In fifteen minutes he had checked out everything he could on the outside and knew exactly where things were in relation to each other. Now was the time to leave. He wished he had not promised Anana that he would only observe the exterior. The temptation to get inside was almost overwhelming. If he could get hold of Cambring and force some information from him … but he had promised. And she had gone back to sleep because she trusted him to keep his word. That in itself indicated how much she loved him, because if there was one thing a Lord lacked, it was trust in others.
He crouched for a while behind a bush in the side yard, knowing that he should leave but also knowing that he was hoping something would happen which would force him to take action. Minutes passed.
Then he heard a phone ringing inside the house. A light went on in a second-story window behind a curtain. He rose and approached the house and applied a small bell-like device to the side of the house. A cord ran from it to a plug, which he stuck in one ear. Suddenly, a man said, “Yes, sir. I got you. But how did you find them, if I may ask?”
There was a short silence, then the man said, “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to be nosy, of course. Yes, sir, it won’t happen again. Yes, sir, I got you the first time. I know exactly what to do. I’ll call you when we start the operation, sir. Good night, sir.”
Kickaha’s heart beat faster. Cambring could be talking directly to Red Orc. In any event, something important was happening. Something ominous.
He heard footsteps and buzzers ringing. The voice said—presumably over an intercom—“Get dressed and up here! On the double! We got work to do! Jump!”
He decided what to do. If he heard anything that indicated that they were not going after him, he would wait until they left and then enter the house. Conditions would have changed so much that it would be stupid for him not to take advantage of their absence. Anana would have to understand that.
If he heard anything that indicated that he and Anana were concerned, he would take off for the nearest public phone booth.
He felt in his pocket for change and cursed. He had one nickel left over from the calls made that previous evening.
Seven minutes later, eight men left by the front door. Kickaha watched them from behind a tree. Four men got into a Mercedes-Benz and four into a Mercury. He could not be sure which was Cambring, because nobody spoke when they left the house. One man did hold the door open for a tall man with a high curly head of hair and a bold sweeping nose. He suspected that that was Cambring. Also, he recognized two: the blond youth and Ramos, the driver of the Lincoln. Ramos had a white bandage over his forehead.
The cars drove off, leaving one car in the driveway. There were also people in the house. He had heard one woman sleepily asking Cambring what was wrong, and a man’s voice surlily asking why he had to stay behind. He wanted some action. Cambring had curtly told him to shut up. They were under orders never to leave the house unguarded.
The cars had no sooner disappeared than Kickaha was at the front door. It was locked, but a quick shot of energy from the ring cut through the metal. He swung the door inward slowly, and stepped inside into a room lit only by a light from a stairwell at the far end. When his eyes adjusted, he could see a phone on a table at the far wall. He went to it, lit a match, and by its light, dialed Anana. The phone rang no more than three times before she answered.
He said softly, “Anana! I’m in Cambring’s house! He and his gang are on the way to pick us up. You grab your clothes and get out of there, fast, hear! Don’t even bother to dress! Put everything in a bag and take off! Dress behind the motel! I’ll meet you where we arranged. Got it?”
“Wait!” she said. “Can’t you tell me what’s happened?”
“No!” he said and softly replaced the receiver on the phone. He had heard footsteps in the hall upstairs and then the creaking caused by a big man descending the steps slowly.
Kickaha reset the ring for stunning power. He needed someone to question, and he doubted that the woman would know as much about operations as this man.
The faint creakings stopped. Kickaha crouched by the foot of the steps and waited. Suddenly, the lights in the great room went on, and a man catapulted outward from behind the wall which had hidden him. He came down off the steps in a leap, whirling as he did so. He held a big automatic, probably a .45, in his right hand. He landed facing Kickaha and then fell backward, unconscious, his head driven backward by the impact of the beam. The gun fell from his hand onto the thick rug.
Kickaha heard the woman upstairs saying, “Walt! What’s the matter? Walt? Is anything wrong?”
Kickaha picked up the gun, flicked on the safety, and stuck it in his belt. Then he walked up the steps and got to the head of the stairwell just as the woman did. She opened her mouth to scream, but he clamped his hand over it and held the knife before her eyes. She went limp as if she thought she could placate him by not struggling. She was correct, for the moment, anyway.
She was a tall, very well built blonde, about thirty-five, in a filmy negligee. Her breath stank of whiskey. But good whiskey.
“You and Cambring and everybody else in this house mean only one thing to me,” he said. “As a means to getting to the big boss. That’s all. I can let you go without a scratch and care nothing about what you do from then on if you don’t bother me. Or I can kill you. Here and now. Unless I get the information I want. You understand me?”
She nodded.
He said, “I’ll let you go. But one scream, and I’ll rip out your belly. Understand?”
She nodded again. He took his hand away from her mouth. She was pale and trembling.
