Wolff smiled and pointed at the console. “Arwoor should have destroyed that instead of indulging his sadistic imagination. Like all weapons it’s two-edged.”
He activated the control, and, again, an image of the crescent shone on the screen. Curving lines of light ran across the plate. Wolff went to another console and opened a little door on the top to reveal a panel with unmarked controls. After flipping two, he pressed a button. The screen went blank.
“The resonance of his crescent has been changed,” Wolff said. “When he goes to use it with any of the others he has, he’ll get a hell of a shock. Not the kind Vannax got. He just won’t have a gate through which to escape.”
“You Lords are a mean, crafty, sneaky bunch,” Kickaha said. “But I like your style, anyway.”
He left the room. A moment later, his shouts came down the corridor. Podarge started to leave the room, then stopped to glare suspiciously at Wolff. He broke into a run. Podarge, satisfied he was coming, raced ahead. Wolff stopped and removed the horn from the case. He reached a finger into its mouth, hooked it through the only opening in the weblike structure therein large enough to accept his finger. A pull drew the web out. He turned it around and inserted it with its front now toward the inside of the horn. Then he put the horn back into the case and ran after the harpy.
She was with Kickaha, who was explaining that he thought he had seen a gworl but it was just a prowling eagle. Wolff said they must go back to the others. He did not explain that it was necessary that the horn be within a certain distance of the control room walls. When they had returned to the hall outside the control room, Wolff opened the case. Kickaha stood behind Podarge, ready to knock her unconscious if she started any trouble. What they could do with the eagles, besides sicking the apes on them, was another matter.
Podarge exclaimed when she saw the horn but made no hostile move. Wolff lifted the horn to his lips and hoped he could remember the correct sequence of notes. Much had come back to him since he had talked with Vannax; much was yet lost.
He had just placed the mouthpiece to his lips when a voice roared out. It seemed to come from ceiling and walls and floor, from everywhere. It spoke in the language of the Lords, for which Wolff was glad. Podarge would not know the tongue.
“Jadawin! I did not recognize you until I saw you with the horn! I thought you looked familiar—I should have known. But it’s been such a long time! How long?”
“It’s been many centuries, or millenia, depending upon the time scale. So, we two old enemies face each other again. But this time you have no way out. You will die as Vannax died.”
“How so?” roared Arwoor’s voice.
“I will cause the walls of your seemingly impregnable fortress to melt. You will either stay inside and roast or come out and die another way. I don’t think you’ll stay in.”
Suddenly he was seized with a concern and a sense of injustice. If Podarge should kill Arwoor, she would not be killing the man who was responsible for her present state. It did not matter that Arwoor would have done the same thing if he had been the Lord of this world at that time.
On the other hand, he, Wolff, was not to blame, either. He was not the lord Jadawin who had constructed this universe and then manipulated it so foully for so many of its creatures and abducted Terrestrials. The attack of amnesia had been complete; it had wiped all of Jadawin from him and made him a blank page. Out of the blankness had emerged a new man, Wolff, one incapable of acting like Jadawin or any of the other lords.
And he was still Wolff, except that he remembered what he had been. The thought made him sick and contrite and eager to make amends as best he could. Was this the way to start, by allowing Arwoor to die horribly for a crime he had not commited?
“Jadawin!” boomed Arwoor. “You may think you have won this move! But I have topped you again! I have one more coin to put on the table, and its value is far more than what your horn will do to me!”
“And what is that?” Wolff asked. He had a black feeling that Arwoor was not bluffing.
“I’ve planted one of the bombs I brought with me when I was dispossessed of Chifaenir. It’s under the palace, and when I so desire, it will go off and blow the whole top of this monolith off. It’s true I’ll die, too, but I’ll take my old enemy with me! And your woman and friends will die, too! Think of them!”
Wolff was thinking of them. He was in agony.
“What are your terms?” he asked. “I know that you don’t want to die. You’re so miserable you should want to die, but you’ve clung to your worthless life for ten thousand years.”
