The World of Tiers, Volume 2

by Philip José Farmer

  He might know by now that his greatest two enemies were on—had been on—the Whaziss planet. But he did not know exactly where they were. Or did he?

  Though Orc might never have completely lost the trail on Earth of Kickaha and Anana, he must have lost it when they escaped to the Lavalite planet. He must have been trying to find them during the fifteen years they were on the Whaziss planet.

  Just what else had the Thoan been up to during that decade and a half? How many Lords had he killed, and how many of the pocket universes were now his?

  Who was the mysterious Englishman costumed in early nineteenth-century clothes who had been in that aerial mansion on the Lavalite planet?

  Where were Wolff and Chryseis now?

  Then the ancient sleeper with the insectile face swam into Kickaha’s mental sea. He was an enigmaed enigma. Why had he awakened just as the intruders from a much later time had left that curious chamber? Just how and why had they blundered into that room, which must surely be heavily guarded by whatever guarded it?

  Kickaha did not believe that they had “blundered” into it or that the awakening was a coincidence. Coincidences might happen, but even these, he believed, if dug into deeply enough, would reveal the connections.

  Anana came to take over her watch. They talked in whispers for about ten minutes. When they were clear on what to do the next day, Kickaha went to the cave to sleep, though not deeply. Thus, the night passed with each taking turns on the boulder. He was on it when a brief gray light announced that the sun was just around the curve of the planet.

  The sisters had not once gotten up, though they had shifted around a lot trying to find a comfortable position on the hard rock.

  After they had spattered some water on their faces and eaten their simple breakfast, they scattered to various boulders and rocky projections behind which to evacuate. After returning to the camp, they loaded up their gear and set out, Kickaha leading. Before they had put a half-mile behind them, Eleth called a halt.

  “This is not the way you told us we’d be going!”

  Kickaha said, “I pointed out the spot we’d travel to. But we don’t take a direct route. This way will be much easier.”

  After two hours, the sisters complained that they were taking a hell of a long way roundabout.

  Kickaha stopped in front of an eighty-foot-high monolith of reddish granite. Its base was within a few feet of the edge of the cliff on which the group stood. Ten feet up from the base, a half-sphere of glossy black rock extruded from the granite. It looked like a cannonball that had been shot at close range into the monolith.

  “Is that the gate?” Eleth said, pointing at the stone pillar.

  “No,” Kickaha said.

  “Then where is it? Are we anywhere near it?”

  “It’s not the gate, but the gate site is in it.”

  He opened the deerskin bag attached to his belt and pulled out the silvery trumpet.

  Eleth, eyes wide, sucked in air noisily. “The Horn of Shambarimen!”

  Ona was too awed at first to make any sound. Then she and Eleth broke into high-pitched chatter. Kickaha let them go on for about a minute before calling for silence.

  He raised the Horn to his lips and blew. As soon as the last note had faded away, an arch-shaped area seven feet high and five feet wide formed at the base of the rock. It shimmered as if made of heat waves. Kickaha thought that he could almost see through the ripplings to the other side and that something huge and dark was there. But that was, of course, an illusion.

  “We have ten seconds before it closes!” he said loudly. He waved the Horn. “Everybody into it! Now!”

  Anana and he pulled out their beamers and shoved the sisters toward the gate. Eleth was shouting, “No! No! How do we know it’s not a trap you’ve set for us!”

  She tried to run away. Anana tripped her with an extended leg and then kicked her in the buttocks as she struggled to get up on her feet.

  Looking terrified, Ona stumbled toward the entrance, then darted to one side and tried to get past Anana. Anana knocked Ona down with the side of her hand against her neck.

  Eleth also ran, holding up the hem of her robe, then she stumbled and fell flat on the ground. She refused to get up, though Kickaha shouted that he would cut her in half.

  The shimmering on the face of the rock was gone.

  He and Anana stepped back so that they could cover the sisters with their beamers.

