More Than Fire

by Philip José Farmer

  “Must’ve been sprayed through holes in the wall behind us,” he murmured to himself. “It doesn’t matter how it was done. We’re here.”

  Red Orc wasn’t the one responsible for their captivity. He was in the cage directly across from Kickaha’s. Like the others, he was unclothed. His face pressed against the bars, he was smiling at his archenemy. Did that mean that he was pleased that at least the others were also caged? Or did it mean that he was enjoying a secret? Such as that he had brought them here and was now posing as a prisoner? But why would he do that? Time would reveal the truth.

  The three clones of Red Orc were in the other cages. Wemathol called out, “So much for your brags, Kickaha!”

  He spat through the bars.

  Kickaha ignored him. He was about to speak to Khruuz when a … creature? thing? semihuman? walked slowly and dignifiedly into the center of the circle. A second before, it had not been present. Where had it come from? A gate, probably.

  Though he had never seen it before this, Kickaha knew that it had to be the thing he had thought was dead.

  He cried out, “Dingsteth!”

  It faced Kickaha, and it said, “Neth thruth,” Thoan for “I am it.” Carved jewels, not teeth, flashed in its mouth.

  Kickaha had heard about Dingsteth from Anana and Manathu Vorcyon. According to them, Dingsteth was an artificial creature made by Zazel as a sort of companion and manager. Before Zazel had killed himself, he had charged his creation to stand guard on and to preserve his world. Just why he would want to keep the dreary universe going, no one knew. Now the fabled being was standing before Kickaha. It was bipedal and six feet tall. Its skin was lightly pigmented, a Scandinavian pink. It walked slowly, because it had to. The shiny flesh rings around its shoulders, hips, elbows, knees, and wrists did not allow the free movement humans had. Its head, neck, and trunk were proportionally larger than those of a man. The skull was almost square, and the lips were very thin.

  Where a man’s genitals would have been was smooth skin.

  The thing said, “You know my name. What is yours?”

  “Kickaha. But I thought this world had died and you with it.”

  “You were meant to think that,” it said, pronouncing its words in a somewhat archaic manner. “But you and the others were too persistent. So I was forced to take appropriate action.”

  It paused, then said, “I thought the gate was closed.”

  “This thing intends to keep all of us here forever!” Red Orc shouted. “Dingsteth! I came here in peace!”

  Without turning around, the thing spoke to the Thoan. “You may have, and you may not have. The being who calls himself Khruuz says that you are very cruel and violent and obsessed with the desire to have the data for my master’s creation-destruction engine. He says that you will destroy all the universes, including Zazel’s, to have the energy to make a new world for yourself only.”

  “He lies!” Red Orc said.

  Dingsteth continued to look at Kickaha.

  “The semihuman calling himself Khruuz may be lying, and he may be telling the truth. He says that he can bring me proof of his words if I let him return to his own world. But you, Orc, promised to come back soon after I gated you out of here so long ago. You did not. Therefore, you lied to me.

  “How do I know that this Khruuz is also not a liar? How can I be sure that you are not all liars? You, for instance, Kickaha. You and Khruuz and the others may never return if I let you leave this world. Or you may come back intending to force me to reveal data that you should not have. I do not know if you are a liar, but you are certainly capable of senseless violence. I saw you throw away the facsimile of my skull. And I saw you kill a man, though that act was in self-defense. Or appeared to be.”

  Dingsteth walked away from the circle of cages. Kickaha watched it go to a place twenty yards away. It stopped near a “tree,” a scarlet plant the branches of which grew closely together and extended to an equal distance from the trunk. Near this cylindrical tree was a large round stone. The keeper of this world was equidistant from the tree and stone. It turned its back to the prisoners. It must have spoken a code word, because it vanished suddenly.

  He called to Khruuz, who was two cages away from his, “How did it catch you?”

  “Gas. Your question should have been, `How do we get out of these cages?’ “

  “Working on it now,” Kickaha said. “But I admit that this is one of the toughest problems I’ve ever had to solve.”

