R.W. IV - The Magic Labyrinth

  "No. The wathan is the source and the seat of self-awareness. That is not a copy. The wathan leaves the dead body, takes its self-awareness with it. But it is unconscious, most of the time, anyway. There are some indications that, under certain conditions and for a brief time, the wathan may be conscious after leaving the body. But we don't have enough evidence to state definitely that this can occur. This newly enfleshed wathan may be hallucinating.

  "Anyway, the wathan furnishes all the data we need to make a new body, and then it attaches itself to the duplicate."

  Burton wondered how many times this information would have to be repeated to some of the group before it was finally accepted.

  "Why did you decide to carry out your own project?" Nur said.

  Loga grimaced.

  "I'll talk about that later."

  The planet was re-formed into a Rivervalley many millions of miles long. The tower and the underground chambers were constructed at the same time. The wathans were fed into the duplicate bodies made in the underground places. The physical defects of the bodies were rectified. Any metabolic disturbances were corrected. Dwarfs and midgets were given a normal height, but pygmies retained their original height. The wathans were attached to the bodies during this process, but the bodies had no self-awareness since the brains of the duplicates were kept unconscious. Nevertheless, the wathans were recording changes. Then, the duplicates were destroyed and, on general resurrection day, the bodies were duplicated again but along the banks of The River.

  "My premature awakening in the chambers?" Burton said. "Was that an accident?"

  "Not at all," Loga said. "I was responsible for that. You were one of those I'd picked to help me in my plan – if it ever became necessary that I'd need your help. I caused you to be awakened so that at least one of the group would have some inkling of what was being done to you people. It would also fire your determination. You have a vast curiosity; you would never be satisfied until you got to the bottom of this mystery."

  "Yes, but when you visited us, you lied to us," Nur said. "You told us you'd picked only twelve. As it's turned out, you must have chosen many more than that."

  "In the first place, I wasn't the only one who visited you. Sometimes, Tringu did. He was completely with me in my objections to some features of this project. He was the only one I could trust. I couldn't even tell Siggen what I was doing.

  "In the second place, I couldn't limit the group to twelve. Chance alone was against that few ever getting to the tower, if I needed them for what I had in mind. So, I actually chose one hundred and twenty-four. I lied to you about the number because, if you were ever caught by my people, you'd not be revealing the full truth.

  "That is also why I didn't reveal everything to you and why I lied about some things. If you'd been caught and your memories were read, you'd not be able to give them the complete plan. And you'd have contradictory stories.

  "That is why, posing as Odysseus, I told Clemens that the renegade who'd visited me had claimed to be a woman."

  Loga had awakened only one of his chosen group because that could be read by the Ethicals as an accident. More than one would arouse suspicion. But he'd made a mistake in arousing even one. Monat had investigated Burton's case, and, while he couldn't prove that someone had tampered with the resurrection machinery, he was on the lookout for more "accidents."

  Loga had become very anxious when Monat said that he meant to be resurrected near Burton and to accompany him for a while. Monat also wished to study the lazari closely, and to do this he had to make up an acceptable story to account for his presence. Why not do both at the same time?

  Loga hadn't warned Burton about this. He was afraid that Burton, knowing Monat's real story, might be self-conscious and act peculiarly. Or, even worse, try to take matters in his own hands.

  "I would've," Burton said.

  "I thought so."

  "I don't like to interrupt," Nur said. "But do you know what happened to the Japanese, Piscator?"

  Loga grimaced again, and he pointed to the wrecked equipment along the wall and the skeleton near it.

  "That's what's left of Piscator."

  He swallowed, and he said, "I didn't think that any Valleydweller would ever get to the top of this tower. The odds against it made it very improbable, though not absolutely impossible. I knew that the Parolanders might build an airship, but even so, how would they get into the tower? Only a highly advanced ethical person could enter. That wasn't likely, but it was possible. As it happened, one man from the Parseval did get in.

  "So, just to make sure, or try to make sure that if someone like Piscator did enter, I put bombs in the cabinets along the wall and also in the cabinets in the revolving platform. Not just in this room. There are more in another control room past the apartments in the opposite direction. The bombs were explosives which were formed into instrument panels. Whichever direction the intruder took, he'd see a control room and go in. His curiosity would drive him to do so. He'd see screens still operating and the skeletons of those who'd been working in it.

  "The sensors in the bombs would allow the bombs to go off only if the intruder's brain didn't contain the little black ball, the suicide mechanism."

  "Piscator wasn't one of your recruits, was he?" Nur said.

  "No."

  "If I'd been on the airship and had gotten in, I'd have been killed."

  Burton wondered briefly why Loga hadn't planted bombs in the secret room at the base. Then he realized that if Loga had done so and he'd been with the expedition, as he had, he, too, would've been killed.

  "Did you deactivate the bombs when you came here?" Burton said. He was thinking of the control room with the open door they'd passed before arriving at the apartments.

  "I did in this room."

