More Than Fire

by Philip José Farmer

  He was marched between two squads through a vast foyer and then halted before an elevator door. Its door did not open. Instead, the shimmering of a gate appeared, and he and one squad walked through it and into a large elevator cage. It was the only one he had ever seen furnished with a washbowl, its stand a rack with towels, a toilet, a fully rotatable blower, a showerhead, a floor drain, and a chair on which was a roll of blankets. The cage accelerated upward for several stories. When it stopped, he expected the door to slide open. But it lurched sideways and began to move swiftly on the horizontal plane.

  Presently, the cage stopped. The squad marched out through a shimmering that had appeared over the doorway. As soon as the last man had left the cage, the gate vanished.

  So, the cage was also his prison cell. An hour after entering it, he saw a small section of the wall slide up. A revolving shelf came out of the recess. His meal was on it. Okay. He had been served before in just such a manner. And he had gotten more than once out of what seemed to be an escape-proof chamber.

  He did not eat for several hours. Though he had recovered somewhat from the blow on the head, he still felt sick. Most of that, though, was because Anana no longer knew him and might never know him again.

  When he had seen her in the huge hangar, her face had looked, in a subtle way, much younger. It was as if without his realizing it before, every hundred years of her millennia-long life had placed another microscopically thin mask of age on her face. Yet, she had always looked young to him. Not until the memory-uncoiling had taken her back to when she was eighteen years old had the real difference become apparent. Though still aged, she was now unaged. What previously could not be seen had been made visible. And a long-dead innocence had been reborn. Only he, who knew her so well, could have perceived the lifting of the years.

  A square section of the wall glowed, shimmered, then became a solid picture. He saw Red Orc, nude, sitting on a chair behind a table. Behind the Thoan, by the opposite wall, was a huge bed.

  He lifted a cut-quartz goblet filled with red wine. He said, “A final toast to you, Kickaha. You led me a hot chase and a quite amusing one. To be frank, you also worried me now and then. But you made the hunt more interesting than usual. So, here’s to you, my elusive but now doomed quarry!”

  After sipping the wine and setting the goblet down, he leaned back. He looked quite satisfied.

  “You did what I could not do during my intermittent searches: you found a way into Zazel’s World. But that was because I was too close to the problem. You were fresh. However, I owe you thanks for what you did for me, and you’re one of the very few I’ve ever felt gratitude toward. In fact, I owe you double thanks.”

  He reached out a hand to something Kickaha could not see. When he brought it within vision, it held the gate-detector device.

  “I also owe you great gratitude for your gift even though you were not so willing to tender me this. Thank you, again.”

  “You call this gratitude?”

  “I haven’t killed you, have I?”

  He sipped again, then said, “I don’t know what happened to my son, that is, the clone I sent after you into the Caverned World. I suspect that you killed him. You will tell me in every detail what did happen.”

  To refuse to tell the Thoan of his experiences there would be useless, even stupid. Red Orc would get it out of him and cause him unendurable pain while doing it. Reluctantly, Kickaha described how he had traveled to the place and what had occurred there. But he did not mention Clifton or Khruuz.

  Red Orc looked neither frustrated nor angry. He said, “I believe some of your story, but I’ll wait a while for verification for my son Abalos to return. Whether he does or not, I will get into Zazel’s World in time. I have no doubt that I’ll be able to reactivate it, though it may take a while.”

  “Time is what you don’t have. After all, Manathu Vorcyon has come out from her isolation. She is now your great enemy.”

  “I was going to tackle her someday anyway.”

  Kickaha quoted an ancient Thoan saying. “He who is forced to begin attack before he planned to do so has no plan.”

  “It was Elyttria of the Silver Arrows who said, `Old sayings are always old but are not always true.’ “

  Kickaha sat down in the only chair in his room. He grinned, and he said, “Let’s quit trading epigrams. Would you be kind enough to tell me exactly how you intend to proceed against Manathu Vorcyon? After all, I’ll never be able to warn her. And then would you tell me what you’ve got in store for me? I like to be prepared.”

