THE MAGIC LABYRINTH by Philip Jose Farmer

“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.”