The World of Tiers, Volume 2

by Philip José Farmer

  “You’re full of howevers, Red Orc,” Kickaha said. “Not to mention other things.”

  8

  At the Thoan’s command, Kickaha slowly took his beamer and knife out and threw them ten feet ahead of him. Very reluctantly, he cast the bag containing the Horn to a spot near the weapons. Red Orc, his face glowing with triumph shot with delight, picked up the bag with his right hand.

  He gestured with his weapon. “Turn your back to me, reach for the sky, and get down on your knees. Stay in that position until I tell you otherwise.”

  Kickaha obeyed, but he was considering what his chances were if he leaped up, ran to the chasm’s edge, and jumped. He might go out far enough to avoid the projecting parts of the side of the chasm and fall into the river. But would he survive the plunge into the water? Would the Thoan be able to shoot him before he got to the chasm edge?

  The answer to the first was no; to the second, yes. Anyway, he was crazy even to think of such a plan. But it might be better to die thus than to get what Red Orc could have in mind for him.

  He never heard the man’s footsteps. He did hear a slight hissing and feel something against his back. When he awoke, he was in the back seat of the vessel. A long sticky cord bound him around and around and secured him to the seat of the chair and its back. His wrists were tied together, and his feet were also bound. His head ached; his mouth was very dry. When he looked through the canopy, he saw that the boat was at least a thousand feet in the air and was heading northward.

  Red Orc, seated before the control panel, was looking at the TV screen to one side and above him. He could see Kickaha in it. He rose, having set the vessel on automatic, and walked back in the narrow aisle between two rows of seats.

  The Thoan stood about four feet from his captive. “You’ve always gotten away before this,” he said. “But you’ve come to the end of the road.”

  Kickaha spoke huskily. “I’m still living.”

  “And you may live for quite a while. But you’ll be wishing that you were dead. Perhaps. I really haven’t decided what I’m going to do with you.”

  Kickaha glanced through the canopy and saw the chasm he had climbed or, perhaps, another chasm. At this point, it was at least forty miles wide and went down so far that he could not see the dark bottom. He did not think that erosion had caused this. There must have been one hell of a cataclysm at one time on this planet.

  Apparently, Red Orc guessed what he was thinking. He said, “This is the planet Wanzord, created by Appyrmazul. My father, Los, and I fought each other here. Los had a weapon of terrifying destructive powers. I don’t know where he got it. Probably, he found it buried in some ancient vault. He used it on me and my forces, and I was forced to gate out, leaving my men behind me. That chasm was caused by Los’s weapon.”

  “What happened to it?” Kickaha said. His voice rasped.

  “My father won that campaign. Eventually, during an attack on his army, I got hold of the ravener, as it was called. But I had to destroy that ancient weapon. Luck went against me, I was forced to retreat, and I didn’t want my father to have it. So, I blew it up.

  “However, as you may have heard, the final victory was mine. I captured my father. After I’d tortured him almost enough to satisfy me, I killed him. A long time before that, I had cut off his testicles and eaten them, after I stopped him when he was trying to kill my mother. I should have slain him then. When his testicles regrew, he launched an all-out war against me.

  “But, in the end, I won, and I burned his body and mixed the ashes in a glass of wine and drank him down. That was not quite the end of him. The next day, I flushed him down the toilet.”

  Red Orc laughed maniacally. And maniac he is, Kickaha thought. But he’s quite rational and logical in most matters. Very cunning, too.

  “That’s interesting and informative,” Kickaha said. “But what about Anana, Clifton, and Eleth?”

  Red Orc smiled as if he was pleased by what he was going to tell his prisoner.

  “While you were struggling to get out of the chasm, I was looking for the others. Eleth’s body was left on a large rock when the flood subsided. The face was torn off, and one side of her head was caved in and the scalp ripped from it. But enough of her blond hair was left to identify her. Thus ended the last of the iron-hearted daughters of Urizen. No one will mourn them.

