A Maze of Death Page 8

  “I’ll kill you,” Mary Morley said; she spun, paced about in a great circle which swept out most of the room. Looking for something to pick up and hit with; Susie knew the motion, the searching, the glazed, ferocious, incredulous expression on her face. Mary Morley found a vase, snatched it up, stood by the dresser, her chest heaving as she confronted Seth Morley. She raised the vase in a spasmodic, abrupt, backward swing of her right arm …

  On the dresser the miniaturized building slid a minute panel aside. A tiny cannon projected. Mary did not see it, but Susie and Seth Morley did.

  “Look out!” Seth gasped, groping at his wife to get hold of her hand. He yanked her toward him. The vase crashed to the floor. The barrel of the cannon rotated, taking new aim. All at once a beam projected from it, in Mary Morley’s direction. Susie, laughing, backed away, putting distance between herself and the beam.

  The beam missed Mary Morley. On the far wall of the room a hole appeared and through it black night air billowed, cold and harsh, entering the room. Mary wobbled, retreated a step.

  Rushing into the bathroom, Seth Morley disappeared, then came dashing out again, the waterglass in his hand. He sprinted to the dresser, poured water onto the building replica. The snout of the cannon ceased to rotate.

  “I think I got it,” Seth Morley said, wheezing asthmatically.

  From the diminutive structure a curl of gray smoke drifted up. The structure hummed briefly and then a pool of sticky, grease-like stain dribbled out from it, mixing with the pool of water which had now formed around it. The structure bucked, spun, and then all at once decayed into inanimation. He was right; it was dead.

  “You killed it,” Susie said, accusingly.

  Seth Morley said, “That’s what killed Tallchief.”

  “Did it try to kill me?” Mary Morley asked faintly. She looked about unsteadily, the fanaticism of fury gone from her face now. Cautiously, she seated herself and stared at the structure, blank and pale, then said to her husband, “Let’s get out of here.”

  To Susie, Seth Morley said, “I’m going to have to tell Glen Belsnor.” He gingerly, and with great caution, picked up the dead little block; holding it in the palm of his hand he stared at it a long, long time.

  “It took me three weeks to tame that one,” Susie said. “Now I have to find another, and bring it back here without getting killed, and tame it like I did this one.” She felt massive waves of accusation slapping higher and higher within her. “Look what you did,” she said, and went swiftly to gather up her clothing.

  Seth and Mary Morley started toward the door, Seth’s hand on his wife’s back. Guiding her out.

  “Goddam you both!” she shouted in accusation. Half-dressed, she followed after them. “What about tomorrow?” she said to Seth. “Are we still going on a walk? I want to show you some of the—”

  “No,” he said harshly, and then he turned to gaze at her long and somberly. “You really don’t understand what happened,” he said.

  Susie said, “I know what almost happened.”

  “Does someone have to die before you can wake up?” he said.

  “No,” she said, feeling uneasy; she did not like the expression in his hard, boring eyes. “All right,” she said, “if it’s so important to you, that little toy—”

  “‘Toy,’” he said mockingly.

  “Toy,” she repeated. “Then you ought to be really interested in what’s out there. Don’t you understand? This is just a model of the real Building. Don’t you want to see it? I’ve seen it very closely. I even know what the sign reads over the main entrance. Not the entrance where the trucks come and go but the entrance—”

  “What does it say?” he said.

  Susie said, “Will you go with me?” To Mary Morley she said, with all the graciousness she could command, “You, too. Both of you ought to come.”

  “I’ll come alone,” Seth said. To his wife he said, “It’s too dangerous; I don’t want you along.”

  “You don’t want me along,” Mary said, “for obvious other reasons.” But she sounded dim and scared, as if the close call with the structure’s energy beam had banished every emotion in her except raw, clinging fear.

  Seth Morley said, “What does it say over the entrance?”

  After a pause Susie said, “It says ‘Whippery.’ ”

  “What does that mean?” he said.

