THE MAGIC LABYRINTH

"Watch two tendencies in yourself, son. Sometimes you are arrogant, thinking you are better than others. More often you are humble. Too humble. I might even say, sickeningly humble. That is another form of arrogance. True humility is knowing your true place in the cosmic scale.

"I'm still learning. And I pray that I may live long enough to be rid of all self-deceit. Meanwhile, you and I can't spend all our time in exploring ourselves. We must also work among the people. Monasticism, retreat from the world, reclusivism, that's a lot of crap. So where would you like to go? Up-River or down?"

"I really hate to leave this place," Herma

"Your family lives from one end of The River to the other," Ch'agii said. "It contains many unpleasant relatives, true. But what family doesn't? It's your job to aid them to become right-thinking. And that is the second stage. The first is getting people to admit that they are wrong-thinking."

"That's the trouble," Herma

"If I believed that, I would not have permitted you to graduate. Which is it? Up or down?"

"Down," Herma

Ch'agii raised his eyebrows. "Good. But the neophyte usually chooses to go up-River. They've heard that La Viro is somewhere in that direction. And they thirst to visit him, to walk and talk with him."

"That is why I choose the other direction," Herma

The bishop sighed, and he said, "Sometimes I regret we are forbidden any violence whatsoever. Right now, I would like to kick you in the ass.

"Very well, go down, my pale Moses. But I charge that you give a message to the bishop of whatever area you settle down in. Tell him or her that Bishop Ch'agii sends his love. And also tell the bishop this. Some birds think they are worms."

"What does that mean?"

"I hope you find out some day," Ch'agii said. He waved his right hand, three fingers extended, blessing. Then he hugged Herma

"May our akhs fly side by side," Herma

As the bishop had said in a lecture, his students would not really know the difference between the two until they had much practice dealing with them. Even then, if they didn't have intelligence, they wouldn't be able to separate one from the other.

The raft on which he was to travel had been built by himself and the seven who were to accompany him. One of these was Chopilotl. Herma

"You're not thinking about taking that thing along?" he said to her.

"Of course I am," she said. "It would be like leaving my ka behind if I did not take her. And she is not just a thing. She is Xochiquetal."

"She's just a symbol, need I remind you for the hundredth time," he said, scowling.

"Then I need my symbol. It would be bad luck to abandon her. She would be very angry.

He was frustrated and anxious. This was the first day of his mission, and he was confronted with a situation he wasn't sure he could handle properly. ‘

"Consider thy latter end, my son, and be wise," the bishop had said in a lecture, quoting Ecclesiastes.

He had to act so that the final result of this particular event would be the right one.

"It's this way, Chopilotl," he said. "It's all right, at least, not bad, keeping this idol in this country. The people here understand. But people elsewhere won't. We're missionaries, dedicated to converting others to what we believe to be the true religion. We have authority behind us, the teachings of La Viro, who received his revelations from one of the makers of this world.

"But how can we convince anybody if one of us is an idolater? A worshiper of a stone statue? Not a very pretty one, I might add, though that is really irrelevant.

"People will mock us. They'll say we're ignorant heathen, superstitious. And we'd be si

"Tell them that she is just a symbol," Chopilotl said, sullenly. His voice rose. "I told you they wouldn't understand! Besides, it'd be a lie. It's obvious that this thing is much more to you than just a symbol."

"Would you throw away your spiral bone?"

"That's different. It's a sign of my belief, a badge of my membership. I don't worship it."

She flashed white teeth in a sardonic dark face.

"You throw it away, and I'll abandon my beloved."

"Nonsense!" he said. "You know I can't do that! You're being unreasonable, you bitch."

"Your face is getting red," she said. "Where is your loving understanding?"

He breathed deeply and said, "Very well. Bring that thing along."

He walked away.

She said, "Aren't you going to help me drag it?"

He stopped and turned. "And be an accessory to blasphemy?"

"If you've agreed that it can come with us, then you're already an accessory."

She wasn't stupid—except in that one respect and that was emotional stupidity. Smiling a little, he resumed walking away. On reaching the raft, he told the others what to expect.

"Why do you allow this, brother?" Fleiskaz said. He was a huge red-haired man whose native language was primitive Germanic. This was one of the tongues of central Europe of the second mille

But on the Riverworld, when he'd converted to the Church, he'd renamed himself Fleiskaz. This, in his natal language, meant "a piece of torn flesh." No one knew why he'd adopted that, but it might have been because he thought of himself as a piece of the good flesh living in an evil body. This piece, torn from the old body, had the potentiality to grow into a complete new body, spiritually speaking, a thoroughly good body.

"Just bear with me," Herma

They sat around, smoking and talking, watching Chopilotl pull the sled with its stone burden. By the time she had crossed the wide plain, she was scarlet-faced, sweating, and panting. She swore at Herma

"This woman doesn't set a good example, brother," Fleiskaz said.

"Be patient, brother," Herma

The raft was butting into the bank, held from drifting by an anchor, a small boulder at the end of a fish-leather cable. Chopilotl asked those aboard the raft to help her haul the sled onto it. They smiled but did not move. Cursing under her breath, she got it onto the raft. Herma

They up-anchored and shoved off then, waving at the crowd assembled on the bank to wish them bon voyage. A single mast was set forward. The square sail was hoisted, and the braces slanted to drive them toward the middle of The River. Here the current and the wind speeded them, and they set the sail to get the full benefit of the breeze. Brother Fleiskaz was at the rudder.

Chopilotl retired to the tent close to the mast to sulk.

Herma