  “Clifton is probably buried under tons of silt and gravel. End of his story. He was in the pit because he was caught in one of my resonant-circuit traps and directed to the same terminal, the pit, to which you and your party were channeled. That pit and the circuit in which Clifton was caught were made by Ololothon long ago. But I took over ownership. In fact, he arranged it as a sort of catch-as-catch-can for any Lord who came along. But it got the Englishman for me. I had almost forgotten about him after I last saw him in Urthona’s floating palace on the Lavalite World. Urthona got away from there with you two. What happened to him?”

  “Urthona was killed just after we escaped from the palace and gated through to the World of Tiers. He got caught in his own trap, you might say. Cheated me out of killing him.”

  Red Orc raised his brows and said, softly, “Ah! One more of the very old Lords is dead. I am unhappy about that, but only because I wanted to be the one who killed him. Since he was my father’s ally, I had him down in my books.”

  Kickaha said, “What about Anana?”

  A ghost of a smile hovered over the Thoan’s lips. He knew that Kickaha knew that he was delaying his account of her to torment him.

  “Anana? Yes, Anana?”

  Kickaha leaned forward, preparing himself for very bad news. But Red Orc said, “I had expected Ona to be caught in the pit, too, but I assume that something happened to her while she was with you. Or did she escape from you to wander around on Alofmethbin?”

  “She died trying to escape. What about Anana?”

  “You must be wondering just how you were trapped. Only I could have done it. The many obstacles and the little time to get the necessary things would have been too much for anyone else. Fortunately, the circuit in which you two were caught, originally set up by Ololothon, had a three-day delay holding you in one gate before you were sent forward again. That gave me the time I needed to bring in the necessary equipment in an airboat through a gate from my base. You have heard of Ololothon?”

  “For Christ’s sake!” Kickaha said in English. Then, speaking in Thoan, “You are going to drag out the suspense, aren’t you? Although you’ve lived so long, you’re juvenile as hell!”

  “I am not above taking pleasure in small things,” Red Orc said. “If you are almost immortal, you find that there are long intervals between pleasures, and these are short-lived. So, even the smallest pleasures are welcome, especially when they are unexpected.”

  He paused, meeting Kickaha’s glare with his unwavering gaze.

  Then he said, “Ololothon?”

  “We were on his world, the planet of the Tripeds,” Kickaha said. “You know that.”

  “I know it now,” the Thoan said. “Before you told me, I had only suspected that you were there. But I could not be sure. What I was sure about was that, if you took the only exit gate on Ololothon’s world, you would be caught in the resonant circuit he set up. Long, long ago, after I invaded his palace and slew him, I studied the charts of his gates and recorded them to file in my bases. I might need to use them someday. And I was right: I did. Very few Lords, perhaps none, have such foresight.”

  Brag, brag, brag, Kickaha thought. However, he was interested in knowing just how the Thoan’s plot had been carried out.

  “Eleth and Ona were very clever. They managed to escape from my prison on my base while I was elsewhere. I suspected that they had bribed the guards, but I did not have time to torture the truth out of anyone. I killed all of them. However, the corruption might have spread throughout my palace. So, I completely depopulated it. I did not slay their children, of course. I made sure that they were adopted by a native tribe.�
�

  Just like that, Kickaha thought. Torture and murder, and then he compliments himself for his mercy.

  “It took me some time to track the sisters down to this planet and then locate them. I found them wandering half-starved and totally miserable in the forest where you came across them. Instead of immediately punishing them as I had promised, I decided to use them against you and Anana. They were in such terror, wondering if they would be released without harm as I had promised they would if they cooperated. Or would I break my word? I also arranged for a raven, an Eye of the Lord, and an oromoth to work with them, to keep a watch on you and Anana when you showed up and also make sure the sisters did not betray me. The Eye and the oromoth would get a suitable reward, but I promised them they would die if they tried treachery. I …”

  “Anana and I know about that,” Kickaha said. “We killed both of them.”

  Red Orc’s face crimsoned. Glaring, he shouted, “Do not speak unless I give you permission!”

