World of Tiers 02 - The Gates of Creation

by Farmer, Phillip Jose

  The beast snorted and slowly advanced towards them. It swiveled its neck back and forth, turning its head now and then to look behind it. The right front foot and left rear foot raised in unison, the cups giving a plopping noise. These came down to give it a hold in its for­ward progress. Then the left front foot and the right rear one raised, and so it came towards them. When it was fifty yards from them, it stopped and raised its head. It gave a cry that was half-bray and half-banshee wail. It lowered its neck until the jaw was on the ground and then scraped the jaw against the ground. The head slid back and forth on the pale surface.

  Wolff thought that this motion could be the equivalent of the paw­ing of dirt of a Terrestrial bull before it charged. He put his beamer on half-power and waited. Suddenly, the creature raised its head as high as it would go, screamed-much like a wounded rabbit-and galloped at them. It was necessarily a slow gallop, since the suction cups did not come off easily. To the humans, it seemed too swift.

  Wolff could afford to wait to determine if the beast were bluffing. At twenty yards, he placed the end of the beam at the juncture of neck and chest. Smoke curled up from the red-brown fur, which blackened. The animal screamed again but did not stop its charge. Wolff continued to hold the beam as steadily as he could. Then, see­ing that its impetus might carry it to the point where its fanged head could seize them, he switched to full-power.

  The beast gave a last scream; its long thin legs crumpled; its body came down on them. The cups stuck to the ground, the legs cracking beneath the weight, the body settling slowly. The neck went limp and the head lolled, the red-purple tongue sticking out, the hazel eyes glassy.

  There was silence, broken by Vala's laugh. "There's our dinner and breakfast and dinner again, already cooked for us."

  "If it's edible," Wolff said. He watched while Vala and Theotormon, knife handled by one foot, stripped off the hide and cut out half-burnt steaks. Theotormon refused to test the meat. Wolff shuffled forward very carefully, but even so his feet went out from under him. Vala and Theotormon, who had gotten to the beast with­out slipping, laughed. Wolff arose and continued his journey. He said, "If no one else dares, I'll try the meat. We can't stand around debating whether it's safe or not."

  Vala said, "I'm not afraid of it, just disgusted. It has such a rank odor." She bit into it, chewed with distaste, and swallowed. Wolff de­cided that there was no use his testing it now. With the others, he waited. When a half-hour passed, and Vala showed no ill effects, he started to eat it. The others shuffled or crawled to the carcass and also ate. There was not too much they could stomach, since most of the meat was charred, leaving only a narrow area where the heat had cooked or half-cooked the flesh.

  Wolff borrowed Theotormon's knife and cut out other steaks. Re­luctantly, because he wished to conserve the power of the beamer, he cooked the steaks. Then they each took an armful and began to march down the river. Wolff lingered for a while, considering the possibility of severing the suction-pads and using them for his loco­motion. He gave up the idea after feeling the thickness of the bones of the legs and the toughness of bone and cartilage at juncture of pad and leg. Vala's sword might do the job, but its edge would be too blunted for use afterward.

  At the end of a two-mile crawl, they came to a group of bushes near the riverbank. These were three feet high and mushroom in shape, the upper part spreading out far from the slender base. The branches were thick and corkscrew and, like the trees, grew fuzz. At close range, the fuzz looked more like slender needles. There were also large dark-red berries in clusters at the ends of the branches.

  Wolff picked one and smelled it. The odor reminded him of pecan nuts. The skin was smooth and slightly moist.

  He hesitated about biting into the berry. Again, it was Vala who dared the strange food. She ate one, exclaiming all the while over its deliciousness. A half-hour went by, during which she ate six more. Wolff then ate several. The others picked them off. Palamabron, the last to try them, complained that there were not many left for him.

  Vala said, "It is not our fault that you are such a coward."

  Palamabron glared at her but did not answer. Theotormon, think­ing that here he had found someone who would not dare to answer him back, took up the insults where Vala left off. Palamabron slapped Theotormon in the face. Theotormon bellowed with rage and leaped at Palamabron. His feet slipped out and he skidded on his face into Palamabron's legs. Palamabron went down like a bowling pin. He slid sidewise, out of reach of Theotormon's flailing flipper. Both made a frenzied but vain effort to get at each other's throat.

  Finally, Wolff, who had not shared the scornful laughter of the others, called a halt. He said, "If these time-wasting displays of childishness continue, I'll put a stop to them. Not with the beamer, since I don't care to use up power on the likes of you. We'll just go on without you or send you away. We have to have unity and a minimum of discord. Otherwise, Urizen will have the pleasure of seeing us destroy ourselves."

  Theotormon and Palamabron spat at each other but quit their struggles. Silently, in the pale purple shade of the moon overhead, they continued to slide their feet forward. The night had brought an end to the silence. They heard bleatings as of sheep and bellowings as of cattle from a distance. Something roared like a lion. They passed another clump of bushes and saw small bipedal animals feeding off the berries. These were about two and a half feet tall, brown-furred, and lemur-faced. They had big rabbit ears and slit eyes. Their upper legs ended in paws; their lower, in suction discs. They had short scarlet tails, like a rabbit's. On seeing the human beings, they stopped eating and faced them, their noses wiggling. After being convinced that the newcomers were no danger, they resumed eating. But one fellow kept his eyes on them and barked like a dog at them.

