The World of Tiers, Volume 2

by Philip José Farmer

  Dingsteth turned toward Wemathol. “You would? That is most kind of you.”

  It had to wait until the laughter of the caged men had ceased before it could make itself heard. Even Khruuz vented his short barking laugh.

  “That’s some kind of human joke, I suppose. I don’t understand such. An hour from now, you will hear a signal. You, Kickaha, will immediately stand in that circle on the floor of your cage. You will be gated to an exercise and shower area. After you have returned to the cage, the signal will again sound. You, Wemathol, will go first.”

  It named off each man in turn, made sure that they understood the arrangement, and returned to the gate by the tree. After it had disappeared, Ashatelon said, “It’s taking good care of us, though I can’t say much for the food. I wonder why it cares at all about our condition?”

  “Its seeming concern for us is built in,” Red Orc said. “It’s part of its command complex. But Zazel put that in for his own good reasons. We may regret that Dingsteth did not kill us at once.”

  “We shouldn’t give a damn about Zazel’s reasons just now,” Kickaha said. “Let’s take advantage of them as soon as possible.”

  Easier said than done, as the old Terrestrial saying went. By the time that Kickaha had been transported to the exercise area, he had not heard or said anything that might help them. He found himself in a space cut into the stone. It had no exit or entrance—except for the gate that had brought him there—and was ventilated from narrow slits along the walls. Its ceiling was fifty feet high, it was fifty feet wide, and it was a half-mile long. At either end was an unwalled shower, a fountain, a commode, and a heat-dryer.

  He warmed up before running swiftly up and down the room for five miles. After a warming-down exercise, he drank, showered, and dried off standing before the blower, after which he stood in the circle and was gated through to the cage. Another loud hooting came, and Wemathol got into his circle.

  On the third morning of this routine, Kickaha asked Dingsteth what it planned to do with them eventually.

  “You will stay caged until you kill yourself or die through accident, though I do not see how accidents can occur.”

  It was some time before the hurricane of protests trailed away. There was a silence for several minutes. Then Wemathol said, “We’ll be here forever.”

  Dingsteth said, “Forever is only a concept. There is no such thing. However, if you had stated that you would be here for a very long time, you would be correct.”

  “We’ll go crazy!” Kumas screamed.

  “That is possible. It won’t make any difference about your longevity.”

  Kickaha spoke calmly, though he did not feel like doing so. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Zazel’s commands are to be obeyed. I myself do not know why he left such orders. I surmise, however, that at the time he gave them to me, he did not foresee that he would one day kill himself. He is dead; his commands are not.”

  Kumas fainted. Wemathol hurled at Dingsteth every item in his large treasury of insults and obscenities. When he had run through them, he started over. Ashatelon bit on his arms until blood came. The other three said nothing, but Red Orc stared through the bars for a long time. Khruuz wept, a strange sight for the humans, since his insectile face looked as if it hid no more than an insect’s emotions. Kickaha leaped up and hung from the bars and grimaced and hooted as if he were an ape. He had to express himself in some way. Just at the moment, he felt as if he had shot backward along the path of evolution. Apes did not think of the future. He would be an ape and not think about it.

  He would later realize just how twisted his logic was. Just then, it seemed to be quite reasonable. It was only human to go ape.

  18

  He had completely recovered by the next morning. Now, looking back at yesterday, he thought that being an ape had been fun. All he had lacked to be a true anthropoid was a fur coat and fleas.

  Nevertheless, that brief fall from evolution’s ladder was a warning. For too many years, he had been under extreme stress and in near-fatal situations. The breaks between them had been too short. It was true that he seemed almost always to be in top physical and mental condition, ready to take on the universe itself, no holds barred, anything goes. But, deep within him, the multitudinous perils, one after the other, had demanded high payment. The latest and worst of the shocks, Anana’s permanent memory loss and then an inescapable sentence to life imprisonment, had been the one-two punch knocking him out of the ring.

  “Only for a little while,” he muttered. “Once I get in shape again, get a long rest, I’ll be ready to fight anything, anybody.”

