Robert Silverberg Read online

  "It's still aboard the ship," Muller answered. "It can wait."

  Marta was chewing at the corner of her lower lip. He took her by the hand and they rode the slidewalk out of the terminal room to the transportation pods. Go on, he thought. Tell me that you don't feel well. Tell me that mysteriously you've come down with something in the last ten minutes.

  "Why did you cut your hair?" he asked.

  "It's a woman's right. Don't you like it this way?"

  "Not as much." They entered the pod. "Longer, bluer, it was like the sea on a stormy day." The pod shot off on a bath of quicksilver. She kept far to her side, hunched against the hatch. "And the makeup, too. I'm sorry, Marta. I wish I could like it."

  "I was prettying for your homecoming."

  "Why are you doing that with your lip?"

  "What am I doing?"

  "Nothing," he said. "Here we are. The room is booked already?"

  "In your name, yes."

  They went in. He put his hand on the registration plate. It flashed green and they headed for the liftshaft. The inn began in the fifth sublevel of the starport and went down for fifty levels; their room was near the bottom. Choice location, he thought. The bridal suite, maybe. They stepped into a room with kaleidoscopic hangings and a wide bed with all accessories. The roomglow was tactfully dim. Muller thought of months of woman cubes and a savage throbbing rose in his groin. He knew he had no need to explain any of that to Marta. She moved past him, into the personal room, and was in there a long while. Muller undressed.

  She came out nude. All the tricky makeup was gone, and her hair was blue again.

  "Like the sea," she said. "I'm sorry I couldn't grow it back in there. The room wasn't programmed for it."

  "It's much better now," he told her.

  They were ten meters apart. She stood at an angle to him, and he studied the contours of her frail but tough form, the small up-jutting breasts, the boyish buttocks, the elegant thighs.

  "The Hydrans," he said, "have either five sexes or none, I'm not sure which. That's a measure of how well I got to know them while I was there. However they do it, I think people have more fun. Why are you standing over there, Marta?"

  Silently she came toward him. He put one arm around her shoulders and cupped his other hand over one of her breasts. At other times when he did that he felt the nipple pebble-hard with desire against his hand. Not now. She quivered a little, like a shy mare wanting to bolt. He put his lips to her lips, and they were dry, taut, hostile. When he ran his hand along the fine line of her jaw she seemed to shudder. He drew her down and they sat side by side on the bed. Her hand reached for him, almost unwillingly.

  He saw the pain in her eyes.

  She rolled away from him, her head snapping back hard onto the pillow, and he watched her face writhe with some barely suppressed agony. Then she took his hands in hers and tugged him toward her. Her knees came up and her thighs opened.

  "Take me, Dick," she said stagily. "Right now!"

  "What's the hurry?"

  She tried to force him onto her, into her. He wasn't having it that way. He pulled free of her and sat up. She was crimson to the shoulders, and tears glistened on her face. He knew as much of the truth now as he needed to know, but he had to ask.

  "Tell me what's wrong, Marta."

  "I don't know."

  "You're acting like you're sick."

  "I think I am."

  "When did you start feeling ill?"

  "I—oh, Dick, why all these questions? Please, love, come close."

  "You don't want me to. Not really. You're being kind."

  "I'm—trying to make you happy, Dick. It—it hurts so much—so —much."

  "What does?"

  She wouldn't answer. She gestured wantonly and tugged at him again. He sprang from the bed.

  "Dick, Dick, I warned you not to go! I said I had some precog.

  And that other things could happen to you there besides getting killed."

  "Tell me what hurts you."

  "I can't. I-don't know."

  "That's a lie."

  "When did it start?"

  "This morning. When I got up."

  "That's another lie. I have to have the truth!"

  "Make love to me, Dick. I can't wait much longer. I—"

  "You what?"

  "Can't-stand-"

  "Can't stand what?"

  "Nothing. Nothing." She was off the bed too, rubbing against him, a cat in heat, shivering, muscles leaping in her face, eyes wild.

