Philip Jose Farmer - WOT 1 - The Maker of Universes

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The Maker of Universes
Book 1 of The World of Tiers Series
by Philip Jose Farmer Version 1.1
I
THE GHOST OF a trumpet call wailed from the other side of the doors. The seven notes were faint
and far off, ectoplasmic issue of a phantom of silver, if sound could be the stuff from which
shades are formed.
Robert Wolff knew that there could be no horn or man blowing upon it behind the sliding doors. A
minute ago, he had looked inside the closet. Nothing except the cement floor, the white
plasterboard walls, the clothes rod and hooks, a shelf and a lightbulb was there.
Yet he had heard the trumpet notes, feeble as if singing from the other wall of the world itself.
He was alone, so that he had no one with whom to check the reality of what he knew could not be
real. The room in which he stood entranced was an unlikely place in which to have such an
experience. But he might not be an unlikely person to have it. Lately, weird dreams had been
troubling his sleep. During the day, strange thoughts and flashes of images passed through his
mind, fleeting but vivid and even startling. They were unwanted, unexpected, and unresistable.
He was worried. To be ready to retire and then to suffer a mental breakdown seemed unfair.
However, it could happen to him as it had to others, so the thing to do was to be examined by a
doctor. But he could not bring himself to act as reason demanded. He kept waiting, and he did not
say anything to anybody, least of all to his wife.
Now he stood in the recreation room of a new house in the Hohokam Homes development and stared at
the closet doors. If the horn bugled again, he would slide a door back and see for himself that
nothing was there. Then, knowing that his own diseased mind was generating the notes, he would
forget about buying this house. He would ignore his wife's hysterical protests, and he would see a
medical doctor first and then a psychotherapist.
His wife called: "Robert! Haven't you been down there long enough? Come up here. I want to talk to
you and Mr. Bresson!"
"Just a minute, dear," he said.
She called again, so close this time that he turned around. Brenda Wolff stood at the top of the
steps that led down to the recreation room. She was his age, sixty-six. What beauty she had once
had was now buried under fat, under heavily rouged and powdered wrinkles, thick spectacles, and
steel-blue hair. He winced on seeing her, as he winced every time he looked into the mirror and
saw his own bald head, deep lines from nose to mouth, and stars of grooved skin radiating from the
reddened eyes. Was this his trouble? Was he unable to adjust to that which came to all men, like
it or not? Or was what he disliked in his wife and himself not the physical deterioration but the
knowledge that neither he nor Brenda had realized their youthful dreams? There was no way to avoid
the rasps and files of time on the flesh, but time had been gracious to him in allowing him to
live this long. He could not plead short duration as an excuse for not shaping his psyche into
beauty. The world could not be blamed for what he was. He and he alone was responsible; at least
he was strong enough to face that. He did not reproach the universe or that part of it that was
his wife. He did not scream, snarl, and whine as Brenda did.
There had been times when it would have been easy to whine or weep. How many men could remember
nothing before the age of twenty? He thought it was twenty, for the Wolffs, who had adopted him,
had said that he'd looked that age. He had been discovered wandering in the hills of Kentucky,
near the Indiana border, by old man Wolff. He had not known who he was or how he had come there.
Kentucky or even the United States of America had been meaningless to him, as had all the English
tongue.
The Wolffs had taken him in and notified the sheriff. An investigation by the authorities had
failed to identify him. At another time, his story might have attracted nationwide attention;
however, the nation had been at war with the Kaiser and had had more important things to think
about. Robert, named after the Wolffs dead son, had helped work on the farm. He had also gone to
school, for he had lost all memory of his education.
Worse than his lack of formal knowledge had been his ignorance of how to behave. Time and again he
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had embarrassed or offended others. He had suffered from the scornful or sometimes savage reaction
of the hill-folk, but had learned swiftly-and his willingness to work hard, plus his great
strength in defending himself, had gained respect.
In an amazingly quick time, as if he had been
relearning, he had studied and passed through grade and high school. Although he had lacked by
many years the full time of attendance required, he had taken and passed the entrance examinations
to the university with no trouble. There he'd begun his lifelong love affair with the classical
languages. Most of all he loved Greek, for it struck a chord within him; he felt at home with it.
After getting his Ph.D at the University of Chicago, he had taught at various Eastern and
Midwestern universities. He had married Brenda, a beautiful girl with a lovely soul. Or so he had
thought at first. Later, he had been disillusioned, but still he was fairly happy.
Always, however, the mystery of his amnesia and his origin had troubled him. For a long time it
had not disturbed him, but then, on retiring...
"Robert," Brenda said loudly, "come up here right now! Mr. Bresson is a busy man."
"I'm certain that Mr. Bresson has had plenty of clients who like to make a leisurely
surveillance," he replied mildly. "Or perhaps you've made up your mind that you don't want the
house?"
