Masters of the Maze (11 page)

Meanwhile, through the translucent sides of the corridor he could see other ones. Some were parallel, others were at different levels, or crossing his at different angles, or cutting it through in wide parabolas — he passed through these with no more than a flicker of awareness — or descending like shafts from nowhere to nowhere; until, off in the distances, they blurred and dwindled and were lost. A rather belated sense of his own rashness now occurred to him. But all he did was try to walk another few steps. It was not like walking on any surface which he had ever trod before, but there was a purchase for his feet, that was the main thing, and his feet left the corridor — the “gate” through which he had come now small but still visible and no longer changing — and he found himself in a vast and vaulted area to one side of which he saw a dark triangle.

He walked toward it, from time to time turning to reassure himself that the way back was not vanishing, and, when he got there, cautiously pushed an end of his scarf through it and drew it back again. It seemed utterly unaffected. He thrust through his head. He looked out upon a warm, wet, narrow gully lined with great ferns. From somewhere above and ahead came a deep, loud, and presumably animal grunting. Nate withdrew his head rather thoughtfully. “This is quite a peep-show,” he said. After rubbing his chin a while he walked back the way he had come and left the open place for the corridor. He intended to go back all the way, but when he stepped through the rectangle once more he felt sand yield beneath his feet, and, opening his eyes, saw a huge red sun resting upon the horizon of an all-encompassing desert.

His heart gave a great lurch of fear, his breath left him, his lungs strained futilely for air, and his incredulous eyes observed a train or procession of what seemed to be unicorns winding across the dunes like a serpent. He stepped back, stumbled, fell on his knees in the darkness, found he could breath again, closed his eyes so as to be able to “see,” and saw the two men. One of them had in his hand something rather like an automobile antenna with a hilt, ridiculous as this of course was; other than that the two men were identical: young, scantly and strangely dressed, hairy in some odd way which he could not quite put his finger on, and resembling no race or people which he had ever in his life seen or heard of. The one with the object thrust it at him. Nothing happened. The two spoke with each other, and their voices had a pleasant timbre, though seemingly puzzled. Nate was not frightened now.

And one reason why he was not was because he recognized the object as being identical with the one he had seen in the corner of the windowless room at Darkglen House.

• • •

Nate was a while with Et-dir-Mor before he remembered what was still wrapped up and knotted into his long woolen scarf. “Yes, yes, yes,” the old man said, when he saw it. “A ward, a ward-stone. It is not precisely the same as mine, I suppose that no two are, as no two men are, not even my twin grandsons. But it is enough like mine … I will show it to you presently. Well. There can’t be much doubt. Bel-am-My had the ward, he had the sword, he must have been a Watcher. I don’t know them all. I couldn’t. No one can. But there must be a group or guild or office or corps or caste … words! words! — who does know him. So this must go back to them.”

They sat in a … Nate assumed he must call it, as he thought of it … in a room: a low-walled, furnished platform built up almost to second-story height within the great central chamber of Et-dir-Mor’s three-tiered dwelling. An S-shaped table which, like a love seat joined and separated them, bore food and drink; and as Nate ate and drank he thought with some guilt of Keziah’s promise that she would bring him the first cup of coffee and the first plate of food. Perhaps he ought not to have done as he did. There were a thousand good reasons for him not to have, but the curiosity which had been building up all night required more power to resist than he had had in his fatigued and light-headed condition. Of course they would wonder there at Darkglen what had become of him, but not for very long. There would be just too much to do. Nate had no fear of their discovering that the panel slid up: why should they? Besides, unless he was completely mistaken, someone of those on the list Keziah called would have another on duty, so to speak, in jig-time.
Duty.
Old Bellamy’s conversation last night began to make more sense now. A Watcher …

All alone there, year after year, a crystal gazer of a vastly different kind, watching … watching …

“But what is it?” Nate asked. “What is it made of?”

Et-dir-Mor dropped his hand at the wrist in a gesture the equivalent of a shrug. “We do not know. They may be pieces of the Maze itself which split off from it, perhaps at the moment of its creation. If it was created. Or perhaps later. We have never heard of anyone actually finding one there. The ones we know of have been among the Watchers forever, as it were, although there are many legends of them having been stolen by or lost among those who didn’t know their use. Or who
did
know … or knew something … and who would misuse it — if they could. I need hardly explain to you — ”

Hardly. That had been almost instinctively evident.

“It seems that there is something like cell memory at work in these wards. That is, that if it is really a fragment of the Maze, it shows something of the structure of the Maze. We think so. That it adapts itself to show at any rate a certain area of it, the area it is nearest to; and that, entirely out of that area, it would change to mirror or to indicate another one. Am-bir-Ros compared it once to a periscope. Another time he said, ‘It’s like an immensely complex thermometer. You have to learn to “read” it.’ ”

“Am-bir-Ros?”

