THE MAGIC LABYRINTH

"Sure you did," Sam said and laughed. "Here, have a cigar, you two."

Monat was six feet eight inches tall, thin, and pink-ski

His face was semihuman. Below a shaved skull and very high forehead were two thick black curly-haired eyebrows that ran down to his very prominent cheekbones and spread out to cover them. The eyes were a dark brown. Most of his nose was more handsome than Sam had seen on many people. But a thin membranous fringe a sixteenth of an inch long hung from the sides of his nostrils. The nose ended in a thick, deeply clefted pad of cartilage. His lips were doglike, thin, leathery, and black. His lobeless ears displayed quite unhuman convolutions.

Each hand bore three fingers and a long thumb on each, and he had four toes on each foot.

I don't suppose he'd scare anybody on skid row, Sam thought. Or in Congress.

His companion was an American born in 1918, deceased in 2008, when the Cetan or Arcturan beam swept Earth. His name was Peter Jairus Frigate, and he was about six feet tall, of muscular build, had black hair and green eyes and a not ugly face in front, but a rather craggy and short-jawed profile. Like Monat, he had a grail and a bundle of possessions and was armed with a stone knife, an axe, a bow, and a quiver of arrows.

Sam doubted very much that Monat was telling the truth about his place of birth or that Frigate was giving his right name. He doubted the story of anybody who said he'd lived past 1983. However, he wasn't going to say anything about that until he became well acquainted with these two.

After having a drink served to them, he personally led them to the officers' quarters near his suite.

"It just so happens that I'm short of three of my complement," he said. "There's a cabin available in the boiler deck. It's not a desirable location, so I'll roust out two junior officers from this cabin here. You can have theirs, and they can go below."

The man and the woman who had to surrender their cabin didn't look happy when they heard Sam's order, but they got out quickly.

That evening, they ate at the captain's table on china plates painted by an ancient Chinese artist and drank from cut-lead-glass goblets. The dining utensils were a solid silver alloy.

Sam and the others, including the gigantic Joe Miller, listened intently to the stories of both newcomers about their adventures on the Riverworld. When Sam heard that they'd journeyed for a long while with Richard Francis Burton, the famous nineteenth-century explorer, linguist, translator, and author, he felt a shock run through him. The Ethical had told him that he'd also recruited Burton.

"Got any idea where he is?" he said calmly.

"No," Monat said. "We were separated during a battle and could not find him after it though we searched for him."

Sam urged Joe Miller to tell his story of the Egyptian expedition. Sam was getting impatient with his role of the polite questioner and host. He loved to dominate the conversation, but he wanted to see what effect Miller's tale had on the two.

When Joe finished, Monat said. "So! Then there is a tower in the polar sea!"

"Yeth, goddam it, that'th vhat I thaid," Joe said.

Sam intended to take at least a week hearing everything relevant they had to say about themselves. Then he would subject them to much more rigorous questioning.

Two days later, when the boat was anchored on the right bank at noon for recharging, the grailstones remained mute and flameless.

"Holy jumping Jesus!" Sam said. "Another meteorite?"

He didn't think that was the cause for the failure. The Ethical had told him that meteor-deflecting guards had been set up in space, and that the only reason the one had gotten through was because he'd managed to make the guards fail at just the right moment to permit the meteor,to pass through them. The guards would still be out there, floating in space, ready to do their job.

But if the failure hadn't been caused by a meteorite, what had caused it?

Or was it another case of malfunction of the Ethicals' systerns? People were no longer resurrected, which meant that something had gone wrong and unrepaired in the mechanism which converted the heat of the planet's core into electricity for the stones. Luckily, these were set in a parallel, not a series, arrangement. Otherwise, everybody would starve, not just those on the right bank.

Sam immediately ordered that the boat resume its course upstream. When it was near dusk the boat stopped at the left bank. Not unexpectedly, the locals did not agree to allow the use of a grailstone. There was a hell of a fight, a slaughter which sickened Sam. Frigate was one of those killed by a small rocket launched from the bank.

Then the starving desperates of the right bank invaded the left bank. They came in swarms that would not be stopped until so many had been killed that there was room enough on the stones for the grails of the survivors.

Not until the bodies no longer clogged the surface of The River did Clemens give the order to proceed upstream. A few days after that, he stopped long enough to replace those he'd lost in the bloodiness.

SECTION 3

Aboard the Rex: The Thread of Reason

7

IT WAS LOGHU AND ALICE WHO GOT BURTON AND THE OTHERS onto King John's boat.

Their group had traveled up-River to the area at which the Rex had anchored for shore leave and repairs. They found the landing place temporarily overpopulated because of those curious to see the great vessel at close range, some of whom were also ambitious to get signed up as crew members. There were some vacancies aboard which rumor said had resulted when the captain had reprimanded too harshly six people whom he thought negligent in their duties. He didn't seem in any hurry to replace them.

When John came ashore, he was surrounded by twelve marines, who gave him plenty of elbow room. It was no secret, though, that King John had an eye for beautiful women. So Loghu, an exceedingly beautiful ancient Tokharian blonde, walked by him clad only in a short kiltcloth. John stopped his marines and began talking to her. He wasn't long in inviting her aboard for a tour of his boat. Though he didn't say so, he intimated that his grand suite might take the longest to inspect and that only he and Loghu should do the inspecting.

Loghu laughed and said that she might come aboard, but her friends would have to come with her. As for the tete-a-tete, she would consider it but would not make up her mind until she had seen everything on the vessel.

King John looked sour, but then he laughed and said that he would show her something that most people didn't get to see. Loghu was no fool and understood well what he meant. Nevertheless, she knew how desperately necessary it was to get aboard the Rex.

Thus Alice, Burton, Kazz, and Besst were also invited to the tour.

Burton was fuming since he did not wish to get John's ear by having Loghu behave like a slut. It was the only way, however. His previous declarations that he would find some way to get onto the boat, no matter what the obstacles, had been so much excess steam, impressive but useless. There was no other course to take that would get him more than a very temporary stay on the Rex.

Thus, Loghu had taken a very old and still effective method. Without actually saying so, she had suggested that she might be willing to share John's bed. Burton hadn't liked it. He felt iike a whoremonger, and it also angered him that it was a woman who had done what he couldn't do. He wasn't as upset as he would have been on Earth or even here many years ago. This world had given him a good opportunity to see what women could do once the inhibitions and strictures of Terrestrial society had been removed. Moreover, it was he who had written: Women the world over are what men have made them. That might have been true in Victorian times, but it no longer applied.