  “It’s plain as the nose on a camel that you two don’t want to go through that gate,” Kickaha said. “Yet, a moment ago, you seemed quite willing to go with us. Why’re you so reluctant all of a sudden?”

  Eleth got onto her feet and tried to rub the dirt from the front of her white robe. She said, “We really don’t trust you.”

  “A very weak excuse!” Anana said loudly. “What is the real reason you tried to get away? You know something’s waiting for us there? Were you hoping to lead us into a trap?”

  “We panicked!”

  “Yes,” Ona said, faking a snuffling, “we got scared.”

  “Of what?” Anana asked.

  Kickaha bellowed, “You were afraid that Red Orc would catch you along with us, betray you, and kill you, too? Is that right?”

  Whatever surprise Eleth felt, she did not reveal it. But Ona winced as if he had struck her with a fly swatter.

  “Red Orc?” she screeched. “What does he have to do with that?” She half turned and waved at where the gate had been.

  Kickaha walked up to her until his nose almost touched hers. He spoke even more loudly. “I overheard your raven, Wayskam, talking to Eleth! So I know all! All!”

  He thought, I don’t by any means know all. But I’ll scare them into confessing everything. If I can’t, I’ll let Anana loose on them. Her heart isn’t as soft as mine. I hope I can stand the screaming.

  The sisters said nothing. That he knew the name of the raven showed them that he was on to them.

  “Your protector, the bear-woman,” he said, “is dead. Anana killed it.”

  Eleth smiled slightly and said, “Ah! It wasn’t a big cat that clawed you! It was …”

  “I didn’t catch her name,” Kickaha said. “Yes, she did tear me up a little. Anana shot her before I could do it.”

  Eleth still kept silence, but Ona said, “We couldn’t help ourselves! We …”

  Eleth screamed, “Shut up! They don’t know anything! They’re just trying to get you to talk!”

  “Tell you what, Ona,” Anana said. “You tell us everything—I mean everything, nothing left out—and I’ll spare your life. As for Eleth …”

  She stabbed the beamer at Ona.

  “Spill it all!”

  Eleth spoke with a diamond-hard voice. No quaverings in her.

  “If we talk, we’ll die. If we don’t talk, we’ll die. It’s better not to talk. Ona, I absolutely forbid you to say another word about it!”

  “You think Red Orc’ll save us now?” her sister said, sneering. “He’ll pop up just in time to save us? How could he? Besides, what does he care about us? I think …”

  “That’s enough!” Anana said. “You’ve both said enough to damn yourselves. Not that we needed a word from you to know that. Eleth, you talk first. If you hold anything back, and Ona then reveals that you have been holding back, you die! Immediately!”

  Eleth looked around as if she expected Red Orc to come riding down from the mountains to rescue her. No savior was in sight, and Eleth was realist enough to know that none was coming. She began talking.

  It was much as Kickaha had expected it to be. The sisters had not, as they had claimed, escaped from Orc when he invaded their palace. They had been caught before they could get to a gate. Instead of killing them, Red Orc had forced them to be tools to catch Kickaha and Anana.

  At this point, Anana snorted and said, “Forced? You, the iron-hearted daughters of Urizen, had to be forced to become our enemy?”

  “We never claimed to be friends of yours,” Eleth said
. “But we would never have gone out after you.”

  “You’re too lazy,” Anana said.

  “He did not tell us why he thought you were there,” Eleth said. “We were not in a position to ask him questions about his methods and results.”

  The Lord had not been able to determine just where the two were on Whazzis. But he did find the only gate existing, the one that Kickaha and Anana eventually came to. The hexagon in the Tripeds’ temple had long been there. Orc had rechanneled it, making it a resonant circuit, and then gone elsewhere.

  “He did say that it would lead to a certain area on the World of Tiers. When the alarm was set off—where, I do not know—Red Orc would know that the circuit had been entered. Of course, he could not be sure that some other Lord had not activated it. But he said that he was approximately ninety percent sure that you two would do it.”