  “I’m not positive. But it sounds fascinating. Maybe we can somehow get inside, this time. I’ve gone real close, almost up to the wall. But I couldn’t find a side door, and I was afraid—I don’t know why—to go in the main entrance.”

  Wordlessly, Seth Morley, steering his dazed wife, strode out into the night. She found herself standing there in the middle of her room, alone and only half-dressed.

  “Bitch!” she called loudly after them. Meaning Mary.

  They continued on. And were gone from sight.

  7

  “Don’t kid yourself,” Glen Belsnor said. “If it shot at your wife it’s because that loopy dame, that Susie Dumb or Smart, whichever it is, wanted it to. She taught it. They can be trained, you see.” He sat holding the tiny structure, staring down at it, a brooding expression settling by degrees into his long, lean face.

  “If I hadn’t grabbed her,” Seth said, “we would have had a second death tonight.”

  “Maybe yes, maybe no. Considering the meager output of these things it probably would only have knocked her out.”

  “The beam bored through the wall.”

  Belsnor said, “The walls are cheap plastic. One layer. You could punch a hole through with your fist.”

  “So you’re not upset by this.”

  Belsnor plucked at his lower lip, thoughtfully. “I’m upset by the whole thing. What the hell were you doing with Susie in her room?” He raised his hand. “Don’t tell me, I know. She’s deranged sexually. No, don’t give me any details.” He played aimlessly with the replica of the Building. “Too bad it didn’t shoot Susie,” he murmured, half to himself.

  “There’s something the matter with all of you,” Seth said.

  Belsnor raised his shaggy head and studied Seth Morley. “In what way?”

  “I’m not sure. A kind of idiocy. Each of you seems to be living in his own private world. Without regard for anyone else. It’s as if—” He pondered. “As if all you want, each of you, is to be left alone.”

  “No,” Belsnor said. “We want to get away from here. We may have nothing else in common, but we do share that.” He handed the destroyed structure back to Seth. “Keep it. As a souvenir.”

  Seth tossed it onto the floor.

  “You’re going out exploring with Susie tomorrow?” Belsnor said.

  “Yes.” He nodded.

  “She’ll probably attack you again.”

  “I’m not interested in that. I’m not worried by that. I think that we have an active enemy on the planet, working from outside the settlement area. I think it—or they—killed Tallchief. Despite what Babble found.”

  Belsnor said, “You’re new here. Tallchief was new here. Tallchief is dead. I think there’s a connection; I think his death was connected to his unfamiliarity with the conditions on the planet. Therefore you’re equally in danger. But the rest of us—”

  “You don’t think I should go.”

  “Go, yes. But be very careful. Don’t touch anything, don’t pick up anything, keep your eyes open. Try to go only where she’s been; don’t tackle new areas.”

  “Why don’t you come too?”

  Regarding him intently, Belsnor said, “You want me to?”

  “You’re the settlement’s leader, now. Yes, I think you should come. And armed.”

  “I—” Belsnor pondered. “It could be argued that I ought to stay here and work on the transmitter. It could be argued that you ought to be at work composing a prayer, instead of tramping around in the wilderness. I have to think of every aspect of this situation. It could be argued—”

  “It could be argued that
your ‘could be argueds’ may kill us all,” Seth Morley said.

  “Your ‘could be argued’ may be correct.” Belsnor smiled as if at a private, secret reality. The smile, with no amusement in it, lingered on his face; it remained and became sardonic.

  Seth Morley said, “Tell me what you know about the ecology out there.”

  “There is an organism which we call the tench. There are, we’ve gathered, five or six of them. Very old.”

  “What do they do? Are they artifact makers?”

  “Some, the feeble ones, do nothing. They just sit there here and there in the middle of the landscape. The less feeble ones, however, print.”

  “‘Print’?”

  “They duplicate things brought to them. Small things, such as a wristwatch, a cup, an electric razor.” “And the printings work?”

  Belsnor tapped his jacket pocket. “The pen I’m using is a print. But—” He lifted out the pen and extended it toward Seth Morley. “See the decay?” The surface of the pen had a furry texture, much like dust. “They decompose very rapidly. This’ll be good for another few days, and then I can have another print made from the original pen.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we’re short on pens. And the ones we have are running out of ink.”