Brenda glared at him, then waddled indignantly off. He sighed because he knew that, later, she
would accuse him of deliberately making her look foolish before the real estate agent.
He turned to the closet doors again. Did he dare open them? It was absurd to freeze there, like
someone in shock or in a psychotic state of indecision. But he could not move, except to give a
start as the bugle again vented the seven notes, crying from behind a thick barricade but stronger
in volume.
His heart thudded like an inward fist against his breast bone. He forced himself to step up to the
doors and to place his hand within the brass-covered indentation at waist-level and shove the door
to one side. The little rumble of the rollers drowned out the horn as the door moved to one side.
The white plaster boards of the wall had disappeared. They had become an entrance to a scene he
could not possibly have imagined, although it must have originated in his mind.
Sunlight flooded in through the opening, which was large enough for him to walk through if he
stooped. Vegetation that looked something like trees-but no trees of Earth-blocked part of his
view. Through the branches and fronds he could see a bright green sky. He lowered his eyes to take
in the scene on the ground beneath the trees. Six or seven nightmare creatures were gathered at
the base of a giant boulder. It was of red, quartz-impregnated rock and shaped roughly like a
toadstool. Most of the things had their black furry, misshapen bodies turned away from him, but
one presented its profile against the green sky. Its head was brutal, subhuman, and its expression
was malevolent. There were knobs on its body and on its face and head, clots of flesh which gave
it a half-formed appearance, as if its Maker had forgotten to smooth it out. The two short legs
were like a dog's hind legs. It was stretching its long arms up toward the young man who stood on
the flat top of the boulder.
This man was clothed only in a buckskin breechcloth and moccasins. He was tall, muscular, and
broad-shouldered; his skin was sun-browned; his long thick hair was a reddish bronze; his face was
strong and craggy with a long upper lip. He held the instrument which must have made the notes
Wolff had heard.
The man kicked one of the misshapen things back down from its hold on the boulder as it crawled up
toward him. He lifted the silver horn to his lips to blow again, then saw Wolff standing beyond
the opening. He grinned widely, flashing white teeth. He called, "So you finally came!"
Wolff did not move or reply. He could only think, Now I have gone crazy! Not just auditory
hallucinations, but visual! What next? Should I run screaming, or just calmly walk away and tell
Brenda that I have to see a doctor now? Now! No waiting, no explanations. Shut up, Brenda, I'm
going.
He stepped back. The opening was beginning to close, the white walls were reasserting their
solidity. Or rather, he was beginning to get a fresh hold on reality.
"Here!" the youth on top of the boulder shouted. "Catch!"
He threw the horn. Turning over and over, bouncing sunlight off the silver as the light fell
through the leaves, it flew straight toward the opening. Just before the walls closed in on
themselves, the horn passed through the opening and struck Wolff on his knees.
He exclaimed in pain, for there was nothing ectoplasmic about the sharp impact. Through the narrow
opening he could see the red-haired man holding up one hand, his thumb and index forming an O. The
youth grinned and cried out, "Good luck! Hope I see you soon! I am Kickaha!"
Like an eye slowly closing in sleep, the opening in the wall contracted. The light dimmed, and the
objects began to blur. But he could see well enough to get a final glimpse, and it was then that
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the girl stuck her head around the trunk of a tree.
She had unhumanly large eyes, as big in proportion to her face as those of a cat. Her lips were
full and crimson, her skin golden-brown. The thick wavy hair hanging loose along the side of her
face was tigerstriped: slightly zigzag bands of black almost touched the ground as she leaned
around the tree.
Then the walls became white as the rolled-up eye of a corpse. All was as before except for the
pain in his knees and the hardness of the horn lying against his ankle.
He picked it up and turned to look at it in the light from the recreation room. Although stunned,
he no longer believed that he was insane. He had seen through into another universe and something
from it had been delivered to him-why or how, he did not know.
The horn was a little less than two and a half feet long and weighed less than a quarter of a
pound. It was shaped like an African buffalo's horn except at the mouth, where it flared out
broadly. The tip was fitted with a mouthpiece of some soft golden material; the horn itself was of
silver or silver-plated metal. There were no valves, but on turning it over he saw seven little
buttons in a row. A half-inch inside the mouth was a web of silvery threads. When the horn was
held at an angle to the light from the bulbs overhead, the web looked as if it went deep into the
horn.
It was then the light also struck the body of the horn so that he saw what he had missed during
his first examination: a hieroglyph was lightly inscribed halfway down the length. It looked like
nothing he had seen before, and he was an expert on all types of alphabetic writing, ideographs,
and pictographs.
"Robert!" his wife said.
