However, his unconscious mind had taken over, and he automatically rolled away. The thing growled like the birth of thunder. Kickaha kept on rolling for several yards, then started to get up on a knee. The thing moved very swiftly toward him. Kickaha raised the beamer. A paw knocked it loose from his grip and numbed his hand. Then the creature was on him.
Its sharp teeth closed on his shoulder, but it did not sink them deeply into his flesh. Its breath was hot, though it did not have the stink of a meat-eater. It quickly released the bite as a paw hooked itself under his crotch and lifted him up and away.
Kickaha was vaguely aware that he was soaring through the air and that his groin was hurting worse than his shoulder. When he struck the ground, he blacked out.
Through the slowly evaporating mists, Anana’s face passed from a dark blurry object into lovely features and bright black hair. Her face was twisted with concern, and she was crying, “Kickaha! Kickaha!”
He said, “Here I am. Down but not out, I think.”
He tried to get up. His knees could not keep their lock. He sank back onto his buttocks and gazed around. The creature was lying face up and unmoving on the ground. The raven was not in sight.
“You got here barely in time,” he said. “What were you doing? Following me?”
She looked relieved but did not smile.
“You were gone too long just to be urinating. And I smelled trouble. That’s nonsense, I suppose, but I have developed a feeling for the not-quite-right. Anyway, I did go after you, and I got here just in time to see that thing throw you away as if you were a piece of trash paper. So, I beamed it.”
Kickaha did not reproach her for killing a source of possibly very important information. She must have had to do it.
“The bird?”
“I never saw a bird. You mean the raven?”
He nodded slightly. “The one I told you about. As we suspected, the sisters are working for Red Orc. Willingly or unwillingly, I don’t know which.”
“Then Red Orc must know we’re here!”
6
“Not necessarily the exact spot,” he said. “We can’t assume he’s keeping close tabs on us.”
He told her how he had spied on Eleth and the raven and how noiselessly and swiftly the bearlike thing had attacked him.
“I’m glad you got here in the proverbial nick of time. But I think I would’ve gotten away from it and managed to kill it with the beamer.”
“Your lack of confidence is pathetic,” she said, smiling. “You stay here and get your strength back. I’ll go after the raven. If I catch it, we’ll get the rest of its story out of it.”
“Don’t look for it more than twenty minutes. If you haven’t caught it by then, you’ll never find it.”
Before leaving, however, she ran to a small creek nearby and returned with her deerskin canteen full of fresh water. She poured water over his wounds, held the container to his lips so that he could drink deeply, then stood up.
“There! That’ll hold you for a while.”
She touched her lips with her thumb and forefinger together, forming an oval, and snapped the fingers of her other hand, a Thoan gesture symbolizing a kiss. Then she disappeared among the trees. He lay staring up into the bright green sky. After a while, he slowly and painfully got to his feet. Everything seemed to whirl around him, though he did not fall. His shoulder hurt more than his crotch did. His lower back was stiff and would be worse soon. He was bleeding from the shoulder, though not heavily, and from less deep claw marks on his belly and testicles.
When he got to the corpse, he studied it—her—in detail. The first thing he noted, though, was that Anana had shot the beam through the forehead just above the eyes. Though she had had to take swift aim, she had coolly decided to pierce its brain and had done so.
The creature was at least seven feet long and formed like a hybrid of woman and bear. The face lacked the ursine snout, but its jaws bulged out as if they would have liked to have become a bear’s. That forehead indicated that she was highly intelligent. The structure of her mouth and the teeth, however, showed that she might have had much trouble pronouncing human words. Whether or not she could speak well, she must have understood Thoan speech.
It was then that Kickaha remembered some stories told by the Bear People, an Amerindian tribe on the second level. These were narratives he had thought were tribal myths until now. They spoke of creatures descended from a union between the original Great Bear and the daughter of the original human couple. Indeed, the Bear People claimed that they, like the Man-Bear, were descended from this couple. But this creature’s first ancestors must have been made in some Lord’s laboratory. Probably, the Thoan was Jadawin, he who became Wolff on Earth I.
