More Than Fire

"I may take Anana with me to my new world. But I may not. While I am gone on my trip, she'll be kept occupied. My son, Kumas, will have her. She will love him as much as she loves me, because she won't know the difference."

He paused, smiled, and said, "That she won't know the difference shows something about true love, doesn't it? It's a philosophical problem in identity. I would like to discuss it with you, though I believe that the discussion would not last long. You're a trickster, Kickaha, but you do not know Thoan philosophy. Or, I suspect, Earthian philosophy. You are, basically, a simple-minded barbarian."

He turned his head to look at something. Perhaps, Kickaha thought, he was checking the time on a chronometer. What did it matter what Red Orc was doing? It didn't, but he was always curious about anything he could not explain.

The Thoan turned his head back to look at Kickaha.

"Oh, yes! Enjoy the movies!"

He walked out of Kickaha's view. Immediately after, the screen shifted to a room in which Red Orc-or was it his clone?-and Anana were at the peak of ecstasy.

Kickaha tried to become deaf, blind, and unfeeling steel. He failed.

There was more than one way to skin a cat. Or, as the Thoan saying went, more than one direction in which to fart. He had used only one of the three techniques taught him by the shaman, Absakosaw.

He sat down and once more watched the films. He was going to sit here until he got bored. Then he would think of Anana and Red Orc as puppets operated by strings. After a while, they should cease being human-in his mind, anyway-and become mere wooden dolls with articulated limbs.

However, as long as the amplified noises came from the screen, he would have much difficulty ignoring that. The sounds that Anana made kept moving the course of his thoughts back to when he and she had been making love. Just as he was on the edge of giving up and trying some other technique, the screen went blank.

A second later, the Lord's face appeared.

"Kickaha! I am Kumas, Red Orc's son!"

Kickaha shot up from his chair. He said, "Are you? Or are you Red Orc playing another trick on me?"

The man smiled despite the strain on his face.

"I don't blame you. My father breeds suspicion as some breed worms for fishing."

"If you are indeed his son ... his clone ... how can you prove that? And what if you are? What do you want of me?"

"Partnership. My father has gone to Zazel's World. He has left me in charge because he trusts me most, though that is not saying much. I have always been obedient to him and never shown any sign of ambition. He thinks I am shy and reclusive, far more interested in reading and in writing poetry and in gaining knowledge. In that, he is partly correct. But I have hated him as much as my brothers do. Unlike them, I have succeeded in hiding my true feelings."

He stopped for a moment while he obviously made an effort to slow down his rapid breathing.

Kickaha said, "You want me to help you kill him?"

Kumas gulped audibly and nodded. "Yes! I know much about you, mostly from my father, though I do have other sources of information. I admit that I do not have enough confidence in myself to carry out my plans."

"Which are what?"

Kickaha's heart was beating hard, and he had to control his own heavy breathing. The situation had suddenly changed from hopelessness to hope. Unless, that is, the Thoan was playing another game with him.

"We'll talk about that now. I'll show you that I am not my father by doing something he would not do. Watch!"

Suddenly, a door-sized area of the wall near the screen shimmered.

"Step through the gate into my room."

Though Kickaha was still suspicious, he could not refuse this invitation. He went through the shimmering to find himself in a large room. It was Spartan in its decorations and furniture. Along all the walls were shelves filled with books, rolls of scripts, and computer readout cubes. The bed was old-fashioned, one of those that hung from the ceiling by chains. By the opposite wall was a desk that ran the length of the room.

Kumas, if he was truly Kumas, was standing in the middle of the room. A beamer was on the edge of the desk near Kickaha. He could get to it before the Thoan could. Kumas spread his hands out and said, "See! I have no weapons except that beamer. To prove that I trust you, I'll not stop you from having it. The battery is in it; it's ready to fire."

Though he moved nearer the weapon, Kickaha said, "That won't be necessary-as of now, anyway. Where's Anana?"

Kumas turned toward the empty space of the wall just above the desk. His back was to Kickaha. He said, "Sheshmu," Thoan for "open." The area became a screen showing Anana and several women swimming in an enormous outdoor pool. Anana seemed to be having fun with them. Their cries and shrieks and chatter came clearly.

Kumas spoke another word, and the volume shrank to a barely heard sound.

"As you see, she is quite happy. She has accepted my father's lies that she was rescued by him from Jadawin when Jadawin-so my father said-invaded her parents' universe. She believes that she is only eighteen years old, and she is deeply in love with my father."

Kickaha's chest was, for a moment, again filled with a searing-hot liquid. He murmured, "Anana!" Then he said, "What'll happen when she finds out he's lied? She'll eventually find discrepancies in his story. How's he going to keep her from reading histories or overhearing somebody saying something that'll not contradict what he says?"

Kumas had been looking curiously at him. He said, "I expected you to be concerned only with how we were going-to dispose of my father. But your first concern seems to be about Anana. You must really love her."

"No doubt of that! But will she ever love me again?"

Kumas said sharply. "That remains to be seen. Just now, if you'll pardon me, we have something much more important. If we don't do that, you and Anana won't have any future. Neither will I."

"Agreed. It'll be hard not to go to her, though. Very hard. But you're right. Let her stay happy until the time when she must be told the truth."

They sat down at a table. Kickaha outlined his story to the Thoan. When he told him that Red Orc pla

The Thoan said, "I did not know that, of course. He told that only to you, because he thought that you would never be able to pass it on."

"That can wait," Kickaha said. "How many of your brothers are left, by the way?"

"Four of us, unless you really did kill Absalos."

"I did."

"Three out of the original nine still live. Ashatelon, Wemathol, and myself. Ashatelon and Wemathol insist on accompanying us to the Caverned World. They want to be in on the kill."

"The more, the merrier," Kickaha said.

But he was thinking that he could not trust any of the clones, though Kumas seemed to be different from the others. Red Orc might have done some genetic tampering with the clones. Or perhaps environment counted for more than the Lords thought it did. In any event, he would have to watch them closely, though he doubted they would be a danger to him until Red Orc was out of the way. They were afraid of their father, and they would need a leader who was not the least bit scared of him. Then, like jackals who'd helped the lion during the hunt, they might fall upon Kickaha.

Kumas resumed talking. "At least four of my brothers so far have died when our father sent them on suicidal missions. Kentrith was sent into Khruuz's world not knowing that a bomb was in his backpack. We were not aware of it until our father told me about it. He laughed all the while. You would think that he would be kind to us since his father was so cruel to him. But that did not happen. Los seems to have twisted him so much that he takes an especial pleasure in tormenting his own sons. Sometimes I think he brought us into being just so that he could, in a certain way, torture himself."