Kickaha arched his eyebrows. Proposal? Then Red Orc must need his help in some project. Since he was not the man to draw back from danger, he had something near-suicidal in mind.
Afterwards? If there was an afterwards?
Kickaha held up his bound wrists and pointed a finger at the table. Red Orc told him to raise his arms high and to hold them as far apart as he could. Kickaha did so. There was approximately an inch between his wrists.
“Hold steady,” the Thoan said, and he drew his beamer so swiftly his arm seemed to be a blur. A yellow ray lanced out; the bond was cut in half; the beamer was holstered. It was done within two eyeblinks.
Very impressive, Kickaha thought. But he was not going to tell Red Orc that. And what kind of beamer projected a yellow ray?
“I’ll be back when you’ve finished eating,” the Thoan said. “If you wish to wash first or need a toilet, utter the word ‘kentfass,’ and a bathroom will extrude from the wall. To make it go back into the wall, say the same word.”
A curious arrangement, Kickaha thought. But Red Orc had a curious mind.
The Thoan left the room. Though Kickaha did not have much appetite, he found that the food, which consisted of various vegetables, fruits, and different kinds of fish, was delicious. The wine was too heavy for his palate, but it did have an inviting don’t-know-what taste and went down easily. Afterward, he used the bathroom, which was decorated with murals of undersea life. It slid into the wall, and the wall section swung shut. Some of these sections must conceal gates.
A few minutes later, the Thoan entered. Now he wore a longer robe and sandals. With him were three dark men wearing conical helmets topped by peacock feathers, short kilts, and buskins. All were armed with spears, swords, and knives. They took positions behind Red Orc, who had drawn up a chair shaped like a spider and sat down in it facing his captive. He was unarmed.
“You must be very puzzled,” he said. “You’re asking yourself why I, a Lord, require the assistance of a leblabbiy?”
“Because you’ve got something to do that’s too big for you to handle by yourself,” Kickaha said.
Red Orc smiled. He said, “I suppose you’re wondering what your reward will be if you succeed in carrying out my desires? You also doubt that I’d keep my word to reward you.”
“You have an astounding ability to read my mind.”
“Sarcasm has no place here. I have never broken my word.”
“Did you ever give your word?”
“Several times. And I honored it though my natural inclination is to break it. But there have been situations …”
He was silent for a few seconds. Then he said, “Have you heard about Zazel of the Caverned World?”
“Yes,” Kickaha said. “Anana …”
He choked. Even speaking her name summoned up grief like a thick glutinous wave and burned his heart.
After clearing his throat, he said, “Anana told me something about him. He created a universe that was a ball of stone in which were many tunnels and caves. Which, in my opinion, only a nut would do. According to her, Zazel was a melancholy and gloomy man, and he eventually killed himself.”
“Many Lords have committed suicide,” Red Orc said. “They are the weaklings. The strong kill each other.”
“Not fast enough for me. What does he have to do with us?”
“When I was a youth, I mightily offended my father. Instead of killing me, he gated me through to a world unfamiliar to me and very dangerous. It was called Anthema, the Unwanted World. I wandered around on it, and then I met another Lord, Ijim of the Dark Woods. He had gated through to Anthema while being pursued by a Lord whose world he had tried to invade. For forty-four years he had tried to find a gate through which he could travel to another universe.”
The Thoan paused. He looked as if he were recalling his hard times on that planet.
He spoke again. “His long solitude had made him paranoiac. But we teamed up, though, of course, each of us was planning to kill the other if we escaped that very undesirable world. We did finally find a gate, but it had been placed by Los inside a structure built by some fierce predators. Nevertheless, we got inside, found the gate, and jumped through it. It was a shearing gate. That is, Los had set it up so that we had to calculate the few seconds when it was safe to enter. Otherwise, we would be cut in half.