  Some of his cage-mates were still suffering. When Kumas was addressed by the others, he only grunted. All day long, he stood, his face pressed against the bars, his hands gripping them. He ate very little. Ashatelon cursed and raved and paced back and forth. Wemathol muttered to himself. Only Khruuz and Red Orc seemed to be undisturbed. Like him, their minds were centered on escaping.

  Fat chance! He had tried again and again to summon up from his reservoir of ingenuity a possible means to break out. Every idea was whisked off by the hurricane of reality. This prison, compared to Alcatraz, was off the starting blocks and over the finish line before Alcatraz could take a step.

  Thirty days passed. Every afternoon, Dingsteth visited them. It spoke for a few minutes to each prisoner except Kumas. He turned his back to it and refused to say a word.

  Red Orc tried to talk it into releasing him. Dingsteth always rejected him. “Zazel’s orders are clear. If he is not here to tell me otherwise, I am to hold any prisoners until he returns.”

  “But Zazel is dead. He will never come back.”

  “True. That makes no difference, however. He did not inform me as to what I should do with prisoners if he died.”

  “You will not reconsider in light of the changed situation?”

  “I am unable to do so.”

  Kickaha listened closely to the dialogue. The next day, while running in the exercise room, not even thinking of his problems, an idea exploded in his mind. It was as if his unconscious had lit a firecracker. “Might work,” he told himself. “Couldn’t hurt to try. Depends upon Dingsteth’s mental setup.”

  The following day, when he saw his captor walking stiffly into the circle of cages, he called to him.

  “Dingsteth! I have great news! Something marvelous has happened!”

  The creature went to Kickaha’s cage and stood close, though not close enough to be grabbed. “What is it?”

  “Last night, while I was dreaming, Zazel’s ghost came to me. He said that he had been trying to get through to you from the land of the dead. But he can only do that in dreams. You don’t dream.”

  Kickaha was guessing about that. But it seemed probable that its brain would lack an unconscious mind.

  “Since you don’t dream, but I am a blue-ribbon dreamer, Zazel, his ghost, that is, used me as his medium to communicate to you!”

  Dingsteth’s features were incapable of expressing puzzlement. Nevertheless, they managed to hint at it.

  “What does ‘blue ribbon’ mean in the context of your statement?”

  “It’s a phrase for ‘excellent.’”

  “Indeed. But what is a ghost?”

  “You don’t know about ghosts?”

  “I have great knowledge, but it is impossible for my brain to hold all knowledge. When I need to know something, I ask the world-brain about it.”

  “Ask them about ghosts and spirits and psychic phenomena. Now, here’s what happened last night. Zazel …”

  After Kickaha had finished his story, Dingsteth said, “I will go to the world and ask it.”

  It hurried away. As soon as it had vanished through the gate between the tree and the stone, Red Orc said, “Kickaha! What are you …?”

  Kickaha held a finger to his lips while shaking his head slightly. “Shh! Bear with me!”

  He paced around the cage. His thoughts were like a swarm of
asteroids orbiting a planet. The center of the planet was the idea that had suddenly come to him yesterday. It was a bright comet born in the darkness of his unconscious mind and zooming into his conscious mind, the bright planet—colliding with it, turning it into fire for a moment.

  I should have been a poet, he thought. Thank God I have sense enough, though, not to tell others the images, the similes and metaphors springing up in my brain. They would laugh at me.

  Having veered away from the subject of importance to his own self, a failing common to everyone, his mind returned to it. What would he say when Dingsteth came back to tell him he was full of crap?

  The ruler of the Caverned World did return within five minutes. When he stood before the cage, he said, “The world informs me that there are in reality no such entities as ghosts or spirits. Thus, you are lying.”

  “No, I’m not!” Kickaha shouted. “Tell me, when was the data about spiritual things put into the world-brain?”

  Dingsteth was silent for a few seconds. Then it said, “It was approximately twelve thousand years ago as time was measured in Zazel’s native world. I can get the exact date for you.”

