The World of Tiers Volume Two: Behind the Walls of Terra, the Lavalite World, Red Orc's Rage, and More Than Fire

by Philip José Farmer

  He was. He knew what The Sphinx knew about the ultimate mysteries. That is, nothing.

  The Mysteries were unassailable in this world and in all worlds.

  The most that any human being could do was to try to solve the “little” mysteries. Those were huge enough.

  AFTERWORD

  A. James Giannini, M.D.

  I

  On an otherwise unremarkable English afternoon, a remarkable English girl named Alice walked through a looking glass. On the other side, she found a land of fantasy and distortion. Her ability was unusual because she could enter a fantasy created by someone else and then return to the alternative “real” world. Schizophrenics and other psychotics inhabit their own world of delusion and also have difficulty reentering the real world—that common interface that humanity shares. Children can also inhabit a secret place of fantasy. While they seldom have trouble skipping across the twin planes of fantasy and reality, they do not have the ability to transport adults into their secret worlds.

  It is the lack of Alice’s gift that makes the practice of psychiatry so difficult. Each delusional patient is truly a master of his own universe. This universe is an entity unique to the individual. It has its own terrain, its own memory-base and its own symbolic language. The understanding of each of these worlds provides the therapist with the ability to discover the root trauma and modify the results. Unfortunately, the patient retains the ability and prerogative to alter his personal reality at any time. For some, alterations occur in a chaotic fashion, while for others it seems to occur whenever a breakthrough is imminent.

  The great English therapist, R. D. Laing, developed a school of thought in which a schizophrenic’s psychosis would be considered an alternative valid reality. For the initial therapeutic phase, as least, this school provided a useful model. In trying to understand the patient’s psychosis, however, one had to consume a large amount of professional resources. Many times, this expenditure was wasted. The patient was sole master of his delusional scheme; he controlled its access and could alter its form.

  Frustration with these inherent limitations causes many psychiatrists to rely solely on a specific class of medication, the “neuroleptics,” to reduce and control their patient’s psychoses. This has always seemed to me a solution to one-half of the physician’s classic problem. Dependence upon neuroleptics alone resolves the symptoms but does not remove the cause of the disorder. With the resolution of the delusional symptoms may come the disappearance of the very key that might provide insight into the damage that begat the delusion.

  Alice was able to pass unhindered through an alternative universe. This was a universe of some stability. While such characters as the Duchess’ child could change their shape, the underlying form of the chessboard-mirror world was stable. It is the accessibility and stability of this world that makes it an attractive alternative to the locked-off morass of each patient’s separate delusional subreality. A therapeutic anodyne would then be a world with fixed reference points and a door that permits universal ingress and egress.

  While completing my psychiatric residency at Yale University, I encountered many patients whose worlds were closed off to me. Their personal fears and my neuroleptic medications seemed to function as twin seals forever removing me from the dreadful fears that pushed them away from reality. It was at Yale that I conceived using science fiction or fantasy novels as the source of an alternative reality that the patient and I could explore together.

  Providentially, I discovered Philip José Farmer’s World of Tiers series. It seemed to be a tool designed for the purpose of investigating and resolving psychotic disturbances. Its “Gates” provide the access mechanisms. Its characters were a Jungian delight; an entire panoply of archetypes were available for retrospective analysis. The variety of pocket universes presented a large but fixed number of multiple realities.

  In the initial approaches with “Tiers-therapy,” several patients with psychotic presentation were asked to read the series. Therapy then shifted from a review of the patients’ activities to a discussion of the books. Gradually, these discussions became more focused so that the patient would gradually relate his experiences with those of Tiers characters. When stress would occur between therapy sessions and the patient would break down, the psychotic perceptions would gradually incorporate an ever-expanding fraction of the Tiers system. As an adapted Tiers universe replaced the highly idiosyncratic forms of alternative reality, I was able to enter each patient’s private world. Finally, the metaphorical means were available to conduct work on-site. It was as if I were an astronomer, who, after gazing at Mars through a distorted mirror, was finally able to walk on that planet’s red sands. Once the patient and I met on a common world, meaningful therapy proceeded quickly.

