A Maze Of Death Part 13

"Correct," she said.

"And if it said there was?"

"I already believe it."

Russell, satisfied, said, "So the tench is right. It makes no difference to any of us what it says in answer to a question like that."

"But if it said yes," Maggie said. "then I could be sure."

"You are sure," Seth Morley said.

"Sweet Jesus," Thugg said. "The raft is on fire."

Leaping up they saw flames billowing and leaping; they heard now the crackle of the wood as it heated up, burned, became glowing ash. The six of them sprinted toward the river ... but, Seth Morley realized, we're too late.

Standing on the bank they watched helplessly; the burning raft had begun to drift out into the center of the water. It reached the current and, still engulfed by fire, it drifted downstream, became smaller, became, at last, a spark of yellow fire. And then they could no longer see it.

After a time Ned Russell said, "We shouldn't feel badly. That's the Norse way of celebrating death. The dead Viking was laid on his s.h.i.+eld, on his boat, and the boat was set on fire and sent drifting out to sea."

Meditating, Seth Morley thought, Vikings. A Vikings. A river, and, beyond it, a mystifying building. The river would be the Rhein and the Building would be Walhalla. That would explain why the raft, with Betty Jo Berm's body on it, caught fire and drifted away. Eerie, he thought, and s.h.i.+vered. river, and, beyond it, a mystifying building. The river would be the Rhein and the Building would be Walhalla. That would explain why the raft, with Betty Jo Berm's body on it, caught fire and drifted away. Eerie, he thought, and s.h.i.+vered.

"What's the matter?" Russell asked, seeing his face.

"For a moment," he said, "I thought I understood." But it couldn't be; there had to be another explanation.

The tench, answering questions, would be-he could not remember her name, and then it came to him. Erda. The G.o.ddess of the earth who knew the future. Who answered questions brought to her by Wotan.

And Wotan, he thought, walks among the mortals in disguise. Recognizable only by the fact that he had but one eye. The Wanderer, he is called.

"How's your vision?" he asked Russell. "Twenty-twenty in both eyes?"

Startled, Russell said, "No-actually not, as a matter of fact. Why do you ask?"

"One of his eyes is false," Wade Frazer said. "I've been noticing. The right one is artificial; it sees nothing, but the muscles operate it, moving it as if it were real."

"Is that true?" Seth Morley asked.

"Yes." Russell nodded. "But it's none of your business."

And Wotan, Seth Morley recalled, destroyed the G.o.ds, brought on die Gotterdammerung die Gotterdammerung, by his ambition. What was his ambition? To build the castle of the G.o.ds: Walhalla. Well, Walhalla had been built, all right; it bore the legend Winery. Winery. But it was not a winery. But it was not a winery.

And, at the end, he thought, it will sink into the Rhein and disappear. And the Rheingold will return to the Rhein Maidens.

But that has not happened yet, he reflected.

Specktowsky had not mentioned this this in his Book! in his Book!

Trembling, Glen Belsnor laid the pistol down on the chest of drawers to his right. Before him on the floor, still clutching the great golden sword, lay Tony Dunkelwelt. A tiny flow of blood from his mouth trickled down his cheek and drip-dripped onto the handmade rug which covered the plastic floor.

Having heard the shot, Dr. Babble came running up. Puffing and wheezing he halted at Bert Kosler's body on the porch, turned the withered old body over, examined the sword wound ... then, seeing Glen Belsnor, he entered the room. Together the two of them stood gazing down.

"I shot him," Glen Belsnor said. His ears still rang from the noise of the shot; it had been an ancient lead slug pistol, part of his collection of odds and ends that he carried everywhere he went. He pointed out onto the porch. "You saw what he did to old Bert."

"And he was going to stab you, too?" Babble asked.

