“The tale also described how he would then kill the last Thoan and become the Lord of all the worlds.
“But another story said that he would join the lablabbiy and help them overthrow the Lords. The tales made enjoyable hair-raising stories for the children. But that the Thokina could actually be … that … that…”
“I am not lying,” he said. “And I was wondering about the image of the scaly man I saw on a goblet during the feast.”
“If a Thokina has risen from his sleep and is somewhere out there, what does he intend to do?”
“All you know now is that they did and do exist. You really don’t know if he’ll be hostile or friendly.”
He wondered if some of that fright she’d felt as a child when hearing the tale was still living in her.
She sat down, leaned toward him, and clamped her hand around his wrist. He winced as his wristbones seemed to bend in toward each other. Her grip was as strong as he imagined a gorilla’s would be. He certainly did not want to tangle with her, not in a fight, anyway.
“This scaly man is an unknown factor. Therefore, until we know better, he’s a danger. Tell me. Did you tell Red Orc about him?”
“I did not. I wouldn’t tell him anything that he might use.”
She loosed her grip. Kickaha felt like rubbing his wrist, but he was not going to let anyone, not even a goddess, know that her grip was so powerful that she had hurt him.
She said, “Good. We have that advantage. Another is that Red Orc does not know where you are. Now, when you resume your journey to the Caverned World, you-“
One does not twice interrupt a goddess, but he did it anyway. “Resume my journey?”
“Of course. I took it for granted that you would. You did give your word to him that you would, didn’t you?”
“It doesn’t matter if I did or not. He knew I’d return to him because he said that Anana might be alive and his prisoner. I doubt very much that she did survive the flash flood. But I can’t chance it that she didn’t.”
“You didn’t get to tell the rest of your story.”
He ended his narration at the point where he had jumped into the trap she had placed before the Thoan’s gate.
She said, “You’re an extraordinary man, though you’ve had more luck than most would have had. It may run out soon. Then again…”
They talked of other things. Kickaha sipped on the liquor. Near the end of their conversation, he felt even more hopeful than he usually did, and he was almost always high on optimism.
The goddess stood up and looked down at him. Her expression seemed to show fondness for him. He felt more than fondness for her.
“It’s agreed that you will go on looking for Zazel’s World. You’ll have an advantage doing that because I know a gateway that I doubt anyone else knows. My powers are not small, though this is a mammoth project. I will try to keep you within detection range of the glindglassa, though I am not at all sure that I can do that. You will spend several more days here resting and exercising and discussing with me the details of our plan. You look tired. You will go to bed, and you may rise when you feel like it.”
“I sometimes rise when I don’t feel like it.”
She smiled and said, “Unless I’m wrong, you are implying more than appears on the surface of your words.”
“I usually do.”
“For a leblabbiy, you are very brash.”
“There’s some doubt that I am a leblabbiy, completely leblabbiy, that is. I may be half-Thoan, but I’m not eager to find out if I am. What is is, and I am what I am.”
“We’ll talk about that some other time. You are dismissed.”
She’s really putting me in my place, he thought. Oh well, it was the liquor talking. Or was it?
Anana’s bright face arced across his mind. For a moment, he felt as if he were going to weep.
She patted him on the shoulder and said, “Grief is a price paid for admission to life.”
She paused, then said, “Bromides help few people in times of sorrow. But there are some things I know that could ease the grief.”
She said nothing more. He went up to his room and prepared for bed. When he got into it, he had some trouble getting to sleep. But only fifteen or so minutes passed before he was gone from the waking world. He awoke with a start and reached for the beamer under his pillow. A noise? A soft voice? Something had awakened him. By then, the beamer, which he kept under his pillow, was in his hand. Then he saw, silhouetted in the doorless entrance against the dusk-light of the hallway, a woman’s figure. She was so tall that she had to be Manathu Vorcyon. He smelled a faint odor. This might have brought him up out of sleep; the nose was also sentinel against danger. The odor was musky but not perfume from a bottle. It hinted at fluids flowing and fevers floating hot and steamy from a swamp, a strange image but appropriate. The odor was that of the flesh of a woman in heat, though stronger than any he had ever smelled.
She walked slowly toward him.
“Put the beamer down, Kickaha.”
He placed it on the floor and waited, his heart thudding as if it were a stallion’s hooves kicking against a stall door. She eased herself down on her knees and then on her side against Kickaha. Her body heat was like a wave from a just-opened furnace door.
“It has been eighty years since I have had a child,” she whispered. “Since then, I have met no man whose baby I cared to bear, though I have bedded many splendid lovers. But you, Kickaha, the man of many wiles, the man who is never at a loss, the hero of many adventures, you will give me a child to love and and to raise. And I know that I have stirred in you a mighty passion. Moreover, you are one of the very few men not afraid of me.”
Kickaha was not sure of that. But he had overcome fear most of his life, and he would ride over this fear, which was not a big one, anyway.
