They halted when the ground moved again and the house dropped a few inches. Smoke suddenly billowed out of the front doorway and the windows, the glass of which had been shattered and fallen away. Dillard and Boyd did not have much time.
Jim was curled in the living room, holding the painting of his grandfather between his arms and his drawn-up knees. He was wedged in a corner formed by a wall, which was part floor now, and by the floor, which was part wall. His eyes were closed, but his mouth spat gibberish between fits of coughing. Smoke covered the white plaster dust on his body and face. A few more minutes of inhaling the smoke would have killed him unless the rapidly spreading fire had gotten to him first. As it was, he and his rescuers got out of the house only thirty seconds before the house fell inwards. Reduced in size suddenly, it disappeared entirely from sight. Flames and smoke leaped up from the hole. More than one spectator thought that it looked as if a gate to Hell had been opened.
Jim was rushed to Wellington Hospital. He did not recover consciousness for two days, though whether the smoke or his psychotic state, as the doctors called it, was responsible would never be known.
When Jim woke up, he remembered only one thing from the moment the house clicked and groaned. It was a vision, the first in many years. He had seen a tall and naked youth chained to a tree. He resembled nobody Jim had ever seen before. Just within the borders of this vision was a hand holding a huge silvery sickle. It did not move, but it was obviously threatening. It was destined to sweep up and then down, and Jim had no doubts about what it was going to cut off.
The sickle also looked to him like a giant question mark.
CHAPTER 13
November 9, 1979
Jim’s wardroom wall now bore a large five-pointed star. Each arm was composed of five illustrated paperback covers taped to the wall. The topmost arm contained covers from Farmer’s first book in the World of Tiers series, The Maker of Universes. The second, The Gates of Creation, formed the horizontal arm on the left. Going counterclockwise, the next arm held covers from the third novel, A Private Cosmos. The next, Behind the Walls of Terra covers. The fifth arm of the star was formed by The Lavalite World.
This was to be Jim’s third serious attempt to get into a Tiersian universe. The five-pointed star was his gateway. Most patients called their gateway a mantra. The others, a sigil. Tragil was Jim’s name for his entrance device. By combining both symbols in a portmanteau word, he made it twice as powerful as an ordinary gateway.
It was half past eight in the evening. His room lights were out, but the insurance company building across the street provided a twilight strong enough for him to see the tragil. The door to his room was closed. Though it had no lock, it displayed on its hallway side a taped notice that he was “gating.” He could hear, very faintly, Brooks Epstein chanting in Hebrew in the next room.
Jim sat in the chair that he had pulled up next to the bed. Staring at the vacant space in the center of the star, he also began chanting.
“ATA MATUMA M’MATA!”
Over and over, the words coming faster and faster and getting louder and louder, he launched the ancient vocal mantra at the center of the star, the round white blankness.
“ATA MATUMA M’MATA!”
Just as a laser structured wild-running photons into a channeled beam, so the chant arranged force lines as a blaster to open a hole in the wall between two universes.
It also was a carriage to transport the chanter through a universe.
He had not found it easy to do. The first time, he had felt himself borne by a soundless but very strong wind toward and then through the hole. He was in a blackness which felt very cold and, at the same time, very hot. These and the sense of being lost and out of control had frightened him even more than his childhood visions. He had lost his courage and striven to swim back against the wind. For a few seconds, he had feared that he would not make it.
Then something had snapped like a rubber band stretched too far, and he had awakened sitting in the chair. He was shivering and moaning and sweating. The clock told him that he had been gone for two seconds. Yet, he had had a sense of many hours having passed.
That was the end of his first expedition.
He had told about this during the group therapy the next day. No one had scoffed at his experience or accused him of cowardice. Anyone who did this would be sat upon at once by the staff member supervising the group. It was strictly against policy for anyone to voice disbelief in the narratives of others. That could invalidate the belief of the traveler in his or her journey and, thus, slow down or even end progress in therapy. Besides, all had gone through obstacles which were different in form but similar in emotional content.
