Philip Farmer: The Gates of Creation

The fabrication of a gate which would match the frequency-image of the hexaculum-entrance to Urizen’s world was automatic. Even so, it took twenty-two hours for the machines to finish the device. By then, the planetary viewers had all reported in. Kickaha was not in their line of sight. This did not mean that the elusive fellow was not on the planet. He could be just outside the scope of the viewers or he could be a hundred thousand places elsewhere. The planet had even more land area than Earth, and the viewers covered only a tiny part of it. Thus, it might be a long long time before Kickaha was apprehended.

Wolff decided not to waste any time. The second the matching hexaculum was finished, he went into action. He ate a light meal and drank water, since he did not know how long he might have to do without either once he stepped through the gate. He armed himself with a beamer, a knife, a bow, and a quiverful of arrows. The primitive weapons might seem curious arms to take along in view of the highly technological death-dispensers he would have to face. But it was one of the ironies of the Lords’ technology that the set-ups in which they operated sometimes permitted such weapons to be effective.

Actually, he did not expect to be able to use any of his arms. He knew too well the many types of traps the Lords had used.

“And now,” Wolff said, “it must be done. There is no use waiting any longer.”

He walked into the narrow space inside the matching hexaculum. Wind whistled and tore at him. Blackness. A sense as of great hands gripping him. All in a dizzying flash.

He was standing upon grass, giant fronds at a distance from him, a blue sea close by, a red sky above, hugging the island and the rim of the sea. There was light from every quarter of the heavens and no sun. His clothes were still upon his body, although he had felt as if they were being ripped off when he had gone through the gate. Moreover, his weapons were still with him.

Certainly, this was not the interior of Urizen’s stronghold. Or, if it were, it was the most unconventional dwelling-place of a Lord that he had ever seen.

He turned to see the hexaculum which had received him. It was not there. Instead, a tall wide hexagon of purplish metal rose from a broad flat boulder. He remembered now that something had pushed him out through it and that he had had to take several steps to keep from falling. The energy that had shoved him had caused him to pass out of it and a few paces from the boulder.

Urizen had set another gate within his hexaculum and had shunted him off to this place, wherever it was. Why Urizen had done so would become apparent quickly enough.

Wolff knew what would happen if he tried to walk back through the gate. Nevertheless, not being one to take things for granted, he did attempt it. With ease, he stepped out on the other side upon the boulder.

It was a one-way gate, just as he had expected.

Somebody coughed behind him, and he whirled, his beamer ready.

The land ended abruptly against the sea with no intervening beach. The animal had just emerged from the sea and was only a few feet from him. It squatted like a toad on huge webbed feet, its columnar legs folded as if they were boneless. The torso was humanoid and sheathed in fat, with a belly that protruded like that of a Thanksgiving goose. The neck was long and supple. At its end was a human head, but the nose was flat and had long narrow nostrils. Tendrils of red flesh sprouted out around the mouth. The eyes were very large and moss-green. There were no ears. The pate was covered, like the face and body, with a dark-blue oily fur.

“Jadawin!” the creature said. It spoke in the ancient language of the Lords. “Jadawin! Don’t kill me! Don’t you know me?”

Wolff was shocked but not so much that he forgot to look behind him. This creature could be trying to distract him.

“Jadawin! Don’t you recognize your own brother!”

Wolff did not know him. The frog-seal body, lack of ears, blue fur, and squashed long-slitted nose made identification too difficult. And there was Time. If he had really called this thing brother, it must have been millennia ago.

That voice. It dug away at the layers of dusty memory, like a dog after an old bone. It scraped away level after level, it...

He shook his head and glanced behind him and at the feathery vegetation. “Who are you?” he asked.

The creature whined, and by this he knew that his brother—if it were his brother—must have been imprisoned in that body for a long long time. No Lord whined.

“Are you going to deny me? Are you like the others? They’d have nothing to do with me. They mocked at me, they spat upon me, they drove me away with kicks and laughs. They said…”

It clapped its flippers together and twisted its face and large tears ran from the moss-green eyes and down the blue cheeks. “Oh, Jadawin, don’t be like the rest! You were always my favorite, my beloved! Don’t be cruel like them!”

The others, Wolff thought. There had been others. How long ago?

Impatiently, he said, “Let’s not play games—whoever you are. Your name!”

The creature rose on its boneless legs, muscles raising the fat that coated them, and took a step forward. Wolff did not back away, but he held the beamer steady. “That’s far enough. Your name.”

The creature stopped, but its tears kept on flowing. “You are as bad as the others. You think of nobody but yourself; you don’t care what’s happened to me. Doesn’t my suffering and loneliness and agonies all this time—oh, this immeasurable time—touch you at all?”

“It might if I knew who you were,” Wolff said. “And what’s happened to you.”

“Oh, Lord of the Lords! My own brother!”

It advanced another giant splayfoot, the wetness squishing from out under the webs. It held out a flipper as if beseeching a tender hand. Then it stopped, and the eyes flicked at a spot just to one side of Wolff. He jumped to his left and whirled, the beamer pointing to cover both the creature and whoever might have been behind him. There was no one.

And, as the thing had planned, it leaped for Wolff at the same time that Wolff jumped and turned. Its legs uncoiled like a catapult released and shot it forward. If Wolff had only turned, he would have been knocked down. Standing to one side, he escaped all but the tip of the thing’s right flipper. Even that, striking his left shoulder and arm, was enough to send him staggering numbly to one side, making him drop the beamer. Wolff was enormously solid and powerful himself, with muscles and nerve impulses raised to twice their natural strength and speed by the Lords’ science. If he had been a normal Earthman, he would have been crippled forever in his arm, and he would not have been able to escape the second leap of the creature.

Squalling with fury and disappointment, it landed on the spot where Wolff had been, sank on its legs as if they were springs, spun, and launched itself at Wolff again. All this was done with such swiftness that the creature looked as if it were an actor in a speeded-up film.

Wolff had succeeded in regaining his balance. He jumped.out for the beamer. The shadow of the creature passed over him; its shrieking was so loud it seemed as if its lips were pressed against his ear. Then he had the beamer in his hands, had rolled over and over, and was up on his feet. By then the thing had propelled itself again towards him. Wolff reversed the beamer, and using his right hand, brought the light but practically indestructible metal stock down on top of the creature’s head. The impact of the huge body hurled him backward; he rolled away. The sea-thing was lying motionless on its face, blood welling from its seal-like scalp.

Hands clapped, and he turned to see two human beings thirty yards away inland, under the shadow of a frond. They were male and female, dressed in the magnificent clothes of Lords. They walked towards him, their hands empty of weapons. Their only arms were swords in crude leather, or fish-skin, scabbards. Despite this seeming powerlessness, Wolff did not relax his guard. When they had approached within twenty yards of him, he told them to stop. The creature groaned and moved its head but made no effort to sit up. Wolff moved away from it to be outside its range of leap.