  He caught her wrists and ground the bones together.

  "Tell me what it is you can't stand much longer, Marta."

  She gasped. He squeezed harder. She swung back, head lolling, breasts thrust toward the ceiling. Her body was oiled now with sweat. Her nakedness maddened and inflamed him.

  "Tell me," he said. "You can't stand-"

  "—being near you," she said.

  SIX

  Within the maze the air was somehow warmer and sweeter. The walls must cut off the winds, Rawlins thought. He walked carefully, listening to the voice at his ear.

  Turn left ... three paces ... put your right foot beside the black stripe on the pavement ... pivot ... turn left ... jour paces ... ninety-degree turn to the right ... immediately make a ninety-degree turn to the right again.

  It was like a children's street game—step on a crack, break your mother's back. The stakes were higher here, though. He moved cautiously, feeling death nipping at his heels. What sort of people would build a place like this? Ahead an energy flare spurted across the path. The computer called off the timing for him. One, two, three, four, five, GO! Rawlins went.

  Safe.

  On the far side he halted flatfooted, and looked back. Board-man was keeping pace with him, unslowed by age. Boardman waved and winked. He went through the patterns, too. One, two, three, jour, five, GO! Boardman crossed the place of the energy flare.

  "Should we stop here for a while?" Rawlins asked. "Don't be patronizing to the old man, Ned. Keep moving. I'm not tired yet."

  "We have a tough one up ahead."

  "Let's take it, then."

  Rawlins could not help looking at the bones. Dry skeletons ages old, and some bodies that were not old at all. Beings of many races had perished here.

  What if I die in the next ten minutes?

  Bright lights were flashing now, on and off many times a second. Boardman, five meters behind him, became an eerie figure moving in disconnected strides. Rawlins passed his own hand before his face to see the jerky movements. It was as though every other fraction of a second had simply been punched out of his awareness.

  The computer told him: Walk ten paces and halt. One. Two. Three. Walk ten paces and halt. One. Two. Three. Walk ten paces and halt. One. Two. Three. Proceed quickly to end of ramp.

  Rawlins could not remember what would happen to him if he failed to keep to the proper timing. Here in Zone H the nightmares were so thick that he could not keep them straight in his mind. Was this the place where a ton of stone fell on the unwary? Where the walls came together? Where a cobweb-dainty bridge delivered victims to a lake of fire?

  His estimated lifespan at this point was two hundred five years. He wanted to have most of those years. I am too uncomplicated to die yet, Ned Rawlins thought.

  He danced to the computer's tune, past the lake of fire, past the clashing walls.

  2

  Something with long teeth perched on the lintel of the door ahead. Carefully Charles Boardman unslung the gun from his backpack and cut in the proximity-responsive target finder. He keyed it for thirty kilograms of mass and downward, at fifty meters. "I've got it," he told Rawlins, and fired.

  The energy bolt splashed against the wall. Streaks of shimmering green sprouted along the rich purple. The beast leaped, limbs outstretched in a final agony, and fell. From somewhere came three small scavengers that began to rip it to pieces.

  Boardman chuckled. It didn't take much skill to hunt with proximity-responsi
ves, he had to admit. But it was a long time since he had hunted at all. When he was thirty, he had spent a long week in the Sahara Preserve as the youngest of a party of eight businessmen and government consultants on a hunt. He had done it for the political usefulness of making the trip. He had hated it all: the steaming air in his nostrils, the blaze of the sun, the tawny beasts dead against the sand, the boasting, the wanton slaughter. At thirty one is not very tolerant of the mindless sports of the middle-aged. Yet he had stayed, because he thought it would be useful to him to become friendly with these men. It had been useful. He had never gone hunting again. But this was different, even with proximity-responsives. This was no sport.