“My friend, whom you may meet, who taught me English. He comes from — not quite your time, I should guess; but close to it. I don’t know if he was before or will be after you. Try some of this — ”

His hand, with its curious, long, distinct white hairs offered a container of something. Nate took it but did not take of it. “Now, hold on … hold on … easy,” he said. “You mean that the, the Maze? — it doesn’t just cross the dimensions or whatever it is? It crosses
time
as well?”

The vessel, hourglass in shape, stayed suspended over the table as they each held it with a hand, one hand on each section of it. The gesture seemed mystical, hieratical. Then, “Oh, yes, I mean that,” said Et-dir-Mor. “Dimensions, times, sections, sectors, parallels, places — all these and more, and things for which we have neither name nor conception nor capacity. It was a fortuitous accident which brought you so easily from your place and time to ours. If, that is, if there be fortuity, if there are such things as accidents. But it
is
, I do assure you, it
is
a maze. So you were fortunate.

“You might quite easily have wandered in it until you died, you know. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. But do not be fearful. I am sure that you — at any rate, we can show you the way back. Some, we cannot. And some,” he added, with a pleasant smile; “some, of course, do not wish to go back.”

Some sort of private thing was clearly going on between the tall man and the short man. Some of it, probably, was endocrinal. The tall man swelled out at the middle — hip and thigh and rump and belly — and tapered at the ends: small head, hands, feet. The short man seemed momentarily about to undergo an explosion or implosion which would result in his being not short at all. For the moment (something about him seemed to say) he was holding himself in … but any moment now — There was something false and sly about the tall man, his good humors and his bad ones seemed alike assumed. The short man was all of a piece, but there was nothing reassuring in this; it was a piece of the same material that too many high school principals, boys’ camp directors, and military and naval officers are made of: a texture or quality often dignified by the description, “ability to command” — the desire to bully, override, bear down — the capacity to do so by virtue of office — the habit of having done so for a long time and the confidence of continuing to do so for a long time.

There was another difference between them, for the tall man was the county sheriff and the short one was captain of the state police troop: dog’s head and lion’s tail. The sheriff appeared to be continually torn between the recollection that Nate had no vote in the county and the possibility that it wasn’t impossible he someday might. The sheriff had only his one paid deputy beneath him and nobody above him except the sovereign citizen-voters — and, at least in theory, the governor of the state, who might (but probably wouldn’t) remove him for misfeasance, malfeasance, and nonfeasance of office. He was a tradesman in his private life and a politician in his public one. Almost every legal paper he ever served and almost every arrest he ever made meant not only a fee earned and a duty done but an enemy made, a customer and a vote lost; he gave, therefore, the impression of a man busily engaged in trying to avoid being sucked up by his own rectal orifice. This was Sheriff Nobeldorf.

The public had no hold on Captain Congers; his eyes, when they turned from malefactors potential or kinetic, were directed toward a hierarchy he no longer entertained much hope of climbing. Middle age now held him fast, he hated the scene of his exile, found refuge from his bitter wife and severe superiors in the unshined boots of a trooper or the possibility of browbeating an offender against the general code.

Congers barked and snapped, Nobeldorf prowled and looked watchful. The immediate menace of the former seemed to hint, nevertheless, of possible and future protection based on experience; the present non-involvement of the latter threatened, just the same, future and possible menace growing out of ignorance and the need for popular reputation.

“I’d like a better explanation of where you have been!” Captain Congers bared his teeth.

“Oh … Just around,” said Nate, vaguely.

Sheriff Nobeldorf arose and scratched his ass. “Maybe he took a nap,” he suggested. “Must be a million beds in this house. Christ.”

Nate wasn’t sure if he was being offered an excuse to use or a trap to fall into … or if the tall man was merely thinking aloud.

A spasm of annoyance passed over the symmetrically seamed face of the state police officer. He ignored the sheriff, but not his remark. “We were all
through
this place. Went away and thought better of it and came back, I suppose. Well. What were you afraid of?”

Soft as lard, the sheriff asked, “Went where? Went how? Came back when?”

Nate said nothing. He was fully aware that he had not been arrested, not — in fact — accused of having done anything except causing his own absence and reappearance. This was not in itself a criminal offense and he was, he felt, not bound to explain it. He was also fully aware that these two men, individually or collectively, had the power of causing him much grief, and he desired not in the least to provoke them into remembering it (if, indeed, they needed any reminders) by any vocal declarations of what he felt he was not bound to do. So he continued to say nothing and tried to look vague rather than stubborn.