  “How could he be sure that we could survive all the traps?” Kickaha said.

  “He apparently had great faith that you two would. He did pay you both a compliment. He said that if anybody could get through the circuit, you could.”

  “I had Shambarimem’s Horn.”

  “He never mentioned that.”

  “He wouldn’t. If you’d known that, you would’ve been tempted to betray him and risk everything for this great treasure.”

  “You’re right,” Eleth said.

  The Lord or, perhaps, a servant of his, had gotten them somehow to the middle of the forest where Kickaha and Anana had found them. The sisters had been unconscious during the entire journey from their world to this.

  “I can assure you that there is no gate in that forest,” Kickaha said. “I know. I’ve seen the diagram of the gates, in Wolff’s palace. You must have been sent through another gate somewhere on this world and then transported by air to the forest.”

  “There couldn’t be gates of which you have no knowledge? Red Orc could not have opened a new gate?”

  Kickaha shrugged.

  The women had awakened among the trees. For fifty-five days, they had had to struggle to survive there. Orc had given them only a few necessities, the stuff they might have taken with them during a very hasty departure.

  “We had almost given up on your getting here,” Eleth said. “It wasn’t certain that you would survive the circuit or that you would find us. But Red Orc, may he suffer the tortures of Inthiman, did not care if we starved to death or were killed by predators! We had decided we’d stay there five days more. If you hadn’t shown up by then, we’d set out for Jadawin’s palace.”

  “A noble ambition,” Anana said. “But you had little chance to make it up the two monoliths.”

  Eleth did not have much to add to her story. She only said that she and her sister did not know why Red Orc wanted them to lead the two to this gate. Ona said that that was true.

  Kickaha and Anana withdrew from the women to talk softly.

  “They probably don’t know why,” he said. “Red Orc wouldn’t tell them. What I’d like to know is how he knew about this gate.”

  “I’m not sure that he did or does know,” she said. “He may be following us now to see where we go. When he sees us open the gate, he’ll pounce.”

  She looked up the mountain slope and then down it and across the great plain.

  “Or, if not he, then someone in his service,” Kickaha said.

  “He or whoever may be a hundred miles away. Across the plain or up there in an aircraft. One missile would wipe us out.”

  “He wouldn’t blow us apart,” Kickaha said. “He wants us alive. We’re in a Hamletish situation. There’re so many ifs and buts to consider, we’re being paralyzed. Let’s do something now, and ride out the consequences.”

  He blew the Horn again. Anana herded the sisters, who protested strongly but vainly, through the shimmering curtain in the rock. She stepped in on their heels. He dropped the Horn into the bag and leaped through the shimmering. On its other side was a hemispherical chamber. The floor was as covered with the opaque brightness as the walls. He could, however, feel bare and level rock under his feet.

  Ona screamed and darted by Kickaha. He thrust out an arm to catch her. She ducked it and leaped back through the curtain. The upper part of her body had disappeared when the shimmering snapped off. Only part of her robe, her buttocks, her long legs, and some blood remained. Eleth shrieked and then began sobbing loudly.

  Without warning, they were in another place, some sort of pit cut out of rock. Crouching, he spun around, his beamer ready, taking in all that was his new environment. There did not seem to be anything that demanded immediate defense or attack. A man whom Kickaha recognized stood at one end of the pit, but his open hands were held high above his head in a sign of peace.

  Kickaha’s gaze passed from him to examine the prison they were in. It was a hole twelve feet square and approximately ten feet deep. Straight above was a bright blue sky. The sun was out of sight, and the shadows of the vast cliff on one side were moving swiftly toward the opening of the hole.

  They were in a pit at the bottom or up on one side of an immense abyss. Both sides went up at a thirty-degree angle from the horizontal, though they had many ledges and holes. Here and there on the walls, some puny trees grew, extending at forty-five-degree angles from the steep slopes. Great patches of some green mosslike stuff covered parts of the walls.

