After making sure that his beam had gone through the man’s neck, Kickaha took off the corpse’s goggles. As he had thought it would be, the face was Red Orc’s. But the real Red Orc could have sent a clone in his place. Kickaha would never know unless he ran across another one and that one confessed that he was the original Red Orc.
Unlikely event, Kickaha thought. This one, though, did not have the Horn. Would Red Orc let it out of his sight? No, he would not. So, it seemed probable that the dead man was a clone. But he could not have gotten into this world without the Horn. Thus, Red Orc had blown the Horn and then sent this clone through. Or was he along with him and now somewhere in the darkness?
Few things were ever certain.
He picked up the man’s beamer and held it so that the headlight showed him its every detail. Its dial was set on stun range within a hundred feet. That meant that he had intended to knock his enemy out, not kill him. Whoever he was, he had been having fun by playing around with his enemy. When the Thoan tired of that, he would have stunned the Earthman and taken him back to Red Orc’s headquarters as a prisoner.
Quickly, though frequently looking around, Kickaha took the man’s oxygen bottle, beamer, battery pack, headlight, food rations, and canteen. Waste not, and you might not get wasted. As he left the cave burdened with two backpacks and went into the tunnel, he wondered if Red Orc could be in this tunnel and waiting for him, hoping to ambush him.
Kickaha switched to the night-vision light and goggled, walked more swiftly. The long journey was uninterrupted. No other person suddenly appeared ahead of him. Nor did his frequent glances backward show him any follower.
Sweating, his nerves still winched up tight, he got to the last X, the mark showing where he had come through the gate. He stood before the wall and uttered the code word Khruuz had given him. He was not looking forward to going through the cold and twisted and terrifying ordeal of the core-gate again. To his surprise, he was spared that. He stepped through the wall and was immediately in a forest.
He looked around and groaned. The trees were like those he had seen when he had gated to the world of Manathu Vorcyon. Before he could adjust to the unexpected, he was surrounded by big brown men with long straight glossy-black hair, snub noses, and black eyes with epicanthic folds. Their long spears were pointed at him.
“Hey, I’m the Great Mother’s friend!” he said. “Don’t you know me?”
Though they obviously did know him, they said nothing. They marched him through the forest. An hour later, they entered a clearing in the center of which was the gigantic tree in which Our Lady lived. Forthwith, he was conducted into the arboreal palace and up the winding stairway to the dimly lit sixth floor. They left him standing before a big door.
“You may come in now,” Manathu Vorcyon said from behind the door. He pushed the polished ebony door open. Light rushed out upon him. He squinted, then saw a large round table in the center of a luxuriously furnished room. The giantess was on a large well-padded chair facing him. On one side of her was seated Eric Clifton; on the other, Khruuz, the scaly man.
He said, “I’ve had a lot of surprises, but this one jolts me the most. How in hell did you two get here?”
She waved a hand. “Sit down. Eat. Drink. And tell us of your adventures in the Caverned World. Under other circumstances, I would allow you time to bathe and to rest before dining. But we are very eager to know what you discovered.”
Kickaha sat down. The chair felt good, and he was suddenly tired. A sip of yellow wine from a wooden goblet gave him a glow and pushed away his fatigue. While he ate, he talked.
When he was done, he said, “That’s it. Red Orc can now get into that world. A lot of good it’ll do him. As for his finding the way in, I don’t know how he did it.”
“Obviously,” Khruuz said, “he put some kind of tracer on your passage from my place to Zazel’s World. That is not good news. He has means of tracking he did not have before. That is, to my knowledge.”
“He can track intergate passage to my world, too,” Manathu Vorcyon said. “Especially since he has the Horn.”
“But I doubt that he has the device I used on the Unwanted World,” Kickaha said. “Okay, I’ve told you my story. How did you three get together?”
“It was Khruuz’s idea,” the Great Mother said. “He sent Eric Clifton as his envoy to me to propose that we band together against Red Orc.”