“Enough of your insults! Will you or won’t you? My finger is on the button.” Arwoor chuckled and continued, “Even if I’m bluffing, which I’m not, you can’t afford to take the chance.”
Wolff spoke to the others, who had been listening without understanding but knew something drastic had happened. He explained as much as he dared, omitting any connection of himself with the Lords.
Podarge, her face a study in combined frustration and madness, said, “Ask him what his terms are.”
She added, “After this is all over, you have much to explain to me, O Wolff.”
Arwoor replied, “You must give me the silver horn, the all-precious and unique work of the master, Ilmarwolkin. I will use it to open the gate in the pool and pass through to the Atlantian tier. That is all I want, except your promise that none will come after me until the gate is closed.”
Wolff considered for a few seconds. Then he said, “Very well. You may come out now. I swear to you on my honor as Wolff and by the Hand of Detiuw that I will give you the horn and I will send no one after you until the gate is closed.”
Arwoor laughed and said, “I’m coming out.”
Wolff waited until the door at the end of the hall was swinging out. Knowing that he could not be overheard by Arwoor then, he said to Podarge, “Arwoor thinks he has us, and he may well be confident. He will emerge through the gate at a place forty miles from here, near Ikwekwa, a suburb of the city of Atlantis. He would still be at the mercy of you and your eagles if there were not another resonant point only ten miles from there. This point will open when the horn is blown and admit him to another universe. I will show you where it is after Arwoor goes through the pool.”
Arwoor advanced confidently. He was a tall broad-shouldered and good-looking man with wavy blond hair and blue eyes. He took the horn from Wolff, bowed ironically, and walked on down the hall. Podarge stared at him so madly that Wolff was afraid that she would leap upon him. But he had told her that he must keep his promises: the one to her and the one to Arwoor.
Arwoor strode past the silent and menacing files as if they were no more than statues of marble. Wolff did not wait for him to get to the pool but went at once into the control room. A quick examination showed him that Arwoor had left a device which would depress the button to set off the bomb. Doubtless he had given himself plenty of time to get away. Nevertheless, Wolff sweated until he had removed the device. By then, Kickaha had returned from watching Arwoor go through the gate in the pool.
“He got away, all right,” he said, “but it wasn’t as easy as he had thought. The place of emergence was under water, caused by the flood he himself had created. He had to drop into the water and swim for it. He was still swimming when the gate closed.”
Wolff took Podarge into a huge map room, and indicated the town near which the gate was. Then, in the visual-room, he showed her the gate at close range on a screen. Podarge studied the map and the screen for a minute. She gave an order to her eagles, and they trooped out after her. Even the apes were awed by the glare of death in their eyes.
Arwoor was forty miles from the monolith, but he had ten miles to travel to get to the temple in which was a gate. Moreover, Podarge and her pets were launching themselves from a point 30,000 feet up. They would descend at such an angle and for such a distance that they could build up great speed. It would be a close race between Podarge and her quarry.
While he waited before the screen, Wolff had time to do much thinking. Eventually, he would tell Chryseis who he was and how he had come to be Wolff. She would know that he had been to another universe to visit one of the rare friendly lords. The Vaernirn became lonely, despite their great powers, and wanted to socialize now and then with their peers. On his return to this universe, he had fallen into a trap set by Vannax, another dispossessed Lord. Jadawin had been hurled into the universe of Earth, but he had taken the surprised Vannax with him. Vannax had escaped with a crescent after the savage tussle on the hill slope. What had happened to the other crescent, Wolff did not know. But Vannax had not had it, that was sure.
Amnesia had struck then, and Jadawin had lost all memory—had become, in effect, a baby, a tabula rasa. Then the Wolffs had taken him in, and his education as an Earthman had begun.