“Ijim was halved like an apple, and I lost some skin and a slice of flesh on the end of my heels and my buttocks. After wandering through tunnels, I came to a very large cavern. There I met Dingsteth, a creature made by Zazel to be his overseer or manager. After Zazel committed suicide, Dingsteth was the only sentient being in that vast ball of stone perforated with tunnels and large caverns.
“Dingsteth was very naive. It did not kill me at once as it should have done. It wasn’t loneliness, a desire for companionship, that stopped it. It did not know what loneliness was. At least, I think it does not suffer from that emotion. There were certain signs …”
Red Orc again became silent. He looked past Kickaha as if he were viewing a screen displaying images of the Caverned World. Then he spoke.
“I found out from Dingsteth that the whole stone world was a computer, semi-protein and semi-silicon. It held enormous amounts of data put there by Zazel. Much of that data has been lost to the rest of us Lords.”
The Thoan paused, licked his lips, and said, “So far, only I have entered Zazel’s World. Only I know of the priceless data-treasures contained in it. Only I know about the gate that gives access to it. Only I know about certain data that would give me complete power over the Lords and their universes.”
“Which is?” Kickaha said.
Red Orc laughed loudly. Then he said, “You are not only a trickster, you are a jester. It’s not necessary that you know what I am specifically looking for, and you know that. I know that, if you should somehow get into Zazel’s World, you will make a desperate effort to find out what I so greatly desire. I won’t tell you because I won’t take the slightest chance that knowledge of it should ever get to other Lords. And I certainly would not trust you with that knowledge.”
“How can I tell anybody else about something I’m ignorant of?” Kickaha said.
“You can’t. But some Lords might be able to guess what it is.”
This reasoning did not seem entirely logical to Kickaha. But he could not expect the Thoan to be completely rational. Hatred and a passion for power had driven Red Orc insane. Or vice versa.
Nor did he expect Red Orc to keep any promise or give any lasting reward. The Thoan knew that Kickaha would not give up revenge for Anana’s death. Even if Anana had somehow survived, she had come near death because of Red Orc. That was unforgivable.
He said, “What do you need me for?”
“We know that I am using you as a pawn whom I will sacrifice if the occasion demands it. However, I swear by Shambarimen, Elyttria, and Manathu Vorcyon that if you succeed, you will be set free, and …”
“Anana, too, if she didn’t die?”
Irritation at the interruption flitted across Red Orc’s face. But he spoke evenly.
“Anana, too.”
Kickaha asked the Thoan what he wanted him to do.
“Get into Zazel’s World. When you’ve done that, you can communicate with me, and I’ll come swiftly.”
Kickaha bit a corner of his lip.
“Why can’t you do it yourself?”
Red Orc smiled and said, “You know why. It’ll be a dangerous project, and your chances of surviving are small. But if you die, I’ll know what killed you and avoid it. I can do that because I have the Horn. Besides, I’d like to determine if you are the greatest of tricksters, which some Lords claim you are. My experience with you has impressed me even though you are a leblabbiy.”
“You enjoy deadly games?”
“Yes. So do you.”
“You did catch me,” Kickaha said. “Several times.”
“And, up until now, you slipped away from me. When we were chasin
g you through the city of Los Angeles, I was playing with you. My hired criminals were not very bright, and luck favored you. And then I was caught in the Lavalite World and came too close to being trapped there forever. I suspect you were responsible.”
Kickaha did not confirm that. Let him guess.
“In any event,” Red Orc said, “I will no longer be playing cat-and-mouse with you.”
“I will try to do what you want me to do, and I won’t attempt to escape,” Kickaha said. Probably, Red Orc did not believe him any more than Kickaha believed Red Orc. But Red Orc described in detail how he had gotten into and out of the Caverned World.
Los, Red Orc’s father, had gated his son from the family world to a cave on Anthema. Red Orc still did not know exactly where the Antheman gate was. But Los could have had more than one on that planet.
He and Ijim had found the gate from Anthema to Zazel’s World because his father had provided his son with a map. But that had been cryptic and very difficult to figure out, and he might never have been able to read it.