By now, the scavenging beetles and ants, attracted by the odor of decaying flesh, were scuttling across the clearing. Kickaha walked woozily into the forest and sat down near the edge of the clearing, his back against a giant aboveground root. He watched from there. Presently, Anana walked into the clearing for a few feet and looked around. Her stance showed that she was ready to dive back into the woods if she saw or heard anything suspicious.
He hooted softly, imitating the call of a small tree-dwelling lemuroid. She hooted back. He got up stiffly and approached her.
“The raven was already dead when I found it,” she said. “One of those giant weasels was eating it.”
They talked for a few minutes. Having decided on their course of action, they started back to the camp. Kickaha’s plan to shock the sisters into confessing their part in Red Orc’s plan had been discarded. He had wanted to cut the head off the Man-Bear and to throw it down at the women’s feet. But he agreed with her that it was best to keep them in the dark. For a while, anyway.
By the time they reached the camp, they had concocted a story to explain his wounds. Though a big cat had attacked him, he said, he had gotten away from it. Anana had supported him while he limped into camp. That needed no acting by him, nor did his lying on the ground and groaning with pain.
“We’ll have to stay here until I’ve recovered enough to resume walking,” he said.
Whether or not Eleth and Ona accepted his story, he had no way of determining. That they were Thoan made them suspicious of even the most simple and straightforward statement.
Two days later, he was ready to go. Like all humans in the Thoan universes, except for the two Earths, he had remarkable powers of physical recovery. Except for faint scars, which would disappear entirely, his gashes were healed over. However, he had to take in far more food and water than he would have normally eaten. A faster healing required more fuel.
During this time, Anana trailed the sisters into the woods whenever they went there for privacy.
“It’s obvious they’re trying to get into contact with the raven, and they’re upset because it isn’t showing up.”
“Let them seethe in their sweat,” he said.
“Their bickering and quarreling is getting on my nerves.”
“On mine, too. They’re ten-thousand-year-old infants. They hate each other, yet they feel as if they have to stay together. Maybe it’s because each is afraid that the other will be happy if she isn’t around to make her life miserable.”
She said, “Most Thoan couples are like that. Are Earth mates the same way?”
“Too many.”
He paused, then said, “I suppose you know both asked me to roll in the leaves with them.”
She laughed, and she said, “They’ve asked me, too.”
On the early morning of the third day, they broke camp and set out toward the target mountain. Two days afterwards, they left the great forest. About two days’ journey across a vast plain was before them. They crossed it without harm, though they were attacked twice by the sabertooths, which dined chiefly on mammoths, and once by six of the moalike birds called axebeaks. And then they came to the foothills of the mountain named Rigsoorth.
“Here we make camp for the night,” Kickaha said. He
pointed to an area halfway up the steep three-peaked mass. “By late noon tomorrow, if we push hard, we’ll be there.”
Only he and Anana knew that he was not indicating the place where the gate was located. He seldom revealed to strangers what he truly intended to do. Misdirection, sleight of hand, and deviousness were traits stamped with the label: KICKAHA.
Eleth said, “The gate is in a large heart-shaped boulder?”
“That’s what I said,” Kickaha replied.
Just before they got under their blankets that night in the entrance of a small cave, Anana said, “If they think they’re that close to the gate, they might try to murder us tonight.”
“I doubt it. I think Red Orc has other plans for us. On the other hand, maybe they might try it. I’ll take the first watch.” He kissed her lips. “Sleep well.”
After fifteen minutes, he slipped out from the blankets and crossed by the seemingly sleeping sisters. He crawled up the rocky slope to a boulder and climbed onto its top. After wrapping himself in a blanket, he sat and watched the small fire in the cave opening and the three women around it. Now and then, he looked in all directions. And he listened intently. Once, a huge dark body snuffled around fifty feet below the cave, kicked a few rocks, and sent them sliding noisily down the slope. Then it disappeared. Once, a long-winged bird—or was it a flying mammal?—swooped down and seized a small animal that squeaked once, and then predator and prey were gulped by the darkness.