The second time, he had conquered enough of his panic and fright to persist. Up to a point, that is. The blackness and the cold and heat had suddenly vanished. The wind became much weaker. He was surrounded by walls—lines of force?—that came up at many angles from some abyss and down from a vast space. They glowed whitely and intersected each other, then continued their extensions through other walls. They formed a jigsaw puzzle in four, maybe more, dimensions. But he could not grasp their extra-dimensionalness, their essences. Across, along, and up were dimensions that his brain knew. These other extensions, however, were beyond his comprehension. Yet he knew that they were there.
That was so weird that he almost surrendered to his fears and went back “home” before he lost his way forever.
Abruptly, the walls fell away. They did not collapse as walls on Earth would. They just disappeared in some fashion he could not fathom. Their afterimages glowed briefly, then were gone.
He was in one of the worlds of the Lords. He did not know how he knew this. But he did. Though he was still frightened, he was too curious to allow himself to be sucked up by the winds of return.
Though he could see, he was not in a body with flesh and organs. Perhaps he was an astral soul. It did not matter. That he was out of Earth’s universe and in a Lord’s was enough for him.
He seemed to be high above a planet which had the same shape and size as Earth. The sun was green, however. Later, he would find that the color of the sky varied according to the day of the week. A week here was nine days long. And the Lord who had made this world had arranged for the sky color to change every day.
He descended swiftly while hoping that he was going toward his goal. He had selected Red Orc as the one in whom he would be incorporated. But if he could pick the person and the place for his otherworld rendezvous, he could also pick the time. It seemed logical.
He had concentrated, while chanting, on a time many thousands of years in the past, hoping to zero in on Red Orc when he was still a child of seven. The events in the Tiers series would not take place until much much later. He was the only one in the therapy group who had chosen not to travel into the present.
Porsena had asked him why he had done this. Jim had said that he did not know why. It just seemed the right thing to do. The doctor had not continued questioning him about it, but he undoubtedly would note this development for future investigation.
Like Earth seen from the top of the atmosphere, the continents and seas of this planet were nowhere near as clearly distinguishable as on a map. Great cloud masses roamed it, but he could see the roughly cross-shaped continent toward which he was drawn as if he were connected to invisible and spiderweb-thin cables. Down he went, and the land spread out below him as if it, not he, were moving.
Then he was above a gigantic ring of mountains in the center of which was a plain, in the center of which was a single enormous mountain. The top of this was a relatively flat plain with rivers and creeks and many forests. Here and there were clusters of round, cone-roofed houses. He was too high to see any people or animals.
In the center of the plain was a structure so huge and strange that his already almost-overpowering awe became greater. Nine vast pylons two miles high curved inwards like elephants’ tusks. Inside the pylons were three floors, the botto
m one of which was a half-mile above the ground. It was transparent, thus allowing the few tenants there to see below the villages and farms of the non-Lords. These were along a river at least two miles broad which ran from a lake formed by cataracts from the mouths of vast crystalline statues placed along the edges of the bottom floor. Mists swirled up from the cataracts but did not reach the floor.
The second floor, also transparent, had less area than the first, though it covered at least seven square miles. Like the bottom level, it contained small dwellings and some large buildings and walled-in areas of earth on which grew trees and other plants. Some were fields bearing plants or enclosing pastures on which animals grazed.
The third floor was only two miles square. On it were houses and some gigantic structures the function of which Jim did not know. Many of these resembled somewhat the ancient temples of Karnak in Egypt as they looked when first built. Yet, though they reminded Jim of the Egyptian structures, they differed in many respects. The hundreds of statues at their entrances and sides were not Egyptian or like anything on Earth of which he knew.
