The White Bull (7 page)

I was silent.

"There, you see? You, my friend, have talked to the Bull more than anyone else whom I can trust, even though the two of you are in some sense rivals. Despite that rivalry I can see that there's also a mutual respect between you. So do what you can toward explaining the diplomatic situation to him, and report back to me when you have done so."

I bowed. I hoped there was respect between the Bull and me.

Clouds had gathered, and a thunderstorm was threatening, as I made my way toward the Labyrinth, in which the Bull's living quarters were deeply embedded—still near the center, in fact, for the surrounding growth had been approximately symmetrical. Detouring slightly, I chose a path that would let me peer into the windows of the elementary school. This school, like most other governmental departments, occupied its own corner of the vast, sprawling House. Finding the window I wanted, I stopped just outside, shading my eyes that I might be able to see into the relative gloom of the interior.

There perched Icarus, his wiry sunburnt legs entangled with the plain wooden sticks of a three-legged stool, surrounded by a gaggle of other boys and girls similarly mounted. My son was holding a stylus, rather awkwardly, in his right hand, and his dark head was bent over the table in front of him, where lay several wax tablets more or less covered with symbols. The teacher of this class, an earnest young Cretan woman, was pacing among her pupils most of whom were chanting grammar. I recognized the teacher as one of the most recent graduates of the upper school, the one to which Theseus was now bound. As far as I was able to tell by observing her through the window now, the experience of higher education had not driven her mad. On the other hand, it did not seem to have conferred upon her any visible benefit. She did not appear to be doing anything more to her pupils, or for them, than other schoolmasters had done with theirs since time immemorial.

At least Icarus, as far as his vigilant father could tell, was not taking any harm from her treatment. And the boy had, I thought, recovered as well as could be expected from his mother's death four years ago.

With a last lingering glance at my son, I started to walk away from the window, then delayed for another moment. In my mind's eye arose a vision of a newly-graduated Theseus four years hence, a caged lion pacing about in this classroom, trying to teach these children grammar. That was hardly any madder a vision, I supposed, than one of the prince sitting down to study. After yet one more look at my fidgeting son—Icarus was bright enough, but didn't seem to want to apply himself to any sort of learning yet—I walked on.

Now, passing along one outer flank of the vast House, this particular surface a rock wall of many turns and angles, I glanced in the direction of a field of rock-hewn tombs nearby. In that direction I could see a small procession returning across the bridge that spanned the ravine between House and cemetery. They would be coming back to the House for the funeral games, the acrobatic bull-dancing with half-tamed animals that had so lately become popular, and the wrestling that should please the gods.

When my way led me past the small arena where the games were about to be held, I paused in a cloistered walk for a few moments to observe. While standing there I pondered briefly the fact that Minos himself had not taken time out to attend today's funeral, nor, apparently, was he going to attend the games. There was Queen Pasiphaë, though, occupying the seat of honor in the king's absence. Pasiphaë, as usual these days, had rouged and wigged herself in an ever more serious attempt to deny her age. Her tight girdle was new, painstakingly designed�though not by me—artfully braced so that it thrust up her full bare breasts in a passable imitation of youth. And now, here came the fair Princess Ariadne, looking cool and serene as usual, mounting the royal bench, taking the position of Master of the Games, as befitted her status of eldest surviving child. And here was Phaedra—how old was she now? Fourteen?�darker and fuller-bosomed than her sister, and quite the prettiest girl in sight.

I had thought that by now Theseus would probably be sleeping off the debauch of his matriculation-mourning, but evidently the powers of recuperation in the Athenian royal family were even stronger than I remembered. The prince, his body cleansed by what must have been a complete bath and a thorough scraping, was just now vaulting into the ring for a wrestling turn. Theseus was stripped stark naked for the contest, except for a modest and genuine official band of mourning black round one of his massive biceps. He made an impressive figure indeed. I lingered just long enough to watch him earn a quick victory over his squat, powerful adversary, some Cretan champion, and then claim a wreath from Ariadne's hand.