Wolff did not know the reason for the amnesia. It might have been caused by a blow on the head during his struggle with Vannax. Or it might have resulted from the terror of being marooned and helpless on an alien planet. Lords had depended upon their inherited sciences so long that, stripped of them, they became less than men.
Or his loss of memory might have corne from the long struggle with his conscience. For years before being thrust willynilly into another world, he had been dissatisfied with himself, disgusted with his ways and saddened by his loneliness and insecurity. No being was more powerful than a Lord, yet none was lonelier or more conscious that any minute might be his last. Other Lords were plotting against him; all had to be on guard every minute.
Whatever the reason, he had become Wolff. But as Kickaha pointed out, there was an affinity between him and the horn and the points of resonance. It had been no accident that he had happened to be in the basement of that house in Arizona when Kickaha had blown the horn. Kickaha had had his suspicions that Wolff was a dispossessed Lord deprived of his memory.
Wolff knew now why he had learned the languages here so extraordinarily quickly. He was remembering them. And he had had such a swift and powerful attraction to Chryseis because she had been his favorite of all the women of his domain. He had even been thinking of bringing her to the palace and making her his Lady.
She did not know who he was on meeting him as Wolff because she had never seen his face. That cheap trick of the dazzling radiance had concealed his features. As for his voice, he had used a device to magnify and distort it to further awe his worshippers. Nor was his great strength natural, for he had used the bio-processes to equip himself with superior muscles.
He would make such amends as he could for the cruelty and arrogance of Jadawin, a being now so little a part of him. He would make new human bodies in the biocylinders and insert in them the brains of Podarge and her sisters, Kickaha’s apes, Ipsewas, and any others who so desired. He would allow the people of Atlantis to rebuild, and he would not be a tyrant. He was not going to interfere in the affairs of the world of tiers unless it was absolutely necessary.
Kickaha called him to the screen. Arwoor had somehow found a horse in that land of dead and was riding him furiously.
“The luck of the devil!” Kickaha said, and he groaned.
“I think the devil’s after him,” Wolff said. Arwoor had looked behind and above him and then begun to beat his horse with a stick.
“He’s going to make it!” Kickaha said. “There’s a Temple of the Lord only a half-mile ahead!”
Wolff looked at the half-ruined white stone structure on top of a high hill. Within it was the secret chamber which he himself had used when he had been Jadawin.
He shook his head and said, “No!”
Podarge swooped within the field of vision. She was coming at great speed, her wings flapping, her face thrust forward, white against the green sky. Behind her came her eagles.
Arwoor rode the horse as far up the hill as he could. Then the mare’s legs gave out, and she collapsed. Arwoor hit the ground running. Podarge dived at him. Arwoor dodged like a rabbit fleeing from a hawk. The harpy followed him in his zigzags, guessed which way he would go during one of his sideleaps, and was on him. Her claws struck his back. He threw his hands in the air and his mouth became an O through which soared a scream, voiceless to the watchers of the screen.
Arwoor fell with Podarge upon him. The other eagles landed and gathered to watch.
The Gates of Creation
AUTHOR’S FOREWORD
The original title for this book was THE TRAPDOOR PLANETS. For some reason, Don Wollheim, then editor of Ace Books, changed it to the bland and less meaningful THE GATES OF CREATION. He had also changed my title for the first novel in this series to THE MAKER OF UNIVERSES. When the third book came out, he’d changed my title, KICKAHA’S WORLD, to A PRIVATE COSMOS.
Son of a bitch! I thought, but there was nothing to do about it but complain again.
That was in the old days. Now the editors always consult with me about title changes, and sometimes I go along with them because they are right. I don’t think there’s anything sacrosanct about my titles or texts, and I’ve had some very valuable suggestions from some editors. In fact, in some situations, I’ve wished that the editor of a book had paid close attention to the text. I could have benefited from it.
