THE MAGIC LABYRINTH

The scarlet lines continued their fire and did not stop until the armor was riddled with holes.

There was a long silence.

Burton heaved a deep sigh and turned his equipment off. The others did the same. Burton went up onto the platform and stood behind Loga. His screen was still alive, but now it showed a pulsing many-colored figure, a globe-shape with extending and withdrawing tentacles.

Loga was bent forward, his elbows on the edge of the panel, his hands against his face.

Burton said, "What's that?"

He knew it was the picture of a wathan, but he didn't know why it was on the screen.

Loga removed his hands and stared at the screen.

"I put a frequency tracker on Goring."

"That's he?"

"Yes."

"Then he didn't Go On?"

"No. He's with the others."

What do we do now?

That was the question of all.

Loga wanted to kill the computer before it captured more wathans, and then he would duplicate it at its predata stage. But he also hoped hopelessly that someone might think of something which would solve the problem before the wathans were released. He was mentally paralyzed and would evidently do nothing unless an impulse broke through and he pressed the fatal button.

The others were thinking hard. They put their speculations, their questions, into their computers. Always, there was some flaw in their schemes.

Burton went down several times to the floor below and stood or paced for hours while he gazed at the splendid spectacle of the swirling wathans. Were his parents among them? Ayesha? Isabel? Walter Scott, the nephew of Sir Walter Scott the author, and a great friend of his in India? Dr. Steinhaeuser? George Sala? Swinburne? His sister and brother? Speke? His grandfather Baker, who'd cheated him out of a fortune by dropping dead just before he could change his will? Bloody-minded and cruel King Gelele of Dahomey, who didn't know that he was bloody-minded and cruel since he was only doing what his society required of him? Which was no acceptable excuse.

He went to bed exhausted and depressed. He had wished to talk to Alice, but she seemed withdrawn, foundering in her own thoughts. Now, though, she didn't seem to be in a reverie which would remove her from painful or distasteful reality. She was obviously thinking about their dilemma.

Finally, Burton slipped away. He awoke after six hours, if his watch was correct. Alice was standing over him in the" dim light.

"What's the matter?" he said drowsily.

"Nothing. I hope. I just came back from the control room."

"What were you doing there?"

Alice lay down beside him.

"I just couldn't get to sleep. I kept thinking about this and that, my thoughts were as numerous as the wathans. I tried to keep my mind on the computer, but a thousand things pushed them aside, occupied me for a brief time, then slid away to be replaced by something else. I must've reviewed my whole life, here and on Earth.

"I remember thinking about Mr. Dodgson before I finally did sleep. I dreamed a lot, all sorts of dreams, a few good ones, some terrible. Didn't you hear me screaming once?"

"No."

"You must have been sleeping like the dead. I awoke shaking and perspiring, but I couldn't remember what it was that'd horrified me so."

"It isn't difficult to imagine what it was."

Alice had gotten up to get a drink of water. On returning to the bed, she again had trouble getting to sleep. Among other things, she thought of the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson and the pleasures from knowing him and from his two books inspired by her. Because she'd reread them many times, she had no trouble visualizing the text and Te

"The first scene that came to me was the Mad Tea-Party."

Seated at the table were the Hatter, the March Hare, and the Dormouse. Uninvited, Alice sat down with them, and, after some insane conversation, the March Hare asked her to have some wine.

Alice looked all around the table, but there was nothing on it but tea.

"Actually," Alice said to Burton, "that wasn't true. There was also milk and bread and butter."

The book-Alice said, "I don't see any wine."

"There isn't any," said the March Hare.

Later there was a silence while Alice was trying to solve the riddle of why a raven was like a writing desk. The silence was broken when the Hatter turned to Alice and asked her what day of the month it was. He'd taken his watch out of his pocket and had been looking uneasily at it, shaking it and holding it to his ear.

Alice considered a little and then said, "The fourth."

The real Alice said to Burton, "Mr. Dodgson wrote that date because it was May in the book and the fourth of May was my birthday."

The Hatter sighed and said, "Two days wrong! I told you butter wouldn't suit the works!"

"It was the best butter," the March Hare meekly responded.

Burton got out of bed and began pacing back and forth.

"Must you go into such detail, Alice?"

"Yes. It's important."

The next scene she visualized, or empathized, since she became the seven-year-old Alice of the book, was from the Wool and Water chapter of Through the Looking-Glass. She was talking to the White Queen and the Red Queen.

"Can you keep from crying by considering things?" she (Alice) asked.

"That's the way it's done," the White Queen said with great decision. "Nobody can do two things at once, you know."

"Alice!" Burton said. "What's all this nonsense leading to?"

"It's not nonsense. Listen."

In her reverie, Alice leaped from the White Queen to Humpty Dumpty.

"Perhaps because Loga is so fat that he reminds me of Humpty Dumpty."

She, the book-Alice, was talking to the huge anthropomorphized egg sitting on a wall. They were discussing the meaning of words.

"When 7 use a word," Humpty-Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all."

Then the real Alice—But is she any more real than that other Alice? Burton wondered—flashed to the scene where the Red Queen asked her if she could do Subtraction.

"Take nine from eight," the Red Queen said.

"Nine from eight. I can't, you know," Alice replied very readily. "But—"

"She can't do Subtraction," said the White Queen to the Red Queen. She spoke to Alice. "Can you do Division? Divide a loaf by a knife—what's the answer to that?"

"Were there any more?" Burton said.

"No. I didn't think they meant much. They were just memories of some of my favorite sections."

She'd slept again. And then she awoke suddenly, her eyes wide. She'd thought she'd heard someone far off calling her. "Just over the horizon of my mind."

It sounded like Mr. Dodgson, but she wasn't sure.

She was wide awake, her heart pounding fast. She got out of bed and walked to the control room.

"Why?"

"It occurred to me that there were three key phrases in the scene. The best butter. Which is to be master? Can you do Division?"

Burton sighed. "Very well, Alice. Tell it as you must."

She had seated herself in Loga's chair and made the adjustments necessary to communicate directly with the computer.

"You realize that you're going to die in two days or less?" she said.

"Yes. That's redundant information. I didn't need to be informed."

"You were ordered by Monat not to resurrect anyone until he gave you the countercommand. What form does tbe countercommand take?"

Burton interrupted her. "Loga asked him that."

"Yes, I know. But I didn't think it'd hurt to try again."

"And the reply?"

As before, it had been silence.

Alice had then told it that there was an even higher command, and this had been given to it by Monat before the second order.