World of Tiers 05 - The Lavalite World

by Farmer, Phillip Jose

  "All we have to do is to jump off and then float down," he said. "But I don't relish the idea of spending the rest of my life on that miserable world. It's better than being dead, but not by much."

  There were probably a thousand, maybe two thousand gates in the walls and on the floors and possibly on the ceilings. Without the codewords to activate them, they could neither locate nor use them.

  They wondered where the wallpanel was which the Englishman had used to get away from Red Ore. To search for it would take more time than they had. Then Kickaha thought of asking the robots, One and Two, if they had witnessed his

  escape. To his delight, both had. They led the humans to it. Kickaha pushed in on the panel and saw a metal chute leading downward some distance, then curving.

  "Here goes nothing," he said to Anana. He jumped into it sitting up and slid down and around and was shot into a narrow dimly lit hall. He yelled back up the chute to her and told her he was going on. But he was quickly stopped by a dead end.

  After tapping and probing around, he went back to the chute and, bracing himself against the sides, climbed back up.

  "Either there's another panel I couldn't locate or there's a gate in the end of the hall," he told her.

  They sent the robots to the supply room to get a drill and hammers. Though the drills wouldn't work on the material enclosing the control room, they might work on the plastic composing the walls of the hidden hall. After the robots returned, Kickaha and Anana went down the chute with them and bored holes into the walls. After making a circle of many perforations, he knocked the circle through with a sledgehammer.

  Light streamed out through it. He caustiously looked within. He gasped.

  "Well, I'll be swoggled! Red Ore!"

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  IN THE MIDDLE of a large bare room was a transparent cube about twelve feet long. A chair, a narrow bed, and a small red box on the floor by a wall shared the cube with its human occupant, Ore. Kickaha noted that a large pipe ran from the base of the wall of the room to the cube, penetrated the transparent material, and ended in the red box. Presumably, this furnished water and perhaps a semiliquid type of food. A smaller pipe within the large one must provide air.

  Red Ore was sitting on the chair before the table, his profile to the watchers through the hole. Evidently, the cube was soundproof, since he had not heard the drilling or pounding. The Horn and a beamer lay on the table before him. From this Kickaha surmised that the cube was invulnerable to the beamer's rays.

  Red Ore, once the secret Lord of the Two Earths, looked as dejected as a man could be. No wonder. He had stepped through a gate in the control room, expecting to enter another universe, possessing the Horn, the Lords' greatest treasure, and leaving behind him two of his worst enemies to die. But Urthona had prepared his trap well, and Red Ore had been gated to this prison instead of to freedom.

  As far as he knew, no one was aware that he was locked in this room. He was doubtless contemplating how long it would be before the palace fell to

  Urthona's world and he perished in the smash, caught in his own trap.

  Kickaha and Anana cut a larger hole in the wall for entrance. During this procedure, Ore saw them. He rose up from his chair and stared from a pale-gray face. He could expect no mercy. The only change in his situation was that he would die sooner.

  His niece and her lover were not so sure that anything had been changed. If he couldn't cut his way out of the cube, they couldn't cut their way in. Especially when they didn't have a beamer. But the pipe which was Ore's life supply was of copper. After the robots got some more tools, Kickaha slicked off the copper at the junction with the impervium which projected outside the cube.

  This left an opening through which Ore could still get air and also could communicate. Kickaha and Anana did not place themselves directly before the hole, though. Ore might shoot them through it.

  Kickaha said, "The rules of the game have been changed, Ore. You need us, and we need you. If you cooperate, I promise to let you go wherever you want to, alive and unharmed. If you don't, you'll die. We might die, too, but what good will that do you?"

  "I can't trust you to keep your word," Ore said sullenly.

  "If that's the way you want it, so be it. But Anana and I aren't going to be killed. We're having parachutes made. That means we'll be marooned here, but at least we'll be alive."

  "Parachutes?" Ore said. It was evident from his expression that he had not thought of their making them.

  "Yeah. There's an old American saying that there's more than one way to skin a cat. And I'm a cat-skinner par excellence. Anana and I are going to figure a way out of this mess. But we need information from you. Now, do you want to give it to us and maybe live? Or do you want to sulk like a spoiled child and die?"

  Ore gritted his teeth, then said, "Very well. What do you want?"

  "A complete description of what happened when you gated from the control chamber to this trap. And anything that might be relevant."

  Ore told how he had checked out the immense room and its hundreds of controls. His task had been considerably speeded up by questioning robots One and Two. Then he had found out how to open several gates. He had done so cautiously and before activating them himself he had ordered the robots to do so. Thus, if they were trapped, they would be the victims.

  One gate apparently had access to the gates enclosed in various boulders scattered over the planet below. Urthona must have had some means of identifying these. He would have been hoping that, while roaming the planet with the others, he would recognize one. Then, with a simple codeword or two, he would have transported himself to the palace. But Urthona hadn't had any luck.

