The World of Tiers, Volume 2

by Philip José Farmer

That depended, just now, on how much blood he was going to lose. Also, if he survived that, how far he could walk while looking for food and then the gate. Unless, that is, the gate was nearby. He doubted that it would be.

  Los had said that the gate in Anthema would lead back to Orc’s native world. He had lied. There was no such place as this on or in that planet.

  Orc crawled out onto the tunnel floor, which was a few inches above the surface of the stream. The agony would come back when he got warm again, but he could no longer stand the cold. He wished he had cloths, anything, to bandage his wounds.

  He saw the front half of Ijim’s body. It was lying facedown. Orc, when coming through the gate, had landed on it and skidded on the organs and blood.

  Orc was wearing a skin loincloth and a belt with a sheath and a flint knife therein. All the other weapons and the food supply bag had been left behind. He walked on his toes, wincing at every step, and stripped the half-corpse of its severed loincloth and belt and a knife. This was now a half-knife, since the ray had cut it longitudinally, but it might be useful.

  With his own knife, he pried off pieces of the green stuff growing on the wall. Beneath them were small tubes projecting from the crystal. It seemed to him that these might be conduits which fed the plants. When he saw some yellow liquid starting to ooze from the tips of the tubes, he thought that his idea could be correct.

  He wrung the fluid out of the plants, which felt like thick wet moss. He decided to call it omuthid, Thoan for moss, and placed pieces of it on the wounds. That made him wince, but they stuck to his skin as if they contained glue. The flow of blood was stanched. Then he ate a small bite of another piece of omuthid stripped from the wall. It was rich with fluid, easily chewed, and tasted like caramel mixed with raw broccoli. Though it might be poisonous, he did not care. Not at this moment, anyway. If he did not get sick from this piece, he would eat more of it later.

  What was left of Ijim’s body could be a protein supply, for a while, anyway. If Orc had not known the Lord so well, he might have eaten him. But, though he felt that he might regret doing it, he shoved the half-corpse into the stream, which carried it away.

  He would be stuck in this area until his wounds healed enough for him to walk easily. Normally, three days would do it. Meanwhile, he would eat, sleep, drink water, and hope that no predator came along. He had no way to estimate the time except by his sleeping requirements. It seemed to him that roughly three days had passed since he had been here. During this period, he explored, mostly on tiptoes, a quarter mile each way. He found nothing that he had not seen near the gate. He also investigated this. The square of metal looked the same on this side as it did on the other. He made a rope of the omuthid and threw one end through the gate. The part that went through the gate was cut off.

  Because of the wounds, he had to sleep on his face on the hard crystalline floor. Unfortunately, he rolled and turned then, and he awoke often and painfully. The only good thing about his situation was that the temperature remained comfortable. Also, the air did not become stale but moved slowly through the tunnel.

  Each “day,” after awakening, he removed the omuthid patches from the wounds and replaced them with fresh pads. They came off as if they were indeed glued. The wounds were healing, but the areas of skin covered by the patches were pricked with many red dots. They looked as if the omuthid had applied tiny suckers to the skin, and the green stuff had a distinct reddish underlay. At the end of the three days, he concluded that the omuthid was sucking his blood, though not in large quantities. He was not as strong as when he had entered this world. Of course, his diet might be lacking in vitamins and minerals.

  Nevertheless, he could walk without too much pain, and he could sit down for several minutes before he had to remove his buttocks from pressure. After another sleep, he set out upstream as instinctively as a salmon seeking its hatching place. The tunnel ran straight for an estimated twenty miles, which he traversed after sleeping only once. The light stayed steady, as it had done since he had been here. The tunnel was silent except for the drumming of his blood in his ears. To get rid of that, he began talking to himself and also sang often.

  The feeling of loneliness and the thought that he might be here until he died kept him company. It was not the sort of company he cared for.

  Finally, he came to a fork in the tunnel. At the base of the wall between the two tunnels was a bubbling pool. Along one side of each of the forks was a shallow trough through which water ran. These emptied into the pool, but the bubbling and the swirling in it indicated that it was also fed by a spring.

