More Than Fire

"They've got horses," Kickaha mumbled. "I need a horse. Ergo, I'll get a horse. But I suppose they hang horse thieves just as they did in the Old West. Well, it won't be the first time I stole a horse. Nor the last, I hope."

After the group had passed, the dust had settled down, and he was sure

no soldiers were coming back to get him, he went back to the road. He walked for an hour in the increasing heat. When he saw two men ride down from a pass in the hills on his right, he increased his pace. By the time the two had gotten to the road, he was only forty feet from them. He called out to them, and they reined in their horses.

Two tougher customers he had never seen. Their hats were like the wagon drivers'. Their black and food-dotted beards flowed down to their chests. Their black eyes were hard, and their hawklike faces were sunseamed and looked as if they had never smiled. They wore dirty blue tunics and full, leg-length boots. Quivers full of arrows hung from their backs; their bows were strung; their scabbards held long swords and long knives.

Kickaha put his pack down, reached in, and brought out a small ingot of gold. Holding it up and pointing with the other hand at the nearest animal, he said, "I'll give you this for a horse."

Of course, they did not understand his words, but they understood his gestures. They spoke softly to each other, then turned their horses and charged him, swords in hand. He had expected this, since they looked to him like outlaws. His beamer ray, set at stun power, knocked them off their steeds. He caught one horse by the reins and was dragged for a few feet before it stopped. The other animal kept on ru

The ride was far longer than he wanted, because he did not press his horse, and he had to find water and feed for it. As he neared the city, he encountered an increasingly heavier traffic. Farmers with wagons piled high with produce were going into the city, and wagons holding bales of goods rattled out of it. Once he passed a slave caravan, mostly Indian men and women linked together by iron collars and chains. The unchained children followed their parents. Though he felt sorry for the wretches, he could do nothing for them.

Finally, he came to a pass that led down to the city, which was still some miles away. By then, he had exchanged some gold for local money, round copper or silver coins of various sizes and values. On each was stamped the profile of some big shot, and circling close to the rim were three words in an alphabet unfamiliar to him.

This was a large city by the citizens' standards, he supposed. His estimate was approximately one hundred thousand to one hundred fifty thousand population. It had a few squalid dwellings on the edge of the municipality. Their number increased as he rode closer to the ocean, though it was still miles from where he was. Here and there among these shacks and rundown stores were walled estates with huge houses. The streets seemed to have followed the paths of drunken cows until he was halfway along what would be the Hollywood Hills on his native planet. Then the dirt streets straightened out and became paved with large hewnstone blocks.

Here and there were some tall, square, white stone buildings with twin domes, large front porches, and columns bulging in the middle and covered with the carved figures of troll-like heads and of dragons, lions, bears, and, surprisingly, elephants. Or were they mammoths? The streets were unpaved in this area. Narrow ditches along their sides were filled with water that stank of sewage. He supposed that there were stone-block or cobblestoned streets nearer to the coast, but he did not have time to see them.

This city had its equivalent of the L.A. smog. The smoke from thousands of kitchen fires hung heavy over the valley.

While he rode, he had been using his gate-detector. The light in it did not come on until he swept the "Hollywood Hills" area. Unlike the hills he had seen while on Earth I in 1970, these slopes were bare except for a score or so of mansions. Emanating from one on the very top of a hill were several bright spots. Gates.

He could not be sure, but he thought that the large white building topped by two domes was where the Griffith Observatory would be on his native planet. If he remembered correctly what he had been told while in Los Angeles, a road led up through a park and ended at the observatory. It seemed probable that on this world, a private road to the same spot would have been laid out to the mansion. There was only one way to find out.

It took several hours of searching to find it, because he could not ask directions of passersby. Finally, he came to a dirt road that led him to a road paved with large flat stones. That led toward the ocean and followed a course at the foot of the hills. But a road that wound to the top of the hill was dirt. He rode unhurriedly up it. The steep slope would be hard on a horse if it galloped or even cantered.

While he was on a narrow lane flanked by tall trees, he figured out what he would do when he got close to the mansion. Though Red Orc lived in it now and then, he was probably unknown to most of the citizens. He had bribed some prominent citizen to front for him and to put the property in his name. Red Orc might not even leave his grounds. The mansion would be well guarded, and any entrance gates in the house would be trapped.

At this moment, the Thoan might not be in the house. He was said to have other houses on several continents of Earth II. He gated from one to the other, depending upon what area he was interested in at the time. His spies reported indirectly to him on the current state of affairs in that part of this world, and he no doubt also read the news periodicals.

Though the creator and hidden observer of both Earths, Red Orc made it a policy to interfere as little as possible with human affairs. The planets were his studies. He had made both in the image of his own planet, that is, the geological and geographical image of his now-ruined native world. But they had been been copies of his world when the human inhabitants were in the Early Stone Age.

He had made artificial humans, then cloned one set, and put one on Earth I and one on Earth II. Each was exactly like the other in genetic makeup, and each had been placed in the same geographical location as the other. They were both in the same primitive state, and each of the corresponding tribes had spoken the same language. Thus, those placed in, say, what would be Algeria on Earth I and the exact same area on Earth II would speak the same language.

Red Orc had observed the tribes on both Earths during the last twenty thousand years. Some Thoan said it was thirty thousand years, but no one except Red Orc knew the correct period of time. Whatever the date, he had watched the prehistory and history of humans on both planets. He had not devoted all of his time to observation there. He apparently just dropped in now and then to bring his information up to date. Or to conduct some of his nefarious business.

Both planets were vast experiments in divergence. Though the various tribes had been, in the begi

Kickaha did not have time to compare in detail how these people had diverged from those of Earth. Red Orc might have spies watching for him. The Thoan left as little to chance as possible; he guarded his own rear end. For all Kickaha knew, word of his coming might have reached Red Orc days ago.