“And I set up the gating from Zazel’s World so that you would come directly here,” Khruuz said.
“Your world is unguarded now?” Kickaha said. “Red Orc’ll-“
“Try to get into it,” Manathu Vorcyon said. “But he does not know that it’s unguarded. Anyway, Khruuz has set up traps.”
Though Khruuz’s face was nonhuman, it showed a quite human annoyance. He said, “I believe that Kickaha was addressing me and expected me to reply.”
The giantess’s eyes opened. She said, “If I offended you, I regret doing so, though I did not intend offense.”
Kickaha smiled. Already there was friction, however slight, between the two allies. Manathu Vorcyon was used to doing exactly what she wanted to do. That included interrupting people when they were talking. Apparently, Khruuz was not used to being regarded as an inferior. To Manathu Vorcyon, everybody else was inferior. Was she not Our Lady, the Great Mother, the Grandmother of All? Did not everybody in her world and the others regard her with awe? Even Red Orc had not contemplated attacking her until recently. And that was only because she had entered the battle early.
“If I am not speaking out of turn,” Kickaha said, carefully keeping sarcasm out of his voice, “I suggest that our best defense is attack against Red Orc. We shouldn’t wait until he storms into this world or any other. We should go after him with everything we have.”
“Good thinking, although it’s superfluous,” she said. “We have already decided that is the best policy. We also agree that you should be our spearhead.”
“I’m used to being cannon fodder,” he said. “It started during World War Two-that was on Earth when I was a youth-and it’s never let up since. But I won’t be used as a mere pawn. I insist on full membership in this council of war. I’ve earned it.”
“There was never a thought that you would not be an equal in the council,” she said smoothly. “However, it has been well known for millennia that a military committee is useful only for advice. An army must have a single leader, a general who makes quick decisions, whose orders are to be obeyed even though the soldier questions that they are the right thing to do.
“You, Clifton, have no military experience. You, Kickaha, are essentially a loner, a man of action, one excellent, perhaps unexcelled, in situations involving very few persons. You are no master strategist or at least have had no experience in planning strategy. You, Khruuz, are an unknown element, though your ability to survive when all your people died is testimony to your wiliness. You also must be an invaluable repository of scientific and technological knowledge. But you really do not know humans or their past and present situations. Nor have you had any experience as a military leader.”
She paused, breathed deeply, then said, “The choice of your leader is obvious. I have all that you lack and also those abilities you do have.”
The others were silent for a minute. Then Kickaha said, “I don’t give a damn about being the general. That’s not my style. But I insist I not be treated like a sacrificial piece on a chessboard. When I’m in the field, I make my own decisions, right or wrong, even if it goes against orders. The foot soldier is the only guy who knows what’s needed in his immediate area.”
He took in a deep breath, then looked straight at Manathu Vorcyon. “Something is sticking in my craw, choking me. It’s a bone I have to pick with you.”
“I expected this,” she said. “If you had kept silent about it, I would not have respected you.”
“Then I’ll say out loud for Clifton’s and Khruuz’s benefit what’s bugging me. You sent me to the Unwanted Wo
rld to locate the gate to Zazel’s World. You gave me a gate detector. But you didn’t tell me the detector was a fake or that it was a booby trap. You knew that it would explode after a certain time. And-“
“No. It would explode only when Red Orc or his clones came within a certain distance of it. And after a certain time interval. I did not know the pattern of his electrical skin fields or what his body mass was. But using your descriptions of his physical features, I estimated his probable mass. I doubt that that was off more than a pound or two.”
“You didn’t care if I was killed, too!” Kickaha blurted.
“No. I cared very much. That is why the bomb was set so that it would not go off until the one who took it from you was out of range of you. Out of killing range, anyway.”
“But you didn’t know if the person who took it away from me was Red Orc or not!”
“Whoever did take it was likely to be your enemy.”
