“Yes. And I wish you wouldn’t smirk when you say it.”
“I’m sorry, Charles. But I feel so damned queasy about deceiving him.”
“We need him.”
“Yes. But a man who’s suffered so much already—”
“We need him.”
“All right, Charles.”
“I need you, too,” Boardman said. “If I could do this myself, I would. But if he saw me, he’d finish me. In his eyes I’m a monster. It’s the same with anyone else connected with his past career. But you’re different. He might be able to trust you. You’re young, you look so damned virtuous, and you’re the son of a good friend of his. You can get through to him.”
“And fill him up with lies so we can trick him.”
Boardman closed his eyes. He seemed to be containing himself with an effort.
“Stop it, Ned.”
“Go on. Tell me what I do after I’ve introduced myself.”
“Build a friendship with him. Take your time about it. Make him come to depend on your visits.”
“What if I can’t stand being with him?”
“Conceal it. That’s the hardest part, I know.”
“The hardest part is the lying, Charles.”
“Whatever you say. Anyhow, show that you can tolerate his company. Make the effort. Chat with him. Make it clear to him that you’re stealing time from your scientific work—that the villainous bastards who are running your expedition don’t want you to have anything to do with him, but that you’re drawn to him by love and pity and won’t let him interfere. Tell him all about yourself, your ambitions, your love life, your hobbies, whatever you want. Run off at the mouth. It’ll reinforce the image of the naive kid.”
“Do I mention the galactics?” Rawlins asked.
“Not obtrusively. Work them in somewhere by way of bringing him up to date on current events. But don’t tell him too much. Certainly don’t tell him of the threat they pose. Or a word about the need we have for him, you understand. If he gets the idea that he’s being used, we’re finished.”
“How will I get him to leave the maze, if I don’t tell him why we want him?”
“Let that part pass for now,” Boardman said. “I’ll coach you in the next phase after you’ve succeeded in getting him to trust you.”
“The translation,” Rawlins said, “is that you’re going to put such a whopper in my mouth that you don’t even dare tell me now what it is for fear I’ll throw up my hands and quit.”
“Ned—”
“I’m sorry. But—look, Charles, why do we have to
“Do you think that’s morally superior to tricking him out?”
“It’s cleaner, somehow. I hate all this dirty plotting and scheming. I’d much rather help knock him cold and haul him from the maze than have to go through what you’ve planned. I’d be willing to help take him by force— because we really do need him. We’ve got enough men to do it.”
“We don’t,” Boardman said. “We can’t force him out. That’s the whole point. It’s too risky. He might find some way to kill himself the moment we tried to grab him.”
“A stungun,” said Rawlins. “I could do it, even. Just get within range and gun him down, and then we carry him out of the maze, and when he wakes up we explain—”
Boardman vehemently shook his head. “He’s had nine years to figure out that maze. We don’t know what tricks he’s learned or what defensive traps he’s planted. While he’s in there I don’t dare take any kind of offensive action against him. He’s too valuable to risk. For all we know he’s programmed the whole place to blow up if someone pulls a gun on him. He’s got to come out of that labyrinth of his own free will, Ned, and that means we have to trick him with false promises. I know it stinks. The whole universe stinks, sometimes. Haven’t you discovered that yet?”
“It doesn’t
“You’re entitled to make mistakes,” Boardman said. “That’s what being young is for.”
“You genuinely believe and know that there’s a cosmic malevolence in the workings of the universe?”
Boardman touched the tips of his thick, short fingers together. “I wouldn’t put it that way. There’s no personal power of darkness running things, any more than there’s a personal power of good. The universe is a big impersonal machine. As it functions it tends to put stress on some of its minor parts, and those parts wear out, and the universe doesn’t give a damn about that, because it can generate replacements. There’s nothing immoral about wearing out parts, but you have to admit that from the point of view of the part under stress it’s a stinking deal. It happened that two small parts of the universe clashed when we dropped Dick Muller onto the planet of the Hydrans. We had to put him there because it’s our nature to find out things, and they did what they did to him because the universe puts stress on its parts, and the result was that Dick Muller came away from Beta Hydri IV in bad shape. He was drawn into the machinery of the universe and got ground up. Now we’re having a second clash of parts, equally inevitable, and we have to feed Muller through the machine a second time. He’s likely to be chewed again—which stinks—and in order to push him into a position where that can happen, you and I have to stain our souls a little—which also stinks—and yet we have absolutely no choice in the matter. If we don’t compromise ourselves and trick Dick Muller, we may be setting in motion a new spin of the machine that will destroy all of humanity—and that would stink even worse. I’m asking you to do an unpleasant thing for a decent motive. You don’t want to do it, and I understand how you feel, but I’m trying to get you to see that your personal moral code isn’t always the highest factor. In wartime, a soldier shoots to kill because the universe imposes that situation on him. It may be an unjust war, and that might be his brother in the ship he’s aiming at, but the war is real and he has his role.”
“Where’s the room for free will in this mechanical universe of yours, Charles?”
“There isn’t any. That’s why I say the universe stinks.”
“We have no freedom at all?”
“The freedom to wriggle a little on the hook.”
“Have you felt this way ail your life?”
“Most of it,” Boardman said.
“When you were my age?”
“Even earlier.”
Rawlins looked away. “I think you’re all wrong, but I’m not going to waste breath trying to tell you so. I don’t have the words. I don’t have the arguments. And you wouldn’t listen anyway.”
“I’m afraid I wouldn’t, Ned. But we can discuss this some other time. Say, twenty years from now. Is it a date?”
Trying to grin, Rawlins said, “Sure. If I haven’t killed myself from guilt over this.”
“You won’t.”
“How am I supposed to live with myself after I’ve pulled Dick Muller out of his shell?”
“Wait and see. You’ll discover that you did the right thing, in context. Or the least wrong thing, anyhow. Believe me, Ned. Just now you may feel that your soul will forever be corroded by this job, but it won’t happen that way.”
“We’ll see,” said Rawlins quietly. Boardman seemed more slippery than ever when he was in this avuncular mood. To die in the maze, Rawlins thought, was the only way to avoid getting trapped in these moral ambiguities; and the moment he hatched the thought, he abolished it in horror. He stared at the screen. “Let’s go inside,” he said. “I’m tired of waiting.”