It would not be wise to delay my distasteful duty any longer. I walked on.

On this side of the House, particularly, no sharp line of architectural demarcation showed where the business rooms and living quarters of the palace ended and the subtle Labyrinth itself began. But I, the architect and builder, knew that I had already entered the first phase, the outer fringe, of the great maze.

The Bull had wanted his Labyrinth to blend with subtle borders into its environment, and I had met his requirements with a success in which I still took pride. A pointless passageway here, a blind room there. One stair went up, and another down, to nowhere. At the moment a man walking where I was had only columns around him, with an occasional entablature above. Now I stepped beneath a roof, and was firmly indoors, though the uninitiated person walking in my place might not yet have fully realized the fact. In ten more paces there were only a few windows to let me see the land outside, and in twenty more paces the last of these apertures was gone, taking with it my last view of the open sea and the mountains.

Now, for a little while as I proceeded, the roof of the Labyrinth was almost solid, cutting out the sky. Then roofed space once more became less common, and the light increased. At the same time the walls grew unscalably high and smooth, and the many branching passages, which had now entirely replaced rooms, grew narrower. There were steps and stairs to take the explorer up and down again, for no apparent reason. Soon the stranger walking here would no longer have a clue as to whether he was above or below the natural level of the ground. Only remote patches of sky, one of them now blue, one heavy gray with thundercloud, remained to give the explorer any light or perspective or mental hold upon the outside world.

And now I, the designer threading my way unerringly and thoughtlessly, had entered upon the precincts of the real school where I was an outsider, the school that Theseus was fated to attend. Now once more the traveler was surrounded by rooms. Behind closed wooden doors, taut silence reigned. And now, only now, did I pass underneath a sign warning in three languages that the real Labyrinth, the dangerous core of deceit and confusion, lay just ahead.

Scarcely had I proceeded fifty paces beyond the sign, turning in that distance half a dozen corners at different angles, before I was made aware by certain faint sounds that someone had now begun to follow me. A sudden stop and a quick glance back earned me one brief glimpse of long brown hair swinging from a girl's quick head, before she had dodged back around a corner, out of my sight.

I waited for a few moments, but the girl did not reappear. Everything in this corner of the Labyrinth was silent, except for the singing of some very distant workmen. The students of the school were immured in their silent rooms like bees in cells of wax.

There was no further sign of the girl. Presently I turned and went on my way again, at which point the furtive shuffle of those following feet resumed.

With a sigh, I stopped and turned again. Seeing no one behind me, I called softly. "Just stay where you are, and I promise I won't hurt you." Then I walked back and peered around a corner.

As I had expected, my follower was a student. A slender Athenian girl of about eighteen was leaning against the smooth stone wall, looking exhausted and defensive. I wondered how long she had been lost. Vaguely I thought that I could recall seeing this girl, at some time during the past year or two, among the score or so of the Bull's most advanced students.

I was not eager to interfere in what was doubtless some assignment of school work for advanced credit. But at the same time it seemed cruel and unsympathetic to walk away from her without speaking. "Follow me, if you like," I suggested. "Then you will come out in the apartments of the Bull himself. Is that what you are trying to do?"

The girl responded, weakly but quickly, with a gesture of denial.

Still I was unable to let matters go at that. "Can I help you in any other way?"

"No. Thank you, Master Daedalus. I have been assigned my own goal, and am supposed to find my own way, without help from anyone." She was not suffering deadly thirst or starvation—not yet, anyway—but I could see a great fear in her eyes. Not the sharp, immediate fear of a soldier entering battle, or a captive going to execution, but deep and vital all the same. Death was not in prospect, only failure, but abysmal failure could sometimes seem as dreadful as death, especially to the young.

The two of us had nothing more to say to each other. I turned from her and went on my way, and heard no more of furtive feet behind me. Soon I came to the place where a large waterpipe, one of the main conduits bringing water down to the House, crossed overhead. The pipe was well masked by concealing brickwork, and most people passing beneath would not realize that it was there. But I knew that it was there, and that this wall just to my left now was as thick as four men's bodies lying head to toe. And just outside that wall, though you could never guess it from inside the Labyrinth, was a free, open sunny slope, at this season probably aglow with wildflowers.

