The White Bull (11 page)

The prince said, without any particular feeling in the words: "If that god-blasted cow dares to lecture me on courage and per-sev-er-ance in my stu-dies one more time, I swear by all the real gods I'll break its neck."

"Very well, my friend." I laid a hand gently and briefly on the prince's shoulder. "Very well. We will do all that we can to help."

It was midafternoon on the day following that conference, and I, in my own classroom, half-hypnotized by the drone of an assistant teacher's voice, had fallen into a daydream of numbers that my stubborn mind kept trying to match with flying gulls. I was roused from this state by a hand shaking me.

Stomargos stood at my side, looking down at me with an expression of obscure triumph. "Daedalus, the White Bull wants to see you, at once."

I would not give him the satisfaction of asking why, although I knew a premonition of sickening fear. Getting to my feet in a silence of outward calm, I followed the educator from the classroom.

I had expected that when we reached the White Bull's private chambers, Stomargos would immediately be dismissed. But the Bull, who was waiting for us on its tall chair, made no gesture to send the young man away. And Stomargos, with a smug look on his face, remained standing at my side.

And today the Bull, for once, did not say
learn from me, Daedalus
. Rather it rumbled: "We have dis-co-vered the prince's cheat-ing, Dae-da-lus."

"Cheating? What do you mean?" But I had never been any good at trying to brazen out a lie.

"I mean the thread tied on his right wrist. In his pock-et, the ti-ny inet-al balls, to bounce and roll and seek al-ways the down-ward slope of floor, how-ev-er gen-tle. How do you make a ball so smooth and round? Ex-act-ly spher-i-cal?"

I had dropped them molten from a tall tower, into water. I wondered if the Bull would be impressed to hear this method. "I see," I said, trying to be noncommittal and admitting nothing. "What do you intend to do now?"

There was a silence. Then the White Bull said at last, in a changed voice: "Leave us a-lone, Sto-mar-gos." And then, when the two of us were finally alone, it said to me: "Now learn from me, Dae-dal-us. As you have sought to learn."

… and before I was able to sit down, I reeled and almost fell into the moat, with the painful power and clarity of the pictures that were being forced into my mind. There, in front of me, as if pinned up on air, were spread the wings of which I had long dreamed. These wings were not very greatly different in their gross structure from the ones I had pinned on my workbench; but in the fine structure there was a great difference between the two. The wings in the vision were pierced through in a thousand places with tiny, peculiarly curved channels. Presently, when the finest scale of the structure was enlarged so I could see it, I saw how the channels would have to be made. Each of them was a soft, sculpted cavity, that would enlarge just slightly each time the wing was beaten downward and air flowed into it. Then in my vision the wing finished its downward motion and the cavities all contracted, forcing air out of each channel at the bottom.

The strangest part of the cycle of operation was the way in which the air just below the wing, on encountering all the suddenly closed entrances, changed pressure wildly. A thin layer of that air, much broader than the wing itself, became momentarily almost as hard as wood. Somehow in the vision I was able to feel, as well as see, the fluid alterations… and I could see also, with no feeling of haste, no need to hurry, that the length and width of the pinions must be just so, in relation to the height and weight of the human being who was to wear them. And just
so
must be the variation in the different channels that pierced the different sections of the wing…

It was all, in every least detail, burned into my brain. From that first learning I knew that there would be no forgetting this lesson, even if forgetfulness were someday willed. But the imprinting did not take long. Soon it was over.

I, Daedalus, feeling like a clay tablet on which someone's signet ring had just been impressed, got shakily to my feet and stood at my full height once more.

"Bull—why did you never before give me such a teaching?"

The soft brown eyes blinked at me, as if the Bull had been expecting a different kind of comment. "It will not make of you an ed-u-ca-ted man, Dae-dal-us."

"AH right, then, it will not. I do not know what you think an educated man is like, or even whether I want to be one by your standards. I thank you for this teaching, though… you refused it to me before, why did you give it now?"

The Bull was no longer looking directly at me; its eyes and its face were
human enough so that at least I could be sure of that. When it answered, its
voice was almost soft.

