More Than Fire

Kickaha switched to the night-vision light and goggled, walked more swiftly. The long journey was uninterrupted. No other person suddenly appeared ahead of him. Nor did his frequent glances backward show him any follower.

Sweating, his nerves still winched up tight, he got to the last X, the mark showing where he had come through the gate. He stood before the wall and uttered the code word Khruuz had given him. He was not looking forward to going through the cold and twisted and terrifying ordeal of the core-gate again. To his surprise, he was spared that. He stepped through the wall and was immediately in a forest.

He looked around and groaned. The trees were like those he had seen when he had gated to the world of Manathu Vorcyon. Before he could adjust to the unexpected, he was surrounded by big brown men with long straight glossy-black hair, snub noses, and black eyes with epicanthic folds. Their long spears were pointed at him.

"Hey, I'm the Great Mother's friend!" he said. "Don't you know me?"

Though they obviously did know him, they said nothing. They marched him through the forest. An hour later, they entered a clearing in the center of which was the gigantic tree in which Our Lady lived. Forthwith, he was conducted into the arboreal palace and up the winding stairway to the dimly lit sixth floor. They left him standing before a big door.

"You may come in now," Manathu Vorcyon said from behind the door. He pushed the polished ebony door open. Light rushed out upon him. He squinted, then saw a large round table in the center of a luxuriously furnished room. The giantess was on a large well-padded chair facing him. On one side of her was seated Eric Clifton; on the other, Khruuz, the scaly man.

He said, "I've had a lot of surprises, but this one jolts me the most. How in hell did you two get here?"

She waved a hand. "Sit down. Eat. Drink. And tell us of your adventures in the Caverned World. Under other circumstances, I would allow you time to bathe and to rest before dining. But we are very eager to know what you discovered."

Kickaha sat down. The chair felt good, and he was suddenly tired. A sip of yellow wine from a wooden goblet gave him a glow and pushed away his fatigue. While he ate, he talked.

When he was done, he said, "That's it. Red Orc can now get into that world. A lot of good it'll do him. As for his finding the way in, I don't know how he did it."

"Obviously," Khruuz said, "he put some kind of tracer on your passage from my place to Zazel's World. That is not good news. He has means of tracking he did not have before. That is, to my knowledge."

"He can track intergate passage to my world, too," Manathu Vorcyon said. "Especially since he has the Horn."

"But I doubt that he has the device I used on the Unwanted World," Kickaha said. "Okay, I've told you my story. How did you three get together?"

"It was Khruuz's idea," the Great Mother said. "He sent Eric Clifton as his envoy to me to propose that we band together against Red Orc."

"And I set up the gating from Zazel's World so that you would come directly here," Khruuz said.

"Your world is unguarded now?" Kickaha said. "Red Orc'll-"

"Try to get into it," Manathu Vorcyon said. "But he does not know that it's unguarded. Anyway, Khruuz has set up traps."

Though Khruuz's face was nonhuman, it showed a quite human a

The giantess's eyes opened. She said, "If I offended you, I regret doing so, though I did not intend offense."

Kickaha smiled. Already there was friction, however slight, between the two allies. Manathu Vorcyon was used to doing exactly what she wanted to do. That included interrupting people when they were talking. Apparently, Khruuz was not used to being regarded as an inferior. To Manathu Vorcyon, everybody else was inferior. Was she not Our Lady, the Great Mother, the Grandmother of All? Did not everybody in her world and the others regard her with awe? Even Red Orc had not contemplated attacking her until recently. And that was only because she had entered the battle early.

"If I am not speaking out of turn," Kickaha said, carefully keeping sarcasm out of his voice, "I suggest that our best defense is attack against Red Orc. We shouldn't wait until he storms into this world or any other. We should go after him with everything we have."

"Good thinking, although it's superfluous," she said. "We have already decided that is the best policy. We also agree that you should be our spearhead."

"I'm used to being ca

"There was never a thought that you would not be an equal in the council," she said smoothly. "However, it has been well known for mille

"You, Clifton, have no military experience. You, Kickaha, are essentially a loner, a man of action, one excellent, perhaps unexcelled, in situations involving very few persons. You are no master strategist or at least have had no experience in pla

She paused, breathed deeply, then said, "The choice of your leader is obvious. I have all that you lack and also those abilities you do have."

The others were silent for a minute. Then Kickaha said, "I don't give a damn about being the general. That's not my style. But I insist I not be treated like a sacrificial piece on a chessboard. When I'm in the field, I make my own decisions, right or wrong, even if it goes against orders. The foot soldier is the only guy who knows what's needed in his immediate area."

He took in a deep breath, then looked straight at Manathu Vorcyon. "Something is sticking in my craw, choking me. It's a bone I have to pick with you."

"I expected this," she said. "If you had kept silent about it, I would not have respected you."

"Then I'll say out loud for Clifton's and Khruuz's benefit what's bugging me. You sent me to the Unwanted World to locate the gate to Zazel's World. You gave me a gate detector. But you didn't tell me the detector was a fake or that it was a booby trap. You knew that it would explode after a certain time. And-"

"No. It would explode only when Red Orc or his clones came within a certain distance of it. And after a certain time interval. I did not know the pattern of his electrical skin fields or what his body mass was. But using your descriptions of his physical features, I estimated his probable mass. I doubt that that was off more than a pound or two."

"You didn't care if I was killed, too!" Kickaha blurted.

"No. I cared very much. That is why the bomb was set so that it would not go off until the one who took it from you was out of range of you. Out of killing range, anyway."

"But you didn't know if the person who took it away from me was Red Orc or not!"

"Whoever did take it was likely to be your enemy."

"Well," Kickaha said slowly and less vehemently, "I suppose you want an apology from me for suspecting you didn't care if I was killed as long as Red Orc bought the farm."

"What does ... ?"

"In English, it means dying in combat."

"Ah! But, no, I don't wish for an apology. No reason to give me one. You didn't know all the facts ..."