He pulled his beamer from his holster. "Vala! Come with me! We have to destroy them! I don't want them alive now they've seen us trying to kill each other!"
Vala said, "I think Sheon was the only one who saw us. He won't tell the others."
"I don't want to take the chance," Los said. "We don't want them to think we're no better than they, do we?"
He wanted to kill someone. If he was restrained from slaying his son, he would slaughter the leblabbiy. At another time, he might have listened to Vala. But not now.
Vala bit her lip, but she said, "Very well." She walked away with Los, her gun also drawn. As Orc discovered later, the natives had guessed what the Lords planned to do. The more passive and religious stayed to submit to their doom. Four leblabbiy, however, fled into the forest. They would be exiled forever from their tribe and would be men with a price on their head, prey for another hunt by the Thoan.
Orc was turned over, and his wrists were bound together with tape his mother brought out of a bag. While doing this, his mother bent close to him and whispered, "Do not anger your father again. I'll do my best to cool him down."
"He'll kill me," Orc said. "He hates me. He's always hated me. What did I do to make him hate me, Mother?"
Chapter 15
ORC HAD BEEN stripped of his clothing and chained to a boulder near the main palace. One end of the ten-foot-long chain was attached to a steel plate secured to the giant quartzite rock. The other end was fixed to a steel band around his right ankle. For two days and nights, he had suffered this humiliation and discomfort. The sun burned him during most of the day. At night, Los allowed the clouds to come into the levels. Orc slept poorly because of the cold, wetness, and hard floor.
During the day, he ate one meal, brought by a servant. She left him a bucket of water to drink and to bathe. When he relieved bladder or bowels, he went around behind the boulder as far as he could. He had no toilet paper or wash rag. Once a day, a servant came to clean up the mess.
At high noon each day, his parents, aunt, and uncle had come down from the palace. Los had asked him if he was sorry that he had behaved so badly. Would he apologize and then promise that he would never do such again and would always obey his parents? Los added that even then his punishment would not be over.
"There are many Lords who would slay their son on the spot. But I do not wish to grieve your mother, and Luvah and Vala have pleaded for you."
"You should not have struck me," Orc said.
"I am your father! I have the right and the duty to do so when you deserve it!"
"You have struck me many times," Orc said. "I would think that a man who is so many thousands of years old would have some wisdom and love. You have learned nothing. Be that as it may, you have struck me for the last time. You may as well kill me."
Los turned and walked away, his long green robe flapping, the tall yellow feather on his wide-brimmed hat bobbing. His mother and his aunt stayed for a minute to beg him to bend to his father's will.
"You are so stubborn," Enitharmon said as tears ran down her cheek. "Your stubbornness will kill you. What will I do if I lose my firstborn?"
"Kill Los, and so avenge me," Orc said. "I think you'd like to do it, anyway. I do not know why you stay with him. Aren't there other worlds you could go to? How about Luvah's and Vala's?"
"You are determined to die," Enitharmon said. She kissed him on the cheek and left. Luvah, shaking his head, walked away. Vala lingered a moment.
"I'll sneak out tonight and bring you a sleeping bag and something good to eat."
"Don't endanger yourself for me, though I thank you. At least, you love me."
"Your mother does, too," Vala said. "You saw how she defended you when Los was going to spear you. But her character is such that she cannot stand up against Los unless she's driven to it, and then it doesn't last long."
"You'd think that she could have changed her character during the course of so many millennia. What good is the Lords' science if it can't change undesirable character traits?"
"There have been some who have changed themselves, though not always for the better. But most people cannot unfix their characters no matter how long they live. It's a matter of will, not of biological engineering. Would you allow yourself to be tampered with?"
She kissed him hard on his lips before leaving. Orc suspected that Vala lusted for him as he did for her. Or was she just a loving aunt, and had he, so young and inexperienced, misread her affection?
He looked at his father, still striding toward the major palace of the city of pylons. His son had seen more of the back of his father than his face, though that was most times the preferable side. Then he looked up at the third story of the glittering gold-block-and-much-gemmed wall of the palace. There, framed by a window, was his tutor, Noorosha. He was an intelligent and highly educated native who had been guiding Orc through programmed courses since the Lord was three years old. Now, he was looking down at his student, who should have been in class.
Orc waved at Noorosha, the person he loved most of all except for his mother and aunt. Why couldn't his father be like Noorosha?
The day passed, each minute like a whip stroke. While he paced back and forth, the chain dragging on his leg and clinking on the slightly roughened surface of the transparent floor, his mind was pacing. Back and forth, back and forth from thoughts of ways to escape to visions of killing his father.
Finally, night fell. The first moon rose. Two hours later, the second lumbered up. Jim, looking through Orc's eyes, estimated that it was half the size of Earth's moon. The first moon was half the size of the second one. Their markings, of course, were different from the one Jim knew.
After the clouds oozed over Orc, he lay down on the floor. It took him a long time to fall asleep. Jim also slept then. It seemed like a short time had passed when Vala's touch awoke Orc and, of course, Jim.
She was a dim figure crouching by him. "I've brought the bag and food," she said softly. "But I've brought more than that."