"Because I think this tea-ching will re-move you from my pre-sence. In one way or a-nother. I see now you are not wor-thy of fine ed-u-ca-tion. One way or a-nother your dis-rup-tion of my school must stop."

"I see." But no, I did not really think about it. Because in my mind the plan for the new wings was burning, as urgent as a fire in my workshop.

Stomargos, his triumph fading into puzzlement when he beheld my elation, was my escort once again. But the image of the wings still burned before my eyes, blinding me to almost everything else, and I allowed myself to be marched away through the Labyrinth for a hundred paces or so before the realization came to me.

When that happened I stopped and grabbed Stomargos by his flabby arm. "And Prince Theseus? What of him?"

"I myself am a witness to the prince's attempt to cheat," said Stomargos, firmly and primly. "There is no doubt of his guilt, and the Bull has decided rightly that he must be expelled."

"But that cannot be!" My reaction was so strong that even the educator was shaken for a moment.

But for a moment only. "Oh, the Bull and I are quite agreed that expulsion is necessary. The prince is probably receiving his formal notification at this moment."

On hearing that I spun around in my tracks and ran, back toward the inner Labyrinth.

"Stay! Stay!" Stomargos shouted, running clumsily after me. "You have been expelled also. You are to leave the grounds of the school at once…"

He was much younger than I, but still I outsped him easily. The voice of the educator faded behind me in the windings of the maze. From somewhere ahead, in the direction of the Bull's habitation, there came inhuman roaring noises and the sounds of physical struggle.

Moments later, I burst into the central room, to behold Theseus and the Bull grappling on the central dais, arms locked around each others necks, the prince gripping a horn with one fist. Theseus was slightly taller. The heavy stone chair had already been overturned, and a Bull-meal of fresh fruit was scattered and trampled under their feet and hooves. In the broad back of the Prince of Athens—even now I can see it vividly—the great bronzed, cabled muscles stood out like structural arches new-glowing from the forge.

The end came even as I, yelling at the combatants, splashed through the moat, running to reach them before it was too late. I heard the sickening bony crack, and the Bull's hoarse warbling cry at the same instant, I saw the prince move staggering back, and then stand motionless, staring down at what his hands had done. At his feet lay a gray-white mound of fur, suddenly no more human than a dying bear.

Stomargos, catching up with me at last, came pounding into the circular space and quickly splashed across the moat to stand beside me goggling at what lay on the dais. The schoolteacher pointed, goggled some more, and opened his mouth to begin an almost wordless cry for help. Then he turned and ran, and it was I who had to drop him with a desperate watery tackle in the moat.

"Theseus! Help me! We must keep this one quiet." And in a moment the Prince of Athens had taken charge. Stomargos's head was clamped down in the deepest part of the little channel, and presently the bubbles ceased to come up out of his mouth.

Then the two of us who were still alive climbed up out of the moat onto the dais. Theseus, still panting with the exertion of his struggle against the Bull, seemed to grow a little taller and straighter with every operation of his lungs, like some young tree freed suddenly of a deforming burden, reasserting its natural form.

He nodded toward the fallen Bull. "Does he still breathe, Daedalus?"

I was already crouching down, prodding and peering into gray fur, trying to find out. "I am not sure."

"Well, let him go on breathing, if he can. It no longer matters to me. I'm leaving Crete."

"But how?"

"My ship is still here—didn't you know? She can be made ready in an hour or two—if I can get my men rounded up out of the taverns by then—and I am going home. Or somewhere else, if my father will not have me in Athens now. But better a pirate's life, even, than this." And his eyes swept round, making a scan of the circular stone wall.

"You are right," I said after a moment's thought. "I think you should leave, must leave, if you can, before this is discovered."

Theseus looked at me and said: "Ariadne is going to come with me. I am sure of it."

"Gods of sea and sky! No! That would cause—"

"And Phaedra too."

I was stricken speechless for the moment.

"And you are welcome to come with us too, old friend," Theseus offered, almost as an afterthought, "though I can promise you no safe workshop, nor slaves, nor high place at any court but my own—if ever I have one."

