THE MAGIC LABYRINTH by Philip Jose Farmer

In one sense, they were old though their youthful bodies had been restored. She had lived on Earth to be eighty-two and he to sixty-nine. (“Considering my sexual preferences, a significant age at which to die,” Burton had once drawled.) A long life tended to ossify more than the arteries; it also ossified habits and attitudes. It made it much more difficult to adjust, to change one’s self for the better. The impact of the resurrection and the Riverworld had shattered many people’s beliefs and helped set them up for change. It had decalcified many, though in some the fragmentation was only slight, in others much more, and many had been unable to adjust at all.

Alice had suffered a metamorphosis in many respects, though her basic character remained. It was down there in the abysm of the soul, the deeps which make the spaces between the stars seem a mere step over a puddle. It was the same with Burton.

So Alice stayed with him, hoping what she knew was hopeless.

At times, she dreamed of finding Reginald again. But she also knew that that was even more hopeless. She would never go back to him whether he had remained the same or changed. It was doubtful that he had changed. He was a good man, but, like all the good, he had faults, some grave, and he was too stubborn to change.

The thing was that no caterpillar could ever effect a metamorphosis in another. The other, if it is to become a butterfly, must do it itself. The difference between man and caterpillar was that the insect was pre-programmed and the human had to re-program himself.

Thus the days passed for Alice, though there was much more to them than thinking such thoughts.

And then one day, when the Rex connected its batacitor and grail lines to a stone on the right bank, the stone failed to discharge.

10

SHOCK AND PANIC.

Fifteen years ago, the grailstones on the left bank had quit operation. Twenty-four hours later, they had resumed functioning. King John had been told by Clemens that the line had been severed by a great meteorite but that it had been reconnected and all damage restored in that amazingly short period. It must have been done by the Ethicals, though anybody in the area to witness the re-forming had been overcome by something—probably a gas—and slept through the whole project. Now the question was: Would the line be repaired again?; the lesser question: What caused this disaster? Another meteorite? Or was it one more step downward in the breakdown of this world?

King John, though stunned, rallied swiftly. He sent his officers to calm down the crew, and he gave orders to serve everybody the mixture of lichen alcohol, water, and powdered irontree blooms called grog on the Rex.

After all were soaked enough in the drink that gives good cheer and courage, he ordered that the copper “feeder” cap be taken back into the boat. Then the Rex proceeded up-river in the shallows near the left bank. There was enough energy in the batacitor to keep the boat going until the next mealtime. When it was two hours to dusk, John commanded that it stop and the copper cap be attached to a stone.

As expected, the locals refused to “loan” a stone to the Rex. One of the steam machine guns loosed a stream of plastic bullets over the heads of the crowd on the bank, and it ran back panicked halfway across the plain. The two amphibian launches, once named Firedragon I and II, now Eleanor and Henry, rumbled onto shore and stood guard while the cap was placed over the stone. Within an hour, however, locals from stones as far away as a mile on each side gathered, including those whose grailstones were in the foothills. Whooping war cries, yelling, thousands of men and women charged the amphibians and the riverboat. At the same time, five hundred in boats attacked from the water.

Exploding shells and rockets from the Rex wiped out hundreds. The steam guns mowed down hundreds more. The marines and crew members lined along the railings shot rifles, pistols, and arrows, and launched small rockets from bazookas.