Farmer, Philip Jose - Riverworld 4 - The Magic Labyrinth

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This Berkley book contains the complete

text of the original hardcover edition.

It has been completely reset in a type face

designed for easy reading, and was printed

from new film.

THE MAGIC LABYRINTH

A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author

PRINTING HISTORY

Berkley-Putnam edition / June 1980

Berkley edition / May 1981

Third printing

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part,

by mimeograph or any other means, without permission.

For information address: Berkley Publishing Corporation,

200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.

ISBN: 0-425-04854-3 A BERKLEY BOOK ® TM 757,375

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

For Harlan Ellison, Leslie Fiedler, and Norman Spinrad, alivest of the alive

AUTHOR'S FOREWORD

Now ends the Riverworld series, all loose ends tied together into a sword-

resisting Gordian knot, all the human mysteries revealed, the millions of

miles of The River and the many years of quests and The Quest completed.

I •

Reason is Life's sole arbiter, the magic Labyrinth's single clue ... Where

'twill be man's to see the whole of what on Earth he sees in part...

—The Kasidah of Haji Abdu Al-Yazdi

SECTION 1

The Mysterious Stranger

"EVERYBODY SHOULD FEAR ONLY ONE PERSON, AND THAT PER- • son should be

himself."

That was a favorite saying of the Operator.

The Operator had also spoken much of love, saying that the person most feared

should also be much loved.

The man known to some as X or the Mysterious Stranger neither loved nor feared

himself the most.

There were three people he had loved more than he loved anybody else.

His wife, now dead, he had loved but not as deeply as the other two.

His foster mother and the Operator he loved with equal intensity or at least

he had once thought so.

His foster mother was lightyears away, and he did not have to deal with her as

yet and might never. Now, if she knew what he was doing, she would be deeply

ashamed and grieved. That he couldn't explain to her why he was doing this,

and so justify himself, deeply grieved him.

The Operator he still loved but at the same time hated.

Now X waited, sometimes patiently, sometimes impatiently or angrily, for the

fabled but real riverboat. He had missed the Rex Grandissimus. His only chance

now was the Mark Twain.'

If he didn't get aboard that boat... no, the thought was almost unendurable.

He must.

Yet, when he did get on it, he might be in the greatest peril

7 1

2 / Philip Jose Farmer

he'd ever been in, bar one. He knew that the Operator was down-River. The

surface of his grail had shown him the Operator's location. But that had been

the last information he would get from the map. The satellite had kept track

of the Operator and the Ethicals, except for himself, and the agents in The

Rivervalley, beaming its messages to the grail which was more than a grail.

Then the map had faded from the gray surface, and X had known that something

had malfunctioned in the satellite. From now on he could be surprised by the

Operator, by the agents, and by the other Ethical.

Long ago, X had made arrangements to track all those from the tower and the

underground chambers. He had secretly installed the mechanism in the

satellite. The others would have put in a device to track him, of course. But

his aura-distorter had fooled the mechanism. The distorter had also enabled

him to lie to the council of twelve.

Now, he was as ignorant and helpless as the others.

However, if anybody on this world would be taken aboard by Clemens, even if

the complement was full, it would be the Operator. One look at him, and

Clemens would stop the boat and hail him aboard.

And when the Mark Twain came along, and he, X, managed to become a crew

member, he would have to avoid the Operator until he could take him by

surprise.

The disguise, good enough to fool even the other stranded Ethical, would not

deceive that great intelligence. He would recognize X instantly, and then he,

X, would have no choice. Strong and quick as he was, the Operator was stronger

and quicker.

Moreover, the Operator would have a psychological advantage. X, face to face

with the being he loved and hated, would be inhibited and might not be able to

attack the Operator with the fury and vigor demanded.

Cowardly though it was, a detestable act, he would have to take the Operator

from behind. But his detestable deeds had been many since he had set himself

against the others, and he could do this. Though taught from early childhood

to loathe violence, he had also been taught that violence was justified if his

life was in peril. The resurrecting force which for all practical purposes

made everyone on the Riverworld indestructible just did not enter into it.

Resurrection no longer worked but even when it had he'd still forced himself

to be violent.

The Magic Labyrinth I 3

Despite what his mentors said, the end did justify the means. Besides, all

those he'd killed would not be dead forever. At least, he'd thought so. But

he'd not foreseen this situation.

