Maker of Universes (6 page)

“I don’t want to shatter your little dream-world,” he said, “but this Chryseis, if she even existed, died at least 3000 years ago. Moreover, she was a human being. She did not have tiger-striped hair and eyes with feline pupils.”

“Nor did I... then. It was the Lord who abducted me, brought me to this universe, and changed my body. Just as it was he who abducted the others, changed them, or else inserted their brains in bodies he created.”

She gestured seaward and upward. “He lives up there now, and we don’t see him very often. Some say that he disappeared a long time ago, and a new Lord has taken his place.”

“Let’s get away from here,” he said. “We can talk about this later.”

They had gone only a quarter of a mile when Chryseis gestured at him to hide with her behind a thick purple-branched, gold-leaved bush. He crouched by her and, parting the branches a little, saw what had disturbed her. Several yards away was a hairy-legged man with heavy ram’s horns on top of his head. Sitting on a low branch at a level with the man’s eyes was a giant raven. It was as large as a golden eagle and had a high forehead. The skull looked as if it could house a brain the size of a fox terrier’s.

Wolff was not surprised at the bulk of the raven, for he had seen some rather enormous creatures. But he was shocked to find the bird and the man carrying on a conversation.

“The Eye of the Lord,” Chryseis whispered. She stabbed a finger at the raven in answer to his puzzled look. “That’s one of the Lord’s spies. They fly over the world and see what’s going on and then carry the news back to the Lord.”

Wolff thought of Chryseis’ apparently sincere remark about the insertion of brains into bodies by the Lord. To his question, she replied, “Yes, but I do not know if he put human brains into the ravens’ heads. He may have grown small brains with the larger human brains as models, then educated the ravens. Or he could have used just part of a human brain.”

Unfortunately, though they strained their ears, they could only catch a few words here and there. Several minutes passed. The raven, loudly croaking a goodbye in distorted but understandable Greek, launched himself from the branch. He dropped heavily, but his great wings beat fast, and they carried him upward before he touched ground. In a minute he was lost behind the heavy foliage of the trees. A little later, Wolff caught a glimpse of him through a break in the vegetation. The giant black bird was gaining altitude slowly, his point of flight the mountain across the sea.

He noticed that Chryseis was trembling. He said, “What could the raven tell the Lord that would scare you so?”

“I am not frightened so much for myself as I am for you. If the Lord discovers you are here, he will want to kill you. He does not like uninvited guests in his world.”

She placed her hand on the horn and shivered again. “I know that it was Kickaha who gave you this, and that you can’t help it that you have it. But the Lord might not know it isn’t your fault. Or, even if he did, he might not care. He would be terribly angry if he thought you’d had anything to do with stealing it. He would do awful things to you; you would be better off if you ended yourself now rather than have the Lord get his hands on you.”

“Kickaha stole the horn? How do you know?”

“Oh, believe me, I know. It is the Lord’s. And Kickaha must have stolen it, for the Lord would never give it to anyone.”

“I’m confused,” Wolff said. “But maybe we can straighten it all out someday. The thing that bothers me right now is, where’s Kickaha?”

Chryseis pointed toward the mountain and said, “The gworl took him there. But before they did...”

She covered her face with her hands; tears seeped through the fingers.

“They did something to him?” Wolff said.

She shook her head. “No. They did something to... to...”

Wolff took her hands from her face. “If you can’t talk about it, would you show it to me?”

“I can’t. It’s... too horrible. I get sick.”

“Show me anyway.”

“I’ll take you near there. But don’t ask me to look at... her... again.”

She began walking, and he followed her. Every now and then she would stop, but he would gently urge her on. After a zigzag course of over half a mile, she stopped. Ahead of them was a small forest of bushes twice as high as Wolff’s head. The leaves of the branches of one bush interlaced with those of its neighbors. The leaves were broad and elephant-ear-shaped, light green with broad red veins, and tipped with a rusty fleur-de-lys.

“She’s in there,” Chryseis said. “I saw the gworl... catch her and drag her into the bushes. I followed... I...” She could talk no more.

