Philip Jose Farmer - WOT 3 - A Private Cosmos

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INTRODUCTION
All characters in this book are fictitious. Any
resemblance to
actual persons, living
or dead, is purely
coincidental.
A PRIVATE COSMOS
A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author
PRINTING HISTORY
Previously published by Ace Books. Berkley edition / November 1984
Alt rights reserved.
Copyright © 1968 by Philip Jos£ farmer.
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part,
by mimeograph or any other means, without permission:
For informalion address; The Berkley Publishing Group,
200 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016.
ISBN: 0-425-07299-1
A BERKLEY BOOK ® TM 757,375 Berkley Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,
200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.
The name "BERKLEY" and the stylized "B" with design
are trademarks belonging to Berkley Publishing Corporation.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
IT ALL GOES BACK to my childhood of about a year ago, when I read The Maker of Universes. I recall
it to have been a sunny Saturday in Baltimore and its morning, when I picked up Philip Jose
Farmer's book with the green Gaughan sky and the gray Gaughan harpy (Podarge) on the front, to
read a page or two before beginning work on a story of my own. I didn't do any writing that day.
I finished reading the book and immediately dashed off to my local purveyor of paperbacks, to
locate the sequel which I knew existed, The Gates of Creation. When I'd finished reading it, the
sunny morning in Saturday and its Baltimore had gone away and night filled the day all the way up
to the top of the sky. The next thing that I wrote was not my story, but a fan letter to Philip
Jose Farmer.
My intention was not to tell the man who had written The Lovers and Fire and the Night and A Woman
A Day that I thought these two new ones were the best things he had ever done. If he'd done a
painting, composed a piece of music, I couldn't
compare them to his stories or even to each other. The two books I had just then finished reading
were of the adventure-romance sort, and I felt they were exceedingly good examples of the type.
They are different from his other stories, styles, themes, different even from each other, and
hence, as always, incomparable. I had hoped there would be a third one, and I was very pleased to
learn that he was working on it.
In other words, I looked forward for over a year to the book you are presently holding in your
hands.
In considering my own feelings, to determine precisely what it was that caused me to be so taken
by the first two books, I found that there are several reasons for the appeal they hold for me:
1) I am fascinated by the concept of physical immortality and the ills and benefits attendant
thereto. This theme runs through the books like an highly polished strand of copper wire. 2) The
concept of pocket universes—a thing quite distinct, as I see it, from various parallel worlds
notions—the idea of such universes, specifically created to serve the ends of powerful and
intelligent beings, is a neat one. Here it allows for, among other things, the fascinating
structure of the World of Tiers.
To go along with these concepts, Philip Farmer assembled a cast of characters of the sort I enjoy.
Kickaha is a roguish fellow; heroic, tricky and very engaging. Also, he almost steals the first
book from Wolff. The second book is packed with miserable, scheming, wretched, base, lowdown, mean
and nasty individuals who would cut one
another's throats for the fun of it, but unfortunately have their lots cast together for a time.
Being devilish fond of the Elizabethan theater, I was very happy to learn early in the story that
they were all of them close relatives.
A sacred being may be attractive or repulsive—a swan or an octopus—beautiful or ugly—a toothless
hag or a fair young child— good or evil—a Beatrice or a Belle Dame Sans Merci—historical fact or
fiction—a person met on the road or an image encountered in a story or a dream—it may be noble or
something unmentionable in a drawing room, it may be anything it likes on condition, but this
condition is absolute, that it arouse awe. . —Making, Knowing and Understanding
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W. H. Auden
Philip Jos6 Fanner lives West of the Sun at the other end of the world from me in a place called
California. We have never met, save in the pages of his stories. I admire his sense of humor and
his facility for selecting the perfect final sentence for everything he writes. He can be stark,
dark, smoky, bright, and any color of the emotional spectrum. He has a fascinating sense of the
Sacred and the Profane. Put quite simply, he arouses awe. He has the talent and the skill to
handle the sacred objects every writer must touch in order to convert the reader, in that
timeless, spaceless place called Imagination.
Since I've invoked Auden, I must go on to agree with his observation that a writer cannot read
another author's things without comparing them to his own. I do this constantly. I almost always
come out feeling weak as well as awed whenever I read the works of three people who write science
fiction: Sturgeon, Farmer and Bradbury. They know what's sacred, in that very special trans-
subjective way where personal specifics suddenly give way and become universals and light up the
human condition like a neon-lined Christmas tree. And Philip Jose Farmer is special in a very
unusual way . . .
Everything he says is something / would like to say, but for some reason or other, cannot. He
exercises that thing Henry James called an "angle of vision" which, while different from my own
a.v., invariably jibes with the way I feel about things. But I can't do it his way. This means
that somebody can do what I love most better than I can, which makes me chew my beard and think of
George London as Mephistopheles, back at the old Metropolitan Opera, in Gounoud's Faust, when
Marguerita ascended to heaven: he reached out and an iron gate descended before him; he grasped a
bar, looked On High for a moment, averted his face, sank slowly to his knees, his hand sliding
down the bar: curtain then: that's how I feel. / can't do it, but it can be done.
