He kissed the woman on the lips and said, “You’ve been in a number of worlds, Anana, but I’ll bet in none more weird than Earth’s.”
“I’ve seen blue skies before,” she said. “Wolff and Chryseis have a five-hour start on us. The Beller has a two-hour start. And all have a big world in which to get lost.”
He nodded and said, “There was no reason for Wolff and Chryseis to hang around here, since the gate is one-way. They’ll take off for the nearest two-way gate, which is in the Los Angeles area, if the gate still exists. If it doesn’t, then the closest ones will be in Kentucky or Hawaii. So we know where they should be going.”
He paused and wet his lips and then said, “As for the Beller, who knows? He could have gone anywhere or he may still be around here. He’s in an absolutely strange world, he doesn’t know anything about Earth, and he can’t speak any of the languages.”
“We don’t know what he looks like, but we’ll find him. I know the Bellers,” she said. “This one won’t cache his bell and then run away to hide with the idea he’ll come back later for it. A Beller cannot endure the idea of being very far away from his bell. He’ll carry it around as long as he can. And that will be our only means of identifying him.”
“I know,” Kickaha said. He was having trouble breathing, and his eyes were beginning to swim. Suddenly, he was weeping.
Anana was alarmed for a minute, and then she said, “Cry! I did it when I went back to my home world once. I thought I was dry forever, that tears were for mortals. But coming back home after so long exposed my weakness.”
Kickaha dried his tears and took his canteen from his belt, uncapped it and drank deeply.
“I love my world, the green-skied world,” he said. “I don’t like Earth; I don’t remember it with much affection. But I guess I had more love for it than I thought. I’ll admit that, every once in a while, I had some nostalgia, some faint longing to see it again, see the people I knew. But …”
Below them, perhaps a thousand feet down, a two-lane macadam road curved around the side of the mountain and continued upward until it was lost around the other side. A car appeared on the up-grade, sped below them, and then was lost with the road. Kickaha’s eyes widened, and he said, “I never saw a car like that before. It looked like a little bug. A beetle!”
A hawk swung into view and, riding the currents, passed before them not more than a hundred yards.
Kickaha was delighted, “The first red-tail I’ve seen since I left Indiana!”
He stepped out onto the ledge, forgetting for a second, but a second only, his caution. Then he jumped back in under the protection of the over-hang. He motioned to Anana, and she went to one end of the ledge and looked out while he did so at the other.
There was nobody below, as far as he could see, though the many trees could conceal anybody who did not want to be seen. He went out a little further and looked upward then but could not see past the overhang. The way down was not apparent at first, but investigation revealed projections just below the right side of the ledge. These would have to do for a start, and, once they began climbing down, other hand and footholds had to appear.
Kickaha eased himself backward over the ledge, feeling with his foot for a projection. Then he pulled himself back up and lay down on the ledge and again scrutinized the road and the forest a thousand feet below. A number of bluejays had started screaming somewhere below him.
He took a pair of small binoculars from his shirt pocket and adjusted three dials on their surface. He removed an ear phone and a thin wire with a male jack on one end and plugged the jack into the receptacle on the side of the binoculars. He began to sweep the forest below and eventually centered it on that spot where the jays were raising such a ruckus.
Through the device, the distant forest suddenly became close, and the faint noises were loud. Something dark moved, and, after he readjusted the binoculars, he saw the face of a man. More sweepings of the device and more adjusting enabled him to see parts of three other men. Each was armed with a rifle with scope, and two had binoculars.
Kickaha gave the device to Anana so she could see for herself. He said, “As far as you know, Red Orc is the only Lord on Earth?”
She put the glasses down and said, “Yes.”
“He must know about these gates, then, and he’s set up some sort of alarm device, so he knows when they’re activated. Maybe his men are stationed close, maybe far off. Maybe Wolff and Chryseis and the Beller got away before his men could get here. Maybe not. In any case, they’re waiting for us.”
They did not comment about the lack of a permanent trap at the gates or a permanent guard. Red Orc, or whatever Lord was responsible for these men, would make a game but of the invasion of his home territory by other Lords. It was deadly, but nevertheless a game.
Kickaha went back to viewing the four beneath the trees. Presently, he said, “They’ve got a walkie-talkie.”
He heard a whirring sound above him. He rolled over to look up and saw a strange machine that had just flown down over the mountain to his right.
He said, “An autogyro!” and then the machine was hidden by a spur of the mountain. He jumped up and ran into the cavern with Anana behind him.
The chopping sound of a plane’s rotors became a roar and then the machine was hovering before the ledge. Kickaha became aware that the machine was not a true autogyro. As far as he knew, a gyro could not stand still in the air, or, as this was doing, swing from side to side or turn around one spot.
The body of the craft was transparent; he could see the pilot and three men inside, armed with rifles. He and Anana were trapped; they had no place to run or hide.
Undoubtedly, Orc’s men had been sent to find out what weapons the intruders carried. Under these conditions, the intruders would have to use their weapons, unless they preferred to be captured. They did not so prefer. They spoke the activating code word, aimed the rings at the machine, and spoke the final word.
