More Than Fire

by Philip José Farmer

  “We Thoan cannot repay him for what we did to his people. Nevertheless, we cannot allow empathy or guilt to interfere in this. If you have to do it, kill him!”

  A minute passed. She cried out, “We’re going in!”

  The night sky vanished. They were inside the well-lit and enormous dining hall for the guards and servants. Approximately forty corpses of guards, severed by beamer rays, were scattered through the hall. Three of the four maids left in charge of gating food to Red Orc and Anana were dead on the floor near a table. The overturned chairs and the half-eaten food on the dishes showed that they had been interrupted in their meal. The ten remaining guards had either fled the palace or were dead somewhere in it, or perhaps hiding.

  By now, Kickaha thought, the alarms Khruuz must have set up will have told him an intruder is in the palace.

  The doorway into the dining hall was just large enough for the vessel, despite its top and bottom turrets, to scrape through. Like the dining room walls, ceiling, and floor, the hallway was blackened from beamer rays. The ship emerged into another huge room. It was also blackened. The fried or severed bodies of five guards sprawled there.

  Manathu Vorcyon’s voice came to Kickaha. “The fourth maid was probably kept alive so that Khruuz could question her. He would want from her the code words allowing him to gate through whatever he wishes to send to Red Orc’s and Anana’s quarters.”

  Kickaha gritted his teeth. The scaly man could send explosives or poisonous gas through the small food gates. Given enough time, Khruuz might be able to figure out how to expand the food gates to a size large enough to gate a person in or out. That is, he might if he wanted them in his presence for some reason.

  Sweat poured over him when he envisioned the scenario. He groaned softly. A high imagination was both a blessing and a curse.

  “… might have done that before he resumed his interrogation of Dingsteth,” Manathu Vorcyon said. “He may have the engine data by now, or he may still be trying to get it out of Dingsteth. That depends on how long he has been here, and what the situation is.”

  The ship squeezed through another hall. The scars and the broken-off parts of the walls and ceiling showed that Khruuz had entered the palace in a craft similar in size to theirs. But they were quickly in another wide, long, and high room. This was for receiving many guests, even though Red Orc never gave parties. In its center, sitting unoccupied and unlit, was a ship much like Manathu Vorcyon’s. But its hull was rounded fore and aft, and its bottom was flat.

  “Khruuz has gone ahead on foot, because the hallways are too narrow for his ship unless he blasted his way through them,” the giantess said. Her vessel settled down. The bottom turret withdrew into the hull while Wemathol scrambled out of it. When the ship was resting on the floor just behind the scaly man’s she said, “Get out the fliers.”

  While the men were unfolding the aircraft outside the hull, she investigated Khruuz’s vessel. It did not take her long. When she returned, she said, “Its door seems to be locked. Here is my plan. We go in two parties to make scouting forays. Kickaha, you and Ashatelon will go together down the nearest hall. Wemathol, you and I will go into the far hallway. That leads to the control room if what you told me about the layout, Kickaha, is correct. Report at once if you need help.”

  She told them the code words for unlocking the two doors of her craft and for turning the power on in the big vessel. Anybody who had to run for it would return to it and use it as the situation required. They would have no trouble operating it. The controls were clearly marked.

  As Kickaha rode off with Ashatelon’s machine by his side, he said, “You know, Khruuz may have already flown the coop. If he did, he probably left a bomb strong enough to blow this building to bits.”

  “You’re the most encouraging man I’ve ever met,” the Thoan replied. “Why don’t you keep all that cheer to yourself?”

  Kickaha laughed, though not as enthusiastically as he usually did.

  In twenty minutes of cursory search, they had been in every room and corridor on the first floor in the eastern half of the palace. Kickaha reported their findings. Manathu Vorcyon’s voice quickly followed his. She and Wemathol were in the second story and outside the door to the control room.

