The Gates of Creation

by Philip José Farmer

  Wolff advanced steadily towards it, and it fled until it was out of sight. He decided that it would be a good thing if the Lords had clubs in case they came within close range of the hopper again. He cut the bushes to make sticks that would be heavy enough to do the job.

  Palamabron asked him why he did not kill the beast with his beamer. Wolff answered that he was trying to waste as little power as possible. The thing took off so swiftly that he was not sure he could hit it. The next time, power conservation or not, he would shoot. They had to have something to eat. They continued on their way and began seeing more of the hoppers. These must have been warned by the first, since they all kept well out of range.

  Two hours later, they came to a wide fissure in the canyon walls. Wolff went down it and found that it led to a box canyon. This was about thirty feet lower than the main one, about three hundred yards wide and four hundred deep. The floor was thick with bushes, among which he saw one hopper.

  He went back to the others and told them what they were to do. Luvah and Theotormon stayed within the narrow passage while the rest walked out into the canyon. They spread out in a wide circle to close in on the lone animal.

  The hopper stood in a large clearing, its nose twitching, its head turning quickly from side to side. Wolff told the others to stop, and he walked slowly towards it, the club held behind his back. The animal waited until Wolff was within ten feet of it. Then it disappeared. Wolff whirled around, thinking that it had jumped with such swiftness that he had not been able to see it. There was no animal behind him. There were only the Lords, gaping and asking what had happened.

  Approximately three seconds later, the beast reappeared. It was now thirty feet from him. Wolff took a step towards it, and it was gone again.

  Three seconds later, there were two animals in the clearing. One was ten feet away from Vala. The other was to Wolff’s left and fifteen feet away.

  "What the hell?" Wolff said. It took much to startle him. Now he was far more than startled. He was bewildered.

  The animal near Vala disappeared. Now there was one left. Wolff ran towards it, his club raised and shouting, hoping to freeze the animal long enough to get a chance to strike it.

  It vanished. A little later, it reappeared to his right. A second hopper was with it.

  The Lords closed in on them. The two beasts suddenly became five.

  After that, there was much yelling, screaming, and confusion. Some of the animals had popped up behind the Lords, and several Lords turned to give chase.

  Then there were two of the creatures that Wolff was to call tempusfudgers.

  These two became three as the wild chase continued for another three seconds.

  Then there was one.

  The Lords pursued that one and suddenly had two before them.

  Three animals were being chased three seconds later.

  Then there was one.

  The Lords came in on it from all directions at full speed. Two animals reappeared, one directly in front of Palamabron. He was so startled, he tried to stop, stumbled, and fell on his face. The creature hopped over him and then vanished as Rintrah swung at it with his stick.

  There were two now.

  Three.

  All of a sudden, none.

  The Lords stopped running and stared at each other. Only the wind and their heavy breathing sounded in the box canyon.

  Abruptly three of the beasts were in their midst.

  The chase started again.

  There was one.

  Five.

  Three.

  Six.

  For six seconds, three.

  Six again.

  Wolff called a halt to the milling chase. He led the Lords back to the entrance, where they sat down to recover their breath. Having done that, they began chattering away to each other, all asking the same questions and no one with an answer.

  Wolff studied the six animals a hundred yards away. They had forgotten their panic, though not the cause of it, and were nibbling away at the berries.

  A silence fell upon the Lords again. They looked at their pensive brother, and Vala said, "What do you make of it, Jadawin?"

  "I've been thinking back to the time that the first animal we saw vanished," he said. "I've been trying to calculate the lengths of their disappearances and the correlation between the number at one time and at succeeding times."

  He shook his head. "I don't know. Maybe. It doesn't seem possible. But how else explain it. Or, if not explain, describe, anyway.

  "Tell me, have any of you ever heard of a Lord having success with time-travel experiments?"

  Palamabron laughed.

  Vala said, "Jackass!" She spoke to WolfL "I have heard that Blind Orc tried for many years to discover the principles of time. But it is said that he gave up. He claimed that trying to dissect time was a problem as insolvable as explaining the origin of the universe."

  "Why do you ask?" Ariston said.

  "There is a tiny subatomic particle which Earth scientists call the neutrino," Wolff answered. "It's an uncharged particle with zero rest mass. Do you know what I'm talking about?"

  All shook their heads. Luvah said, "You know we were all exceedingly well educated at one time, Jadawin. But it has been thousands of years since we took any interest in science except to use the devices we had at hand for our purposes."

  "You are indeed a bunch of ignorant gods," Wolff said. "The most powerful beings of the cosmos, yet barbaric, illiterate divinities."

  "What has that got to do with our present situation?" Enion said. "And why do you insult us? You yourself said we must quit these insults if we are to survive."

