The World of Tiers Volume One: The Maker of Universes, the Gates of Creation, and a Private Cosmos

by Philip José Farmer

  They placed the masks over their faces and crouched in a corner near the archway to gain protection from the full force of the current. The sea struck the wall opposite the archway and then raced off down the floor and through the door. Seeing that the water was not activating the rays, Wolff hurled his stone axe towards the door. Even through his closed lids, he saw the dazzle. When he opened his eyes, the water was boiling. The axe had been swept on through the arch.

  The waters rose swiftly, carrying the treading Lords up towards the ceiling. When there was only a foot of air between the sea and the ceiling, they put on their masks. Wolff dived as close towards the floor as he could get and began swimming. Suddenly, the air shut off. He held his breath and continued swimming. There was a glare of light that blinded him, and the water seemed to burn his exposed hands and back of neck. He bumped against the side of the arch and was borne out into the next room. Here he shoved his feet against the floor and propelled himself upward. He held his hands out to soften the impact against the ceiling, which he could not yet see.

  His head bumping against stone, he removed his mask and breathed in. His lungs filled with air, then water slapped him in the mouth and he coughed. His vision returned; Theotormon and Luvah were beside him. Wolff lifted his hand and pointed downward. “Follow me!”

  He dived, his eyes open, his hands sliding along the wall. There was a green jade statue, a foot high, once an idol of some people in some universe, squatting in a niche. Wolff rotated its head, and a section of the wall opened inwards. The three Lords were carried into the large room. They scrambled to their feet, and Wolff ran to a console and pulled on a red-handled lever. The door closed slowly against the pressure of the water, leaving a foot of water in the room.

  Identifying the console Urizen had told him about (there were at least thirty), Wolff pressed down a rectangular plate on which was an ideogram of the ancient writing once used by the Lords. He stepped back with the first smile he had had for a long time.

  “Vala not only won’t be able to use her controls any more,” he said, “she’s trapped in her control room as well. And all gates of escape in the room are deactivated. Only the permanent gates in the palace, like the gate to the waterworld, are still on.”

  Wolff reached towards the button that would activate the viewscreen in the other control room. He withdrew his hand and stood in thought for a moment.

  “The less our sister knows of the true situation, the better for us,” he said. “Theotormon, come here and listen carefully.”

  Wolff and Luvah hid behind a console and peered through a narrow opening between the console and its screen. Theotormon pushed the button with the end of his flipper. Vala was staring at him, her long hair dark-red with damp and her face twisted with fury.

  “You!” she said.

  “Greetings, sister,” Theotormon answered. “Are you surprised to see me still living? And how do you feel knowing that I have sealed off your escape and rendered you powerless?”

  “Where are your brothers, your betters?” Vala said, trying to see past him into the room.

  “They’re dead. Their airtanks gave out and so did mine. But this body that our father gave me enabled me to hold my breath until the water washed away your jelly.”

  “So Jadawin is finally dead? I don’t believe it. You are trying to play a trick on me, you stupid slug!”

  “You’re in no position to call names.”

  “Let me see his body,” she said.

  Theotormon shrugged. “That’s impossible. He’s floating somewhere in the palace. I barely made it to this room myself. I can’t go out to get him without flooding this room.”

  Vala looked at the water on the floor and then she smiled. “So you’re trapped, too. You fish-stinking idiot, you don’t even have the brains of a fish! You just told me what your situation is!”

  Theotormon gaped. He said, “But … but …””

  “You may think you have me in your power,” Vala said. “And so you do, in a manner of speaking. But you are just as much in mine. I know where the spacecraft is. It can get us off this planet and to another, which has a gate through which we can leave this universe. Now, what do you propose to do about this impasse?”

  Theotormon scratched the fur on his head with the tip of a flipper. “I don’t know.”

  “Oh, yes, you do! You’re stupid, but not that stupid! You’ll make a trade with me. You let me out, and I’ll let you leave with me in the ship. There’s no other way out for either of us.”

