The Gates of Creation

He clung to the rawhide rope and allowed the boat to be taken off from under him. Then Wolff was hanging onto the rope, his feet in the water. He lifted his feet to brace himself against the rock, only to have them slide away. He quit this method of climbing and hauled himself up, hand-over-hand, on the greasy rope. This was not easy to do, since the rock curved just gently enough to make the rope follow it closely, the tension being greatest just above his handhold. Without slack, he had to force his hands to slide between rope and rock.

He rose slowly. Halfway up, he felt the tension go. There was a crack, barely audible above the swirl of water at the rock-base. Yell­ing with disappointment, he fell back into the river.

When he was hauled out by Vala and Enion, he discovered that two of the prongs had broken across where they joined the top part. The pieces were now somewhere at the bottom of the river.

"What do we do now?" Palamabron snarled at him. "You have used up all our weapons and drained your beamer of much of its power. And we are no closer to getting through the gate than before. Less, I say. Look at us. Look at me. Spouting water like an old fish brought up from the abyss and weary, oh, Los, how weary!"

"Go fly a kite," Wolff said. "Another old Earth saying."

He stopped, eyes widening, and said, "I wonder..."

Palamabron threw his hands up into the air and said, "Oh, no, not another of your wonderful ideas!"

"Wonderful or not, they're ideas," Wolff said. "So far, I'm the only one who's had anything to offer... besides whinings, com­plaints, and backbitings."

He lay on his back for a while, staring up at the purple skies and chewing on a piece of meat Luvah had handed him. Was a kite a fan­tastic thought? Even if it could be built, would it work?

He discarded the kite. If one were made big enough to carry a heavy prong, it would not go through the hexagon. Wait a minute. What if the kite, dangling a hook on the end of a rope, were flown above the hexagon? He groaned and gave up the kite again. It just would not work.

Suddenly, he sat up and shouted. "It might do it! Two!"

"Two what?" Luvah said, startled out of his drowse.

"Not kites!"

"Who said anything about kites?" Luvah replied.

"Two boats and two good men to throw," Wolff cried. "It might work. It better. I've about exhausted my ideas, and it's evident I'm not going to get any from the rest of you. You've used your brains these many thousands of years for only one purpose: to kill each other. You're good for nothing else. But, by Los, I'm going to make you good for something else!"

"You're tired," Vala said. "Lie down and rest." She was gri

Could it be that she still had some love for him beneath that hate? Perhaps she was proud of him that he continued to improvise and to fight while the others only nursed their resentments.

Or was she trying to make him think that she still loved him and was proud of him? Did she have a secret reason for this display of amiability?

He did not know. To be a Lord was to mistrust every motive of another Lord, and with good reason.

By the time the first two coracles were half-made, Wolff changed his plan. Originally, he had wanted to have two of the little round boats approach the gaterock on each side. But then he decided that three would be better.

Using wood of the bushes and tree branches and strips of hide for ties, he made a high scaffolding. Each of its four legs was placed on a boat, one on the dragoncraft and each one of the other three on a coracle. Then, after rehearsing the Lords many times in what they must do, Wolff began the operation. Slowly, the boats at the base of the rectangular scaffolding were pushed into the water. The current near the shore was not as swift as out in the river's center, so the Lords could keep it from being carried off at once. While they swam and shoved against the boats, Wolff climbed up the narrow ladder built on one leg of the scaffolding. This was supported by the larger dragon boat, and thus the leg with Wolff on it did not tip over too far. Even so, for a moment, he feared a turnover. Then, as he hitched himself on his belly along the planking of the scaffolding, the struc­ture righted.

The other Lords, working in teams, climbed into the big boat and the three small ones. They went in simultaneously, to distribute the weight equally. Vala, Theotormon, and Luvah were each already in a coracle, and they helped Palamabron, Enion, and Ariston. Tharmas was very agile; he got into the dragonboat with a quick heave and twist of his body.

The Lords began paddling to direct the scaffolding. They had some trouble at first, since the coracles, built more like tubs than boats, were difficult to navigate. But they had launched the structure well above their goal so that they could get the feel of their awkward craft before they reached the rock. Wolff clung to the forward part of the structure, the bridge, which projected out above the water. The bridge pitched and rolled, and twice he thought sure that it would go over with him. Then the white dome of the rock with the twin golden hexagons was dead ahead. He shouted down to the Lords, and they began backpaddling. It was vital that the scaffolding not crash into the rock with much speed. Fragile, it could not resist a strong im­pact.

Wolff had decided that he would enter the left gate, since the last time they had taken the right. But as the end of the bridge neared, the scaffolding veered. The bridge drove in at a slant towards the right hexagon. Wolff rose to a crouch, and, as the structure rammed with a loud noise into the rock, he leaped forward. He shot through the hexagon with his beamer in his belt and a rope coiled around his shoulders.

XI

HE DID NOT HAVE THE SLIGHTEST IDEA OF WHAT HE WOULD FIND ON the other side. He expected either another planet or Urizen's strong­hold. He suspected that Urizen was not through playing with them, and that he would find himself on the third of the planets that re­volved around Appirmatzum. He might have a comfortable landing or be dropping into a pit of wild beasts or down a precipice.

As he landed, he realized that he had come in against an incline. He bent his knees and put out his hands and so stopped himself from banging into the stone. It was smooth but not frictionless, and it leaned away from him at a forty-five degree angle. Turning, he saw why the grapples had slid back out of the gate at his first experi­ment. The base of the hexagon on this side was set flush with the stone. There was no purchase for any hold.

He smiled, knowing that his father had foreseen hooks and had set up the trap against them. But his son had gotten through.

Wolff pushed against the seemingly empty area within the hex­agon. Unlike the gate through which they had entered the water-world, this was not one-way. Urizen did not care, for some reason or another, whether they went back into the planet of purple skies. Or he knew that they would never want to return to it.

Wolff climbed up the stone incline, which was set on the side of a hill. He tied one end of his rope around a small tree and then went back to the gate. He flipped the free end of the rope through the gate. It jerked, and presently Vala's face appeared. He helped her through, and the two of them grabbed hold of the other Lords as they climbed through.

When Rintrah, the last, was safe, Wolff stuck his head through the gate for a final look. He made it quick, because it gave him a fright­ening feeling to know that his body was on a planet twenty thousand miles distant from his head. And it would be a grim joke, exactly to his father's tastes, if Urizen should deactivate the gate at that mo­ment.