A Maze of Death Read online

  That’s right, he thought. It’s time for my wheat germ oil, my vitamin E. Must go to my quarters. And, while I’m there, I’ll take a few glucose tablets to counterbalance my hypoglycemia. Assuming I don’t pass out on the way. And if I did, who would care? What in fact would they do? I’m essential to their survival, whether they recognize it or not. I’m vital to them, but are they vital to me? Yes, in the sense that Glen Belsnor is; vital because they can do, or allegedly can do, skilled tasks necessary for the maintenance of this stupid little incestuous small town that we’re running here. This pseudo-family that doesn’t work as a family in any respect. Thanks to the meddlers from outside.

  I’m going to have to tell Tallchief and—what’s his name? Morley. Tell Tallchief and Morley and Morley’s wife—who is not bad-looking at all—about the meddlers from outside, about the building which I have seen … seen close enough to read the writing above the entrance. Which no one else has. Insofar as I know.

  He started down the gravel path toward his quarters. As he came up onto the plastic porch of the living quarters he saw four people in a gathering together: Susie Smart, Maggie Walsh, Tallchief and Mr. Morley. Morley was talking, his tub-shaped middle protruding like a huge inguinal hernia. I wonder what he lives on, Babble said to himself. Potatoes, broiled steak, with ketchup on everything, and beer. You can always tell a beer drinker. They have the perforated facial skin, perforated where the hair grows, and the bags under their eyes. They look, as he looks, as if they have an edema puffing them out. And renal damage as well. And of course the ruddy skin.

  A self-indulgent man, he thought, like Morley, doesn’t in any way understand—can’t understand—that he’s pouring poisons into his body. Minute embolisms … damage to critical areas of the brain. And yet they keep on, these oral types. Regression to a pre-reality testing stage. Maybe it’s a misplaced biological survival mechanism: for the good of the species they weed themselves out. Leaving the women to more competent, and more advanced, male types.

  He walked up to the four of them, stood with his hands in his pockets, listening. Morley was relating the minutiae of a theological experience which he evidently had had. Or pretended to have had.

  “…‘my dear friend,’ he called me. Obviously I mattered to him. He helped me with the reloading … it took a long time and we talked. His voice was low but I could understand him perfectly. He never used any excess words and he could express himself perfectly; there was no mystery about it, like you sometimes hear. Anyhow, we loaded and talked. And he wanted to bless me. Why? Because—he said—I was exactly the kind of person who mattered to him. He was completely matter-of-fact about it; he simply stated it. ‘You are the kind of person whom I think matters,’ he said, or words to that effect. ‘I’m proud of you,’ he said. ‘Your great love of animals, your compassion toward lower life forms, pervades your entire mentality. Compassion is the basis of the person who has risen from the confines of the Curse. A personality type like yours is exactly what we are looking for.’” Morley paused, then.

  “Go on,” Maggie Walsh said, in a fascinated voice.

  “And then he said a strange thing,” Morley said. “He said, ‘As I have saved you, saved your life, by my own compassion, I know that your own great capacity for compassion will enable you to save lives, both physically and spiritually, of others.’ Presumably he meant here at Delmak-O.”

  “But he didn’t say,” Susie Smart said

  “He didn’t have to,” Morley said. “I knew what he meant; I understood everything he said. In fact I could communicate a lot more clearly with him than with most of the people I’ve known. I don’t mean any of you—hell, I don’t really know you, yet—but you see what I mean. There weren’t any transcendental symbolic passages, no metaphysical nonsense like they used to talk about before Specktowsky wrote The Book. Specktowsky was right; I can verify it on the basis of my own experiences with him. With the Walker.”

  “Then you’ve seen it before,” Maggie Walsh said.

  “Several times.”

  Dr. Milton Babble opened his mouth and said, “I’ve seen it seven times. And I encountered the Mentufacturer once. So if you add it together I’ve had eight experiences with the One True Deity.”

