The Gates of Creation

by Philip José Farmer

  The tentacle doubled up on itself, looped, and went around him. He released the tip, turned, and grabbed the tentacle about twelve inches back from its tip. He began to saw at the skin with the knife, which went through fairly easy. The tentacle abandoned its efforts to wrap itself around him and began to pull back. He kept hold with one hand and continued to cut. The water became darker as he was carried back under the edge. Then, the knife was through, and he was swimming back up with the severed part in his teeth.

  He heaved the tentacle up on shore and was beginning to pull himself out when he felt something enfold his right foot. He looked down at a mouth on the end of another tentacle. The mouth was toothless but strong enough to keep its grip on his foot. He clung with his arms on the edge and gasped, "Help me!"

  Theotormon took a few steps towards him on his rubbery legs and then halted. Vala looked down at the thing and smiled. Luvah snatched the broken sword from her scabbard and went into the water. At that, Vala laughed, and she followed Luvah in. She came back up, took Wolff's dagger, and dived back down. She and Luvah went to work on the tentacle a few feet from the mouth. The shaft parted; Wolff pulled himself on out with the amputated mouth-part still ensocked on his foot.

  The two pieces of flesh could be eaten only after being pounded against the treetrunk to tenderize them. Even then, eating them was almost like chewing on rubber. But it was more food in the stomach.

  Afterwards, they advanced gingerly over the plain. At the point by the first butte where the hairs began to cluster thickly, they halted. Now they could see their goal. A half-mile away, on top of a tall butte, was the pair of golden hexagons.

  Wolff had picked up the branch that Vala's fall had broken off. He threw this hard as he could and watched it come down in the hairs. The whole area reacted at once and far more violently than the less haired area. The skin stormed.

  "Oh, Los!" Ariston said. "We're done for! We could never get across that." He shook his fist at the sky and shouted, "You, our father! I hate you! I loathe you, and abominate the day that you jetted me from your foul loins! You may think you have us where you want us! But, by Los and crooked Enitharmon, I swear that we'll get to you yet!"

  "That's the spirit," Wolff said. "For a moment, I thought you were going to whine like a sick dog. Tell the old bastard off! He can probably hear you."

  Ariston, breathing hard, fists still clenched, said, "Brave enough talk. But I still would like to know what to do."

  Wolff said to the others, "Any ideas?"

  They shook their heads. He said, "Where is all the diabolical cleverness and weasel agility of mind that the children of Urizen are supposed to have? I've heard tales of each one of you, of how you have assailed the stronghold of many a Lord and by your wits and powers have taken his universe from him. What is the matter now?"

  Vala said, "They were brave enough and clever enough when they had their weapons. But I think they're still recovering from the shock of being taken so easily by our father. And of being deprived of their devices. Without those, they lose that which made them Lords. Now, they're only men, and pretty sorry men at that."

  "We're so tired," Rintrah said. "My muscles ache and burn. They sag as if I were on a heavy planet."

  "Muscles!" Wolff said. "Muscles!"

  He led them back to the tree. Despite the flame in his back every time he pulled on a branch-agony from the talon-wounds-he worked with a will. The other Lords helped him, and each soon had a bundle of branches in his arms. They returned to the rim of the overgrown area and here began to cast the sticks as far out into the feelers as they could. They did not do it all at once but spaced their throws. The skin reared up like a sea in a hurricane. Waves, craters, wavelets coursed back and forth.

  But as the skin continued to be activated, its ragings became less. Near the end of the supply of branches, it began to react feebly. The last stick got no more than a shallow hole and a weak and quickly subsiding wave.

  Wolff said, "It's tired now. Its rate of recovery may be very swift, however. So I suggest we get going now."

  He led the way, walking swiftly. The skin quivered and humped up in response to the warnings from the feelers and broad three-or-four-inch deep holes appeared. Wolff skirted them, then decided he should trot. He did not stop until he had reached the foot of the butte. This, like the first they had passed, seemed to be an excrescence, a huge wart on the skin. Though its sides rose perpendicularly, it was wrinkled enough to give hand and footholds. The ascent was not easy but was not impossible. They all got to the top without mishap.

  Wolff said, "Yours is the honor again, Vala. Which gate?"

  Ariston said, "She hasn't done very well so far. Why let her pick it?"

  Vala turned on him like a tigress. "Brother, if you think you can do any better, you choose! But you should show your confidence in yourself by being the first to go through the gate!"

  Ariston stepped back and said, "Very well. No use breaking with the custom."

  Vala said, "So it's a custom now! Well, I choose the left one.”

  Wolff did not hesitate. Although he felt that this time he might find himself, weak and weaponless, in Urizen's fortress, he stepped through.

  For a moment, he could not understand where he was or what was happening, he was so dizzy and the objects that hurtled above him were so strange.

