Behind the Walls of Terra

Philip Jose Farmer

Behind the Walls of Terra

This adventure of Kickaha is dedicated to Jack Cordes, who lives in the pocket universes of Peoria and Pekin.

The sky had been green for twenty- four years . Suddenly, it was blue.

Kickaha blinked. He was home again. Rather, he was once more on the planet of his birth. He had lived on Earth for twenty-eight years. Then he had lived for twenty-four years in that pocket universe he called . Now, though he did not care to be here, he was back "home."

He was standing in the shadow of an enormous overhang of rock. The stone floor was swept clean by the wind that traveled along the face of the cliff. Outside the semi-cavern were mountains covered with pine and fir trees. The air was cool but would get warmer, since this was morning of a July day in southern California. Or it should be, if his calculations were correct.

Since he was high on the face of a mountain, he could see very far into the southwest. There was a great valley beyond the nearer smaller valleys, a valley which he supposed was one near the Los Angeles area. It surprised and u

He had no idea of what had occurred on Earth since that night in 1946 when he had been transmitted accidentally from this universe to that of Jadawin. Perhaps the great basins of the Los Angeles area were filled with poison gas that some enemy nation had dropped. He could not guess what enemy could do this, since both Germany and Japan had been wrecked and utterly defeated when he left this world, and Russia was sorely wounded.

He shrugged. He would find out in time. The memory banks below the great fortress-palace at the top of the only planet in the universe of the green sky had said that this "gate" opened into a place in the mountains near a lake called Arrowhead.

The gate was a circle of indestructible metal buried a few inches below the rock of the floor. Only a dimly stained ring of purple on the stone marked its presence.

Kickaha (born Paul Janus Fi

His hair was shoulder-length. He had considered cutting it before he returned to Earth, so he would not look strange. But the time had been short, and he had decided to wait until he got to a barber shop. His cover story would be that he and Anana had been in the mountains so long he had not had a chance to clip his hair.

The woman beside him was as beautiful as it was possible for a woman to be. She had long dark wavy hair, a flawless white skin, dark-blue eyes, and a superb figure. She wore hiking garb: boots, Levi's, a lumberman's checked shirt, and a cap with a long bill. She also carried a pack on her back in which were shoes, a dress, undergarments, a small handbag, and several devices which would have startled or shocked an Earth scientist. Her hair was done in the style of 1946 as Kickaha remembered it. She wore no makeup nor needed it. Thousands of years ago, she had permanently reddened her lips, as every female Lord had done.

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."

"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 ca

"I know," Kickaha said. He was having trouble breathing, and his eyes were begi

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 curbed around the side of the mountain and continued upward until it was lost around the other side. A car appeared on the upgrade, 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 overhang. 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; the air acted as a fu

He took a pair of small binoculars from his shirt pocket and adjusted three dials on their surface. Then he removed an earphone 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.