“I was able to leave the Caverned World because Dingsteth showed me the gate out,” Red Orc said. “However, it allowed exit but not entrance. The same was true for the gate by which I got from Anthema to Zazel’s World. You will have to find a gate that is at present unknown. Or, if you can find it, use the gate Ijim and I used. I’ve been trying so long to find it again, and I’ve been so obsessed with it that I’m going around in a circle. I need someone to search for it whose view is fresh. Someone who’s also ingenious or, at least, has the reputation for being so. Thus, I’m asking you to volunteer for the venture.”
“Give me the Horn,” Kickaha said. “That can open any gate, and it reveals weak places in the walls among the universes.”
“You can’t stop joking, can you?”
Kickaha said, “No. Very well. I must know more about these gates and the worlds in which they’re located. And other items, too.”
After an hour, Red Orc left the room, though the evil which Kickaha imagined as emanating from him still hung in the air. What the Thoan required was clear. His secret motives were not. For one thing, Red Orc had been in Zazel’s World when he was eighteen years old, That was at least twenty thousand Terrestrial years ago. What had he been doing in the meantime? Why hadn’t he stormed the fort, so to speak, and invaded the Caverned World to get the data he wanted? Or had he tried again and again and always failed? If the Thoan had tried many times to do that, then he was indeed desperate. It would be almost impossible to succeed where the Thoan had failed, yet he was turning over the job to a despised leblabbiy.
Almost impossible. But Kickaha was convinced that, as long as something was one-thousandth of one-thousandth of one-half percent possible, he could do it. Though he sometimes laughed at his own egotism, he believed that he was capable of everything but the impossible, and he was not so sure that he could not defeat those odds, too.
During the next three days, Kickaha did not see his captor. He exercised as vigorously as possible in this large room, which was not large enough, ate well, and, mostly, chafed and fumed and sometimes cursed. The beautiful servant made it evident through signs that she would bed him if he so desired. He refused her. Not until he was certain that Anana was dead could he even consider another woman.
He indulged in fantasy scenes about how Anana could have lived through the flash flood. And Red Orc, searching in his aircraft up and down the chasm, might have missed her because she was in a cave or under a ledge, or because he just did not see her even if she was in the open.
After a while, he quit imagining these scenarios. He would just have to wait and see.
The afternoon of the third day, Red Orc entered the chamber. His beamer was in his holster, and a sheath hanging from his belt carried a long dagger. In his right hand was a large bag. Behind him came five armed bodyguards, one of them a bowman. He did not greet his captive but said, “Come with me.” The men grouped around him. Kickaha was conducted from the room and through a series of exotically decorated halls, all empty of natives. Then he was taken into a vast room blazing with the light of a thousand torches. The ceiling was six or seven stories high. Its gold-plated walls bore many figures of animals and human beings, all outlined in jewels. It had no furniture. At the far end was a gigantic bronze statue of a man with an enormous upright phallus, four arms, and a demon’s face. Twenty feet before it was an altar with a block of stone at its base. The block was stained with old blood. A stone platform half its height surrounded it, and stone steps led up to it.
“Am I to be sacrificed?” Kickaha said, grinning.
The Thoan’s smile seemed to be carved from granite.
“Not as part of a religious rite.”
He spoke in the mellifluous native tongue, and the guards marched out through the main door. One of them shut the door and slammed a huge bolt shut. The bang sounded to Kickaha like a note of doom. But he had met many dooms and defeated them.
Red Orc said, “Go to the block, walk up the steps, and stand by the block.”
When Kickaha turned around to face the Thoan, his back almost touching the stone, which still was higher than his head, he saw Red Orc swinging the bag backward. Then the bag soared up and landed with a thump near Kickaha’s feet.
“Empty the bag,” the Thoan said loudly. His words echoed.
Kickaha removed a beamer, a bundle of batteries, a long knife, a canteen full of water, and a smaller bag. He dumped its contents: a bundle of clothes, a belt holding a holster and a sheath, a pair of shoes, a smaller knife, and a box of compressed rations.
