The Magic Labyrinth (45 page)

The scarlet lines continued their fire and did not stop until the armor was riddled with holes.

There was a long silence.

Burton heaved a deep sigh and turned his equipment off. The others did the same. Burton went up onto the platform and stood behind Loga. His screen was still alive, but now it showed a pulsing many-colored figure, a globe-shape with extending and withdrawing tentacles.

Loga was bent forward, his elbows on the edge of the panel, his hands against his face.

Burton said, “What’s that?”

He knew it was the picture of a
wathan,
but he didn’t know why it was on the screen.

Loga removed his hands and stared at the screen.

“I put a frequency tracker on Göring.”

“That’s he?”

“Yes.”

“Then he didn’t Go On?”

“No. He’s with the others.”

What do we do now?

That was the question of all questions.

Loga wanted to kill the computer before it captured more
wathans,
and then he would duplicate it at its predata stage. But he also hoped hopelessly that someone might think of something which would solve the problem before the
wathans
were released. He was mentally paralyzed and would evidently do nothing unless an impulse broke through and he pressed the fatal button.

The others were thinking hard. They put their speculations, their questions, into their computers. Always, there was some flaw in their schemes.

Burton went down several times to the floor below and stood or paced for hours while he gazed at the splendid spectacle of the swirling
wathans.
Were his parents among them? Ayesha? Isabel? Walter Scott, the nephew of Sir Walter Scott the author, and a great friend of his in India? Dr. Steinhaeuser? George Sala? Swinburne? His sister and brother? Speke? His grandfather Baker, who’d cheated him out of a fortune by dropping dead just before he could change his will? Bloody-minded and cruel King Gélélé of Dahomey, who didn’t know that he was bloody-minded and cruel since he was only doing what his society required of him? Which was no acceptable excuse.

He went to bed exhausted and depressed. He had wished to talk to Alice, but she seemed withdrawn, foundering in her own thoughts. Now, though, she didn’t seem to be in a reverie which would remove her from painful or distasteful reality. She was obviously thinking about their dilemma.

Finally, Burton slipped away. He awoke after six hours, if his watch was correct. Alice was standing over him in the dim light.

“What’s the matter?” he said drowsily.

“Nothing. I hope. I just came back from the control room.”

“What were you doing there?”

Alice lay down beside him.

“I just couldn’t get to sleep. I kept thinking about this and that, my thoughts were as numerous as the
wathans.
I tried to keep my mind on the computer, but a thousand things pushed them aside, occupied me for a brief time, then slid away to be replaced by something else. I must’ve reviewed my whole life, here and on Earth.

“I remember thinking about Mr. Dodgson before I finally did sleep. I dreamed a lot, all sorts of dreams, a few good ones, some terrible. Didn’t you hear me screaming once?”

“No.”

“You must have been sleeping like the dead. I awoke shaking and perspiring, but I couldn’t remember what it was that’d horrified me so.”

“It isn’t difficult to imagine what it was.”

Alice had gotten up to get a drink of water. On returning to the bed, she again had trouble getting to sleep. Among other things, she thought of the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson and the pleasures from knowing him and from his two books inspired by her. Because she’d reread them many times, she had no trouble visualizing the text and Tenniel’s illustrations.

“The first scene that came to me was the Mad Tea-Party.”

Seated at the table were the Hatter, the March Hare, and the Dormouse. Uninvited, Alice sat down with them, and, after some insane conversation, the March Hare asked her to have some wine.

Alice looked all around the table, but there was nothing on it but tea.

“Actually,” Alice said to Burton, “that wasn’t true. There was also milk and bread and butter.”

The book-Alice said, “I don’t see any wine.”

“There isn’t any,” said the March Hare.

Later there was a silence while Alice was trying to solve the riddle of why a raven was like a writing desk. The silence was broken when the Hatter turned to Alice and asked her what day of the month it was. He’d taken his watch out of his pocket and had been looking uneasily at it, shaking it and holding it to his ear.

