More Than Fire

By then, Khruuz had heard everything that Kickaha knew about Red Orc. He had also been told as much of the history of the Thoan people as Kickaha knew. Khruuz spoke in his heavily accented and just barely understandable Thoan. His tongue-tendril now and then struck parts of his palate and formed sounds that were not in Thoan and probably only in his language.

"I have closed all the gates for the time being. That keeps anyone from coming in, but it also does not permit me to gather information from the outside."

Khruuz had told Kickaha that parts of the outline of the legends about the Khringdiz were close to the truth. But the details were usually wrong. When the Thoan people had killed off all of the Khringdiz except for him, he had made this underground retreat. After being there for a while, he had stopped the molecular motion of his body and settled down for a very long "sleep." The fuel to drive the machine for maintaining the chamber, to record the events on various parts of various universes, and to "awaken" him was nuclear power. When the fuel was almost gone, the machinery would bring him out of molecular stasis.

"By then," Khruuz had said, "the probabilities that the situation would be considerably changed were high. The Lords might have died out. Their numbers were comparatively few at the time I went into stasis. And their descendants, if these existed after such a long time, might be different in culture and temperament. They could be much more tolerant and empathetic. Or some other sentient species, higher on an ethical level than the Lords, might have replaced the Thoan. In any event, whoever inhabited the universes might be willing to accept me, the last of the Khringdiz. If such was not the situation, I would have to deal with the evil as best I could.

"My fuel would have lasted for some time yet. But I had also set up the security system so that any intrusion into the chamber would awaken me. You entered, and I was brought out of stasis prematurely. But the process takes some time. It did not bring me out of stasis in time for me to speak to you. You got away because of the Horn. That, by the way, must contain machinery the design for which was stolen from my people. The Thoan did not have such technology."

"What?" Kickaha had said. "The Horn was invented by the ancient Lord, Shambarimen!"

"This Shambarimen must have gotten the data from one of us, undoubtedly after he killed the Khringdiz who owned it. But instead of sharing it with his fellow Lords, he kept it secret. He incorporated it in the artifact that you called the Horn. That has to be what happened."

"But there must have been other designs, or even the machinery itself!" Kickaha had said. "If the devices for opening gates or flaws were used by the Khringdiz, surely some would have fallen into Thoan hands!"

"No. They were few and well guarded. They gave us an advantage over the Thoan because we could enter their gates and flaws. But those of us who survived the initial onslaught were too few to use the openers effectively. At last, only I survived. However, those who did have the openers must have destroyed or hidden all the designs and the machines before they were hunted down and killed. You know the rest of the story."

"So, Shambarimen lied about inventing the Horn," Kickaha had said. "There goes another legend into the dust!"

Khruuz had shrugged his massive shoulders in a quite human gesture. He had said, "From what you tell me and from my experience since being awakened, it's evident that the Lords are still here and that very few have changed."

Kickaha had said, "You'd like to get revenge, wipe them out?"

The scaly man had hesitated, then had said, "I can't deny that I would be happy if all my original enemies, the Lords who existed when we were being exterminated, were to be killed and I was the one who did it. But that is impossible. I must somehow make peace with them. If I ca

"Don't feel hopeless," Kickaha had said. "I am the enemy of almost all Lords because they tried to kill me first. They must be killed before there will be peace in all the universes. You and I would make wonderful allies. How about it?"

The scaly man had said, "I will do my best to help you. You have my word on that, and in the days when there were other Khringdiz, the word of Khruuz was enough."

Kickaha had asked him if he knew how the Thoan came into being. Khruuz replied that his people would never have made beings so unlike themselves.

"Some questions have no answers," Khruuz had said. "But our universe was not the only one. Somehow, the Thoan broke through the wall between our universes. Instead of treating us as if we were peaceful and nonviolent sentients, which we were, they behaved as if we were dangerous animals. We were treacherously attacked, and in the first blow, the Thoan wiped out more than three-quarters of us. We survivors were forced to become killers. The rest of the story you know."

"And now?" Kickaha had said.

"When I opened a gate and co

"We can help you, and you can help us," Kickaha had said. "Red Orc must be killed. In fact, all those Lords who would slay us must be killed. But first I have to get into Zazel's World before Red Orc does."

"He really intends to destroy all of the universes and then make his own?"

"He says he does. He's capable of doing it."

Khruuz rolled his eyes and spat, his tongue-tendril straight out from his mouth. At that moment, he looked serpentine. Kickaha told himself to quit comparing Khruuz to insects and reptiles. The Khringdiz was as human as any member of Homo sapiens and much more human than many of them. At least, he seemed to be so. He could be lying and so hiding his true feelings.

Man, I've tangled with too many Lords! he thought. I'm completely paranoiac. On the other hand, being so has saved my life more than once.

Khruuz had promised to study the data re gates, which his bank contained. He had set his machines to scan that section, to abstract significant data, and to print it out. That took only two hours, but he had an enormous amount of data to read in the-to Kickaha-exotic alphabet of the Khringdiz.

"Most of this is what my people knew about gates," the scaly man said. "But I assume that the Thoan made some advances in their use since I went into the long sleep. I was trying to get information on these when I had to close my gates. Unfortunately, Zazel must have made his Caverned World after that. However, we may yet find out something about his gate setup. Not until Red Orc is dealt with, though."

"If we do that, we won't have to worry about getting into Zazel's World," Kickaha said.

"Yes we will. Some other Lord might get the creation-destruction engine data. The data should be in safe hands or destroyed. Though it makes me shudder to think of doing that to scientific data, it is better than chancing that it might be stolen or taken by violence."

Kickaha thought for a moment, then said, "At one time, every Lord must have had the engine. Otherwise, how could they have made their own private universes? What made them all disappear? Why don't at least some of them now have the data for making the engines?"

"You're asking the wrong person," Khruuz said. "I was out of the stream of the living for thousands of years. There may be some Lords who have the engines or the designs for them, but they don't know it. As for your first question, I think that every Lord who successfully invaded another's universe destroyed his enemy's creation-destruction engine. The successful invader would not want others who might invade during the owner's absence to find one. And then another Lord would slay the previous invader. In time, very few engines would be left. But I really don't know."