He thought of Anana, though the withdrawal of blood from his brain for nonmental uses paled the thought. If she were dead, she would be no barrier for him to other women. But he did not know if she had died, and he and Anana had sworn faithfulness to each other. They would honor the vow unless they were separated for a long time or were forced by circumstances to suspend it for a while. What they did in such situations was left to each to justify to himself or herself.
Her mouth met his, and the right breast of Mother Earth, in itself a planet, rested on his belly.
He thought, I am in her power. I depend upon her to help me in the battle with Red Orc. The fate of whole universes is on the scales. If I say no to her, I might weigh the balance in favor of Red Orc. No, that’s nonsense, but she might not be so enthusiastic in helping me. Also, a guest does not offend a hostess. It’s not good manners.
Mainly, though, I want to do this.
He sighed, and he said, “I am indeed deeply sorry, Great Mother. But Anana and I swore absolute fidelity to each other. Much as I desire you, and I’ve desired only Anana more than you, I will not do this.”
She stiffened, then got up. Looking down at him, she said, “I honor your vow, Kickaha. Even though I can see plainly in this dim light that you are not at all indifferent to me.”
“The body does not always override the dictates of the mind.”
She laughed, then said, “You know the Thoan proverbs well. I admire
you, Kickaha. Fidelity is a rare trait, especially when I am the temptress.” “That is the truth. Please go before I weaken too much.”
Three days later, Kickaha and Manathu Vorcyon were standing before the silvery screen of the glindglassa. Kickaha was fully clothed and well armed with various weapons. His backpack contained food, water, and some medical supplies. His head was full of advice from the Great Mother.
She leaned close to the glindglassa and whispered a code word. Its surface instantly shimmered and expanded slightly, then contracted slightly. Kickaha looked into it but could see nothing beyond.
Manathu Vorcyon turned, enfolded him in her arms, pressed him close to her breasts, and kissed his forehead.
“I shall miss you, Kickaha,” she murmured. “May you succeed in your mission. I will be attempting to keep you under surveillance as much as possible, but even that will not be much.”
“It’s been more than fun,” he said. “It’s been very educational. And you have highly honored me.”
She released him. He stepped toward the gate. She lightly touched the back of his neck and ran the tip of her finger down his spine. A shiver ran through him. It felt as if a goddess had blessed him.
She said, “If anyone can stop Red Orc, you’ll be the one.”
He wondered if she really meant it. It did not matter. He agreed wholeheartedly with her. However, his best might not be enough.
He stepped through the wavering and shimmering curtain.
11
THOUGH KICKAHA HAD BEEN TOLD BY THE GIANTESS THAT HE would find nothing dangerous during his first transit, he was ready for the unexpected. He was crouching, beamer in hand, when he was suddenly surrounded by darkness. Per Manathu Vorcyon’s instructions, he walked forward three steps. Bright sunlight dazzled him. Before him was an open plain-no surprise, since the Great Mother had told him what to expect. He straightened up, looked around, and reholstered the weapon.
The sky seemed to be one vast aurora with shifting and wavering bands of violet, green, blue, yellow, and gray. The plain was covered with tall yellow grasses except for groves of trees here and there. Far away, a large herd of huge black animals was grazing. Behind him was a house-sized and roughly pyramid-shaped boulder of some smooth, greasy, and greenish stone.
He had fifty seconds to get to the other side of the boulder. The Great Mother had arranged this detour to mystify any enemy who might be traveling through the gateways. He ran around the stone and saw a shimmering on its side. But he stopped for several seconds. Here was something not even the Great Mother could have anticipated. Two tiger-sized beasts with long snouts and predators’ teeth were standing in front of the gate. They roared but did not charge.
Kickaha, yelling, ran at them, his beamer again in his hand. One beast bounded away; the other held its ground and crouched down to spring at him. His beamer ray drilled through its head. It slumped and was silent. He leaped over the carcass, which stank of burnt flesh, and through the gate. A roar filled his ears. The other beast had turned and was, he supposed, charging him. He envisioned the gate disappearing and the animal bouncing off the suddenly hard side of the boulder. But he was rammed forward by its flying body and slammed into a wall. The force of the impact stunned him.
When, after an undeterminable time, he regained his senses, his groping hand felt a sticky liquid. An odor like a weasel’s filled his nostrils. But he also smelled blood. He felt the device on his wrist and pressed a button. Light sprang from it, momentarily dazzling him. It lit up a small chamber cut out of stone like the first one. But he doubted that he was in the same boulder, if it was a boulder. He got to his feet and noted as he stepped over the big predator that only its front part had gotten through the gate.
He walked toward the wall through which he had just entered. There were shimmerings on each of the other walls. The Great Mother had told him that two were false gates containing devices that would spray poison on the intruder. He jumped throught the safe gate while hoping that he had not been delayed too long by the animal. As he emerged on the other side and yelled out the code word, he landed on top of a six-foot-square and six-inch-deep metal box. It was poised a thousand feet in the air above a land of bare stone. The sky was blue, and the wind whistling past him was cold. Below were row on row of Brobdingnagian busts carved out of monoliths. They extended to the horizons. Manathu Vorcyon had told him that this was the world of Arathmeem the strutter. That Lord, long since slain by Red Orc, had made a planet of which a fourth consisted of billions of rock or jewel busts of himself.