  In this form of therapy, I noted that adolescents and younger adults had the best results. Those who were possessed of a love for books were the most eager. Therapy was quickly engaged if these young men and women felt themselves to be misfits who belonged in another age. Some had psychoses; others were addicted to their own fantasy world. When I moved to Ohio, I found a corps of willing patients (and supportive parents) who quickly accepted the tenets of Tiersian therapy. Since these patients were comfortable with expressing themselves, I was able to utilize the powerful tool of group therapy to project ourselves into a Tiersian model.

  In standard group therapy, what is discussed (“content”) is less important than the act of discussion (“process”). It is after all the flow of water rather than the nature of water that gives a river its special properties and attractions. Since every patient had a unique way of relating to the Tiers worlds, the de-emphasis on content worked well. Because all of our group members now shared the same basic symbols and archetypes, each patient could relate to another in a way that enhanced the process. By relating to each other, the group was able to resolve the earlier conflicts of its members and gradually reenter the real world. Using the Tiers series as a halfway house, they moved from private reality to shared reality to that reality which all humanity holds in common.

  II

  Farmer’s re-creation of Tiersian therapy at Wellington Hospital captures the essence of this particular process. Tiersian therapy is currently undergoing a punctuated evolution. It has been discontinued and continued many times. Each manifestation has brought with it many refinements. As the strangely familiar Dr. Porsena emphasizes, the trick of the game is to ensure that Tiersian therapy becomes an entry into reality, not a substitute for it. Generally, our patients were able to distinguish their delusions or fantasies from reality; they simply chose to avoid reality. Tiersian therapy is not yet applicable for the profoundly psychotic individual. Schizophrenics are not candidates for therapeutic systems that utilize evolving realities.

  In reading the fictional re-creation of group process and the individual reaction to it, I felt I was an observer in my own therapeutic groups. Though Philip Farmer has never observed any of these sessions, he has reconstructed them accurately. While all persons and processes are totally fictional, any of my former patients and cotherapists should feel a sense of familiarity.

  Future scientific papers on Tiersian therapy will analyze the components of this technique. It is to be hoped that my professional colleagues will then attempt to replicate the methods and results of this approach. Scientific papers, while a necessary part of the transmission of knowledge, lack the gestalt of the exploration: the experiment, the analysis, the therapeutic techniques. The novel, however, while short on absolutely accurate detail faithfully reproduces the sweat and fire of scientific enquiry. Red Orc’s Rage carries on its pages the intuitive “feel” of psychotherapeutic treatment. In it, we can truly experience Jim’s emergence into reality as he takes control of his own life.

  III

  Alice learned to run twice as fast and so became a queen. She then was able to walk through the nether side of the looking glass and reenter England.

  More Than Fire

 
To Lynn and Julia Carl,

  Gary Wolfe, and Dede Weil

  1

  This’ll be it!” Kickaha said. “I know it, know it! I can feel the forces shaping themselves into a big funnel pouring us onto the goal! It’s just ahead! We’ve finally made it!”

  He wiped the sweat from his forehead. Though breathing heavily, he increased his pace.

  Anana was a few steps behind and below him on the steep mountain trail. She spoke to herself in a low voice. He never paid any attention to her discouraging—that is, realistic—words, anyway.

  “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  Kickaha the Trickster and Anana the Bright had been tramping up and down the planet of the Tripeds for fifteen years. Their quest was not for the Holy Grail but for something even better: a way to get out of this backwater universe. It had to exist. But where was it?

  Kickaha usually looked on the cheerful side of events. If they had none, he lit the darkness with his optimism. Once, he had said to Anana, “If your jail’s an entire planet, being a yardbird isn’t so bad.”

