Vala sat up also. She said, “Did you hear something, brother? Or was it the wailing of our bellies?”
“It came from upriver,” he said. He rose to his feet. “I think I shall go look.”
She said, “I’ll go with you. I cannot sleep any longer. The thought that they might be feasting keeps me angry and awake.”
“I do not think the feasting will be on the little hoppers,” he said.
She said, “You think …”
“I do not know. You spoke of the possibility. It becomes stronger every day, as we become weaker and hungrier.”
He picked up his stick, and they walked along the edge of the river. They had little difficulty seeing where they were going. The moon brought only a half-darkness. Even though the walls of the canyon deepened the twilight, there was still enough light for them to proceed with confidence.
So it was that they saw Palamabron before he saw them. His head appeared for a moment above a boulder near the wall of the canyon. His profile was presented to them, then he disappeared. On bare feet, they crept towards him. The wind carried to them the noise he was making. It sounded as if he were striking one stone against another.
“Is he trying to make a fire?” Vala whispered.
Wolff did not answer. He was sick, since he could think of only one reason why Palamabron would want to build a fire. When he came to the huge rock behind which Palamabron was, he hesitated. He did not want to see what he thought he must when he came around the boulder.
Palamabron had his back to them. He was on his knees before a pile of branches and leaves and was knocking a piece of flint against a rock that was heavy in iron.
Wolff breathed a sigh of relief. The body beside Palamabron was that of a fudger.
Where was Enion?
Wolff came up silently behine Palamabron, his stick raised high. He spoke loudly. “Well, Palamabron?”
The Lord gave a short scream and dived forward over the firepile. He rolled and came up on his feet, facing them. He held a very crude flint knife.
“It’s mine,” he snarled. “I killed it, and I want it. I have to have it. I’ll die if I don’t get to eat!”
“So will we all,” Wolff said. “Where is your brother?”
Palamabron spit and said, “The beast! He’s no brother of mine. How should I know where he is? Why should I care?”
“You went out with him,” Wolff said.
“I don’t know where he is. We got separated while we were hunting.”
“We thought we heard a cry,” Vala said.
“It was a fudger, I think,” Palamabron said. “Yes, it was. The one I killed a little while ago. I found it sleeping and killed it and it cried out as it died.”
“Maybe,” Wolff said. He backed away from Palamabron until he was at a safe distance. He continued on up the rivershore. Before he had gone a hundred yards, he saw the hand lying beside a boulder. He went around it and found Enion. The back of his head was crushed in; beside him lay the bloody rock that had killed him.
He returned to Vala. The Lord and the fudger were gone.
“Why didn’t you stop him?” Wolff said.
She shrugged and smiled. “I’m only a woman. How could I stop him?”
“You could have,” he replied. “I think you wanted to enjoy the chase after him. Well, let me tell you, there won’t be any. None of us have the strength to waste it climbing around here. And when he eats, he’ll have enough strength to outclimb or outrun us.”
“Very well,” she said. “So what do we do now?”
“Keep on going and hope for the best.”
“And starve!” she said. She pointed at the boulder which hid Enion’s body. “There’s enough food for all of us.”
Wolff did not reply for a moment. He had not wanted to think about this, but, since he was faced with it, he would do what had to be done. Vala was right. Without this food, however horrible it was to think about it, they might well die. In a way, Palamabron had done them a favor. He had taken the guilt upon himself of killing for them. They could eat without considering themselves murderers. Not that killing would bother the rest of them. He, however, would have suffered agonies if he had been forced into a position where he had to slay a human being to survive.
As for the actual eating, he was now feeling only a slight repulsion. Hunger had deadened his normal horror against cannibalism.
He returned to wake the others while Vala picked up the rocks dropped by Palamabron. By the time they returned, she had not only started a fire but was intent on the butchering. Wolff held back for a moment. Then, thinking that if he was to share in the food, he should also share in the work, he took Theotormon’s knife. The others offered a hand, but he turned them down. It was as if he wanted to punish himself by making himself do most of the grisly work.