  XIII

  HE WAS ON A HUGE GRAY METALLIC CYLINDER THAT WAS ROTATING swiftly. Above him, on both sides, and also coming into view as the cylinder whirled, were other gray cylinders. The sky behind them was a pale pink.

  Between each pair of cylinders were three glowing beams of mauve light. These began about ten feet from the ends of the cylinders and from the middle. Every now and then, colored lights burst along the lengths of the beams and ran up and down them. Red, orange, black, white, purple, they burst like Very lights and then bobbed along the beams as if jerked along by an invisible cord. When they came to a point about twelve feet from the cylinders, they flared brightly and quickly died out.

  Wolff closed his eyes to fight off the dizziness and the sickness. When he opened them again, he saw that the others had come through the gates. Ariston and Tharmas fell to the surface and clung as tightly as they could. Theotormon sat down as if he feared the spinning would send him scooting across the metal or perhaps might hurl him out into the space between the cylinders. Only Vala seemed not to be affected. She was smiling, although it could have been a mere show of courage.

  If so, she was to be admired for achieving even this.

  Wolff studied the environment as best he could. The cylinders were all about the size of skyscrapers.

  Wolff did not understand why they were not all spun off immediately by centrifugal force. Surely, these bodies could not have much gravity.

  Yet, they did.

  Perhaps-no perhaps-Urizen had set up a balance of forces which enabled objects with such strong gravities to keep from falling on each other. Perhaps the colored lights that ran along the beams were manifestations of the continual rebalancing of whatever statics and dynamics were being used to maintain the small but Earth-heavy bodies.

  Wolff did not know anything except that the science that the Lords had inherited was far beyond that which Terrestrials knew.

  There must be thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of these cylinders. They were about a mile apart from each other, spinning on their own axes and also shifting slowly about each other in an intricate dance.

  From a distance, Wolff thought, the separate bodies would look like one solid bulk. This must be one of the planets he had observed from the waterworld.

  There was one advantage to their predicament. On a world as tiny as this one, they would not have to go far to find the next set of gates. But it did not seem likely that Urizen would make things so easy for them.

  Wolff stepped back to the gate and tried to reenter it. As he had expected, it only permitted him to step through the frame and back onto the cylinder. He turned and tested its oth
er side, only to find that equally unfruitful. Then he set out to look for the gates by walking around the circumference. And when he had gotten less than halfway around, he saw the two hexagons.

  These were at one end and hung a few inches above the surface, the pale sky gleaming pinkly between the lower frame and the cylinder surface. With the others, he began to talk towards it. He kept his eyes on the gates and tried not to see the whirling shifting objects around him.

  Wolff was in the lead and so was the first to notice the unexpected behavior of the twin hexagons. As he came within fifty feet of them, they began to move away. He increased his pace; the gates did not maintain quite the same distance. When he broke into a run, they went more swiftly but still he gained a little. He stopped; the gates stopped. He made a dash at them, only to see them start off just as quickly. As he stepped up his speed, he gained on them.

  The other Lords were behind him. Their feet slapped on the metallic surface, and their gaspings whistled through the atmosphere. Wolff stopped again. The gates halted. The other Lords, except Vala, gathered around him and babbled.

  "Los! First he starves us to death. . . then runs us to death."

  Wolff waited until he had recovered his breath, then said, "I think they can be caught. They began to slow down in their speed as I went faster. It's a proportional decrease. But I don't think I can go quickly enough and long enough to catch them. Who's the fastest here?"

  Luvah said, "I could always beat the rest of you in a foot race. But now I am so tired and weak. . ."

  "Try," Wolff said.

  Luvah grinned uncertainly at him and inched towards the gates. Hovering, they moved away. He broke into a dash and presently was gone around the curve of the cylinder out of their sight. Wolff turned and ran in the opposite direction. After him came Vala. The dizzyingly close horizon jumped at him; he sped on and then he saw Luvah and the gates. Luvah was now within ten feet of them, but he was slowing down. And as his legs refused to move as he wished and his breath burned out of his lungs, the gates drew away.

  Wolff came up behind the gates. When he was as close to them as Luvah, the gates slipped sideways, like wet soap between two hands. Vala came in at an angle towards them, but they veered off. The panting Lords stopped, forming three corners of a square with the gates at the remaining comer,

  "Where are the others?" Wolff said.

  Luvah jerked a thumb. Wolff looked around to see them straggling around the curve of this minute world. He called to them, his voice sounding eerie in the strangely propertied atmosphere. Luvah started to go forward but stopped at Wolff's order.

  Ariston, Tharmas, Rintrah, and Theotormon spread out. Under Wolff’s directions, they formed a pentagon with the gates at the ends of two legs of the figure. Then all began to close in on their quarry. They kept the same distance between them and advanced at the same pace. The gates oscillated back and forth but made no break.