Beyond this, what can I say about a particular Philip Jose Farmer story?
Shakespeare said it better, in Antony and Cleopatra:
Lepidus. What manner o' thing is your crocodile?
Antony. It is shaped, sir, like itself; and it is as broad as it hath breadth. It is just so high
as it is, and moves with its own organs. It lives by that which nourisheth it; and the elements
once out of it, it transmigrates,
Lepidus. What color is it of?
Antony. Of its own color, too.
Lepidus. 'Tis a strange serpent.
Antony. 'Tis so. And the tears of it are wet.
(Act II, Scene VII.)
Indeed, Sir, they are. It is the skill that goes with the talent that makes them so. Each of its
products are different, complete, unique, and this one is no exception. I rejoice that such a man
as Philip Jose Farmer walks among us, writes there, too. There aren't many like him. None, I'd
say.
But read his story and see what I mean.
Now it is a cold, gray day in February and its Baltimore. But it doesn't matter. Philip Jose
Farmer, out there somewhere West of the Sun, if by your writing you ever intended to give joy to
another human being, know by this that you have succeeded and brightened many a cold, gray day in
the seasons of my world, as well as having enhanced the lighter ones with something I'll just call
splendor and let go at that.
The colors of this one are its own and the tears of it are wet. Philip Jose Farmer wrote it. There
is nothing more to say.
ROGER ZELAZNY
Baltimore, Md.
UNDER A GREEN SKY and a yeliow sun, on a black stallion with a crimson-dyed mane and blue-dyed
tail, Kickaha rode for his life.
One hundred days ago, a thousand miles ago, he had left the village of the Hrowakas, the Bear
People. Weary of hunting and of the simple life, Kickaha suddenly longed for a taste—more than a
taste—of civilization. Moreover, his intellectual knife needed sharpening, and there was much
about the Tishquetmoac, the only civilized people on this level, that he did'not know.
So he put saddles and equipment on two horses, said goodbye to the chiefs and warriors, and kissed
his two wives farewell. He gave them permission to take new husbands if he didn't return in six
months. They said they would wait forever, at which Kickaha smiled, because they had said the same
thing to their former husbands before these rode out on the warpath and never came back.
Some of the warriors wanted to escort him through the mountains to the Great Plains. He said no
and rode out alone. He took five days to get out of the mountains. One day was lost because two
young warriors of the Wakangishush tribe stalked him. They may have been waiting for months in the
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Black Weasel Pass, knowing that some day Kickaha would ride through it. Of all the greatly
2 A PRIVATE COSMOS
desired scalps of the hundred great warriors of the fifty Nations of the Great Plains and
bordering mountain ranges, the scalp of Kickaha was the most valued. At least two hundred braves
had made individual efforts to waylay him, and none - had returned alive. Many war parties had
come up into the mountains to attack the Hrowakas' stockaded fort on the high hill, hoping to
catch the Bear People unawares and lift Kickaha's scalp—or head—during the fighting. Of these,
only the great raid of the Oshangstawa tribe of the Half-Horses had come near to succeeding. The
story of the raid and of the destruction of the terrible Half-Horses spread through the 129 Plains
tribes and was sung in their council halls and chiefs' tepees during the Blood Festivals.
The two Wakangishush kept a respectable distance behind their quarry. They were waiting for
Kickaha to camp when night came. They may have succeeded where so many others had failed, so
careful and quiet were they, but a red raven, eagle-sized, flew down over Kickaha at dusk and
cawed loudly twice.
Then it flew above one hidden brave, circled twice, flew above the tree behind which the other
crouched, and circled twice. Kickaha, glad that he had taken the trouble to train the intelligent
bird, smiled while he watched it. That night, he put an arrow into the first to approach his camp
and a knife into the other three minutes later.
He was tempted to go fifty miles out of his way to hurl a spear, to which the braves' scalps would
be attached, into the middle of the Wakangishush encampment. Feats such as this had given him the
name of Kickaha, that is, Trickster, and he liked to keep up his reputation. This time, however,
it did
A PRIVATE COSMOS 3
not seem worthwhile. The image of Talanac, The City That Is A Mountain, glowed in his mind like a
jewel above a fire.
And so Kickaha contented himself with hanging the two seal pie ss corpses upside down from a
branch. He turned his stallion's head eastward and thereby saved some Wakangishush lives and,
possibly, his own. Kickaha bragged a lot about his cunning and speed and strength, but he admitted
to himself that he was not invincible or immortal.
Kickaha had been born Paul Janus Finnegan in Terre Haute, Indiana, U. S. A., Earth, in a universe
next door to this one. (All universes were next door to each other.) He was a muscular broad-
shouldered youth six feet one inch tall and weighing 190 pounds. His skin was deeply tanned with
slightly copper spots, freckles, here and there, and more than three dozen scars, varying from
light to deep, on parts of his body and face. His reddish-bronze hair was thick, wavy, and
shoulder-length, braided into two pigtails at this time. His face was usually merry with its
bright green eyes, snub nose, long upper lip, and cleft
chin.