  “I will do the latter, though not completely,” Red Orc said. “I’ll not tell you one of the things I plan for you. You can watch me do it.”

  The Thoan stood up and called out, “Anana!” Then he said, “From now on, you’ll be able to see what takes place in this room and hear everything. The transmission from your room will be stopped.”

  A minute later, Anana, as nude as the Thoan, walked into the room. She went into his arms and kissed him passionately. After which, he led her to the bed.

  Kickaha yelled, “No! No!” and struck the screen area with his fist. All he did was to hurt his hand, but he did not mind that. Nevertheless, he used the chair to strike the screen many times. Neither the wall nor the chair was damaged. Then he unrolled the blankets and wrapped them around his head and stuck the ends of his little fingers into his ears. When he did that, the sound volume was raised so high that he could hear everything.

  He screamed to drown out the noises until his throat was too hoarse to continue. After a long time, the sounds ceased. He came out from under his covers to look at the screen. It was now silent and blank. He croaked a sound of relief. But his mind was still displaying the images and voicing the noises.

  Suddenly, the area glowed, shimmered, and became a picture. This one was a replay. Evidently, Red Orc was going to run it and, probably, future scenes over and over again until Kickaha went berserk or withdrew into himself.

  He gritted his teeth, pulled up his chair to face the wall and, maskfaced, stared at the images. He did not know if he could concentrate enough to summon up certain mental techniques he had learned a long time ago. While living with the Hrowakas, the Bear People, on the Amerind level of the tiered planet, he had mastered a psychological procedure taught by a shaman. Many years had passed since then. Despite this, he had not forgotten the methods any more than he had forgotten how to swim. They were embedded in his mind and nerves.

  Doing them with the needed concentration was the main problem now. It was not easy. He failed after starting them seven times. Then he grimly focused on the movie and did not quit that until hours later. If Red Orc was watching him-he undoubtedly was-he would be puzzled by his prisoner’s attitude.

  Seeing the film over and over hurt Kickaha as he had never been hurt before. Tears flowed; his chest seemed to be a cavern filled with boiling lead. But he would not quit. After a while, his pain began to ooze away. Later, he became bored. He had attained enough objectivity to see the film as a pornographic show in which the characters were strangers. He felt as if his only punishment was to be doomed to watch the same movie over and over forever.

  Now, he was able to start the internal ritual. This time, he succeeded. The screen area suddenly disappeared. Though it was still there to see and to hear, he no longer saw or heard it. He had shut it out.

  He thought, Absakosaw, wise old medicine man! I owe you much. But he could never repay Absakosaw. He and his tribe had been slain by one of Kickaha’s enemies. Kickaha had killed their killer, but revenge did not make the Bear People rise from the dead.

  Three days passed. The screen area remained blank. On the morning of the fourth day, it came alive. This time, the scene was a different bedroom but with the same actors. It was obvious that Anana was deeply in love with Red Orc. But then, she had always been lusty, and she had no reason she knew of to hate the Lord. Nor did she know, of course, that she was being observed.

  Either this transmi
ssion was a new one or Red Orc had figured out why Kickaha never paid attention to the film. In any event, it was getting through to Kickaha in more than one way. Again, he sat for hours staring at the wall until he was bored. After this, he used Abakosaw’s system. When he rose from the chair, he saw only the wall. However, occasional images from the film would pierce his mind. He might be worn down eventually and be unable to make the blanking-out work.

  The fifth day, while he was exercising vigorously, he heard the Thoan’s voice. He turned. The screen was active. But it did not display the scenes that had driven him close to insanity. Red Orc’s head and shoulders filled the screen. That confused Kickaha for a few seconds until he realized what had happened. Only the films were blocked from his mind, and he would receive anything else coming from the wall.