“Show me a picture of Cambring,” he said.
She turned and led him to her bedroom, where she indicated a photograph on her bureau dresser. It was of the man he had suspected was Cambring. “Are you his wife?” he said.
She cleared her throat and said, “Yes.”
“Anybody else in this house besides Walt?”
She said huskily, “No.”
“Do you know where Cambring went tonight?”
“No,” She said. She cleared her throat again. “I don’t want to know those things.”
“He’s gone off to pick up me and my woman for your big boss,” Kickaha said. “The big boss would undoubtedly kill us, after he’d tortured us to get everything he wanted to know. So I won’t have any mercy on anybody connected with him—if they refuse to cooperate.”
“I don’t know anything!” she gasped. “Roy never tells me anything! I don’t even know who the big boss is!”
“Who’s Cambring’s immediate superior?”
“I don’t know. Please believe me! I don’t know! He gets orders from somebody, I’ll admit that! But I don’t know.”
She was probably telling the truth. So the next thing to do was to rouse Walt and find out what he knew. He did not have much time.
He went downstairs with the woman ahead of him. The man was still unconscious. Kickaha told her to get a glass of water from the nearest bathroom. He threw it over Walt’s face. Walt recovered a moment later, but he looked too sick to be a threat. He seemed to be on the verge of throwing up. A big black mark was spreading over the skin on his forehead and nose, and his eyes looked a solid red.
The questioning did not last long. The man, whose full name was Walter Erich Vogel, claimed he also did not know who Cambring’s boss was. Kickaha believed this, since Cambring had not said anything about the destination. Apparently, he meant to tell his men after they got started. Cambring called his boss now and then but he carried the phone number in his head.
“It’s the old Commie cell idea,” Vogel said. “So you could torture me from now until doomsday and you wouldn’t get anything out of me because I don’t know anything.”
Kickaha went to the phone again and, while he kept an eye on the two, dialed Anana’s number again. He wasn’t surprised when Cambring answered.
“Cambring,” he said, “this is the man you were sent after. Now he
ar me out because this message is intended for your big boss. You tell him, or whoever relays messages to him, that a Black Beller is loose on Earth.”
There was a silence, one of shock, Kickaha hoped, and then Cambring said, “What? What the hell you talking about? What’s a Black Beller?”
“Just tell your boss that a Black Beller got loose from Jadawin’s world. The Beller’s in this area, or was yesterday, anyway. Remember, a Black Beller. Came here yesterday from Jadawin’s world.”
There was another silence and then Cambring said, “Listen. The boss knows you got away. But he said that if I got a chance to talk to you, you should come on in. The boss won’t hurt you. He just wants to talk to you.”
“You might be right,” Kickaha said. “But I can’t afford to take the chance. No, you tell your boss something. You tell him that I’m not out to get him; I’m not a Lord. I just want to find another Lord and his woman, who came to this world to escape from the Black Bellers. In fact, I’ll tell you who that Lord is. It’s Jadawin. Maybe your boss will remember him. It’s Jadawin, who’s changed very much. Jadawin isn’t interested in challenging your boss; he could care less. All he wants to do is get back to his own world. You tell him that, though I doubt it’ll do any good. I’ll call your home tomorrow about noon, so you can relay more of what I have to say to your boss. I’ll call your home. Your boss might want to be there so he can talk to me directly.”
“What the hell you gibbering about?” Cambring said. He sounded very angry.
“Just tell your boss what I said. He’ll understand,” Kickaha said, and he hung up. He was grinning. If there was one thing that scared a Lord, it was a Black Beller.
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About the Author
Philip José Farmer (1918–2009) was born in North Terre Haute, Indiana, and grew up in Peoria, Illinois. A voracious reader, Farmer decided in the fourth grade that he wanted to become a writer. For a number of years he worked as a technical writer to pay the bills while writing. Science fiction allowed him to apply his knowledge and passion for history, anthropology, and the other sciences to works of mind-boggling originality and scope.
His early novella “The Lovers,” published in 1952, earned him the Hugo Award as “most promising new writer,” and he won a second Hugo, as well as the Nebula Award, for the 1967 novella “Riders of the Purple Wage,” a prophetic literary satire about a futuristic, cradle-to-grave welfare state. His best-known works include the Riverworld books, the World of Tiers series, the Dayworld trilogy, and literary pastiches of such fictional pulp characters as Tarzan and Sherlock Holmes. He was one of the first writers to mash-up these characters and their origin stories into wholly new works. His short fiction is also highly regarded.
Farmer won the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2001, and the Science Fiction Writers of America named him the 19th recipient of the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award in the same year.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
These are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1965, 1966, 1968 by Philip José Farmer
Cover design by Amanda Shaffer
ISBN: 978-1-5040-4601-5
This edition published in 2017 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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