The Man In The Maze

He had never done anything significant before. He had studied, he had performed routine tasks in Boardman’s office, he had now and then handled a slightly sensitive matter. But he had always believed that his real career still was yet to open; that all this was preliminary. That sense of a future beginning was still with him, but it was time to admit that he was on the spot. This was no training simulation. Here he stood, tall and blond and young and stubborn and ambitious, at the verge of an action which—and Charles Boardman had not been altogether hypocritical about that —might well influence the course of coming history.

Ping.

He looked about. The sensors had spoken. Out of the shadows ahead emerged the figure of a man. Muller.

They faced each other across a gap of twenty meters. Rawlins had remembered Muller as a giant and was surprised to see now that they were about the same height, both of them just over two meters high. Muller was dressed in a dark glossy wrap, and in this light at this hour his face was a study in conflicting planes and jutting prominences, all peaks and valleys.

In Muller’s hand lay the apple-sized device with which he had destroyed the probe.

Boardman’s voice buzzed in Rawlins’ ear. “Get closer to him. Smile. Look shy and uncertain and friendly, and very concerned. And keep your hands where he can see them at all times.”

Rawlins obeyed. He wondered when he would begin to feel the effects of being this close to Muller. He found it hard to take his eyes from the shiny globe that rested like a grenade in Muller’s hand. When he was ten meters away he started to pick up the emanation from Muller. Yes. That must certainly be it. He decided that he would be able to tolerate it if he came no closer. Muller said, “What do you—”

The words came out as a raucous shriek. Muller stopped, cheeks flaming, and seemed to be adjusting the gears of his larynx. Rawlins chewed the corner of his lip. He felt an uncontrollable twitching in one eyelid. Harsh breathing was coming over the audio line from Boardman.

Muller began again. “What do you want from me?” he said, this time in his true voice, deep, crackling with suppressed rage.

“Just to talk. Honestly. I don’t want to cause any trouble for you, Mr. Muller.”

“You know me!”

“Of course I do. Everyone knows Richard Muller. I mean, you were the galactic hero when I was going to school. We did reports on you. Essays about you. We—”

“Get out of here!” The shriek again.

“—and Stephen Rawlins was my father. I knew you, Mr. Muller.”

The dark apple was rising. The small square window was facing him. Rawlins remembered how the relay from the drone probe had suddenly ceased.

“Stephen Rawlins?” The apple descended.

“My father.” Rawlins’ left leg seemed to be turning to water. Volatilized sweat drifted in a cloud about his shoulders. He was getting the outpouring from Muller more strongly now, as though it took a few minutes to tune to his wavelength. Now Rawlins felt the torrent of anguish, the sadness, the sense of yawning abysses sundering calm meadows. “I met you long ago,” Rawlins said. “You had just come back from—let’s see, it was 82 Eridani, I think, you were all tanned and windburned—I think I was eight years old, and you picked me up and threw me, only you weren’t used to Earthnorm gravity and you threw me too hard, and I hit the ceiling and began to cry, and you gave me something to make me stop, a little bead that changed colors—”

Muller’s hands were limp at his sides. The apple had disappeared into his garment.

He said tautly, “What was your name? Fred, Ted, Ed-that’s it. Yes. Ed. Edward Rawlins.”

“They started calling me Ned a little later on. So you remember me, then?”

“A little. I remember your father a lot better.” Muller turned away and coughed. His hand slipped into his pocket. He raised his head and the descending sun glittered weirdly against his face, staining it deep orange. He made a quick edgy gesture with one finger. “Go away, Ned. Tell your friends that I don’t want to be bothered. I’m a very sick man, and I want to be alone.”

“Sick?”

“Sick with a mysterious inward rot of the soul. Look, Ned, you’re a fine handsome boy, and I love your father dearly, if any of this is true, and I don’t want you hanging around me. You’ll regret it. I don’t mean that as a threat, just as a statement of fact. Go away. Far away.”

“Stand your ground,” Boardman told him. “Get closer. Right in, where it hurts.”

Rawlins took a wary step, thinking of the globe in Muller’s pocket and seeing from those eyes that the man was not necessarily rational. He diminished the distance between them by ten per cent. The impact of the emanation seemed to double.

He said, “Please don’t chase me away, Mr. Muller. I just want to be friendly. My father would never have forgiven me if he could have found out that I met you here, like this, and didn’t try to help you at all.”

“Would have? Could have found out? What happened to your father?”

“Dead.”

“When? Where?”

“Four years ago, Rigel XXII. He was helping to set up a tight-beam network connecting the Rigel worlds. There was an amplifier accident. The focus was inverted. He got the whole beam.”

“Jesus. He was still young!”

“He would have been fifty in a month. We were going to come out and visit him and give him a surprise party. Instead I came out by myself to bring his body back.”

Muller’s face softened. Some of the torment ebbed from his eyes. His lips became more mobile. It was as though someone else’s grief had momentarily taken him from his own.

“Get closer to him,” Boardman ordered.

Another step; and then, since Muller did not seem to notice, another. Rawlins sensed heat: not real but psychical, a furnace-blast of directionless emotion. He shivered in awe. He had never really believed in any essential way that the story of what the Hydrans had done to Richard Muller was true. He was too sharply limited by his father’s heritage of pragmatism. If you can’t duplicate it in the laboratory, it isn’t real. If you can’t graph it, it isn’t real. If there’s no circuitry, it isn’t real. How could a human being possibly be redesigned to broadcast his own emotions? No circuitry could handle such a function. But Rawlins felt the fringes of that broadcast.

Muller said, “What are you doing on Lemnos, boy?”

“I’m an archaeologist.” The lie came awkwardly. “This is my first field trip. We’re trying to carry out a thorough examination of the maze.”

“The maze happens to be someone’s home. You’re intruding.” Rawlins faltered.

“Tell him you didn’t know he was here,” Boardman prompted.

“We didn’t realize that anyone was here,” said Rawlins. “We had no way of knowing that—”

“You sent your damned robots in, didn’t you? Once you found someone here—someone you knew damned well wouldn’t want to have any company—”

“I don’t understand,” Rawlins said. “We had the impression you were wrecked here. We wanted to offer our help.”

How easily I do this, he told himself!

Muller scowled. “You don’t know why I’m here?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“You wouldn’t, I guess. You were too young. But the others— once they saw my face, they should have known. Why didn’t they tell you? Your robot relayed my face, didn’t it? You knew who it was in here. And they didn’t tell you a thing?”

“I really don’t understand—”

“Come close!” Muller bellowed.

Rawlins felt himself gliding forward, though he was unaware of taking individual steps. Abruptly he was face to face with Muller, conscious of the man’s massive frame, his furrowed brow, his fixed, staring, angry eyes. Muller’s immense hand pounced on Rawlins’ wrist. Rawlins rocked, stunned by the impact, drenched with a despair so vast that it seemed to engulf whole universes. He tried not to stagger.

“Now get away from me!” Muller cried harshly. “Go on! Out of here! Out!”

Rawlins did not move.