The People Trap by Sheckley Robert

Author:Sheckley, Robert [Sheckley, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Published: 2014-05-12T21:00:00+00:00

REDFERN’S LABYRINTH

Charles Angier Redfern received two curious letters in his mail on an otherwise undistinguished morning. One letter was in a plain white envelope, and for a moment Redfern thought he recognized the handwriting. He opened the envelope and took out a letter with no salutation or signature. He puzzled for a while over the strange yet familiar handwriting, then recognized it as an imitation of his own. Mildly intrigued, but with a faint anticipation of boredom, he read the following:

Most of the propositions in Redfern’s ineptly titled Labyrinth will doubtless go unchallenged, as no one could possibly care one way or another. Redfern’s Labyrinth fails to evoke anything except Redfern’s own baffled impotence. One senses that Redfern has failed to overcome his own meek and hateful slavishness, his boundless desire to comply.

Because of this resonant failure, the reader’s first sensation is apt to be pointedly inconsequential: a concern with the humble brevity of the Labyrinth, and a spiteful wish that it were shorter still.

But this quickly passes, and the reader discovers that his predominant mood is a muted reluctance to feel anything at all. With gratitude he discovers himself to be indifferent. And, although he surely does not wish to remember the Labyrinth, he does not even care enough to forget it.

Thus the reader meets Redfern’s boredom with an even more devastating boredom of his own; he imitates Redfern’s

hostility, and easily surpasses it. He refuses even to acknowledge Redfern’s existence-, and to that end, he has the absent-minded sensation of never having experienced the Labyrinth at all. (He is right, of course; no number of re-encounters would ever correct that eminently logical conclusion.

This Labyrinth, it seems, could be used as an exemplary monument to tedium, were it not marred (how typical of Redfern!) by a single provocative idea.

This occurs in Proposition 113, which states: “All men know that the Maze rules its haphazard victims with an iron law; but very few realize the logical consequences of this: namely, that the Maze itself must be one of these victims, and must therefore be equally subject to the rule of an irksome law.”

Redfern does not state the “law,” a lapse which we might have anticipated. But it can easily be inferred from his otherwise meaningless Proposition 282: “Providence, despite all outward appearances, is inevitably merciful.”

Therefore, following Redfern: the Maze rules men, but Providence rules the Maze. How can we know this? By the law to which the Maze (in common with all things except Providence) is subject. What is this law? That the Maze is under a mandate to make itself known. Our proof of this? The fact that Redfern, the meekest and most imitative of men, knows it.

But now we wish to know exactly what this law is that governs the Maze. How must the Maze make itself known? Without a description of this, we have nothing; and Redfern is useless to us in this quest. He cannot tell us, he probably would not even if he could. Therefore, for

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