He was, he thought, in a tiny canoe moving on a river of uncertainty and ambiguity, a craft leaking from holes, with the paddle on the point of breaking. But if it sank, he would swim on upstream.
He wiped the sweat from his forehead and drank deeply from the canteen. This he had emptied and refilled a dozen times during his trip with water from clean streams flowing from the hills. He pushed through the thick bushes among the trees for a few yards, stopping when he saw the lights in the upper-story windows of the great mansion. The ground floor had no windows. Like those large houses in the valley, this building was constructed of white stone blocks.
Kickaha removed his night-vision goggles and looked behind him and down. The valley was in darkness except for a few widely scattered lights, probably clusters of torches. He resumed his walk toward the east side of the house. The ground was level, and the gravel path he was following wound through beds of flowers. Forty feet from the house, the lawn began. Glancing at his detector now and then, Kickaha proceeded to the corner of the house and stuck his head around it. Lit by torches set in brackets on the front wall was a wide porch. Along the front edge of the porch were seven columns covered by carved figures.
Two spearmen stood before the eight-foot-high arched doorway.
He took two minutes to stun them with the beamer, tie their hands behind them and their feet together, and slap tape on their mouths. He did not know when the change of guard would be and did not care. There was no lock on the big iron door. Since it resisted his push, he supposed that it had been barred from the inside. His beamer cut through the door and the big rectangular wooden bolt behind it.
The only noise was the sputter of melting metal and the clang as the bolt and metal bracket on the other side fell onto the floor. He had to push them aside when he entered. He stepped inside a well-lit room big enough to hold a medium-sized sailing ship. The illumination was the sourceless lighting of Thoan technology. Cool air was blowing from a wall vent near him.
No one appeared to defend the house. After searching through the ground floor and finding no one there, he went up a wide staircase to the second story. There he found the room in which Anana had been subjected to the memory-uncoiling. It was as empty of people as the first floor. The third revealed nothing useful except the lights he saw through his gate-detector. So far, he had found gates on every floor, ten in all. Red Orc believed in having many escape routes close at hand.
The “attics,” the twin domes, were entered by trapdoors in the ceiling of the third story. Though he did not expect to find anything significant there, he was wrong. Each dome housed an airboat. If Red Orc failed to get to a gate fast enough, he could use one of these to escape. Kickaha got into the cockpit of one and reacquainted himself with the controls and instruments. Having done that and started the motor, he pushed the button that energized the control mechanism of the dome door. It slid to one side, showing a still-cloudy sky.
The airboat lifted and pointed toward the doorway. He was going to fly back to the Vasquez rocks and regate there to Manathu Vorcyon’s World. Since he was one hundred percent sure that all the gates in the house were trapped, he would take none. He was beginning to feel that Red Orc had guessed that he would break into the house. It was a wonder that the Thoan had not fixed it so that the house would blow up when any unauthorized person entered it.
He pressed down on the acceleration pedal. The craft surged forward, pressing him against the back of the pilot’s chair. He should go slowly until he was out of the dome, but he was in a hurry.
That haste was his undoing. Or maybe it wouldn’t have made any difference.
In any event, when he saw the shimmering, which was a few inches outside the dome-hangar door, it was too late to stop.
He howled, “Trapped!”
The airboat passed through the shimmering curtain, the gate that Red Orc had set to be triggered when the craft approached it.
16
Just as he bulleted through the veil, he pressed two buttons to fire big and powerful “cannon” beamers, one on each side of the nose of the boat. Whatever was waiting for him on the other side was going to be blasted. Metal would melt, and flesh would be a cloud of atoms.
No, they would not. The cannons failed to spit out the ravening beams that destroyed everything in their range.
He should have checked them out before taking off. Red Orc had deactivated them.
Though furious at himself for not testing the beamers, he did what was needed to keep the airboat from slamming into the opposite wall of the gigantic hangar he had shot into. His foot lifted from the acceleration pedal. At the same time, he turned the magnetic retro-fire dial to the full-power position. His body surged forward slightly, but the pressure was so intense he felt crushed. The magnetic restraining field kept him from breaking his chest bones against the steering wheel. Its nosetip almost touching the wall, the boat had stopped.
