Back at the Abode, they hashed it over. "We know there is a solution," Niobe said. "We just don't know what it is."
"And chances are, we won't find it on our own," Atropos said. "Maybe, if we were all experienced, we'd know it, but by the time we get experienced enough to know, it'll be too late."
"We're still in Satan's trap," Clotho agreed.
"Not entirely," Niobe said. "If all three of us were new, that might be true; but I did have thirty-eight prior years of experience. I know Satan's power is not complete. There has to be something he's hiding from us."
"The solution!" Clotho exclaimed wryly.
"Too bad we can't go to Hell and ask the Magician what his message was," Atropos said.
Niobe pounced on that. "Maybe we can! Incarnations have special powers!"
They checked with Thanatos, who confirmed it. "I have been there," he said. "But only in spirit. The physical body has to be left behind. All the things there are spirits, but they seem solid, as they do in Purgatory. But Satan wouldn't let you visit anyone there."
"But then how did you go there?"
"I was invited on a tour."
Oh. She knew about that sort of thing. Still—
"Can he stop a mother from visiting her son?" she asked.
All three of them paused at that. Who would know? Clotho thought.
"Gaea," Niobe said. "The Green Mother understands everything about human nature and then some."
They went to Gaea. "Satan cannot stop you, in this instance," she said. "But he will not help you. This represents a conflict between Incarnations, and your chance of success would be half."
"But I can do it?" Niobe asked.
"You can cut off your foot, too, but you might not want to." Gaea smiled coldly.
"If I do this—if I go to Hell—I stand to win the salvation of man—or at least enable my granddaughter to. What do I stand to lose?"
"Your soul," Gaea said grimly.
"But I'm an Incarnation! Satan can't touch my soul!"
Gaea shook her head. "You must put your soul on the line to gain entry to Hell. If you win your objective, you keep your soul. But if you fail, your soul is forfeit. Hell is not child's play, Lachesis!"
Niobe sighed. "It certainly isn't!"
Well, that lets that out, Atropos thought. A good soul locked in Hell—
"How do I set it up?" Niobe asked.
Don't do it, Lachesis! Clotho thought.
What shall it profit a woman to win the whole world, if she lose her own soul? Atropos thought.
"That's figurative; this is literal," Niobe said. "The whole world is on the line, this time."
"You must choose a referee," Gaea said. "To ensure fairness in the proceedings. Otherwise Satan will cheat."
Niobe considered. "How about Mars? He knows how to supervise war—and this is really a battle in the war between Good and Evil."
Gaea nodded. "Excellent choice. Go to him and ask."
"Thank you, Ge."
"Every Incarnation must sooner or later confront Satan," Gaea said. "You did it long ago, in the Void. Now you are doing it again—but the locale is not neutral and the stakes are higher. We shall be watching—but none of us will be able to assist you, once you enter Hell."
"I know." This was, among other things, confirmation that Gaea had recognized her, the day of the excursion into the model Hell, and had kept her secret.
"You will leave your body and your two other Aspects behind. If you fail, they will have to choose your replacement—with no soul to exchange. That body will die."
A heavy penalty indeed! Yet, added to the loss of the world, did it matter? She had to make the effort!
"Farewell," Gaea said. "You are a fine woman, Lachesis."
Niobe slid her thread to Mars' castle. This time he was at home. Quickly she explained the situation. "You have courage," Mars said gruffly. "I trust you know that Hell is no picnic."
"I know, but I must go. Will you serve?"
"I will serve. But I can guarantee only that the terms are honored. I cannot help you or advise you in any way. Once you enter Hell, you are on your own."
"But—I have no idea what to expect there!"
"As referee, it is my job to help arrange what to expect," Mars said. He raised his red sword, and it flashed. "Satan!"
Satan appeared. "What the Hell do you want. Mars? A war?"
"Both," Mars agreed, unperturbed. "Lachesis wishes to visit her son, the Magician Kaftan. You may not deny her that."
Satan turned on Niobe. "So you learned of that, you meddling female! But it will cost you your soul."
"The one offer you cannot turn down," Niobe agreed.
"No," Mars said. "She is not buying the visit with her soul. She is putting up her soul as the stake for the game. That is a different matter."
"A different matter," Satan agreed reluctantly. "A technicality."
Already the referee was functioning. That was some technicality!
"We must select the format," Mars said.
"Aerial combat while mounted on firedrakes," Satan said.
"Competitive tapestry weaving," Niobe retorted.
Atropos laughed in her mind.