  “See!” Kickaha said. “The data has long been obsolete! Since then, it’s been discovered that what was thought to be a superstition is fact! There are indeed such entities as ghosts and other kinds of spirits! About two thousand years ago, a Thoan named Houdini proved that there are ghosts. He also proved that they can communicate with us, but it’s seldom that we can communicate with them. The ghosts appear to highly sensitive and gifted individuals, such as myself, and make their wishes known. Their method of communication is like a one-way gate. They can speak to us. We can’t speak to them!”

  He glanced around. By now, all except Kumas were gripping the bars and looking intently at him.

  “If you don’t believe me, ask them! They’ll tell you that what I said is true? Isn’t that right, men?”

  None of them may have guessed rightly what he was heading for. But they were intelligent enough to play along with him. Kumas might not, but when Dingsteth asked him if Kickaha was telling the truth, the Thoan lay silent on his blankets and stared up through the bars. The others swore that what Kickaha claimed had indeed been public knowledge for a very long time.

  “In fact,” Red Orc said, “this same Houdini confirmed the existence of ghosts through scientific-psychic experiments. He was able several times to see them, though faintly. But the dead sometimes come through more or less clearly in dreams.”

  He looked at Kickaha as if to say, “Who the hell is Houdini?”

  Kickaha held up a hand and formed an O with the fingers while Dingsteth’s back was turned to him. He was delighted that the Thoan had caught on so quickly.

  Khruuz spoke loudly. “My people lived before the Thoan! We knew that there were spirits long before the Thoan became aware that we existed!”

  Kickaha hoped that the clones did not get so enthusiastic that they made up “facts” that could be exposed as untruths. This game had to be played coolly and close to the chest. When Dingsteth wheeled around to see Khruuz, Kickaha gestured at Ashatelon and Wemathol to say little. Then he stopped. It had occurred to him that Dingsteth’s monitor cameras would photograph him.

  If the creature did view the films and it had questions about the gestures, it would get some kind of hokey explanation from him.

  Wemathol and Ashatelon told the creature that everybody had known for millennia that there was a spiritual world and that ghosts now and then did communicate through dreams. They were, however, more scornful of Dingsteth for its ignorance than Kickaha wished them to be. They could not resist their impulses to insult and demean.

  If Dingsteth was affected by them, it did not show it. After turning its back to face Kickaha, it said, “Describe Zazel.”

  Canny creature! Not so guileless as it seemed.

  To put off the answer until he could think of an acceptable one, Kickaha said, “What do you mean? Describe his physical features? His face? His height? The relative proportions of his limbs to his trunk? The color of his hair and eyes? Whether his ears were small or large? How big a nose he had and what its shape was?”

  “Yes.”

  Kickaha breathed in deeply before speaking, hoping to suck in inspiration of mind as well as breath. He spoke loudly so the others could hear him clearly.

  “Ah, well, he was shrouded in a mist so I couldn’t make out his face clearly. The dead appearing in mists or not clearly to the dreamer is, as I’ve said before, a common phenomenon. Isn’t that right, men?”

  “Yes, indeed!”

  “No doubt of it! It’s been proven!”

  “If Houdini were here, he’d tell you himself that it’s true!”

  “We Khringdiz had the same experiences!”

  Kumas rose from his blankets, went across his cage, and screamed, “You’re all crazy!” after which he lay down again.

  Dingsteth said, “He invalidates your statements.”

  “Not at all,” Red Orc called. “His mind is sliding down into insanity. You will have noticed that he said ‘all,’ meaning everybody here, you included. You know you’re not insane. The rest of us know we’re sane. Therefore, his statement is that of a mentally unhinged man and so does not coincide with reality.”

  “That seems reasonable,” Dingsteth said. “I know that I am quite rational.”

  He spoke to Kickaha, “What did Zazel say?”

  “First, he greeted me. He said, ‘Niss Zatzel.’”

  Wemathol groaned. He thought that the leblabbiy Earthman had really goofed up.