"Yes," Glen Belsnor got out his handkerchief and blew his nose; his hand shook and he felt satanically miserable. "What a h.e.l.l of a thing," he said, and heard his voice wobble with grief. "To kill a kid. But Christ-he would have gotten me, then you, and then Mrs. Rockingham." The thought of anyone killing the distinguished old lady ... that, more than anything else, had prompted him to act. He He could have run away; so could Babble. But not Mrs. Rockingham. could have run away; so could Babble. But not Mrs. Rockingham.

Babble said, "Obviously, it was Susie Smart's death that made him psychotic, that brought on his break with reality. He undoubtedly blamed himself for it." He stooped, picked up the sword. "I wonder where he got this. I've never seen it before."

"He always was on the verge of a breakdown," Glen Belsnor said. "With those G.o.ddam 'trances' he went into. He probably heard the voice of G.o.d telling him to kill Bert."

"Did he say anything? Before you killed him?"

"'I killed the Form Destroyer.' That's what he said. And then he pointed at Bert's body and said, 'See?' Or something like that." He shrugged weakly. "Well, Bert was very old. Very much decayed. The handiwork of the Form Destroyer was all over him, G.o.d knows. Tony seemed to recognize me. But he was completely insane anyhow. It was all c.r.a.p he was saying, and then he went for the sword."

They were both silent for a time.

"Four dead now," Babble said. "Maybe more."

"Why do you say 'maybe more'?"

Babble said, "I'm thinking of those who left the settlement this morning. Maggie, the new man Russell, Seth and Mary Morley-"

"They're probably all right." But he did not believe his own words. "No," he say savagely, "they're probably all dead. Maybe all seven of them."

"Try to calm down," Babble said; he seemed a little afraid. "Is that gun of yours still loaded?"

"Yes." Glen Belsnor picked it up, emptied it, handed the sh.e.l.ls to Babble. "You can keep them. No matter what happens I'm not going to shoot anyone else. Not even to save one of the rest of us or all of the rest of us." He made his way to a chair, seated himself, clumsily got out a cigarette and lit up.

"If there's a court of inquiry," Babble said, "I'll be glad to testify that Tony Dunkelwelt was psychiatrically insane. But I can't testify to his killing old Bert, or attacking you. I mean to say, I have only your verbal report for that." He added quickly, "But of course I believe you."

"There won't be any inquiry." He knew it was an absolute verity; there was no doubt in him on that score. "Except," he said, "a posthumous one. Which won't matter to us."

"Are you keeping a log of some sort?" Babble asked.

"No."

"You should."

"Okay," he snarled, "I will. But just leave me alone, G.o.ddam it!" He glared at Babble, panting with anger. "Lay off!"

"Sorry," Babble said in a small voice, and shrank perceptibly away.

Glen Belsnor said, "You and I and Mrs. Rockingham may be the only ones alive." He felt it intuitively, in a rush of comprehension.

"Perhaps we should round her up and stay with her. So that nothing happens to her." Babble cringed his way to the door.

"Okay." He nodded irritably. "You know what I'm going to do? You go stay with Mrs. Rockingham; I'm going to go over Russell's possessions and his noser. Ever since you and Morley brought him around last night I've been wondering about him. He seems odd. Did you get that impression?"

"It's just that he's new here."

"I didn't feel that way about Ben Tallchief. Or the Morleys." He got abruptly to his feet. "You know what occurred to me? Maybe he picked up the aborted signal from the satellite. Maybe he picked up the aborted signal from the satellite. I want to get a good look at his transmitter and receiver." Back to what I know, he pondered. Where I don't feel so alone. I want to get a good look at his transmitter and receiver." Back to what I know, he pondered. Where I don't feel so alone.

Leaving Babble, he made his way toward the area in which all the nosers lay parked. He did not look back.

The signal from the satellite, he reasoned, short as it was, may have brought him here. He may have been already in the area, not on his way here but preparing a flyby. And yet he had transfer papers. The h.e.l.l with it, he thought, and began taking apart the radio equipment of Russell's noser.