Thunder grumbled, and the indirect daylight in the maze suddenly grew dimmer.

I had still a few more turns and branchings to negotiate; I, their designer, at each turn made the proper choice unthinkingly.

… and then I was emerging abruptly into the Labyrinth's central open space, a modest stone's throw across. Here the Bull could feel inwardly secure; his inhuman spirit was really at ease only when he knew he was surrounded by artificial complexity. The space was an easy stone's throw across, partially roofed by connected domes. On the far side of the broad stone dais, waist-high, that occupied the middle of the circular space there yawned the several dark mouths of the Bull's own private rooms, which I had never entered since their construction had been completed.

In the middle of the the dais, like the gnomon of a sundial, there stood in sunny space a big stone chair upon whose humped seat no human could comfortably have rested. On this chair the White Bull sat waiting, as if he had been expecting my arrival.

"Learn from me, Dae-da-lus." This had come to be the Bull's regular greeting to me, in place of any more conventional salutation. His speech had not improved noticeably since that first day about five years ago when we had first encountered each other on the seashore.

Silently I walked closer to the dais, which was surrounded by a gently flowing moat, a couple of strides wide and no more than about ankle-deep. The dweller in the Labyrinth had no physical need of such an open flow of water, but he loved it, as he loved the Labyrinth itself.

As I approached, the Bull, an almost manlike figure clothed in different lengths of silver hair, stood up to welcome me. His hands, extended in a learned gesture of greeting, were far from human, something I had failed to notice at our first meeting, bewildered by his overall strangeness as I was then. Each hand bore two thumbs on opposite sides of the palm, each thumb fully opposable to the four fingers. Yet fingers and thumbs looked clumsy and sometimes were. Each fingernail was so enlarged as to be almost a tiny hoof, a miniature of the real hooves that were the Bull's feet.

"Learn from me, Dae-dal-us," he said again, when I had reached the dais without speaking. I came to a stop leaning against the waist-high rim of stone, standing on the last of the short series of stepping-stones that enabled more fastidious human visitors to cross the moat easily without getting their feet wet. Rain was falling now, drumming on the roof and filling the nearby cisterns, trickling into the moat.

There was movement in the corner of my eye; Talus, the Bronze Man, had entered the circular space from a side passage, and was standing motionless, distant lightning reflecting dully on his metal skin.

"I have tried enrolling in your school," I replied to the Bull at last, my voice a heavy rasp. "The results were not pleasing to either of us."

"Learn." The deep voice somehow sounded more bull-like the more I listened to it. The voice could be as stubborn as a wall. "The secrets of the a-toms and the stars are mine to give."

"Then what need can you have for one more student, an aging craftsman like myself? There must be great numbers of young minds ready and eager to learn from you. I understand your school is becoming a fad all across the eastern Mediterranean. More than a fad. From the Egyptians to the south to the barbarians far in the north, great numbers of the wealthy and powerful are coming to want your education for their children. Even today a fresh contingent of young people has arrived from Athens for your instruction."

"Dae-dal-us, you are not tru-ly old as yet. De-cades of strong life lie a-head of you. And if you tru-ly learn, you may be ab-le to ex-tend your life." The Bull, suddenly looking remarkably manlike, sat down in his chair again. Lightning flared nearby, close enough to set a human's teeth on edge, and simultaneously thunder smashed. Talus, who had started to move again, stood frozen for a moment, then quivered faintly before pacing on.

Backing away a little from the edge of the dais, I curtly signed refusal. I said: "For five years now I have watched the young men and women coming to be enrolled in your advanced school, and for the past year or so I have seen the graduates come out. I have spoken with them, and I do not know that I wish to be taught whatever it is that they are learning. Not one of them has whispered to me of the stars' or the atoms' secrets."