  “You mean that we have ever had,” Khruuz said.

  Red Orc said, “Yes, we! I propose that until we do escape, we put aside our hatreds and cooperate fully.”

  “I won’t put them aside,” Kickaha said. “I won’t allow them, however, to keep me from working with you.”

  Kumas said, “We’re doomed.”

  “Weakling!” Ashatelon said. “I am ashamed to be your brother. I have been since we played together as children.”

  Wemathol called, “You’re really cooperating, Ashatelon!”

  Khruuz’s deep and rough voice stopped the snarling and snapping. “Hearing you Thoan makes me wonder how you ever succeeded in conquering my people. I do not believe that the Thoan who killed all of us except myself could be your ancestors.

  “I suggest that we act as a harmonious whole until we have dealt with Dingsteth-nonviolently, I hope.”

  “Don’t ask them to give their word they won’t stab you in the back before that’s done,” Kickaha said. “Their word is as worthless as a burning piece of paper.”

  “I know that,” Khruuz said. “But our common danger should be the cement binding us together.”

  “Ha!”

  Red Orc said, “Does anyone have any ideas?”

  “Dingsteth may be listening, probably is right now,” Kickaha said. “So how do we share ideas if it’s going to know what we plan to do? We have no paper to write on, and we couldn’t throw notes from cage to cage even if we did have paper. They’re too far apart. Besides, Dingsteth’ll be watching us.”

  “Sign language?” Kumas said. The others laughed.

  “Think about it, dummy,” Wemathol said. “How many of us know sign language? It’d have to taught by one who knows, if any of us do. And we can’t do that unless we shout at each other. Dingsteth would hear us and learn along with the rest of us. Thus-“

  “I get the idea,” Kumas said. “I was just thinking out loud, you worthless, do-nothing, gasbag lout. What’s your ingenious idea?” Wemathol did not reply.

  Very little was said for the rest of the day. Night came when the sourceless light was turned off, and the only illumination was from the plants. Kickaha slept uneasily on his pile of blankets, not because he lacked a bed but because he could not stop thinking about how to get out of the cage and what he would do after that. Finally, sleep did come, laden with dreams of his life with Anana. Some of them were nightmares, fragments of desperate situations they had been in. On the whole, though, they were pleasant.

  During one dream, he saw the faces of his parents. They were smiling at him and looked much younger than when they had died. Then they receded and were lost in mists. But his feeling about them was happy. He awoke for a while after that. There had been a time when he wondered if they were his biological mother and father. It had been hinted by some Thoan that he was adopted; his true parents were Thoan, possibly Red Orc himself. He had seriously considered questing for the truth when he had time for it. Now he did not care. The biological parent was not necessarily the real parent. Loving and caring made the real father and mother. The poor but decent couple who had raised him from a baby on an Indiana farm were the ones he had known and loved. Thus, they were the only parents about whom he cared. Forget the quest.

  Dawn, a less bright light than yesterday’s, sprang into being. No false dawn here for Dingsteth. An hour later, it appeared between the tree and the stone and walked into the circle. It was careful not to come close enough to be reached through the bars.

  Witho
ut the preliminary of a greeting, it spoke. “I heard your talk about escape plans. I have run the possibilities of your succeeding in that through the world. It gives you more than a 99.999999999-percent chance of never doing that. It is trying now to locate what it is that you could do so that the chance will be one hundred percent.”

  “It has to have complete data from you to calculate that,” Kumas said. “You cannot ever know that.”

  “Make it easier for us!” Wemathol howled. “Blab everything, you anus’s anus, king of the cretins!”

  Kumas, looking chagrined, lay down on his blanket pile. He refused to say a word after that.

  “Nevertheless, I am attempting to consider all factors,” Dingsteth said. “Unfortunately, my creator did not install a creator’s imagination in me.”

  “We’ll be glad to help you find what you’re looking for!” Wemathol yelled.

  Dingsteth turned toward Wemathol. “You would? That is most kind of you.”