“There is no battery in the beamer,” Red Orc said. “After you reach your next destination, you can put the battery in it.”
“And after you’re out of knife range,” Kickaha said. “You’re taking no chances.”
“I’m not as reckless as you leblabbiy. You have your instructions and as much useful information as I am able to give you. Rebag those items, then climb up on the top of the stone.”
When Kickaha was standing up on the top of the block, he looked at the Thoan. He was smiling as if he was deeply enjoying the procedure. He called, “I would really prefer to keep you prisoner, work my pleasure on you, and eventually drink your ashes down as I did my father’s. But I am pragmatic. I give you sixty days to complete your mission, and …”
“Sixty days?” Kickaha bellowed. “Sixty days to do what you couldn’t do in ten thousand years!”
“That’s the way it’s going to be! By the way, Trickster! Here’s an additional incentive for you to return to me! Your traitor bitch, Anana, is in the room next to the one you occupied!”
He paused, then shouted, “Or am I lying?”
Kickaha felt as if a giant icicle had slammed through him. Before he could unfreeze, he heard Red Orc scream out a code word.
The hard stone beneath his feet became air, and he dropped straight down.
9
His right hand shot out to catch the side of the pit that gaped below him. His fingertips scraped along the stone shaft just below the edge. A gate, not a trapdoor, had opened to swallow him. How typical of Red Orc not to warn him that he was going to fall!
Holding the bag in his left hand close to his side, he struggled to maintain his vertical attitude. The light that had come through the gate was cut off. Total darkness was around him as he pierced the air. The shaft down which he hurtled must have narrowed by now. Its circular wall seemed to be an inch away from his body. Then he became aware that it was twisting. The soapy texture of the stone kept the skin of his back from burning—so far.
By then, he had begun counting seconds. Twenty of them passed. He had dropped perhaps five seconds before starting to time his descent. Four more passed before the shaft began curving gently and then became horizontal. The darkness was tinged with a dusklike light. It quickly became brighter.
Oh, oh, he thought. Here it comes!
He cannonballed from the hole. Above him was a wall of stone lit by
a strong light. He began twisting around so that he could land on his feet. As he did so, he saw that he was in a chamber of stone about twenty feet wide and thirty feet high. What he had thought was a wall was a ceiling. Below him was a pool of water, and he was about to strike it. Though he tried to go in feet first, he crashed on his side with enough force to plunge him to the bottom. He struggled upright despite his half-daze and shoved upwards toward the light. With the bag still in his hand, he swam to the side of the pool. It was only several inches above the water, and thus it was easy to drag himself onto the rock floor.
“Damn!” he said loudly.
His voice came back hollowly. After sitting up to catch his breath and to look around, he stood up. The light was sourceless—nothing new to him. It showed three tunnel openings in the walls. Kickaha undid the string on the bag and removed most of its contents. Though he was wet, he donned the snug jockey shorts and long-sleeved shirt. After drying his feet with the short kilt, he put that on and then the socks and the shoes. These were much like tennis shoes. It did not take him long to fasten the belt around his waist, sheath the beamer and knife, and attach the bag to the belt.
“It’s been fun, so far.”
Not much fun was his uncertainty about Anana’s fate. The demon son of a bitch Thoan had given him a brief joy when he had said that Anana was still living. Then he had blown out the joy as if it were a candle when he said that he might be lying. That, of course, was said to bedevil Kickaha throughout his mission.
Red Orc was left-handed. Was that a clue that the left tunnel was the right one to take? Or were they all the right ones? It would be like Red Orc to do that.
He entered the tunnel on his left. It was filled with the same sourceless and shadowless light as the room, though the illumination was no stronger than twilight. He walked slowly, wary of any signs of traps, although it seemed to him that Red Orc would have deactivated these. He would not want to stop the mission just after it had begun. Not even Red Orc was that crazy.
The World of Tiers, Volume 2 Page 79