  3

  Images played on a golden screen bracketed to a wall near the inner end of Zone H. Rawlins saw his father's face take form, coalesce with an underlying pattern of bars and crosses, burst into flame. The screen was externally primed; what it showed was in the eye of the beholder. The drones, passing this point, had seen only the blank screen. Rawlins watched the image of a girl appear. Maribeth Chambers, sixteen years old, sophomore in Our Lady of Mercies High School, Rockford, Illinois. Maribeth Chambers smiled shyly and began to remove her clothes. Her hair was silken and soft, a cloud of gold; her eyes were blue, her lips were full and moist. She unhinged her breast-binders and revealed two firm upthrust white globes tipped with dots of flame. They were high and close together, as though no gravity worked on them, and the valley between them was six inches deep and a sixteenth of an inch in breadth. Maribeth Chambers blushed and bared the lower half of her body. She wore small garnets set in the dimples just above her plump pink buttocks. A crucifix of ivory dangled from a golden chain around her hips. Rawlins tried not to look at the screen. The computer directed his feet; he shuffled along obediently.

  "I am the Resurrection and the Life," said Maribeth Chambers in a husky, passionate voice.

  She beckoned with the tips of three fingers. She gave him a bedroom wink. She crooned sweet obscenities.

  Step around in back here, big boy! Let me show you a good time….

  She giggled. She wriggled. She heaved her shoulders and made her breasts ring like tolling bells.

  Her skin turned deep green. Her eyes slid about in her face. Her lower lip stretched forth like a shovel. Her thighs began to melt. Patterns of flame danced on the screen. Rawlins heard deep throbbing ponderous chords from an invisible organ. He listened to the whispering of the brain that guided him and went past the screen unharmed.

  4

  The screen showed abstract patterns: a geometry of power, rigid marching lines and frozen figures. Charles Boardman paused to admire it for a moment. Then he moved on.

  5

  A forest of whirling knives near the inner border of Zone H.

  6

  The heat grew strangely intense. One had to tiptoe over the pavement. This was troublesome because none who had passed this way before had experienced it. Did the route vary? Could the city introduce variations? How hot would it get? Where would the zone of warmth end? Did cold lie beyond? Would they live to reach Zone E? Was Richard Muller doing this to prevent them from entering?

  7

  Maybe he recognizes Boardman and is trying to kill him. There is that possibility. Muller has every reason to hate Boardman, and he has had no chance to undergo social adjustment. Maybe I should move faster and open some space between Boardman and myself. It seems to be getting hotter. On the other hand, he would accuse me of being cowardly. And disloyal.

  Maribeth Chambers would never have done those things.

  Do nuns still shave their heads?

  8

  Boardman found the distortion screen deep inside Zone G perhaps the worst of all. He was not afraid of the dangers; Marshall was the only man who had failed to get past the screen safely. He was afraid of entering a place where the evidence of his senses did not correspond to the real universe. Boardman depended on his senses. He was wearing his third set of retinas. You can make no meaningful evaluations of the universe without the confidence that you are seeing it clearly.

  Now he was within the field of the distortion screen.

  Parallel lines met here. The triangular figures emblazoned on the moist, quivering walls were constructed entirely of obtuse angles. A river ran sideways through the valley. The stars were quite close, and the moons orbited one another.

  What we now must do is close our eyes and not be deceived.

  Left foot. Right foot. Left foot. Right foot. Move to the left slightly—slide your foot. More. More. A trifle more. Back toward the right. That's it Start walking again.

  Forbidden fruit tempted him. All his life he had tried hard to see clearly. The lure of distortions was irresistible. Boardman halted, planting each foot firmly. If you hope to get out of this, he told himself, you will keep your eyes closed. If you open your eyes you will be misled and go to your death. You have no right to die foolishly here after so many men have struggled so hard to teach you how to survive.

  Boardman remained quite still. The silent voice of the computer, sounding a little waspish, tried to prod him on.

  "Wait," said Boardman quietly. "I can look around a little if I don't move. That's the important thing, not to move. You can't get into trouble if you don't move."

  The ship's brain reminded Mm. of the geyser of flame that had sent Marshall to his death.