  Loga continued his narrative. He had made a wathan distorter to enter the tower and also to deceive the scanner satellites. And he had fixed the computer so that it couldn't notify the Council when Burton died and a duplicate body was being made for him.

  "That's why you were able to kill yourself so many times and still elude the Council. But Monat sent word via an agent to inspect the place where your preresurrection duplicate would be made so that your fatal wounds could be repaired. The circuits were traced back to the inhibit I'd installed. That's why, the last time you committed suicide, you were caught."

  In the frantic search to find out the identity of the renegade, the Council had agreed to submit themselves to the memory scanner. Loga had anticipated this, and he had fixed the computer so that it would show a false memory track.

  "You understand that I couldn't do this for my entire track by any means. Only those memory sections for the times when we had to account for our absences were scanned. Even that took much time and hard work, but I did it."

  The time came which Loga dreaded so much and hoped would not come. He had arranged for that, but he did not want to have to carry out his arrangements. It hurt him severely to do it.

  "Monat decided that he would be picked up at night soon and return to the tower. At the same time, you, Burton, would be taken along for a complete scan of your time in The Valley. I think that Monat suspected that the renegade, I, had fixed it so that your memory of your questioning by the Council had not been removed. Also, the violence around him in The Valley was increasingly sickening him. He needed a vacation."

  51

  * * *

  Loga was flying to the tower, having just completed a legitimate mission, when the two hidden resurrectors were found. At the same time, the engineers had discovered more evidence of Loga's tampering with the computer.

  Monat, Thanabur, and Siggen were in The Valley then. The other Councilors sent out aircraft to pick them up and to give them the news. However, the Council had made an error in judgment. Instead of waiting until Loga arrived and then confronting him, they sent a message to him. He was told to expect arrest when he got home.

  "It took me half an hour to work up my nerve to do
what I'd long planned and had known that I must someday do. But I'd hoped I'd be in the tower when I had to do it."

  He'd sent out a signal which had activated the codeword in the little black balls in the brains of those in the tower and the sea around it. They had made a mistake when they used one code instead of individual codes.

  "But I also made a mistake when I didn't send the code down into The Valley. I'd thought of it, but I didn't want to kill any more than I had to. Also, I thought that those Ethicals in The Valley would be helpless. They couldn't get out to the tower, since I'd fixed it so that the signal also deactivated the aircraft. Those left in The Valley would have to try to get to the tower the hard way. By boat until they got to the headwaters and on foot over the mountains. Long before then, I'd have done what I had to do."

  "But what if the aircraft had fallen into The Valley?" Nur said.

  "They wouldn't. Before they hit the surface they'd have burned up. Those parked on top of the mountains along The Valley would have burned, too. I'd arranged that."

  "How did their pilots get down the mountain and back up to the parked vehicles?" Nur said.

  "The ships could be directed by remote control. They'd drop the pilots off in the foothills during a storm or hard rain and return to the mountain top. The pilot would bury the control if he was going to stay in the area or he'd carry it in his grail. It looked just like one of the cups found in all the grails."

  There was nothing to stop Loga then from flying to the tower. But he'd underestimated the wiliness of Monat.

  "At least, I believe it was he who took those countermeasures. He must have put into the computer all that had happened and had gotten a list of probabilities. The computer didn't betray me; it was inhibited. But it did all that Monat asked it to do. I think it did. Possibly Monat thought of it himself."

  Loga was silent for so long that Burton had to jog him along.

  "Thought of what?"

  "Of their planting a device in my personal aircraft. When I sent out that signal, everybody in the tower and the sea area dropped dead, all other aircraft in flight were burned up, and the general resurrection machinery was shut down. It wouldn't start again until I signaled it to do so.

  "But my own vessel had had a device installed in it. I found that out when I could no longer control it. It was flying automatically. It headed toward the top of the mountain range no matter what I did. At the same time, a recorded voice told me to wait there until I'd be picked up.

  "Monat's voice!

  "He'd had the stop-devices installed before he went into The Valley to accompany you, Burton. Of course, he must've had the devices put into every ship. If he'd suspected me only, he would've had me put under a completely exhaustive examination.

  "What Monat hadn't reckoned on, though, was that there would be no aircraft or pilots to come to my rescue. That meant that I'd be stranded on the mountain top and would starve to death unless I could trace down the device and remove it.

  "Though Monat had expected an aircraft from the tower to get to the guilty person's craft swiftly, he had also made sure that the culprit wouldn't be able to remove the device or cut it off. A few minutes before my machine would land, a recording told me that the device would burn up the moment contact with the ground was made and so would the motor."

  Loga had cursed and raved. He briefly visualized what would happen. He'd die and so couldn't send false messages to the Gardenplanet. In one hundred and sixty years, the Gardeners would expect the automatically operated ship with the latest report. When it hadn't arrived after a reasonable time, the Gardeners would send people to investigate. They would arrive at the tower over three hundred and twenty years after the message-ship should have been launched.