The lionskin band around his head was edged with bear teeth pointing upward, and a long black-and-
red feather from the tail of a hawk stuck up from the right side of the headband. He was unclothed
from, the waist up; around his neck was a string of bear teeth. A belt of turquoise-beaded
bearskin supported dappled fawnskin trousers, and his moccasins were lionskin. The belt held a
sheath on each side. One held a large steel knife; the other, a smaller knife perfectly balanced
for throwing.
The saddle was the light type which the Plains
4 A PRIVATE COSMOS
tribes had recently adopted in place of blankets, Kickaha held a spear in one hand and the reins
in the other, and his feet were in stirrups. Quivers and sheaths of leather hanging from the
saddle held various weapons. A small round shield on which was painted a snarling bear's head was
suspended from a wooden hook attached to the saddle. Behind the saddle was a bearskin robe rolled
to contain some light cooking equipment. A bottle of water in a clay wicker basket hung from
another saddle hook.
The second horse, which trotted along behind, carried a saddle, some weapons, and light equipment.
Kickaha took his time getting down out of the mountains. Though he softly whistled tunes of this
world, and of his native Earth, he was not carefree. His eyes scanned everything before him, and
he frequently looked backward.
Overhead, the yellow sun arced slowly in the cloudless light green sky. The air was sweet with the
odors of white flowers blooming, with pine needles, and an occasional whiff of a purpleberry bush.
A hawk screamed once, and twice he heard bears grunting in the woods.
The horses pricked up their ears at this but they did not become nervous. They had grown up with
the tame bears that the Hrowakas kept within the village walls.
And so, alertly but pleasantly, Kickaha came down off the mountains onto the Great Plains. At this
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point, he could see far over the country because this was the zenith of a 160 mile gentle curve of
a section. His way would be so subtly downhill for eighty miles that he would be almost unaware of
it. Then there would be a river or lake to cross,
A PRIVATE COSMOS 5
and he would go almost imperceptibly up. To his left, seeming only fifty miles away, but actually
a thousand, was the monolith of Abharhploonta. It towered a hundred thousand feet upward, and on
its top was another land and another monolith. Up there was Dracheland, where Kickaha was known as
Baron Horst von Horstmann. He had not been there for two years, and if he were to return, he would
be a baron without a castle. His wife on that level had decided not to put up with his long
absences and so had divorced him and married his best friend there, the Baron Siegfried von
Listbat. Kickaha had given his castle to the two and had left for the Amerind level, which, of all
levels, he loved the most.
His horses pulling the ground along at a canter, Kickaha watched for signs of enemies. He also
watched the animal life, comprised of those still known on Earth, of those that had died off
there, and of animals from other universes. All of these had been brought into this universe by
the Lord, Wolff, when he was known as Jadawin. A few had been created in the biolabs of the palace
on top of the highest monolith.
There were vast herds of buffalo, the small kind stiH known in North America, and the giants that
had perished some ten thousand years ago on the American plains. The great gray bulks of curving-
tusked mammoths and mastodons bulked in the distance. Some gigantic creatures, their big heads
weighted down with many knobby horns and down-curving teeth projecting from horny lips, browsed on
the grass. Dire wolves, tall as Kicka-ha's chest, trotted along the edge of a buffalo herd and
waited for a calf to stray away from its mother. Further on, Kickaha saw a tan-and-black striped
6 A PRIVATE COSMOS
body slinking along behind a clump of tall grass and knew that Felis Atrox, the great maneless
nine hundred pound lion that had once roamed the grassy plains of Arizona, was hoping to catch a
mammoth calf away from its mother. Or perhaps it had some faint hopes of killing one of the
multitude of antelope that was grazing nearby.
Above, hawks and buzzards circled. Once, a faint V of ducks passed overhead and a honking floated
down. They were on their way to the rice swamps up in the mountains.
A herd of gawky long-necked creatures, looking like distant cousins of the camel, which they were,
lurched by him. There were several skinny-legged foals with them, and these were what a pack of
dire wolves hoped to pull down if the elders became careless.
Life and the promise of death was everywhere. The air was sweet; not a human being was in sight. A
herd of wild horses galloped off in the distance, led by a magnificent roan stallion. Everywhere
were the beasts of the plains. Kickaha loved it. It was dangerous, but it was exciting, and he
thought of it as his world—his despite the fact that it had been created and was still owned by
Wolff, the Lord, and he, Kickaha, had been an intruder. But this world was, in a sense, more his
than WolfFs, since he certainly took more advantage of it than Wolff, who usually kept to the
palace on top of the highest monolith.
The fiftieth day, Kickaha came to the Tishquet-moac Great Trade Path. There was no trail in the
customary sense, since the grass was no less dense than the surrounding grass. But every mile of
it was marked by two wooden posts the upper part of which had been carved in the likeness of
A PRIVATE COSMOS 7
Ishquettlammu, the Tishquetmoac god of commerce and of boundaries. The trail ran for a thousand
miles from the border of the empire of Tishquetmoac, curving over the Great Plains to touch
various semipermanent trading places of the Plains and mountain tribes. Over the trail went huge
wagons of Tishquetmoac goods to exchange for furs, skins, herbs, ivory, bones, captured animals,
and human captives. The trail was treaty-immune from attack; anyone on it was safe in theory, at
least, but if he went outside the narrow path marked off by the carved poles, he was fair prey for
anybody.