  “What about the writing of one of these print-pens? Does the ink fade out after a few days?”

  “No,” Belsnor said, but he looked uncomfortable.

  “You’re not sure.”

  Standing, Belsnor dug into his back pocket and got out his wallet. For a time he examined small, folded pieces of paper and then he placed one in front of Seth. The writing was clear and distinct.

  Maggie Walsh entered the briefing chamber, saw the two of them, and came over. “May I join you?”

  “Sure,” Belsnor said remotely. “Pull up a chair.” He glanced at Seth Morley, then said to her in a leisurely, hard voice, “Susie Smart’s toy building tried to shoot Morley’s wife a little while ago. It missed, and Morley poured a plate of water over it.”

  “I warned her,” Maggie said, “that those things are unsafe.”

  “It was safe enough,” Belsnor said. “It’s Susie that isn’t safe … as I was explaining to Morley.”

  “We should pray for her,” Maggie said.

  “You see?” Belsnor said to Seth Morley. “We do have concern for one another. Maggie wants to save Susie Smart’s immortal soul.”

  “Pray,” Seth Morley said, “that she doesn’t capture another replica and begin teaching that one, too.”

  “Morley,” Belsnor said, “I’ve been thinking about your thoughts on the whole bunch of us. In a way you’re right: there is something the matter with each of us. But not what you think. The thing we have in common is that we’re failures. Take Tallchief. Couldn’t you tell he’s a wino? And Susie—all she can think about is sexual conquests. I can make a guess about you, too. You’re overweight; obviously you eat too much. Do you live to eat, Morley? Or had you never asked yourself that? Babble is a hypochondriac. Betty Jo Berm is a compulsive pill-taker: her life is in those little plastic bottles. That kid, Tony Dunkelwelt; he lives for his mystical insights, his schizophrenic trances … which both Babble and Frazer call catatonic stupor. Maggie, here—” He gestured toward her. “She lives in an illusory world of prayer and fasting, doing service to a deity which isn’t interested in her.” To Maggie he said, “Have you ever seen the Intercessor, Maggie?”

  She shook her head no.

  “Or the Walker-on-Earth?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Nor the Mentufacturer either,” Belsnor said. “Now take Wade Frazer. His world—”

  “How about you?” Seth asked him.

  Belsnor shrugged. “I have my own world.”

  “He invents,” Maggie Walsh said.

  “But I’ve never invented anything,” Belsnor said. “Everything developed during the last two centuries has come from a composite lab, where hundreds, even thousands of research workers work. There is no such thing as an inventor in this century. Maybe I just like to play private games with electronic components. Anyhow, I enjoy it. I get most if not all of my pleasure in this world from creating circuits that ultimately do nothing.”

  “A dream of fame,” Maggie said.

  “No.” Belsnor shook his head. “I want to contribute something; I don’t want to be just a consumer, like the rest of you.” His tone was hard and flat and very earnest. “We live in a world created and manufactured from the results of the work of millions of men, most of them dead, virtually none of them known or given any credit. I don’t care if I’m known for what I create; all I care about is having it be worthwhile and useful, with people able to depend on it as something they take for granted in their lives. Like the safety pin. Who knows who created that? But everyone in the goddam galaxy makes use of safety pins, and the inventor—”

  “Safety pins were invented on Crete,” Seth Morley said. “In the fourth or fifth century B.C.”

  Belsnor glared at him. “About one thousand B.C.”

  “So it matters to you when and where they were invented,” Seth Morley said.

  “I came close to producing something one time,” Belsnor said. “A silencing circuit. It would have interrupted the flow of electrons in any given conductor for a range of about fifty feet. As a weapon of defense it would have been valuable. But I couldn’t get the field to propagate for fifty feet; I could only get it functional for one-and-a-half feet. So that was that.” He lapsed into silence, then. Brooding, baleful silence. Withdrawn into himself.

  “We love you anyway,” Maggie said.