"Perhaps a compromise," Mars said, smiling grimly. "An event that combines elements of both monsters and threads, illusion and reality. A demon-infested maze."
Satan considered. "Could be. Those are fun."
Niobe also considered. A maze was a bit like a tapestry, with passages instead of threads. Demons were monsters—but should not be able to hurt her. If, as it seemed, she had to navigate some sort of challenge course in Hell to reach her son, this might be the best type for her. But— "Threads? Illusion?"
"An illusion-maze is less challenging, physically," Mars said. "But more challenging, intellectually."
Niobe knew herself to be no genius, but she did have a flair with the weaving of intricate threads. "That sounds good," she agreed tentatively.
"No way," Satan said.
"Superimposed on a physical maze," Mars said. "Shall we say, one hundred illusions of your choice—and one hundred reality-threads for her? With some of the prop- erties of her normal threads, so she can travel expeditiously—"
"Limited," Satan said. "I don't want her traveling all over Hell."
"Limited," Mars agreed. "The maze so constituted that the best course can be traversed by fewer than fifty threads, the worst by more than one hundred fifty threads, but centered on one hundred?"
"A fifty-fifty chance," Satan agreed. "But I set up the maze, and choose all the configurations."
"And I verify the balance and call the fouls," Mars said. "I will inspect the maze before she enters, and there will be no changes after she enters."
"Done," Satan said.
They looked at Niobe. She wasn't sure she trusted what those two males might agree was fair. But she knew Mars would not betray her, and it seemed to be the best compromise she could get. "Very well."
They cleared the remaining details. Then Niobe sat back in a chair, waited a moment, and stood—and left her body behind. She was in spirit form!
She turned and reached out to touch her physical hand. As she did so, she felt the other two Aspects. Give 'em Hell, girl! Atropos thought. Find your son! Clotho thought. Both sent the emotion of support and best wishes.
I shall! she replied.
She turned again. Satan stood directly before her, while Mars watched from the side. "Come to Me, fool!" Satan said, and laughed.
She stepped into him—and discovered he was a kind of door. She passed through it and found herself in Hell.
Hell was a crystalline place. Bright hexagonal facets surrounded her, red and green and blue—all colors, each facet her own height. She stood on another, the same size.
She turned to look back the way she had come. There was only another facet there, highly polished, so that she saw her own reflection clearly.
She looked exactly as she had in life, in her physical body: a nondescript, middle-aged woman whose onceflowing buckwheat-honey hair was now cut to a less-flattering length, and the honey seemed soiled. Her dress was a drab gray, and not well-fitted. That last wasn't really carelessness; if the dress fitted better, it would show up the inadequacies other present figure all too clearly. Ah, for the flesh of youth! She could understand how the old senators had found the lure of renewed youth to be irresistible.
The irony was, she had kept her youthful appearance for an extra thirty-eight years, and then given it up. And would do so again, for Pacian. And would have given everything up, for Cedric. She had understood Clotho exactly, when the girl had yielded "everything!" to Samurai. When a woman loved a man—
But now she had to find her son. She checked her left hand: it clasped a handful of measured threads. She was not Lachesis any more; she could not travel to the ends of the world. She was merely Niobe, and every thread she used would be one thread lost. She had to use them well; though the worst-case route through the maze would require over 150 threads, she had only 100. Her mission and her soul would be forfeit if she used them all without finding her son.
Well, this was a puzzle, certainly. She reached out to rap a knuckle on a blue facet. The sound rang, setting up a sympathetic tintinnabulation throughout the region. It was a rather pretty sound, but it didn't get her through the maze.
She saw that one hexagon was not a facet, but an open space. She stepped through it, onto the golden floor tile there—
Her foot passed right through the floor. There was nothing there. With a scream she fell down past several hexagonal levels, until she fetched up against another golden tile. She was unhurt—but in a hole, literally.
There was a puff of vapor at her hand. She looked— and saw the remains of one of her threads curling as it dissolved into smoke. That fall had not hurt her physically, for a spirit could not be injured that way, but it had cost her a thread. That was one of the details of this game. Now she had ninety-nine threads left, and she had exposed the first illusion.
She tapped the surfaces about her. All were solid. She was in a nether chamber with no ready exit. The slick facets offered no purchase for her fingers; she could not climb out.
She sighed. She tucked her threads carefully into a pocket, saving out one. She flung that upward.
Now she sailed up, following the thread's course, much as she did as an Aspect of Fate. In a moment she was back at her original level, facing the golden floor panel. An illusion—but she had expended two of her precious threads in making the discovery and recovery. Two for one; Satan had gained one on her.
