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The man lost some of his smile. "No, there is only one! I am Red Orc! That other is an impostor! A usurper! I was careless for just one moment! But I got away with my life, and because of his bad luck, I will kill him and get back everything!"
"Who is that other?" Kickaha said. "I had thought ... but then he never named himself... he let me think..."
"That he was Red Orc? I thought so! But his name is Urthona, and he was once Lord of the Shifting World. Then that demon-bitch Vala, my niece, drove him from his world, and he fled and came here, to this world, my world. I did not know who it was, although I knew that some Lord had come through a gate in Europe. I hunted for him and did not find him and then I forgot about him. That was a thousand years ago; I presumed he had gotten out through some gate I did not know about or else had been killed.
"But he was lying low and all the time searching for me. And finally, only ten years ago, he found me, surveyed my fortress, my defenses, watched my comings and my goings, and then he struck!
"I had grown careless, but I got away, although all my bodyguards died. And he took over. It was so simple for him because he was in the seat of power, and there was no one to deny him. How could there be anyone to say no to him? I had hidden my face too well. Anyone in the seat of power could issue orders, pull the strings, and he would be obeyed, since the Earthlings who are closest to him do not know his real name or his real face.
"And I could not go to the men who had carried out my orders and say, 'Here I am, your own true Lord! Obey me and kill that fool who is now giving you orders!' I would have been shot down at once, because Urthona had described me to his servants, and they thought I was the enemy of their leader.
"So I went into hiding, just as Urthona had done. But when I strike, I will not miss! And I shall again be in the seat of power!"
There was a pause. Orc seemed to be expecting him to comment. Perhaps he expected praise or awe or terror.
Kickaha said, "Now that he has this seat of power, as you call it, is he Lord of both Earths? Or of this one only?"
Orc seemed set aback by this question. He stared and then his face got red.
"What is that to you?" he finally said.
"I just thought that you might be satisfied with being Lord of the other Earth. Why not let this Urthona rule this world? It looks to me, from the short time I've been here, that this world is doomed. The humans are polluting the air and the water and, at any time, they may kill off all life on Earth with an atomic war. Apparently, you are not doing anything to prevent this. So why not let Urthona have this dying world while you keep the other?"
He paused and then said, "Or is Earth Number Two in as bad a condition as this one?"
Red Orc's face had lost its redness. He smiled and said, "No, the other is not as bad off. It's much more desirable, even though it got exactly the same start as this one. But your suggestion that I surrender this world shows you don't know much about us, leblabbiy."
"I know enough," Kickaha said. "But even Lords change for the better, and I had hoped..."
"I will do nothing to interfere here except to protect myself," Orc said. "If this planet chokes to death on its man-made foulness, or if it all goes out in a thousand bursts of radiation, it will do so without any aid or hindrance from me. I am a scientist, and I do not influence the direction of natural development one way or another on the two planets. Anything I do is on a microscale level and will not disturb macroscale matters.
"That, by the way, is one more reason why I must kill anyone who invades my universes. They might decide to interfere with my grand experiments."
"Not me!" Kickaha said. "Not Wolff or Chryseis or Anana! All we want is to go back to our own worlds! After the Beller is killed, of course. He's the only reason we came here. You must believe that!"
"You don't really expect me to believe that?" Orc said.
Kickaha shrugged and said, "It's true, but I don't expect you to believe it. You Lords are too paranoid to see things clearly."
Red Orc stood up from the table. "You will be kept prisoner here until I have captured the others and defeated Urthona. Then I'll decide what to do with you."
By this, Kickaha knew, he meant just what delicate tortures he could inflict upon him. For a moment, he thought about informing Orc of the Horn of Shambarimen's presence on Earth in this area. Perhaps he could use it for a bargaining point. Then he decided against it. Once Orc knew that it was here, he would just get the information from his captive by torture or drugs.
"Have you killed the Beller yet?" he said.
Orc smiled and said, "No."
He seemed very pleased with himself. "If it becomes necessary, I will threaten Urthona with him. I will tell Urthona that if he does not leave, I will let the Beller loose. That, you understand, is the most horrible thing a Lord could do."
"You would do this? After what you said about getting rid of anybody that might interfere with the natural development?"
"If I knew that my own death was imminent, unavoidable, yes, I would! Why not? What do I care what happens to this world, to all the worlds, if I am dead? Serve them right!"
There were more questions to which Kickaha wanted answers, but he was not controlling the interview. Orc abruptly walked out, leaving by the other door. Kickaha strained at the end of the chain to see through it, but the door swung out toward him and so shut off his view.
He was left with only his thoughts, which were pessimistic. He had always boasted that he could get loose from any prison, but it was, after all, a boast. He had, so far, managed to escape from every place in which he had been imprisoned, but he knew that he would someday find himself in a room with no exit. This was probably it. He was being observed by monitors, electronic or human or both, the chain was unbreakable with bare hands, and it also could be the conductor for some disabling and punishing agent if he did not behave.
This did not prevent him from trying to break it and twist it apart, because he could not afford to take anything for granted. The chain was unharmed, and he supposed that any human monitors would be amused by his efforts.
He stopped struggling, and he used the toilet facilities. Then he lay down on the sofa and thought for a while about his predicament. Though he was naked, he was not uncomfortable. The air was just a few degrees below his body temperature and it moved slowly enough so that it did not chill him. He fell asleep after a while, having found no way out, having thought of no plan that could reasonably work.
When he awoke, the room was as before. The sourceless light still made it high noon, and the air had not changed temperature. However, on sitting up, he saw a tray with dishes and cups and table utensils on top of the small thin-legged wooden table at the end of the sofa. He did not think that anyone could have entered with it unless he had been drugged. It seemed more likely that a gate was embedded in the wooden top and that a tray had been gated through while he slept.
He ate hungrily. The utensils were made of wood, and the dishes and the cups were of pewter and bore stylized octopuses, dolphins, and lobsters. After he ate, he walked back and forth within the range of the chain for about an hour. He tried to think of what he could do with the gate, if there was a gate inside that wooden table top. At the end of the hour, as he turned back toward the table, he saw that the tray was gone. His suspicion was correct; the top did contain a gate.
There had been no sound. The Lords of the old days had solved the problems of noise caused by sudden disappearance of an object. The air did not rush into the vacuum created by the disappearance because the gate arrangement included a simultaneous exchange of air between the gate on one end and that at the other.