Kickaha rode on the trail for several days because he wanted to find a trade-caravan and get news
of Talanac. He did not come across any and so left the trail because it was taking him away from
the direct route to Talanac. A hundred days after he had left the Hworakas village, he encountered
the trail again. Since it led straight to Talanac, he decided to stay on it.
An hour after dawn, the Half-Horses appeared.
Kickaha did not know what they were doing so close to the Tishquetmoac border. Perhaps they had
been making a raid, because, although they did not attack anybody on The Great TradePath, they did
attack Tishquetmoac outside it.
Whatever the reason for their presence, they did not have to give Kickaha an excuse. And they
would certainly do their best to catch him, since he was their greatest enemy.
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Kickaha urged his two horses into a gallop. The Half-Horses, a mile away to his left, broke into a
gallop the moment they saw him racing. They could run faster than a horse burdened with a man, but
he had agood lead on them. Kickaha knew that
B A PRIVATE COSMOS
an outpost was four miles ahead and that if he could get within its walls, he would be safe.
The first two miles he ran the stallion beneath him as swiftly as it would go. It gave its rider
everything it had; foam blew from its mouth and wet his chest. Kickaha felt bad about this, but he
certainly wasn't going to spare the animal if foundering it meant saving his own life. Besides,
the Half-Horses would kill the stallion for food.
At the end of the two miles, the Half-Horses were close enough for him to determine their tribe.
They were Shoyshatel, and their usual roving grounds were three hundred miles away, near the Trees
of Many Shadows. They looked like the centaurs of Earth myth, except that they were larger and
their faces and trappings certainly were not Grecian. Their heads were huge, twice as large as a
human being's, and the faces were dark, high-cheekboned, and broad, the faces of Plains Indians.
They wore feathered bonnets on their heads or bands with feathers; their hair was long and black
and plaited into one or two pigtails.
The upright human body of the centaur contained a large bellows-like organ to pump air into the
pneumatic system of the horse part. This swelled and shrank below the human breastbone and added
to their weird and sinister appearance.
Originally, the Half-Horses were the creations of Jadawin, Lord of this universe. He had fashioned
and grown the centaur bodies in his biolabs. The first centaurs had been provided with human
brains from Scythian and Sarmatian nomads of Earth and from some Achaean and Pelasgian tribesmen.
So it was that some Half-Horses still spoke these tongues, though most had
A PRIVATE COSMOS «
long ago adopted the language of some Amerindian tribe of the Plains.
Now the Shoyshatel galloped hard after him, almost confident that they had their archenemy in
their power. Almost because experience had disillusioned many of the Plains people of the belief
that Kickaha could be easily caught. Or, if caught, kept.
The Shoyshatel, although they lusted to capture him alive so they could torture him, probably
intended to kill him as soon as possible. Trying to take him alive would require restraint and
delicacy on their part, and if they restrained themselves, they might find that he was gone.
Kickaha transferred to the other horse, a black mare with silver mane and tail, and urged it to
its top speed. The stallion dropped off, its chest white with foam, shaking and blowing, and then
fell when a Half-Horse speared it.
Arrows shot past him; spears fell behind him. Kickaha did not bother returning the fire. He
crouched over the neck of his mare and shouted encouragement. Presently, as the Half-Horses drew
closer, and the arrows and spears came nearer, Kickaha saw the outpost on top of a low hill. It
was square and built of sharpened logs set Upright in the ground, and had overhanging blockhouses
on each side. The Tishquetmoac flag, green with a scarlet eagle swallowing a black snake, flew
from a pole in the middle of the post.
Kickaha saw a sentry stare at them for a few seconds and then lift the end of a long slim bugle to
his lips. Kickaha could not hear the alarm because the wind was against him and also because the
pound of hooves was too loud.
10
A PRIVATE COSMOS
Foam was pouring from the mare's mouth, but she raced on. Even so, the Half-Horses were drawing
closer, and the arrows and spears were flying dangerously near. A bola, its three stones forming a
triangle of death, almost struck him. And then, just as the gates to the fort opened and the
Tishquetmoac cavalry rode out, the mare stumbled. She tried to recover and succeeded. Kickaha knew
that the mishap was not caused by fatigue but by an arrow, which had plunged slantingly into her
rump, piercing at such a shallow angle that the head of the arrow was out in the air again. She
could not go much longer.
Another arrow plunged into the flesh just behind the saddle. She fell, and Kickaha threw himself
out and away as she went down and then over. He tried to land running but could not because of the
speed and rolled over and over. The shadow of the rolling horse passed over him; she crashed and
lay still. Kickaha was up and running toward the Tishquetmoac.