  Presently, a four-legged animal the size of a Norwegian elkhound came around a low hill. It was shaggy as a sheep-dog, yellowish, and built like a fox. At the ends of its feet were thin skates of bone on which it raced towards the bipeds. These barked in alarm and all took off in a body. They made swift progress, despite the pads, but the skate-wolf was far faster. The leader of the bipeds, seeing that they had no chance, dropped behind until he was even with the slowest of his charges. He shoved against the laggard, knocking him over, then he ran on. The sacrifice screamed and tried to get back up on its suckers, only to be knocked down again by the snarling skate-wolf. There was a brief struggle, ending when the wolf’s jaws closed on the biped's throat.

  Wolff said, "There's your explanation for the scratches we've seen now and then on the surface. Some of these creatures are skaters."

  He was silent for a while, thinking that skates would enable them to make much better progress. The problem was getting them down.

  They passed another long-necked, hyena-bodied, deer-antlered beast. This one did not offer to bother them. It bit into a rock of the vitreous substance, ripped out a chunk, and chewed upon it. It kept its eye upon them, groaning with delight at the taste of the rock, its stomach rumbling like defective plumbing in an old house.

  They went on and soon came within three hundred yards of a herd of the creatures, all grazing upon the rocks. There were young among them, awkwardly chasing each other in play or nursing from the mothers. Some of the bulls bray-wailed at the intruders, and one kept pace with them for a while. They passed antelope-like animals, marked with red diamond-shapes on white and with two horns that intertwined. Bone skates grew at the end of their legs.

  Wolff began to look for a place to sleep. He led them into a semi-amphitheater, a level between four hills. "I'll stand first watch," he said. He designated Enion as next and Luvah after him. Enion protested, asking by what authority Wolff could pick him.

  "You can refuse to take your share of responsibility, if you wish," Wolff said. "But if you sleep when your turn comes, you may wake up in the jaws of that."

  He pointed past Enion's shoulder, and Enion whirled so swiftly he lost his footing. The others looked in the direction in which Wolff's fin
ger was pointing. On top of one of the hills, a huge maned animal was glaring down at them. Its head was that of a short-snouted croc­odile and its body was catshaped, the feet ending in broad cups.

  Wolff put the the beamer on half-power and shot. He flicked the actuation plate briefly and aimed towards the hairs of the mane. The hairs crisped and smoked, and the beast roared, turned, and disap­peared beyond the hill.

  Wolff said, "Now, somebody has to be officially given authority. So far, we've avoided, that is, you've avoided, a decision. You've more or less let me run things. Mostly because you're too lazy or too occupied with your own petty problems to face this issue. All right, now's the time to settle this. Without a leader whose orders will be immediately obeyed in emergencies, we're all lost. So what do you say?"

  "Beloved brother," Vala said, "I think that you have shown that you're the man to follow. I vote for you. Besides, you have the beamer, and that makes you the most powerful of all. Unless, of course, some of us have hidden weapons we've not displayed as yet."

  "You're the only one who has enough clothes to conceal weap­ons," he said. "As for the beamer, whoever is on guard will have it."

  They all raised their eyebrows at this. He said, "It's not because I trust your loyalty. It's just that I don't think any of you would be quite stupid enough to try to keep it for yourself or try to take off on your own. When we resume the march, I expect to get the beamer back."

  All then voted, except for Palamabron. He said that he did not have to vote, since it was obvious that he would be overruled by the majority, anyway.

  "Surely brother, you were not going to nominate yourself," Vala said. "Even you, with all your hideous egotism, could not think of that."

  Palamabron ignored her. To Wolff he said, "Why am I not one of the sentinels? Don't you trust me?"

  "You can stand first watch tomorrow night," Wolff replied. "Now, let's all get some sleep."

  Wolff sat guard while the others slept on their hard beds of white rock. He listened to the distant animal cries: the bray-wails, roars, and some new sounds, a shrill fluting, a plaintive sobbing, a whis­tling. Once, something beat out a gonging, and there was the flutter of wings overhead. He rose to his feet now and then and slowly pivoted around to cover all points of the compass. At the end of a half-hour, he woke up Enion and gave him the beamer. He had no watch to determine the tune, any more than the others did, but, like them, he knew the measured passage of tune. As a child, he had gone through a species of hypnosis which enabled him to clock the sec­onds as accurately as the most precise of chronometers.

  For a while, he did not sleep. He was worried about the first watch of the next night, when Palamabron would be entrusted with the beamer. Of all the Lords, he was the most unstable. He hated Vala even more than the others. Could he withstand the temptation to kill her while she slept? Wolff decided he would have a talk with Pala­mabron in the morning. His cousin must understand that if he killed her, he would have to kill them all. This he could do with the beamer, but he would be alone from then on. This was a curious thing. Though the Lords could not stand to be with each other, they could stand the idea of being alone even less. In other circumstances, they would want no one but themselves, of course. In these, they shared a dread of their father and some comfort in having compan­ions in misery and peril.