  “We’ve found the fourth maid. She is lying in the hallway. Her body is covered with small burns, her eyes are burned out, and her head is sliced off. Evidently, she had to be tortured before she would tell him what he wanted to know. A very brave woman, though it was foolish of her not to reveal her secrets. She could have spared herself all the pain.”

  She paused, then said, “All of you come up here. I’ll wait for you before I enter the control room.”

  When Kickaha and his partner got there, they found that Manathu Vorcyon’s beamers had cut the door away from the wall. It was lying in the hall. She was now carving out a large circular area in the wall thirty feet from the doorway. It was large enough to admit her and the airboat.

  “Kickaha and Ashatelon, make another entrance on the other side of the door at the same distance from it as this one.”

  While they were doing that with the large beamers of their vehicles, they heard the other section fall crashing into the room. Shortly thereafter, Kickaha rammed his flier into the section he and the clone had cut out. The impact would have knocked him off his seat if he had not been belted to it. The section fell inward and crashed onto the floor.

  He looked through it, wary of a beamer ray or a grenade. The huge room contained many control screens and panels, but it also had many machines, their purpose unknown to him. He reported that he could see part of the room. No one was in his view, but he’d be happy to stick his head through the hole to see all of the room. He was relieved, however, when Manathu Vorcyon forbade that. Did he want his head sliced off just to show how brave he was?

  She continued, “The part of the room I can see seems to be unoccupied. Nor do my sensors indicate any body heat in there. Nevertheless, he may be shielded by something-if, that is, he is indeed in there. When I give the signal, we’ll all go in at the same time. As I said, I prefer that we just wound him, but that will probably be impossible.”

  She held her hand up. Then she shouted, “Go!”

  Kickaha pressed down on the acceleration pedal of his craft. It shot through the hole so swiftly that he was pressed back against the upright support behind him. Just as he entered the room, he raised the airboat so that it lifted in a tight curve to his right. His head almost touched the ceiling, which was forty feet above the floor. He straightened out the machine as his retrofield fired. It slowed down so abruptly that he was pushed forward against the restraining belt.

  Ashatelon’s vehicle, which had curved to the left, stopped in front of Kickaha’s. It was so close to his that the cone noses almost touched. Ashatelon’s flight path was supposed to end at a level lower than his partner’s, but he had miscalculated. No time for reproaches. Kickaha was too busy looking around below him for Khruuz. He did not see him.

  He grunted when he saw Dingsteth stretched out facedown behind a massive machine set out a few feet from the back wall. Its hands were tied together behind its back. A trail of blood in front of the machine led around it to Dingsteth.

  Khruuz must have walked out of the room before his pursuers got there or he had gated out of it. The latter, probably. His enemies had interrupted him just as he had shot Dingsteth. Since the Khringdiz did not have time to finish it off, he had fled through a gate or down the hallway.

  Kickaha, along with the others, rode down to the console behind which Dingsteth lay, landed, and got off his craft. Manathu Vorcyon ordered Wemathol to stand guard by the doorway. She did not want Khruuz to surprise them by doubling back from a gate. Then she strode around the console. The others crowded behind her. Kickaha was turning Dingsteth over on its back.

  He looked up as she stopped by him. “Beamed through a shoulder and a leg,” he said. “His pulse is weak.”

  The giantess said, “Kh
ruuz has not been gone long. Dingsteth’s blood is fresh.”

  Kickaha started to stand up. A strange disorienting feeling passed through him. He seemed to be floating. It was as if he were in a very swiftly descending elevator. When he straightened up, he looked up through the giantess’s helmet at her face, twisted with alarm. She opened her mouth. Before she could say anything, a great noise stopped her.

  Then the floor came up at him. He struck it very hard, and it buckled and broke open against his fallen body. He was vaguely aware that the console was skittering over the floor, hurling aside Ashatelon, who had been standing at its corner. Something hit him hard in the back, and he lost consciousness. The last things he heard were a deep rumbling, a crashing like an avalanche, and his own feeble voice crying out.