“Well,” Kickaha said slowly and less vehemently, “I suppose you want an apology from me for suspecting you didn’t care if I was killed as long as Red Orc bought the farm.”
“What does … ?”
“In English, it means dying in combat.”
“Ah! But, no, I don’t wish for an apology. No reason to give me one. You didn’t know all the facts …”
“Damned few facts,” Kickaha muttered. “In fact, none.”
“I had to expose you to a certain amount of danger. You are used to that. As it turned out, you were only stunned.”
She looked at the others. “You agree that I am the general in this war?” Khruuz shrugged. “You have presented your case logically. I cannot argue with you.”
“Thanks for even allowing me my say,” Clifton said. “Who am I to question you three mighty ones?”
“Kickaha?” “Agreed.”
“Very well. Here is what I have in mind as our next move.”
15
KICKAHA WAS ON ONE OF RED ORC’S PROPERTIES, EARTH II. Just exactly where he was there, he did not know. He had gated through, courtesy of the Great Mother, to an area on Earth II corresponding to the California region on Earth I.
“Red Orc has forbidden any Lord to enter either Earth,” Manathu Vorcyon had told him. “But as you know, other Lords, including Jadawin and Anana, made gates to both these worlds and entered them.
“Long ago, I made several gates there for possible future entrances, though I have not used any so far. You will take the gate on Earth Two closest to where you think Red Orc has a palace. It’s possible that he has discovered this gate and trapped it.”
“How well I know that.”
Before stepping through the glindglassa, he had been embraced by her. For a few seconds, his head was buried in the valley between her breasts. Ah, delicious sensation!
After releasing him, she held him at arm’s length, which was a considerable distance. “You are the only man who has ever rejected me.”
“Anana.”
She nodded and said, “I know. But you’ll get me in the end.”
“It’s not your end I’m thinking about.”
She laughed. “You’re also the only man whom I could forgive. But you have forgiven me for placing you in such danger without telling you. On your way, and may the luck of Shambarimen be with you.”
The legendary Hornmaker’s luck had run out eventually, but Kickaha said nothing about that. He stepped through the seeming mirror into a warm desert of rocks and few plants. Behind him was the boulder holding the gate. He looked around and saw only some buzzards, weeds, more boulders, and some angular rock formations, strata that had been tilted upward. When and where had he seen them?
The sky was cloudless. The sun was at a height that made him believe that the time was around ten in the morning. The air seemed to be a few degrees above 75° Fahrenheit.
The Great Mother had not been able to tell him how close the gate was to the area corresponding to the Los Angeles region of Earth I. Nor did she know in what direction it was from that place.
As usual, on my own, he thought. But that was a milieu he loved.
He had been facing west when he came out of the boulder. South was on his left hand. He always favored the left, his lucky side. If he found out that he was going in the wrong direction, he would just turn around and head the right way. He walked down the rough and exotic rocks, slipping a few times though not falling, until he got to more or less level ground. During this, he passed close to a diamondback snake, whose warning rattle made him feel comfortable. He was, in a sense, home. However, the last time he had really been on his native planet and in Los Angeles, he had not liked it. Too many people, too much traffic, noise, sleaze, and foul air.
A little later, he came across a huge tarantula. Its tiny vicious eyes reminded him of some of the black-hearted villains he had encountered in many worlds. That, too, warmed him. Meeting them had sharpened his survival skills; he owed them a debt of gratitude. Too bad they were all dead. He could not now thank them.
He wore a wide-brimmed straw hat for shade, a dark maroon shirt open at the neck, a leather belt, baggy black pants, black socks, and sturdy hiker’s shoes. A holster holding a beamer was at his side, and a canteen full of water hung from his belt on his right. His backpack was stuffed full with items he considered necessary for this expedition.
Shortly after he began walking on the road, he stopped. Of course! Now he knew where he was. Those stone formations and boulders! How many times he had seen them in Western movies! They were the Vasquez rocks, an area used many times in shooting those films. Thus, his destination was south, though he did not know how far away. He set out confidently in the direction of the 30th parallel.
