THE MAGIC LABYRINTH by Philip Jose Farmer

“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.