  “‘Niss Zatzel.’ I didn’t know what he meant. Then I realized that he was speaking the Thoan of his time. He was saying, ‘I am Zazel’ in the form of his tongue when he lived. Fortunately, the language has not changed that much. I could understand almost everything he said. When I couldn’t, I could figure it out from the context. Also, his words did not come through the mists without some distortion, some muffling, too. Both the appearance of ghosts and their voices come through as if a slightly malfunctioning gate were transmitting them.”

  “I am pleased to find that out. ‘Niss Zatzel.’ You are not a Thoan, hence you would not be likely to know the ancient language.”

  Kickaha decided to quote Zazel’s supposed words indirectly from here on. About all he knew of the archaic Thoan was a few words Anana had told him. He was glad that he remembered some of their conversation, which had taken place long ago.

  “What did he say after that?” Dingsteth said.

  Kickaha spoke slowly, his thoughts only a few words ahead of his tongue.

  “He said he had learned much from the other spirits and from the Supreme Spirit who rules their land. He sees now what errors and mistakes he made while in the land of the living.”

  Don’t get carried away, Kickaha told himself. Make it effective but short. The less I say, the more chance I won’t say something that’ll betray me.

  “To be brief, he told me that he could not get in contact with you except through a human who was open to psychic channels. That one was me. It took him some time and energy to do it since I was emotionally upset about being imprisoned. Finally, last night, he did it in a dream of mine. He told me to tell you that we should be released and treated as guests, though Red Orc is to be watched carefully because he’s dangerous. But you are not to give anybody the data on the creation engine. You should destroy it and then let each of us go our own ways.”

  After a slight pause, Kickaha said, “He also told me, insisted, in fact, that the Horn of Shambarimen, which you took from Red Orc, should be given to me. It is my property, and, as Zazel said, I won’t misuse it.”

  Red Orc’s face paled, and it twisted into a silent snarl. But he dared not say anything that would make Dingsteth refuse to release him. On the other hand, Kickaha had to include the Thoan in the people to be freed. If he did not, Red Orc would expose him for the liar he was.

  “Zazel ordered that you erase
all the data about the engine because it’s a great danger to every living thing in every universe. You must do this immediately. And you must make sure the data is not retrievable. By that, he means that none of it is to be left stored in the world-brain. No one’ll be able to call it up from the world.

  “Then, you will let us out of our cages and permit us to gate out of this world. But Zazel ordered that Red Orc’s weapons not be given back to him and that his airboat be stripped of its beamers. We will fly our machines to the departure gate. All of us will leave together and gate through to Red Orc’s palace on Earth II.”

  Red Orc glared. He knew why Kickaha was making these terms.

  Kickaha continued, “Zazel did not tell me why he wants us to do that. He must have some reason he didn’t care to tell me. But it’ll be for the best, I’m sure. The dead know everything.”

  Dingsteth did not speak for several minutes. Its eyes were as unmoving as those in a statue, though it did blink. It did not shift slightly or twitch minutely as a human would have done in that rigid posture. The caged men, Kumas excepted, did not take their gazes from him.

  Kickaha murmured to himself, “Is Dingsteth going to buy it?”

  His fabrication would not work on any Thoan or most Earthpeople. But the creature was not human, and it had had almost no experience with the supreme prevaricator species, Homo sapiens.

  At long last, Dingsteth spoke. “If Zazel ordered it, it will be done. If only I could dream, he might speak to me!”

  For a moment, Kickaha felt sorry for it. Maybe it was more human than he had thought. Or maybe it just wanted to be.

  They would be released within an hour, and they would be gated to the cave wherein their craft were stored. But it took longer to carry out “Zazel’s instructions” than Kickaha had anticipated. The unforeseen, as so often happened, took place. Khruuz was the first to be gated through to the place where Dingsteth had put the aircraft. Kumas was to follow Khruuz, after which Red Orc would be transmitted to the storage place. Kickaha had requested this gating order because he wanted Red Orc not to be the first in the storage place. No telling what that wily bastard could do if he were alone or had only his clones to deal with. But Khruuz was powerful enough to overcome him if the need arose.