  21

  PAIN AWOKE HIM. HIS HEAD, NOSE, NECK, LOWER BACK, AND right elbow hurt. His legs were numb from his hips downward. But they were not so deadened that he could not feel the heaviness pressing them down. All he could see through the helmet, which was covered with a very thin layer of white dust, was the tiled floor. A large crack in it was just below him. His nose was flattened against the front of his globed helmet. When he licked his lips, he tasted blood.

  The room was silent except for a single muffled groan from somewhere. He called out. Silence answered him.

  He tried to roll over, but his legs were pressed down against the floor. While struggling to pull himself free, he saw green boots sticking out from a pile of cement blocks mixed with fragments of various materials. They were lightly covered by the plaster dust covering everything in the room. But parts of the boots were not so veiled that he could not see that they were green. Ashatelon was the only one wearing green footwear.

  When he lowered his head and turned it to his right, his vision was blocked by a metal ceiling beam an inch from his helmet. Torn loose from its wall support, the beam had probably struck one side of his curved helmet. The impact had hurled him to one side so that his shoulder had just missed being crushed by the beam.

  He strove to drag himself forward to escape whatever it was that felt like a Titan’s thumbs pressing down on his legs. Not until he was breathing very hard and was exhausted did he stop. At least, he had managed to move forward several inches. Or was that wishful thinking?

  After lying still a few minutes, he began struggling again. He quit that when he suddenly saw the huge, dusty, light-blue boots of Manathu Vorcyon before him. Her voice filled his helmet.

  “Lie still, Kickaha. I’ll try to lift this beam from your legs.”

  The boots disappeared. Presently, after much grunting and many expletives, she said, panting, “I cannot do it. I will get my boat, if I can find it in this mess, and use it to haul up the beam. There is a rope in the supply bag on the boat.”

  While she was gone, Wemathol came to Kickaha. He croaked when he spoke. “She told me to dig the debris from around the beam. Just lie still, Kickaha. You cannot do anything until she gets back.”

  “As if I didn’t know that,” Kickaha muttered. He longed for a tall glass of iced water.

  He heard scraping sounds and a loud panting for some time. Then Wemathol said, “There is a chance your legs might not be crushed. They were buried in debris before the beam fell on top of the pile.”

  “I can feel something now,” Kickaha said. “The numbness is going away.”

  The giantess came on an airboat. She had had to tear away a mass of debris before she could uproot it. It was not hers, but it was the only one she could find. She helped the clone dig out the debris on top of and around the massive beam. Then she got the rope through the space beneath it. Within a few minutes, it was lifted up far enough for Wemathol to drag Kickaha out from under it. She landed the boat and got off it to examine Kickaha.

  His legs would not yet obey him. He sat leaning against the pile of debris while Manathu Vorcyon felt his legs through the cloth. She reported that they did not seem to be broken, but she would have to examine them after his clothes were off. Then she said, “Ashatelon is dead.”

  “I’m surprised he is. He seemed to be a survivor.”

  “Time makes sure that nobody is.”

  Kickaha looked up at what was left of the ceiling. Only its outer part was left, but the collapsed story above that had plugged up the hole. Parts of it looked as if they would soon fall through. Moreover, the broken wall of this room had spilled out into the hallway. While he was looking at the damage, the building shifted slightly, and the other walls became even more cracked. The far end of the ceiling collapsed with a roar and a cloud of white plaster dust, plunging into the room and forming a great mound that reached up through the gaping hole.

  He said, “Maybe we should get out of here.”

  Before she could reply, Wemathol came into the room after exploring the hallway.

  “We’re not on Earth Two!”

  Kickaha and the giantess spoke as if they were one person. “What? How do you know?”

  “I could see the sky through a small opening in a part of the hallway ceiling. A stone pillar must have fallen from the palace roof and pierced through all the floors of the rooms above. There is not much of the sky to see, but it is enough. It is green.”