He was glad that he had not arrived when an electrical storm was in full rage. Thunder and lightning and a strong wind might have drowned out the code word. In which situation, the metal box would have automatically turned over and dumped him.
On the bottom of the box, near the edge, was a slightly raised metal plate. He got down on his belly, reached over the edge, felt the plate, and pressed it. Then he was, as the Great Mother had said he would be, in darkness and enclosed by a very thick fluid. It pressed on him and flowed up his nostrils and into his ears. He had not been given an oxygen mask because he would not be in this gate-trap very long. But an enemy of Manathu Vorcyon would be unless he knew what Kickaha knew.
He reached out with his right hand and felt up and down the wall until his fingers came to a rounded protuberance. He pushed with the flat of his hand on it, and he was free of the strangest trap he had ever been in. It was inside a massive rock on Wooth’s World, a stone that was a living-nonliving thing, analogous to a virus. The slow-moving fluid eventually emerged from fissures in the rock and dripped onto the ground outside the gigantic boulder. From this lava were born-if that word could be used for the bizarre process-small balls flat on the bottom.
The natives on this planet worshiped the “mother,” and they would take the “babies” and set them in the center of their villages. These minor gods grew into stones as large as the mother. Moreover, there was a thriving trade in “babies.” Those villages that had a monopoly on the supply sold them to those who lacked them. Many wars had been fought to protect or to seize a source of the most precious commodity on this planet.
Dripping with the heavy gray fluid, Kickaha stood motionless until it had oozed away from him and spread in a puddle around him. Then he jumped to the ground beyond the puddle. He began walking toward the east. Manathu Vorcyon, during millennia of the use of spies and eavesdropping via gates she had tapped into, had a rough idea of where the gate to Zazel’s World was located on this planet. It was up to Kickaha to find the exact location, but he knew the direction he should go from her gate.
Getting there was not easy. He was on the Unwanted World, a planet so crowded with dangerous beasts, birds, plants, and other forms of life that it was a wonder they had not killed each other off long ago. After some days of avoiding or shooting these, Kickaha had great respect for the survival abilities of Red Orc. After ten days, four of them spent in hiding from a five-foot-high and city-block-wide creature that oozed across the ground and emitted a deadly gas, Kickaha topped a high ridge. Below him was a plain and a river. Near the river were the remains of the gigantic square nest built by some kind of creatures. Manathu Vorcyon did not know what they were. The structure was built with a concrete-like substance made in the creatures’ bellies and spat out to dry.
Los had set up a gate there, the only entrance, as far as anyone knew, to Zazel’s World. When Red Orc had finally returned to this place, he had slain all of the creatures living in it. Unable to find the gate, he had destroyed the construction. Believing that the creatures had broken the gate off at its foundation and buried it somewhere, he searched the land for a hundred-square-mile area. He had very sensitive metal detectors that could determine the size and shape of any metal mass a hundred feet down in the ground. The first time he looked for the gate, he did not find it, and he did not succeed during his many other searches.
“The truth,” the Great Mother had said, “is that we can’t be sure that those creatures removed and hid the gate. Perhaps a Lord did it, though that does not seem likely.”
Kickaha had refrained from saying that he had already thought of that. She might, as on previous occasions, be irritated enough to chew him out and thus put him in his place. Sometimes the Great Mother was a Big Mother.
After crossing the plain, spooking a herd of bisonlike animals on the way, he got to the ruins. There were no pieces left from Red Orc’s beamblasting. He must have disintegrated these and burned out a huge hole in the ground. The hole was brim-full of water.
Kickaha took the backpack off and placed it on the ground. After opening it, he took out a device shaped like a big cigar, but twice the size of the arg
est cigar he had ever seen. Attached halfway along its upper part was a monocular cylinder. He pointed it toward where the building had been. He could see crosshairs and the sky through it. He slowly moved it back and forth, working upward. Then he saw a brightness like a short lightning streak.
He murmured, “I’ll be damned! There it is!”
Manathu Vorcyon had told him that the instrument was a gate or crackin-the-wall detector. Kickaha had not known that such a thing existed until she had handed it to him. It was many thousands of years old, and as far as she knew, the only one.
“Shambarimen is supposed to have made that, too,” she had said.
“You must have a hell of a lot of confidence in me,” he had said. “What if I lose it or have it taken away from me?”
She had shrugged and had said, “I’ve been saving it for a truly important time, a serious crisis. This is it.”
So, here was the gate or, since the metal hexagram had been removed, the weak spot made by the gate. Red Orc had not known where it was since he did not have the detector.
Kickaha put the detector down. Up there, perhaps fifty feet above the ground, was the crack in the wall between two universes, visible only to his instrument. To reach it, he would have to build a series of platforms and ladders. There was plenty of wood around, and he had the tools he needed.
“Might as well get to work,” he muttered.
“Thank you,” a voice said loudly behind him.