The basic premise of the series was that, many thousands of years ago, only one universe had existed. On one planet only in that universe was there life. The end of its evolutionary path was a species that resembled humans. These had attained a science vastly exceeding anything Earth had ever known. Eventually, the humans had been able to make artificial pocket universes.
So knowledgeable and powerful were these beings, they were able to alter the laws of physics governing each individual pocket universe. Thus, the rate of acceleration in a fall toward the center of gravity could be made different from that in the original world. Another example, one pocket world might contain a single sun and a single planet. The World of Tiers, for example. This was an Earth-sized planet shaped like a terraced Tower of Babylon. Its tiny sun and tiny moon revolved around it.
Another universe contained a single planet which behaved like the plastic in a lavalite bottle. Its shape kept changing. Mountains arose and sank before your very eyes. Rivers were formed within a few days and then disappeared. Seas rushed in to fill quickly forming hollows. Parts of the planet broke off -- just like the thermoplastic in the liquid of a lavalite bottle -- whirled around, changing shape, then fell slowly to the main body.
Many of the Lords, as the humans came to call themselves, left the original universe to live in their artificial pocket universes or designer worlds. Then a war made the planet unfit for life forever and killed all those then living on it. Only the Lords inhabiting the pocket worlds were saved.
Thousands of years passed while more artificial universes were made by the Lords living in those already made at the time of the war. These were inhabited by the life forms that the Lords had introduced on the planets of their private cosmoses. Many of these forms had been made in the laboratories of the Lords. There were other humans than the Lords on these. But these lesser beings had been made in the laboratories, though their models were the Lords themselves.
Access to these pocket worlds was gotten through "gates." These were interdimensional routes activated by various kinds of codes. As the Lords became increasingly decadent, they lost the knowledge of how to make new universes. The sons and daughters of the Lords wanted their own worlds, but they no longer had the means to create them. Thus, as was inevitable, there was a power struggle among them to gain control of the limited number of worlds.
By the time The Maker of Universes began, in the late 1960s, many Lords had been killed or dispossessed. Even those who had their own universes wanted to conquer others. That they could live without aging for hundreds of millennia meant that most of them had become bored and vicious. Invading other worlds and killing the Lords there had become a great game.
If they could not create, they could destroy.
The World of Tiers series was clearly an anticipation of the "Dungeons and Dragons" games which were so popular among youths. Its gates, the traps set by the Lords in the gates, the ingenuity necessary to get through the gates, and the dangerous worlds in which a wrong decision would land a character prefigured the D-and-D games. Jim was surprised that the series had not been adapted to such a game.
He was even more surprised to find that the books had become a tool used in psychiatric therapy. But it seemed like a great idea. It certainly appealed to him far more than conventional therapy, Freudian, Jungian, or whatever. Though he did not know much about any of the various psychiatric schools, he nevertheless did not like them.
Rest-room graffiti flashed across his mindscreen.
"Mental illness can be fun." "Over the edge is better than under it." "Nobody catches schizophrenia from a toilet seat."
Doctor Porsena looked at the clock on his desk. A puppet of Time, Jim thought. Doctors and lawyers, like railroads, ran on Newtonian time. They knew nothing of Einsteinian. No loafing and inviting your soul, to hell with relativity. But that was how they got things done.
The psychiatrist rose, and he said, "On to other things, Jim. Excelsior! Ever upward and onward! Junior Wunier will give you the books, no charge. He'll also acquaint you with the rules and regulations. May you be safe from the curving carballoy claws of Klono, and may the Force be with you. See you later."
Jim left the room thinking that the doctor was really something. That reference to the Force. That was from Star Wars, and any kid in America would recognize it. But that bit about Klono. How many would know that Klono was a sort of spaceman's god, a deity with golden gills, brazen hooves, indium guts, and all that? Klono was the god whom spacefarers swore by in E. E. Smith's Lensman series.