  Anana had replied, “A prison is a prison.”

  Kickaha had been carrying the key to unlock the gate leading to other worlds and to the mainstream of life. That key was Shambarimem’s Horn, the ancient musical instrument he carried in a deerskin pouch hanging from his belt. During their wanderings on this planet, he had blown the Horn thousands of times. Each time, he had hoped that an invisible “weak” place in the fabric of the “walls” separating two universes would open in response to the seven notes from the Horn and make itself visible. There were thousands of such flaws in the walls.

  But, so far, he had not been in an area where these existed. He knew that, every time he blew the Horn, a flaw, a way out of their vast prison, might be a hundred yards away, just out of the activating range of the Horn. As he had said, knowing that made him feel as if he owned a ticket in the Irish Sweepstakes. The chances of his winning that would be very, very low.

  If he could find a gate, an exit deliberately made by a Lord and often evident as such, he would have won the lottery. The natives of this planet had heard rumors of gates or what could be gates, countless rumors. Kickaha and Anana had followed these, sometimes for hundreds of miles, to their sources. So far, they had found only disappointment and more rumors to set them off on another long trail. But today, Kickaha was sure that their efforts would pay off.

  The trail was leading them upward through a forest. Many of the giant trees smelled to Kickaha like sauerkraut juice mixed with pear juice. The odor meant that the leaves at the tips of the branches would soon be mutating into a butterflylike, but vegetable, creature. The brightly colored organisms would tear themselves away from the rotting twigs. They would flutter off, unable to eat, unable to do anything but soar far away before they died. Then, if they were not eaten by birds on the way, if they landed on a hospitable spot, the very tiny seeds within their bodies would sprout into saplings a month later.

  The many marvels on this planet made it easier to endure their forced stay on it, Kickaha thought. But the longer they were here, the more time it gave their archenemy, Red Orc, to track them down. And Kickaha also thought often of his friends, Wolff and Chryseis, who had been imprisoned by Red Orc. Had they been killed by Red Orc, or had they managed to escape?

  Kickaha, who on Earth had been named Paul Janus Finnegan, was tall, broad-shouldered, and muscular. The exceptional thickness of his powerfully muscled legs made him look shorter. He was deeply sun-browned; his shoulder-length and slightly curly hair was red-bronze; his face was craggy, long-lipped, and usually merry. His large wide-set eyes were as green as spring leaves.

  Though he looked as if he were twenty-five years old, he had been born on Earth seventy-four years ago.

  Buckskin moccasins and a belt were his only clothing. His belt held a steel knife and a tomahawk. On his back was a small pack and a quiver full of arrows. One hand held a long bow.

  Behind him came Anana the Bright, tall, black-haired, blue-eyed, and also sun-browned. She came from a people who thought of themselves as deities, and she did look like a goddess. But she was no Venus. A classical scholar seeing her slim and exceptionally long legs and greyhound body would think of the hunting goddess, Artemis. However, goddesses did not perspire, and Anana’s sweat ran from her.

  She, too, wore only moccasins and a belt. Her weapons were the same as Kickaha’s except for the long spear in one hand, and she bore a knapsack on her back.

  Kickaha was thinking about the natives who had directed them up this path. They had seemed certain that the Door to the Sleeper’s Tomb was on top of the mountain. He hoped that the Door was a gate. The natives he had questioned had never been to the mountaintop because they did not have the goods to give the Guardian of the Door for answers to their questions. But they knew somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody who had visited the Guardian.

  This was probably another disappointing journey. But they could not afford to ignore any rumor or tale about anything that could be a Lord’s gate. Anyway, what else did they have to do?

  A little more than a decade and a half ago, he and Anana had escaped from the Lavalite World into the World of Tiers. Then, he had been very confident that they would soon be able to do what must be done.

