More Than Fire

by Philip José Farmer

  The Thoan was silent for a moment before replying. He said, “I don’t understand either. As for escaping from here, you ought not to be so sure. We are alike in many respects, Kickaha, more than you admit, I believe. But that’s nothing to waste time with. You’ve opened a door for me, if I understand your implications. That opening, however, won’t be freedom for me. You will not just kill me, but you will keep me prisoner, or attempt to do so, until I kill myself from frustration and boredom. Correct?”

  Kickaha nodded.

  “You stupid leblabbiy!” the Thoan screamed. His entire skin was suddenly a poisonous red, and his face was knotted with fury. He shook his fist at Kickaha, then he spat. Tiny bubbles quickly gathered at the corners of his mouth, broke, and were replaced by other bubbles. His eyeballs were shot with blood; the arteries on his forehead swelled as if they were cobras puffing up their hoods. And then he began banging his forehead against the screen.

  Kickaha had jumped with surprise when Red Orc screamed, and had stepped back. But he now went up to the screen to observe the Thoan closely. Blood was running from his forehead and spreading over his face. Blood had smeared the screen. He truly looked red with a capital R. Though the Thoan had earned his title primarily because he had shed so many people’s blood, he was also known throughout the many universes for his rages. They did not happen often, because of his glacial self-control. But when they did erupt, they were fearsome to behold.

  This, Kickaha thought, was the granddaddy of all furies.

  If it was true that the child was the father of the man, ancient hurts were thrusting themselves up from his soul. Though the very long-lived Lords remembered only the most significant events of their remote past, Red Orc had never forgotten his earliest years, his hatred of his father, his deep love for his mother, and his grief when she had been killed. Nor the numerous frustrations and disappointments since then. His many victories had never canceled these.

  Watching the Thoan, who was now tearing at his face with his fingernails and still screaming, Kickaha wondered why the Thoan had not tried some system of mental healing. Or perhaps he had, but it had not been successful.

  Now Red Orc was rolling over the floor until he banged against a wall, then rolled back until stopped by the opposite wall. He was, however, no longer screaming. Blood from the scratches and gashes on his face, chest, stomach, and legs marked his passage on the floor.

  Suddenly, he stopped rotating. He lay on his back, his mouth gaping like a fish out of water. His legs and arms were extended to form a crude X, and he was staring at the ceiling.

  Kickaha waited until the Thoan’s massive chest was no longer rising and falling so quickly. Then he said, “Are you over your tantrum?”

  Though Red Orc did not reply, he did rise to his feet. His face was composed under the blood covering it. After a minute, during which he stared at Kickaha, he spoke calmly.

  “I know what you are going to propose. If I am to stay alive, I will have to tell Anana the truth about what I did to her.”

  Kickaha nodded.

  “I need some time to think about it,” the Thoan said. “Okay,” Kickaha said. “You have ten seconds.”

  For a moment, Kickaha thought that Red Orc was going to rocket off in another rage. He had pressed his lips together, and his eyes began looking crazy again. But then he breathed out deeply and smiled.

  “I was thinking about a week to make up my mind. Very well. No, I will not tell Anana the truth.”

  “I didn’t think you would,” Kickaha said. “However, I have another offer. If you accept it, you’ll escape lifelong imprisonment. But the offer depends upon an answer to my question. Did you store Anana’s memory? If you did, can you give it back to her?”

  19

  RED ORC SAT STILL, HIS EYES FOCUSED ON A POINT A FEW inches from Kickaha’s head. That he did not answer at once showed that he was going to be very careful about what he would say.

  Kickaha tried to think as the Thoan was thinking. Red Orc knew whether or not he could give Anana’s memory back to her. He was wondering if he should lie. If he was able to restore her memory, he would say that he could not do so. Though a no from him would confine him for life in a seemingly escape-proof cell, Kickaha had found a way to get out of Dingsteth’s cages. What the leblabbiy could do, he, Red Orc, could do.