He slid back the canopy and looked over the side of the cockpit. About fifty feet below was the hangar floor. Parked at the rear of the vast room were two score airboats of different sizes and a zeppelin-shaped and sized vessel. On the floor near the front of the building, a dozen men were aiming their beamers at him. What he had thought was a wall was the upper part of the closed hangar door.
Red Orc walked out of the small doorway near the big one. He stood well back of the armed men and looked up. Though he seemed small at this distance, his voice was loud.
“Bring the boat down slowly, and give yourself up! If you don’t, I’ll detonate the bomb in your boat!”
Kickaha shrugged and then did as ordered. This was most probably the stonewall end of his life. He was sure that the Thoan did not need the Trickster anymore. Besides, his enemy had slipped away from him so slickly so many times that he would no longer chance his doing it again.
But then you never knew about Red Orc, a slippery and unpredictable customer himself.
Kickaha turned off the motor. At the command of the soldiers’ officer, he threw his backpack and weapons out. Red Orc would now have a gate-detector for his own use. He’d be one up in the ever-shifting conflict between himself and his foes, Khruuz and Manathu Vorcyon. Kickaha got out of the cockpit and stood, hands held high, while the officer ran a metal detector over him and patted him down. The officer spoke in Thoan, and Kickaha put his hands behind his back. The officer used a hold-band to secure his wrists together.
A woman walked through the doorway and then stopped by Red Orc’s side. She was beautiful. Her long straight black hair fell past her shoulders. Her dress was a simple red shift; her feet were sandaled.
Kickaha cried, “Anana!”
She looked blankly at him and questioningly at the Thoan.
“She doesn’t know you, Kickaha!” Red Orc said. He put one arm around her. “I haven’t told her about you, but I will. She’ll find out what a vicious and murderous man you are. Not that she’ll be very interested in you.”
Many bad things had been happening to Kickaha. This seemed the worst to him.
Red Orc told the officer to take the prisoner away.
“We’ll see each other soon,” he said. “Our final talk will be, in a sense, our last one.”
In a sense? What did that mean?
Anana was looking straight at him. Her face showed pity for him. But that would soon change to repulsion when the lying Thoan told her what a cowardly backstabbing lowlife he was.
“Don’t believe a word he says about me!” Kickaha shouted at her. “I love you! You loved me once, and you’ll love me again!”
She pressed closer to Red Orc. He put his hand on her breast. Kickaha surged forward but was brought to his knees by a beamer butt slamming the back of his head. Dazed, his head hurting, and with vomit rising, he was marched away. Halfway to the building that would be his prison, he got the dry heaves. But his guards urged him on with kicks.
Even though sick, he observed the land around him and the big building he was headed for. It was in a large clearing surrounded b
y trees. These were growing so closely together that their branches interlocked, moving up and down and sometimes bending around other branches. They looked as if they were feeling each other up. He did not need to be told that they were watchdog trees. Whether or not they just held an escapee or ate him, they were tough obstacles.
The sky was blue and clear except for some very high and thin clouds. The sun was like Earth’s. That meant nothing, because many suns in many worlds looked like the Terrestrial sun. Some were as large as the sun; some, very tiny though they looked large.
The guards were tall blue-eyed men with Dutch-bobbed brown, red, or blond hair. They wore yellow calf-length boots and baggy green knee-length shorts attached to a harnesslike arrangement over their shoulders. Broad leather straps running diagonally across their chests bore metal sunburst badges.
Kickaha had never seen such uniforms before. For all he knew, he could still be on Earth II but in a place distant from the “Los Angeles” area.
The building into which he was conducted was onion-shaped, and its front bore clusters of demonic and snakelike figures locked in combat or copulating.