  Boardman opened his eyes.

  He was careful not to move. All about him he saw the negation of geometry. This was the inside of the Klein bottle, looking out. Disgust rose like a green column within him.

  You are eighty years old and you know how the universe should look. Close your eyes now, C.B. Close your eyes and move along. You're taking undue risks.

  First he sought Ned Rawlins. The boy was twenty meters ahead of him, shuffling slowly past the screen. Eyes closed? Of course. All of them. Ned was an obedient boy. Or a frightened one. He wants to live through this, and he'd rather not see how the universe looks through a distortion screen. I'd like to have had a son like that. But I'd have changed him by this time.

  Boardman began to lift his right leg, checked himself, reimplanted it on the pavement. Just ahead, pulsations of golden light leaped in the air, taking now the form of a swan, now the form of a tree. Ned Rawlins' left shoulder rose too high. His back was humped. One leg moved forward and the other moved backward. Through golden mists Boardman saw the corpse of Marshall stapled to the wall. Marshall's eyes were wide open. Were there no bacteria of decay on Lemnos? Looking into those eyes Boardman saw his own curving reflection, all nose, no mouth. He closed his eyes.

  The computer, relieved, directed him onward.

  9

  A sea of blood. A cup of lymph.

  10

  To die, not having loved—

  11

  This is the gateway to Zone F. I am now leaving death's other kingdom. Where is my passport? Do I need a visa? I have nothing to declare. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

  3

  A chill wind blowing out of tomorrow.

  7

  The boys camped in F were supposed to come out and meet us and lead us through. I hope they don't bother. We can make it without them. We just have to get past the screen, and we're all right.

  5

  I've dreamed this route so often. And now I hate it, even though it's beautiful. You have to admit that: it's beautiful. And probably it looks most beautiful just before it kills you.

  3

  Maribeth's thighs have small puckers in the flesh. She will be fat before she's thirty.

  10

  You do all sorts of things in a career. I could have stopped long ago. I have never read Rousseau. I have not had time for Donne. I know nothing of Kant. If I live I will read them now. I make this vow, being of sound mind and body and eighty years of age, I Ned Rawlins will I Richard Muller will read I will III will read I Charles Boardman

  13

  14

  On the far side of the gateway Rawlins stoppe
d short and asked the computer if it was safe for him to squat down and rest. The brain said that it was. Gingerly, Rawlins lowered himself, rocked on his heels a moment, touched his knee to the cool pebble-textured pavement. He looked back. Behind him, colossal blocks of stone, set without mortar and fitted to a perfect truing, were piled fifty meters high, flanking a tall narrow aperture through which the solid form of Charles Boardman now was passing. Boardman looked sweaty and flustered. Rawlins found that fascinating. He had never seen the old man's smugness pierced before. But they had never come through this maze before, either.

  Rawlins himself was none too steady. Metabolic poisons boiled in the tubes and channels of his body. He was drenched with perspiration so thoroughly that his clothing was working overtime to get rid of it, distilling the moisture and volatilizing the substratum of chemical compounds. It was too early to rejoice. Brewster had died here in Zone F, thinking that his troubles were over once he got past the dangers of G. Well, they were.

  "Resting?" Boardman asked. His voice came out thin and unfocussed.

  "Why not? I've been working hard, Charles." Rawlins grinned unconvincingly. "So have you. The computer says it's safe to stay here a while. I'll make room."

  Boardman came alongside and squatted. Rawlins had to steady him as he balanced before kneeling.

  Rawlins said, "Muller came this way alone and made it."

  "Muller was always an extraordinary man."

  "How do you think he did it?"

  "Why don't you ask him?"

  "I mean to," Rawlins said. "Perhaps by this time tomorrow I'll be talking to him."

  "Perhaps. We should go on now."

  "If you say so."

  "They'll be coming out to meet us soon. They should have fixes on us by now. We must be showing up on their mass detectors. Up, Ned. Up."