At the apex, held within the curve of the inward-curving pylons, was a green emerald. This seemed larger than any cathedral on Earth. It had been carved to make doors and windows and was hollow. Or perhaps it had been made in a mold which provided the openings and the empty space. He would learn that it was tiny compared to the diamond on one of the planets of one of Urizen’s worlds. That Brobdingnagian gem was a dam for a river that made the Mississippi seem a trickle in a child’s mud pie.
Down he went. Though the emerald reflected the rays of the sun from its huge facets in a glory of many-beamed light, Jim was not blinded. He could see, but he had no eyes to be dazzled. The jewel shot out as if it were exploding, and he was dwarfed by a facet directly ahead of him and then was through it and inside the temple. That, he now realized, was what the gem was—a temple.
The vast interior was shadowy except for the very center of the floor. A ray of bright light coming from an unseen source illuminated the floor in the middle. Outside its area were very large and somehow ominous statues. They crowded the floor and were set in a rising series of niches on the curving walls. As they neared the apex of the temple, they became vague figures. Some could not be seen at all from the floor, but he felt their presence.
It was a very scary place for Jim. How it affected the seven-year-old boy standing in its center, Jim could not know. The child, Orc, might have been there several times, but he would perhaps find it frightening. Awing, at least.
Jim called the boy Orc because he knew, without knowing how he knew, that the boy was not yet called Red Orc.
The boy and two adults were the only human beings in the temple. Some other being was there, yet it was hidden. It filled the entire chamber with a brooding menace.
The man was tall, handsome, blond-haired, and blue-eyed. His name was Los, and he was Orc’s father. The woman was as tall as he, statuesque, auburn-haired, and green-eyed. She was Orc’s mother, Enitharmon. Both wore ankle-length gauzy robes which concealed little. His robe had a purple hem band; hers, a blue. He held a censer in his right hand and swung it back and forth slowly while he chanted in a language Jim could not understand. (Though Jim had no ears, he could hear.) From the censer came an orange smoke with an odor that was a mixture of bitter almonds and sweet apples.
Enitharmon held a wand at the end of which was a circlet containing a large and scarlet uncut gem. She waved it in a ritualistic manner.
The boy stood rigid, his green eyes rolled up to look at the ceiling, his arms held close to his sides, one hand a fist, the other open. Now and then, Los stopped his chanting to ask the boy a question. Once, when Orc could not respond properly, the father struck him across his face with the back of his hand. A red mark appeared on Orc’s cheek, and tears came.
Jim had expected, for some reason, that Orc would look like him. He did not. His body was stockier, and his arms seemed longer. His nose was snub, his lips fuller than Jim’s, his chin less pronounced, and his hair was black. Moreover, the eyes were wider and gave him a look of innocence.
He wore no clothing except a blue headband printed with symbols unfamiliar to Jim. One looked like a trumpet of some sort. Did that represent the Horn of Shambarimem, which Jim had read about in the series and which was supposed to open all gates among the worlds when it was blown?
Now, the father and the mother slowly began to circle the child counterclockwise. Los continued to swing the censer, and he questioned his son only when he was in front of him. Jim could see the boy tighten up when this happened. Twice, he responded successfully. The third time, he stammered. Again, the father struck his son on the face.
The woman frowned and opened her mouth as if to say something to her husband. But she closed her lips. Los shouted something. Perhaps the anger was required by the ceremony, but it seemed to be far more personal than ritualistic.
Orc quivered. His face and body shone with sweat, and his lower lip trembled. His signs of stress seemed to make Los more furious.
Jim hated the father.
Though he had come here to enter Orc and to be one with him, he hesitated. His sympathetic anger was making his mind whirl, and he needed all the coolness and self-control he could master to be able to enter Orc. That step was frightening enough. He had no way of knowing, of course, but he felt that he could err during the incorporation procedure and find himself in a very bad situation.
The father, whose face had been getting redder and more twisted, swung the censer hand against the side of Orc’s head. The boy went down to his knees. Both of his arms remained down. Jim guessed that, if the boy had moved his arms, he would completely fail to fulfill his part in the ceremony. What the result of that would be, Jim did not know.