  Wolff could not see Theotormon’s expression, but he could deduce from his tone the cunningness and suspicion on his face.

  “How do I know I can trust you?”

  “You don’t, any more than I can trust you. We’ll have to arrange this so neither of us can possibly trip the other up. Do you agree?”

  “Well, I don’t know …”

  “This control room won’t be harmed if the seas get a mile high and sit forever on the palace. I have food and water enough for a year. I can just sit here and let you die. And then I’ll figure some way to get out, believe me. I’ll discover a way.”

  “In that case,” Theotormon said, “why don’t you do it?”

  “Because I don’t want to stay in this room for a year. I have too many things to do.”

  “All right. But what about Chryseis?”

  “She comes with me. I have plans for her,” Vala said.

  Her voice became even more suspicious. “Why should you care about her?”

  “I don’t. I just wondered. Maybe … maybe you could give her to me. From what Jadawin said, she must be very beautiful.”

  Vala laughed and said, “That would be one form of torture for her. But it isn’t enough. No, you can’t have her.”

  “Then it’s not a deal,” Theotormon said. “You keep her. See how you like being cooped up with her for a year. Besides, I don’t really think you can swim to the spacecraft. The water pressure will be too much.”

  Vala said, “You stupid selfish slimegut! You’d die yourself rather than let me have anything! Very well, take her then!”

  Wolff smiled. He had told Theotormon to bring up Chryseis and so take her mind off him. This business about Chryseis was just irrelevant enough and so Theotormonically selfish that she might be convinced that he was not hiding the truth.

  Theotormon clapped his flippers together with glee. Wolff hoped that his joy was all act, since he was not sure that Theotormon might not betray him at the last moment. Theotormon said, “All right. Now, how can we get to the spacecraft?”

  “You’ll have to release me first. I’m not going to tell you and then have you take off without me.”

  “But if I open the door to your room, you’ll be able to get out ahead of me.”

  “Can’t you set the controls so they’ll open the doors by the time you get here?”

  Theotormon grunted as if the thought were a new one. “All right. Only, you’ll have to come out of the room with absolutely no clothes on. You must both be nude and emptyhanded. I’ll come out of my room weaponless. We’ll both leave at exactly the same time and meet in the corridor that links the two rooms.”

  Vala gasped and said, “I thought …! You mean you knew all the time how to get here … so that’s where the other controls are! And I thought the other end of the corridor was a wall.”

  “It won’t do you any good to know,” Theotormon said. “You can’t get out until I let you. Oh, yes, strip Chryseis, too. I don’t want you to hide any weapons on her.”

  Vala said, “You’re not taking any chances, are you? Perhaps you’re more intelligent than I thought.”

  What was she planning? If she did meet him in the middle of the corridor, she would be helpless against Theotormon’s far greater strength. He would attack her the moment she revealed the location of the spacecraft, and she must know that.

  The truth was that Wolff, Luvah, and Theotormon knew where the ship was. Theotormon had pretended ignorance only to seem to
give her an advantage. She had to be lured out of the room, otherwise she would never come out. Wolff knew his sister. She would die and take Chryseis with her rather than surrender. To her it was inconceivable that a Lord would keep a promise not to harm her. She had good reason. In fact, Wolff himself, though he never thought of himself as a genuine Lord anymore, was not sure he would have kept his word to her. Certainly, he did not intend that Theotormon adhere to his assurances.

  Then what did she have in mind?

  Theotormon went over the method of conduct with Vala again, pretending that he was not quite sure. Then he deactivated the screen and turned to Wolff and Luvah. Wolff opened the door into the corridor so that he and Luvah could go out ahead of time. As Theotormon had said, the corridor linked the two control rooms. Both control rooms and the hall between were in an enclosed unit of fourteen feet-thick metal alloy. The unit could hold any pressure of water and was resistant even to a direct hit by a hydrogen bomb. The interior wall was coated with a substance which would repel the neutrons of a neutron bomb. Urizen had placed the secret control room in this unit, near the main control room for just such situations as this. Anyone who managed to get into the main room would not know that there was an exit to the corridor until part of the seemingly solid wall of the main control room opened.