  When he had regained his composure, he said, “I was faced with a problem. You had the Horn or, at least, I assumed you still had it. The Horn changed normal conditions for those in a circuit. With it, you might escape even if caught in one. And then the alarms I had set up in the circuit sounded through the series of gates and registered in my base. I knew then that you and Anana had entered the gate from the planet of the Tripeds.

  “The gate-circuit chart I inherited from Ololothon after I killed him so many years ago showed that one of the brief stops would be on Alofmethbin. But it would be for only a few seconds. I gambled that you would recognize Alofmethbin and would run out of the area of influence of the gate before it could send you on. Or that you would be sounding the Horn at that time and that would nullify the action of the gate. And I was right, of course. I would have preferred that you be much closer to the sisters when you exited, but I had to work with what was available. Nor did I know, of course, whether or not there was a flaw near the gate.

  “For this reason, I could not erect a cage there to imprison you and Anana when you entered. You would only have to blow your Horn, and you would escape through the flaw, if there was one. The probability that there would be was about fifty-fifty.”

  Kickaha opened his mouth to ask a question, thought better of it, and closed his lips.

  “I knew you would head in a straight line for the nearest gate, the one in the boulder. My usual good fortune held because I knew about the gate. Ololothon was on this planet several times when Wolff was its Lord, found four gates, and charted them. He connected the gate in the boulder to the pit.”

  Kickaha cleared his throat, then said, “Permission to speak?”

  Red Orc waved his hand.

  “What happened to Anana?”

  “I have a story to tell!” the Thoan said harshly. “It will enlighten you so that you will know whom you are up against! Now, be silent! Ololothon must have dug that pit shortly after the chasm was made by my father’s engine of destruction during my campaign against him on Wanzord. I found the pit a long time ago when I went briefly to the planet Wanzord. I like to prowl around universes and gather data that I may use later. You never know when it will be useful. Then, when you two disappeared from the circuit for a few hours, a delay that came too soon for you to be on the islet …”

  He paused, then said, “You used the Horn to escape the circuit before you got to the islet, of course. But you got caught in it again?”

  Kickaha nodded. Though he did not see how the Thoan could use knowledge of the scaly man’s existence to his own advantage, it was best to keep him ignorant. Never give anything away; you might regret it.

  “Few things make me anxious,” the Thoan said, “but I am not above admitting that your disappearance gave me a bad time. But I went ahead with my plan. However, there might be a flaw in the walls of the pit. It was not likely there was, but I could not take the chance. One blast from the Horn, and you might escape through that. So, I placed a generator near the pit—you could not see it from the bottom of the pit—and set it to form a one-way gate completely around the pit and just below the surface of the rock wall. As long as that one-way gate shield was there, even the Horn could not open a flaw.”

  Red Orc paused.

  “Permission?” Kickaha croaked. His throat and mouth were very dry, but he’d be damned if he’d ask the Thoan for a glass of water.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Why didn’t you just wait for night while we were on the plains or in the forest, then swoop in in your aircraft and capture us?”

  “Because I take no chances unless I am forced to do so. You might have had enough time to use the Horn and escape through a flaw. Once you were in the pit, you could not escape. Your Horn could not get you out of it.”

  “But you overlooked the flash floods,” Kickaha said.

  The Thoan’s face became red again. He shouted, “I had not been on the planet long enough to know that there were floods caused by rainstorms! That planet is very dry! I never saw a cloud while I was there!”

  Kickaha said nothing. He did not want to goad the Thoan into doing something painful, such as burning his eye out with a beamer ray. Or God knew what else.

  “So!” Red Orc said. “I got a bonus! That Englishman, Clifton, apparently escaped from the floating palace of Urthona in the Lavalite World. But he fell at last into one of my traps in another world, and I shuttled him into the pit! All my most elusive enemies—except for Wolff and Chryseis—were collected like fish in a net!”

  “Wolff? Chryseis?” Kickaha murmured.

  “Wolff and Chryseis!” Red Orc howled. His voice was so loud in the narrow area of the boat that Kickaha was startled again.