The needle-thin golden rays spat once, delivering the full charges in the rings’ tiny powerpacks.
The fuselage split in two places, and the craft fell. Kickaha ran out and looked down over the ledge in time to see the pieces strike the side of the mountain below. One section went up in a white and red ball which fissioned into a dozen smaller fire globes. All the pieces eventually fell not too far apart near the bottom and burned fiercely.
The four men under the trees were white-faced, and the man with the walkie-talkie spat words into the transmitter. Kickaha tried to tighten the beam so he could pick them up, but the noise from the burning machine interfered.
Kickaha was glad that he had struck the first blow, but his elation was darkened. He knew that the Lord had deliberately sacrificed the men in the gyro in order to find out how dangerous his opponents were. Kickaha would have preferred to have gotten away undetected. Moreover, getting down the mountain-side would be impossible until night fell. In the meantime, the Lord would attack again.
He and Anana recharged their rings with the tiny powerpacks. He kept a watch on the men below while she scanned the sides of the mountain. Presently, a red convertible appeared on the left, going down the mountain road. A man and a woman sat in it. The car stopped near the flaming wreckage, and the two got out to investigate. They stood around talking and then got back into the car and sped off.
Kickaha grinned. No doubt they were going to notify the authorities. That meant that the four men would be powerless to attack. On the other hand, the authorities might climb up here and find him and Anana. He could claim that they were just hikers, and the authorities could not hold them for long. But just to be in custody for a while would enable the Lord to seize them the moment they were released. Also, he and Anana would have a hard time identifying themselves, and it was possible that the authorities might hold them until they could be identified.
They would have no record of Anana, of course, but if they tracked down his fingerprints, they would find something difficult to explain
. They would discover that he was Paul Janus Finnegan, born in 1918 near Terre Haute, Indiana, that he had served in a tank corps of the Eighth Army during World War II, and that he had mysteriously disappeared in 1946 from his apartment in a building in Bloomington while he was attending the University of Indiana, and that he had not been seen since.
He could always claim amnesia, of course, but how would he explain that he was fifty-two years old chronologically yet only twenty-five years old physiologically? And how would he explain the origin of the peculiar devices in his backpack?
He cursed softly in Tishquetmoac, in Half-Horse Lakotah, in the Middle High German of Dracheland, in the language of the Lords, and in English. And then he switched his thinking into English, because he had half-forgotten that language and had to get accustomed to its use. If those four men stuck there until the authorities showed up …
But the four, after a long conversation, and obvious receipt of orders from the walkie-talkie, left. They climbed up onto the road, and within a minute a car appeared from the right. It stopped, and the four got in and drove off.
Kickaha considered that this might be a feint to get him and Anana to climb down the mountain. Then another gyro would catch them on the mountainside or the men would come back. Or both.
But if he waited until the police showed up, he could not come down until nightfall. Orc’s men would be waiting down there, and they might have some of the Lord’s advanced weapons to use, because they would not fear to use them at night and in this remote area.
“Come on,” he said to Anana in English. “We’re going down now. If the police see us, we’ll tell them we’re just hitchhikers. You leave the talking to me; I’ll tell them you’re Finnish and don’t speak English yet. Let’s hope there’ll be no Finns among them.”
“What?” Anana said. She had spent three and a half years on Earth in the 1880’s and had learned some English and more French but had forgotten the little she had known.
Kickaha repeated slowly.
“It’s your world,” she said in English. “You’re the boss.”
He grinned at that, because very few female Lords ever admitted there was any situation in which the male was their master. He let himself down again over the ledge. He was beginning to sweat. The sun was coming over the mountain now and shining fully on them, but this did not account for his perspiration. He was sweating out the possible reappearance of the Lord’s men.
He and Anana had gotten about one-third of the way down when the first police car appeared. Two men got out. Their uniforms looked like those of state police, as he remembered those of the Mid-west. A few minutes later, another patrol car and an ambulance appeared. Then two more cars stopped. After a while, there were ten cars.
Kickaha found a path that was sometimes precarious but led at an angle to the right along the slope. He and Anana could keep hidden from the people below part of the time. If they should be seen, they would not have to stop. The police could come after them, but they would be so far behind that their pursuit would be hopeless.
Or so it seemed until another gyro appeared. This one swept back and forth, apparently looking for bodies or survivors. Kickaha and Anana hid behind a large boulder until the craft landed near the road. Then they continued their sidewise descent of the mountain.
When they reached the road, they drank some water and ate some of the concentrated food they had brought from the other world. Kickaha told her that they would walk along the road, going downward. He also reminded her that Red Orc’s men would be cruising up and down the road looking for them.
“Then why don’t we hide out until nightfall?”
“Because in the daylight I can spot a car that definitely won’t be Orc’s. I won’t mind being picked up by one of them. But if Orc’s men show up and try anything, we have our rays and we can be on guard. At night, you won’t know who’s stopping to pick you up. We would avoid the road altogether and hike alongside it in the woods, but that’s slow going. I don’t want Wolff or the Beller to get too far ahead.”
“How do we know they didn’t both go the other way?” she said, “Or that Red Orc didn’t pick them up?”