He was marched between two squads through a vast foyer and then halted before an elevator door. Its door did not open. Instead, the shimmering of a gate appeared, and he and one squad walked through it and into a large elevator cage. It was the only one he had ever seen furnished with a washbowl, its stand, a rack with towels, a toilet, a fully rotatable blower, a shower head, a floor drain, and a chair on which was a roll of blankets. The cage accelerated upward for several stories. When it stopped, he expected the door to slide open. But it lurched sideways and began to move swiftly on the horizontal plane.
Presently, the cage stopped. The squad marched out through a shimmering that had appeared over the doorway. As soon as the last man had left the cage, the gate vanished.
So, the cage was also his prison cell. An hour after entering it, he saw a small section of the wall slide up. A revolving shelf came out of the recess. His meal was on it. Okay. He had been served before in just such a manner. And he had gotten more than once out of what seemed to be an escapeproof chamber.
He did not eat for several hours. Though he had recovered somewhat from the blow on the head, he still felt sick. Most of that, though, was because Anana no longer knew him and might never know him again.
When he had seen her in the huge hangar, her face had looked, in a subtle way, much younger. It was as if, without his realizing it before, every hundred years of her millennia-long life had placed another microscopically thin mask of age on her face. Yet, she had always looked young to him. Not until the memory-uncoiling had taken her back to when she was eighteen years old had the real difference become apparent. Though still aged, she was now unaged. What previously could not be seen had been made visible. And a long-dead innocence had been reborn. Only he, who knew her so well, could have perceived the lifting of the years.
A square section of the wall glowed, shimmered, then became a solid picture. He saw Red Orc, nude, sitting on a chair behind a table. Behind the Thoan, by the opposite wall, was a huge bed.
He lifted a cut-quartz goblet filled with red wine. He said, “A final toast to you, Kickaha. You led me a hot chase and a quite amusing one. To be frank, you also worried me now and then. But you made the hunt more interesting than usual. So, here’s to you, my elusive but now doomed quarry!”
After sipping the wine and setting the goblet down, he leaned back. He looked quite satisfied.
“You did what I could not do during my intermittent searches: you found a way into Zazel’s World. But that was because I was too close to the problem. You were fresh. However, I owe you thanks for what you did for me, and you’re one of the very few I’ve ever felt gratitude toward. In fact, I owe you double thanks.”
He reached out a hand to something Kickaha could not see. When he brought it within vision, it held the gate-detector device.
“I also owe you great gratitude for your gift even though you were not so willing to tender me this. Thank you, again.”
“You call this gratitude?”
“I haven’t killed you, have I?”
He sipped again, then said, “I don’t know what happened to my son, that is, the clone I sent after you into the Caverned World. I suspect that you killed him. You will tell me in every detail what did happen.”
To refuse to tell the Thoan of his experiences there would be useless, even stupid. Red Orc would get it out of him and cause him unendurable pain while doing it. Reluctantly, Kickaha described how he had traveled to the place and what had occurred there. But he did not mention Clifton or Khruuz.
Red Orc looked neither frustrated nor angry. He said, “I believe some of your story, but I’ll wait a while for verification for my son Abalos to return. Whether he does or not, I will get into Zazel’s World in time. I have no doubt that I’ll be able to reactivate it, though it may take a while.”
“Time is what you don’t have. After all, Manathu Vorcyon has come out from her isolation. She is now your great enemy.”
“I was going to tackle her someday anyway.”
Kickaha quoted an ancient Thoan saying. “He who is forced to begin attack before he planned to do so has no plan.”
“It was Elyttria of the Silver Arrows who said, ‘Old sayings are always old but are not always true.’”
Kickaha sat down in the only chair in his room. He grinned, and he said, “Let’s quit trading epigrams. Would you be kind enough to tell me exactly how you intend to proceed against Manathu Vorcyon? After all, I’ll never be able to warn her. And then would you tell me what you’ve got in store for me? I like to be prepared.”
“I will do the latter, though not completely,” Red Orc said. “I’ll not tell you one of the things I plan for you. You can watch me do it.”
The Thoan stood up and called out, “Anana!” Then he said, “From now on, you’ll be able to see what takes place in this room and hear everything. The transmission from your room will be stopped.”