  The Thoan yelled, “They escaped! They escaped! I should have dealt with them as soon as I caught them!”

  “You don’t know where they are?” Kickaha said softly.

  “Somewhere on Earth!” the Thoan said, waving one hand violently. “Or perhaps they managed to gate through to another world! It does not matter! I will catch them again! When I do …!”

  He stopped, took a deep breath, and then smiled. “You can quit being so happy about them! I did find Anana!”

  Kickaha knew that Red Orc wanted him to ask about her. But he gritted his teeth and clamped his lips. The Thoan was going to tell him anyway.

  “Anana’s body, what was left of it, was sticking out from under a small boulder! I left her for the scavengers!”

  Kickaha shut his eyes while a tremor passed over him, and his chest seemed to have been pierced by a spear. But the Lord could be lying.

  When he felt recovered enough to speak in a steady voice, he said, “Did you bring back her head to show me?”

  “No!”

  “Did you photograph her body? Not that I’d believe a photo.”

  “Why should I do either?”

  “You’re lying!”

  “You will never know, will you?”

  Kickaha did not reply. After waiting for a few moments for his captive to say something, the Thoan returned to the pilot’s seat.

  Kickaha looked out through the canopy again. Though he saw no more vast chasms, he did see a world the surface of which had been swept clear of soil and vegetation. Yet new growth had managed to get a roothold here and there. Some species of birds, as he well knew, had survived, and he supposed that some animals had escaped the apocalyptic raging. Perhaps, somewhere, were small bands of humans. They must not be eating well, though.

  He became more angry than usual at the arrogance and scorn for life of the Lords. They would destroy an entire world and think little of doing it.

  It was a miracle that Anana was not like her own kind.

  In ten minutes, the vessel began to slow, then hovered in the air for a few seconds before sinking swiftly. It landed by a corrugated monolith of stone that bent halfway up in a thirty-degree angle from the horizontal. At its base was an enormous reddish boulder roughly shaped like a bear’s head. The Thoan squeezed several dr
ops of a blue liquid from a container onto a small part of the sticky rope. A moment later, the rope became smooth and was easily loosened by Kickaha’s efforts. But the bonds tying his hands before him were still sticky.

  He was shepherded out of the vessel. After the Thoan had commanded the craft to close the canopy, he guided Kickaha toward the boulder. Then he spoke a code word, and part of the side of the boulder shimmered with bands of red and violet. Looking steadily at it hurt Kickaha’s eyes.

  “Go ahead,” Red Orc said.

  Kickaha entered the gate into a small chamber in the rock. The next second, he was in a large windowless room made of greenish marble and furnished with carpets, drapes, chairs, divans, and statuary. A few seconds later, part of the seemingly solid wall opened, and Red Orc stepped inside the room.

  He motioned with the beamer. “Sit in that chair there.”

  After his captive had obeyed, Red Orc sat down in a chair facing Kickaha’s. He smiled, leaned back, and stretched out his legs.

  “Here we are in one of my hideaways on Earth II.”

  “And?”

  “Are you hungry? You may eat and drink while I’m discussing a certain matter with you.”

  Kickaha knew he would be foolish to refuse just because his enemy offered it. He needed the energy to get free, if he was going to do that, and he had no doubt that he would. “When,” not “if,” was the way it was going to be.

  He said, “Yes.”

  Orc must have given some sort of signal, or he had assumed that his captive would not refuse a meal. A door-sized section of the wall opened. A woman pushed in a cart on which were goblets, covered dishes, and cutlery. She was a black-haired, brown-eyed, and dark-skinned beauty. She wore only some sort of silvery and shimmering hip band from the front of which hung a foot-long fan-shaped band of the same material. A peacock feather was inserted into her hair. She stopped the cart by a table, bowed to Red Orc, transferred the food and drink to the table, and pushed the cart out of the room, her narrow hips swaying. The section swung shut.

  “You may not only have the best food and drink this planet offers but her, too,” the Thoan said. “And others equally as beautiful and skilled in the bodily arts. If, that is, you accept my proposal.”