She looked at the golden tile. It still looked real. She would not be fooled again by it, of course, so in that sense it had been expended—but how much better it would have been to identify it without falling through it! Then she would have been one ahead, having expended no threads to identify one of the hundred illusions.
She felt at the edge of the illusion. She found a small ledge; part of the golden tile was real. She could walk on that to get through. There had to be a way through the maze; that was part of the deal. She had only to move carefully, to avoid falling for any more tricks.
But she could not get through without using close to fifty of her threads. That meant that she couldn't simply close her eyes and feel her way the full length of it. There would be illusions she had to penetrate before trusting her body to them, and climbs she had to make regardless of illusion. She could not hoard her threads; she would not get through that way.
She completed her circuit of the golden illusion and entered a new chamber. This one had a solid floor—but no other exit. She looked up and saw a high green ledge, out of reach. Evidently that was the route. Not an illusion, just one of the thread-requiring avenues.
She brought out another thread and flung it at the ledge. In a moment she slid up it, landing neatly on the green. Good enough.
Except that it turned out to be a dead end.
She sighed again. She had been suckered into using another thread, unnecessarily.
She squatted, touching the edge of the ledge. It was glassy smooth. She stood and scraped the sole of one shoe across it. Then she tested it with her finger again.
Yes—there was faint scratching. The material was not super-hard. It could be abraded.
She scuffed it some more, then lay down. She nudged her legs over the edge, sidewise. She spread her fingers against the roughened surface. The slope beyond the edge was not vertical; there were no perfect right angles in this place, just the obtuse angles of the hexagons. Her body was sliding down at about a forty-five-degree angle—she wasn't sure what it was for a hexagon, but that was what it felt like. Maybe fifty degrees. Her fingers had some purchase on the roughened level face.
When enough of her body was on the sloping face, it swung down. Her fingers were unable to hold; she slid off the surface and dropped to the floor beneath. But it was not as long a fall as the one she had suffered before, and she was better prepared for it. She landed neatly on her feet.
She watched the threads in her pocket, but there was no puff of smoke-vapor. She had made it down without sacrificing another thread! She had not "killed" herself this time.
But it was a minor victory, for she had now expended three threads and discovered only one illusion. She would have to do better than that.
She checked the golden floor panel again. The ledge continued around the other side—and there was another open panel. Had she skirted it the other way, she would have found it, and saved herself the dead end.
Well, the bad break had taught her a lesson or two; not to assume a given route was the only one, and not to expend a thread on a route just because the route was there.
She got into the new chamber. This one had two other exits; which should she take? Both went far enough so that she could not tell which was a dead end.
She shrugged and took the one to the left. It looped around to the right, over and under crystalline formations of differing sizes—it seemed there was nothing sacred— sacred, here in Hell?—about the full-size ones. In due course it debouched back into the chamber she had left.
She went around again, verifying every surface. No way out. She had walked into another dead end, in effect.
She went back to the golden tile, and the rest of the way around it. Now she was back to her starting point, three threads gone—and she had made no progress through the maze!
Then she had a bright thought. She returned to the golden tile, got down on her belly, and put her right arm through it. She felt for the surfaces below.
All in reach were solid. She got up, walked to the far side, and lay down again. She reached—and discovered that there was an open panel directly beneath her.
She braced her feet as well as she could against the edge-surfaces and hunched her body forward over the golden panel until she could put her head through the illusion. She peered under.
Sure enough: there was an opening. There was her true exit! The illusion covered a dead-end hole—and the way through. She had fallen right by it, and passed it again on the way back up. Satan was certainly a cunning devil!
She crawled around, letting her body down. Here she was able to get a better grip on the edge of the panel— but she didn't trust it. She was no muscular man, she was a weak-fleshed woman.
She sighed a third time. Then she brought out another thread and flung it toward the hole.
Her body followed. Now she was perched at the edge of a hexagonal tunnel. It sloped sharply down—and she could not hold her position. She felt herself sliding. She tried to spread her legs and brace her feet against the sides, but this was ineffective. She was bound for the end of this tunnel—wherever it might lead—unless she expended yet another thread. She decided to risk the slide.
She slid into a new aspect of the maze. She landed in a chamber with transparent walls, and behind those walls were demons in horrendous shapes. There were five exits from the chamber—but each was guarded by a monster. How could she get through?
Obviously at least one of the monsters was illusion, so she could pass through it without getting "killed." Because there had to be a route through, and she couldn't pass a real monster.