  It had to wait until the laughter of the caged men had ceased before it could make itself heard. Even Khruuz vented his short barking laugh.

  “That’s some kind of human joke, I suppose. I don’t understand such. An hour from now, you will hear a signal. You, Kickaha, will immediately stand in that circle on the floor of your cage. You will be gated to an exercise-and-shower area. After you have returned to the cage, the signal will again sound. You, Wemathol, will go then.”

  It named off each man in turn, made sure that they understood the arrangement, and returned to the gate by the tree. After it had disappeared, Ashatelon said, “It’s taking good care of us, though I can’t say much for the food. I wonder why it cares at all about our condition?”

  “Its seeming concern for us is built in,” Red Orc said. “It’s part of its command complex. But Zazel put that in for his own good reasons. We may regret that Dingsteth did not kill us at once.”

  “We shouldn’t give a damn about Zazel’s reasons just now,” Kickaha said. “Let’s take advantage of them as soon as possible.”

  Easier said than done, as the old Terrestrial saying went. By the time that Kickaha had been transported to the exercise area, he had not heard or said anything that might help them. He found himself in a space cut into the stone. It had no exit or entrance-except for the gate that had brought him there-and was ventilated from narrow slits along the walls. Its ceiling was fifty feet high, it was fifty feet wide, and it was a half-mile long. At either end was an unwalled shower, a fountain, a commode, and a heatdryer.

  He warmed up before running swiftly up and down the room for five miles. After a warming-down exercise, he drank, showered, and dried off standing before the blower, after which he stood in the circle and was gated through to the cage. Another loud hooting came, and Wemathol got into his circle.

  On the third morning of this routine, Kickaha asked Dingsteth what it planned to do with them eventually.

  “You will stay caged until you kill yourself or die through accident, though I do not see how accidents can occur.”

  It was some time before the hurricane of protests trailed away. There was a silence for several minutes. Then Wemathol said, “We’ll be here forever.”

  Dingsteth said, “Forever is only a concept. There is no such thing. However, if you had stated that you would be here for a very long time, you would be correct.”

  “We’ll go crazy!” Kumas screamed.

  “That is possible. It won’t make any difference about your longevity.” Kickaha spoke calmly, though he did not feel like doing so. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Zazel’s commands are to be obeyed. I myself do not know why he left such orders. I surmise, however, that at the time he gave them to me, he did not foresee that he would one day kill himself. He is dead; his commands are not.”

  Kumas fainted. Wemathol hurled at Dingsteth every item in his large treasury of insults and obscenities. When he had run through them, he started over. Ashatelon bit on his arms until blood came. The other three said nothing, but Red Orc stared through the bars for a long time. Khruuz wept, a strange sight for the humans, since his insectile face looked as if it hid no more than an insect’s emotions. Kickaha leaped up and hung from the bars and grimaced and hooted as if he were an ape. He had to express himself in some way. Just at the moment, he felt as if he had shot backward along the path of evolution. Apes did not think of the future. He would be an ape and not think about it.

  He would later realize how twisted his logic was. Just then, it seemed to be quite reasonable. It was only human to go ape.

  18

  HE HAD COMPLETELY RECOVERED BY THE NEXT MORNING. Now, looking back at yesterday, he thought that being an ape had been fun. All he had lacked to be a true anthropoid was a fur coat and fleas.

  Nevertheless, that brief fall from evolution’s ladder was a warning. For too many years, he had been under extreme stress and in near-fatal situations. The breaks between them had been too short. It was true that he seemed almost always to be in top physical and mental condition, ready to take on the universe itself, no holds barred, anything goes. But deep within him, the multitudinous perils, one after the other, had demanded high payment. The latest and worst of the shocks. Anana’s permanent memory loss and then an inescapable sentence to life imprisonment, had been the one-two punch knocking him out of the ring.

  “Only for a little while,” he muttered. “Once I get in shape again, get a long rest, I’ll be ready to fight anything, anybody.”