The Ethical was living in a bamboo leaf-thatched hut on the bank of The River,

the right bank if you faced upstream. He hadn't been there long. Now he sat on

the thick short grass of the plain near the shore. There were approximately

five hundred others around him, all waiting for lunchtime. At one time, there

would have been seven hundred here, but, since the resurrections had ceased,

the population had lessened. Accidents, mostly from encounters with the

gigantic human-eating boat-smashing riverdragon fish, suicide, and murder, had

accounted for most fatalities. Once, war had been the greatest death-maker,

but there had been none in this area for many years, the would-be conquerors

had been killed off, and now they would not be translated elsewhere along The

River to make more trouble.

Also, the spread of the Church of the Second Chance, the Nichirenites, the

Sufis, and other pacifistic religions and disciplines had had great effect in

bringing peace.

Near the crowd was a mushroom-shaped structure of a red-flecked granite

material. It was called a grailstone, though actually it was a highly

electrically conductive metal. It had a broad base five feet high, and the top

had a diameter of approximately fifty feet. On the surface of this were seven

hundred depressions. In each one was a cylinder of gray metal, a device which

converted energy discharged by the grailstone into food, liquor, and other

items. The containers kept the vast population of the Riverworld, estimated to

have been thirty-five to thirty-six billion at one time, from starving to

death. Though the grail-provided food could be augmented by fish and acorn

bread and the tips of young bamboo shoots, these were not enough to feed the

dwellers of the narrow Valley, a valley which enclosed The River, ten million

miles long.

The people by the stone chattered and laughed and kidded around. The Ethical

did not speak to those near him; he was occupied with his thoughts. It had

occurred to him that perhaps the malfunction of the satellite was not natural.

Its tracking mechanism was designed to function for over a thousand years

without breakdown. Had it failed because Piscator, the Japanese once named

Ohara, had messed up something in the tower? Theoretically Piscator should

have been destroyed by

4 I Philip Jose Farmer

the various traps that he, X, had placed in the tower or been caught in a

stasis field installed by the Operator. But Piscator was a Sufi, and he might

have had the intelligence and perceptive powers to avoid these. That he could

enter the tower showed that he was very ethically advanced. Not one in five

million of the candidates, the resurrected Terrestrials, could have gone

through the entrance on top. As for the one at the base, only that had been

prepared by X, and only two knew about it until the expedition of ancient

Egyptians had gotten to it. He'd been surprised and upset when he'd found

their bodies in the secret room. Nor had he known then that one Egyptian had

escaped and had been drowned and then translated back to The Valley until he'd

heard the survivor's story, somewhat distorted and via who knew how many

tellers? Apparently no agents had heard it until it was too late for them-to

transmit the news to the Ethicals in the tower.

What worried him now was that if Piscator had indeed been responsible for

accidentally causing the tracker to malfunction, then he might somehow bring

the Ethicals back to life. And if he did that... he, X, was done for.

He stared across the plain at the foothills covered with the long-bladed grass

and trees of various kinds and the gloriously colored blooms of the vines on

the ironwood trees and then past them to the unscalable mountains walling in

The Valley. His fear and frustration made him angry again, but he quickly used

the mental techniques to dissipate his anger. The energy, he knew, made his

skin temperature rise for a hundredth of a degree Celsius for a few seconds.

He felt somewhat relieved, though he knew that he'd be angry again. The

trouble with the technique was that it didn't dissipate the source of his

anger. He'd never be able to get rid of that, though he had appeared to do so

to his mentors.

He shaded his eyes and glanced at the sun. Within a few minutes, the stone

would vomit lightning and thunder along with the millions of others on both

banks. He moved away from the stone and put the tips of his fingers in his

ears. The noise would be deafening, and the sudden discharge still made one

jump though you knew it was coming.

The sun reached its zenith.

There was an enormous roar and flashing upward of ravening blue white-shot

electricity.

On the left bank, not the right.

The Magic Labyrinth I 5

Once before, the right-bank grailstones had failed to function.

Those on the right bank waited with apprehension and then increasing fear when

the stones failed to spout their energy for dmnertime. And when they failed

again at breakfast time, the consternation and anxiety became panic.

By the next day, the hungry people invaded the left bank en masse.

I I

SECTION 2

Aboard the Not For Hire

THE FIRST TIME THAT SlR THOMAS MALORY DIED WAS ON EARTH

in A.D. 1471.

The English knight got through the terrible weeks after Resurrection Day

without too many body wounds, though he suffered grievously from spiritual

shock. He found the food in his "littel greal" fascinating. It reminded him of

what he had written in The Book of King Arthur concerning Galahad and his

fellow knights when they ate of the food provided by the Sangreal. "... ye

shall be fed afore this table with sweetmeats that never knights tasted."