Wolff, knife in one hand, pushed the branches of the bushes aside. He found himself in a natural clearing. In the middle, on the short green grass, lay the scattered bones of a human female. The bones were gray and devoid of flesh, and bore little toothmarks, by which he knew that the bipedal vulpine scavengers had gotten to her.

He was not horrified, but he could imagine how Chryseis must have felt. She must have seen part of what had taken place, probably a rape, then murder in some gruesome fashion. She would have reacted like the other dwellers in the Garden. Death was something so horrible that the word for it had long ago become taboo and then dropped out of the language. Here, nothing but pleasant thoughts and acts were to be contemplated, and anything else was to be shut out.

He returned to Chryseis, who looked with her enormous eyes at him as if she wanted him to tell her that there was nothing within the clearing. He said, “She’s only bones now, and far past any suffering.”

“The gworl will pay for this!” she said savagely. “The Lord does not allow his creatures to be hurt! This Garden is his, and any intruders are punished!”

“Good for you,” he said. “I was beginning to think that you may have become frozen by the shock. Hate the gworl all you want; they deserve it. And you need to break loose.”

She screamed and leaped at him and beat on his chest with her fists. Then she began weeping, and presently he took her in his arms. He raised her face and kissed her. She kissed him back passionately, though the tears were still flowing.

Afterward, she said, “I ran to the beach to tell my people what I’d seen. But they wouldn’t listen. They turned their backs on me and pretended they hadn’t heard me. I kept trying to make them listen, but Owisandros”—the ram-horned man who had been talking with the raven—”Owisandros hit me with his fist and told me to go away. After that, none of them would have anything to do with me. And I... I needed friends and love.”

“You don’t get friends or love by telling people what they don’t want to hear,” he said. “Here or on Earth. But you have me, Chryseis, and I have you. I think I’m beginning to fall in love with you, although I may just be reacting to loneliness and to the most strange beauty I’ve ever seen. And to my new youth.”

He sat up and gestured at the mountain. “If the gworl are intruders here, where did they come from? Why were they after the horn? Why did they take Kickaha with them? And who is Kickaha?”

“He comes from up there, too. But I think he’s an Earthman.”

“What do you mean, Earthman? You say you’re from Earth.”

“I mean he’s a newcomer. I don’t know. I just had a feeling he was.”

He stood up and lifted her up by her hands. “Let’s go after him.”

Chryseis sucked in her breath and, one hand on her breast, backed away from him. “No!”

“Chryseis, I could stay here with you and be very happy. For awhile. But I’d always be wondering what all this is about the Lord and what happened to Kickaha. I only saw him for a few seconds, but I think I’d like him very much. Besides, he didn’t throw the horn to me just because I happened to be there. I have a hunch that he did it for a good reason, and that I should find out why. And I can’t rest while he’s in the hands of those things, the gworl.”

He took her hand from her breast and kissed the hand. “It’s about time you left this Paradise that is no Paradise. You can’t stay here forever, a child forever.”

She shook her head. “I wouldn’t be any help to you. I’d just get in your way. And... leaving... leaving I’d, well, I’d just end.”

“You’re going to have to learn a new vocabulary,” he said. “Death will be just one of the many new words you’ll be able to speak without a second thought or a shiver. You will be a better woman for it. Refusing to say it doesn’t stop it from happening, you know. Your friend’s bones are there whether or not you can talk about them.”

“That’s horrible!”

“The truth often is.”

He turned away from her and started toward the beach. After a hundred yards, he stopped to look back. She had just started running after him. He waited for her, took her in his arms, kissed her, and said, “You may find it hard going, Chryseis, but you won’t be bored, won’t have to drink yourself into a stupor to endure life.”

“I hope so,” she said in a low voice. “But I’m scared.”

“So am I, but we’re going.”

IV

H
E TOOK HER HAND
in his as they walked side by side toward the roar of the surf. They had traveled not more than a hundred yards when Wolff saw the first gworl. It stepped out from behind a tree and seemed to be as surprised as they. It shouted, snatched its knife out, then turned to yell at others behind it. In a few seconds, a party of seven had formed, each gworl with a long curved knife.

Wolff and Chryseis had a fifty-yard headstart. Still holding Chryseis’ hand, the horn in his other hand, Robert Wolff ran as fast as he could.