She approached the tiger-headed man at the nearest exit and flung a thread at him. He disappeared. Victory—she had found the route on the first try!
She walked into the passage. It turned at right angles, then turned again, in the manner of the kind of maze that was printed on paper. She moved along it cautiously, so as not to fall through an illusion-section of floor, but the floor was opaque and solid.
She came to a division. Which should she take, the left or the right? It didn't seem to matter, as neither would cost her a thread. She took the left.
That led to a small chamber containing a man-headed tiger—the reverse of the prior monster. She tossed a thread at it.
The thread shriveled and puffed into vapor—but the monster remained. This one was real!
"Come here, morsel!" the tigerman cried. "You look good enough to chomp!"
She backed away and retreated to the other part of'the fork. That one led her to a man-headed wolf. It paced restlessly, watching her.
She flung a thread—and the monster evaporated with the thread. Another illusion. The way was clear.
But she paused. She had just expended two threads to uncover one illusion. At that rate, she would use up all her threads before the illusions gave out. Satan was winning!
But she knew that if she walked blithely into a monster and it was real, it would chomp her. That should not hurt her physically, as she was here only in spirit, but by the laws of the maze it would cost her double: two threads. Being "killed" by a monster was like taking a fall, then having to thread out of the hole. So it paid her to verify a monster before stepping within its range.
Or did it? If she had an even chance that a given monster was real, then she could assume that half of them would tag her. Double the threads—and she lost the same number as if she had checked all the monsters. No loss—but no gain. She might as well use the threads.
This bothered her. There seemed to be no way other than sheer chance to beat Satan, and the chances were against her. She had—she checked the count—used up four threads and exposed one illusion in the crystal section of the maze; she had used three more threads and exposed two more illusions here. That was a cumulative score of seven threads and three illusions. Yet her chances of getting through the maze were supposed to be even. She was definitely falling behind.
Well, she had been checking every monster. The problem was that there could be ten times as many real ones as illusory ones. She could use up all her threads without getting anywhere, that way! There had to be a better way—but what was it?
She set her jaw. Obviously, checking every monster was a losing strategy. So she would check none of them. Had she followed that course so far, she would have been chomped by the tigerman, and lost two threads—but that was less than the three she had used checking every monster.
She proceeded on down the passage. She came to a huge human head from which five human legs sprouted. No torso. A monster indeed! She walked right into it.
The thing rolled at her, each foot touching the floor in turn—and kicking her when it arrived. "Ooo!" she howled as she got kicked in the knee. Then the next foot caught her in the face. Her nose exploded in pain, and she fell down. Then the monster was all over, tromping her to death.
It wasn't death, of course. But it felt like it. In due course, satisfied, the foot-face withdrew, and she dragged herself back to her feet. The pain abated, and she discovered that neither her nose nor her limbs were broken. She was uninjured, physically. The blows had hurt terribly, but caused no lasting damage. She had been wrong about the discomfort of getting chomped!
Two more threads were gone. Score: nine to three, in favor of Satan.
And she couldn't pass this alcove. In fact, this whole passage had been a mistake. It was a dead end, blocked by monsters.
So much for her new strategy. She could have saved herself one thread and some pain by testing the monster for illusion.
She made her way back to the original chamber of this section. There were the four other exits with their guardians.
She eyed the monsters. One was a bird with the head of a fox; another was a woman-headed snake; another was a man's head with two muscular arms growing where the ears should be; the last was a pig-headed dog. This was Hell, all right! The demons hewed to no normal Earthly shapes.
Four chances. She could either use four more of her precious threads to verify them, or chance walking through them—with the odds even that it would cost her four threads anyway to find the true passage. If it was the true passage; the first had not been.
This just wouldn't do! She needed a strategy of approach, not only to make her way through, but to do it economically enough to get ahead on threads. She needed to expunge two illusions for every thread, instead of the other way around. Blundering through by blind chance simply wasn't going to accomplish that.
Well, she did have time. There was no time limit on the maze; she was to continue until she either won through to her son or lost her soul. If she hesitated forever, she would never escape Hell—or save Luna's position. Her timing was her own.
There had to be some key she had overlooked. How she wished she had Cedric's ready intelligence, or her son's! Obviously sheer chance was not going to get her through; only an appropriate strategy would do that. But what strategy?
She played her mind over it, knowing there had to be something. Satan might have deceived her about the odds, but Mars would not have. She had at least an even chance—if she could only figure it out.