  Kickaha said, “That means-“

  “It means,” the Great Mother said, “that Khruuz wrapped up the entire palace, perhaps some of the surrounding grounds, in a gate and transported it to this universe. That took great power. It would also take some time to be arranged. He must have set it up before he came to this room with Dingsteth. When the palace came through the gate, it was up in the air, by accident or design, and it fell. It could not have been very high above the surface or we would be dead.”

  “Just what I was going to say,” Kickaha said. He looked around. “Where’s Dingsteth?”

  “It’s either buried under a pile or it woke up before we did and walked off. It may have been in a daze. But I would assume that if it did wander away, it will not get far because of its wounds.”

  “It was half flesh and half electronic circuits,” Kickaha said. “Its recovery powers must be greater than ours. Is there a trail of blood leading out of the room?”

  “No,” she said. “But Dingsteth was next to you when the palace collapsed. It should have been hit by the same beam that came close to smashing you.”

  “Or it’s seeking Khruuz so it can get revenge,” Wemathol said.

  “With its hands bound behind its back?” the giantess said.

  Kickaha cried, “Anana!” He tried to get up, but his legs were still too weak. At least they were showing signs of getting their strength back.

  The woman and the clone looked at each other but said nothing. They knew what Kickaha was envisioning: Anana in a suite of rooms inside the building but sealed off from the rest of it. The only access was through a gate. But the wall containing the gate activator could be buried under rubble.

  Red Orc would be in a similar situation. Kickaha was not worried about him.

  Manathu Vorcyon, however, was more concerned than he about the Thoan. She said, “It is possible that the collapse might not have buried them. It could have opened a way for Anana, and Red Orc, too, to get out of their rooms.”

  “Not very likely,” Wemathol said.

  “Anything is possible. But we cannot take a chance. We have to locate Khruuz and also determine if Red Orc did get away.”

  “Aren’t you going to look for Anana?” Kickaha said.

  “Later,” Manathu Vorcyon said. “Wemathol, you come with me. I am sorry, Kickaha, but we cannot wait for you to recover. Khruuz would not have stayed inside the palace when he gated it to this place. He would have taken another gate to it after it was transported. He would not care to be in the palace when it was transmitted to here, wherever this is. It is certain that he’ll be looking for us. I am surprised that he has not come back to this room by now.”

  “He’s somewhere around here, waiting to ambush us,” Wemathol said. He looked around nervous
ly.

  The Great Mother decided that they should remove their tanks, backpacks, helmets, and suits.

  “They slow us down, and I doubt we have to guard against poison gas,” she said. When she and the clone had stripped down, they put on their weapons belts. Then they removed Kickaha’s suit and helped him strap on his belt. In addition to his weapons, the Horn of Shambarimen was attached to the belt.

  Wemathol removed the radio sets, which were attached by suction discs to the interior of the globed helmets. The three stuck these on their wrists.

  The air was dusty and getting hot. The palace must have landed in a tropical area, Kickaha thought.

  He watched the two ride away on the boat, which had two seats in tandem and was a very thin and lightweight metal structure supporting a small motor, a small storage space, and two rotatable beamers. The Great Mother was at the controls. Wemathol sat behind her. Kickaha was to stay behind the pile but keep on guard. His gate detector was in a small pouch hanging from the belt. A canteen was by him, and his beamer was in his hand, ready to shoot if the scaly man or Red Orc appeared. Though the room did not seem to be accessible behind him, he looked there now and then. The large masses of rubble might conceal an opening into the room approachable from the other side of the wall.

  All was silent except for the occasional creaks caused by the shifting parts of the ruins. Anybody in here with good sense should get out of the structure before all of it crashes, he thought. But anybody with good sense wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place. And I still hurt very much.

  It seemed improbable that Khruuz could be tuned in to their radio frequencies, but it was best not to chance it. They were to use the radios only if a situation absolutely required it.

  He felt helpless. Though he usually was content to be alone, he would have been glad to hear a human voice. Also, that the entire building might collapse and bury him at any moment made time seem to stretch out like a glowing-hot wire in a drawing machine. If it got too thin, it snapped. That would be when the debris suspended above him fell through the ceiling.