Night thoughts covered Kickaha as if a black parachute were collapsing over him.
Foremost and most often recurring of the images that questioned him was Red Orc’s.
Kickaha was certain that the Lord was nudging him and Anana toward a trap. Even if he had not overheard the raven and Eleth, he would have been sure. So far, he had gone along with with the Lord’s plot, whatever it was. That Red Orc had not tried to have them killed proved to Kickaha that the Lord wanted him and Anana alive. He was planning something special for them. Such as intense physical torture or a long imprisonment involving mental pain, or both.
Kickaha thought back to when he and Anana had been in Los Angeles and Orc and his men had been trying to catch them. Now that he considered the events, it seemed to him that Orc’s men had been rather inept. And Orc’s organizing had not been of the best.
Was that because Orc was playing with him?
It seemed likely. One of the rules of the games Lords played with each other was that the opponent was always given a slight chance to escape a trap. If, that is, the enemy was quick and ingenious enough. And also had a certain amount of luck.
The opening was always so slight that many Lords had been killed trying to get through their foes’ trapped gates into those foes’ private universes. Thus far, Kickaha and Anana had been fortunate. Their enemies, not they, had died or been forced to flee their strongholds.
But it seemed to Kickaha that Red Orc had not tried hard enough, up to now, to capture or kill them.
However, Red Orc might have gotten tired of the game and determined to get rid forever of his archenemies.
Kickaha did not intend to allow that to happen.
But Red Orc did, and he was not one to be ignored. Of all the Lords, he was the most dangerous and the most successful. No other Thoan had invaded so many universes or killed so many of their owners. No one else was so dreaded. Yet, it was said, according to what Anana and others had told Kickaha, that he had been a somewhat compassionate and loving youth. That is, by Thoan standards.
But the unjust and harsh treatment by his father, Los, had metamorphosed Orc into a brutal and vindictive man. That was some people’s theory. But Kickaha believed that the change was caused by the genetic viciousness of the Lords. Whatever the reason, Orc had rebelled against his father. After a long struggle with him, during which several planets in several universes had been ruined, he killed Los. He had then taken his mother, Enitharmon—and his aunt, Vala—as his mates. This was not against Thoan morality, nor was it uncommon.
Much later, Enitharmon had been killed by a raiding Lord. Red Orc had tracked the killer down, captured her, and tortured her so hideously that the Lords, though proficient and merciless torturers, were shocked.
“It was shortly after this, only a thousand or so years afterwards, but at least fifteen thousand Terrestrial years ago,” Anana had said, “that Red Orc became the secret Lord of both Earths. But you know that.”
“Yes, I know,” Kickaha had said. “And Red Orc made the universes of the two Earths about then.”
“That’s what I told you,” she had said. “When I told you that, I thought Red Orc had made them and that it was he who populated both planets with artificial human beings. But I believe now that I was mistaken. You see, there is also a story that the two Earths were made by a Lord named Orc. Not our Red Orc. He was one of the very first to make pocket universes. He was born many millennia before Red Orc. But he was killed by another Lord. The two Earths had no Lord for a long time. Then, one called Thrassa took over. But Red Orc, who was born long after the original Orc, killed Thrassa and became the Lord of the two Earths.”
Kickaha, his mind leaping ahead to form a conclusion, had said, “The original Orc became confused with Red Orc.”
She had nodded. “That’s it. Or something like it. During all those thousands of years and with the Lords’ failure to keep records and the infrequent communication among the Lords of the many universes, Red Orc became identified with the original Orc. Red Orc, he’s my uncle, you know, my mother’s brother, and Los and Enitharmon are my grandparents. Jadawin, who is also Wolff, is my half-brother …”
“Don’t confuse me,” Kickaha had said. “Stick to the story.”