Behind him, a Half-Horse shouted in triumph, and Kickaha turned his head to see a feather-bonneted
chief, a spear held high, thundering in toward him. Kickaha snatched his throwing knife out,
whirled, took a stance, and, as the centaur began the cast of spear at him, threw his knife. He
jumped to one side immediately after the blade had left his hand. The spear passed over his
shoulder, near his neck. The Half-Horse, the knife sticking out of the bellows organ below his
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chest, cartwheeled past Kickaha, bones of equine legs and backbone of the human upright part
cracking with the impact. Then spears flew over Kickaha into the Half-Horses. One intercepted a
brave who thought that he had succeeded where the chief had
A PRIVATE COSMOS
11
failed. His spear was in his hand; he was trusting to no skill in casting but meant to drive it
through Kickaha with the weight of his five hundred pound
body.
The brave went down. Kickaha picked up the spear and hurled it into the horse-breast of the
nearest centaur. Then the cavalry, which outnumbered the Half-Horses, was past him, and there was
a melee. The Half-Horses were driven off at great cost to the human beings. Kickaha got onto a
horse which had lost its master to a Half-Horse tomahawk and galloped with the cavalry back to
the post.
The commander of the outpost said to Kickaha, "You always bring much trouble with you. Always."
Kickaha grinned and said, "Confess now. You were glad for the excitement. You've been bored to
death, right?"
The captain grinned back.
That evening, a Half-Horse, carrying a shaft of wood with a long white heron's feather at its tip,
approached the fort. Honoring the symbol of the herald, the captain gave orders to withhold fire.
The Half-Horse stopped outside the gates and shouted at Kickaha, "You have escaped us once again,
Trickster! But you will never be able to leave Tishquetmoac, because we will be waiting for you!
Don't think you can use the Great Trade Path to be safe from us! We will honor the Path; everyone
on it will be untouched by the Half-Horses! Everyone except you, Kickaha! We will kill you! We
have sworn not to return to our lodges, our women and children, until we have killed you!"
Kickaha shouted down to him, "Your women
12
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will have taken other husbands and your children will grow up without remembering you! You will
never catch or kill me, you half-heehaws!"
The next day a relief party rode up, and the Tishquetmoac cavalry on leave rode out with Kick-aha
to the city of Talanac. The Half-Horses did not appear, and after Kickaha had been in the city for
a while, he forgot about the threats of the Shoyshatel. But he was to remember.
II
THE WATCETCOL RIVER originates in a river which branches off from the Guzirit in Kham-shemland, or
Dracheland, on the monolith Abharhploonta. It flows through dense jungle to the edge of the
monolith and then plunges through a channel which the river has cut out of hard rock. The river
falls for a long distance as solid sheets of water, then, before reaching the bottom of the
hundred thousand foot monolith, it becomes spray. Clouds roll out halfway down the monolith and
hide the spray and foam from the eyes of men. The bottom is also hidden; those who have tried to
walk into the fog have reported that it is like blackest night and, after a while, the wetness
becomes solid.
A mile or two from the base the fog extends, and somewhere in there the fog becomes water again
and then a river. The stream flows through a narrow channel in limestone and then broadens out
later. It zigzags for about five hundred miles, straightens out for twenty miles and then splits
to flow around a solid rock mountain. The river reunites on the other side of the mountain, turns
sharply, and flows westward for sixty miles. There it disappears into a vast cavern, and it may be
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presumed that it drops through a network of caverns inside the monolith on top of which is the
Amerindian level. Where it comes out, only the eagies of Podarge, Wolff, and Kickaha know.
The mountain which the river had islanded was a solid block of jade.
When Jadawin formed this universe, he poured out a three thousand foot high, roughly pyramid-
shaped piece of mingled jadeite and nephrite, striated in apple-green, emerald-green, brown,
mauve, yellow, blue, gray, red, and black and various shades thereof. Jadawin deposited it to cool
on the edge of the Great Plains and later directed the river to flow arouiu} its base.
For thousands of years, the jade mountain was untouched except by birds that landed on it and fish
that flicked against the cool greasy roots. When the Amerindians were gated through to his world,
they came across the jade mountain. Some tribes made it their god, but the nomadic peoples did not
settle down near it.
Then a group of civilized people from ancient Mexico were taken into this world near the jade
mountain. This happened, as nearly as Jadawin (who later became Wolff) could recall, about 1,500
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Earth-years ago. The involuntary immigrants may have been of that civilization which the later
Mexicans called Olmec. They called themselves Tishquetmoac. They built wooden houses and wooden
walls on the bank to the west and east of the mountain, and they called the mountain Talanac.
Talanac was their name for the Jaguar God.
The kotchulti (literally, god-house) or temple of Toshkouni, deity of writing, mathematics, and
music, is halfway up the stepped-pyramid city of
A PRIVATE COSMOS
15
Talanac. It faces the Street of Mixed Blessings, and, from the outside, does not look impressively
large. The front (if the temple is a slight bulging of the mountainside, a representation of the
bird-jaguar face of Toshkouni. Like the rest of the interior of this mountain, all hollowing out,
all cleaving away, all bas- and alto-relief, have been done by rubbing or drilling. Jade cannot be
chipped or flaked; it can be drilled, but most of the labor in making beauty out of the stone
comes from rubbing. Friction begets loveliness and utility.