"I want no place as high as a sun-dried pirate's, which I fear Minos might make for me here, as soon as he comes home. Comes home to find the Sacred Bull, the gift of Poseidon, dead. And you departed, with both his daughters who are his only heirs—come, you think they will really both go with you?"

"I'm sure they will."

He might not have been able to pass the tests of school, but in this I did not think he would be wrong. I said: "Then I must ask you as your friend if you have thought this through."

"What is there to think about, Daedalus? I could not stay here after attacking the Bull, even if he were still alive. And now I have killed this miserable teacher in the moat. And when the princesses tell me they are too frightened to stay and face their father, as I am sure they will, then I cannot very well refuse to take them with me."

"I suppose not," I said, and wondered if Theseus was having an affair with both princesses at the same time. "And if you go I certainly do not intend to stay and take all the blame. Very well, then, we must move swiftly, before this violence is discovered."

"Dae-dal-us." The unexpected voice was a mere thread of sound, stretched thin and about to break.

I bent down again, getting my ears closer to the furry head. "White Bull, how is it with you?"

"As with a man whose neck is bro-ken, Dae-dal-us. After to-day I teach no more."

"Would that I had been able to learn from you before today, White Bull. And would that you had learned from me."

The tall Athenian prince and I walked out of the Labyrinth together. No doubt both of us looked a little shaken, as would be only natural for two students who had probably just been expelled. Through the windows of the elementary school the usual voices came droning out, from classrooms in which the usual lessons were no doubt in progress. When a pair of teachers approached us, heading in a direction that suggested they might be bound for a conference with the Bull, Theseus—displaying, as I thought, excellent Tactical Skill—stopped them and informed them in a subdued voice that the Bull and Stomargos were talking together and did not want to be disturbed just now. The teachers accepted this unquestioningly, and walked off uncertainly in another direction.

The prince and I walked on, moving quickly but without hurrying. There was one more stop I had to make, within the precincts of the school. On doing so I was presented with more disturb-ing news—Icarus was truant yet again today, his teacher had no idea of where he might be found.

The prince and I hurried on to Ariadne. A minute after our arrival the princess had dispatched one of her most trusted servants to begin the job of rounding up Theseus's crew�his ship had been here for a month now, and apart from a few practice cruises little had been done to keep the men and gear in shape. Despite his evident faith in his men, I thought it highly problematical how soon he might be able to hoist sail.

A few minutes after the first servant left the royal quarters, a couple of others followed, detailed to help me look for my son.

The wild, rugged lands where boys were wont to go searching for birds' eggs and dreams swept up and up, one hour's walk after another, behind and above the House of the Double Axe.

The Prince of Athens said: "We can wait no longer for him, Daedalus. My men's lives are all in danger, and the lives of the two princesses too. As soon as those two bodies are discovered in the Labyrinth, some military man or sea captain is sure to take it upon himself to try to stop my sailing, no matter what the Princess Ariadne tells him. They know they'll stand responsible to the king when he gets back."

And Ariadne said: "Theseus must get away. You are welcome to come with us, Daedalus, but if you stay, I feel sure my father will not deal too grievously with you; he depends too much on you for that."

Only Phaedra, who had joined this hasty conference in the middle, had nothing at all to say to me. For the most part she was silent, biting her full lips. Her fingers, as if they moved without her awareness, had gone to caressing Theseus's arm as the prince stood beside her. I saw this, but Ariadne did not see.

I in my mind's eye saw more: the sun-dried pirates on the dock. And his own workshop, and the hidden room that held the hidden, unfinished wings. All wrong; I would have to start again from scratch. And I saw my living quarters nearby, and how the small, trusting shadow would cross the threshold there, when Icarus came running home…

Long, helmed shadows came across that threshold first, with the black triangles of shadow-spearheads thrust ahead of them. This time the soldiers grimly held their weapons as they marched me, the king's chief engineer, deeper into the House. Icarus, returning wearily from another of his adventures, was only just in time to see his father being arrested, and to be swept up like a dropped crumb by tidy soldiery.