“Sorry. Red Orc now sincerely believes that he did make the last of the universes to be made, the universes of Earth I and Earth II. He is not sane, though he functions extremely well. Very few Lords are, in fact, entirely sane. Living so long seems to unbalance the mind of all but the most stable.”
“Such as yourself,” he had said, grinning.
“Yes. Let me tell you how I arrived at this conclusion.”
“That too long a life makes it hard for the brain to continue accepting reality and thus slips into unreality?”
She had smiled and had said, “I wasn’t referring to that, though what you say is close to the truth. One night, some time ago when we were on the planet of the Tripeds, while you were sleeping soundly but I could not sleep at all, I got to thinking about Orc and Red Orc. And I saw what the true story has to be.”
“Why didn’t you didn’t tell me about it in the morning?”
“Because that was the night we were attacked by the Shlook tribe. Remember? We fought our way out but had to run for two days before we shook off the last of those three-legged cannibals. That made me forget about it until now. In fact, I was lucky to be able to recall it. After thousands of years, my brain, like all of the long-lived Thoan, stores only certain significant memories. It seems there’s only room enough …”
“A struldbrugian’s lot is not a ’appy one,” Kickaha had said in English.
“What?”
“Never mind. The true story, as you call it.”
“You have these two stories about who made the two Earths. The one about the original Orc doing it is not now widespread. Most people now accept the story that Red Orc did it, and his claim that he did so has reinforced that belief. But he could not have done it.”
She had paused so long that Kickaha had said, “Well!”
“There’s the tale I’ve heard from several unhostile Lords; not many of those, I’ll admit. It’s supposed to have come from Red Orc’s boasting to his various mistresses, though he has a reputation for being close-mouthed about his personal life.
“It concerns the time when he was stranded by his father on Anthema, the Unwanted World. Los thought his son would die there, though he did have a very slight chance to survive and a lesser chance to find the gate out of that world. But, if he did find it
, it would only lead him to Zazel’s World, also called the Caverned World. And there was no way out of that. Or so thought Los.
“Red Orc did find the gate, and he went into Zazel’s World. This, according to Red Orc’s story, was a single vast computer but with countless caves and tunnels inhabited by plants and animals. Zazel had died long ago, but an artificial being was still the caretaker of it. This thing eventually let Red Orc talk it into sending him out through a gate Los knew nothing about. But Red Orc intended to re-enter that world if he could—after he’d killed his father. That took several thousands of years, an epic in itself.
“The reason my uncle wanted to get back into the Caverned World was that its memory contained the data for making a Creation-Destruction engine.”
“Ah!”
“You know what I’m talking about?”
“Sure,” Kickaha had said. “The ancient Lords used such engines to make their artificial universes. But as time went by and then during the millennia-long and very destructive war of the Lords against the Black Bellers, the engines were destroyed or lost. And the data for making them were lost, too. Am I right?”
“Right! But Red Orc found out that the data were still in the Caverned World’s circuits. He was in no position to get it then, but he was determined to come back someday and do so. Unfortunately for him, fortunately for us, he could not get back in. The creature that ruled the world must have sealed up the gate. Red Orc’s been trying to find a way to penetrate that world, though he hasn’t tried continuously. Other things, such as warring against the Lords, have kept him busy. But I think that he’s almost given up the effort. He’s been frustrated too often.”
“From what I know of him, I doubt that,” Kickaha had said.
One of the recent things occupying Red Orc would have been trying to find Kickaha and Anana. The Thoan’s pride would be deeply wounded because the two had eluded him so successfully and for such a long time. He would be in one of his well-known rages. God help the people around him; God help the men he had sent to track down and catch Kickaha and Anana. However, these people were no innocents. Anything bad that happened to them, they deserved.
The World of Tiers, Volume 2 Page 75