Fifteen minutes later he knew the answer. Standard receiver and transmitter, exactly like the others in all their other nosers. Russell would not have been able to pick up the satellite's signal because it was a flea-signal. Only the big receiver on Delmak-O could have monitored it. Russell had come in on the automatic pilot, like everybody else. And in the way that everybody else arrived.

So much for that, he said to himself.

Most of Russell's possessions remained aboard the noser; he had only carried his personal articles from the noser to his living quarters. A big box of books. Everybody had books. Glen Belsnor idly tossed the books about, prowling deep in the carton. Textbook after textbook on economics; that figured. Microtapes of several of the great cla.s.sics, including Tolkien, Milton, Virgil, Homer. All the epics, he realized. Plus War and Peace War and Peace, as well as tapes of John Dos Pa.s.sos' U.S.A. U.S.A. I always meant to read that, he said to himself. I always meant to read that, he said to himself.

Nothing about the books and tapes struck him as odd. Except- No copy of Specktowsky's Book.

Maybe Russell, like Maggie Walsh, had memorized it.

Maybe not.

There was one cla.s.s of people who did not carry a copy of Specktowsky's Book-did not carry it because they were not allowed to read it. The ostriches shut up in the planetwide aviary at Terra: those who lived in the sandpile because they had crumbled under the enormous psychological pressure suffered while emigrating. Since all the other planets of the Sol System were uninhabitable, emigration meant a trip to another star system ... and the insidious beginning, for many, of the s.p.a.ce illness of loneliness and uprootedness.

Maybe he recovered, Glen Belsnor reflected, and they let him loose. But they then would have made sure he owned a copy of Specktowsky's Book; that would be the time when one really needed it.

He got away, he said to himself.

But why would he come here?

And then he thought, The Interplan West base, where General Treaton operates, is on Terra, tangent to the aviary. What a coincidence. The place, evidently, where all the non-living organisms on Delmak-O had been constructed. As witness the inscription in the tiny replica of the Building.

In a sense it fits together, he decided. But in another sense it adds up to zero. Plain, flat zero.

These deaths, he said to himself, they're making me insane, too. Like they did poor nutty Tony Dunkelwelt. But suppose: a psychological lab, operated by Interplan West, needing aviary patients as subjects. They recruit a batch-those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds would, too-and one of them is Ned Russell. He's still insane, but they can teach him; the insane can learn, too. They give him a job and send him out to do it-send him here.

And then a gross, vivid, terrifying thought came to him. Suppose we're all ostriches from the aviary Suppose we're all ostriches from the aviary, he said to himself. Suppose we don't know; Interplan West cut a memory conduit in our friggin' brains. That would explain our inability to function as a group. That's why we can't really even talk clearly to one another. The insane can learn, but one thing they can't do is to function collectively ... except, perhaps, as a mob. But that is not really functioning in the sane sense; that is merely ma.s.s insanity.

So we are are an experiment, then, he thought. I now know what we wanted to know. And it might explain why I have that tattoo stuck away on my right instep, that Persus 9. an experiment, then, he thought. I now know what we wanted to know. And it might explain why I have that tattoo stuck away on my right instep, that Persus 9.

But all this was a great deal to base on one slim datum: the fact that Russell did not possess a copy of Specktowsky's Book.

Maybe it's in his G.o.ddam living quarters, he thought all at once. Christ, of course; it's there. there.

He departed from the a.s.sembly of nosers; ten minutes later he reached the common and found himself stepping up onto the porch. The porch where Susie Smart had died-opposite to the porch where Tony Dunkelwelt and old Bert had died.

We must bury them! he realized.-And shrank from it.

But first: I'll look at Russell's remaining stuff.

The door was locked.

With a prybar-taken from his rolypoly aggregate of worldly goods, his great black crowish conglomeration of junk and treasures-he forced open the door.