Jim found Junior Wunier at the officer of the day's post near the elevators. Junior Wunier! What a name for parents to stick a kid with! Handicapped him from birth. As if he wasn't handicapped enough. The eighteen-year-old had hair like the Bride of Frankenstein's, a curved spine like the Hunchback of Notre Dame's, a dragging foot like Igor's, and a face like the Ugly Duchess's in the first Alice book. Besides the hump, he had a monkey on his back. He was a speed freak. Jim hoped that he had been caught before his brain had been burned out.
Worst of all was his tendency to drool.
And he, Jim Grimson, had thought he was born with two strikes against him.
Jim pitied the poor guy, but he couldn't stand him.
Wouldn't you know it? Junior Wunier had chosen Kickaha as his role model. Kickaha, the handsome, strong, quick, and ever-tricky hero. Whereas Jim would have thought that Wunier would pick Theotormon. That character was a Lord who had been captured by his father and whose body had been cruelly transformed in the laboratory into a monster with flippers and a hideous and bestial face.
Wunier went into the storeroom and brought out five paperbacks for Jim. "Read 'em and weep," he said.
Jim put the stack of Farmer's novels under his arm. Were they to be his salvation? Or were they like everything else, full of promises that turned out to be hot air?
Wunier led Jim to his room through halls that were, at this moment, empty. Everybody was in his own room, in the recreation room, or in private or group therapy. The long wide halls with their white walls and gray floors echoed their footsteps. Jim had been assigned, for the time being, to a one-person room, small and very hospital looking. The tiny closet was more than large enough, however. The only clothes Jim had were on his back, and these had been brought by his mother, who had gotten them from Mrs. Wyzak. Being Sam's, they fit him too tightly. The shoes were embarrassing, square-toed oxfords that Sam would have worn only if his mother had threatened to kill him if he didn't, which she probably had.
Junior Wunier pointed to a niche in the wall. "You can put the books there. Now, here's the rules and regulations."
He leaned against the wall. Holding the paper with both hands close to his face, he read it aloud. A spray of saliva moistened the paper.
Jim thought, Suffering succotash! This guy was another Sylvester the Cat.
He sat down in the only chair, a wooden one with a removable cushion. He wished he had a cigarette. His teeth ached slightly; his nerves were drawn as tightly as telephone cables; his temper badly needed tempering.
Wunier droned on as if he were a Buddhist monk chanting the Lotus Sutra. The patient had to keep his or her room neat and orderly. The patient had to take a shower every day, keep his nails clean, and so on. The patient could use only the telephone by the officer of the day's desk and must not tie it up for more than four minutes. Smoking was permitted only in the lounge. Graffiti was forbidden. Those patients caught with nonprescription drugs or booze or tearing off a piece (Wunier's words) would be subject to being kicked out on his or her ass.
"And when you jack off," he said, "don't do it in the showers or in the presence of anyone else."
"How about before a mirror?" Jim said. "Is the image another person?"
"From Sarcasmville," Wunier growled. "Just obey the rules, and you'll get along fine."
Wunier dragged his foot across to the wall and tore off a taped-up paper. Jim read the words on it before it went into the wastebasket.
/>
DON'T BE AFREUD OF YOUR SHRINK.
Beneath the phrase was a Kilroy-was-here drawing.
"There's some wise guy puts this stuff up in all the rooms," Wunier said. "We call him the Scarlet Letterer. His ass'll be scarlet if we catch him."
Besides some framed prints that looked as if they came out of the Saturday Evening Post, the only thing hanging on the wall was a calendar.
Jim said, "How about the mantras? A lot of the rooms have them up on the walls."
"That's OK, part of the therapy. Some people need them to get into the World of Tiers." Wunier paused, then said, "You decided yet what character you'll choose?"
He obviously wanted to stay and talk. Poor guy must be lonely. But Jim didn't feel like sacrificing himself for someone who was the last person he wanted to talk with.
"No," Jim said. He was about to get up but then drew back into the chair. He pointed at the space below his bed.
"What's that?"
Wunier's eyes widened. He started to bend over to look under the bed, then changed his mind.
"What do you mean, 'What's that?' "
"It just moved. I thought it was just the shadows. But it's very dark, blacker than outer space. It looks like if you put your hand in it, the hand'd freeze off and float into the fourth dimension. Sort of spindle-shaped. About a foot long. Hey, it moved again!"