When the meal was cooked, half-cooked, rather, he took his share and went around the boulder to eat. He was not sure that he could keep the meat down, and he was sure that if he watched the others eat, he would not be able to keep from vomiting. Somehow, it did not seem so bad if he were alone.
Dawn had found them still cooking. Not until the middle of the morning did they start traveling again. The meat that had not been eaten was wrapped in leaves.
“If Urizen was watching us,” Wolff said, “he must really be laughing.”
“Let him laugh,” Vala said. “My turn will come.”
“Your turn? You mean, our turn.”
“You may do what you like. All I’m interested in is what I do.”
“Typical of the Lords,” said Wolff without elaborating. He watched her for a while after that. She had amazing vitality. Perhaps it was the food that had given her such a swift walk and had filled out her cheeks and arms. He did not think so. Even during the starvation, she had not seemed to suffer as much as the rest or to waste away as swiftly.
If anybody could survive to get at her father’s throat, it would be Vala, he thought.
May I not be far behind her, he prayed. Not so much for vengeance on Urizen, though I want that, as to rescue Chryseis.
CHAPTER TWELVE
They had been without food for a day when they emerged from the canyon. Before them, at the foot of a long gentle hill, was a plain that stretched to the horizon. A quarter of a mile away was a small hill, and on this were two giant hexagons.
They stopped to look dully at their goal. Wolff said, “I suggest we take one or the other gate immediately. Perhaps there may be food on the other side.”
“If not?” Tharmas said.
“I’d rather die quickly trying to get through Urizen’s defenses than starve slowly. Which, at the moment, looks as if it might …”
He let his voice trail off, thinking that the Lords felt low enough.
They followed him sluggishly up to the foot of the golden, gem-studded frames. He said to Vala, “Sister, you have the honor of choosing the right or the left entrance for us. Only be quick about it. I can hear my strength ebbing away.”
She picked up a stone, turned her back to the gates, and cast the stone over her head. It sailed through the right gate, almost striking the frame.
“So be it,” Wolff said. He looked at them and laughed. “What a crew! Brave Lords! Tramps rather! Sticks, a broken sword, a knife, and muscles shaking with weakness and bellies groaning for meat. Was ever a Lord attacked in his own stronghold by such a contemptible bunch?”
Vala laughed and said, “At least you have some spirit left, Jadawin. That may mean something.”
“I hope so,” he said, and he ran forward and jumped through the right gate. He came out under a deep-blue sky and onto ground that gave under his feet a little. The topography was flat except for a few steep hills, so rough and dark that they looked more like excrescences than mounds of dirt. He doubted they were dirt, since the surface on which he stood was not earth. It was brownish but smooth and with small holes in it. A foot-high stalk, thin as a pipestem cleaner, grew out of each hole.
Alm
ost like the skin of a giant, he thought.
The only vegetation, if it could be called that, was a number of widely separated trees. These were about forty feet high, were thinly trunked, and had smooth, sharply pointed branches that projected at a forty five degree angle upwards from the trunk. The branches were darker than the saffron of the main shaft and sparsely covered with blade-like leaves about two feet long.
The other Lords came through the gate a minute later. He turned and said, “I’m glad I didn’t find anything I couldn’t have handled without your help.”
Vala said, “They all were sure that this time the gate would lead into Urizen’s stronghold.”
“And perhaps I’d trip a few traps before I went down,” he said. “And so give the rest of you a chance to live a few minutes longer.”
They did not reply. Wolff gazed reproachfully at Luvah, whose cheeks reddened.
Wolff tested the gate. It had either been deactivated or else was unipolar. He saw a long black line that could be the shore of a lake or sea. This world, unlike the one they had just left, gave no indications of the direction they must take. On the side, where he had first stepped, however, he had seen two rough dark hills very close together. These might or not be some sort of sign from Urizen. There was only one way to find out, which Wolff took without hesitation. He set out on the slightly springy ground, the others trailing. The shadow of a bird passed before them, and they looked up. It was white with red legs, about the size of a bald eagle, and had a monkey face with a curving bird’s beak. It swooped so low that Luvah threw his stick at it. The stick passed behind its flaring tail. It squawked indignantly and climbed away swiftly.