She held up an object that he could not see clearly.
"A beamer. Hold still. I'm going to cut your chain."
"You shouldn't do that!" Orc said. "I thank you, but I can't allow you to endanger yourself. My father will investigate thoroughly if I escape, and he'll find out you did it, and he'll kill you!"
"Not if you kill him first," she said.
She started to rise. Orc heard a thud. She grunted and pitched forward, falling heavily across his legs. Above Orc loomed a vague shape, but he knew that it was Los. Vala, groaning, rolled over Orc's legs, a hand pressing the back of her head. Then she started to rise.
"Stay down, you treacherous slut!" Los said.
Just beyond Orc's father was a vague and bulky figure. It looked to Orc like a vehicle of some sort.
"I should kill you, Vala!" Los shouted. "But I can understand why you felt sorry for him, believe it or not! After all, he is my son, though not much of one! I can remember how I loved him when he was a baby! But you have betrayed my hospitality! How do I know that you weren't planning on letting him help you kill me!"
He raved on, the gist being that, because he was merciful, he was permitting Vala and her husband to return to their universe. But they would do it at once and under guard. He would deal with his son, though they would never find out how he would do it. She would never see him again.
Vala started to protest. He screamed at her to shut up or he would shoot her on the spot. After that, she said nothing except to murmur, "I'm sorry, Orc." Los kept on ranting in the same manner for about five minutes. When he stopped, he bent over Vala and jammed the end of a cylinder into her arm. She collapsed immediately. Then he stuck the end against Orc's chest. He became unconscious and so did Jim.
Jim awoke at the same moment as Orc. Bright sunlight made Orc squint and, in a shadowy way, Jim also. The young Thoan was sitting on bare buttocks on a rock ledge. He was propped up against a vertical outcropping of stone. His hands were tied together behind h
im with rope. The ledge ended a foot beyond him. Below it was a precipitous slope of mountain, forested halfway down. At the bottom was a river snaking through an unbroken forest. Another mountain was on the other side of the river.
The sky was blue, which meant that he was not in his native world. Not unless he had been unconscious long enough to let two days pass.
Despite the blazing sun, he shivered from the cold air. There were patches of snow on the upper face of the mountain opposite him. He looked around then and saw that he was in a cave extending back from the ledge. Near him on the dirt floor was a square plastic sheet.
He walked to the sheet, lowered himself to his knees, and bent over to look at the plastic piece. As he had expected, it bore his father's handwriting.
You are on Anthema, the unwanted world. If you are man enough to survive on it and find your way to the only other gate on this world, you may be able to get out of it. I give you a clue though you do not deserve it. The gate will be near a landmark resembling something you are wearing. But you will have to find the code allowing you to open the gate. That gate leads back to your own world.
You only have to look for the gate on land, which cuts the territory of your search down to fifty million square miles. Though I should wish you bad luck, I do not. May you get what you deserve.
Orc groaned. Anthema, the Unwanted World! Made by those mysterious beings who had existed before the Lords, who had made the original universe of the Lords and then created the Lords to populate it. Anthema was so crudely constructed that the Lords theorized that it had been the pre-Thoan's first experiment in making artificial universes.
No Lord had chosen to live there. Indeed, very few knew how to gate to it.
Los must have put him in that vehicle and carried him to a gate in the palace or somewhere on his world. Then he had gated the vehicle with himself and Orc in it to this world. After arriving at Anthema via the interdimensional route, Los had used the vehicle to fly from the gate to this cave.
And what was that about the clue being provided by something his son was wearing? Orc was naked.
It was then that he felt the necklace and the object attached to it.
He heaved himself up onto his feet. Now he could bend his neck and see the object, which rested just below his breastbone. Though it was upside down from his viewpoint, he could recognize it. It was a round gold medallion, one of his father's, bearing a name, Shambarimem, and, below that, a raised relief of the Horn -- a trumpet -- of that legendary man. It was as close to a religious medal as a Thoan artifact could come.
What kind of a clue was that? A mountain that looked like the Horn? Orc, knowing his father's subtle nature, was sure that it was not as simple as that. In fact, the clue might not even be visual. Never mind. First, he had to get his hands free.
That was done, though not soon. He went to the tiny monolith he had been sitting against, turned around, and bent his knees. He raised his arms, squatted even more, and set the rope on the rather blunt edge of a small ridge on top of the rock and near its side. The position was both tiring and painful, but he kept sawing until the rope was halfway worn through. After resting, he resumed the sawing. When he felt the rope part, he brought his hands before him and untied each with the other hand, no easy task. After reconnoitering the cave and finding nothing to indicate a gate, he surveyed the valley. The only life he saw consisted of some strange-looking and awkward flying creatures.
He started climbing down the steep slope below the ledge. He had no reason to feel optimistic in this world certainly not made for him. His fury and desire for revenge would keep him going for a long time. But he could search the vast territory for a thousand years and still not find the landmark and the gate within or on or under or by it. He might even see the landmark and not know that it was what he was looking for.
He had troubles. Oh, Shambarimem, did he have troubles!