Slowly it came to her. She had to ration her threads— but Satan had to do the same for his illusions. Each was limited to one hundred. If she didn't want to throw away threads, he didn't want to throw away illusions. Each of them had to calculate a strategy to make the assets count most. But while she could change a nonproductive course, Satan could not; he had set up the maze at the outset, and could not change it. It stood to reason that wherever Satan didn't need an illusion, he wouldn't use it. He had to use some in key places, because otherwise she would be able to thread the maze simply by avoiding visible monsters. An illusion-monster could seem to block off the one route through, shunting her into real monsters and trouble.
Here were five exits. It would make no sense to have several illusions down one passage—if the start of it was blocked by a real monster. She couldn't pass the monster, so would never have a chance to be fooled by the illusions. The illusions had to come early—or along the real path.
All five of the monsters at this junction had to be illusions. That was the only pattern that made sense. No wonder she had verified the first illusion she had challenged, here! She could have saved the thread.
Furthermore, since Satan's illusions were limited, there were only so many he could spare for any one segment of the maze. She had discovered only one in the crystal section, strategically situated; that might be all there was there. Perhaps nine of ten monsters would be real, because here in Hell monsters were relatively cheap. In the mortal world, illusions were cheaper than demons, but here in Hell it was the other way around. So the chances were that after the beginning of any passage, most of the monsters would be real. If a passage divided into ten alternate routes, nine of them would be blocked by real monsters, with only the one that actually led somewhere having an illusion. That would give her nine chances to lose threads, regardless whether she gambled or tested. That was why she had been falling behind; she had not perceived the strategy of Satan.
That being the case, what she needed to do was figure out the pattern of the overall maze, and select the route that was most likely to have illusions. The wrong routes would be blocked mostly by real monsters.
But how could she analyze the maze when she couldn't see it as a whole? The walls might be of glass, but that gave her no notion of the overall layout. She could see many monsters, but could not make out the convoluted channels of the maze.
She looked up, and saw that one tower rose above the rest. Most of the maze seemed to be open, and the tops of the walls, in addition to being too high for her to reach, looked knife-sharp; she could not climb them. The tower sported a short diving board. Into what was she expected to dive, from there? The illusion of a lake? She knew she couldn't risk that; it would cost her at least two threads.
But the tower was high. From it, she might be able to see the layout of the puzzle as a whole. If so, that would be a useful spot to reach, even if it was not the correct route.
She selected the passage she deemed most likely to lead to the tower and walked through the monster that guarded it, the woman-headed snake. The monster hissed at her, but could not touch her; it was, as she had surmised, illusion. She had saved herself a thread; in fact, she had saved four, for all these monsters had to be illusion. Just by pausing for thought, she had brought the running score up to nine to seven, for once she had identified an illusion she didn't have to waste a thread on it. These illusions were fixed in place; they could not follow her about. She could check off any she was sure of, and the more she could discover by deduction, the better off she was. She found herself shivering with release of tension; by bracing the monster "blind" she had not only saved her threads but also had confirmed her analysis. Had she been wrong...
Now there was a snake-headed woman, the inverse of the prior monster, blocking the passage. Since there was no alternate route, she knew this was illusion. Satan wanted her to be able to navigate this route, after wasting a thread, perhaps hoping she would indeed dive off the tower. She braced herself again and marched through the monster: illusion number eight.
She came to a coiled staircase. That fitted in with the serpentine theme. She had to admit that Satan had a certain artistic sense. But of course all art could be considered a form of lie, because it differed from reality; that was certainly in the bailiwick of the Father of Lies.
She mounted the stair, testing each step for illusion so as not to fall through; that required no threads. Soon she emerged at the top of the tower. It was enclosed by glass that distorted the view of the surroundings; she had to go out onto the diving board to see clearly.
She went out—and was attacked by a siege of aerophobia. The board was about fifteen feet above the top of the walls of the maze, and twenty-five feet above the ground. It gave slightly under her weight and she shivered. She had never been a confident diver and was less so now. She remembered that she had been bolder when crossing the seeming chasm in the Hall of the Mountain King, so maybe her courage had eroded with age. She got down on her hands and knees and crawled to the end and peered over.
There was a clearing below. Five giant cushions sat in it, each one so fluffy that it was obvious that she could jump down on it, even from this height, and not get hurt. But some might be illusion, so she couldn't risk it without using at least one thread.
Also, she realized, it could be a trap; she might locate a good cushion, land safely on it, and go on—only to discover this was a dead-end path. Then how could she return to the starting point? She could see that there was no access to the base of the tower from that yard. The jump was one-way.