  If he said yes, only he would operate the machine. Anana would be in his power, and he could kill her with a jolt of electricity or whatever else was available. He would not enjoy his revenge long. A few seconds later, he would die.

  Finally, he said, “No. I cannot restore her memory. Even if it could be filed, it would take a vast storage space, a capacity that only Zazel’s World would have. And I am not certain of that. Destroying is far easier than creating.”

  “You should know,” Kickaha said. “You have taken Anana’s memory from her. What’s been done to her can be done to you. How would you like to be stripped of your memory?”

  The Thoan shuddered slightly.

  “I’ll see to it that the memory-uncoiler takes you back to when you were only five,” Kickaha said. “You were, if my informants are to be believed, a loving person at that age. That way, I don’t have to kill you-I hope I don’t-and you’ll be given a second chance. You’ll not be confined to a cell, but you won’t be allowed to go out of this palace. Or wherever you’re kept. Not until I’m one-hundred-percent satisfied that you’ll stay on the right path, that you’re a real pussycat.

  “Maybe it’d be better to take you back to the age of three. Or even two. That’d make it easier for us to help you form a different persona, or at least reshape you. Your destructive tendencies could be channeled into creative drives. Despite what you said, it’s sometimes easier to create than destroy.”

  “Thousands of years of knowledge and experience lost,” Red Orc murmured.

  Kickaha had expected that the Thoan would go into another rage. But the first one seemed to have exhausted him.

  “It happened to Anana.”

  The Thoan breathed deeply, looked at the ceiling, then into Kickaha’s eyes.

  “But you forget something. Only I know how to operate the memory-uncoiler.”

  “I haven’t forgotten,” Kickaha said. “You’ll be injected with a hypnotic that’ll make you answer all questions.”

  “That won’t do anything to me,” the Thoan said. He smiled. “I have taught myself certain mental techniques that will automatically block out the effects of any hypnotics available to you.”

  “I won’t hesitate to cause you such pain you’ll be happy to tell me much more than I want to know about operating the uncoiler. I’ve seldom tortured a man before this, only when it was absolutely necessary to save lives. Do you doubt that?”

  “You’re a man of your word,” Red Orc said sarcastically. “But whose life are you saving if you torture me?”

  Kickaha grinned. “Yours. However, I don’t have to torture you. I have another card up my sleeve. I won’t have to hurt you, physically, that is. Khruuz will be able to figure out how to operate the machine.”

  It was the Thoan’s turn to grin. “I anticipated long ago that someone with the Khringdiz’s knowledge might be available. The machine will not turn on until it has identified me as the operator. It must read my voice frequencies and pattern of intonation. It also requires my handprint, my eyeprints, my odorprint, and a small patch of my skin so that it may read my DNA. It also must receive a code phrase from me, though you will be able to get that out of me by torture. That will not be necessary. I’ll give you the code phrase, much good it will do you.”

  “And?” Kickaha said.

  “Ah! You have anticipated another barrier to operating the machine. You are right in doing that. Certain numerous components of the machine, after a certain delay, will explode unless I am the operator. That will disintegrate the machine and annihilate everything within three hundred feet of the blast and do extensive damage for another three hundred.”

  “That’s
a lot of trouble,” Kickaha said. “What you did, you set up the self-destruction system to keep your clones from being able to use it, right?”

  “Of course, you idiot!”

  “This idiot will find a way to fool the machine,” Kickaha said. “You’re holding back one item of information about how the machine identifies you. It’s something that marks you as different from your duplicates. I can get that out of you if you hurt enough. I don’t like the idea, but as I said, I’ll use torture. It’s a tool that almost always works.”

  “It would get you what you want. But that information would not aid you one bit. The machine would explode even if you used Ashatelon or Wemathol.”

  Red Orc paused, then said, “My sons could be the operators if it were not for one insurmountable factor. I may as well tell you what it is since I don’t care to be disintegrated, and it is the factor that makes it impossible to use the memory-stripping on me. Not even I can cancel it. If I am the person whose memory is to be stripped, the machine will blow up. It will know that I am the subject, because it can detect my age. The clones are much younger than I. Therefore, the machine will be triggered when it reads the age difference.”