  With two minutes of slow and patient closing in, the Lords were able to seize half of the frames. This time, Wolff did not bother to ask Vala which exit they should take. He went through the left.

  The others came through on his heels and their look of dismay reflected his. They were on another cylinder, and down at the end was another pair of hexagons.

  Again, they went through the tiring chase and the boxing in. Again, they stepped through a frame, the one to the right this time. Again, they were on another cylinder.

  This occurred five tunes. The Lords looked at each other with fatigue-reddened and exhaustion-circled eyes. Their legs trembled, and their chests ached. They were covered with sweat and were as dry within as a Saharan wind. They could hardly keep their grips on the hexagons.

  "We can't go on much longer," Rintrah said.

  "Don't be so obvious," Vala said. "Try to say something original once in a while."

  "Very well. I'm thirsty enough to drink your blood. And I may if I don't get a drink of water soon."

  Vala laughed. "If you come close enough, I'll broach you with this sword. Your blood may be thin and ill-smelling, but at least it should be wet enough."

  Wolff said, "Somehow, we always seem to take the gate that leads us everywhere but to Urizen. Perhaps we should split up this time. At least some might get to our father."

  The others argued about this, Vala and Luvah only abstaining. Finally, Wolff said, "I'm going through one gate with Vala and Luvah. The rest of you will go through the other. That's that."

  "Why Vala and Luvah?" Theotormon said. He was squinting suspiciously, and his voice had a faint whine. "Why them? Do you three know something we don't? Are you planning on deserting us?"

  "I'm taking Luvah because he's the only one I can trust-I think," Wolff said. "And Vala is, as she's pointed out more than enough times, the best man among you."

  He left them squabbling and, with his sister and Luvah, went through the left gate. A few minutes later, the others came through. They looked bewildered on seeing Wolff, Luvah, and Vala.

  "But we went through the right-hand gate," Rintrah said.

  Vala laughed and said, "Our father has played us another grim jest. Both gates of a pair lead to the same cylinder. I suspect that they all will."

  "He's not playing fair!" Ariston said. At this, Wolff and Luvah laughed, and presently the others, Ariston excepted, had joined him in his mirth.

  When the howling-which had a note of despair in it-had died, Wolff said, "I may be wrong. But I think that every one of these thousands of cylinders in this-this birling world-has a set of gates. And if we continue the same behavior, we'll go through every one of them. Only we'll die before we get a fraction of the way. We must think of something new."

  There was a silence. They sat or lay on the hard gray shiny metal while they whirled around, the cylinders above them rotated about each other in a soundless and intricate saraband, and the twin hexagons at the end hovered and seemed to mock.

  Finally, Vala said, "I do not think that we have been left without a way out. It would not be like our father to stop the game while we still have an atom of breath and of fight in us. He would want to drag out the agony until we broke. And I'm sure that he plans on allowing us eventually to find the gate that will conduct us into his stronghold. He must be planning some choice receptions for us, and he would be disappointed if he could not use them.

  "So, I think that we have not been using our wits. Obviously, these gates lead only to other sets on other cylinders. That is, they do if we go through the regular way, through the side which is set with jewels. But what if the gates are bipolar? What if the other side would take us where we want to go?"

  Wolff said, "I tested the other side when we first came through." "Yes, you tested the initial gate. But have you tested any of the double gates?"

  Wolff shook his head and said, "Exhaustion and thirst are robbing me of my wits. I should have thought of that. After all, it's the only thing left to try."

  "Then, let's up and at them," Vala said. "Summon your strength; this may be our exit from this cursed birling world."

  Once more, they corraled the twin hexagons and seized them. Vala was the first to go through the side opposite the gem-set side. She disappeared, and Wolff followed her. On coming through and seeing another cylinder, he felt his spirits dissipate like wine in a vacuum. Then he saw the gate at the end and knew that they had taken the correct route.

  There was only one golden hexagon. It, too, hovered a few inches above the surface. But it spun on its axis, around and around, completing a cycle every second and a half.

  The others came through and cursed when they realized that they were still on a birling. But when they saw the single rotating gate, some brightened up; others sagged at the thought of facing a new peril.

  "Why does it whirl?" Ariston said weakly.

  "I really can't say, brother," Vala said. "But, knowing Father, I would suspect that the gate has only one safe side. That is, if we choose the right side, we'll go through unharmed. But if we take the wrong side
. . . You'll observe that neither side has jewels; both are bare. So there's no way of distinguishing one side from another."

  "I am so weary I do not care," Ariston said. "I would welcome death. To sleep forever, free of this agony of body and mind, that is all I desire."

  "If you really feel that way," Vala said, "then you should be the first to test the gate."

  Wolff said nothing, but the others added their voices to Vala's urgings. Ariston did not seem so eager to die now; he objected, saying that he was not fool enough to sacrifice himself for them.