  Ore identified three gates to other worlds. One was to Jadawin's, one to Earth I, and one to dead Urizen's. There were other gates, but Ore hadn't wanted to activate them. He didn't want to push his luck. So far, he hadn't set off any traps. Besides, the gate to Earth I was the one he wanted.

  Having made sure that his escape routes were open, Ore had then had the robots, One and Two, seal the control room.

  "So you had our torments all fixed up ahead of time?" Anana said.

  "Why not?" Ore said. "Wouldn't you have done the same to me?"

  "At one time I would have. Actually, you did us a favor by letting us loose so we could savor the terrors of the fall. But you didn't mean to, I'm sure."

  "He did himself a favor, too," Kickaha said.

  Ore had then activated the gate to Earth I. He had stepped through the hole between the universes, fully expecting to emerge in a cave. He could see through its entrance a valley and a wooded mountain range beyond. He thought that it was possibly the same cave through which Kickaha and Anana had gone in southern California.

  But Urthona had set up a simulacrum to lull the unwary. To strengthen its impression, Urthona had also programmed the robots in case a crafty Lord wanted to use the gate. At least, Red Ore supposed he had done so. Ore had ordered the robot called Six to walk through first. Six had done so, had traveled through the cave, stepped outside, looked around, then had returned through the gate.

  Satisfied, Ore had ordered the robots, One and Two, to seal up the control room door with impervium flux. Then he had stepped through.

  "Apparently," Ore said, "that wily shagg (a sort of polecat) had counted on the robot being used as a sacrifice. So he had arranged it that the robot would not be affected."

  "Urthona always was a sneaky one," Anana said. "But he had depended on his technological defenses too long. Thrown on his own resources, he was not the man he should have been."

  She paused, then added, "Just like you, uncle."

  "I haven't done so badly," he said, his face red.

  Kickaha and Anana burst out laughing.

  "No," she said. "Of course not. Just look where you are."

  Ore had been whisked away when he was only a few feet from leaving the cave or what he thought was a cave. The next second he was standing in the cube.

>   Kickaha drew Anana to a corner of the room to confer quietly. "Somehow, that mysterious Englishman discovered a gateway to another universe in the wall at the end of the corridor," he said. "Maybe he had found Urthona's codebook. Anyway, where one can go through, others can. And the Horn can get us through. But we can't get to the Horn.

  "Now, what's to prevent us from getting Ore to blow the notes for us? Then we can make a recording of it and use it to open the gate."

  Anana shook her head. "It doesn't work that way. It's been tried before, it's so obvious. But there's something in the machinery in the Horn that adds an element missing in recordings."

  "I was afraid of that," he said. "But I had to ask. Look, Anana. Urthona must have planted gates all over this place. We've probably passed dozens without knowing it because they are inside the walls. Logically, many if not most of them will be quick emergency routes from one place in this building to another. So Urthona could outsmart anyone who was close on his heels.

  "But there have to be a few which would gate him to another world. Only to be used in cases of direst emergency. One of them is the gate at the end of the corridor next door. I think ..."

  "Not necessarily," Anana said. "For all we know, it leads to the control room or some other place in the palace."

  "No. In that case, the sensors would have shown Ore that the Englishman was in the palace."

  "No. Urthona might have set up places without sensors where he could hide if an enemy had possession of the control room."

  "I'm the Number One trickster, but sometimes I think you sneaky Lords put me to shame. Okay. Just a minute. Let me ask Ore a question." He went to the cube. The Lord, looking very suspicious, said, "What are you two up to now?"

  "Nothing that won't help you," Kickaha said, grinning. "We just don't want you to get a chance to get the drop on us. Tell me. Did the sensor displays in the control room indicate that there were hidden auxiliary sensor systems?"

  "Why would you want to know?"

  "Damn it!" Kickaha said. "You're wasting our time. Remember, I have to spring you if only to get the Horn."

  Hesitantly, Ore said. "Yes, there are hidden auxiliary systems. It took me some time to find them. Actually, I wasn't looking for them. I discovered them while I was looking for something else. I checked them out and noted that they were in rooms not covered by the main system. But since nobody was using them, I assumed that no one was in them. It was inconceivable that anyone in a room where they were wouldn't be trying to find out where I was."

  "I hope your memory's good. Where are they?"

  "My memory is superb," Ore said stiffly. "I am not one of you sub-beings."

  Kickaha grimaced. The Lords had the most sensitive and gangrenous egos he'd ever encountered. A good thing for him, though. He'd never have survived his conflicts with them if they hadn't always used part of their minds to feed their own egos. They were never really capable of one hundred percent mental concentration.