  The four of them gazed at him with various expressions. Susie Smart looked skeptical: Maggie Walsh showed absolute disbelief; both Tallchief and Morley seemed relatively interested.

  “And twice,” Babble said, “with the Intercessor. So it’s ten experiences in all. Throughout my whole life, of course.”

  “From what you heard from Mr. Morley about his experience,” Tallchief said, “did it sound similar to your own?”

  Babble kicked at a pebble on the porch; it bounced away, struck the nearby wall, fell silent, then. “Fairly much so. By and large. Yes, I think we can in some part accept what Morley says. And yet—” He hesitated meaningfully. “I’m afraid I’m skeptical. Was it truly the Walker, Mr. Morley? Could it not have been a passing itinerant laborer who wanted you to think he was the Walker? Had you thought of that? Oh, I’m not denying that the Walker appears again and again among us; my own experiences testify to that.”

  “I know he was,” Morley said, looking angry, “because of what he said about my cat.”

  “Ah, your cat.” Babble smiled both within and without; he felt deep and hearty amusement transverse his circulatory system. “So this is where the business about your ‘great compassion for lower life forms’ comes from.”

  Looking nettled and even more angrily outraged Morley said, “How would a passing tramp know about my cat? Anyhow, there aren’t any passing tramps at Tekel Upharsin. Everybody works; that’s what a kibbutz is.” He looked, now, hurt and unhappy.

  The voice of Glen Belsnor dinned in the darkened distance behind them. “Come on in! I’ve made contact with the goddam satellite! I’m about to have it run its audio tapes!”

  Babble, as he started walking, said, “I didn’t think he could do it.” How good he felt, although he did not know exactly why. Something to do with Morley and his awe-inspiring account of meeting the Walker. Which now did not seem awe-inspiring after all. Once it had been scrupulously investigated, and by a person with adult, critical judgment.

  The five of them entered the briefing hall and seated themselves among the others. From the speakers of Belsnor’s radio equipment sharp static punctuated with random voice-noises sounded. The din hurt Babble’s ears, but he said nothing. He displayed the formal attention which the technician had demanded.

  “What we’re picking up right now is a scatter track,” Belsnor informed them over the racket. “The tape hasn’t started to run yet; it won’t do that until I give the satellite the right signal.”

  “Start the tape,” Wade Frazer said.

  “Yeah, Glen, start the tape.” Voices from here and there in the chamber.

  “Okay,” Belsnor said. He reached out, touched control knobs on the panel before him. Lights winked on and off as servo-assist mechanisms switched into activity aboard the satellite.

  From the speakers a voice said, “Greetings to the Delmak-O colony from General Treaton of Interplan West.”

  “That’s it,” Belsnor said. “That’s the tape.”

  “Shut up, Belsnor. We’re listening.”

  “It can be run back any number of times,” Belsnor said.

  “You have now completed your recruiting,” General Treaton of Interplan West said. “This completion was anticipated by us at Interplan R.A.V. to occur not later than the fourteenth of September, Terran statute time. First, I would like to explain why the Delmak-O colony was created, by whom and for what purpose. It is basically—” All at once the voice stopped. “Wheeeeee,” the speakers blared. “Ughhhhhh. Akkkkkkkkk.” Belsnor stared at the receiving gear with mute dismay. “Ubbbbb,” the speakers said; static burst in, receded as Belsnor twisted dials, and then—silence.

  After a pause Ignatz Thugg guffawed.

  “What is it, Glen?” Tony Dunkelwelt said. />
  Belsnor said thickly, “There are only two tape-heads used in transmitters such as are aboard the satellite. An erase head, mounted first on the transport, then a replay-record head. What has happened is that the replay-record head has switched from replay to record. So it is erasing the tape an inch ahead automatically. There’s no way I can switch it off; it’s on record and that’s where it’ll probably stay. Until the whole tape is erased.”

  “But if it erases,” Wade Frazer said, “then it’ll be gone forever. No matter what you do.”