  Some of his cage-mates were still suffering. When Kumas was addressed by the others, he only grunted. All day long, he stood, his face pressed against the bars, his hands gripping them. He ate very little. Ashatelon cursed and raved and paced back and forth. Wemathol muttered to himself. Only Khruuz and Red Orc seemed to be undisturbed. Like him, their minds were centered on escaping.

  Fat chance! He had tried again and again to summon up from his reservoir of ingenuity a possible means to break out. Every idea was whisked off by the hurricane of reality. This prison, compared to Alcatraz, was off the starting blocks and over the finish line before Alcatraz could take a step.

  Thirty days passed. Every afternoon, Dingsteth visited them. It spoke for a few minutes to each prisoner except Kumas. He turned his back to it and refused to say a word.

  Red Orc tried to talk it into releasing him. Dingsteth always rejected him. “Zazel’s orders are clear. If he is not here to tell me otherwise, I am to hold any prisoners until he returns.”

  “But Zazel is dead. He will never come back.”

  “True. That makes no difference, however. He did not inform me as to what I should do with prisoners if he died.”

  “You will not reconsider in light of the changed situation?”

  “I am unable to do so.”

  Kickaha listened closely to the dialogue. The next day, while running in the exercise room, not even thinking of his problems, an idea exploded in his mind. It was as if his unconscious had lit a firecracker. “Might work,” he told himself. “Couldn’t hurt to try. Depends upon Dingsteth’s mental setup.”

  The following day, when he saw his captor walking stiffly into the circle of cages, he called to it.

  “Dingsteth! I have great news! Something marvelous has happened!”

  The creature went to Kickaha’s cage and stood close, though not close enough to be grabbed. “What is it?”

  “Last night while I was dreaming, Zazel’s ghost came to me. He said that he had been trying to get through to you from the land of the dead. But he can only do that in dreams. You don’t dream.”

  Kickaha was guessing about that. But it seemed probable that its brain would lack an unconscious mind.

  “Since you don’t dream, but I am a blue-ribbon dreamer, Zazel, his ghost, that is, used me as his medium to communicate to you!”

  Dingsteth’s features were incapable of expressing puzzlement. Nevertheless, they managed to hint at it.

  “What does `blue ribbon’ mean in the context of your
statement?”

  “It’s a phrase for `excellent.’ “

  “Indeed. But what is a ghost?”

  “You don’t know about ghosts?”

  “I have great knowledge, but it is impossible for my brain to hold all knowledge. When I need to know something, I ask the world-brain about it.”

  “Ask it about ghosts and spirits and psychic phenomena. Now, here’s what happened last night. Zazel … “

  After Kickaha had finished his story, Dingsteth said, “I will go to the world and ask it.”

  It hurried away. As soon as it had vanished through the gate between the tree and the stone, Red Orc said, “Kickaha! What are you-?”

  Kickaha held a finger to his lips while shaking his head slightly. “Shh! Bear with me!”

  He paced around the cage. His thoughts were like a swarm of asteroids orbiting a planet. The center of the planet was the idea that had suddenly come to him yesterday. It was a bright comet born in the darkness of his unconscious mind and zooming into his conscious mind, the bright planet-colliding with it, turning it into fire for a moment.

  I should have been a poet, he thought. Thank God I have sense enough, though, not to tell others the images, the similes and metaphors, springing up in my brain. They would laugh at me.

  Having veered away from the subject of importance to his own self, a failing common to everyone, his mind returned to it. What would he say when Dingsteth came back to tell him he was full of crap?

  The ruler of the Caverned World did return within five minutes. When it stood before the cage, it said, “The world informs me that there are in reality no such entities as ghosts or spirits. Thus, you are lying.”

  “No, I’m not!” Kickaha shouted. “Tell me, when was the data about spiritual things put into the world-brain?”

  Dingsteth was silent for a few seconds. Then it said, “It was approximately twelve thousand years ago as time was measured in Zazel’s native world. I can get the exact date for you.”