There, in plain sight, on the rumpled bed, lay Russell's wallet and papers. His transfer, his everything else, back to his birth certificate; Glen Belsnor pawed through them, conscious that here he had something. The chaos attendant on Susie's death had confused them all; undoubtedly Russell had not meant to leave these here. Unless he was not accustomed to carrying them ... and the ostriches at the aviary did not carry identification of any sort.

At the door appeared Dr. Babble. In a voice shrill with panic he said, "I-can't find Mrs. Rockingham."

"The briefing room? The cafeteria?" She may have gone off for a walk, he thought. But he knew better. Roberta Rockingham could scarcely walk; her cane was essential to her, due to a long-term circulatory ailment. "I'll help look," he grunted; he and Babble hurried from the porch and across the common, hiking aimlessly; Glen Belsnor stopped, realizing that they were simply running in fear. "We have to think," he gasped. "Wait a minute." Where the h.e.l.l might she be? he asked himself. "That fine old woman," he said in frenzy and in despair. "She never did any harm to anyone in her life. G.o.ddam them, whoever they are."

Babble nodded glumly.

She had been reading. Hearing a noise, she glanced up. And saw a man, unfamiliar to her, standing in the entrance-way of her small, neatly-arranged room.

"Yes?" she said, politely lowering her microtape scanner. "Are you a new member of the settlement? I haven't seen you before, have I?"

"No, Mrs. Rockingham," he said. His voice was kind and very pleasant, and he wore a leather uniform, complete with huge leather gloves. His face gave off a near radiance ... or perhaps her gla.s.ses had steamed up, she wasn't sure. His hair, cut short, did gleam a little, she was positive of that. What a nice expression he has, she declared to herself. So thoughtful, as if he has thought and done many wonderful things.

"Would you like a little bourbon and water?" she asked. Toward afternoon she generally had one drink; it eased the perpetual ache in her legs. Today, however, they could enjoy the Old Crow bourbon a little earlier.

"Thank you," the man said. Tall, and very slender, he stood at the doorway, not coming fully in. It was as if he were in some way attached to the outside; he could not fully leave it and would soon go back to it entirely. I wonder, she thought, could he be a Manifestation, as the theological people of this enclave call it? She peered at him in an effort to distinguish him more clearly, but the dust on her gla.s.ses-or whatever it was-obscured him; she could not get a really clear view.

"I wonder if you might get it," she said, pointing. "There'a a drawer in that somewhat shabby little table by the bed. You'll find the bottle of Old Crow in there, and three gla.s.ses. Oh dear; I don't have any soda. Can you enjoy it with just bottled tapwater? And no ice?"

"Yes," he said, and walked lightly across her room. He had on tall boots, she observed. How very attractive.

"What is your name?" she inquired.

"Sergeant Ely Nichols." He opened the table drawer, got out the bourbon and two of the gla.s.ses. "Your colony has been relieved. I was sent here to pick you up and fly you home. From the start they were aware of the malfunctioning of the satellite's tape-transmission."

"Then it's over?" she said, filled with joy.

"All over," he said. He filled the two gla.s.ses with bourbon and water, brought her hers, seated himself in a straight-backed chair facing her. He was smiling.

11.

Glen Belsnor, searching futilely for Roberta Rockingham, saw a small number of people trudging toward the settlement. Those who had gone off: Frazer and Thugg, Maggie Walsh, the new man Russell, Mary and Seth Morley ... they were all there. Or were they?

His heart laboring, Belsnor said. "I don't see Betty Jo Berm. Is she injured? You left her, you b.a.s.t.a.r.ds?" He stared at them, feeling his jaw tremble with impotent anger. "Is that correct?"

"She's dead," Seth Morley said.

"How?" he said. Dr. Babble came up beside him; the two of them waited together as the four men and two women approached.

Seth Morley said, "She drowned herself." He looked around. "Where's that kid, that Dunkelwold?"