The World of Tiers, Volume 2

by Philip José Farmer

  “Though that could have been my great chance to be a free man and, perhaps, a rich man,” Clifton said.

  The man who raised him was Richard Dally. “A bookseller and publisher. He and his wife taught me to read and write. I became acquainted with Mr. William Blake, the poet, engraver, and painter, when my stepfather charged me with delivering a book to him. Mr. Blake …”

  “Does this have anything to do with the main story?” Kickaha said.

  “Very much so. I cannot leave it out. Do you know Blake’s poetry?”

  “I read some of his poems when I was in high school.”

  Blake had been born, if he remembered correctly, in 1757 and had died in 1827. He was an eccentric who was Christian, but his ideas about religion differed much from the views of his time. Or from any other views then and in Kickaha’s time. That much he had learned from his English teacher.

  Clifton said, “Did you know that Blake wrote poetic works in which he made up his own mythology?”

  “No.”

  “He mixed them with Christian elements.”

  “So?”

  “His didactic and symbolical works were apocalyptic poems in which the characters were gods and goddesses he invented, or said he invented. He conceived his own mythology, and the deities in them had names such as Los, Enitharmon, Red Orc, Vala, and Ahania.”

  “What? You must be … no, you’re not kidding!” Kickaha said.

  He turned to Anana. “Did you know this?”

  Her eyes widened. “Yes, I did, but don’t get angry with me. The subject just didn’t come up, though I’ve met Blake.”

  “You met Blake?”

  Kickaha was so flabbergasted that he spluttered. Yet he knew that she must be telling the truth. This Blake matter had meant little to her, and she would have recalled it if he had mentioned the poet’s name.

  He said, “All right. It’s okay. I was just surprised.” He turned to Clifton. “Tell me how this happened.”

  “Mr. Blake was a mystic visionary and exceedingly eccentric. His eyes were the wildest, the brightest, and the piercingest I’ve ever seen. His face was like an elf’s, one of the dangerous elves. Mr. Dally said that Blake claimed that, when he was a child, he saw angels in a tree and the prophet Ezekiel in a field. It was also said that he had seen the face of God at his bedroom window. If you saw him and heard him talk, you’d believe that these stories were true.

  “A few times, Mr. Blake visited Mr. Dally to buy a book on credit. He was very poor, you know. Twice, I overheard him and Mr. Dally in conversation, though Mr. Blake did most of the talking. Mr. Dally was fascinated by Mr. Blake, though Mr. Dally felt uneasy when Mr. Blake was indulging in his wild talk. I did too. He seemed possessed by something strange, something not quite of this world. You’d have to talk to him to know exactly what I mean.

  “Anyway, one afternoon, Mr. Blake, his eyes looking more wild than I’d ever seen them, more spiritual or more visioning, I should say, told Mr. Dally that he had seen the ghost of a flea. I don’t know what he meant by a flea since the ghost, as he described it, had very little of the flea in it. It looked just like the figure on this ring, except that its hand did not hold a cup for drinking blood.”

  Clifton held up the hand with the ring on its finger.

  “The flea was just one of what he called his ‘visitations.’ That is, the figures of beings and things from the supernatural. Though, sometimes, he spoke of them as visitors from other worlds.”

  Anana said, “Sometimes, he called them emanations from the unknown worlds.”

  “From whom did you hear this?” Kickaha said.

  “I heard it directly from Blake. As you know, after Red Orc made the universe of Earth and the universe of Earth’s twin, he forbade any Lords to visit them. But some did go there, and I was one of them. I’ve told you that I’ve been on Earth I several times, though I didn’t mention all the times and places I’ve been there. When I was living in London, a fascinating though disgusting place, I was disguised as a wealthy French noblewoman. Since I collected some of the best of the primitive art of Earthmen, I went to see Blake. I purchased some engravings and tempera sketches from him but asked him not to tell anyone I’d done so. There didn’t seem to be the slightest chance that Red Orc would hear about it, but I wasn’t taking any risks.”

  “And you didn’t tell me about this?” Kickaha said.