“I don’t know!” she said despairingly. “We could hide in a tree hollow, but we’d be trapped if they found us.”

They ran on. Now and then he looked back: the brush was thick hereabouts and hid some of the gworl, but there were always one or two in evidence.

“The boulder!” he said. “It’s just ahead. We’ll take that way out!”

Suddenly he knew how much he did not want to return to his native world. Even if it meant a route of escape and a temporary hiding place, he did not want to go back. The prospect of being trapped there and being unable to return here was so appalling that he almost decided not to blow the horn. But he had to do so. Where else could he go?

The decision was taken away from him a few seconds later. As he and Chryseis sped toward the boulder, he saw several dark figures hunched at its base. These rose and became gworl with flashing knives and long white canines.

Wolff and the girl angled away while the three at the boulder joined the chase. These were nearer than the others, only twenty yards behind the fugitives.

“Don’t you know any place?” he panted.

“Over the edge,” she said. “That’s the only place they might not follow us. I’ve been down the face of the rim; there’re caves there. But it’s dangerous.”

He did not reply, saving his breath for the run. His legs felt heavy and his lungs and throat burned. Chryseis seemed to be in better shape than he: she ran easily, her long legs pumping, breathing deeply but not agonizingly.

“Another two minutes, we’ll be there,” she said.

The two minutes seemed much longer, but every time he felt he had to stop, he took another look behind him and renewed his strength. The gworl, although even further behind, were in sight. They rolled along on their short, crooked legs, their bumpy faces set with determination.

“Maybe if you gave them the horn,” Chryseis said, “they’d go away. I think they want the horn, not us.”

“I’ll do it if I have to,” he gasped. “But only as a last resort.”

Suddenly, they were going up a steep slope. Now his legs did feel burdened, but he had caught his second wind and thought that he could go awhile longer. Then they were on top of the hill and at the edge of a cliff.

Chryseis stopped him from walking on. She advanced ahead of him to the edge, halted, looked over, and beckoned him. When he was by her side, he, too, gazed down. His stomach clenched like a fist.

Composed of hard black shiny rock, the cliff went straight down for several miles. Then, nothing.

Nothing but the green sky.

“So... it is the edge... of the world!” he said.

Chryseis did not answer him. She trotted ahead of him, looking over the side of the cliff, halting briefly now and then to examine the rim.

“About sixty yards more,” she said. “Beyond those trees that grow right up to the edge.”

She started running swiftly with him close behind her. At the same time, a gworl burst out of the bushes growing on the inner edge of the hill. He turned once to yell, obviously notifying his fellows that he had found the quarry. Then he attacked without waiting for them.

Wolff ran toward the gworl. When he saw the creature lift its knife to throw, he hurled the horn at it. This took the gworl by surprise—or perhaps the turning horn reflected sunlight into his eyes. Whatever the cause, his hesitation was enough for Wolff to get the advantage. He sped in as the gworl both ducked and reached a hand out for the horn. The huge hairy fingers curled around the horn, a cry of grating delight came from the creature, and Wolff was on him. He thrust at the protruding belly; the gworl brought his own knife up; the two blades clanged.

Having missed the first stroke, Wolff wanted to run again. This thing was undoubtedly skilled at knife-fighting. Wolff knew fencing quite well and had never given up its practice. But there was a big difference between dueling with the rapier and dirty in-close knivery, and he knew it. Yet he could not leave. In the first place, the gworl would down him with a thrown blade in his back before he could take four steps. Also, there was the horn, clenched in the gnarled left fist of the gworl. Wolff could not leave that.

The gworl, realizing that Wolff was in a very bad situation, grinned. His upper canines shone long and wet and yellow and sharp. With those, thought Wolff, the thing did not need a knife.

Something goldenbrown, trailing long black-and-auburn-striped hair, flashed by Wolff. The gworl’s eyes opened, and he started to turn to his left. The butt end of a pole, a long stick stripped of its leaves and part of its bark, drove into the gworl’s chest. At the other end was Chryseis. She had run at top speed with the dead branch held like a vaulter’s pole, but just before impact she had lowered it and it hit the creature with enough speed and weight behind it to bowl him over backward. The horn dropped from his fist, but the knife remained in the other.