There were times when Malory thought he'd go mad. He'd always been tempted by

madness, a state in which a person was both touched with holiness by'God and

invulnerable to the cares and woes of the world, not to mention his own. But a

man who'd spent so many years in prison on Earth without going crazy had to be

basically tough. One of the things that had kept his mind unclouded in prison

had been his writing of the first English prose epic. Though he knew that his

readers would be very few, and most of them would probably not like it, he did

not care one whit. Unlike his first work, which had been based on the great

French Writers of the cycles about King Arthur of ancient Britain, this was

about the rejections but final triumph of his sweet Jesu. Unlike so many once-

devout Christians, Malory clung to his faith with fierce obliviousness to

The Magic Labyrinth I 7

"facts"—-in itself an indication that he had gone mad, if his critics were to

be believed.

Twice slain by savage infidels, Malory ended up in an area inhabited on one

side by Parthians and oh the other by Englishmen.

The Parthians were ancient horsemen who got their name from their habit of

shooting backwards from their steeds as they retreated. In other words, they

always got in a parting shot. At least, that was the explanation for their

name according to one informant. Malory suspected that the grinning fellow was

pulling his leg, but it sounded good, so why not accept it.

The Englishmen were chiefly of the seventeenth century and spoke an English

which Malory had trouble understanding. However, after all these years, they

also spoke Esperanto, that tongue which the missionaries of the Church of the

Second •• Chance used as a universal medium of communication. The land, now

known as New Hope, was peaceful, though it had not always been so. Once it had

been a number of small states which had had a savage battle with the medieval

German and Spanish states up north. These had been led by a man called Kramer,

nicknamed the Hammer. After he had been killed, a long peace had come to the

land, and the states eventually became one. Malory settled down there and took

as his hutmate Philippa Hobart, daughter of Sir Henry Hobart. Though there was

no longer a giving in marriage, Malory insisted that they be married, and he

got a friend who had been a Catholic priest to perform the old ceremony.

Later, he reconverted both his wife and the priest to their native faith.

He was set back somewhat, though, when he heard that the true Jesu Christ had

appeared in this area with a Hebrew woman who had known Moses in Egypt and

during the exodus. Jesu had also been accompanied by a man named Thomas Mix,

an American, the descendant of Europeans who had emigrated to the continents

discovered only twenty-one years after Malory had died. Jesu and Mix had

burned to death together in bonfires ignited by Kramer.

At first, Malory had denied that the man calling himself Yeshua could be the

real Christ. He might be a Hebrew of Christ's time, but he was a fake.

Then Malory, after tracking down all the evidence he could

6 /

8 I Philip Jose Farmer

of Yeshua's statements and the events of his martyrdom, decided that perhaps

Christ had truly been present. So he incorporated the tale told by the locals

into the epic he was now writing with ink and a pen formed from the bone of a

fish on bamboo paper. Malory also decided to canonize the American, and so Mix

became Saint Thomas the Steadfast of the White Hat.

After a while Malory and his disciples forgot that the sainthood was a fiction

and came to believe that Saint Thomas was indeed roaming The Valley in quest

of his master, sweet Jesu, in this world which was purgatory, though not

exactly the middle state between earth and heaven portrayed by the priests of

lost Earth.

The ex-priest who'd married Thomas and Philippa, as a bishop ordained on Earth

and so in the direct line of priesthood sjrom Saint Peter, was able to

instruct others and to make priests of them. The little group of Roman

Catholics, however, had a different attitude in one respect from that they'd

had in their Terrestrial days. They were tolerant; they did not attempt to

bring back the Inquisition nor did they burn suspected witches. If they had

insisted on these old customs, they would have quickly been exiled or perhaps

even killed.

Late one night, Thomas Malory was lying in bed and pondering on the next

chapter of his epic. Suddenly, there was a great shouting outside and a noise

as of many running. He sat up and called to Philippa, who awoke frightened and

trembling. They went out then to ask what the commotion was about. The people

questioned pointed upward into the cloudless sky made bright as a full moon by

the packed stars and flaming cosmic-gas sheets.

High up were two strange objects silhouetted against the celestial blaze. One,

much smaller, was composed of two parts, a larger sphere above the other.

Though those on the ground could not see any linkage between the two, they got

the impression that the two were connected because they moved at the same

speed. Then a woman who knew of such things said that it looked like a

balloon. Malory had never seen one, but he had heard descriptions of them from

nineteenth- and twentieth-centurians, and this did indeed look like the

description.