  Their adventures on the Lavalite World, that planet of insecurity, instability, and constantly shifting shape, had been harrowing. Kickaha and Anana had rested for several weeks after escaping from it to the World of Tiers. Then, having renewed themselves with rest and fun, they had sought out and found a gate that teleported them to Wolff’s palace, now uninhabited. This was on top of the monolith on top of the World of Tiers.

  They had armed themselves in the palace with some of the weapons of the Lords, weapons superior to anything on Earth. Then they had activated a gate that had previously passed them to a cave in a Southern California mountain. This was the cave through which Kickaha had first come back to Earth after many years of absence.

  But when he and Anana had stepped through the gate, they had found themselves on a planet in this artificial universe, the Whaziss world. The gate had been a one-way trap, and Kickaha did not know who had set it up.

  Kickaha had boasted more than once that no prison or trap could hold him long. Now, if those words could be given substance, he would have to eat them. They would taste like buzzard dung sprinkled with wood ashes.

  Yesterday, he and Anana had stopped two-thirds of the way up the mountain and camped for the night. They had continued their climb at dawn and thus should, by now, be close to the top.

  Five minutes later, he heard the voices of children drifting down the path. Within two minutes, they stepped over the edge of the small plateau.

  The village in the middle of the plateau was much like others in this area. A circular wall of upright and pointed logs enclosed approximately forty log houses with conical roofs. In the center of the village was a temple, a two-story log building with a round tower on top and many carved-wood idols in and around it.

  If the natives’ stories were true, the temple could contain a gate. According to these, the building contained a vertical structure of “divine” metal. Its thin beams formed a six-sided opening into the world of the gods. Or, as some stories said, a door to the world of the demons.

  The natives also said that the hexagon had been on the top of the hill before the natives were created by the gods. The gods—or the demons—had used the opening long before the natives came into being and would use it long after the natives had become extinct.

  The first one to tell Kickaha this story was Tsash. He was a priest of a deity that had once been very minor but was now up and coming and perhaps destined to be number one on this island the size of Earth’s Greenland.

  Tsash had said, “The Door to the Otherworld is open. Anyone may step through it. But he will only find himself on the other side of the six-angled door and still in our world unless he can utter the magical word. And there is n
o assurance that he who does know the word will like what he finds on the other side.”

  “And just where is this door?” Kickaha had said.

  Tsash had waved his hand westward. The gesture took in a lot of territory, since he was standing in a temple on a cliff on the shore of the Eastern Sea.

  “Out there. It is said that the Door is in a temple—dedicated to what god, I do not know—which is on a hilltop. But then, all temples are on the tops of high hills or mountains.”

  “How many temples are there in this land?” Kickaha had said.

  “Only the gods could count them, they are so numerous!”

  He had lifted both four-fingered hands above his head, and he had cried, “Do not use the Door even if you find the magical word to open the Door! You may awake the Sleeper! Do not do that! You will die the Undying Death!”

  “Which is what?” Kickaha had said.

  “I do not know, and I do not wish to know!” Tsash had shouted.

  Kickaha had asked more questions, but Tsash seemed to have submerged himself in prayers. His huge eyes were closed, and the mouth under the green hair growing all over his face was murmuring something rhythmic and repetitive.

  Kickaha and Anana had left the temple and set out westward. Fifteen years later, after going up and down and around but always working toward the Western Sea, they were on another mountain-top with a temple on it.

  Kickaha was excited. He believed that the long-sought gate was inside the building. Despite the many failures and consequent disappointments, he allowed himself to believe that their quest was at an an end. Perhaps “allowed” was not the correct word. He had no control over his enthusiasms. They came and went as they pleased; he was the conduit.

  If Anana was delighted or expectant, she did not show it. Many thousands of years of life had rubbed away much of her zest. Being in love with Kickaha and sharing his adventures had restored some of this—far more, in fact, than she had expected. Time was a chisel that had reshaped the original substance of her spirit. Yet it had taken that relentless dimension a long, long time to do it.