some common comforts.
Theseus, keep your weapons girdled to your hip, for
there will be no killing of a sad and unpretentious Mino-
taur.
The pit was a tangerine color, pulsating with mind-heat
which coursed upwards, washed the rim, flowed down the
stone corridors, evicting the leeching cold. The center of
the pit was a fierce white dot.
I reached out and grabbed the nearest thought. It was a
weapon. But it was nothing that could cure the world’s ills,
no ultimate dragon as I sought.
A formula to cause ratlike mutations in unborn babies …
A beam that could dehydrate living tissue, make a living
body into a dry, dead corpse in seconds . . .
There were many of the G association thoughts, several
different progressions of them which led toward one dis-
tant point whose nature I could not quite ascertain …
. . . an inordinately large number of G thoughts. I was
interested in exploring their source and their destiny, but
they did not seem to be what I needed.
Then I found it. A stray thought, the ultimate weapon.
F . . . Field . . . Force Field capable of stopping all
entry by anything, including air, permitting neither bombs
nor bacteria passage . . . Field. . . .
I latched onto it and gently nudged it toward the main
stream, toward the waterspout. The ultimate weapon—the
weapon to make weapons obsolete.
I thought I was being subtle, but I was underestimating
Child. There was a clacking of hooves behind me.
“Get out!”
No. You don’t understand.
“It’s you who doesn’t understand!”
He pounced. I stepped quickly aside, struck at him, and
sent him flailing over the brink, into the pit. . . .
Far out at sea, the Force Field Theory was shot up the
waterspout. Soon it would be spoken in a dark room,
taped, transferred to paper, and sent by special messenger
to those who might put it into practice.
Sighing, I turned to go. But with a low, animal grum-
ble, the walls of the labyrinth began to sway and the floor
to shake and buck.
From somewhere down in the pit, there was a scream,
a deafening ululation which spread throughout the caverns,
echoing and re-echoing. Clutching the edge of the pit, the
Minotaur was pulling himself onto the earthen ledge. I
could see that it was not the Minotaur who screamed, but
I could not see anyone else.
What is it? I asked above the noise.
His eyes were wild. He opened his mouth, and I watched
horrified as snakes came slithering forth.
I kicked him. He fell back into the pit, all the way to
the churning bottom this time.
When I turned back to the caverns, the ceiling caved in
before me, dirt and stones spilling over my shoes. And
there was no longer an exit. I wasn’t going to get out!
I turned to the sea and saw the waterspout dying,
withering. There was no hope in that direction, either. No
hope! And the situation was so ironic, like Jesus finally
sealed into his tomb. But I had given up that delusion,
hadn’t I?
What, for crissakes, is going on? I yelled above the
constant screaming from the pit. Then it occurred to me
that I might find the nature of the disaster by latching on
to a stray thought. I reached out into the turbulent river
and found all of them starting the same way:
G … G … GGGGGGGGGG . . . leadingG to Grass
rollinG over the hills . . . to G . . . G . . . GGG God God
God like a tornado whirlinG across the Glen, relentless,
relentless … GGG GGod GGod … GODGODGOD …
random … what purpose? … trap Him like the wind to
find His purpose, find my purpose . . . GGGGGGG. . . .
I realized the nature of it then. Child’s purpose in life
had been shattered when he met me—just as mine had
been shattered when I encountered him. He could no
longer pretend to himself that he was the Second Coming,
the virgin birth. But he had no mechanical psychiatrist to