More Than Fire

He paused, smiled, then said, "Of course, you could be talking to one of them now, not the real Red Orc."

"But how did you get here? How did you know when I got here?"

"Manathu Vorcyon is not the only one who has secrets. Tell me what happened here. I assume that the device was not able to detect a crack and that it was a trick to blow my head off. You must also have thought of the high probability that your head could have gone the way of my clone's. However, I take nothing for granted. There wasn't a gate or a crack, was there?"

"No."

Red Orc smiled. "I know there isn't. I tried the Horn here, and nothing happened. If I'd known that when I sent you out, I would've told you not to waste your time or mine."

He gestured with the beamer and said, "Walk ahead of me to the boat."

Kickaha obeyed. He wondered where the Horn was now. Probably it was in the Lord's boat. Then the same thing that had happened when Red Orc caught him at the cliff top occurred again. He felt a slight prick in his back, and he awoke in an unfamiliar room, a twenty-foot cube. He was not bound, and he was naked. There was in the cube no furniture, rugs, door, or window. In one corner was a hole in the floor, apparently for excretion, but it looked and smelled clean. Cool air moved slightly over him, piped in through a nozzle on a wall near the ceiling.

His chest still hurt. When he looked down, he could see the five-inch-wide black-and-blue bruise across his breast. But his head was clear, and he no longer felt emotional shock. What he did feel was frustration and rage.

To work off the stiffness in his muscles and his emotions, he exercised as vigorously as the chest pain would allow him. Then he began pacing back and forth while waiting for Red Orc to make his next move. Hours must have gone by before a cough behind him startled him. Red Orc or one of his clones stood there, holding a beamer. Kickaha was begi

"Turn around," the Thoan said.

Kickaha did so, and the upper and lower sections of the wall before him parted. The top section slid into the ceiling; the lower, into the floor. At the Lord's command, Kickaha marched down a very wide and high hallway, doorless and windowless, then went around a corner and down a similar corridor. Two men armed with spears stood by the sides of a door twelve feet high. Their square steel helmets and bulging cuirasses were arabesqued in gold, and their short kilts were crimson and embroidered with small green female sphinxes. Kickaha had never seen such armor or dress before. The guards stepped aside, their spears ready to plunge into Kickaha. The door slid to one side into the wall.

The two, followed by the guards, entered an enormous room furnished with laboratory equipment, most of it strange to Kickaha. They walked down a half-mile-long aisle past many tables and big machines. When a wall barred farther progress, Red Orc told Kickaha to stop. The Thoan spoke a code word swiftly, but not too fast for Kickaha to understand it and to store it in his memory.

A huge square area of the wall became transparent. Kickaha could not help crying out. Anana, unclothed, was in the room beyond the wall. She was bound into a chair, her head held in a brace. Her eyes were closed. Above her head was what at first seemed to be a giant hair dryer.

He whirled around and snarled. "What are you doing to her?"

"I would think you'd be overjoyed because she is alive. If I had left her on that ledge just above the floodwaters, she would have died. She had a broken leg and arm, three broken ribs, and a slight concussion. Now she's in excellent physical shape because of my medical skills. You're a hard man to please, Trickster."

"What are you doing to her?"

The Lord waved his free hand. "What you see, leblabbiy, is a process I conceived and built and experimented with during those many times I worked to relieve myself of the inevitable boredom that comes to all immortals. The machine there is not an ancient device I inherited. I invented it."

He paused, but Kickaha said nothing. If Red Orc was waiting for another outburst, he was not going to get it.

The Lord spoke sharply. "Look at her, Kickaha! And say good-bye to the Anana you knew!"

Reluctantly, Kickaha turned to the window.

"That machine is removing her memory. It's doing so slowly, because a quick process injures the brain, and I do not want a mindless mistress."

Kickaha quivered but did not move or speak.

"The machine requires an hour a day for ten days to remove all memory back to when she was approximately eighteen years old. When the process is completed, she will believe-and in a sense, it will be true-that she is on her native planet and her parents and siblings are still living. It will be as if she has journeyed back in time, but without any knowledge of the thousands of years that have passed since she was eighteen."

Kickaha could not speak for a moment, and when he did, he croaked.

"She won't remember me."

"Not at all. Nor will she remember me. But I will introduce myself and in time, make her love me. I can make any woman love me."

"What about when she finds out the truth?"

"She won't," Red Orc said, and he laughed. "I'll see to that. Of course, when I get tired of her, if I do. .."

"Do you plan to do the same thing to me? Or do you have something painful in mind?"

"I could remove your memory up to the time, say, when you were a college student on Earth and went through Va

Kickaha had no trouble choosing one of the options. But he would not tell Red Orc his decision until he was forced to do so. Just now, he could think only of Anana.

If we ever get free and are reunited, Kickaha thought, I'll see that she loves me again. And I'll tell her about our life together in detail.

Red Orc spoke another code word. The window became the wall. All four marched off through three halls and entered a large room ornately furnished in a style that Kickaha assumed was that of the natives. He and the Thoan sat down in comfortable chairs, facing each other across a large table of polished red wood in which were spiral green streaks. The table legs were carved with the figures of mermen and merwomen. Food and drink were brought in by a man and a woman, one of whom stood behind the Lord and the other behind Kickaha.

"You may bathe, eat, and rest after we've finished here," the Lord said. "Now! I assume you've decided that you'll try to carry out the two missions for me and for your own sake. I would certainly do so. While you live-"

"While I live, I hope," Kickaha said.

"I know that. Let us eat."

"I am not at all hungry," Kickaha said. "I would choke on the first bite." "Sometimes the belly overrides everything. Very well. You may eat later in your own quarters."

The Thoan waited until he had chewed and swallowed several bites and drank some wine before he spoke again.

"Describe your experiences while with the ogress slut."

Kickaha did so, holding nothing back except what the Great Mother had said about the scaly man. Red Orc might know something of what his "guest" had said and done while with Manathu Vorcyon. It did not seem likely, but he did not know what kind of espionage system his "host" might have.