She could use a thread to rise back to the diving board, of course—but that would put her further behind. Every thread she used that didn't dispel an illusion was a loss for her.
However, she had not come to jump, only to look. She had expended no threads on this path, so was gaining. She decided to assume that two of the five cushions were illusions, the two closest; if she had used her threads to verify her landing, it would have cost her several more to explore this dead end. She was learning to figure the odds.
Now she concentrated on the rest of the maze. It was not as large as it had seemed from below; the convolutions made the distance seem greater. She traced the path of the first passage she had tried, to make sure she knew what she was doing; then she traced the route to the tower. Good enough; she was able to see them clearly from here.
She traced the other three routes very carefully. All of them had several splits, but most of the splits dead-ended immediately after passing monsters. Obviously they were intended to seem to go on, so she would challenge the monster—and waste either one or two threads. One route looped back into the other, so that she might win through it—and find herself back at the starting point, perhaps several threads poorer. But one route wound its tortuous way all around the maze, with three separate splits and rejoinings, and finally exited to a hole in an opaque wall. That was evidently the one. There were a total of thirteen monsters along it. She concluded that all but three were illusions, the three being used to block one arm of each split. There was no way to tell which of each pair of monsters was real—but it didn't matter. The ratio now favored her. She needed to test only in the splits, using three threads, and she would pass ten illusions. Assuming she had correctly analyzed the two cushion illusions, that would put her running score at twelve to twenty. Twelve threads for twenty illusions—and perhaps other illusions bypassed in the other passages. That was the kind of ratio she liked!
She memorized the route, then backed off the board. She got to her feet in the tower and descended, pleased with herself. If she had calculated correctly, she was now winning the game.
The passage she wanted was guarded by the head with the muscular arms. Was that symbolic? A muscular head, meaning good thinking. Symbols were a form of art, and Satan had an insidious sense of humor; it was possible.
She walked through the illusion and into the passage. The next monster was a cat with chicken's legs; she walked through it too. She reached the first split, took the left fork, and threw a thread at the hawk-headed dog that guarded it. The creature screeched and charged her;
it was real. She retreated, took the other fork, and marched through the headless man whose face was on his belly.
On the next split she caught the illusion the first time. It really didn't matter; one thread got her through regardless, now that she knew how to play it. She completed the course without difficulty and came at last to the opaque wall. She had done it! Her mind had enabled her to prevail.
She walked through the doorway in the wall. In a moment she came to a blank barrier—but it was an illusion. She stepped through it—
First one foot, then the other landed on something that rose up to fasten about her ankle. Startled, she looked down and discovered she was on skis. They started to move. She had skied as a child, so knew how to keep her balance and guide herself down a snowy slope—but that had been seventy-five years ago. The last thing she had expected to encounter in Hell was skiing! Still, she had known it was possible.
She was picking up speed. She saw two ski poles standing upright on either side of the track. She reached out and grabbed them. Evidently Mars had ensured fair play for this aspect of the challenge; she had the necessary equipment.
She shot out of the chamber. She was on a high mountain, on a steep slope, accelerating. Below her were diverging tracks in the snow, marked by thin columns of fire. One track led to a towering ski jump, another to a broad and ice-covered lake.
She skewed into the third track, which seemed to be a slalom: a twisting path between the firepoles. She was no slalom expert, but this seemed a better bet than the others.
She passed the first pole and made a wide turn around it, almost losing her balance. She was way out of form and she lacked the lithe muscles of youth. Who ever heard of a middle-aged woman doing the slalom?
She overcorrected and brushed by the second pole, touching it. There was a sizzle as it burned her elbow;
her clothing caught fire, and the pain was sharp. She brought her other hand about to slap out the flame—and the ski pole whirled around, upsetting her balance, and she spun out of control on the skis. She went right through a firepole; this time her face smarted from the burn, and her hair caught fire.
She flung aside the ski poles and dived into the snow, trying to douse her blazing head. The skis twisted sidewise, and her dive became a preposterous belly flop. The snow was hard, almost like ice dusted by a powdery layer. Now she was sliding on her stomach down the slope, completely out of control. One leg was twisted; she felt the pain shooting along it.
Then she was rolling, her skis tearing free along with one shoe, leaving the foot bare. The slope steepened, then became a dropoff. She fell—
Into the lake. The ice cracked, and she plunged under it, immersed in the shockingly cold water. She tried to swim up to the surface, but she had drifted under the unbroken section of the ice and banged her head on it from below. She inhaled to scream—and sucked in water.