Meanwhile he went on mentally playing one questioner against the other. Congers had less to gain by involving Nate in any criminal charge than Nobeldorf had. He didn’t have to seek re-election, a conviction would mean less to him. On the other hand, he had less to lose: an acquittal would mean equally less to him. He didn’t have to consider the cost to the local taxpayers of a trial whose expense was unjustified by the satisfaction of a sentence.

“How soon’ll they have that report, you suppose?” Nobeldorf asked.

Congers looked at his watch, shrugged irritably. “
Report
…” The word echoed, silently loud. Report … report … what kind of a report? Only one answer supplied itself: a medical report. It fit in. Fit in with the fact that he had been neither charged nor accused, fit in with earlier questions concerning his relationship to Joseph Bellamy and did he know the contents of Mr. Bellamy’s will. Yes, indeed. Also: no, indeed. Suppose — damned unlikely to Nate — that he was the dead man’s heir? — maybe a lot less unlikely to Congers and Nobeldorf. After all, he had been invited to Darkglen, he was related by marriage. Suppose the report were to show that neither the bad heart nor anything else of the sort had caused death. Suppose … after all, Ned hadn’t examined the body, hadn’t turned it over … a bullet hole? A knife wound? No … No one had searched Nate or even asked if he owned gun or knife. So … well … a contusion, say. Something like that. “Deceased met his death by violence and Accused stood to profit by his death.” They didn’t talk like that in the United States, but, still.

On the other hand. If Bellamy’s death was from purely natural causes, then Nate’s presence was fortuitous, his absence of equally no significance. More: if Bellamy had died a natural death
and
Nate were his heir,
well
… Nobeldorf, at any rate, would assuredly not want the local rich man (for all he knew) to have cause to remember him for ill.

If the report was okay, then everything was okay. And if it weren’t, what then?
“I
saw another man and he walked through that wall inside
…” Not at all the trite situation of not being believed; it was of comparatively little importance if he were believed or not — concerning the other man, that is. He had only to show them the Maze in order for them to believe in the Maze.

Which was to say, he had only to show them the Maze in order for them to make use of the Maze.

Them
— and millions of other
Thems.

The telephone rang.

“It’s working now,” Nate said. Congers and Nobeldorf looked at him as the former picked up the phone, but nothing was said except the former’s curt, “Hello!”

“No …” he said, after a moment. “No … No … I don’t know.” His sigh was exceedingly brief and he hung up.

Nate said, “I’d like to make a phone call.”

Sheriff and captain exchanged looks. “I don’t see why not,” the sheriff murmured. Congers’s grunt, as he handed Nate the instrument, seemed to indicate that he didn’t see why not, either, but wished he did.

Peggy’s response to the single ring was so swift that she must have been waiting for it, next to it. And she had evidently (a) been waiting for it a long time and (b) spent all of that time thinking of what she was going to say. It took her quite a while to say it, with Nate making the traditional brief and futile interjections of the straight man in a situation comedy: stupid old Dad, as it might be. Boiled down and strained twice, it amounted to the fact that POLICE had come to the office where Peggy worked (WORKED: she didn’t OWN the place) and had questioned her about Nate. She had worked in that place for seven years and hoped to go on working there for another seven years and in all that time (her remarks now seeming to include the future as well as the past) the police had NEVER come and asked about ANYONE. How did it LOOK? Had Nate any idea what a thing like that could do to a person’s REPUTATION? And not only the POLICE! EVERYONE had asked her about it, after the police left. COHALLAN had asked her. CHANDOS had asked her. RUTHERFORD and WEINSTOCK and MERRY-ELLEN and even that low, slimy, son-of-a-bitch, DONAHO! had asked her. DONAHO! whose attitude notoriously was, If it smells bad, by all means throw it into the fan!

Nate said
But.
He said
I
. He said
Listen.
He said
Peg.

That was bad enough. That was quite bad enough. But what hurt, what really hurt, was that the police said that they’d found her name and phone number in Nate’s suitcase. How could anyone be so stupid? How could anyone be so careless? How could anyone be so absolutely and utterly in — dif — ferent? to someone else’s welfare? as to leave her name and phone number in his suitcase? This passed Peggy’s capacity to understand. She did not, did not, did not understand how he could have done it.

Nate said
Oh for.

Peggy said that she had only one question to ask. She would like, she would really like a reply to it She was asking it civilly, she was asking it calmly, she was asking it politely; making no reproaches, no references whatsoever to the fact that her name had probably been ruined forever and her career and professional reputation had suffered a stigma which would certainly never wear off; no: none of that. Not a word, not a word, not a single word. She wasn’t even angry. Just curious. Would Nate mind answering that question? He really wouldn’t? He was sure? Good.