  Just before he went to sleep, he had an idea. He swore. Why had he not thought of it? Why had not the others? It was so obvious. There was no need to creep and slip along on the ground. With boats, they could travel swiftly and much more surely. They would be safe from the predators. He would see what they could do about this in the morning.

  He was propelled from sleep at dawn by shouting. He sat up to see Tharmas shooting at a maned beast, one just like the liongator he had scared off by singeing its hair. The beast came down the hill swiftly, plop-plopping as its suction pads pulled free. Behind it lay three dead mates. The survivor came within ten feet and then dropped, its snout cut half off.

  Tharmas held the beamer while he stared at the carcass. Wolff shouted at him to turn the power off. The ray was drilling into the side of the hill. Tharmas suddenly realized what he was doing and deactivated the weapon. By then, most of the charge was gone. Groaning, Wolff took the beamer back. Now he was down to his final power pack.

  The others went to work swiftly. They took turns with the knives of Theotormon and Vala and stripped the tough hides off the dead beasts. This was slow work, both because of their ineptness and be­cause they kept sliding on the glassy surface. And they could not re­frain from arguing with him, saying that all the hard work was for nothing. Where would he get the framework for the boats he planned? Even if he could use these hides as coverings for the boats, there were not enough to go around.

  He told them to shut up and keep on working. He knew what he was doing. With Luvah, Vala, and Theotormon, he shuffled off to the nearest bushes. Here it was necessary to use more power to kill an animal that was eating the berries and refused to give up its claim. It was like a Chinese dragon. It hissed and struck threateningly at them before they got within its range. Its skin was as thick and ridged as armor plate and could be penetrated only by a beam at full-power. Even its eyes were protected. When Wolff shot at these, the ray struck transparent coverings. The creature began waving its head wildly so that Wolff could not keep the beam on one spot. Eventu­ally, he cut through the armor back of the head, and it turned over and died, exposing the serrated plates and tiny suction discs on which it made progress.

  "If this keeps up, we'll be out of power," he said to the others. "Pray that that time does not come."

  Wolff tested the toughness of the bark of the bushes and found it to be strong indeed. Chopping down the bushes and slicing off lengths to make a framework for the rough coracles he had in mind would be long hard work and ruin the sword. It was then, glancing at the caterdragon-as he called it-that he saw a ready-made vessel. Well, not quite finished, but it should need less work to complete than the original boat he had in mind.

  The sword, driven by his powerful arm, was equal to the task of separating the caterdragon's locomotion plates from the body armor. Thereafter, the sword and the knife cut up the internal organs. By then the other Lords were with them, and they took turns at the work. All were soon covered with blood, which also ran over the area and made the surface even more frictionless. Several of the lion-gators, attracted by the odor of blood, and then driven frantic by it, attacked. Wolff had to expend more power in killing them.

  The only possible sources for paddles were the 9-shaped branches on the trees. The bark of these resisted the edge of the sword. Again, Wolff had to use his beamer. He cut enough branches to make ten paddles, three extra, since Theotormon could not handle one with his flippers. The needles came off easily when cut with a knife.

  They had a rather flexible canoe, sixty feet long. The only open­ings to worry about were the mouth and nostrils. These were dis­posed of by bending the hollow front part back and up and tying a small boulder to it with Vala's cloak. The weight of the boulder stopped the forward part from straightening out and thus kept it above the water level-they hoped. Again, Wolff had to use some more power to burn off the pieces of gristle and the blood that ad­hered to the inside walls of the armor-plate. Then, walking on their knees, the Lords shoved their makeshift boat towards the river.

  Near the edge of the river, they rose to their feet and got into the dragonboat by falling over the sides and into the bottom. They did so by teams of twos, one on each side, to keep the craft from falling to one side. When all but Wolff and Vala had gotten in, the two urged the boat down. Fortunately, there was a very gentle incline. As the craft picked up a little speed, Wolff and Vala clung to the sides and the others pulled them aboard.

  The night-bringing moon crossed the horizon, and the dragoncraft floated with the current. Two Lords stayed on paddle-duty to keep the boat straight while the others tried to sleep. The moon passed, and after it came the bright p
urple of the naked skies. The river was smooth, disturbed only by tiny waves and ripples. They passed through canyons and came out again between rolling ground. The day passed without incident. They complained about the stench from the meat and blood they had not been able to clear away. They made jokes as each had to rid himself of food and drink. They spoke grouchily of their lack of sleep the previous night. They talked about what might face them when-or if-they ever found the gate that would lead them into the palace of their father.

  A day and a night floated by. Several hours after the second dawn, they came around a wide bend of the river. Ahead was a rock that split the river, a dome of white about thirty feet high. On top of it, side by side, was a pair of towering and golden hexagonal frames.