  "Forgive me," Wolff said. "It's just that I am sometimes overwhelmed at the discrepancy . . . never mind. Anyway, the neutrino behaves rather peculiarly. In such a manner, in fact, that it might be said to go backward in time."

  "It really does?" Palamabron said.

  "I doubt it. But its behavior can be described in time-travel terms, whether the neutrino actually does go into reverse chronological gear or not.

  "I believe the same applies to those beasts out there. Maybe they can go forward or backwards in time. Perhaps Urizen had the power to create such animals. I doubt it. He may have found them in some universe we don't know about and imported them.

  "Whatever their origin, they do have an ability which makes them seem to hop around in time. Within a three-second limit, I'd say."

  He drew a circle in the dirt with the end of his stick. "This represents the single animal we first saw."

  He drew a line from it and described another circle at its end. "This represents the disappearance of it, its nonexistence in our time. It was going forward in time, or seemed to."

  "I'll swear it was not gone for three seconds when it first disappeared," Vala said.

  Wolff extended a line from the second circle and made a third circle at its end. Then he scratched a line at right angles to it, and bent it back to a position opposite the second circle.

  "It leaped forward into time, or can be described as doing so. Then it went back to the time-slot it did not occupy when it made the first jump. Thus, we saw a beast for six seconds but did not know that it had gone forward and backward.

  "Then the animal-let's call it a tempusfudger-jumped forward again to the time at which its first-avatar-had come out of the first jump.

  "Now we have two. The same animal, fissioned by time-travel.

  "One jumped the three seconds forward again, and we did not see it during that tune. The other did not jump but ran about. It jumped when tempusfudger No. 2 reappeared.

  "Only No. 1 also jumped back just as No. 2 came out of the time-hop. So we have two again."

  "But all of a sudden there were five?" Rintrah said. "Let's see. We had two. Now No. 1 had made a jump, and he was one of the five. He jumped back to be one of the previous two. Then he jumped forward again to become No. 3 of the five.

  "No. 2 had jumped, when there was only one tempusfudger, to become N
o. 2 of the five. No. 1 and No. 2 jumped forward and then back to also become No. 4 and 5 of the five.

  "No. 4 and 5 then jumped ahead to the period when there were only two. Meanwhile, No. 1 had leaped over three seconds, No. 4 didn't leap, and No. 5 did. So there were only two at that instant."

  He grinned at their lax faces. "Now do you understand?"

  "That's impossible," Tharmas said. "Time-travel! You know it's impossible!"

  "Sure, I know. But if these animals aren't time-traveling, what are they doing? You don't know any more than I do. So, if I can describe their behavior as chronosaltation, and the description helps us catch them, why object?"

  "Why don't you use your beamer?" Rintrah said. "We're all very hungry. I'm weak after chasing those flickering on-again-off-again things."

  Wolff shrugged and arose and walked towards the fudgers. They continued eating but kept watching him. When he was within thirty yards, they hopped away. He followed them until they were getting close to the blind wall of the canyon. They scattered. He put the beamer on half-power and aimed at one.

  Perhaps the tempusfudger was startled by the raising of the weapon. It disappeared just as he fired, and the beam's energy was absorbed by a boulder beyond it.

  He cursed, flicked off the power, and aimed at another. This leaped to one side and avoided the first shot. He kept the power on and swung the beam to catch it. The animal jumped again, narrowly escaping the ray. Wolff twisted his wrist to bring the fudger within touch of the beam. The animal disappeared.

  Quickly, he swung the weapon back towards the others. A fudger sprang across his field of vision, and he brought the white ray upon it.

  It disappeared at the same time. There was a shout behind him. He turned to see the Lords pointing at a dead animal a few yards to his left. It lay in a heap, its fur scorched.

  He blinked. Vala came running and said, "It dropped out of the air; it was dead and cooked when it hit the ground."

  "But I didn't hit anything except just now," he said. "And the animal I hit hasn't reappeared yet."

  "That fudger was dead on arrival three seconds ago, maybe a little more," she said. "Three seconds before you hit the other."

  She stopped, grinned, and said, "What do I mean . . . other? It's the same one you hit. Killed before you hit it. Or just as you hit it. Only it jumped back."

  Wolff said, slowly, "You're telling me I killed it first, then shot it."

  "No, not really. But it looked that way. Oh, I don't know. I'm confused."

  "Anyway, we have something to eat," he said. "But not much. There's not enough meat there to satisfy us."

  He whirled and brought the beam around to describe a horizontal arc. It struck some rocks, then came to a fudger. And the beam went out.

  He continued to aim the beamer steadily at the fudger, which stood poised upon its hind legs, its big eyes blinking.

  "The power's gone," he said. He ejected the power pack and stuck the beamer into his belt. It was useless now, but he had no intention of throwing it away. The time might come when he would get his hands on some fresh packs.