  “You know how it happened that I didn’t. Let’s hear no more of that.”

  “All right,” he said. “But how could Blake have known anything of the Thoan worlds?”

  Clifton opened his mouth to say something, but she spoke first.

  “We Thoan who know about Blake have wondered that, too. Our theory is that Blake was a mystic who somehow tuned in, you might say, to a knowledge of the people inhabiting the other universes. He had a sensitivity, perhaps neural, perhaps from a seventh sense we know nothing about. No other Earthperson has ever had it. At least, we haven’t heard of his like, though there is a theory that some Earth mystics and perhaps some insane Earthpeople …”

  “No theories unless they’re absolutely relevant,” Kickaha said.

  Anana said, “We just don’t know. But, somehow, Blake received some—what should I call them? visions? intimations?—of the artificial pocket universes. Perhaps of the original Thoan universe or of that universe that some say preceded the Thoan’s. In any event, it couldn’t have been coincidence that he knew the exact names of many Lords and some of the situations and events in which they played their parts.

  “But his, ah, psychic receptions of them were distorted and fragmentary. And he used them as part of his personal mythology and mingled Christian mythology with them. The mixture was Blakean, highly imaginative and shaped by his own beliefs. Blake was a freak, though of a high order.”

  Kickaha said, “Very well. Anyway, what he saw as the flea’s ghost was the scaly man we saw in that curious tomb. No Thoan knew about the scaly man, yet Blake saw him.”

  “Obviously.”

  “Remarkable!”

  “All universes and everything in them are remarkable,” Anana said.

  “Some more than others,” Kickaha replied.

  He pointed at the ring. “What about that, Clifton? How’d you get it?”

  “And how did you get into the Thoan worlds?” she said.

  Clifton shook his head. “That is the strangest thing that’s ever happened to an Earthman.”

  “I doubt it’s any stranger than how I happened to get to the World of Tiers,” Kickaha said.

  “I have some ability at drawing,” Clifton said. “Mr. Blake’s description of the flea’s ghost so intrigued me that I drew a sketch of it. I showed it to a friend, George Pew. Like me, he had been a child of the streets, a cutpurse who also was a catchfart for a jeweler named Robert Scarborough.”

  Kickaha said, “Catchfart?”

  “A footboy,” Anana said. “A footboy was a servant who closely followed his master when he was out on the street.”

  Clifton said, “Pew showed the sketch to his employer, Mr. Scarborough, though he did not mention its source. Mr. Scarborough was so taken up with the sketch that he told a customer, a wealthy Scots nobleman, Lord Riven, about it. Lord Riven was very intrigued and ordered that a ring based on the sketch be made for him. It was done, but it was never delivered because it was stolen.”

  Clifton paused to hold up the ring to look at it. Then he said, “My friend Pew was one of the gang that stole it. He gave it to me to hide because his employer suspected him. I didn’t really want to have anything to do with it, though, to be truthful, I did consider plans to obtain permanent possession of it. I was at that time not as honest as the rich people would wish me to be, and you might not be if you had been me.”

  “We’re not judges,” Kickaha said.

  “Pew had told me that only he knew he’d given me the ring for safekeeping. But Pew was killed while fleeing the constables. Thus, I considered the ring to be my property. But I
did not plan to sell it until much time had passed. The constabulary had a good description of it; it was dangerous to try to sell it.

  “And then, one fine summer day, that event happened that resulted in my being propelled willy-nilly into these other worlds and resulted in my being confined in this pit. Though just what Red Orc plans for me, for us, I don’t know.”

  Thunder, amplified by the deep chasm, rumbled in the distance. With the suddenness of a Panzer attack, dark clouds were speeding from the west. In a few seconds, they had covered the bright sky, and a wind whistled over the top of the pit. The air that reached down into the pit blew away the sweltering heat and chilled Kickaha’s naked body.

  He said, “We’ll hear the rest of your story later, Clifton. We’ve got to get out of this hole.”

  Anana did not have to ask him why they had to vacate the pit. She knew what a big downpour in this chasm would do.