  "In one way," Loga said, "that was good. I had wanted the project to run far past the one hundred and twenty years allotted, though I hadn't dared say so. My colleagues said that that was more than long enough to weed out the people who would never get to the stage necessary to Go On. Now the project would run far longer than planned. And perhaps my father and mother and sisters and brothers and uncles and aunts and cousins would not be doomed."

  Burton said, "What?"

  Tears flowed down Loga's cheeks. He spoke in a strangled voice.

  "It was strictly forbidden for anyone to locate any relatives resurrected in The Valley. The formulators of this policy were Monat's people. They said that experience had shown that Ethicals who found their loved ones among the lazari were too emotionally upset if these were evidently not going to make it. They'd interfere, they'd be tempted to reveal what was happening before the time was ripe for that. In a previous project, a woman had put her parents in a special place in the underground chambers and tried to force-feed, as it were, their ethical advancement.

  "I was taught that when I was a young adult on the Gardenworld. I believed in the policy then. But later I couldn't endure not seeing my family. Nor could I endure the agonizing idea that they might not Go On. So, long before we left the Gardenworld, I had made my plans. Still, I wasn't sure that I could carry them out. But I did track down my relatives through the computer – that took a long long time, believe me – and I visited them in The Valley. I was in disguise, of course. They had no chance of recognizing me. I'd arranged it so that they'd all be resurrected in the same place. Also, if any moved away from there or was killed, I'd know where they were.

  "I have almost photographic recall. Even though I'd died on Earth shortly before I was to be five years old, I vividly remembered my parents and all my other relatives.

  "It was very hard on me to keep concealing my identity. But I had to. I did become good friends with them and even pretended to be learning their language. All this while engaged on an authorized project, you understand.

  "I dearly loved my foster mother on the Gardenworld. But I loved my own mother even more, though she was not as spiritually developed as my foster mother, far from it.

  "During several of my visits, in later years, I made sure that my relatives were introduced to the beliefs of the Church of the Second Chance. They all converted to it, but it wasn't enough. They were a long way from attaining that stage in which I could have hope that they'd advance even further.

  "But I believed, and still believe, that if they're given enough time, they will do so."

  Burton said gently, "You were just about to land on top of the mountain."

  "Yes. But what I've told you about my relatives is highly important. You must also realize that I wasn't just distressed about my own family. I've agonized over all the others, the billions who are doomed. I couldn't even mention this once to my fellows, though. Except Tringu, of .course, and I didn't bring up the subject until I was absolutely sure of him. If I'd said anything about it to the others, I'd have been suspected at once if it became known that there was a renegade."

  Though he might be committing suicide, Loga did the one thing that would prevent his vessel from alighting on the designated place. He cut off the power.

  "If Monat had thought that anyone'd do that, he'd have arranged it so that it couldn't be done. But he hadn't expected any such action. Why should he? The culprit would know that even if he killed himself, he'd be raised in the tower."

  The craft had fallen at once and struck the side of the mountain just below the top. It was going slow, and Loga was in a buffer suit. Moreover, since the vessel was made of the almost indestructible gray metal, it was not even scratched by the impact.

  "Even so, I would've been killed during the fall. But I turned on the power when it had hurtled for a hundred feet, and the craft started back up toward the top. I cut the power again, and I turned it on when I'd gone fifty feet. The craft started up again for its original destination. I cut the power once more."

  By bone jarring increments, Loga worked the vessel down to near ground level. Before this, he'd opened a port. When he thought that he was close enough, he leaped out the port, clutching the handle of his grail. He fell through the rain and
the thunder and lightning, struck something, and was knocked unconscious.

  When he awoke he was draped belly-down across a branch of an irontree. It was daylight, and he could see his grail a hundred feet below at the base of the tree. Though he was severely scratched and bruised and had some internal injuries and a broken leg, he managed to get to the ground.

  "The rest I've told you or you've correctly inferred."

  Burton said, "Not all. We don't have the slightest inkling what this terrible thing is which you mentioned. What you were saving for the last."

  "Or what Going On really means," Nur said.

  "Going On? When the body of a person who's highly advanced ethically dies, the wathan disappears. Our instruments can find no trace of it. If another duplicate body is made, its wathan doesn't return to it."

  "What do you do with a wathanless body?"

  "Only one experiment was made, and the wathanless was allowed to live out her natural span. That's never been done with human beings. The people who came before Monat's did that.

  "The theory is that, though the Creator may appear to be indifferent to Its creatures, It does welcome and take care of the wathans that disappear. What other explanation is there for that?"

  "It could be," Frigate said, "that there's something about the extraphysical universe that attracts a wathan when it reaches a certain stage of development. I don't know why this would have anything to do with the extraphysical. But there could be some sort of magnetic pull caused by this, I suppose."

  "That theory's been put forth. We prefer to believe that the Creator does it. Though It may do it through purely physical-extraphysical means and not by a supernatural act."

  "In effect," Burton said, "you aren't relying on science but on faith to explain the disappearances."

  "Yes, but when you get to the basics, infinity and finiteness, eternity and time, the First Cause, you must rely on faith."

  "Which has led so many billions astray and caused such immense suffering," Frigate said.