Wunier stared briefly at the bed and a longer time at Jim.
"I have to get going," he said. Attempting nonchalance, he added, "I leave you to entertain your guest." But he got out of the room as swiftly as he could.
Jim laughed loudly when he thought that Wunier would not hear him. The thing he had claimed to see was out of a novel by Philip Wylie -- he didn't remember the title -- but he didn't know if Wunier had really thought there was one under the bed or if he was scared that Jim was about to freak out.
However, he was, a minute later, in a mixed black and red mood. A sort of AC phase. Depression alternating with anger. The psychologists said that depression was anger turned against yourself. So, how could he, like a light flashing off and on, suffer from both states within a minute's time? Maybe he really was about to freak out.
IT'S DEPRESSING TO BE A MANIC.
He'd tape that to the rest-room wall. He'd show them that the damned elusive Scarlet Letterer wasn't the only one who could strike from the shadows.
He didn't even have clothes of his own. And he had no money. Strip a man or woman of his possessions and money, and you see a person who's lost his manhood or her womanhood. That person was no longer a person. Not unless he or she were a Hindu fakir or yogi, part of a culture that considered such people to be holy. Not in this world where clothes and money made the man, where the emperor was the only one who could go naked and still be a person.
He had nothing.
While sitting in the chair, staring at nothing, a nothing looking into a mirror, he felt the blackness recede. It was followed by red, red that surged into every cell of his body and mind.
But a man who was angry was a man who had something. Rage was a positive force even if it led to negative action. A poem he'd read a long time ago said -- how'd it go? couldn't remember it verbatim -- rage would work if reason wouldn't.
Gillman Sherwood, a fellow patient, stuck his head in the doorway. "Hey, Grimson! Group therapy in ten minutes!"
Jim nodded and got up from the chair.
He knew then what character he was going to choose to be.
Red Orc. A villainous Lord in the series, Kickaha's most dangerous enemy. One mean and angry Ess Oh Bee. He kicked ass because his own was red.
Chapter 4
October 31, 1979, Halloween
SOMETHING HAD AWAKENED Jim just before the alarm clock had gone off. His eyes still sleep-blurred, he had stared upwards. The cracks in the ceiling were slowly forming a map of chaos. Or were they preliminary strokes of a drawing of the image of a beast or some cryptic symbol? Several new cracks had shot out from the old ones since he had gone to bed last night.
The alarm clock startled him. Twirrruuup! Up and Adam! Rise from bed, sluggard! Roll 'em! Roll 'em! Once more to the breach!
The early-morning sun shone through the thin yellow curtains on white dust motes falling from the cracks.
The earth had moved below the house and shaken his bed. Somewhere directly below him, one of the many long-ago abandoned mine tunnels or shafts under Belmont City had shifted or crumbled, and the Grimson house had sunk or tilted a little more.
Three months ago, four blocks from Jim's house, two houses, side by side, had fallen into a suddenly born gap two feet deep. They now leaned toward each other, their front and back porches torn off. Once six feet apart, they were jammed together, stuck in the hole like a couple of too-large and too-hard suppositories in the Jolly Green Giant.
A tremor a minute ago had yanked him upward, like a trout on a hook, from a nightmare. But it was no dream of a monster that had made him moan and whimper. It had been a black-on-black dream in which nothing, nothing at all, had happened.
He told himself to haul his weary ass out of bed and get it in gear. "With a song in his heart." Yeah. A song like "Gloomy Sunday." Only this was Wednesday, All Souls' Day.
The room was very small. Seven big posters were taped to the faded red-roses-and-light-green wallpaper and the back of the door. The largest was that of Keith Moon, Moon the Loon, great and late mad drummer for The Who. The most colorful displayed the five members of the Hot Water Eskimos, a local rock group. There was "Gizzy" Dillard vomiting into his saxophone; Veronica "Singing Snatch" Pappas shoving the microphone up under her leather miniskirt; Bob "Birdshot" Pellegrino jacking off one of his drumsticks; Steve "Goathead" Larsen looking as if he were humping his guitar; Sam "Windmill" Wyzak tickling the ivories. Above the unsavory crew hovered a dozen cowbells resembling UFOs in flight. Up close and in bright light, you could see very thin wires connecting them to the ceiling.