  Kickaha had considered using the beamers to make a forty-five-degree channel from the bottom of the hole to the surface. They might be able to escape from the pit that way. But there was no time to use the beamers.

  Kickaha gave his orders. The two men stood side by side, their faces close to the north side of the pit. Anana, who was very strong and agile, climbed up onto them and stood with one foot on Kickaha’s right shoulder and one foot on Clifton’s left shoulder. By now, Eleth had recovered enough to join them in their effort. The lightest in the group and very athletic, she had no difficulty climbing up until she was on Anana’s shoulders. The thin rope taken from Kickaha’s backpack was coiled around Eleth’s waist. A few seconds later, she called down.

  “The edge is just too slippery for me to get a hold.”

  “What do you see?” he said. “Anything that might hold a grappling hook?”

  “Nothing at all!” Eleth sounded desperate. A bellow of thunder and the cannon blast of nearby lightning tore her next words to shreds. She shrieked and fell backward off Anana. But she twisted around and landed, knees bent, on her feet.

  After Anana had come down, she said, “What were you going to say?”

  Eleth’s reply was again shattered by thunder and lightning. A few raindrops fell on them. Then she shouted “I saw a torrent of water pouring down the mountainsides! We’re all going to drown!”

  “Maybe,” Kickaha said, grinning. “But we might be able to swim out of this pit.”

  He sounded more hopeful than he felt.

  “Red Orc wouldn’t put us here just so we could drown!” Eleth shrilled.

  “Why not?” Anana said.

  “Besides,” Kickaha said, “he may have overlooked the possibility of flash floods. He may have picked this place out but not been around when it rained.”

  By then, a darkness not as black as midnight but blacker than the last gasp of dusk filled the pit. The wind was stronger and colder, though it was not in its full rage. Suddenly, a heavy rain fell upon them. Whips of lightning exploded near them. A few minutes later, water spilled over the edges of the pit. The water rose to Kickaha’s ankles.

  Eleth cried, “Elyttria of the Silver Arrows, save us!”

  A wave of cold water crashed into the pit and knocked all of them down. Before they could struggle to their feet, a second and larger one fell on them. And then a third wave, the edge of the flood, cataracted into the pit.

  Kickaha was rammed against the wall. He almost became unconscious but struggled to swim upward, though he did not know where upward was. When his hand struck stone, he knew that he had been swimming downward. Or had he gone horizontally and felt the side of the pit?

  Somebody bumped into him. He grabbed for him or her but missed. Then he was sliding and bumping against stone for an indeterminable time. Just as he thought that he had to suck air into his lungs or die, his head rose above water. He gulped air before he was again drawn down. But he had seen a mass to his right, a mass darker than the darkness around him.

  It must be a mountainside, he thought. Which means that I’ve been carried out of the pit.

  He swam again in the blackness. If he had not been turned upside down, he was going for the surface. His chances for surviving were few, since he could, at any moment, slam into a mountainside. He kept struggling, and his head was suddenly out of the water, though a wave at once slapped his mouth and filled it. Choking and spitting, he got rid of the water.

  It was no use to call out. The lightning and thunder were still cursing the earth. No one could hear him, and what if they did?

  Now he was also in danger of being electrocuted. Lightning was plunging into the flood. But he could see in their flashes that he was being sped past solid rock that soared almost straight up into a darkness not even the lightning could scatter.

  A roaring louder than the thunder’s was now ahead of him. A waterfall? And he was swept over the edge and fell he knew not how far. When he struck the bottom of the raging river and was scraped along it, he was again half out of his wits. By the time he had recovered them, he was on top of a maelstrom. It whirled him around and around, and then, once again, he slammed into something hard.

  When he awoke, he was lying on rock, his upper body out of the stream. It tugged feebly at him. Lightning still blazed through the darkness, though it was not near him.