Thus, the white-and-black striated jade in this area had been worn away by a generation of slaves
using crushed corundum for abrasives and steel and wooden tools. The slaves had performed the
crude basic labor; then the artisans and artists had taken over. The Tishquetmoac claim that form
is buried in the stone and that it is revealed seems to be true—in the case of Talanac.
'The gods hide; men discover," the Tishquetmoac say.
When a visitor to the temple enters through the doorway, which seems to press down on him with
Toshkouni's cat-teeth, he steps into a great cavern. It is illuminated by sunlight pouring through
holes in the ceiling and by a hundred smokeless torches. A choir of black-robed monks with shaven,
scarlet-painted heads stands behind a waist-high white-and-red jade screen. The choir chants
praises to the Lord of The World, Ollimaml, and to Toshkouni.
At each of the six corners of the chamber stands an altar in the shape of a beast or bird or a
young woman on all fours. Cartographs bulge from the surfaces of each, and little animals and
abstract symbols, all the result of years of dedicated labor
16
A PRIVATE COSMOS
and long-enduring passion. An emerald, as large as a big man's head, lies on one altar, and there
is a story about this which also concerns Kickaha. Indeed, the emerald was one of the reasons
Kickaha was so welcome in Talanac. The jewel had once been stolen and Kickaha had recovered it
from the Khamshem thieves of the next level and returned it—though not gratis. But that is another
story.
Kickaha was in the library of the temple. This was a vast room deep in the mountain, reached only
by going through the public altar room and a long wide corridor. It, too, was lit by sunlight
shooting through shafts in the ceiling and by torches and oil lamps. The walls had been rubbed
until thousands of shallow niches were made, each of which now held a Tishquetmoac book. The books
were rolls of lambskin sewn together, with the roll secured at each end to an ebony-wood cylinder.
The cylinder at the beginning of the book was hung on a tall jade frame, and the roll was slowly
unwound by the reader, who stood before it.
Kickaha was in one well-lit corner, just below a hole in the ceiling. A black-robed priest,
Takoacol, was explaining to Kickaha the meaning of some cartographs. During his last visit,
Kickaha had studied the writing, but he had memorized only five hundred of the picture-symbols,
and fluency required knowing at least two thousand.
iakoacol was indicating with a long-nailed yellow-painted finger the location of the palace of the
emperor, the miklosiml.
"Just as the palace of the Lord of this world stands on top of the highest level of the world, so
the palace of the miklosiml stands on the upper-
A PRIVATE COSMOS
17
most level of Talanac, the greatest city in the world."
Kickaha did not contradict him. At one time, the capital city of Atlantis, the country occupying
the inner part of the next-to-highest level, had been four times as large and populous as Talanac.
But it had been destroyed by the Lord then in power, and now the ruins housed only bats, birds,
and lizards, great and small.
"But," the priest said, "where the world has five levels, Talanac has thrice three times three
levels, or streets."
The priest put the tips of the excessively long , fingernails of his hands together, and, half-
closing his slightly slanted eyes, intoned a sermon on the magical and theological properties of
the numbers three, seven, nine, and twelve. Kickaha did not interrupt him, even though he did not
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understand some of the technical terms.
He had heard, just once, a strange clinking in the next room. Just once was enough for him, who
had survived because he did not have to be warned twice. Moreover, the price he paid for still
living was a certain uncomfortable amount of anxiety. Always, he maintained a minimum amount of
tension even in moments of recreation and lovemak-ing. Thus, he never entered a place, not even in
the supposedly safe palace of the Lord, without first finding the possible hiding places for
ambushers, avenues of escape, and hiding places for himself.
He had no reason to think that there was any danger for him in this city and especially in the
sacrosanct temple-library. But there had been many times when he had had no reason to fear danger
and yet the danger was there.
The clinking was weakly repeated. Kickaha,
18
A PRIVATE COSMOS
without an "Excuse me!" ran to the archway through which the unidentified, hence sinister, noise
had come. Many of the black-robed priests looked up from their slant-topped desks where they were
painting cartographs on skin or looked aside from the books hanging before them. Kick-aha was
dressed like a well-to-do Tishquetmoac, since his custom was to look as much like a native as
possible wherever he was, but his skin was two shades paler than the lightest of theirs. Besides,
he wore two knives, and that alone marked him off. He was the first, aside from the emperor, to
enter this room armed.
Takoacol called out to him, asking if anything was wrong. Kickaha turned and put a finger to his
lips, but the priest continued to call. Kickaha shrugged. The chances were that he would end up by
seeming foolish or overly apprehensive to the onlookers, as had happened many times in other
places. He did not care.
As he neared the archway, he heard more clink-ings and then some slight creakings. These sounded
to him as if men in armor were slowly— perhaps cautiously—coming down the hallway. The men could
not be Tishquetmoac because their soldiers wore quilted-cloth armor. They had steel weapons, but
these would not make the sounds he had heard.
Kickaha thought of retreating across the library and disappearing into one of the exits he had
chosen; in the shadows of an archway, he could observe the newcomers as they entered the library.