  Well, he, Kickaha, had a big ego, too. But a healthy one.

  The Lord remembered only a few of the locations of the auxiliary sensor systems. He couldn't be blamed for that since there were so many. But he was able to give Kickaha directions to three of them. He also gave him some instructions on how to operate them.

  Just to make sure he hadn't been neglecting another source of information, Kickaha asked robots One and Two about the sensors. They were aware of only that in the control room. Urthona had not trusted them with any more data than he thought necessary for his comfort and protection.

  Kickaha thought that if he had been master of this palace, he would have installed a safety measure in the robots. When asked certain questions, they would have refused to answer them. Or pretended that they didn't know.

  Which, now that he thought about it, might be just what was happening. But they'd given him data that Urthona might not want his enemies to have. So possibly, they were not lying.

  He took One with him, leaving Anana to keep an eye on her uncle. It wasn't likely that he'd be going any place or doing anything worth noticing. But you never knew.

  The hidden system console was in a room behind a wall in a much larger room on the tenth floor. Lacking the codeword to gate through, he and One tore part of the wall down. He turned on the console and, with One's aid, checked out the entire building. It was done swiftly, the glowing diagrams of the rooms flashing by too swiftly on the screen for Kickaha to see anything but a blur. But a computer in One's body sorted them out.

  When the operation was complete, One said, "There are one hundred and ten chambers which the sensors do not monitor."

  Kickaha groaned and said. "You mean we'd have to get into all of them to make sure no living being is in one of them?"

  "That is one method."

  "What's the other?"

  "This system can monitor the control chamber. It's controlled by that switch there." One pointed. "That also enables the operator to hook into the control-room sensories. These can be used to look into the one hundred and ten chambers. The man named Ore did not know that. The switch is not on the panel in the control room however. It is under the panel and labeled as an energy generator control. Only the master knew about it."

  "Then how did you come to know about it?"

  "I learned about it while I was scanning the displays here."

  "Then why didn't you tell me?"

  "You didn't ask me."

  Kickaha repressed another groan. The robots were so smart yet so dumb.

  "Connect this system with the control room's."

  "Yes, master."

  One strode ponderously to the control board and turned a switch marked, in Lord letters: HEAT. Heat for what? Obviously, it was so designated to make any unauthorized operator ignore it. Immediately, lights began pulsing here and there, a switch turned by itself, and one of the large video screens above the panel came to life.

  Kickaha looked into the room from a unit apparently high on the wall and pointing downward. It was directed toward the central chair in a row of five or six before the wide panel. In this sat a man with his back to Kickaha.

  For a second he thought that it must be the Englishman who had helped Ore. But this man was bigger than the one described by Ore, and his hair was not brown but yellow.

  He was looking at a video screen just above him. It showed Kickaha and the robot behind him, looking at the man.

  The operator rose with a howl of fury, spun out of his chair, and shook his fist at the unit receiving his image.

  He was Urthona.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  THE LORD WAS clad only in a ragged skin bound around his waist. A longitudinal depression, the scan from the axe wound, ran down the center of his chest. His hair fell over his shoulders to his nipples. His skin was smeared with the oily dirt of his world, and a bump on his forehead indicated a hard contact with some harder object. Moreover, his nose had been broken.

  Kickaha was shocked for a few seconds, then he went into action. He ran toward the switch to turn it off. Urthona's voice screamed through the video. "One! Kill him! Kill him!"

  "Kill who, master?" One said calmly.

  "You blithering metal idiot! That man! Kickaha!"

  Kickaha turned the switch and whirled. The robot was advancing on him, its arms out, fingers half-clenched.

  Kickaha drew his knife. Shockingly, Urthona's voice came out of the robot's unmoving lips. "I see you, you leblabbiy! I'm going to kill you!"

  For a second Kickaha didn't know what was happening. Then illumination came. Urthona had switched on a transceiver inside the robot's body and was speaking through it. Probably, he was also watching his victim-to-be through One's eyes.

  That had one advantage for Kickaha. As long as Urthona was watching the conflict from the control room, he wasn't gating here.

  Kickaha leaped toward the robot, stopped, jumped back, slashed with his knife with no purpose but to test the speed of One's reaction. The robot made no attempt to parry with his
arm or grab the knife, however. He continued walking toward Kickaha.

  Kickaha leaped past One and his blade flickered in and out. Score one. The point had broken the shield painted to look like a human eyeball. But had it destroyed the video sensor behind it?

  No time to find out. He came in again, this time on the left side. The robot was still turning when the knife shattered the other eyeball.

  By now Kickaha knew that One wasn't quick enough for him. It undoubtedly was far stronger, but here swiftness was the key to victory. He ran around behind One and stopped. The robot continued on its path. It had to be blinded, which meant that Urthona would know this and would at once take some other action.