“How could you do it?”

Her voice echoed in his ears long, long after he had hung up without answering. He saw the mouths of Sheriff Nobeldorf and Captain Congers moving, but if they said anything, he didn’t hear it. He saw Keziah come in with plenty of the food and coffee she had spoken of — when was it? He wasn’t sure. He wasn’t even approximately uncertain today, probably, earlier today — and she looked at him with reproach — and with no more than a measure of kindly curiosity as she (it seemed) urged him to eat and drink. Obediently he moved to the table, cut, poured, stirred, swallowed.

I have seen the sun rise at midnight.

The famous phrase, where was it from? Lucius Apuleius, probably;
The Golden Ass
; but it was a symbolic reference, not to any Arctic dawn, but to the still-mysterious drama of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Nate had seen something more unsettling than that, greater wonder than if he had seen, literally and actually, his own sun rise in his own midnight. The thought of it was like a blow to him, delayed shock or arrested wonder. Circling around it, striking its own blows whenever the opportunity offered, was the smaller (but not small) shock of Peggy. So Nate sat there, stonefaced, making motions, like a man dancing on the crust of the pit: let him dance lightly, dance delicately.

“What?”

This time Nobeldorf had answered the phone, was waving him to come answer it.

“Who?”

“I said, ‘Mr. Wiedemyer.’ This is I don’t know oh maybe the fourth, fifth time he’s been calling,” the sheriff said, covering the mouthpiece with the cushion of his hand. “Well, I guess he must have a, sure, legitimate concern, he was on Mr. Bellamy’s list; anyway, he’s on the phone — ” He raised it to his mouth, smiled a bland and automatic and sebaceous smile — “Here’s Mr. Gordon now, Mr. Wiedemyer.”

Nate’s eye, as his hand took the phone, rested on the opposite wall, on a sepia photograph framed in dark wood — this house in the days of its greatness and glory … whatever the hell such words meant, applied anywhere, let alone here … His mouth made some sort of acknowledgment.

Polite, fussy, tired, precise, excited, unhappy, cautious was the voice or the molecular reproduction of the voice in his ear. “ — a rather nice or rather nasty little monopoly the legal profession enjoys in that state. I realize it is not your fault, sir; I am, believe me, although I cannot explain now, trying to help you as much as,” the shortest of pauses, “myself. It seems that being admitted to general legal practice in that state is not sufficient, it is also necessary to be admitted to practice in each individual county. That county’s bar association consists of exactly six members. Mr. Johnstone, Mr. McDaniel, and Mr. Brandon do not take trial work — their phrase in each case: ‘I don’t take trial work.’ Mrs. Arendts is in bed, sick. Mr. Sweet is out of town. That leaves Mr. Morton.

“I believe I have made exactly fifteen phone calls to Mr. Morton. He assures me there is no cause for alarm. Nothing will take place in the county, forensically speaking, without him being aware of it before it can be finished. He may or may not take the case — if there turns out to be a case — if he has time — if he receives the retainer which I have wired — Have I been too pre-occupied with my own grievances? Are you in immediate difficulties? Or is your position merely equivocal? The wire may be tapped, you know,” he added, calmly.

“The position is as stated,” Nate said, carefully. Tapped by whom? he wanted to ask. And not caring what the answer was. “Thanks for your interest,” he said.

Mr. Wiedemyer actually said something which sounded very much as though it were
tut-tut.
“Here is the most important thing. Listen quite carefully. I cannot go to see you. I am trying to find someone … someone whom I will know personally … who will be able to go there to see you.
And on general and other specific principles.
I wonder if you understand what I — ”

Responding to who knows what fugitive impulse, Nate said, “It’s like trying to see with your eyes shut.”

There was, for this conversation, a fairly long pause. Then Mr. Wiedemyer said, “The important thing is: if you have it, don’t surrender it. And do not trust, do not follow strangers.
Timor Danaos et dona ferentes.
None may appear. Someone else is currently trying to get to where you are. I repeat, and I warn: Do not trust! And now I must discontinue this conversation. There’s so much to do, there are too few of us, you must know the infinite importance — ”

“I do. I’ll remember. Good-bye.”

He turned to see that meanwhile several strangers had entered the room. One of them at first struck his eye as being familiar — a sallow, stiff-looking man with clipped, gray hair. The other was evidently familiar at least to both Congers and Nobeldorf, with whom he immediately entered into casual, bluff conversation; a large, red-nosed and self-confident man. They addressed him as “Jack.”