  “How can that be?” Kickaha said. “Your body cells are replaced every seven years. It won’t be any older, within a seven-year limit, than your clones’ bodies.”

  “True. But the machine will scan my memory before it starts the stripping process. That will determine that I am indeed the original person, because my clones have shorter memories. There is nothing that I can do about that. I cannot remove that circuit without causing the machine to explode. That is a command that now that I’ve installed it, cannot be canceled.”

  Red Orc stood up. “I’m tired of this. Gate me back to my cell.”

  Kickaha also rose from his chair. “You’re leaving when I’m having so much fun?”

  Red Orc was now standing inside the circle on the floor, waiting to be transmitted to his cell. He called out, “Take my advice, Kickaha! Watch Khruuz! Do not trust him!”

  As Kickaha left the room, he admitted to himself that he was stymied. The situation was a Mexican standoff. Red Orc was suicidally stubborn. Though he’d been offered a deal far better than he deserved, he’d rather die than lose his memory and, thus, his precious identity.

  Kickaha went to the control room, a huge chamber with a very deep carpet on which were various mathematical formulae. The Khringdiz was sitting on a chair before a panel with many displays and controls. He wheeled his seat around and looked up at Kickaha. “It seems that you must either kill him or imprison him until he dies.”

  “Keeping him locked up is a bad idea. Sometime during the thousands of years he may yet live, he’d find a way to escape. I hate to think of him on the loose again.”

  “My advice is to end his misery.”

  “Misery?”

  “Yes. Sometimes, so I’ve been told, he is quite calm, at one with himself because he feels superior to all other humans. Then he is even kind to people. He believes that he is truly a god. But this feeling only lasts a certain time. He tortures himself because he cannot make himself peaceful and serene. He cannot get people to love him, though this feeling largely comes from the unconscious, and he is not aware of it. By love, I don’t mean sexual love-that is, lust. During the thousands of years he has lived, he has not found a way to be at peace with himself or with others. He was driven to madness by others because he drove them to hate him.

  “Now he is given the opportunity to erase that madness, to start over again. But despite his misery and suffering, he loves his madness. He cannot give it up. He thinks of himself as a very strong person, which he is in many respects. Yet he is also what he despises most, a weakling.”

  Kickaha laughed loudly, then said, “Thank you, Doctor Freud!”

  “Who?”

  “Never mind. But, though nonhuman, you certainly seem to know much about the human psyche.”

  “I’m convinced that there is not a significant basic degree of difference between any two sapient species, or among the members of the same species.”

  “You may be right. Anyway, I gave Red Orc a most generous offer, considering what he’s done. He isn’t going to accept it. That’s that.”

  Khruuz rolled his huge eyes upward. Kickaha did not know what that meant. Disgust? Wonder at the craziness of human beings?

  The Khringdiz said, “Red Orc was trying to make you suspicious of me when he told you to watch me. I hope that you dismissed his warning for what it is, a lie.”

  “Oh, sure. I know what he’s doing,” Kickaha said. “He’s always in there pitching.”

  Damn Red Orc! he thought. He’s brought up from the deep of my mind what’s been lurking down there. I knew it was there-I’m never entirely without suspicion-but I just had no valid reason at all to suspect . Khruuz of evil intentions. I don’t have any now. I should rid my mind of Red Orc’s warning-though, come to think of it, Manathu Vorcyon did say that I might trust the Khringdiz too much. But she admitted that she didn’t have any basis for her remark. Except that you shouldn’t trust anybody unless they’d been through the fires with you, and maybe not even then.

  Usually, I breathe in suspicion with the air. But Khruuz had such impressive credentials for hating the Lords. I don’t doubt that he has. But who else does he hate? All humans? Could he be as crazed as Red Orc but have much better control at concealing his feelings? I certainly can’t accuse Khruuz. No basis for doing that.