  “That’s right,” Glen Belsnor said. “It’s erasing and then recording nothing. I can’t get it out of the record mode. Look.” He snapped several switches open and shut. “Nothing. The head is jammed. So much for that.” He slammed a major relay into place, cursed, sat back, removed his glasses and wiped his forehead. “Christ,” he said. “Well, so it goes.”

  The speakers twittered briefly with cross talk, then fell silent again. No one in the room spoke. There was nothing to say.

  5

  “What we can do,” Glen Belsnor said, “is to transmit to the relay network, transmit so it’ll be carried back to Terra, and inform General Treaton at Interplan West of what’s happened, that our briefing of his instructions has failed to take place. Under the circumstances they’ll undoubtedly be willing—and able—to fire off a communications rocket in our direction. Containing a second tape which we can run through the transport here.” He pointed to the tape deck mounted within the radio gear.

  “How long will that take?” Susie Smart asked.

  “I haven’t ever tried to raise the relay network from here.” Glen Belsnor said, “I don’t know; we’ll have to see. Maybe we can do it right away. But at the most it shouldn’t take more than two or three days. The only problem would be—” He rubbed his bristly chin. “There may be a security factor. Treaton may not want this request run through the relay network, where anyone with a class one receiver can pick it up. His reaction then would be to ignore our request.”

  “If they do that,” Babble spoke up, “we ought to pack up and leave here. Immediately.”

  “Leave how?” Ignatz Thugg said, grinning.

  Nosers, Seth Morley thought. We have no vehicles here except inert and fuel-zero nosers, and even if we could round up the fuel—say by syphoning from every fuel tank to fill up one—they don’t have tracking gear by which we could pilot a course. They would have to use Delmak-O as one of two coordinates, and Delmak-O is not on Interplan West charts—hence no tracking value. He thought, Is this why they insisted on our coming in nosers?

  They’re experimenting with us, he thought wildly. That’s what this is: an experiment. Maybe there never were any instructions on the satellite’s tape. Maybe it all was planned.

  “Make a sample try at picking up the relay people,” Tailchief said. “Maybe you can get them right now.”

  “Why not?” Belsnor said. He adjusted dials, clamped an earphone to the side of his head, opened circuits, closed others down. In absolute silence the others waited and watched. As if, Morley thought, our lives depend on this. And—perhaps they do.

  “Anything?” Betty Jo Berm asked at last.

  Belsnor said, “Nothing. I’ll switch it on video.” The small screen jumped into life. Mere lines, visual static. “This is the frequency on which the relay operates. We should pick them up.”

  “But we’re not,” Babble said.

  “No. We’re not.” Belsnor continued to spin dials. “It’s not like the old days,” he said, “when you could tinker with a variable condenser until you got your signal. This is complex.” All at once he shut off the central power supply; the screen blanked out and, from the speakers, the snatches of static ceased.

  “What’s the matter?” Mary Morley asked.

  “We’re not on the air,” Belsnor said.

  “What?” Startled exclamations from virtually all of them.

  “We’re not transmitting. I can’t pull them and if we’re not on the air they sure as hell aren’t going to pull us.” He leaned back, convulsed with disgust. “It’s a plot, a friggin’ plot.”

  “You mean that literally?” Wade Frazer demanded. “You mean this is intentional?”

  “I didn’t assemble our transmitter,” Glenn Belsnor said. “I didn’t hook up our receiving equipment. For the last month, since I’ve been here, in fact, I’ve been making sample tests; I’ve picked up several transmissions from operators in this star system, and I was able to transmit back. Everything seemed to be working normally. And then this.” He stared down, his face working. “Oh,” he said abruptly. He nodded. “Yes, I understand what happened.”

  “Is it bad?” Ben Tallchief asked.

