THE MAGIC LABYRINTH

He passed many open doors, all very large, giving him eye access to small and large rooms, some with equipment, some apparently for apartments. A number had many skeletons; some, a few; some, none. The corridor ran straight for at least two miles ahead of him. Just before it was time to return, he saw on his right an entrance with a closed door. He stopped the chair, got out, withdrew his pistol, and cautiously approached the door. Above it were thirteen symbols, twelve helices arranged in a circle with a sundisc in the center. There was no knob on the door. Instead, a metal facsimile of a human hand was attached to the door where a knob should have been. Its fingers were half closed as if about to seize another hand. Burton turned it, and he pulled the door open. The room was a very large, very pale-green semitransparent sphere surrounded by and intersected by other green bubbles. On the wall of the central sphere at one side was an oval of darker green, a moving picture of some sort. The odor of pine and dogwood rose from the trees in the background, and in the foreground a ghostly fox chased a ghostly rabbit. On the bottom of the largest sphere, or bubble, were twelve chairs in a circle. Ten contained parts of skeletons. Two were bare of anything, even dust.

Burton had to breathe deeply. This room brought back frightening memories. It was here that he had awakened after killing himself 777 times to escape the Ethicals. It was here that he had faced the Council.

Now those beings who had seemed so godlike to him were bones.

He put one foot beyond the threshold, poking it through the bubble with only a slight resistance. His body followed, feeling the same tiny push. Then his other foot came through, and he was standing on springy nothingness or what seemed to be nothingness.

He reholstered his pistol and passed through two bubbles, the surfaces closing behind him, but air moving past him, and then he was in the "Council room." When he got near the insubstantial chairs, he saw that he'd been mistaken. One of the seemingly empty seats held a very thin circular convex lens. He picked it up and recognized the many-faceted "eye" of the man who'd seemed to be the chief of the Council, Thanabur.

This was no jewel, no artificial device to replace an eye, as he'd thought then. It was a lens which could be slipped over the eye. It felt greasy. Perhaps it was lubricated so it wouldn't irritate the eyeball.

With some difficulty and revulsion, he inserted the lens under his eyelid.

The left eye saw the room through a distorting semiopaque-ness. Then he closed his right eye.

"Oooohhhh!"

He quickly opened the right eye.

He'd been floating in space, in a darkness in which distant stars and great gas sheets shone and there was the feeling, but not the direct effect, of unbelievable coldness. He'd been aware that he was not alone, though. He knew, without having seen them, that he was followed by uncountable souls, trillions upon trillions, perhaps far more. And then he was shooting toward a sun, and it became larger, and suddenly he saw that the flaming body was not a star but a vast collection of other souls, all flaming, yet burning not as in Hell but with an ecstasy that he'd never experienced and which the mystics had tried to describe but was indescribable.

Though shaken and afraid, he was also pulled fiercely by the ecstasy. Moreover, he could not allow his fear to overcome him, he who had boasted that he had never feared anything.

He closed his right eye and was again in space in the same "location." Again, he was hurtling through space, far swifter than light, toward the sun. Again, he felt the i

Then he heard a soundless cry, one of unutterable ecstasy and welcome, and he plunged headfirst into the sun, the swarm, and he was nothing and yet everything. Then, he wasn't he any more. He was something which had no parts and was not a part but was one with the ecstasy, with the others who were not others.

He gave a great cry and opened his eye. There were Alice and Nur and Frigate and his companions staring at him from the doorway. Trembling, he went to them through the bubbles. He was not so upset, however, that he did not notice that the Sumerian was missing nor that Alice was weeping.

He ignored their questions, saying, "Where's Gilgamesh?"

"He died on the way up," Alice said.

"We left him sitting in the chair in a room," Nur said. "He must have had a brain concussion."

"I killed him!" Alice said, and she sobbed.

"I'm sorry for that," Burton said, "but it couldn't be helped. If he was i

He put his arms around Alice and said, "You did what you had to do. If you hadn't, he might've killed me."

"Yes, I know. I've killed before, but those people were strangers attacking us. I liked Gilgamesh, and now..."

Burton thought it was best to allow her to weep out her guilt and grief. He released her and turned to the others. Nur asked him what he had been doing in the room. He told them of the lens.

"You must've been standing there for at least an hour,"

Frigate said.

"Yes, I know, but the state seemed to last only a minute."

"What about the aftereffects?" Nur said.

Burton hesitated, then said, "Apart from being shaken up, I feel... I feel... a tremendous closeness to all of you! Oh, I've been fond of some of you, but... now... I love all of you!"

"That must've been a shock," Frigate murmured. Burton ignored him.

The Moor held up the multifaceted device and looked through it with his right eye closed.

"I see nothing. It has to be fitted next to the eye."

Burton said, "I thought that the lens was something which only the chief of the twelve, Thanabur, would wear. I presumed that it was some sort of ritual token or emblem of leadership, something traditional. I may've been wrong. Perhaps everybody took a turn wearing it during the Council meetings. It may be that the lens gave all of them a feeling such as I had, a closeness and love for everybody in the room."

"In which case, X was able to overcome that feeling," Tai-Peng said.

"What I don't understand," Burton said, "is why the lens put me into a trance yet didn't seem to affect Thanabur."

"Perhaps," Nur said, "the Councilors were used to it. After wearing it many times, they got only a mild effect from it."

Nur fitted the lens under his eyelids and shut his right eye. Immediately, his face took on an expression of ecstasy, though his body remained motionless. When two minutes had passed, Burton shook the Moor by the shoulder. Nur came out of his trance and began weeping. But when he'd recovered and had taken the lens out, he said, "It does induce a state similar to that which the saints have attempted to describe."

He handed the lens to Burton.

"But it's a false state brought about by an artificial thing. It's not the true state. That can only be attained by spiritual development."

Some of the others wanted to try. Burton said, "Later. We may have used up time we sorely need. We have to find X before he finds us."