  The corridor itself, though an emergency convenience, had been furnished as if a reception for Lords were to be held in it. It contained paintings, sculptures, and furniture that a Terrestrial billionaire could not have purchased with all his fortune. A chandelier made from a single carved diamond, weighing half a ton, hung from a huge gold alloy chain. And this was not the most valuable object in the corridor.

  Wolff hid behind a davenport covered with the silky chocolate-and-azure hide of an animal. Luvah concealed himself behind the base of a statue. Theotormon made sure that they were ready and returned to the control room to inform Vala that they could now proceed to meet each other as planned. He then pressed the button that operated the door to Vala’s room.

  The wall at the other end of the corridor slid upwards. Light poured out of the opening, and Vala stuck her head cautiously around the frame. Theotormon did the same from his door. He stepped out quickly, ready to hurl himself back if she had a weapon. She gave a low laugh and came out of the doorway, her hands held out to show their emptiness. She was naked and magnificent.

  Wolff gave her a glance. He had eyes only for the woman who followed her. It was his Chryseis, the beautiful huge-eyed nymph with tiger-striped hair. She, too, was unclothed.

  “The Horn of Shambarimen,” Theotormon said. “I almost forgot! Where is it?”

  “It is in the control room,” Vala replied. “I did not bring it because you told me to be empty-handed.”

  “Go get it, Chryseis,” Theotormon said. “But when you return with it, hold it up above your head at arm’s length and do not point it at me. If you make a sudden motion with it, I will kill you.”

  Vala’s laughter filled the corridor. “Are you so suspicious that you suspect even her? She would not hurt you! She is definitely not going to do anything for me!”

  Theotormon did not reply. Instructed by Wolff, he was playing the role of the overly alert Lord to keep Vala from suspecting any treachery. If Theotormon had been too trusting, she would have scented something foul at once.

  Vala and Theotormon then advanced towards each other, taking a step forward slowly and in unison. It was as if they were partners in a formal dance, they moved so stately and in such matching rhythm.

  Wolff crouched and waited. He had taken his suit off so that it would not hinder his movements. The sweat of tension covered his body. Neither he nor Luvah were armed. They had lost all their own weapons before they reached the secret room. And the room, to his dismay, had contained no arms. Apparently, Urizen had not thought it necessary. Or, much more likely, there were weapons hidden behind the walls, accessible only to one who knew how to find them. Urizen had not had time to give that information—if he had ever intended to do so.

  The plan was to wait until Vala had passed Luvah, hidden on the other side of the hall. When he rushed out behind her, Theotormon would jump her. Wolff would hurl himself from his hiding palace and help the other two.

  Vala stopped several feet away from the diamond chandelier. Theotormon also stopped. She said, “Well, my ugly brother, it seems that you have kept your side of the bargain.”

  He nodded and said, “So where is the spaceship?”

  He went forward one step in the hope that she, too, would take one and so place herself nearer. Vala stood still, however. Mockingly, she said, “The entrance to it is just on the other side of that roseshaped mirror. You could have gone to it and left me to die—if you had known about it! You witless filth!”

  Theotormon snarled and leaped at her. Luvah came out from behind the statue but bumped into Chryseis. Wolff rose and sped straight at Vala.

  She screamed and held up her right hand, the palm at right angles to her arm, fingers stiffly pointing toward the ceiling. Out of the palm shot an intensely white beam no thicker than a needle. She moved her hand to her left in a horizontal arc. The beam slashed across Theotormon’s neck, and his head fell off. For a moment, the body stood upright, blood fountaining upward from his neck. Then he fell forward.

  Wolff whirled like a broken-field runner. He threw himself down on the floor behind Theotormon’s feet. Vala, hearing Luvah curse as he recovered from his bump into Chryseis, spun around. Evidently she thought that this was the nearest danger and that she had enough time to deal with Wolff.

