Slowly, to disturb nothing, I passed. He never looked up.
Pasiphae, here is your unholy child.
Minos, your labyrinth is ugly.
Theseus, keep your weapons girdled to your hip, for there will be no killing of a sad Minotaur.
The pit was a tangerine orange, pulsating warmth flowing out of it. The center was a white hot dot.
I reached out and grabbed the nearest thought. A weapon. Nothing that could serve my purpose, not the ultimate weapon that would make war impossible.
A formula to cause ratlike mutations in unborn babies
A beam that could dehydrate living tissue . . .
Many of the G association thoughts, several different progressions that led toward one distant point . . .
. . . An inordinately large number of them.
Then I found it. A stray thought. An 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.
“You don’t understand!”
He pounced. I stepped quickly aside, struck at him, and sent him falling over the brink into the pit . . .
Far out at sea, the Force Field Theory was being shot up the waterspout. Soon, it would be spoken in a dark room.
Sighing, I turned to go. But, with a low, animal grumble, the walls of the labyrinth began to sway, the floor shook, bucked.
From somewhere down in the pit, there was a scream, a deafening scream that spread throughout the caverns, echoing and reechoing. Clutching the edge of the pit, the Minotaur was pulling himself onto the earthen ledge. I could see it was not he screaming.
“What is it!” I yelled above the noise.
His eyes were wild. He opened his mouth, and I watched horrified as snakes came slithering out.
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 in front of me. Dirt and stones spilled over my shoes. And there was no longer an exit. I wasn’t going to get out! I turned to the sea, and I 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 in his tomb. But I had given up that delusion!
“What for crissakes is going on?” I yelled above the constant screaming from the pit. Then I thought of catching a stray thought. I reached out into the turbulent river, and I found them all starting the same way:
G … G … GGGGGGGGG . . . leadinG to Grass roll-inG over the hills . . . to G … G … GGG God God God like a tornado whirlinG across the Glen, relentlessly . . . GGG GGod GGODGODGOD . . . randomly what purpose . . . trap him like the wind to find a purpose . . . GGG . . .
I realized it. 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 be the Final Coming, the virgin birth. But he had no Mechanical Psy to treat him and could find no woman to love. He had to search for an answer.
GODDGOD GOD GOD . . . trapped in a cavern to tell answers . . . GGG .. .
I followed the thoughts to their end; I was swept along with them. I never should have listened. It was the ultimate theory, and he had proven it. Proven it beyond a doubt . . .
He had tried to contact God.
He asked what meaning there could be to life, to the world.
And he was answered; he solved his problem.
He asked what was at the center of creation.