Wolff said, “That looks like a nest on that tree. Let’s see if it contains eggs.”
Luvah ran forward to recover his stick, then stopped. Wolff stared where Luvah was pointing.
The earth was rippling. It rose in inch-high waves and advanced towards the stick. Luvah turned to run, thought better of it, turned again, and ran to pick up the stick. Behind him, the earth swelled, rose up and up, and raced forward, like a surfer’s wave.
Wolff yelled. Luvah whirled, saw the danger, and ran away from it at an angle towards the end of the wave. Wolff came along behind it, not knowing what he could do to help Luvah but hoping to do something.
Then the wave collapsed. Wolff and Luvah stopped. Abruptly, Wolff felt the earth rising below his feet and saw that another swelling had started some ten feet from Luvah. Both turned and raced away, the earth—or whatever it was—chasing after them.
They made it back to the area around the gate, which had been stable and would continue to be so—they hoped.
They got to the safety zone just in time to escape the sudden sinking of the land behind them. A hole, broad and shallow at first, appeared. Then it narrowed and deepened. The sides closed in on themselves, there was a smacking sound, and the hole reversed its original process. It widened out. until all was smooth as before, except that the foot-high thin growths sprouting from each depression kept on vibrating.
“What in Los’ name!” Luvah said over and over. He was pale, and the freckles stood out like a galaxy of fear.
Wolff was a little sick himself. Feeling the earth tremble under him had been like being caught in an earthquake. In fact, that was what he had thought when it first happened.
Somebody yelled behind him. He spun to see Palamabron trying to get back through the gate through which he had just stepped only to go flying vainly through the frame. He must have been following them and waited until he thought they had gone some distance from the gate. Now, he was trapped as much as they.
More so, since Wolff had use for him. Wolff shoved the others away from Palamabron’s throat and shouted at them to leave him alone. They drew back while Palamabron shook and his teeth chattered.
“Palamabron,” Wolff said, “you have been sentenced to death because you broke truce with us and murdered your brother.”
Palamabron, seeing that he was not to be killed out of hand, took courage. Perhaps he thought he had a chance. He cried, “At least I did not eat my own brother! And I had to kill him! He attacked me first!”
“Enion was struck in the back of the head,” Wolff said.
“I knocked him down!” Palamabron shouted. “He started to rise when I seized a rock and hit him with it. It was not my fault he had his back turned. Would you ask me to wait until he had turned around?”
“There’s no use talking about this,” Wolff said. “But you can go free. Your blood will not be on our hands. Only, you can’t stay with us. None of us would feel safe with you around.”
“You are letting me go?” Palamabron said. “Why?”
“Don’t waste time talking,” Wolff said. “If you don’t get out of our sight within ten minutes, I’ll let the others at you. You’d better leave. Now!”
“Wait a minute,” Palamabron said. “There’s something very suspicious about this. No, I won’t go.”
Wolff gestured at the others. “Go ahead. Kill him.”
Palamabron screamed, turned, and ran away as swiftly as he could. He seemed weak, and his legs began to move slowly after the first thirty yards. He looked back several times, then, seeing that they were not coming after him, he quit running.
The earth swelled behind him and built up until it was twice as high as his head. At the moment it gained its peak, Palamabron looked over his shoulder again. He saw the giant wave racing towards him, and he screamed and began to run again. The wave collapsed, the tremors following the collapse upsetting Palamabron and knocking him off his feet. He scrambled up and continued to go on, although he was staggering by now.
A hole opened up ahead of him. He screamed and darted off at right angles to it, seeming to gain new strength from terror. The hole disappeared, but a second gaped ahead of him. Again, he raced away, this time diagonally to the hole.
Another wave began to build up before him. He whirled, slipped, fell hard, rolled over, and stumbled away. Presently, the swelling, which had risen directly between Palamabron and the Lords, grew so high that it walled him off from their sight. After that, the wave froze for a moment, rigid except for a slight trembling. Gradually, it subsided, and the plain was flat again, with the exception of a six-foot long mound.
