The Gates of Creation

"I do not know about that," Wolff said. "But this I do know. Urizen has been pla

Luvah laughed without much merriment. "And if we survive the torment and pass the tests, what is our reward?"

"We get a chance to be killed by our father or to kill him."

"Do you really believe he will play fair? Won't he make the stronghold absolutely impregnable? I ca

"Fair? What is fair? There is supposed to be an unspoken agree­ment that every Lord will leave some slight loophole in his defense. Some defect whereby an extremely skillful and clever attacker can get through. Whether this is true in all cases, I do not know. But Lords have been killed or dispossessed, and these Lords thought they were safe from the most powerful and clever. I do not think that the successful ones were successful because of built-in weaknesses by the defender. The chinks in the armor were there for another reason.

"That reason is that the Lords have inherited their weapons. What they haven't inherited or taken from others, they ca

"There is another aspect to this. The Lords fight for their lives and fight to kill each other. But most have lived too long. They weary of everything. They want to die. Deep in the abyss of their minds, below the thousands of strata of the years of too much power and too little love, they want to die. And so, there are cracks in the walls."

Luvah was astonished. "You do not really believe this wild theory, brother? I know I am not tired of living. I love life now as much as when I was a hundred. And the others, they fight to live as much as they ever did."

Wolff shrugged and said, "It's only a theory of mine. I have evolved it since I became Robert Wolff. I can see things that I could not see before and that none of you can see."

He crawled to Vala and said, "Lend me your sword for a moment. I want to try an experiment."

"Like cutting my head off?" she said.

"If I wanted to kill you, I have the beamer," he replied. She took the short blade from its scabbard and handed it to him. He tapped the sharp edge gently on the glassy surface. When the first blow left the stuff unmarked, he struck harder.

Vala said, "What are you doing? You'll ruin the edge."

He pointed at the scratch left by the second blow. "Looks like a scratch made in ice. This stuff is far slipperier, more frictionless than ice, but in other respects it seems to resemble frozen water."

He handed the weapon to her and drew his beamer. After putting it on half-power, he aimed it at a spot on the surface. The stuff grew red, then bubbled. Liquid flowed from it. He turned the beamer off and blew the liquid from the hole. The others crawled over to watch him.

"You're a strange man," Vala said. "Whoever would have thought of doing this?"

"Why is he doing it?" Palamabron said. "Is he crazy, cutting holes in the ground?"

Palamabron had recovered his haughtiness and his measured way of speaking.

Vala said, "No, he's not crazy. He's curious, that's all. Have you forgotten what it is to be curious, Palamabron? Are you as dead as you look... and act? You were certainly lively enough a little while ago."

Palamabron flushed, but he said nothing. He was watching the growth of tiny crystals on the walls of the hole and along the edges of the scratch.

"Self-regeneration," Wolff said. "Now, I have read as much as possible on the old science of our ancestors, but I have never read or heard of anything like this. Urizen must have knowledge lost to others."

"Perhaps," Vala said, "he has gotten it from Red Orc. It is said that Orc knows more than all of the other Lords put together. He is the last of the old ones; it is said that he was born over a half a mil­lion years ago."

"It is said. It is said," Wolff mimicked. "The truth is that nobody has seen Red Ore for a hundred mille

He rose carefully and shuffled slowly a few steps forward. The sur­face of this world was not entirely barren vitreosity. There were widely spaced trees several hundred yards away and between them mushroom-shaped bushes. The trees had thin spiraling trunks that were striped with red and white, like barber poles. The trunks rose straight for twenty feet, then curved to left or right. Where the curve began, branches grew. These were shaped like horizontal 9's and covered with a thin gray fuzz, the strands of which were about two feet long.

Rintrah, naked, shivered and said, "It is not cold, but something makes me uneasy and quivers through me. Perhaps it is the silence. Listen, and you hear nothing."

They fell silent. There was only a distant soughing, the wind rip­pling through the bushes and the stiff projections on the end-curled branches, and the slursh-slursh of the river. Aside from that, nothing. No bird calls. No animal cries. No human voices. Only the sound of wind and river and even that hushed as if pressed down by the purple of the skies.

Around them the pale white land rolled away to the four horizons. There were some high rounded hills, the tallest of which was that which had sent them speeding down the hill. From where they stood, they could see its mound and the gate, a tiny dark object, on its top. The rest was low hills and level spaces.

Where do we go from here? Wolff thought. Without some clue, we could wander forever. We could wander to the end of our lives, pro­vided we find something to eat on the way.

He spoke aloud. "I believe we should follow along the river. It leads downward, perhaps to some large body of water. Urizen cast us into the river; this may mean that the river is to be our guide to the next gate... or gates."

"That may be true," Enion said. "But your father and my uncle has a crooked brain. In his perverse way, he may be using the river as an indication that we should go up it, not down it."

"You may be right, cousin," Wolff replied. "However there is only one way to find out. I suggest we go downriver, if only because it will be easier traveling." He said to Vala, "What do you think?"

She shrugged and said, "I don't know. I picked the wrong gate the last time. Why ask me?"

"Because you were always the closest to father. You know better than the rest of us how he thinks."

She smiled slightly. "I do not think you mean to compliment me by that. But I will take it as such. Much as I hate Urizen, I also ad­mire and respect his abilities. He has survived where most of his con­temporaries have not. Since you ask, I say we go downriver."

"How about the rest of you?" Wolff said. He had already made up his mind which direction he was going, but he did not want the others complaining if they went the wrong way. Let them share the responsibility.

Palamabron started to speak. "I say, no, I insist, that..."