But he could not resist the desire to know immediately who the intruders were. He risked one fast
peek around the corner.
A PRIVATE COSMOS
19
Twenty feet away walked a man in a complete suit of steel armor. Close behind him, by twos, came
four knights, then at least thirty soldiers, swordsmen and archers. There might be more because
the line continued on around the curve of the hall. Kickaha had been surprised, startled, and
shocked many times before. This time, he reacted more slowly than ever in His life. For several
seconds, he stood motionless while the ice-armor of shock thawed.
The knight in the lead, a tall man whose face was visible because of the opened visor of his
helmet, was the king of Eggesheim, Erich von Turbat.
He and his men had no business being on this level! They were Drachelanders of the level above
this, all natives of the inland plateau on top of the monolith which soared up from this level.
Kickaha, who was known as Baron Horst von Horstmann in Dracheland, had visited the king, von
TUrbat, several times and once had knocked him off a horse in a joust.
To see him and his men on this level was startling enough, since they would have had to climb down
a hundred thousand feet of monolith cliff to get to it. But their presence within the city was
incomprehensible. Nobody had ever penetrated the peculiar defences of the city, except for Kickaha
on one occasion, and he had been alone.
Unfreezing, Kickaha turned and ran. He was thinking that the Teutoniacs must have used one of the
"gates" which permitted instantaneous transportation from one place to another. However, the
Tishquetmoac did not know where the three "gates" were or even guessed that they existed. Only
Wolff, who was the Lord of this universe, his
20
A PRIVATE COSMOS
mate Chryseis, and Kickaha had ever used them; or, theoretically, they were the only ones who knew
how to use them.
Despite this, the Teutoniacs were here. How they had found the gates and why they had come through
them to this palace were questions to be answered later—if ever.
Kickaha felt a surge of panic which he rammed back down. This could only mean that an alien Lord
had successfully invaded this universe. That he could send men after Kickaha meant that Wolff and
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Chryseis were unable to prevent him. And that might mean they were dead. It did mean that, if they
were alive, they were powerless and therefore needed his help. Ha! His help! He was running for
his life again!
There were three hidden gates. Two were in the Temple of Ollimaml on top of the city, next to the
emperor's palace. One gate was a large one and must have been used by von Turbat's men if they had
entered in any force. And they must have great force, otherwise they would never have been able to
overcome the large and fanatical bodyguard of the emperor and the garrison.
Unless, Kickaha thought, unless the invaders had somehow been able to capture the emperor
immediately. The Tishquetmoac would obey the commands of their ruler, even if they knew they
originated from his captors. This would last for a time, anyway. The people of Talanac were, after
all, human beings, not ants, and they would eventually revolt. They regarded their emperor as a
god incarnate, second only to the all-powerful creator Ollimaml, but they loved their jade city,
too, and they had a history of twice committing deicide.
In the meantime ... in the meantime, Kickaha
A PRIVATE COSMOS
21
was running toward the archway opposite the one through which the invaders must be stepping just
now. A shout spurred him on, then many were yelling. Some of the priests were crying out, but
several of the cries were in the debased Middle High German of the Drachelanders. A clash of
armors and of swords formed a base beneath the vocal uproar.
Kickaha hoped that the hallway was the only one the Drachelanders were using. If they had been
able to get to all the entrances to this' room—no, they couldn't. The arch ahead led to a hall
which only went deeper into the mountain, as far as he knew. It could be entered by other halls,
but none of these had openings to the outside. That is, he had been told so. Perhaps his
informants were lying for some reason, or perhaps they hadn't understood his imperfect
Tishquetmoac speech.
Lied to or not, he had to take this avenue. The only trouble with it, even if it were free of
invaders, was that it would end up in the mountain.
HI
THE LIBRARY was an immense room. It had taken five hundred slaves, rubbing and drilling twenty-
four hours a day, twenty years to complete the basic work. The distance from the archway he had
just left to the one he desired was about 180 yards. Some of the invaders had time to enter the
library and take one shot at him.
Knowing this, Kickaha began to zigzag. When he neared the arch, he threw himself down and rolled
through the exit. Arrows slissed above him and kukked into the stone wall or bunged off the floor
near him. Kickaha uncoiled to his feet and raced on down the hallway; he came to the inevitable
curve, and then stopped. Two priests trotted past him. They looked at him but said nothing. They
forgot about him when shrill cries stung their ears, and they ran toward the source of noise. He
thought they would be acting more intelligently if they ran the other way, since it sounded as if
the Drachelanders might be massacring the priests in the library.
However, the two would now run into the pursuers, and might delay them for a few seconds. Too bad
about the priests, but it wasn't his fault if they were killed. Well, perhaps it was. But he did
not
A PRIVATE COSMOS
23
intend to warn them if silence would help him keep ahead of the hunters.
He ran on. Just before he came to another forty-five degree bend, he heard screams behind him. He
stopped and removed a burning torch from its fixture on the wall. Holding it high, he looked
upward. Twenty feet from the top of his head was a round hole in the ceiling. It was dark, so
Kickaha supposed that the shaft bent somewhere before it joined another.