  Belsnor said, “When the satellite received my signal to activate the audio tape construct and complying transmitter, the satellite sent a signal back. A signal to this gear.” He indicated the receiver and transmitter rising up before him. “The signal shut down everything. It overrode my instructions. We ain’t receiving and we ain’t transmitting, no matter what I tell this junk to do. It’s off the air, and it’ll probably take another signal from the satellite to get it functioning again.” He shook his head. “What can you do but admire it?” he said. “We transmit our initial instruction to the satellite; in response it sends one back. It’s like chess: move and respond. I started the whole thing going. Like a rat in a cage, trying to find the lever that drops food. Rather than the one that transmits an electric shock.” His voice was bitter, and laden with defeat.

  “Dismantle the transmitter and receiver,” Seth Morley said. “Override the override by removing it.”

  “It probably—hell, undoubtedly—has a destruct component in it. It’s either already destroyed vital elements or it will when I try to search for it. I have no spare parts; if it’s destroyed a circuit here and there I can’t do anything toward fixing it.”

  “The automatic pilot beam,” Morley said. “That I followed to get here. You can send out the message on it.”

  “Automatic pilot beams work for the first eighty or ninety thousand miles and then peter out. Isn’t that where you picked up yours?”

  “More or less,” he admitted.

  “We’re totally isolated,” Beslnor said. “And it was done in a matter of minutes.”

  “What we must do,” Maggie Walsh said, “is to prepare a joint prayer. We can probably get through on pineal gland emanation, if we make it short.”

  “I can help on preparing it, if that’s the criterion,” Betty Jo Berm said. “Since I’m a trained linguist.”

  “As a last resort,” Belsnor said.

  “Not as a last resort,” Maggie Walsh said. “As an effective, proven method of getting help. Mr. Tallchief, for example, got here because of a prayer.”

  “But it passed along the relay,” Belsnor said. “We have no way to reach the relay.”

  “You have no faith in prayer?” Wade Frazer asked, nastily.

  Belsnor said, “I have no faith in prayer that’s not electronically augmented. Even Specktowsky admitted that; if a prayer is to be effective it must be electronically transmitted through the network of god-worlds so that all Manifestations are reached.”

  “I suggest,” Morley said, “that we transmit our joint prayer as far as we can through the automatic pilot beam. If we can project it eighty or ninety thousand miles out it should be easier for the Deity to pick it up … since gravity works in inverse proportion to the power of the prayer, meaning that if you can get the prayer away from a planetary body—and ninety thousand miles is reasonably away—then there is a good mathematical chance of the various Manifestations receiving it, and Specktowsky mentions this; I forget where. At the end, I think, in one of his addenda.”

  Wade Frazer said. “It’s against Terran law to doubt the power of prayer. A violation of the civil code of all Interplan West stages and holdings.”

  “And you’d report it,” Ignatz Thugg said.

  “Nobody’s doubting the efficacy
of prayer,” Ben Tallchief said, eyeing Frazer with overt hostility. “We’re merely disagreeing on the most effective way of handling it.” He got to his feet. “I need a drink,” he said. “Goodbye.” He left the room, tottering a little as he went.

  “A good idea,” Susie Smart said to Seth Morley. “I think I’ll go along, too.” She rose, smiling at him in an automatic way, a smile devoid of feeling. “This is really terrible, isn’t it? I can’t believe that General Treaton could have authorized this deliberately; it must be a mistake. An electronic breakdown that they don’t know about. Don’t you agree?”

  “General Treaton, from all I’ve heard,” Morley said, “is a thoroughly reputable man.” Actually, he had never heard of General Treaton before, but it seemed to him a good thing to say, in order to try to cheer her up. They all needed cheering up, and if it helped to believe that General Treaton was definitely reputable then so be it; he was all for it. Faith in secular matters, as well as in theological matters, was a necessity. Without it one could not go on living.

  To Maggie Walsh, Dr. Babble said, “Which aspect of the Deity should we pray to?”

  “If you want time rolled back, say to the moment before any of us accepted this assignment,” Maggie said, “then it would be to the Mentufacturer. If we want the Deity to stand in for us, collectively to replace us in this situation, then it would be the Intercessor. If we individually want help in finding our way out—”

  “All three,” Bert Kosler said in a shaking voice. “Let the Deity decide which part of himself he wishes to use.”