  Orc took the tunnel to his right. After a while, it widened and became as big as that which he had left. He trudged on, singing a song his mother had taught him when he was a child. Suddenly, he stopped, and he turned to face the left-side wall. Something flickering along the wall, halfway down its height, had caught his eye.

  Whatever it was had ceased, but he kept his head turned toward the wall while he walked on. Then, he stopped again. His brain had not been playing tricks on him, not unless he had gone crazy from solitude. A series of large black figures, symbols, perhaps, moved in a rather speedy parade along the wall. They came from behind him and traveled ahead of him until he could no longer see them.

  They ceased for a few minutes. Or perhaps it was for an hour. Orc had lost his sense of time. Only when he counted the seconds and the minutes could he be sure of its passage.

  Suddenly, the first of a series of the symbols, many of them repeated in different combinations, sped along on the wall. Parts of them were obscured when they passed beneath the omuthid and knobs. After several hundreds had sped by, they stopped. Orc resumed walking. Some time later, another series began. Orc counted the seconds then. The train took thirty-one to pass him.

  If they made a message, its transmission was slow. But he was quickened by it. No natural process could produce such distinct and differentiated figures in an obviously artificial order.

  Some minutes later, another string of the same symbols, repeated in the same arrangement, shot by. After that, the wall was blank.

  Orc hastened onward. The tunnel curved gradually to the right until it seemed to be going at right angles to its original direction. When he got very tired, he stopped and ate. By now, he was sick of the taste of caramel-cum-broccoli.

  Jim Grimson was as fed up as Orc with the omuthid. When the Lord ate it, Jim ate it. Orc’s problems were also Jim’s. But Jim had others, too. The ghostbrain, his shadowy cotenant, seemed to be getting larger. Now that Orc was just sitting and chewing, no emotions raging in him, though his mind was active, he was in a relatively quiescent state. Thus, Jim was able to concentrate on his own thoughts and act as he wished. But he was still half Orc and likely, when his host was aroused or irate, to be slammed back into a near-Orc persona.

  Jim “moved” closer to the ghostbrain. It “retreated.” There could be no movement in the physical sense, just as there could be no “seeing” or “hearing” or “touching” by beings without limbs or sensory organs. Jim “knew,” however, that he had advanced and that the ghostbrain had backed away.

  He continued to go toward the thing. It kept on moving away. Was it afraid of him? Perhaps Jim was dangerous to it. If that was so, he would have to find out how it could be attacked. Easy to say; hard to do.

  Orc slept, ate with little appetite, and started walking again. Presently, the tunnel opened into a vast glittering cavern. The growths furnishing the light were far more numerous per square foot and larger than those in the tunnels. Also—what a delight—there was sound! Many small birds or animals lived among various plants and twittered, squealed, trumpeted, and cawed.

  The creatures looked as if Tenniel had been on LSD when he had illustrated Alice in Wonderland. Or as if they had been designed by a deity whose own god was Euclid. They were many-angled, some of them long-legged cubes or nonahedrons on wheels, their skins spotted with triangles, circles, squares, and crosses.

  The pla
nts looked as if they were part crystal, part vegetable. Some of them bore berries or hexagonal fruit. The green mosslike omuthid was everywhere, on the floors, walls, and ceiling. At least a hundred feet above him was the ceiling, and the cavern itself extended beyond his eye’s reach.

  Standing on a ledge about twenty feet above the cavern’s floor, Orc could see several creeks. They did not run straight, as in the tunnels, but meandered as proper creeks should.

  He had been taken with the ecstasy of the sounds of living creatures. Shortly thereafter, he was seized with a rapture caused by sight of a human being. He was naked and walking slowly through the forest toward Orc. But he did not seem to be aware that an intruder was in his exotic Garden of Eden.