The entire mountain was pierced with thousands of these shafts. All were at least three feet in
diameter, since the slaves who had made the shafts and tunnels could not work in an area less than
this.
Kickaha considered this shaft but gave up on it. There was nothing available to help him get up to
it.
Hearing the scrape of metal against stone, he ran around the curve and then stopped. The first
archer received a blazing torch in his face, screamed, staggered back, and knocked down the archer
behind him. The conical steel helmets of both fell off and clanged on the floor.
Stooping, Kickaha ran forward, using the archer with the burned face, who had sat up, as a shield.
He pulled the archer's long sword from his sheath. The man was holding his face with both hands
and screaming that he was blind. The soldier he had knocked down stood up, thus preventing the
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bowmen who did see Kickaha from shooting at him. Kickaha rose and brought the sword down on the
unprotected head of the soldier. Then he whirled and ran, stooping,again.
Too late, some of the bowmen fired. The arrows struck the walls. He entered a large storage room.
24
A PRIVATE COSMOS
There were many artifacts here, but those catching his attention were long extendible ladders for
use in the library. He set one upright, its end propped against the lip of a shaft in the ceiling.
He placed the sword at the foot of the ladder, then picked up another ladder and ran with it down
the hall, went through a doorway into a branching hall, and stopped below another shaft.
Here he propped the ladder against the edge of the hole in the ceiling and climbed up. By bracing
his back against one side of the shaft and his feet against the other, he could thrust-slide his
body up the hollow.
He hoped that the first ladder and the sword by it would fool his pursuers, so they would waste
time shooting arrows up its dark hole. When they realized he was not to be brought down like a
bear in a hollow tree, they would think that he had managed to get to a branching shaft in time.
Then some of them would go up the shaft after him. If they were smart, they would delay long
enough to take off their heavy chain-mail shirts, skirts, leggings, and steel helmets.
If they were smart enough, though, they would also realize that he might be playing a trick. They
would explore the halls deeper in. And they might soon be under this shaft and send an arrow
through his body.
Inspired by this thought, he climbed more swiftly. He would back upward several inches, feet
planted firmly, legs straining. Then he'd slide the feet up, then the back up, then the feet up—at
least the walls were smooth and greasy-feeling jade, not rough steel, stone, or wood. After he had
gone perhaps twenty feet upward—which meant a drop of forty feet to the floor—he came to a shaft
A PRIVATE COSMOS
25
which ran at right angles to his.
He had to twist around then so that he faced downward. He could see that the ladder still lay
propped against the bright end of the shaft. There was no sound coming up the well. He pulled
himself up and onto the horizontal floor.
At that moment, he heard a faint voice. The soldiers must have fallen for his ruse. They'were
either coming up that first tube after him or had already done so and were, possibly, in the same
horizontal shaft in which he was.
Kickaha decided to discourage them. If he did find a way out, he might also find that they were
right behind him—or worse, just below him. They could have passed bows and arrows from one to
another up the shaft; if they had, they could shoot him down without danger to themselves.
Trying to figure out the direction of the shaft where he had left the first ladder, he came to a
junction where three horizontal tunnels met above a vertical one. There the twilight of the place
became a little brighter. He leaped across the hole in the floor and approached the brightening.
On coming around a bend, he saw a Teutoniac bending over with his back to him. He was holding a
torch, which a man in the vertical shaft had just handed to him. The man in the hole was muttering
that the torch had scorched him. The man above was whispering fiercely that they should all be
quiet.
The climbers had shed their armor and all arms except the daggers in the sheaths on their belts.
However, a bow and a quiver of arrows was passed up to the soldier in the tunnel. The men in the
vertical shaft were forming a chain to transport weapons. Kickaha noted that they would have been
wiser to place six or seven in the tunnel first
26 A PRIVATE COSMOS
to prevent attack by their quarry.
Kickaha had thought of jumping the lone soldier at once, but he decided to wait until they had
transported all the weapons they intended to use. And so bow after bow, quiver after quiver,
swords, and finally even the armor was passed up and given to the man in the tunnel, who piled
them neatly to one side. Kickaha was disgusted: didn't they understand that armor would only weigh
them down and give their quarry an advantage? Moreover, the heavy thick mail and the heavy
clothing underneath it would make them hot and sweaty. The only reason he could think of for this
move was the rigidity of the military mind. If the regulations prescribed armor in every combat
situation, then the armor would be worn, appropriate or not.
The soldier handling the material and those braced in the shafts bitched, though not loudly, about
the heat and the strain. Kickaha could hear them plainly, but he supposed that the officers below
could not.
At last, there were thirty-five bows, thirty-five quivers, and thirty-five swords, helmets, and
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摘要：

file:///F|/rah/Philip%20Jose%20Farmer/Farmer,%20Philip%20Jose%20-%20World%20of%20Tiers%203%20A%20Private%20Cosmos.txtINTRODUCTIONAllcharactersinthisbookarefictitious.Anyresemblancetoactualpersons,livingordead,ispurelycoincidental.APRIVATECOSMOSABerkleyBook/publishedbyarrangementwiththeauthorPRINTIN...

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