  But it’s possible he’s up to something I won’t like at all. How do I determine what he really thinks and feels? I could lock him up, keep him out of the way. But I need him badly, and I’d be unfair and unjust if I imprisoned him without good reason.

  Ah! Idea! Ask him to submit to a lie detector! No. He might be able to fool the machine or any truth drugs through mental techniques. If Red Orc can do that, Khruuz probably can do it. Anyway, his metabolism and neural reactions probably differ from those of humans. The machine or the drugs wouldn’t work as they do with us. If I ask him to volunteer, I’ll mightily offend him. I just can’t do that. Or should I do it anyway?

  He looked at the Khringdiz and wondered what was going on in that grasshopper head.

  Khruuz said, “Do you plan to execute Red Orc soon?”

  “I haven’t made up my mind. He should be killed. But I hate doing it that’s my weakness-and I’d have to do it personally, press the button to flood his cell with gas or whatever. I won’t delegate it to someone else. That’s a coward’s way.”

  “I do not see that it is,” Khruuz said. “Do you yourself kill the animal that others serve you on the table?”

  “I usually kill my own meat. But you have a point. Not much of one, though. Red Orc is not an animal, despite what many say about him. And despite the fact that he intended to kill me and then eat me as if I were an animal.”

  “I hope you soon resolve your dilemma,” the Khringdiz said. “Meanwhile, I have been thinking that I should return to my world and stay there for a while.”

  Red Orc’s warning was a hand plucking at his mind as if it were made of harp strings. The music-discord, rather-was high notes of suspicion. Damn Red Orc again! But he said calmly, “Why?”

  “As you know, I’ve been trying to get through Red Orc’s access codes here to enter various sections of the computer. His data banks may have the information we need to make another memory-uncoiling machine and to operate it. If so, we can strip him of his memory to any age we select, and thus avoid the unpleasantness of executing him. But there’s another far more compelling reason. He may be lying when he says that he has not stored that part of Anana’s memory that he took from her. It may be in the bank. If it is, we can give her memory back to her.”

  Kickaha was so excited that all thoughts of doubt about the Khringdiz scattered like a flock of birds under gunfire. After all, what evidence did he have that Khruuz was plotting something sinister? Not a bit. The Khringdiz had been invaluable in the conflict
with Red Orc. Moreover, he was a likable person despite his monstrous features. “Do you really think so?” he said.

  “It is possible. We cannot afford to ignore anything, no matter how difficult it may be to obtain it. It is well worth the time and the effort.”

  “I could kiss you!” Kickaha cried.

  “You may do so if it pleases you.”

  “I should have said I feel like kissing you,” Kickaha said. “I was speaking emotionally, not literally.”

  “But I need to go to my planet,” the Khringdiz said. “I have an enormous amount of data stored there, data inherited from my ancestors and data stolen or taken from the Thoan. There is much there of which I am not aware. It’s possible that I might not only find the means there to crack Red Orc’s codes, but find data on building memory-uncoiling machines. Who knows?

  “Also, our friend, Eric Clifton, must be very lonely. I will transmit him to here so that he will have human companionship.”

  “Oh, man!” Kickaha said.

  “What?” Khruuz said.

  “Nothing.”

  “I’ve noticed that when you humans say `nothing’ in the context of your conversation, you mean ‘something.’”

  “Very observant of you,” Kickaha said. “But in this case, I was struck by a completely irrelevant thought. Something I’d forgotten to do, that’s all.”

  His suspicions of the Khringdiz had been like a bag of garbage he’d thrown from the beach into the ocean. It had drifted off, almost out of sight, and then a tidal wave had picked the bag up and hurled it back against him, knocking him off his feet.

  He said, “That’s damned decent of you, considering Clifton’s feelings. But I’d rather he stayed with you for a while.”

  “Why?”

  Kickaha was taken aback. Mentally, he stuttered. But a second later, he said, “Clifton can’t help you with anything technological, I think. But he can be helpful in other matters. As for companionship, you need that, too. . And Clifton likes you. Also, I’m sure there are things you could tell him, enlighten him. He’s intelligent and eager to learn.”