When they met again the next morning it was easier for both of them. Rawlins, having slept well under the sleep wire, went to the heart of the maze and found Muller standing beside a tall flat-sided spike of dark metal at the edge of the great plaza.
“What do you make of this?” Muller asked conversationally as Rawlins approached. “There are eight of these, one at each corner. I’ve been watching them for years. They turn. Look here.” Muller pointed to one face of the pylon. Rawlins came close, and when he was ten meters away he picked up Muller’s emanation. Nevertheless, he forced himself to go closer. He had not been so close yesterday except in that one chilling moment when Muller had seized him and pulled him near.
“You see this?” Muller asked, tapping the spike.
“A mark.”
“It took me close to six months to cut it. I used a sliver from the crystalline outcropping set in that wall yonder. Every day for an hour or two I’d scrape away, until there was a visible mark in the metal. I’ve been watching that mark. In the course of one local year it turns all the way around. So the spikes are moving. You can’t see it, but they do. They’re some kind of calendars.”
“Do they—can you—have you ever—”
“You aren’t making sense, boy.”
“I’m sorry.” Rawlins backed away, trying hard to hide the impact of Muller’s nearness. He was flushed and shaken. At five meters the effect was not so agonizing, and he stayed there, making an effort, telling himself that he was developing a tolerance for it.
“You were saying?”
“Is this the only one you’ve been watching?”
“I’ve scratched a few of the others. I’m convinced that they all turn. I haven’t found the mechanism. Underneath this city, you know, there’s some kind of fantastic brain. It’s millions of years old, but it still works. Perhaps it’s some sort of liquid metal with cognition elements floating in it. It turns these pylons and runs the water supply and cleans the streets.”
“And operates the traps.”
“And operates the traps,” Muller said. “But I haven’t been able to find a sign of it. I’ve done some digging here and there, but I find only dirt below. Maybe you archaeologist bastards will locate the city’s brain. Eh? Any clues?”
“I don’t think so,” said Rawlins.
“You don’t sound very definite.”
“I’m not. I haven’t taken part in any of the work within the city.” Rawlins smiled shyly. The quick facial movement annoyed him and drew reproof from Boardman, who pointed out over the monitor circuit that the shy smile always announced an upcoming lie and that it wouldn’t be long before Muller caught on. Rawlins said, “Most of the time I was outside the city, directing the entry operations. And then when I got in, I came right in here. So I don’t know what the others may have discovered so far. If anything.”
“Are they going to rip up the streets?” Muller asked.
“I don’t think so. We don’t dig so much anymore. We use scanners and sensors and probe beams.” Glibly, impressed with his own improvisations, he went on headlong. “Archaeology used to be destructive, of course. To find out what was under a pyramid we had to take the pyramid apart. But now we can do a lot with probes. That’s the new school, you understand, looking into the ground without digging, and thus preserving the monuments of the past for—”
“On one of the planets of Epsilon Indi,” said Muller, “a team of archaeologists completely dismantled an ancient alien burial pavilion about fifteen years ago, and then found it impossible to put the thing back together because they couldn’t comprehend the structural integrity of the building. When they tried, it fell apart and was a total loss. I happened to see the ruins a few months later. You know the case, of course.”
Rawlins didn’t. He said, reddening, “Well, there are always bunglers in any discipline—”
“I hope there are none here. I don’t want the maze damaged. Not that there’s much chance of that. The maze defends itself quite well.” Muller strolled casually away from the pylon. Rawlins eased as the distance between them grew, but Boardman warned him to follow. The tactics for damping Muller’s mistrust included a deliberate and rigorous self-exposure to the emotion field. Muller was not looking back, and said, half to himself, “The cages are closed again.”
“Cages?”
“Look down there—into that street branching out of the plaza.”
Rawlins saw an alcove against a building wall. Rising from the ground were a dozen or more curving bars of white stone that disappeared into the wall at a height of about four meters, forming a kind of cage. He could see a second such cage farther down the street.
Muller said, “There are about twenty of them, arranged symmetrically in the streets off the plaza. Three times since I’ve been here the cages have opened. Those bars slide into the street, somehow, and disappear. The third time was two nights ago. I’ve never seen the cages either open or close, and I’ve missed it again.”
“What do you think the cages were used for?” Rawlins asked.
“To hold dangerous beasts. Or captured enemies. What else would you use a cage for?”
“And when they open now—”
“The city’s still trying to serve its people. There are enemies in the outer zones. The cages are ready in case any of the enemies are captured.”
“You mean us?”
“Yes. Enemies.” Muller’s eyes glittered with sudden paranoid fury; it was alarming how easily he slipped from rational discourse to that cold blaze. “
“You say it as if you believe it.”
“I do.”
“Come on,” Rawlins said. “You devoted your life to serving mankind. You can’t possibly believe—”
“I devoted my life,” said Muller slowly, “to serving Richard Muller.” He swung around so that he faced Rawlins squarely. They were only six or seven meters apart. The emanation seemed almost as strong as though they were nose to nose. Muller said, “I gave less of a damn for humanity than you might think, boy. I saw the stars, and I wanted them. I aspired after the condition of a deity. One world wasn’t enough for me. I was hungry to have them all. So I built a career that would take me to the stars. I risked my life a thousand times. I endured fantastic extremes of temperature. I rotted my lungs with crazy gases, and had to be rebuilt from the inside out. I ate foods that would sicken you to hear about. Kids like you worshipped me and wrote essays about my selfless dedication to man, my tireless quest for knowledge. Let me get you straight on that. I’m about as selfless as Columbus and Magellan and Marco Polo. They were great explorers, yes, but they also looked for a fat profit. The profit I wanted was in here. I wanted to stand a hundred kilometers high. I wanted golden statues of me on a thousand worlds. You know poetry? Fame is the spur. That last infirmity of noble mind. Milton. Do you know your Greeks, too? When a man overreaches himself, the gods cast him down. It’s called
“The cage—”
“Let me finish!” Muller rapped. “You see, the truth is, I wasn’t a god, only a rotten mortal human being who had delusions of godhood, and the real gods saw to it that I learned my lesson. They decided to remind me of the hairy beast inside the plastic clothing. To call my attention to the animal brain under the lofty cranium. So they arranged it for the Hydrans to perform a clever little surgical trick on my brain, one of their specialities, I guess. I don’t know if the Hydrans were being malicious for the hell of it or whether they were genuinely trying to cure me of a defect, my inability to let my emotions get out to them. Aliens. You figure them out. But they did their little job. And then I came back to Earth. Hero and leper all at once. Stand near me and you get sick. Why? It reminds you that