  Belsnor raised his head and glared at her.

  “The Deity accepts even that,” Maggie said. “Even an attempt which led nowhere. The Deity knows your motive, and motive is everything.”

  “It wouldn’t matter,” Belsnor said, “if this whole colony, everybody in it, died. None of us contribute anything. We’re nothing more than parasites, feeding off the galaxy. ‘The world will little note or long remember what we do here.’ ”

  Seth Morley said to Maggie, “Our leader. The man who’s going to keep us alive.”

  “I’ll keep you alive,” Belsnor said. “As best I can. That could be my contribution: inventing a device made out of fluid-state circuitry that’ll save us. That’ll spike all the toy cannons.”

  “I don’t think you’re very bright to call something a toy simply because it’s small,” Maggie Walsh said. “That would mean that the Toxilax artificial kidney is a toy.”

  “You would have to call eighty percent of all Interplan ship circuitry toys,” Seth Morley said.

  “Maybe that’s my problem,” Belsnor said wryly. “I can’t tell what’s a toy and what isn’t … which means I can’t tell what’s real. A toy ship is not a real ship. A toy cannon is not a real cannon. But I guess if it can kill—” He pondered. “Perhaps tomorrow I should require everyone to go systematically through the settlement, collecting all the toy buildings, in fact everything from outside, and then we’ll ignite the whole pile and be done with it.”

  “What else has come into the settlement from outside?” Seth Morley inquired.

  “Artificial flies,” Belsnor said. “For one thing.”

  “They take pictures?” Seth asked.

  “No. That’s the artificial bees. The artificial flies fly around and sing.”

  “‘Sing’?” He thought he must have heard wrong.

  “I have one here.” Belsnor rummaged in his pockets and at last brought out a small plastic box. “Hold it to your ear. There’s one in there.”

  “What sort of thing do they sing?” Seth Morley held the box to his ear, listened. He heard it, then, a far-off sweet sound, like divided strings. And, he thought, like many distant wings. “I know that music,” he said, “but I can’t place it.” An indistinct favorite of mine, he realized. From some ancient era.

  “They play what you like,” Maggie Walsh said.

  He recognized it
, now. Granada. “I’ll be goddamed,” he said aloud. “Are you sure it’s a fly that’s doing that?”

  “Look in the box,” Belsnor said. “But be careful—don’t let it out. They’re rare and hard to catch.”

  With great care Seth Morley slid back the lid of the box. He saw within it a dark fly, like a Proxima 6 tape-fly, large and hairy, with beating wings and eyes protruding, composite eyes, such as true flies had. He shut the box, convinced. “Amazing,” he said. “Is it acting as a receiver? Picking up a signal from a central transmitter somewhere on the planet? It’s a radio—is that it?”

  “I took one apart,” Belsnor said. “It’s not a receiver; the music is emitted by a speaker but it emanates from the fly’s works. The signal is created by a miniature generator in the form of an electrical impulse, not unlike a nerve impulse in an organic living creature. There’s a moist element ahead of the generator which alters a complex pattern of conductivity, so a very complex signal can be created. What’s it singing for you?”

  “Granada,” Seth Morley said. He wished he could keep it. The fly would be company for him. “Will you sell it?” he asked.

  “Catch your own.” Belsnor retrieved his fly and placed the box back in his pocket.

  “Is there anything else from outside the settlement?” Seth Morley asked. “Besides the bees, flies, printers and miniature buildings?”

  Maggie Walsh said, “A sort of flea-sized printer. But it can only print one thing; it does it over and over again, grinding out a flood that seems endless.”

  “A print of what?”

  “Of Specktowsky’s Book,” Maggie Walsh said.

  “And that’s it?”

  “That’s all we know about,” Maggie amended. “There may be others unknown to us.” She shot a sharp glance at Belsnor.

  Belsnor said nothing; he had again retracted into his own personal world, for the moment, oblivious to them.

  Seth Morley picked up the abolished miniature building and said, “If the tenches only print duplicates of objects then they didn’t make this. Something with highly-developed technical skills would have had to.”