Clad in torn green pajama tops, red pajama bottoms, and black socks, he got out of bed and opened the door. Yes, it did stick more than it had yesterday. Turning to the left, he went down the unlit hall. Its carpet was thready and a dull green. Inside the narrow bathroom, he turned on the light. When he looked in the mirror, he winced. A third pimple was bulging redly under the skin. His reddish whiskers were sticking out a little more than they had yesterday. By weekend, he would have to shave. The dull razors his father insisted on keeping because new ones cost too much would scrape his skin raw, cut off the scabs over the recently squeezed pimples, and make them bleed.
He urinated into the washbowl. By doing this, Jim was helping his father, Eric Grimson. Eric was always hollering about too many flushes running up the utility bill. Jim was also getting a small, if secret, revenge on that domestic tyrant and all-around prick, his father.
While standing there, he studied his face. Those large deep-blue eyes were inherited from both his Norwegian father and his Hungarian mother. The reddish hair, long jaw, and prominent chin were handed down from Eric Grimson. The small ears, long straight nose, high cheekbones, and slightly Oriental cast of the eyes were the gifts of his mother, Eva Nagy Grimson. His six feet and one and a half inches of height came from his father. Jim would grow three more inches if he became as tall as his begetter. His old man was wiry and narrow-shouldered, but Jim had gotten his broad shoulders from his mother's side of the family. Her brothers were short but very wide and muscular.
God Almighty and then some! If he could get rid of the damn pimples, he might be good-looking. He might even get some place with Sheila Helsgets, the best-looking girl in Belmont Central High, his unrequited love. Jim meant to look up "unrequited" in the dictionary someday and find out what it meant exactly. To Jim, it meant that his love was one-sided, that she felt no more for him than an orbital satellite did for the radar beam bouncing off it.
The only remark she had ever directed his way had been to ask him to stand downwind of her. That had hurt him but not enough to make him q
uit loving her. He had started bathing twice a week, a big sacrifice of time on his part, considering how little he had to spare for trivial matters.
Those pimples! Why did God, if He existed, curse teenagers with them?
After splashing water on his face and penis and drying them off with the towel only his father was supposed to use, he headed for the kitchen. Despite the darkness of the hallway, he could see white plaster dust on the carpet. When he got to the kitchen, he noticed that new cracks were in the greenish ceiling. There was white dust on the gas stove and the oilcloth cover on the table.
"We're all going to fall into a hole," he muttered. "All the way to China. Or Hell."
Hurriedly, he made his own breakfast. He swung open the door of the forty-year-old refrigerator, the cooling coils atop it looking like an ancient Martian watchtower. From it he took a jar of mayonnaise, a Polish sausage, a Polish pepper hot enough to burn the anus when it came out the next day, half a browned banana, wilted lettuce, and cold bread. He forgot to close the refrigerator door. While water boiled for the cup of instant coffee he would make, he sliced the sausage and banana and slapped together a sandwich.
He turned on the radio, purchased by his father's father the day after the first transistor radios came on the market. The vacuum-tube GE was gathering dust up in the overburdened attic along with piles and piles of old newspapers and magazines, broken toys, old clothes, cracked china, rusty silverware, broomless brooms, and a burned-out 1942 Hoover vacuum cleaner.
Eric and Eva Grimson found it painful to throw anything away except garbage, and sometimes not even that. It was as if, Jim thought, they were cutting off pieces of their own bodies when they parted with a possession. Most people put their past behind them. His parents put it above them.
He bit deeply into the sandwich and followed it with a piece of Polish pepper. While his mouth burned and his eyes watered, he turned the gas off and poured the boiling water into a cup. As he stirred the instant coffee, WYEK, Belmont's only rock station, blasted into the kitchen with the tail end of the weather report. After that, it began to blare out number sixteen of this week's local hit list. "Your Hand's Not What I Want!" was the first song by the Hot Water Eskimos that Jim had ever heard on the radio. It would also be the last.