The woman said something. Los glared at her and spoke one word. The woman glared back and spoke one word. Jim did not think that they were complimenting each other.
Orc rose unsteadily to his feet. He stared upward while blood trickled from the wound. Tears swept down his cheeks, but he had locked his jaws together.
Enitharmon shrieked. She sprang toward Los and swung the end of her wand against the side of Los’s head.
She certainly did not react as his mother would, Jim thought.
Then he was whisked away, up out of the temple, up above the mountains, the continent, the planet, the sun, back to the gate to his room on Earth, and through the gate with a soundless explosion.
CHAPTER 14
November 8, 1979
When Jim entered the next time, he did not see the scary, intersecting, glowing, and many-dimensional walls. Instead, he was confronted by a great swarm of figures that alternately flashed green and red. They looked like spermatozoa with human faces, all grinning malignantly at him.
He flew through the horde, those in his path wriggling swiftly away, and was quickly in Orc’s universe. But, before he had started chanting, he had decided to enter Orc when he was seventeen years old.
The youth was in a forest hundreds of miles beyond the city. Orc had grown into a tall and very muscular young man. He was standing behind the massive bole of a tree, his left hand grasping the shaft of a spear. He wore a blue cap shaped like Robin Hood’s. A scarlet feather stuck out of its side. Except for the cap, a short blue kilt, and sandals, he wore nothing. A belt held a scabbarded short-sword and a holstered throwing ax. It was an hour or so into the afternoon. The sky, crimson today, was clear, and the sun, also crimson, blazed down on top of the forest. It was, however, cool below the thick canopy of vegetation connecting trees seven hundred feet high.
The layer of tangled plants far above him held a multitude of insects, birds, and animals. From a branch fifty feet above him, a raccoonlike creature with a green beard hung by its prehensile tail and scolded him. Orc was listening intently to something, but it would have been difficult to hear anything above the uproar of the forest life.
Orc turned his head. His father, Los, and his mother,
Enitharmon, had appeared from the shadows of the trees behind him. His parents were clad only in kilts and sandals, and they, too, carried weapons. Though Los had a spear and an ax, he was armed also with a bulbous-ended handgun, a beamer.
Jim was again suffering from fear. To project himself into Orc’s mind and possibly never get out again was to dare a danger such as he had never encountered before. But he had to do it or live as a coward forever after. Do or die. And maybe die, anyway. Worse, be absorbed by Orc or be only partially absorbed but forever a prisoner in that alien body.
Never mind. Get into Orc’s mind. Become partly Orc. Not completely Orc, dear God!
It was done. For a second or more, he seemed to have fallen into a silo of wet oats. Slimy and squidgy matter pressed around him. He was blind. The darkness and the loathsome substance drowning him came close to making him turn back. He gritted his figurative teeth and shouted voicelessly at himself, “Go on!”
The frightening muck was behind him, though the darkness remained. He had a sensation of plunging into a furiously running stream of a mercury-heavy liquid, of being shot through many winding and twisting tunnels, and of hearing a noise like that of the beating of giant wings or a vast heart.
That was behind him. Now, he floated in a silent chamber. Then, he heard a faint crackling. Sparks showered around him.
Suddenly, the sparks expanded and coalesced. They became a bright light. He could see and hear and smell and taste as he had in his body on Earth.
He was enfleshed and enbrained, almost entirely Orc. He was like a tiny parasite hanging on to its host’s artery wall and hoping that it would not be swept away by the raging current of blood. Meanwhile, it tapped into its host’s nervous system and shared all thoughts, memories, emotions, and sensations.
That one-way input was, as he was to find out, very confusing for him. It would take some time to be able to handle at the same time his own thoughts and identity and Orc’s.
The World of Tiers, Volume 2 Page 52