THE MAGIC LABYRINTH

Neither Ah Qaaq nor Gilgamesh acted as if they must keep others at a proper distance. In fact, the Sumerian insisted on being very close when conversing, almost nose to nose. And he touched the other speaker frequently as if he had to have flesh contact also.

That insistence on closeness could be overcompensation, though. The Ethical might have found out that his recruits had noted his dislike for near proximity and was forcing himself to get close.

Long ago, the agent, Spruce, had said that he and his colleagues loathed violence, that doing it made them feel degraded. But if that were so, they had certainly learned to be violent without showing any repulsion. The agents on both boats had fought as well as the others. And X, as Odysseus and Barry Thorn, had killed enough to satisfy Jack the Ripper.

Possibly, X's avoidance of touch had nothing to do with a personal feeling. It might be that a touch by another human being could leave some sort of psychic print. Perhaps psychic wasn't the right word. The wathans, the auras that all sentient beings radiated, according to X, might take a sort of fingerprint. And this might last for some time. If so, then X would not be able to return to the tower until the "print" had vanished. His colleagues would see it and wonder how he'd gotten it.

Was that speculation too bizarre? All X had to tell his questioners was that he'd been on a mission and had been touched by a Valleydweller.

Ah! But what if X was not supposed to have been in The Valley? What if he had an alibi for his absences but it didn't include a visit to The Valley? Then he could not explain satisfactorily why his wathan bore a stranger's print.

This speculation, though, required that an agent's or Ethical's prints be different from those of resurrectees and instantly recognizable as such.

Burton shook his head. Sometimes, he got almost dizzy •trying to think through these mysteries.

Deciding to abandon the wandering of the mental maze, he went to talk to Gilgamesh. Though the fellow disclaimed any of the adventures attributed to the mythical king of Uruk, he liked to boast of his unrecorded exploits. His black eyes would twinkle, and he would smile when he told his wild tales-. He was like the American frontiersmen, like Mark Twain, he exaggerated to an incredible extent. He knew his listener knew he was lying, but he didn't care. It was all in fun.

The days passed, and the air became colder. The mists hung more heavily, refusing to dissipate until about eleven in the morning. They stopped more frequently to smoke the fish they caught by trolling and to make more acorn bread. Despite the thin sunshine, the grass and the trees were as green as their southern counterparts.

Then the day came when they arrived at the end of the line. There were no more grailstones.

From the north, borne by the cold wind, came a faint rumbling.

They stood on the forward deck, listening to the ominous growling. The now ever-present twilight and the mists seemed to press upon them. Above the soaring black mountain walls the sky was bright, though not nearly as bright as in the southern climes.

Joe broke their silence.

"That noithe ith the firtht cataract ve'll come to. It'th big ath hell, but it'th only a fart in a vindthtorm compared to the one that cometh from the cave. But ve got a long hard vay to go before ve get to that."

They were robed and hooded in heavy clothes and looked like ghosts in the thin fog. Cold moisture collected on their faces and hands.

Burton gave orders, and the Post No Bills was tied to the base of the grailstone. They began unloading, finishing in an hour. After they had set all their grails on the stone, they waited for it to discharge. An hour passed, the stone erupted; the echoes were a long time stopping.

"Eat hearty," Burton said. "This will be our last warm meal."

"Maybe our last supper, too," Aphra Behn said, but she laughed.

"Thith plathe lookth like purgatory," Joe Miller said. "It ain't tho bad. Vait until you get to hell."

"I've been there and back many times," Burton said.

They made a big fire of dried wood they'd been carrying in the boat and sat with their backs to the base of the stone while it warmed them. Joe Miller told some of his titanthrop jokes, mostly about the traveling trader and the bear hunter's wife and two daughters. Nut related some of his Sufi tales, designed to teach people to think differently, but light and amusing. Burton told some stories from the Thousand and One Nights. Alice told some paradoxical tales which Dr. Dodgson had made up for her when she was eight years old. Then Blessed Croomes got them to singing hymns, but she became angry when Burton inserted slightly off-color lines.

All in all, it was fun, and they went to bed feeling cheerier. The booze also helped to raise their spirits.

When they arose, they ate breakfast over another fire. Then they loaded up with their heavy burdens and started off. Before the stone and the boat disappeared in the mists, Burton turned for a last look. There were his final links with the world he'd known, though not always loved, so long. Would he ever see a boat, a grailstone again? Would he soon never see anything?

He heard Joe's lion-thunderish voice, and he turned away.

"Holy thmoke! Look at what I got to carry! I got three timeth ath much ath the retht of you. My name ain't Thamthon, you know."

Turpin laughed and said, "You're a white nigger with a big nose."

"I ain't no nigger," Joe said. "I'm a packhorthe, a beatht of burden."

"Vhat'th the differenthe?" Turpin said, and he ran laughing as Joe swung a gigantic fist at him. The towering backpack unbalanced him, and he fell flat on his face.

Laughter rose up and bounced off the canyon walls.

"I'll wager that's the first time the mountains have made merry," Burton said.

After a little while though, they became silent, and they trudged onward looking like lost souls in a circle of the Inferno.

They soon came to the first cataract, the little one, Joe Miller said. It was so broad that they couldn't see the other end, but it had to be ten times the width of Victoria Falls. At least, it seemed so. It fell from the mists above in a roar that made conversation impossible even if they shouted in each others' ears.

The titanthrop led the way. They climbed upward past the waterfall, spray now and then falling over them. Their progress was slow but not overly perilous. When they had gotten to perhaps two hundred feet up, they stopped on a broad ledge. Here they let down their burdens while Joe climbed on up. After an hour, the end of a long rope fell through the fog like a dead snake. They tied the packs, two at a time, to the rope, and Joe pulled them bumping and swinging into the mists. When all the packs were on top of the plateau, they worked their way carefully up the cliff. At the top they resumed their burdens and walked on, stopping frequently for rests.

Tai-Peng related stories of his adventures in his native land and got them to laughing. They came to another cataract and quit laughing. They scaled the cliff beside it, and then decided to call it a day. Joe poured some grain alcohol over wood— a frightful waste of good booze, he said—and they had a fire. Four days later, they were out of wood. But the last of the "small" cataracts was behind them.

After walking for an hour over a stone-strewn gently sloping-upward tableland, they came to the foot of another cliff.

"Thith ith it," Joe said excitedly. "Thithe ith the plathe vhere ve found a rope made out of clothth. It vath left by Ekth."

Burton cast his lamp beam upward. The first ten feet was rough. From there on up, for as far as he could see, which wasn't far, there was a smooth-as-ice verticality.

"Where's the rope?"

"Damn it, it vath here!"