“We don’t,” he said. “But I’m betting that this is the way to Los Angeles. It’s westward, and it’s down-hill. Wolff would know this, and the instinct of the Beller would be to go down, I would think. I could be wrong. But I can’t stand here forever trying to make up my mind what happened. Let’s go.”
The air was sweet and clean; birds sang; a squirrel ran onto the branch of a tall and half-dead pine and watched them with its bright eyes. There were a number of dead or dying pines. Evidently, some plant disease had struck them. The only signs of human beings were the skeletal power transmission towers and aluminum cables going up the side of a mountain. Kickaha explained to Anana what they were; he was going to be doing much explaining from now on. He did not mind. It gave her the opportunity to learn English and him the opportunity to relearn it.
A car passed them from behind. On hearing it, Kickaha and Anana withdrew from the side of the road, ready to shoot their ray rings or to leap down the slope of the mountain if they had to. He gestured with his thumb at the car, which held a man, woman, and two children. The car did not even slow down. Then a big truck pulling a trailer passed them. The driver looked as if he might be going to stop but he kept on going.
Anana said, “These vehicles! So primitive! So noisy! And they stink!”
“Yes, but we do have atomic power,” Kickaha said. “At least, we had atomic bombs. America did anyway. I thought that by now they’d have atomic-powered cars. They’ve had a whole generation to develop them.”
A cream-colored station wagon with a man and woman and two teenagers passed them. Kickaha stared after the boy. He had hair as long as Kickaha’s and considerably less disciplined. The girl had long yellow hair that fell smoothly over her shoulders, and her face was thickly made-up. Like a whore’s, he thought. Were those really green eyelids?
The parents, who looked about fifty, seemed normal. Except that she had a hairdo that was definitely not around in 1946. And her makeup had been heavy, too, although not nearly as thick as the girl’s.
None of the cars that he had seen were identifiable. Some of them had a GM emblem, but that was the only familiar thing. This was to be expected, of course. But he was startled when the next car to pass was the beetle he had seen when he first looked down from the ledge. Or at least it looked enough like it to be the same. VW? What did that stand for?
He had expected many changes, some of which would not be easy to understand. He could think of no reason why such an ugly cramped car as the VW would be accepted, although he did remember the little Willys of his adolescence. He shrugged. It would take too much energy and time to figure out the reasons for everything he saw. If he were to survive, he would have to concentrate on the immediate problem: getting away from Red Orc’s men. If they were Red Orc’s.
He and Anana walked swiftly in a loose-jointed gait. She was beginning to relax and to take an interest in the beauty of their surroundings. She smiled and squeezed his hand once and said, “I love you.”
He kissed her on the cheek and said, “I love you, too.”
She was beginning to sound and act like an Earthwoman, instead of the superaristocratic Lord.
He heard a car coming around the bend a quarter of a mile away and glanced back at it. It was a black and white state police car with two golden-helmeted men. He looked straight ahead but out of the side of his mouth said, “If this car stops, act easy. It’s the police. Let me handle things. If I hold up two fingers, run and jump down the side of the mountain. No! On second thought … listen, we’ll go with them. They can take us into town, or near it, and then we’ll stun them with the rings. Got it?”
The car, however, shot by without even slowing. Kickaha breathed relief and said, “We don’t look as suspicious as I feel.”
They walked on down the road. As they came onto a half-mile stret
ch they heard a faint roar behind them. The sound became louder, and then Kickaha grinned with pleasure. “Motorcycles,” he said. “Lots of them.”
The roaring became very loud. They turned, and saw about twenty big black cycles race like a black cloud around the corner of the mountain. Kickaha was amazed. He had never seen men or women dressed like these. Several of them aroused a reflex he had thought dead since peace was declared in 1945. His hand flew to the handle of the knife in his belt sheath, and he looked for a ditch into which to dive.
Three of the cyclists wore German coalscuttle helmets with big black swastikas painted on the gray metal. They also wore Iron Crosses or metal swastikas on chains around their necks.
All wore dark glasses, and these, coupled with the men’s beards or handlebar moustaches and sideburns and the women’s heavy makeup made their faces seem insectile. Their clothing was dark, although a few men wore dirty once-white T-shirts. Most wore calf-length boots. A woman sported a kepi and a dragoon’s bright-red, yellow-piped jacket. Their black leather jackets and Y-shirts bore skulls and crossbones that looked like phalluses, and the legend: LUCIFER’S LOUTS.
The cavalcade went roaring by, some gunning their motors or waving at the two and several wove back and forth across the road, leaning far over to both sides with their arms folded. Kickaha grinned appreciatively at that; he had owned and loved a motorcycle when he was going to high school in Terre Haute.
Anana, however, wrinkled up her nose. “The stink of fuel is bad enough,” she said. “But did you smell them? They haven’t bathed for weeks. Or months.”
“The Lord of this world has been very lax,” Kickaha said.
He referred to the sanitary habits of the human inhabitants of the pocket universes which the other Lords ruled. Although the Lords were often very cruel with their human property, they insisted on cleanliness and beauty. They had established laws and religious precepts which saw to it that cleanliness was part of the base of every culture.