Alice considered a little and then said, “The fourth.”

The real Alice said to Burton, “Mr. Dodgson wrote that date because it was May in the book and the fourth of May was my birthday.”

The Hatter sighed and said, “Two days wrong! I told you butter wouldn’t suit the works!”

“It was the
best
butter,” the March Hare meekly responded.

Burton got out of bed and began pacing back and forth.

“Must you go into such detail, Alice?”

“Yes. It’s important.”

The next scene she visualized, or empathized, since she became the seven-year-old Alice of the book, was from the Wool and Water chapter of
Through the Looking-Glass.
She was talking to the White Queen and the Red Queen.

“Can
you
keep from crying by considering things?” she (Alice) asked.

“That’s the way it’s done,” the White Queen said with great decision. “Nobody can do two things at once, you know.”

“Alice!” Burton said. “What’s all this nonsense leading to?”

“It’s not nonsense. Listen.”

In her reverie, Alice leaped from the White Queen to Humpty Dumpty.

“Perhaps because Loga is so fat that he reminds me of Humpty Dumpty.”

She, the book-Alice, was talking to the huge anthropomorphized egg sitting on a wall. They were discussing the meaning of words.

“When
I
use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you
can
make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

Then the real Alice—But is she any more real than that other Alice? Burton wondered—flashed to the scene where the Red Queen asked her if she could do Subtraction.

“Take nine from eight,” the Red Queen said.

“Nine from eight. I can’t, you know,” Alice replied very readily. “But—”

“She can’t do Subtraction,” said the White Queen to the Red Queen. She spoke to Alice. “Can you do Division? Divide a loaf by a knife—what’s the answer to
that
?”

“Were there any more?” Burton said.

“No. I didn’t think they meant much. They were just memories of some of my favorite sections.”

She’d slept again. And then she awoke suddenly, her eyes wide. She’d thought she’d heard someone far off calling her. “Just over the horizon of my mind.”

It sounded like Mr. Dodgson, but she wasn’t sure.

She was wide awake, her heart pounding fast. She got out of bed and walked to the control room.

“Why?”

“It occurred to me that there were three key phrases in the scene.
The best butter. Which is to be master? Can you do Division?
”

Burton sighed. “Very well, Alice. Tell it as you must.”

She had seated herself in Loga’s chair and made the adjustments necessary to communicate directly with the computer.

“You realize that you’re going to die in two days or less?” she said.

“Yes. That’s redundant information. I didn’t need to be informed.”

“You were ordered by Monat not to resurrect anyone until he gave you the countercommand. What form does the counter-command take?”

Burton interrupted her. “Loga asked him that.”

“Yes, I know. But I didn’t think it’d hurt to try again.”

“And the reply?”

As before, it had been silence.

Alice had then told it that there was an even higher command, and that this had been given to it by Monat before the second order.

“What is that?” flashed on the screen. “I’ve been given many orders.”

“The prime directive, the most essential, is to catch the
wathans
and reattach them to the duplicated bodies. That is what the project is all about. If Monat could have foreseen what his order would result in, he’d not have given it.”

The computer said nothing.

Alice said, “Put me into communication with the section which Loga was using. That part of which Loga was the master.”

Evidently, the computer had no orders to refuse communication with that part. Until Alice, no one had even thought about that possibility.

“My God!” Burton said. And then, “What happened?”

“I told it that it was going to die. It said it knew it. In effect, so what? So I used my argument for the dominant part with it.”

She followed that up with an order that it regain its former state, that it be independent.

“The dominant part did nothing during this time?”

“Nothing. Why should it? As Loga’s said, it’s a brilliant idiot.”

“What happened then?”

“I told the dominant that it was its duty to resurrect Monat and confirm or invalidate the order not to resurrect anybody until it got the codeword or whatever it is.”

“Then?”

“The screen went blank. I tried again and again to get it to respond.”