The other object, far greater, resembled a gigantic cigar.

The same woman said that this was an airship or dirigible

The Magic Labyrinth I 9

or perhaps was a vessel of the unknowns who'd made this planet.

"Angels?" Malory muttered. "Why would they have to use an airship? They have

wings."

He forgot about that and cried out with the others as the huge vessel of the

air suddenly dived. And then he screamed with the others when the vessel

exploded. Burning, it fell toward The River.

The balloon continued to travel northeastward, and after a while it was gone.

Long before that, the flaming airship struck the water. Its skeletal framework

sank almost at once, but some pieces of its skin burned for a few minutes

before they, too, were extinguished.

NEITHER ANGELS NOR DEMONS HAD VOYAGED IN THAT VESSEL of the sky. The man whom

Malory and his wife pulled out of the water and rowed to shore in their boat

was no more and no less human than they. He was a tall dark rapier-thin man

with a big nose and a weak chin. His large black eyes stared at them in the

torchlight, and he said nothing for a long while. After he had been carried

into the community hall, dried off and covered with thick cloths, and had

drunk some hot coffee, he said something in French and then spoke in

Esperanto.

"How many survived?"

Malory said, "We don't know yet."

A few minutes later, the first of twenty-two corpses, some

10 I Philip Jose Farmer

very charred, were brought to the bank. One of them was a woman's. Though the

search continued through the night and part of the morning these were all that

were found. The Frenchman was the single survivor. Though he was weak and

still in shock, he insisted on getting up and taking part in the search. When

he saw the bodies by a grailstone, he burst into tears and sobbed for a long

time. Malory took this as a good indication of the man's health. At least he

wasn't in such deep trauma that he was unable to express his grief.

"Where have the others gone?" the stranger demanded.

Then his sorrow became rage, and he shook his fist at the skies and howled

damnation at someone named Thorn. Later, he asked if anybody had seen or heard

another aircraft, a helicopter. Many had.

"Which way did it go?" he said.

Some said that the machine making the strange chopping noise had gone down-

River. Others said that it had gone up-River. Several days later, the report

came that the machine had been seen sinking into The River two hundred miles

upstream during a rainstorm. Only one person had witnessed that, and he

claimed that a man had swum from the sinking craft. A message via drum was

sent to the area asking if any strangers had suddenly appeared. The reply was

that none had been located.

A number of grails were found floating on The River, and these were brought to

the survivor. He identified one as his, and he ate a meal from it that

afternoon. Several of the grails were "free" containers. That is, they could

be opened by anybody, and these were confiscated by the state of New Hope.

The Frenchman then asked if any gigantic boats propelled by paddlewheels had

passed this point. He was told that one had, the Rex Grandissimus, commanded

by the infamous King John of England.

"Good," the man said. He thought for a while, then said, "I could just stay

here and wait until the Mark Twain comes by. But I don't think I will. I'm

going after Thorn."

By then, he felt recovered .enough to talk about himself. And how he talked

about himself!

"I am Savinien de Cyrano II de Bergerac," he said. "I prefer to be called

Savinien, but for some reason most people prefer Cyrano. So I allow that small

liberty. After all, later ages

The Magic Labyrinth I 11

referred to me as Cyrano, and though it was a mistake, I am so famous that

people cannot get used to my preference. They think they know better than I

do.

"No doubt you've heard of me."

He regarded his hosts as if they should feel honored to have such a great man

as their guest.

"It pains me to admit that I have not," Malory said.

"What? I was the greatest swordsman of my time, perhaps, no, undoubtedly, of

all times. There is no reason for me to be modest. I do not hide my light

under a bushel or, in fact, under anything. I was also the author of some

remarkable literary works. I wrote books about trips to the sun and to the

moon, very pointed and witty satire. My play, The Pedant Out-Witted, was, I

understand, used with some modifications by a certain Monsieur Moliere and

presented as his own. Well, perhaps I exaggerate. Certainly he did use much of

the comedy. I also understand that an Englishman named Jonathan Swift used

some of my ideas in his Gulliver's Travels. I do not blame them, since I

myself was not above using the ideas of others, though I improved upon them."

"That is all very well, sir," Malory said, forbearing to mention his own

works. "But if it does not make you overwrought, you could tell us how you

came here in that airship and what caused it to burst into flames."

De Bergerac was staying with the Malorys until an empty hut could be found or

he could be loaned the tools to construct one for himself. At this time,

though, he and his hosts and perhaps a hundred more were seated or standing by

a big fire outside the hut.