  He wanted to continue the hunt with sticks. The others vetoed him. Weak and hungry, they needed food at once. Although the meat was half-charred, they devoured it greedily. Their bellies quit rumbling a little. They rested a moment, then got to their feet and went after the tempusfudgers again.

  Their plan was to spread out in a wide circle which would contract to bring all the animals within reach of the clubs. The fudgers began hopping wildly and flickering in and out of existence ... or time. At one moment, there were none, when all must have simultaneously decided to jump forward or to jump backward. It was difficult to tell what was going on during the hunt.

  Wolff made no effort at the beginning to keep count. There were six, then zero, and then six, then three, then six, then one, then seven.

  Back and forth, in and out, while the Lords ran around and howled like wolves and swung their sticks, hoping to connect with a fudger just as it came out of the chronoleap. Suddenly, Tharmas' club thudded against the side of the head of one of the animals as it materialized. It collapsed, jerked several times, and died.

  Eight had dropped out of the air. One had stayed behind as a carcass while the others became invisible. There should have been seven the next time, but there were eight again. Three seconds later, there were three. Another three seconds, nine. Zero. Nine. Two. Eleven. Seven. Two.

  Eleven, and Wolff threw his stick and caught one in the back. It pitched forward on its face. Vala was on it with her stick and beat it to death before it could recover from its stunned condition.

  There were fifteen, quickly cut to thirteen when Rintrah and Theotormon each killed one. Then, zero.

  Within a minute, the tempusfudgers seemed to go riot. Terrified, they hurled themselves back and forth and became twenty-eight, zero, twenty-eight, zero, and fifty-six, or so Wolff roughly estimated it. It was, of course, impossible to make an accurate count. A little later, he was sure, only because his arithmetic assured him it should be so, that the doubling had resulted in one thousand seven hundred and ninety-two.

  There had been no more casualties among the fudgers to reduce the number. The Lords had been unable to kill any. They were being buffeted by the ever-increasing horde, knocked down by hoppers appearing in front of them, behind them, and beside them, stepped upon, scratched, kicked, and hammered.

  Suddenly, the little animals stampeded towards the exit of the canyon. They hurtled over the floor and should have jammed into the narrow pass, but somehow formed an orderly arrangement and were gone.

  Slowly, sore and shaken, the Lords arose. They looked at the four dead animals and shook their heads. Out of almost eighteen hundred that had been at hand, easy prey-in theory-these pitiful four were left.

  "Half a fudger will make one good meal for each of us," Vala said. "That's better than none. But what will we do tomorrow?"

  The others did not answer. They began collecting wood for the cooking fires. Wolff borrowed Theotormon's knife and started the skinning.

  In the morning, they ate the scraps left over from the evening's feast. Wolff led them on up. The canyon remained as silent as before, except for the river's murmuring. The walls kept on pressing in. The sky burned yellow far above. Fudgers appeared at a distance. Wolff tried throwing rocks at them. He almost struck one, only to see it disappear as if it had slipped around a corner of air. It came into sight again, three seconds later, twenty feet away and hopping as if it had an important engagement it had suddenly recalled.

  Two days after they had last eaten, the Lords were almost ready to try the berries. Palamabron argued that the repulsive odor of the berries did not necessarily mean that they had a disagreeable taste. Even if they did, they were not necessarily poisonous. They were going to die, anyway, so why not test the berries?

  "Go ahead," Vala said. "It's your theory and your desire. Eat some!"

  She was smiling peculiarly at him, as if she were enjoying the conflict between his hunger and fear.

  "No," Palamabron said. "I will not be your guinea pig. Why should I sacrifice myself for all of you? I will eat the berries only if all eat at the same time."

  "So you can die in good company," Wolff said. "Come on, Palamabron. Put up or shut up-old Earth proverb. You're wasting our time arguing. Either do it yourself or forget about it."

  Palamabron sniffed at the berry he was holding, made a face, and let the berry fall on the rocky floor. Wolff started to walk away, and the Lords followed. About an hour later, he saw another side-canyon. On the way into it, he picked up a round stone which was just the right size and weight for throwing. If only he could sneak up close enough to a fudger and throw the rock while it was looking the other way.

  The canyon was a little smaller than that in which the Lords had made their first hunt. At its far end was a single tempusfudger, eating the berries. Wolff got down on his hands and knees and began the slow crawl towards it. He took advantage o
f every rock for covering and managed to get halfway across the canyon before the animal noticed anything. It suddenly quit moving its jaws, sat up, and looked around, its nose wiggling, its ears vibrating like a TV antenna in a strong wind.

  Wolff hugged the ground and did not move at all. He was sweating with the effort and tension, since the starvation diet had weakened him considerably. He wanted to jump up and run at the fudger and hurl himself upon it, tear it apart, eat it raw. He could have devoured the entire animal from the tips of its ears down to the tip of its tail and then broken the bones open to suck out the marrow.