Her consciousness was fading, but she focused on one thing; the threads. She clutched out a thread and flung it as well as she could.
Suddenly she was moving upward. She passed through the ice without breaking it and landed on her feet on the surface. She had managed to avoid drowning, thanks to the magic.
She looked about her. The ice supported her weight, in this region. To the side was a single ski that had followed her down; the other seemed to be lost in the snow of the slope. One ski pole floated in the open water where she had broken through. Her bare foot was freezing. She was here in spirit only, but only her intellect knew the difference; she felt every bit of it. Now she had the proof that those who suffered in Hell really did suffer!
She looked at her collection of threads. It had shrunk significantly. She had destroyed herself several times over, in the course of that spill! She was well behind on the running score now.
She limped across the ice, coughing out what remained of the water she had tried to breathe. She picked up the lone ski and found it was the wrong one; it was for the left foot, while her right foot needed the shoe. Of course her right foot was the wrenched one, so skiing on it might be awkward anyway. But she used the ski as a clumsy pole to brace against, and started dragging herself up the nearest slope that could be navigated. She would have to go the long way around, to get above the dropoff and find the other ski with her shoe, and it wasn't going to be pleasant, but she had no choice.
She slogged up. Her bare foot hurt in the snow, but soon it became numb—which was no good sign. She tried to hurry, but her left leg also had been wrenched, it was now apparent, and haste was impossible. To make things worse, a wind was coming up, cutting cruelly through her inadequate clothing.
She was never going to make it this way! She sighed, and fumbled out another thread. She flung it up at the top of the dropoff, and followed it up. She had just saved herself perhaps half an hour of slogging—but lost yet another thread.
A white figure loomed before her. It was a snowman! "Damn it!" she swore. She swung the ski at the monster.
It passed right through without resistance. Niobe spun around and fell to the ground, a victim of her own inertia, An illusion!
She picked herself up and plowed on until she came to the slide-marks of her own descent. These she followed up until she spied the other ski, with her shoe attached. She hurried toward it—and dropped into an illusion-covered hole.
It was only an ice-pocket, but it cost her two threads. She got out and proceeded on to the ski, where she detached her shoe, dumped out the snow, and put it on. The stocking was gone. It hardly mattered; her whole leg now felt like a dead stick.
Where to, now? She had to find her way out of this frozen mess!
She decided that the slalom remained her best chance. She tracked over to it and tramped down its slope. She no longer had any trouble keeping the course; what were impossibly tight turns at speed on skis were quite simple on foot. If she had been smart, she would have gotten off the skis at the outset and walked down. She was not on show for skiing here; she just wanted to cover the course. The whole ski-setup was probably a diversion; she had allowed Satan to dictate the mode of play, and naturally this had led to disaster.
She paused to warm herself at a firepole, but it was an illusion. How fiendishly clever: the early poles were real, so that they had burned her, while some key later ones were illusion; probably she could have skied down the course successfully if she had known which firepoles to ignore. This one blocked the direct course, so that the skier had to make a wide and dangerous turn to avoid it.
She went to the next pole, which was real, and came close to it. But it wasn't effective as a heater; the fire was too hot up close, and inadequate at a distance. She needed a warm ambience, not a sharply defined line-source. She dragged herself on along the track.
There was a termination station at the foot of the mountain. A ski lift was there, but it didn't go up the slope she had descended. Evidently it led to the next aspect of the maze.
She was too cold and tired to debate the merits properly. She climbed into the seat. It was comfortable; it was a blessing to get off her feet. She buckled the safety harness. Imagine that: a concern for safety in Hell!
The thing began to move. It hoisted itself into the air, hanging below its line, and proceeded slowly across the terrain.
Now she counted her remaining threads. There were just twenty. Sixty-eight threads she had lost in that fiasco! That seemed an impossible number—but Mars would not have let her be cheated. Probably some had fallen out of her pocket during her slide down the mountain, and some had been washed away by the water. How would she ever catch up now?
But she reminded herself that she didn't have to catch up; she just had to make it through the maze. If she used her mind henceforth, she could still do it. She had to believe that.
How much more of the maze remained? She didn't know. But whatever it was, she would negotiate it.
She reached down to chafe her cold leg. Some sensation was returning. That was good and bad; good because it indicated recovery, bad because it hurt. But that would pass; she had been tromped to death, as it were, by the headfoot monster, but had recovered immediately. It seemed it took longer to recover from sixty-eight threads worth of mischief than from two threads worth. But she would recover.