  Orc had to fight against rushing down and greeting the man. He crouched down close to a boulder and studied the person as he made his way through the plants. There was something peculiar about him. He did not seem to have a quite human construction. His gait was unhurried and stately as if he owned this world, which, indeed, he might. When the man was closer, the details of his face and body became clearer.

  He walked slowly and dignifiedly because he could not walk otherwise. The joints of his shoulders, hips, elbows, knees, and wrists were bulbous and somewhat shiny. And the head, neck, and trunk were larger than they would be in a normally proportioned man.

  Orc shook his head. He had been momentarily under an illusion. His imagination had supplied what the man did not have because Orc expected him to have it. Where Orc had seen male genitals was now a smooth place, skin dotted with gleaming crystals. The he was an it.

  It had no weapons, though. Orc stood up and shouted through cupped hands at the being. It stopped, though it did not look startled. Then the mouth opened. It could have been a smile, but its teeth shone like jewels.

  Orc climbed down and walked to the creature, which had resumed its slow pace. When they were ten feet apart, they halted. Orc greeted it in Thoan. “Koowar!”

  It said, “Koowar-su shemanithoon!”

  “Greetings and come in peace!”

  The teeth were white diamonds and obviously had been made in a biofactory. They had been fashioned so that they resembled human canines, incisors, and molars.

  “Neth Orc,” the young Lord said. “I am Orc.”

  “Neth Dingsteth.”

  The being’s name was Dingsteth, one Orc had never heard before. It spoke with a slight impediment. No doubt the diamond teeth caused that.

  To Orc’s rapid-fire questions, Dingsteth responded slowly. In due time, Orc learned that this world had been made by the Lord called Zazel. Zazel of the Caverned World. He was also the maker of Dingsteth, who was now the only sentient being in an entire universe. The world consisted of rock perforated with tunnels and caves, some of which had floor areas a thousand miles square. But it was, in a sense, a living being. It did not seem to have a consciousness. Or, if it did, it had given no sign of one to Dingsteth.

  “It’s a vast semimineral-semiprotein computer in which many different forms of life exist. Half of the fauna and flora herein are symbiotes of the world of Zazel. I’ll explain all that later. It detected your presence and notified me. I am, in reality, the Lord of this world even if I did not make it. Perhaps you saw the message traveling along the wall? It’s a very slow computer.”

  “I saw the message. What happened to Zazel?”

  “He killed himself. He went mad. Or madder. I think he was crazy from the beginning. Who else but an insane person would create this kind of world? But he had an easy death. He let the computer suck his blood, drain him dry. Then, as he had ordered me to do, I cremated him.”

  Dingsteth looked at Orc from head to toe, then said, “Turn around, please.”

  “What?” Orc said. “Why should I?”

  “Tell you later. Please do as I requested.”

  Frowning, Orc rotated. He had never obeyed anybody’s orders except his parents’, and, for some years, he had disliked doing that. He was a Lord, and Lords commanded, not non-Lords.

  Dingsteth did not nod because the swollen ring which was its neck prevented that. It said, “Good! So far! There are no indications of crystallization!”

  At Orc’s somewhat alarmed question, Dingsteth said, “If you’re active enough, your metabolism is able to stave off the crystallization of your flesh. But you have to sleep, and it is then that the cells slowly begin to turn into stone.”

  “What kind of a world is this?” Orc said. At the same time, he decided that he was going to get out of it as quickly as possible. “And how have you kept from being crystallized?” he added.

  “Zazel made me so that I have an innate resistance, a biological defense.”

  “Is there a gate out of the Caverned World?”

  “There could be. I may be able to find out for you. I have access to all the tremendous amount of data that Zazel stored in the world.”

  Orc was not accustomed to being humble, but this situation demanded that he be. He was not going to risk his survival just because of his pride. He would bend, though not break it, if he had to.

  “Would you find out for me?”

  “Why not?” Dingsteth said. “I will unless some reason for not doing so occurs to me or I find the reason in the computer.”

  “Thank you. One immediate question, though. How did Los manage to penetrate this world and set up the gate I used to get here?”