They came sooner than he expected. A loud shriek behind him froze him for a fraction of a second. A blow on his back knocked him forward. He heard giant wings beating. Pain as of very sharp and large claws stabbing his back made him scream.
Jim Grimson was also startled. He heard the shriek, felt the hard impact, and yelled from the agony.
The shock was too much for him. He was whisked out, up, and away far more swiftly than his previous journeys back to Earth. He awoke sitting on the chair in his room. He was shivering and sweating and somewhat numb. For a moment, the searing on his back from the terrible claws stayed with him. Then it faded.
Despite his fear, he would have tried to get back into Orc if his energy had not been completely dynamited out of him. It was a long time before he could rise from the chair.
Chapter 16
TODAY, THE GROUP session members were even more inclined to argue than usual. Their digs were sharper, and they took offense more quickly. Was there something in the air like itching powder? Or was it that they had reached a certain stage in their therapy where their anger and frustration were closer to the surface? These were burrowing upward toward the skin like worms chased out of the intestine by strong medicine.
Gillman Sherwood, the nineteen-year-old from Gold Hill, was getting more abuse than usual. Some of the group detested and distrusted him because his family was wealthy. Until now, he had responded with a slight smile and silence to the onslaught. That he would not defend himself made his attackers even more angry.
Foremost among them was Al Moober, a sixteen-year-old who had never had any money until he had started dealing in drugs. His career had lasted six months. Then the cops had caught him. But he had been accused of being under the influence and of possession, not of selling. He especially had it in for Sherwood, one of his former customers, because he suspected that Sherwood had turned him in to the narcs.
Sherwood's wrists were still bandaged from the deep slashes made when he had tried suicide. He had wanted to be a painter, but his parents had opposed that ambition. Both had agreed, when their son was only three years old, that he would go to Ohio State for his undergraduate education and then to Harvard for his law degree. After six months at Ohio, he had a "nervous breakdown." He came out of the sanitarium three months later, went home, and refused to consider going back to college. His parents had kept up their pressure despite their doctor's warnings. One night, Sherwood had used the blood from his wrist arteries to paint a nightmare vision on his palette. He had ended up in Porsena's Tiersian therapy group.
Moober had also told his fellow patients that Sherwood was bisexual and had added that Sherwood had made a pass at him. The girls thought that Sherwood was divinely handsome and looked much like a tall Paul Newman. Besides, he had made passes at several of them, and why would he go for a loathsome creature like Moober?
Moober had persisted in trying to invalidate Sherwood's descriptions of his adventures as Wolff, the hero Sherwood had chosen to emulate. Doctor Scaevola, today's group leader, had tried to stop Moober from doing this, but Moober would not quit. Then Scaevola had told Moober that he would obey the rules or be sent to his room to think about how he would like being kicked out of the therapy.
Moober had quit attacking Sherwood, though he was muttering to himself.
Jim Grimson was only half listening to the others. For one thing, he had been shocked when he had seen Sandy Melton this morning. She was sitting at the far end of the dining hall with the group of mild schizo-affectives. Until then, Jim had not known that Sandy was in the hospital. He had heard nothing about what had happened to her after that evening at Dumski's.
He had waved to her. She had smiled at him and resumed talking to the girl next to her. Jim planned to talk to her when he got the chance.
Another reason Jim had trouble concentrating was that he could not keep from wondering about what had happened to Orc after Jim had left him. His plight and his world seemed more real than this room and the people in it. These people did not know what real trouble was.
He became aware that Doctor Scaevola was s
peaking to him and that the others were looking at him.
"Your turn, Jim," Scaevola said. "We're all eager to hear what happened during your latest exploration."
Jim doubted they all were that eager. Most of them were too wrapped up in their own sojourns to care much about his. Or, at least, he thought that they were. He had learned something about himself in the short time he had been here. That was that he often attributed his own feelings to others, but there was often no match between the two. He must be more careful in the future not to assign to others his own thoughts and emotions.
Group therapy was supposed to be in some respects like a book club. The members would talk about various characters in the series and how they felt about them. They would then tell how they would have changed the situations or the endings in the books. Also, they commented on how each person's chosen character reflected the personality and the problems of the chooser. This interplay, however, was closely monitored by the group leader. It was not allowed to get to a point where the members were criticizing each other too harshly.
One of the difficulties the members had, at this stage in therapy, was in giving full information about their experiences in the pocket universes. Jim shared this reluctance. Now, in answering Scaevola's invitation, he gave only the sketchiest outline of his adventures. He held back because it seemed to him that they should be very private. Somehow, if the others got too far into Orc's world, they would try to take over. His fellow patients would want his worlds just as the Lords desired the worlds of other Lords.
Moreover, Jim was convinced that the universes the other members entered into were purely imaginary. Though vivid and very detailed, they were nevertheless just fantasies. He did not reveal this to the group, of course. To do so would be to invalidate the worlds of his fellow patients.
Jim finished his somewhat halting and hesitant tale. Even as he spoke, he began to feel that it was made up. The others seemed to be looking doubtfully at him. Damn! They were invalidating him!