Ahead of him was what Earth I called the Los Angeles area. The geography was the same as on Earth I, but its architecture and inhabitants were different.
After a while he came to a well-traveled and wheel-rutted path. Five miles or so had spun out from his feet when he heard something behind him. He turned around and saw a cloud of dust a half-mile north. It was boiling up from a body of men on horseback. Their helmets flashed in the sun. Two men at the front of the cavalcade held aloft flapping banners on long poles. And now the reflection from lanceheads struck his eyes as if it were from sunbeam javelins. It twanged nerves that evoked images of the many raids he had made when with the Bear People tribe on the Amerind level of the World of Tiers. And when he had been in jousts on the Dracheland level of that same world. The flashing lights were transformed into the blood-thumping calls of war horns.
However, the last thing he wanted was to be arrested by soldiers. His clothing would make them curious. If they paused to question him, he would not be able to answer them in any tongue they knew. In this world, a suspicious alien equaled the calaboose.
The country on his left was flat, but a wash was forty feet away. The hills on his right were a hundred and fifty feet from him. He ran toward the dry streambed, hoping that the cavalry would not see him. But if he could see them, they could see him. Too bad. Nothing to do about it except run.
He jumped into the wash, turned around at once, and looked over the edge of the bank. His head was partly hidden by a clump of sagebrush. Presently, the standard-bearers rode by. Each of their crimson flags bore the figure of a huge brown bear with relatively longer legs than a grizzly’s. The face was also relatively shorter than a grizzly’s.
Maybe the giant short-faced bear that died out on Earth I has survived here, he thought.
The officers behind the standard-bearers were clean-shaven and wore round helmets with noseguards and curved neck-protectors, topped by black plumes-something like the armor of ancient Greek warriors. They also wore plum-colored capes and crimson tunics with gold braiding on the fronts. Their legs were bare, and their feet were shod in leather sandals. Scabbards with short swords were on their broad crimson-chased belts. Their body armor, casques something like those of the Spanish conquistadores, was in a basket behind each rider. It was too hot to don thes
e unless a battle was coming up.
Actually, the sun was too strong for wearing helmets. But he supposed that their military regulations required them even when the heat forbade them.
The dogfaces carried spears in their hands and long swords in their scabbards. They were as clean-shaven and as dark-skinned as the officers. But whereas the officers had short hair, the rank-and-file had long, dark, wavy, and unbound hair. They did not look Mediterranean. Their faces were broad and high-cheekboned, the eyelids had slight epicanthic folds, and their noses were, generally, long. A dash, perhaps only a savor, of Arnerind ancestors, he thought.
About two score of archers followed these out of the dust cloud.
Behind these came a number of men and women on horseback or driving wagons loaded with bundles of supplies. They wore soiled, yellow, high-crowned, floppy, wide hats. Their varicolored tunics were dustsmudged, and they carried no weapons. They were undoubtedly American Indians and were civilian servants or slaves. Behind this section rode a few companies of lancers and archers.
“They’ve got horses,” Kickaha mumbled. “I need a horse. Ergo, I’ll get a horse. But I suppose they hang horse thieves just as they did in the Old West. Well, it won’t be the first time I stole a horse. Nor the last, I hope.”
After the group had passed, the dust had settled down, and he was sure
no soldiers were coming back to get him, he went back to the road. He walked for an hour in the increasing heat. When he saw two men ride down from a pass in the hills on his right, he increased his pace. By the time the two had gotten to the road, he was only forty feet from them. He called out to them, and they reined in their horses.
Two tougher customers he had never seen. Their hats were like the wagon drivers’. Their black and food-dotted beards flowed down to their chests. Their black eyes were hard, and their hawklike faces were sunseamed and looked as if they had never smiled. They wore dirty blue tunics and full, leg-length boots. Quivers full of arrows hung from their backs; their bows were strung; their scabbards held long swords and long knives.