  Red Orc said, “You are elusive in more ways than the physical. I’d ask you to teach me your technique, but I have my own. And I could get you to tell me that without rewarding you with a month or so free of mental torture. I’m sure that you have held certain items of information back from me. You’ve been pleased, perhaps smug, because you’ve done this. You’re going to go to sleep now. When you wake up, I’ll know everything you know. Know, at least, those items you’ve been keeping from me.”

  The screen faded into blackness. Everything faded. When Kickaha awoke on the bed, he knew that he had been made unconscious, probably by gas. Then he had been questioned. Red Orc had used some sort of truth drug and gotten out of him everything, including the facts about Khruuz. That must have startled and alarmed him considerably. The appearance of the scaly man was something he could not have anticipated.

  After Kickaha had eaten his dinner and placed the tray of dirty dishes on the swing-out shelf, he found out what else Red Orc had done. The screen came on. Again, Red Orc and Anana made passionate and polymorphous-perverse love. Grimly, Kickaha went through the old Hrowaka’s methods. But this time, five hours went by without his being able to blank the screen out.

  Suddenly, it stopped in the middle of the tenth replay. The Thoan’s head appeared.

  “By now, you have concluded that I canceled the effects of your technique. I did so, of course, with hypnotic commands. You remember the methods, but you can’t make them effective.”

  Kickaha managed to control himself and not throw the chair at the screen. He tried to smile as if he did not care. Instead, he snarled.

  “I have decided not to wait for Absalos to return from Zazel’s World,” Red Orc said. “Your story that you killed him is probably true. I’ll find out when I get there. I will be gating out to there in a few minutes. When I come back, I’ll have data to make the creation-destruction engine. After that, you and all my enemies and billions who have never heard of me will die. So will their universes. Even my Earths will perish in a beautiful display of energy. I’ve run them as experiments, but I can now predict what’s going to happen to their people. Earth One humans will kill almost all of themselves with their brainless breeding, poisoning of land, air, and sea, and in the end, the collapse of civilization, followed by starvation. Then the survivors, though plunged into savagery, will start the climb back to civilization, science, and technology, only to repeat the same story.

  “This will also eventually happen on Earth Two. Why should I continue the experiments when I know by now what the results will be? I’ll use the energies of the disintegrated universes to make a new one. One only. This will be the ideal world, ideal for me, anyway.

  “I may take Anana with me to my new world. But I may not. While I am gone on my trip, she’ll be kept occupied. My son, Kumas, will have her. She will love him as much as she loves me, because she won’t know the difference.”

  He paused, smiled, and said, “That she won’t know the difference shows something about true love, doesn’t it? It’s a philosophical problem in identity. I would like to discuss it with you, though I believe that the discussion would not last long. You’re a trickster, Kickaha, but you do not know Thoan philosophy. Or, I suspect, Earthian philosophy. You are, basically, a simple-minded barbarian.”

  He turned his head to look at something. Perhaps, Kickaha thought, he was checking the time on a chronometer. What did it matter what Red Orc was doing? It didn’t, but he was always curious about anything he could not explain.

  The Thoan turned his head back to look at Kickaha.

  “Oh, yes! Enjoy the movies!”

  He walked out of Kickaha’s view. Immediately after, the screen shifted to a room in which Red Orc-or was it his clone?-and Anana were at the peak of ecstasy.

  Kickaha tried to become deaf, blind, and unfeeling steel. He failed.

  There was more than one way to skin a cat. Or, as the Thoan saying went, more than one direction in which to fart. He had used only one of the three techniques taught him by the shaman, Absakosaw.

  He sat down and once more watched the films. He was going to sit here until he got bored. Then he would think of Anana and Red Orc as puppets operated by strings. After a while, they should cease being human-in his mind, anyway-and become mere wooden dolls with articulated limbs.

  However, as long as the amplified noises came from the screen, he would have much difficulty ignoring that. The sounds that Anana made kept moving the course of his thoughts back to when he and she had been making love. Just as he was on the edge of giving up and trying some other technique, the screen went blank.

  A second later, the Lord’s face appeared.