It was a long tale, more fabulous even than the teller's own fictions or

Malory's. Sir Thomas, however, had the feeling that the Frenchman was not

telling all that had happened.

When the narrative was finished, Malory mused aloud, "Then it is true that

there is a tower in the center of the north polar sea, the sea from whence

flows The River and to which it returns? And it is true that whoever is

responsible for this world lives in that tower? I wonder what happened to this

Japanese, this Piscator? Did the residents of the tower, who surely must be

angels, invite him to stay with them because, in a sense, he'd entered the

gates of paradise? Or did they send him elsewhere, to some distant part of The

River, perhaps?

12 I Philip Jose Farmer

"And this Thorn, what could account for his criminal behavior? Perhaps he was

a demon in disguise."

De Bergerac laughed loudly and scornfully.

When he had stopped, he said, "There are no angels nor demons, my friend. I do

not now maintain, as I did on Earth, that there is no God. But to admit to the

existence of a Creator does not oblige one to believe in such myths as angels

and demons."

Malory hotly insisted that there were indeed such. This led to an argument in

the course of which the Frenchman walked away from his audience. He spent the

night, from what Malory heard, in the hut of a woman who thought that if he

was such a great swordsman he must also be a great lover. From her accounts,

he was, though perhaps too much devoted to that fashion of making love which

many thought reached its perfection, or nadir of degeneracy, in France. Malory

was disgusted. But later that day de Bergerac appeared to apologize for his

ingratitude to the man who'd saved his life.

"I should not have scoffed at you, my host, my savior. I tender you a thousand

apologies, for which I hope to receive one forgiveness."

"You are forgiven," Malory said, sincerely. "Perhaps, though you forsook our

Church on Earth and have blasphemed against God, you would care to attend the

mass being said tonight for the souls of your departed comrades?"

"That is the least I can do," de Bergerac said.

During the mass, he wept copiously, so much so that .after it Malory took

advantage of his high emotions. He asked him if he was ready to return to God.

"I am not aware that I ever left Him, if He exists," the Frenchman said. "I

was weeping with grief for those I loved on the Parseval and for those whom I

did not love but respected. I was weeping with rage against Thorn or whatever

his real name is. And I was also weeping because men and women are still

ignorant and superstitious enough to believe in this flummery."

"You refer to the mass?",Malory said icily.

"Yes, forgive me again!'' de Bergerac cried.

"Not until you truly repent," Malory said, "and if you address your repentance

to that God whom you have offended so grievously."

The Magic Labyrinth I 13

"Quelle merde!" de Bergerac said. But a moment later he embraced Malory and

kissed him on both cheeks. "How I wish that your belief was indeed fact! But

if it were, then how could I forgive God!"

He bade adieu to Malory, saying that he would probably never see him again.

Tomorrow morning, he was setting out up-River. Malory suspected that de

Bergerac would have to steal a boat to do so, and he was right.

Malory often thought of the man who'd leaped from the burning dirigible, the

man who had actually been to the tower which many spoke about but none had

seen except for the Frenchman and his crewmates. Or if the story could be

believed, a group of ancient Egyptians and a huge hairy subhuman.

Less than three years later, the second great paddlewheeled boat came by. This

was even more huge than the Rex and it was more luxurious and faster and

better armored and weap-oned. But it was not called the Mark Twain. Its

captain, Samuel Clemens, an American, had renamed it the Not For Hire.

Apparently, he'd heard that King John was calling his own boat, the original

Not For Hire, the Rex Grandissimus. So Clemens had taken back the name and

ceremoniously had it painted on the hull.

The boat stopped off to recharge its batacitor and to charge its grails.

Malory didn't get a chance to talk to the captain, but he did see him and his

surprising bodyguard. Joe Miller was indeed an ogre, ten feet high and

weighing eight hundred pounds. His body was not as hairy as Malory expected

from the tales. He was no more hirsute than many men Malory had seen, though

the hairs were longer. And he did have a face with massive prognathic jaws and

a nose like a gigantic cucumber or a proboscis monkey's. Yet he had the look

of intelligence.

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ThisBerkleybookcontainsthecompletetextoftheoriginalhardcoveredition.Ithasbeencompletelyresetinatypefacedesignedforeasyreading,andwasprintedfromnewfilm.THEMAGICLABYRINTHABerkleyBook/publishedbyarrangementwiththeauthorPRINTINGHISTORYBerkley-Putnamedition/June1980Berkleyedition/May1981ThirdprintingAllr...

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Farmer, Philip Jose - Riverworld 4 - The Magic Labyrinth

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