In those days, Ace Books did not give notice to the reader or the writer that an issue was a reprint. I would have welcomed such information since I needed it for bibliographical data and, especially, as a means for checking against the publishers’ royalty reports. For instance, one of the reprints of BEHIND THE WALLS OF TERRA, the fourth in the series, came out as BEYOND THE WALLS OF TERRA. If it had not been for this title change, I would never have known that the book I saw on the stands was a reprint. Only when a book had a new cover could I determine that it was a reprint. I don’t know why the “BEHIND” became “BEYOND”, but I suspect that someone in production goofed. Later, the title was changed back to the original wording. Whoever discovered the error did not learn it from me. I never said a word about it to anyone at Ace Books.
When Ace was taken over by another publisher, I suggested to the new editors that it would be helpful, not to mention ethical, if future reprints contained reprint data. And they adopted my suggestion.
I suppose that the above may seem unimportant to some readers. But such things are not trivial to us writers. Some publishers are very honest; others are not. And even the honest ones sometimes make errors.
Apparently, Don Wollheim, who was also a vice-president of Ace, was not responsible for the policy of failure to give reprint data. That lies with the late Wynn. I don’t know why he insisted on this policy, but I have it on good authority that he did so. Wollheim, who’s now the publisher and chief editor of his own line, DAW Books, gives reprint information on his books.
Though I had no control over the title or cover art—and how I wish I did have it then and now over the latter!—I was given a free hand by Wollheim in the text. Provided, of course, that there was no overt sex or any use of the stronger swear words or of such items as penises and vaginas. This was o.k. with me because I saw no esthetic reasons for using such in this particular series. Besides, I knew the ground rules before I started and so had no reason to complain if I had used such and they had been censored. However, one thing I did not know was that Wollheim reserved the right to cut the text if he thought it too long. After BEHIND THE WALLS OF TERRA came out, Wollheim informed me that he had excised some pages. He’d done so, he said, because he thought the chase-and-hiding-scenes were too long and slowed the pace. I read the book then, though I did not compare it to the manuscript. The cutting did not seem to have hurt anything. It was well done.
Still, I would have preferred to have been consulted about the excisions, to have been given a chance to argue about them if I wanted to. The writer should have the deciding vote in such matters.
Three of my early stories were savagely, in fact, barbarically, slashed to make room for advertisements or because of the Victorian hangups of the editors. Two came out we
ll-nigh unintelligible. If the two editors responsible for this had been within reach, I would’ve kicked their asses. One, at least, had the grace to apologize and to promise that she wouldn’t do it again. The other female editor paid no more attention to my protests than the Goths did to the citizens of Rome when they were sacking it. The third editor, a man, apologized for having rewritten what he considered to be overly racy passages. In fact, they were extremely innocuous even by the standards of the 1950’s.
When I wrote MAKER OF UNIVERSES, I did not have the origin and history of the Lords in clear detail in my mind. What there is about them in MAKER was made up while I was writing. But, by the time I was ready to start on GATES, I had the genesis and the outline of the social/economic/psychological/scientific development of the Lords in my head. I do not know what seized me to make the Lords the same beings that William Blake wrote of in his strange symbolical and didiactic works. I had read parts of these works several years before. And I’d read these and other parts in the early 1950’s. At neither time had I thought of using anything from them, though they did stimulate me. Blake burns sometimes with an intense but opaque flame and at others with a clear and mind-searing flame. And he also has very long stretches where the flame, if any, is hidden.
My progress through them has been somewhat like the temporal locomotion of the tempusfudgers in this book. Here, then there, and then over thataway with plenty of disapperances between locale shifts.
But while I was working out the outline of GATES it came to me that the Lords were actually those cosmogens the English poet knew. By knew, I mean knew. It seemed to me that he had not imagined them, that he had had personal relationships with them. And it also seemed that what Blake told us about them had been cast into poetic and symbolic terms for some good reason I hadn’t” figured out yet.
Now I have figured it out.
I also envisioned bringing in William Blake in the last book of the series. And perhaps having him make a brief and unaccountable appearance before the final volume. As a teaser.