  “Kickaha! I am Kumas, Red Orc’s son!”

  Kickaha shot up from his chair. He said, “Are you? Or are you Red Orc playing another trick on me?”

  The man smiled despite the strain on his face.

  “I don’t blame you. My father breeds suspicion as some breed worms for fishing.”

  “If you are indeed his son … his clone … how can you prove that? And what if you are? What do you want of me?”

  “Partnership. My father has gone to Zazel’s World. He has left me in charge because he trusts me most, though that is not saying much. I have always been obedient to him and never shown any sign of ambition. He thinks I am shy and reclusive, far more interested in reading and in writing poetry and in gaining knowledge. In that, he is partly correct. But I have hated him as much as my brothers do. Unlike them, I have succeeded in hiding my true feelings.”

  He stopped for a moment while he obviously made an effort to slow down his rapid breathing.

  Kickaha said, “You want me to help you kill him?”

  Kumas gulped audibly and nodded. “Yes! I know much about you, mostly from my father, though I do have other sources of information. I admit that I do not have enough confidence in myself to carry out my plans.”

  “Which are what?”

  Kickaha’s heart was beating hard, and he had to control his own heavy breathing. The situation had suddenly changed from hopelessness to hope. Unless, that is, the Thoan was playing another game with him.

  “We’ll talk about that now. I’ll show you that I am not my father by doing something he would not do. Watch!”

  Suddenly, a door-sized area of the wall near the screen shimmered.

  “Step through the gate into my room.”

  Though Kickaha was still suspicious, he could not refuse this invitation. He went through the shimmering to find himself in a large room. It was Spartan in its decorations and furniture. Along all the walls were shelves filled with books, rolls of scripts, and computer readout cubes. The bed was old-fashioned, one of those that hung from the ceiling by chains. By the opposite wall was a desk that ran the length of the room.

  Kumas, if he was truly Kumas, was standing in the middle of the room. A beamer was on the edge of the desk near Kickaha. He could get to it before the Thoan could. Kumas spread his hands out and said, “See! I have no weapons except that beamer. To prove that I trust you, I’ll not stop you from having it. The battery is in it; it’s ready to fire.”

  Though he moved nearer the weapon, Kickaha said, “That
won’t be necessary-as of now, anyway. Where’s Anana?”

  Kumas turned toward the empty space of the wall just above the desk. His back was to Kickaha. He said, “Sheshmu,” Thoan for “open.” The area became a screen showing Anana and several women swimming in an enormous outdoor pool. Anana seemed to be having fun with them. Their cries and shrieks and chatter came clearly.

  Kumas spoke another word, and the volume shrank to a barely heard sound.

  “As you see, she is quite happy. She has accepted my father’s lies that she was rescued by him from Jadawin when Jadawin-so my father said-invaded her parents’ universe. She believes that she is only eighteen years old, and she is deeply in love with my father.”

  Kickaha’s chest was, for a moment, again filled with a searing-hot liquid. He murmured, “Anana!” Then he said, “What’ll happen when she finds out he’s lied? She’ll eventually find discrepancies in his story. How’s he going to keep her from reading histories or overhearing somebody saying something that’ll not contradict what he says?”

  Kumas had been looking curiously at him. He said, “I expected you to be concerned only with how we were going-to dispose of my father. But your first concern seems to be about Anana. You must really love her.”

  “No doubt of that! But will she ever love me again?”

  Kumas said sharply. “That remains to be seen. Just now, if you’ll pardon me, we have something much more important. If we don’t do that, you and Anana won’t have any future. Neither will I.”

  “Agreed. It’ll be hard not to go to her, though. Very hard. But you’re right. Let her stay happy until the time when she must be told the truth.”

  They sat down at a table. Kickaha outlined his story to the Thoan. When he told him that Red Orc planned to disintegrate all the universes and to start over with a new one, he saw Kumas turn pale and start to shake.

  The Thoan said, “I did not know that, of course. He told that only to you, because he thought that you would never be able to pass it on.”