  The heat was a vicious magical wand that tapped him and brought forth from his skin a spring of water. He estimated that the temperature was approximately 101°F.

  He did not waste time. He took the Horn from its bag and blew it. The seven notes died, but no gate appeared on the walls of the pit. Red Orc had trapped them, no doubt of that.

  He put the Horn back in the bag and turned to face the man at the end of the pit. He was tall and handsome and looked twenty-five years old, though he must have lived at least a century and a half ago, possibly more. His long hair was brown and pulled tightly back into a ponytail. His suit of clothes was of a style in fashion among the Lords a long time ago. But he must have had them made in some Thoan universe. The threads of the jacket pulsed with green, red, white, blue, and yellow as if they were colored tubes. His once-white shirt was ruffed and open at the neck. His trousers were a bottle-green velvety material ending at the calves in a tight band. A scarlet triangular patch covered his groin.

  On the middle finger of his left hand was a heavy ring of silver. It wound around the finger three times. Though Kickaha had glimpsed the ring when he had entered the pit, he now saw it in detail. He was startled. It was in the form of the scaly man. That insectile head on the ring looked exactly like the head of the being in the chamber of the dead.

  “We meet again,” the man said in English, smiling. His pronunciation, though, was not like any English Kickaha had ever heard.

  “I am Eric Clifton. At your service. Like you, I am the prisoner of Red Orc. At least, I assume that that loathsome Lord brought you here against your will.”

  7

  Eleth was now wailing loudly. Kickaha shouted, “Stop that caterwauling! You hated your sister, yet you’re carrying on something awful as if she was very dear to you!”

  Eleth stared with red eyes at him while she choked back her grief. Sniffling, she said, “But I did love Ona! Just because we disagreed now and then …”

  “Disagreed? Now and then?” He laughed. “You and your sister were bound in a ring of loathing and spite! The only reason you didn’t kill each other was because you’d lose somebody you could hate!”

  “That’s not true,” Ona said. She sobbed once, then said, “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “No, I wouldn’t.”

  He turned back to Eric Clifton.

  “I’m Kickaha. You may have heard of me. This is Anana the Bright. She was born at the beginning of the war with the Black Bellers, so that gives you an idea of how long she’s lived. This wailer is Eleth, one of the hard-hearted daughters of Urizen, once known as the gentle-hearted daughters of Ahania, Urizen’s wife.
You may have heard of them.”

  He paused, then said, “Anana and I saw you briefly when you were in the floating palace of Urthona, Lord of the Shapeshifting World. Anana and I had a hard time with Urthona and Red Orc when we were passing through Urthona’s World. But we killed him. Red Orc was also a prisoner on the palace, but he escaped.”

  “I wondered what happened to you,” Clifton said.

  “Details later. You can explain to us just how you got into the Thoan universes from Earth and how you happen to be here. And how in hell did you get that ring?”

  While he was talking, he was looking at the sides of the pit. An oily substance filmed them.

  “It’s a long story,” Eric Clifton said. “Shouldn’t we be thinking just now about how to get out of here before Red Orc shows up?”

  “I’m doing that,” Kickaha said. “But that won’t interfere with my hearing your story. Keep to the highlights, though.”

  Clifton said that he was born somewhere around 1780 of very poor parents in London, England. His father had managed to work his way up from a day laborer to owner of a bakery shop. When that failed, he and his wife and six children had been put in debtor’s prison. There his father and three children had died of malnutrition and fever. His mother had gone insane and was sent to Bedlam. Not long after he and his siblings had been released, his fourteen-year-old brother was caught and hanged for having stolen a pair of shoes. His younger sister became a whore at the age of twelve and died at eighteen of syphilis and gonorrhea.

  At this point, Clifton sucked in a deep breath, and tears filmed his eyes.

  “That was a very long time ago, but, as you see, I am still affected by the memory of … Never mind … Anyway …”

  He had been very fortunate in being adopted, though not legally, by a childless couple. That had saved him from being deported to Australia.