More Than Fire

"Time is what you don't have. After all, Manathu Vorcyon has come out from her isolation. She is now your great enemy."

"I was going to tackle her someday anyway."

Kickaha quoted an ancient Thoan saying. "He who is forced to begin attack before he pla

"It was Elyttria of the Silver Arrows who said, `Old sayings are always old but are not always true.' "

Kickaha sat down in the only chair in his room. He gri

"I will do the latter, though not completely," Red Orc said. "I'll not tell you one of the things I plan for you. You can watch me do it."

The Thoan stood up and called out, "Anana!" Then he said, "From now on, you'll be able to see what takes place in this room and hear everything. The transmission from your room will be stopped."

A minute later, Anana, as nude as the Thoan, walked into the room. She went into his arms and kissed him passionately. After which, he led her to the bed.

Kickaha yelled, "No! No!" and struck the screen area with his fist. All he did was to hurt his hand, but he did not mind that. Nevertheless, he used the chair to strike the screen many times. Neither the wall nor the chair was damaged. Then he unrolled the blankets and wrapped them around his head and stuck the ends of his little fingers into his ears. When he did that, the sound volume was raised so high that he could hear everything.

He screamed to drown out the noises until his throat was too hoarse to continue. After a long time, the sounds ceased. He came out from under his covers to look at the screen. It was now silent and blank. He croaked a sound of relief. But his mind was still displaying the images and voicing the noises.

Suddenly, the area glowed, shimmered, and became a picture. This one was a replay. Evidently, Red Orc was going to run it and, probably, future scenes over and over again until Kickaha went berserk or withdrew into himself.

He gritted his teeth, pulled up his chair to face the wall and, maskfaced, stared at the images. He did not know if he could concentrate enough to summon up certain mental techniques he had learned a long time ago. While living with the Hrowakas, the Bear People, on the Amerind level of the tiered planet, he had mastered a psychological procedure taught by a shaman. Many years had passed since then. Despite this, he had not forgotten the methods any more than he had forgotten how to swim. They were embedded in his mind and nerves.

Doing them with the needed concentration was the main problem now. It was not easy. He failed after starting them seven times. Then he grimly focused on the movie and did not quit that until hours later. If Red Orc was watching him-he undoubtedly was-he would be puzzled by his prisoner's attitude.

Seeing the film over and over hurt Kickaha as he had never been hurt before. Tears flowed; his chest seemed to be a cavern filled with boiling lead. But he would not quit. After a while, his pain began to ooze away. Later, he became bored. He had attained enough objectivity to see the film as a pornographic show in which the characters were strangers. He felt as if his only punishment was to be doomed to watch the same movie over and over forever.

Now, he was able to start the internal ritual. This time, he succeeded. The screen area suddenly disappeared. Though it was still there to see and to hear, he no longer saw or heard it. He had shut it out.

He thought, Absakosaw, wise old medicine man! I owe you much. But he could never repay Absakosaw. He and his tribe had been slain by one of Kickaha's enemies. Kickaha had killed their killer, but revenge did not make the Bear People rise from the dead.

Three days passed. The screen area remained blank. On the morning of the fourth day, it came alive. This time, the scene was a different bedroom but with the same actors. It was obvious that Anana was deeply in love with Red Orc. But then, she had always been lusty, and she had no reason she knew of to hate the Lord. Nor did she know, of course, that she was being observed.

Either this transmission was a new one or Red Orc had figured out why Kickaha never paid attention to the film. In any event, it was getting through to Kickaha in more than one way. Again, he sat for hours staring at the wall until he was bored. After this, he used Abakosaw's system. When he rose from the chair, he saw only the wall. However, occasional images from the film would pierce his mind. He might be worn down eventually and be unable to make the blanking-out work.

The fifth day, while he was exercising vigorously, he heard the Thoan's voice. He turned. The screen was active. But it did not display the scenes that had driven him close to insanity. Red Orc's head and shoulders filled the screen. That confused Kickaha for a few seconds until he realized what had happened. Only the films were blocked from his mind, and he would receive anything else coming from the wall.

Red Orc said, "You are elusive in more ways than the physical. I'd ask you to teach me your technique, but I have my own. And I could get you to tell me that without rewarding you with a month or so free of mental torture. I'm sure that you have held certain items of information back from me. You've been pleased, perhaps smug, because you've done this. You're going to go to sleep now. When you wake up, I'll know everything you know. Know, at least, those items you've been keeping from me."

The screen faded into blackness. Everything faded. When Kickaha awoke on the bed, he knew that he had been made unconscious, probably by gas. Then he had been questioned. Red Orc had used some sort of truth drug and gotten out of him everything, including the facts about Khruuz. That must have startled and alarmed him considerably. The appearance of the scaly man was something he could not have anticipated.

After Kickaha had eaten his di

Suddenly, it stopped in the middle of the tenth replay. The Thoan's head appeared.

"By now, you have concluded that I canceled the effects of your technique. I did so, of course, with hypnotic commands. You remember the methods, but you can't make them effective."

Kickaha managed to control himself and not throw the chair at the screen. He tried to smile as if he did not care. Instead, he snarled.

"I have decided not to wait for Absalos to return from Zazel's World," Red Orc said. "Your story that you killed him is probably true. I'll find out when I get there. I will be gating out to there in a few minutes. When I come back, I'll have data to make the creation-destruction engine. After that, you and all my enemies and billions who have never heard of me will die. So will their universes. Even my Earths will perish in a beautiful display of energy. I've run them as experiments, but I can now predict what's going to happen to their people. Earth One humans will kill almost all of themselves with their brainless breeding, poisoning of land, air, and sea, and in the end, the collapse of civilization, followed by starvation. Then the survivors, though plunged into savagery, will start the climb back to civilization, science, and technology, only to repeat the same story.

"This will also eventually happen on Earth Two. Why should I continue the experiments when I know by now what the results will be? I'll use the energies of the disintegrated universes to make a new one. One only. This will be the ideal world, ideal for me, anyway.