Страница 16 из 40
Wolff said, "We should all go through the same one. It won't be wise to split up our forces. Wrong one or right one, we must be united."
Palamabron said, "You are right, brother. Besides, if we split, and one group were to get into Urizen's stronghold and kill him, then that group would have control. And they would betray the second group."
"That is not why I think we should stay together," Wolff said. "But you have a good point."
"On top of his head," Vala said. "Palamabron is no more of a thinker than he is a lover."
Palamabron reddened, and he put his hand upon the hilt of his sword. "I am through swallowing your insults, you vixen in heat," he said. "One more, and your head will roll off your shoulders."
"We have enough fighting ahead of us," Wolff said. "Save your fury for that which lies on the other side of one of those gates."
He saw a movement in the bushes a hundred yards away. Presently, a face showed. A native was watching them. Wolff wondered if any of the natives had tried to go through the gates. If one had, his disappearance would have terrified the others. Possibly, this area was tabu.
He was interested in the natives' reactions, because he considered that they might be of some help, someday. Just now, he did not have time or did not wish to take time. Chryseis was in Urizen's stronghold, and every minute there must be agony. It might not be agony only of spirit; she could be tormented physically by his father.
He shuddered and tried to put out of his mind the pictures that this thought painted. One thing at a time.
He looked at the others. They were watching him intently. Although they would have strongly denied it, they regarded him as a leader. He was not the oldest brother and one of his cousins was older. But he had taken immediate and forceful measures whenever any crisis had come up on this world. And he had the beamer. Moreover, they seemed to detect something different in him, a dimension that they lacked-although they would have denied this, too. His experience as Robert Wolff, the Earthman, had given him a grip upon matters that they had always considered too mundane to bother with. Insulated from hard labor, from having to deal with things at a primitive level, they felt lost. Once they had been makers and semi-divine rulers of their own private universes. Now they were no better-perhaps not as good-as the savages they so despised. Jadawin- or Wolff, as they were begi
Wolff said, "It's one fate or the the other. A case of eenie meenie minie moe."
"And what barbaric language is that?" Vala said.
"Earth type. I'll tell you what. Vala is the only woman here..."
"But more of a man than most of you," Vala said.
"... so why don't we let her pick out which one we enter? It's as good a method as any for choosing."
"That bitch never did anything right in her life," Palamabron said. "But I say, let her designate the gate. Then we won't go wrong if we enter the one she doesn't choose."
"Do what you like," Vala said. "But I say--that one."
She pointed at the right-hand hexagon.
"Very well," Wolff said. "Since I have the beamer, I'll go first. I don't know what's on the other side. Rather, I know what is there--death-but I don't know what form it'll take. Before I go, I'd like to say this. There was a time, brothers, cousins, sister, when we loved each other. Our mother lived then, and we were happy with her. We were in awe of our father, the gloomy, remote, forbidding Urizen. But we did not hate him. Then our mother died. How she died, we still don't know. I think, as some of you do, that Urizen killed our mother. It was only three days after she died that he took to wife Araga, the Lord of her own world, and so united his domain with hers.
"Whoever murdered our mother, we know what happened after that. We found out that Urizen was begi
"Love!" said Vala. She laughed, and the others joined her. Luvah half-smiled, but he did not laugh.
"You sound like a pack of hyenas," Wolff said. "Hyenas are carrion-eaters, powerful, nasty, vicious brutes, whose stench and habits make them despised and hated everywhere. However, they do serve a useful function, which is more than I can say for you.
" 'Love,' I said. And I repeat it again. The word means nothing to you; it has been too many thousands of years since you felt it. And I doubt that any of you felt it very strongly then. Anyway, as I was saying, we found out that Urizen was considering doing away with us. Or at least disowning us and driving us out to live with the aborigines on a planet in one of his universes, a world which he intended to make gateless so we could never strike back at him. We fled. He came after us and tried to kill us. We got away, and we killed other Lords and took over their worlds.
"Then we forgot we were brothers and sisters and cousins and became true Lords. Hateful, scheming, jealous, possessive. Murderers, cruel alike to each other and to the miserable beings who populated our worlds."
"Enough of this, brother," Vala said. "What are you getting at?"
Wolff sighed. He was wasting his breath.
"I was going to say that perhaps Urizen has done us a favor without meaning to. Perhaps we could somehow find it in ourselves to resurrect the childhood love, to act as brothers should. We..."
He stopped. Their faces were like those of stone idols. Time could break them, but love would never soften them.
He turned and stepped through the right-hand gate.
VIII
HIS FEET SLID OUT FROM UNDER HIM, AND HE FELL ON HIS SIDE. HE caught a glimpse of smooth glassy surfaces as he slid down the hill on top of which the gate was set. The stuff on which he raced downhill was dry and slippery, although it gave an impression of oiliness. No matter how he tried to dig his heels in, how strongly he placed the flats of his hands against the stuff to brake himself, he sped on down. It was like being on ice.
He shot on, gaining speed. Throwing himself over with a convulsive twist, he managed to face the direction in which, willynilly, he was going. Ahead was a gentling of the slope, and when he reached it his velocity slowed somewhat. Still, he was going at least sixty miles an hour with no way of stopping himself. His head was raised to keep his face from being burned and his hands were upheld. By then his clothes should have been burned off him, and his flesh should have been crisped and unraveling from the friction, but he sped on with only a slight feeling of warmth.
The skies were purple, and just above the edge of the horizon, the arc of a moon-he thought it was a moon-was showing. The arc was a deeper purple than the skies. He was not inside any Lord's palace; he was on another planet. Judging from the distance of the horizon, this planet was about the size of the one he had just left. In fact, he was sure that it was one of the bodies that he had seen in the skies from the surface of the waterworld.
Urizen had tricked them. He had set up the gate through which they had gone to jump them to one of the bodies circling about Appirmatzum. The other gate back on the waterworld might have led to Urizen's world. Or, it might have led to here also. There was no way of knowing now.
Whichever way the other entrance presented, it was too late to do anything about it. He was caught helplessly in one of his father's jokes. A practical joke, if you could consider death as practical.