  He lay choking and coughing for a while. After he had gotten back his wind, he crawled painfully up the sloping rock. His face, feet, knees, ribs, hands, elbows, buttocks, and genitals felt as if they had been skinned with a knife. He hurt too much to crawl far. He rolled over; the scene was briefly lit by the lightning. He was on a triangular shelf of stone that dipped its apex into the storming river. Across it was a straight-up God-knows-where-its-top-is wall.

  He turned, grunting with pain, sat up, and looked upward. Another flash showed him the wall that towered there. It was only about fifty feet from him. When the rain first came down its side, it must have been a torrent. But now it was a shallow brook.

  Kickaha’s luck, he thought. One of these days, though …

  He got up and staggered through a thin waterfall and under a wide shelf of stone. He sat down. After a while, the thunder and lightning retreated far down the canyon. Somehow, despite the cold and wetness, he fell asleep. When he woke, he saw daylight. Hours passed, and then the sun had come over the edge of the seemingly sky-high mouth of the chasm. It seemed to him that he was even deeper in it than when he had been in the pit.

  He said, “Anana!”

  His equipment and most of his weapons had been torn from him. He still had his belt and the beamer in its holster. Somehow, the bag containing the Horn of Shambarimem had not been torn from the loop on his belt … He grinned then because he would have given up even the knife and the beamer in exchange for the Horn.

  By the time that the sun was directly overhead, he rose stiffly. The storm had cooled the air, but tomorrow the heat would be stifling. He had to get to the top of the chasm. He went back and forth as far as he could along the base of the cliff. When he found cracks and fissures and plants to hold on to—even at this depth little treelike plants projected at angles from the wall—he began to climb. His hands ached and some skin had been ground off from four of his fingers. Gritting his teeth and groaning, he got to an estimated eighty feet above the river. By then, the water had ceased falling down the wall. And he saw, fifty feet above him, the side of a large nest sticking out from a small ledge.

  Maybe the nest contained eggs that he could eat.

  When, shaking with fatigue and hunger, he got to the nest, he found that it was made of sticks and twigs and a gluey substance that had dried out. Inside the nest were four mauve eggs, each twice as large as a hen’s. He looked around to make sure that the mother was not in sight. After piercing the eggs with the point of his knife, he sucked some yolk from each. Then he broke them open to disclose embryonic chicks. He ate these raw except for the heads and the legs.

  Having rested a while, he rose to climb again. It was then that he heard a scream. He whirled. Mama Bird was
home, and she was so angry she had dropped the rabbit-sized animal she had been bringing home. It fell, and he did not see it strike the river because he was busy defending himself. The sky-blue bird, somewhat larger than a bald eagle, slammed into him. He gutted it with a slash of his knife, though not before its beak had slashed open an arm and its talons had sunk deep into his chest.

  He had thought he could not hurt more than he had. He was wrong.

  After defeathering the bird, he butchered it and ate part of it. Then he spent the rest of the day and all of the night on the ledge. At least the night air was warm.

  Twelve days later, he got to the top of the chasm. He had eaten on the way, though not much. Despite the regenerative powers of his body, it still had many abrasions and bruises. But these had been acquired recently.

  He pulled himself over the edge after he had looked to make sure that nothing dangerous was there. Then he lay on his side, panting. After several minutes, he rose.

  It was as if the vessel had appeared out of the air, and perhaps it had. It was a silvery and shiny craft, a cylinder with a cone at each end. Under the transparent canopy at the end nearest Kickaha was a cockpit that ran half of the length of the cylinder. From two sides of the craft, four struts extended to the ground to stabilize the vessel while it was on the ground.

  The airboat landed, and the fore part of the canopy rose. The man sitting in the front seat climbed out and strode toward Kickaha, who by then had risen shakily to his feet.

  The pilot was tall and muscular; his face was handsome; his flowing hair was shoulder-length and red-bronze. He was clad in a black-and-white striped robe that came down to his calves. A belt set with many jewels held a holster. It was empty because the beamer it had held was in the man’s hand.

  The man smiled broadly, exposing very white teeth.

  He spoke in Thoan. “Kickaha! You are truly a remarkable man to have survived! I respect you greatly, so much that I could almost just salute you and let you go on your way! However …”