More Than Fire

The other two Thoan entered. "No one here," Kumas said. He sounded very relieved.

"Someone rolled that wheel aside," Kickaha said. "We'll go on."

He started to press his foot down on the acceleration pedal. Then he felt wet drops on his bare skin, and a fine mist was around him.

When he woke up, he was inside a square cage made of bars. Above him were bars through which he could see the cave ceiling. He got slowly to his feet, becoming aware that they were unshod while he did so. His clothes had been removed and were nowhere in sight. The cage floor was solid metal. In a corner was a pile of blankets. In another was a metal box, and the third corner held another box, the top of which had a toilet-seat hole. In the center of the metal floor was a painted orange-lined circle with a diameter of three feet.

And there were other cages, widely separated, arranged in a circle. Six, including his. Inside each one was a man. One of them, however, was not a member of Homo sapiens.

"Khruuz!" he said hoarsely. He gripped the bars facing the i

"Must've been sprayed through holes in the wall behind us," he murmured to himself. "It doesn't matter how it was done. We're here."

Red Orc wasn't the one responsible for their captivity. He was in the cage directly across from Kickaha's. Like the others, he was unclothed. His face pressed against the bars, he was smiling at his archenemy. Did that mean that he was pleased that at least the others were also caged? Or did it mean that he was enjoying a secret? Such as that he had brought them here and was now posing as a prisoner? But why would he do that? Time would reveal the truth.

The three clones of Red Orc were in the other cages. Wemathol called out, "So much for your brags, Kickaha!"

He spat through the bars.

Kickaha ignored him. He was about to speak to Khruuz when a ... creature? thing? semihuman? walked slowly and dignifiedly into the center of the circle. A second before, it had not been present. Where had it come from? A gate, probably.

Though he had never seen it before this, Kickaha knew that it had to be the thing he had thought was dead.

He cried out, "Dingsteth!"

It faced Kickaha, and it said, "Neth thruth," Thoan for "I am it." Carved jewels, not teeth, flashed in its mouth.

Kickaha had heard about Dingsteth from Anana and Manathu Vorcyon. According to them, Dingsteth was an artificial creature made by Zazel as a sort of companion and manager. Before Zazel had killed himself, he had charged his creation to stand guard on and to preserve his world. Just why he would want to keep the dreary universe going, no one knew. Now the fabled being was standing before Kickaha. It was bipedal and six feet tall. Its skin was lightly pigmented, a Scandinavian pink. It walked slowly, because it had to. The shiny flesh rings around its shoulders, hips, elbows, knees, and wrists did not allow the free movement humans had. Its head, neck, and trunk were proportionally larger than those of a man. The skull was almost square, and the lips were very thin.

Where a man's genitals would have been was smooth skin.

The thing said, "You know my name. What is yours?"

"Kickaha. But I thought this world had died and you with it."

"You were meant to think that," it said, pronouncing its words in a somewhat archaic ma

It paused, then said, "I thought the gate was closed."

"This thing intends to keep all of us here forever!" Red Orc shouted. "Dingsteth! I came here in peace!"

Without turning around, the thing spoke to the Thoan. "You may have, and you may not have. The being who calls himself Khruuz says that you are very cruel and violent and obsessed with the desire to have the data for my master's creation-destruction engine. He says that you will destroy all the universes, including Zazel's, to have the energy to make a new world for yourself only."

"He lies!" Red Orc said.

Dingsteth continued to look at Kickaha.

"The semihuman calling himself Khruuz may be lying, and he may be telling the truth. He says that he can bring me proof of his words if I let him return to his own world. But you, Orc, promised to come back soon after I gated you out of here so long ago. You did not. Therefore, you lied to me.

"How do I know that this Khruuz is also not a liar? How can I be sure that you are not all liars? You, for instance, Kickaha. You and Khruuz and the others may never return if I let you leave this world. Or you may come back intending to force me to reveal data that you should not have. I do not know if you are a liar, but you are certainly capable of senseless violence. I saw you throw away the facsimile of my skull. And I saw you kill a man, though that act was in self-defense. Or appeared to be."

Dingsteth walked away from the circle of cages. Kickaha watched it go to a place twenty yards away. It stopped near a "tree," a scarlet plant the branches of which grew closely together and extended to an equal distance from the trunk. Near this cylindrical tree was a large round stone. The keeper of this world was equidistant from the tree and stone. It turned its back to the prisoners. It must have spoken a code word, because it vanished suddenly.

He called to Khruuz, who was two cages away from his, "How did it catch you?"

"Gas. Your question should have been, `How do we get out of these cages?' " "Working on it now," Kickaha said. "But I admit that this is one of the toughest problems I've ever had to solve."

"You mean that we have ever had," Khruuz said.

Red Orc said, "Yes, we! I propose that until we do escape, we put aside our hatreds and cooperate fully."

"I won't put them aside," Kickaha said. "I won't allow them, however, to keep me from working with you."

Kumas said, "We're doomed."

"Weakling!" Ashatelon said. "I am ashamed to be your brother. I have been since we played together as children."

Wemathol called, "You're really cooperating, Ashatelon!"

Khruuz's deep and rough voice stopped the snarling and snapping. "Hearing you Thoan makes me wonder how you ever succeeded in conquering my people. I do not believe that the Thoan who killed all of us except myself could be your ancestors.

"I suggest that we act as a harmonious whole until we have dealt with Dingsteth-nonviolently, I hope."

"Don't ask them to give their word they won't stab you in the back before that's done," Kickaha said. "Their word is as worthless as a burning piece of paper."

"I know that," Khruuz said. "But our common danger should be the cement binding us together."

"Ha!"

Red Orc said, "Does anyone have any ideas?"

"Dingsteth may be listening, probably is right now," Kickaha said. "So how do we share ideas if it's going to know what we plan to do? We have no paper to write on, and we couldn't throw notes from cage to cage even if we did have paper. They're too far apart. Besides, Dingsteth'll be watching us."

"Sign language?" Kumas said. The others laughed.

"Think about it, dummy," Wemathol said. "How many of us know sign language? It'd have to taught by one who knows, if any of us do. And we can't do that unless we shout at each other. Dingsteth would hear us and learn along with the rest of us. Thus-"

"I get the idea," Kumas said. "I was just thinking out loud, you worthless, do-nothing, gasbag lout. What's your ingenious idea?" Wemathol did not reply.

Very little was said for the rest of the day. Night came when the sourceless light was turned off, and the only illumination was from the plants. Kickaha slept uneasily on his pile of blankets, not because he lacked a bed but because he could not stop thinking about how to get out of the cage and what he would do after that. Finally, sleep did come, laden with dreams of his life with Anana. Some of them were nightmares, fragments of desperate situations they had been in. On the whole, though, they were pleasant.