A minute later, Anana, as nude as the Thoan, walked into the room. She went into his arms and kissed him passionately. After which, he led her to the bed.
Kickaha yelled, “No! No!” and struck the screen area with his fist. All he did was to hurt his hand, but he did not mind that. Nevertheless, he used the chair to strike the screen many times. Neither the wall nor the chair was damaged. Then he unrolled the blankets and wrapped them around his head and stuck the ends of his little fingers into his ears. When he did that, the sound volume was raised so high that he could hear everything.
He screamed to drown out the noises until his throat was too hoarse to continue. After a long time, the sounds ceased. He came out from under his covers to look at the screen. It was now silent and blank. He croaked a sound of relief. But his mind was still displaying the images and voicing the noises.
Suddenly, the area glowed, shimmered, and became a picture. This one was a replay. Evidently, Red Orc was going to run it and, probably, future scenes over and over again until Kickaha went berserk or withdrew into himself.
He gritted his teeth, pulled up his chair to face the wall, and, mask-faced, stared at the images. He did not know if he could concentrate enough to summon up certain mental techniques he had learned a long time ago. While living with the Hrowakas, the Bear People, on the Amerind level of the tiered planet, he had mastered a psychological procedure taught by a shaman. Many years had passed since then. Despite this, he had not forgotten the methods any more than he had forgotten how to swim. They were embedded in his mind and nerves.
Doing them with the needed concentration was the main problem now. It was not easy. He failed after starting them seven times. Then he grimly focused on the movie and did not quit that until hours later. If Red Orc was watching him—he undoubtedly was—he would be puzzled by his prisoner’s attitude.
Seeing the film over and over hurt Kickaha as he had never been hurt before. Tears flowed; his chest seemed to b
e a cavern filled with boiling lead. But he would not quit. After a while, his pain began to ooze away. Later, he became bored. He had attained enough objectivity to see the film as a pornographic show in which the characters were strangers. He felt as if his only punishment was to be doomed to watch the same movie over and over forever.
Now, he was able to start the internal ritual. This time, he succeeded. The screen area suddenly disappeared. Though it was still there to see and to hear, he no longer saw nor heard it. He had shut it out.
He thought, Absakosaw, wise old medicine man! I owe you much. But he could never repay Absakosaw. He and his tribe had been slain by one of Kickaha’s enemies. Kickaha had killed their killer, but revenge did not make the Bear People rise from the dead.
Three days passed. The screen area remained blank. On the morning of the fourth day, it came alive. This time, the scene was a different bedroom but with the same actors. It was obvious that Anana was deeply in love with Red Orc. But then she had always been lusty, and she had no reason she knew of to hate the Lord. Nor did she know, of course, that she was being observed.
Either this transmission was a new one or Red Orc had figured out why Kickaha never paid attention to the film. In any event, it was getting through to Kickaha in more than one way. Again, he sat for hours staring at the wall until he was bored. After this, he used Abakosaw’s system. When he rose from the chair, he saw only the wall. However, occasional images from the film would pierce his mind. He might be worn down eventually and be unable to make the blanking-out work.
The fifth day, while he was exercising vigorously, he heard the Thoan’s voice. He turned. The screen was active. But it did not display the scenes that had driven him close to insanity. Red Orc’s head and shoulders filled the screen. That confused Kickaha for a few seconds until he realized what had happened. Only the films were blocked from his mind, and he would receive anything else coming from the wall.
Red Orc said, “You are elusive in more ways than the physical. I’d ask you to teach me your technique, but I have my own. And I could get you to tell me that without rewarding you with a month or so free of mental torture. I’m sure that you have held certain items of information back from me. You’ve been pleased, perhaps smug, because you’ve done this. You’re going to go to sleep now. When you wake up, I’ll know everything you know. Know, at least, those items you’ve been keeping from me.”
The World of Tiers Volume Two: Behind the Walls of Terra, the Lavalite World, Red Orc's Rage, and More Than Fire Page 88