The lift entered a tunnel. Light flared—and she saw she was in a kind of factory. The chairs of the lift moved among robots that used tools to adjust things. Obviously if she were in the correct spot, she would get adjusted— and that would not be at all comfortable. She had to find a clear route through.
The line overhead divided. She shifted her weight to the right, and the seat took the right line. She could control her travel, to some extent.
What she evidently could not do was pause in her progress. The seat kept moving forward at its measured pace. That provided her inadequate time to decide. The thing would not go backward, which meant she was committed to whatever decision she made. She could not change her mind and withdraw. She might already have made the wrong choice!
A robot loomed ahead. It had a roughly humanoid headbox and a pair of articulated metal arms. One terminated in a giant pincers, the other in a sharp knife. Evidently the robot was intended to hold and slice, trimming off excess material from the subject. If she was the subject, she could lose some flesh. Unless the robot was illusion.
She flung a thread at it. The thread struck the robot and vaporized. The robot remained. So much for that faint hope.
Niobe hastily unbuckled her belt and jumped out of the chair. She fell to the floor of the foot-pedestal of the robot. Vapor wafted up; that fall had cost her another thread. This was an ongoing disaster! She was sure she couldn't proceed through the maze unless she rode the lift—and this was the wrong line.
But she didn't want to depend on chance at all. She had to figure out the pattern, as she had in the maze-andmonster section. Then she could get through with minimal losses.
She stood and looked at the towering robot. How could she analyze this pattern? She couldn't even see it from below—and she perceived no way to get above it. Not for a weak middle-aged woman.
She had to use her mind, because her body was inadequate. She sat at the base of the robot and pondered, while the seats of the lift trundled on over her head. Assume that she had to ride the lift to get through and that her options were limited once she was on her way. She could not fathom the overall pattern, so would have to guess. Could she win through? She had lost what little faith she had in luck, here in Hell.
What about guile? Satan was the master of guile; could he fall victim to his own technique? He had done so in the Luna-Orb matter, yet—
Then she had it. If this failed—well, she probably would have lost anyway. If this succeeded, she might win through.
She tossed a thread toward the robot's shoulder, and in a moment she was there, clinging to her precarious perch. She took hold of the robot's head and yanked. The covering came off; it was a cup-shaped cap with apertures for the eye lenses. Underneath were the gears used to rotate the head on the neck. She didn't bother with them; all she needed was the helmet. And maybe an arm.
She set the helmet-cap on her own head. It reeked of oil and fit quite loosely, but she was able to see out of the lens apertures. She grabbed for an arm.
The robot felt the contact, or perhaps the pressure on the extremity. The gears spun in the head, and the lenses swiveled to cover the arm. Then the hinge-elbow flexed, and the arm folded back on itself.
She grabbed it and pulled. It froze in place, and did not move. All of her strength could not budge it.
So much for that. She would have to settle for the helmet. She hoped it would suffice.
She watched the seats of the lift as they passed. When a suitable one approached, she threw a thread at it and followed the thread onto the seat. Quickly she settled herself and fastened the belt.
The robot reached for her. "Uh-uh!" she exclaimed, facing it with her eye-slits. Her voice reverberated in her helmet. "I'm a testing robot. Clank-clank!"
The robot hesitated, its head-gears spinning as its gaze followed the motion of her seat, almost as if the gears were brains in operation. By the time the machine made up its mind, she was beyond it.
The line diverged again. She picked her course, and moved on to the next robot. "Clank! Clank!" she cried again in the helmet. Again the robot hesitated, its program not quite covering this, and again she got through. It was working!
Unfortunately for her, this line was not the correct one; it dead-ended. It terminated in a station that went nowhere. The seats turned over, folded up, and followed in a line leading back to the other side of the factory; no way to ride farther. But nearby a line seemed to be going somewhere. She used a thread to reach it—and passed through it, crashing on the floor. It was an illusion!
She had to use yet another thread to reach another line. This one was real—but it too dead-ended.
She kept trying. At- last she made it to a line that went somewhere. A robot reached for her; she warned it off— and it kept coming. It had not been deceived by the helmet, and she had no time to scramble free! She screamed as the pincers took hold of her—and passed through her body harmlessly. It was another illusion!
That meant she was back on track. She rode this line to the true terminus: a walk that led out of the factory. She removed her helmet and surveyed her situation. Her frozen leg had thawed and was serviceable, but she had only five threads left. She didn't know how far she still had to go, or how many illusions remained. But she was sure that, one way or another, she was near the end.