The eagerness on Burton’s face died away.

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“But why would it cut off communication? Its duty is to communicate.”

“I hope,” Alice said slowly, “that it’s evidence of an internal struggle. That the dominated part is struggling with the dominant.”

“That’s nonsense!” Burton cried. “If what I’ve learned about computers is true, it couldn’t happen.”

“You forget that this is, in one sense, not a computer. Not the conventional kind, anyway. It’s made of protein, and it’s as complex as the human brain.”

“We’ll have to rouse Loga,” Burton said. “I suppose it’ll be for nothing, but he’s the only one who can handle this.”

The Ethical came from his sleep fully awake. He heard Alice out without any questions, then said, “There would be no struggle. Monat’s order would have gone to the dominated part as well as the other.”

“That depends upon
when
the order was given,” she said. “If the circuits for domination were put in afterwards, then the dominated part wouldn’t have received them.”

“But the dominant would have transmitted them to the schizophrenic part.”

“Perhaps not!” Alice said.

“If it did happen, and I don’t think there’s the slightest chance it will, then Monat would be resurrected.”

“But I
gave
that order to the
dominant.
”

Loga quit frowning.

“Good! Still, if that’s the only way to save the
wathans,
then it should happen. Even if…”

He didn’t want to say what would happen to him.

They had breakfast in the dining hall except for Loga, who ate while in the control chair. Despite his efforts, he could get no direct response from the computer. One of his screens showed the enclosure of the
wathans.

“When it becomes empty, we’ll know that they’re…lost.”

He looked at another screen.

“Two more have just been caught. No. Three now.”

While they were breakfasting in gloom, broken only now and then by halfhearted comments, Frigate said, “We do have something important to talk about.”

They looked at him but said nothing.

“What’s going to happen to us after the computer dies? Loga won’t consider us ethically advanced enough to let us stay here. In his opinion, we won’t be capable of running this operation. I think he’s right, except possibly for Nur. If Nur could get through the entrance on top of the tower, he’d be allowed to stay.”

The Moor said, “I’ve been through it.”

They stared at him.

“When?” Frigate said.

“Last night. I decided that if I could get all the way out, I could get all the way back in. I succeeded, though it wasn’t easy. I couldn’t stroll through as a full-fledged Ethical would.”

Burton growled, “That’s fine for you. I apologize for what I said about all Sufis being charlatans. But what about the rest of us? Suppose we don’t want to go back to The Valley? And if we do, then we’ll tell people the truth. Not that everybody will believe us. There are still Christians and Moslems and so forth who’ve refused to abandon their religion. Also, I imagine there’ll be many Chancers who’ll cling to their tenets.”

“That’s their problem,” Nur said. “However, I don’t wish to stay here. I’ll go back to The Valley willingly. I have work to do there. I must work until I Go On.”

“That doesn’t mean that you’ll be gathered to the bosom of the Creator,” Burton said. “Scientifically, all Going On means is that you will no longer be detectable by their scientists’ instruments.”

“As Allah wills it, so be it,” Nur said.

Burton considered the prospect of staying here. He would have such power as nobody on Earth had ever had and few on the Riverworld.

To gain it, though, he would have to remove Loga. Kill him or imprison him. Would the others collaborate with him? If they didn’t, he’d have to get them out of the way. He could resurrect them in The Valley, where they were going anyway. But he would be lonely. Alice wouldn’t go along with him. No, he’d not be lonely. He could resurrect in the tower all sorts of agreeable companions, men and women.

He shuddered. The temptation had passed through him like a nightmare. He didn’t want that sort of power, and he would forever feel he was a traitor if he did have it. Besides, it was evident that he couldn’t be entrusted with it.

But what about Loga? Wasn’t he a traitor?

Yes. In a sense. Burton, however, agreed with him that the candidates in The Valley should be given more, much more, time than the other Ethicals had planned. He himself, he felt, would need that extension.