  “Los?”

  Orc told his story.

  Dingsteth said, “The fatal flaw in Thoan culture is that the children of the Lords of a particular world want to be its sole ruler. That desire was understandable and feasible in ancient days when the Lords had the means to create new worlds. Then the children, when they became adult, could move out of their parents’ universes into their own. Now, they are restricted to those worlds already made. If they knew that the means for making new worlds still existed, they could abandon their bloody conflict. That has kept their population down considerably, as you know, and is responsible for your present plight. If the Thoan were logical, they would get rid of that cultural trait.”

  “Hold it!” Orc said excitedly. “You said that the means for making new worlds still exists! Where?”

  “Here. I did not mean that the creation engines are still around. I meant that this world has the data for making new ones. Not only the instructions for operation but how to make the materials needed and how to construct them and to supply them with power. Et cetera.”

  “You can access all this?”

  “Of course.”

  Orc shook his head, then rolled his eyes. “All this time! The knowledge has been thought lost for thousands of years! And it’s here! In this desolate and undesired world!”

  “It’s not such a bad place,” Dingsteth said.

  “I apologize if I hurt your feelings,” Orc said. “I’ve only been here a short time, so I shouldn’t judge the place with the little data I have of it. But you must understand that it’s not my kind of place. Anyway, I’m eager to get back to my own world, for reasons I’ve explained.”

  “I don’t understand revenge,” Dingsteth said. “The capability for that was left out of me when I was made. A good thing, too, I think. By the way, the video data of your father setting up that gate you came through are stored in the world’s memory. Would you care to see them?”

  “I was wondering how he managed to gate into and out of this world.”

  “I let him in. I am always curious, and I wanted to talk to him and find out all about him. He was the first in centuries to try to get in. Zazel did not play the game you Lords play. He set up codeless gates, though they can be opened from this side. I permitted Los to come in, but I was disappointed in him. He was in a hurry, so he said, but he promised to come back later. He never did, and that was over five hundred years ago. Evidently, he’s not to be trusted. When you first mentioned his name, it didn’t register. But, as we’ve been talking, I recalled him. I …”

  Orc said, “You didn’t tel
l him about the creation engine data, did you?”

  “No. The subject didn’t come up during our brief conversations. I would have, but …”

  “Dingsteth,” Orc said, “Listen to me! Hear my words of advice and caution! Do not ever tell anybody else about the engines! If you do, you might be killed—after you’ve shared that knowledge! There are many Thoan who would like to get the secret and keep it for themselves! They would torture you, then slay you.”

  “How about you?” Dingsteth said.

  “I would be very grateful if you would show me that data, then open the gate long enough for me to pass on to Los’s world.”

  “You did not answer my question,” Dingsteth said. “Which means, I’m afraid, that you are concealing from me some of your intents and purposes. I don’t know you well enough to understand your personality. But, if it’s like most of the other Lords, Manathu Vorcyon is a notable exception, you’d be thinking about killing me after you learn all you can about the creation engines.”

  Orc had to laugh. Then he said, “Zazel certainly made you an open and exceedingly frank person!”

  “If I told you how to operate, rather, cooperate, with this world, you would have to give some of your blood to get the data you desire. You have to apply your face to a monitor-input and let it suck your blood before it’ll give you what you want. But it wouldn’t let you go unless you knew certain codes, which I am not going to tell you. You’d be sucked dry.”

  “Just tell me how to gate out,” Orc said. “That’s all I want.”

  He was thinking—Jim was aware of this—that he would return some day in a small armed vehicle and get the information. Dingsteth was the only one who could let him in, but Orc would find a way to cajole it into doing that. Or he would come back through the kamanbur gate.

  He said, “Why did you admit my father? Also, why did you let him set up a gate which kills others when they try to get through it?”

  “Why not? What do I care? As it stands, you’re the first Lord to get through. Your uncle, Ijim, did not make it through, and the chances are that the next one to try it will fail. It’ll be interesting to observe those who follow you, if any ever do.”