"Be right up, dear!" He placed the horn in the right-hand front corner of the closet and closed
the door. There was nothing else he could do except to run out of the house with the horn. If he
appeared with it, he would be questioned by both his wife and Bresson. Since he had not come into
the house with the horn, he could not claim it was his. Bresson would want to take the instrument
into his custody, since it would have been discovered on property of his agency.
Wolff was in an agony of uncertainty. How could he get the horn out of the house? What was to
prevent Bresson from bringing around other clients, perhaps today, who would see the horn as soon
as they opened the closet door? A client might call it to Bresson's attention.
He walked up the steps and into the large living room. Brenda was still glaring. Bresson, a
chubby, spectacled man of about thirty-five, looked uncomfortable, although he was smiling.
"Well, how do you like it?" he asked.
"Great," Wolff replied. "It reminds me of the type of house we have back home."
"I like it," Bresson said. "I'm from the Midwest myself. I can appreciate that you might not want
to live in a ranchtype home. Not that I'm knocking them. I live in one myself."
Wolff walked to the window and looked out. The midafternoon May sun shone brightly from the blue
Arizona skies. The lawn was covered with the fresh Bermuda grass, planted three weeks before, new
as the houses in this just-built development of Hohokam Homes.
"Almost all the houses are ground level," Bresson was saying. "Excavating in this hard caliche
costs a great deal, but these houses aren't expensive. Not for what you get."
Wolff thought. If the caliche hadn't been dug away to make room for the recreation room, what
would the man on the other side have seen when the opening appeared? Would he have seen only earth
and thus been denied the chance to get rid of that horn? Undoubtedly.
"You may have read why we had to delay opening this development," Bresson said. "While we were
digging, we uncovered a former town of the Hohokam."
"Hohokam?" Mrs. Wolff said. "Who were they?"
"Lots of people who come into Arizona have never heard of them," Bresson replied. "But you can't
live long in the Phoenix area without running across references to them. They were the Indians who
lived a long time ago in the Valley of the Sun; they may have come here at least 1200 years ago.
They dug irrigation canals, built towns here, had a swinging civilization. But something happened
to them, no one knows what. They just up and disappeared several hundred years ago. Some
archeologists claim the Papago and Pima Indians are their descendants."
Mrs. Wolff sniffed and said, "I've seen them. They don't look like they could build anything
except those rundown adobe shacks on the reservation."
Wolff turned and said, almost savagely, "The modern Maya don't look as if they could ever have
built their temples or invented the concept of zero, either. But they did."
Brenda gasped. Mr. Bresson smiled even more mechanically. "Anyway, we had to suspend digging until
the archeologists were through. Held up operations about three months, but we couldn't do a thing
because the state tied our hands.
"However, this may be a lucky thing for you. If we hadn't been held up, these homes might all be
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sold now. So everything turns out for the best, eh?"
He smiled brightly and looked from one to the other.
Wolff paused, took a deep breath, knowing what was coming from Brenda, and said, "We'll take it.
We'll sign the papers right now."
"Robert!" Mrs. Wolff shrilled. "You didn't even ask me!"
"I'm sorry, my dear, but I've made up my mind."
"Well, I haven't!"
"Now, now, folks, no need to rush things," Bresson said. His smile was desperate. "Take your time,
talk it over. Even if somebody should come along and buy this particular house-and it might happen
before the day's over; they're selling like hotcakes^well, there's plenty more just like this."
"I want this house."
"Robert, are you out of your mind?" Brenda wailed. "I've never seen you act like this before."
"I've given in to you on almost everything," he said. "I wanted you to be happy. So, now, give in
to me on this. It's not much to ask. Besides, you said this morning that you wanted this type of
house, and Hohokam Homes are the only ones like this that we can afford.
"Let's sign the preliminary papers now. I can make out a check as an earnest." "I won't sign,
Robert."
"Why don't you two go home and discuss this?" Bresson said. "I'll be available when you've reached
a decision."
"Isn't my signature good enough?" Wolff replied.
Still holding his strained smile, Bresson said, "I'm sorry, Mrs. Wolff will have to sign, too."
Brenda smiled triumphantly.
"Promise me you won't show it to anybody else," Wolff said. "Not until tomorrow, anyway. If you're
afraid of losing a sale, I'll make out an earnest."
"Oh, that won't be necessary." Bresson started toward the door with a haste that betrayed his wish
to get out of an embarrassing situation. "I won't show it to anyone until I hear from you in the
morning."
On the way back to their rooms in the Sands Motel in Tempe, neither spoke. Brenda sat rigidly and
stared straight ahead through the windshield. Wolff glanced over at her now and then, noting that
her nose seemed to be getting sharper and her lips thinner; if she continued, she would look
exactly like a fat parrot.
