees the maze as the best place for that. He isn’t ready to plunge back into normal life again. Give him two years, three, four. He’ll come out. The two sets of aliens have cancelled each other’s work on him, and he’s fit to rejoin society.”

“I don’t think so,” Rawlins said quietly. “I don’t think it cancelled out so evenly. Charles, I don’t think he’s human at all—anymore.”

Boardman laughed. “Shall we bet? I’ll offer five to one that Muller comes out of the maze voluntarily within five years.”

“Well—”

“It’s a bet, then.”

Rawlins left the older man’s office. Night had fallen. He crossed the bridge outside the building. In an hour he’d be dining with someone warm and soft and willing, who was awed beyond measure by her liaison with the famous Ned Rawlins. She was a good listener, who coaxed him for tales of daring deeds and nodded gravely as he spoke of the challenges ahead. She was also good in bed.

He paused on the bridge to look upward at the stars.

A million million blazing points of light shimmered in the sky. Out there lay Lemnos, and Beta Hydri IV, and the worlds occupied by the radio beings, and all man’s dominion, and even, invisible but real, the home galaxy of the others. Out there lay a labyrinth in a broad plain, and a forest of spongy trees hundreds of meters high, and a thousand planets planted with the young cities of Earthmen, and a tank of strangeness orbiting a conquered world. In the tank lay something unbearably alien. On the thousand planets lived worried men fearing the future. Under the spongy trees walked graceful silent creatures with many arms. In the maze dwelled a… man.

Perhaps, Rawlins thought, I’ll visit Muller in a year or two.

It was too early to tell how the patterns would form. No one yet knew how the radio people were reacting, if at all, to the things they had learned from Richard Muller. The role of the Hydrans, the efforts of men in their own defense, the coming forth of Muller from the maze, these were mysteries—shifting, variable. It was exciting and a little frightening to think that he would live through the time of testing that lay ahead.

He crossed the bridge. He watched starships shattering the darkness overhead. He stood motionless, feeling the pull of the stars. All the universe tugged at him, each star exerting its finite power. The glow of the heavens dazzled him. Beckoning pathways lay open. He thought of the man in the maze. He thought too of the girl, lithe and passionate, dark-eyed, her eyes mirrors of silver, her body awaiting him.

Suddenly he was Dick Muller, once also twenty-four years old, with the galaxy his for the asking. Was it any different for you, he wondered? What did you feel when you looked up at the stars? Where did it hit you? Here. Here. Just where it hits me. And you went out there. And found. And lost. And found something else. Do you remember, Dick, the way you once felt? Tonight in your windy maze, what will you think about? Will you remember?

Why did you turn away from us, Dick?

What have you become?

He hurried to the girl who waited for him. They sipped young wine, tart, electric. They smiled through a candle’s flickering glow. Later her softness yielded to him, and still later they stood close together on a balcony looking out over the greatest of all man’s cities. Lights stretched toward infinity, rising to meet those other lights above. He slipped his arm around her, put his hand on her bare flank, held her against him.

She said, “How long do you stay this time?”

“Four more days.”

“And when will you come back?”

“When the job’s done.”

“Ned, will you ever rest? Will you ever say you’ve had enough, that you won’t go out any longer, that you’ll take one planet and stick to it?”

“Yes,” he said vaguely. “I suppose. After a while.”

“You don’t mean it. You’re just saying it. None of you ever settle down.”

“We can’t,” he murmured. “We keep going. There are always more worlds… new suns…”

“You want too much. You want the whole universe. It’s a sin, Ned. You have to accept limits.”

“Yes,” he said. “You’re right. I know you’re right.” His fingers traveled over satin-smooth flesh. She trembled. He said, “We do what we have to do. We try to learn from the mistakes of others. We serve our cause. We attempt to be honest with ourselves. How else can it be?”

“The man who went back into the maze—”

“—is happy,” Rawlins said. “He’s following his chosen course.”

“How can that be?”

“I can’t explain.”

“He must hate us all terribly to turn his back on the whole universe like that.”

“He’s beyond hate,” Rawlins said. “Somehow. He’s at peace. Whatever he is.”

“ Whatever?”

“Yes,” he said gently. He felt the midnight chill and led her inside. They stood by the bed. The candle was nearly out. He kissed her solemnly, and thought of Dick Muller again, and wondered what maze was waiting for him at the end of his own path. He drew her into his arms and felt the impress of hardening flesh against his own cool skin. They lowered themselves. His hands sought, grasped, caressed. Her breath grew ragged.

When I see you again, Dick, I have much to tell you, he thought.

She said, “Why did he lock himself into the maze again, Ned?”

“For the same reason that he went among aliens in the first place. For the reason that it all happened.”

“And that reason was?”

“He loved mankind,” Rawlins said. It was as good an epitaph as any. He held the girl tightly. But he left before dawn.