It was not true telepathy that the Hydrans had given him. Muller could not “read” minds, nor could he communicate his thoughts to others. What came forth was this gush of self: a torrent of raw despair, a river of regrets and sorrows, all the sewage of a soul. He could not hold it back. For that eternal moment Rawlins had been bathed in it; the rest of the time he had merely picked up a vague and general sense of distress.
He could generate his own concretenesses out of that raw flow. Muller’s sorrows were not unique to himself; what he offered was nothing more than an awareness of the punishments the universe devises for its inhabitants. At that moment Rawlins had felt that he was tuned to every discord in creation: the missed chances, the failed loves, the hasty words, the unfair griefs, the hungers, the greeds, the lusts, the knife of envy, the acid of frustration, the fang of time, the death of small insects in winter, the tears of things. He had known aging, loss, impotence, fury, helplessness, loneliness, desolation, self-contempt, and madness. It was a silent shriek of cosmic anger.
Are we all like that? He wondered. Is the same broadcast coming from me, and from Boardman, and from my mother, and from the girl I used to love? Do we walk about like beacons fixed to a frequency we can’t receive? Thank God, then. That’s a song too painful to hear.
Boardman said, “Wake up, Ned. Stop brooding and watch out for trouble. You’re almost in Zone C now.”
“Charles, how did you feel the first time you came close to Muller?”
“We’ll discuss that later.”
“Did you feel as if you knew what human beings were all about for the first time?”
“I said we’ll discuss—”
“Let me say what I want to say, Charles. I’m not in any danger here. I just looked into a man’s soul, and I’m shaken by it. But— listen, Charles—he isn’t really like that. He’s a good man. That stuff he radiates, it’s just noise. It’s a kind of sludge that doesn’t tell you a real thing about Dick Muller. It’s noise we aren’t meant to hear, and the signal’s altogether different—like when you open an amplifier up to the stars, full blast, and you get that rasping of the spectrum, you know, and some of the most beautiful stars give you the most terrible noises, but that’s just an amplifier response, it has nothing to do with the quality of the star itself, it—it—”
“Ned?
“I’m sorry, Charles.”
“Get back to camp. We all agree that Dick Muller’s a fine human being. That’s why we need him. We need you, too, so shut your mouth and watch your step. Easy, now. Calm. Calm. Calm. What’s that animal on your left? Hurry along, Ned. But stay calm. That’s the way, son. Calm.”
EIGHT
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.”