“Swallowed up,” Vala said.
Her eyes were wide open, her mouth parted, the lower lip wet. Her tongue flicked out to trace with its tip the oval of both lips.
Wolff said, “Our father has indeed created a monster for us. Perhaps, this entire planet is covered with the skin of … of this Weltthier.”
“What?” said Theotormon. His eyes were still glazed with terror. And though he had been shrinking during the starvation on the last world, he now seemed to have dwindled off fifty pounds in the past two minutes. His skin hung in loops.
“Welttheir. World-animal. From German, a Terrestrial language.”
A planet covered with skin, he thought. Or maybe it was not so much a skin as a continent-sized amoeba spread out “over the globe. The idea made him boggle.
The skin existed; there was no denying that. But how did it keep from starving to death? The millions and millions of tons of protoplasm had to be fed. Certainly, although it ate animals, it could not get nearly enough of these to maintain itself.
Wolff decided to investigate the subject, if he ever got the chance. He was as curious as a monkey or a Siamese cat, always probing, pondering, speculating, and analyzing. He could not rest until he knew the why and how.
He sat down to rest while he considered what to do. The others, Vala excepted, also sat or lay down. She walked from the “safety zone,” placing her feet carefully with each step. Watching her, he understood what she was doing. Why had he not thought of that? She was avoiding contact with the plants (hairs?) that grew from the holes (pores?). After traveling on a circle with a radius of about twenty five yards, she returned to the gate area. Not once had the skin trembled or begun to form threatening shapes.
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br /> Wolff stood up and said, “Very good, Vala. You beat me to it. The beast, or whatever it is, detects life by touch through the feelers or hairs. If we navigate as cautiously as ships going through openings in reefs, we can cross over this thing. Only trouble is, how do we get past those?”
He pointed outwards to the horny buttes, the excrescentoid hills. The hairs began to crowd together at their bases, and beyond the buttes they carpeted the ground.
She shrugged and said, “I don’t know.”
“We’ll worry about it when we get to it,” he said. He began walking, looking downwards to guide himself among the feelers. The Lords followed him in Indian file, with Vala again being the only exception. She paralleled his course at a distance of five or six yards to his right.
“It’s going to be very difficult to hunt animals for food under these conditions,” he said. “We’ll have to keep one eye on the hairs and one on the animal. A terrible handicap.”
“I wouldn’t worry,” she said. “There may be no animals.”
“There is one I’m sure exists,” Wolff said. He did not say anything more on the subject although it was evident that Vala was wondering what he meant. He headed towards the “tree” in a branch of which he saw the nest. A circular pile of sticks and leaves, it was lodged at the junction of the trunk and a branch and was about three feet across. The sticks and leaves seemed to be held together with a gluey substance.
He stepped between two feelers, propped his club against the tree, and shinnied up the trunk. Halfway up, he saw the tops of two hexagons on one of the buttes. When he got to the nest, he clung to the trunk with his legs, one arm around the trunk, while with the other hand he poked through leaves on top of the nest. He uncovered two eggs, speckled green and black and about twice the size of turkey eggs. Removing them one by one, he dropped them to Vala.
Immediately thereafter, the mother returned. Larger than a bald eagle, she was white with bluish chevrons, furry, monkey-faced, falcon-beaked, saber-toothed, wolf-eared, bat-winged, archeopteryx-tailed, and vulture-footed.
She shot down on him with wings folded until just before she struck. The wings opened with a whoosh of air, and she screamed like iron being ripped apart. Perhaps the scream was intended to freeze the prey. If so, it failed. Wolff just let loose of the trunk and dropped. Above him came a crash and another scream, this time of frustration and panic, as the beast rammed partly into the nest and partly into the trunk. Evidently, it had expected to have its momentum absorbed by Wolff’s body. And it may have underestimated its speed in its fury.
The World of Tiers Volume One: The Maker of Universes, the Gates of Creation, and a Private Cosmos Page 33