  Chryseis had reacted quickly. On seeing the head of the sealman fall off and roll back behind Theotormon, she had dived for the protection of a statue. Vala’s ray took off a chunk of the base of the statue but missed Chryseis. Then Luvah was coming in, head down. Vala leaped adroitly aside and chopped down with the edge of the palm of her left hand. Luvah fell forward on his face, unconscious.

  Why she had not killed him with the tiny beamer implanted in the flesh of her palm was a mystery. Perhaps she wanted someone to save as a torture victim.

  Wolff was helpless, or so Vala thought. She advanced towards him.

  “You I shall kill now,” she, said. “You’re too dangerous to leave alive for a second longer than necessary.”

  “I’m not dead yet,” Wolff said. His fingers closed on Theotormon’s head, and he hurled it at her. He was up on his feet at once and running towards her, knowing that he did not have a chance but hoping that something would happen to deflect her aim long enough.

  She raised her hand to ward off the grisly projectile. The beam split the head in half, but one section continued to fly towards her.

  The ray, directed towards the ceiling momentarily, cut the gold alloy chain. And the half-ton diamond chandelier came down upon her.

  Wolff was still charging while all this occurred. He dived on the floor to be below her line of fire in case she was still living and could use the hand. She glared up at him, the light not yet gone from her eyes. Her arms and her body were pinned beneath the diamond, from beneath which blood ran.

  “You … did it, brother,” she gasped.

  Chryseis came out from behind the statue to throw herself in his arms. She clung to him and sobbed. He could not blame her for this, but there were still things to do.

  He kissed her a few times, hugged her, and pushed her away from him.

  “We have to get out while we can,” he said. “Push in on the third gargoyle to the left on the upper decoration on that mirror.”

  She did so; the mirror swung in. Wolff put his unconscious brother on his shoulders and started towards the entrance. Chyrseis said, “Robert! What about her?”

  He stopped. “What about her?”

  “Are you going to let her suffer like this? It may take a long time before she dies.”

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “Besides, she has it coming.”

  “Robert!”

  Wolff sighed. For
a moment, he had been a complete Lord again, had become the old Jadawin.

  He put Luvah on the floor and walked over to Vala. She twisted, and her hand came loose, a section of the shorn diamond falling over onto the floor. Wolff leaped at her and caught her hand just as the ray shot forth from the palm. He twisted her hand so violently that the bones cracked. She cried out once with pain before she died.

  Directed by Wolff, the laser beam had half guillotined her.

  Wolff, Chryseis, and Luvah entered the spaceship. It rose straight up the launching shaft to the very top of the palace. Wolff headed the ship for the exit-gate, hidden in the mountains of the tempusfudger planet. Only then did he have time to find out how Vala had managed to get Chryseis from her bed and out of their world.

  “The hexaculum awoke me,” she said, “while you were still sleeping. It—Vala’s voice—warned me that if I tried to wake you, you would be killed in a horrible way. Vala told me that only by following her instructions would I prevent your death.”

  “You should have known better,” he said. “If she had been able to hurt me, she would have done it. But then, I suppose that you were too concerned for me. You did not dare to take the chance that she might be bluffing.”

  “Yes. I wanted to cry out, but I was afraid that she might be able to carry out her threats. I was so terrified for you that I was not thinking straight. So I went through the gate she designated, one of those gates that take you to a lower level of our planet. I deactivated the alarms before entering it, as she ordered. Vala was waiting in the cave where our gate took me. She had already set up a gate to take us to this universe. The rest you know.”

  Wolff turned the controls over to Luvah so that he could embrace and kiss her. She began to weep, and soon he was weeping, too. His tears were not only from relief at having gotten her back unharmed and from the unrelenting strain of the experiences in this world. He wept for his dead brothers and sister. He did not mourn those who had died, the adults. He mourned for his brothers and sister as the children they had once been and for the love they had had for each other as children. He grieved for the loss of what they might have been.