And when she finally did burst loose, talking, she would sound like a fat parrot. The same old
tired yet energetic torrent of reproaches and threats would issue. She would upbraid him because
of his neglect of her all these years, remind him for the latest in God-knew-how-many-times that
he kept his nose buried in his books or else was practicing archery or fencing, or climbing
mountains, sports she could not share with him because of her arthritis. She would unreel the
years of unhappiness, or claimed unhappiness, and end by weeping violently and bitterly.
Why had he stuck with her? He did not know except that he had loved her very much when they were
young and also because her accusations were not entirely untrue. Moreover, he found the thought of
separation painful, even more painful than the thought of staying with her.
Yet he was entitled to reap the harvests of his labors as a professor of English and classical
languages. Now that he had enough money and leisure time, he could pursue studies that his duties
had denied him. With this Arizona home as a base, he could even travel. Or could he? Brenda would
not refuse to go with him-in fact, she would insist on accompanying him. But she would be so bored
that his own life would be miserable. He could not blame her for that, for she did not have the
same interests as he. But should he give up the things that made life rich for him just to make
her happy? Especially since she was not going to be happy anyway?
As he expected, her tongue became quite active after supper. He listened, tried to remonstrate
quietly with her and point out her lack of logic and the injustice and baselessness of her
recriminations. It was no use. She ended as always, weeping and threatening to leave him or to
kill herself.
This time, he did not give in.
"I want that house, and I want to enjoy life as I've planned to," he said firmly. "That's that."
He put on his coat and strode to the door. "I'll be back later. Maybe."
She screamed and threw an ashtray at him. He ducked; the tray bounced off the door, gouging out a
piece of the wood. Fortunately, she did not follow him and make a scene outside, as she had on
previous occasions.
It was night now, the moon was not yet up, and the only lights came from the windows of the motel,
the lamps along the streets, and numerous headlights of the cars along Apache Boulevard. He drove
his car out onto the boulevard and went east, then turned south. Within a few minutes he was on
the road to the Hohokam Homes. The thought of what he meant to do made his heart beat fast and
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turned his skin cold. This was the first time in his life that he had seriously considered
committing a criminal act.
The Hohokam Homes were ablaze with lights and noisy with music over a PA system and the voices of
children playing out in the street while their parents looked at the houses.
He drove on, went through Mesa, turned around and came back through Tempe and down Van Buren and
into the heart of Phoenix. He cut north, then east, until he was in the town of Scottsdale. Here
he stopped off for an hour and a half at a small tavern. After the luxury of four shots of Vat 69,
he quit. He wanted no more-rather, feared to take more, because he did not care to be fuddled when
he began his project.
When he returned to Hohokam Homes, the lights were out and silence had returned to the desert. He
parked his car behind the house in which he had been that afternoon. With his gloved right fist,
he smashed the window which gave him access to the recreation room.
By the time he was within the room, he was panting and his heart beat as if he had run several
blocks. Though frightened, he had to smile at himself. A man who lived much in his imagination, he
had often conceived of himself as a burglar-not the ordinary kind, of course, but a Raffles. Now
he knew that his respect for law was too much for him ever to become a great criminal or even a
minor one. His conscience was hurting him because of this small act, one that he had thought he
was fully justified in carrying out. Moreover, the idea of being caught almost made him give up
the horn. After living a quiet, decent and respectable life, he would be ruined if he were to be
detected. Was it worth it?
He decided it was. Should he retreat now, he would wonder the rest of his life what he had missed.
The greatest of all adventures waited for him, one such as no other man had experienced. If he
became a coward now, he might as well shoot himself, for he would not be able to endure the loss
of the horn or the self-recriminations for his lack of courage.
It was so dark in the recreation room that he had to feel his way to the closet with his
fingertips. Locating the sliding doors, he moved the left-hand one, which he had pushed aside that
afternoon. He nudged it slowly to avoid noise, and he stopped to listen for sounds outside the
house.
Once the door was fully opened, he retreated a few steps. He placed the mouthpiece of the horn to
his lips and blew softly. The blast that issued from it startled him so much that he dropped it.
Groping, he finally located it in the corner of the room.
The second time, he blew hard. There was another loud note, no louder than the first. Some device
in the horn, perhaps the silvery web inside its mouth, regulated the decible level. For several
minutes he stood poised with the horn raised and almost to his mouth. He was trying to reconstruct
in his mind the exact sequence of the seven notes he had heard. Obviously the seven little buttons
on the underside determined the various harmonics. But he could not find out which was which
without experimenting and drawing attention.
He shrugged and murmured, "What the hell."
Again he blew, but now he pressed the buttons, operating the one closest to him first. Seven loud
notes soared forth. Their values were as he remembered them but not in the sequence he recalled.
As the final blast died out, a shout came from a distance. Wolff almost panicked. He swore, lifted
the horn back to his lips, and pressed the buttons in an order which he hoped would reproduce the
open sesame, the musical key, to the other world.
At the same time, a flashlight beam played across the broken window of the room, then passed by.
Wolff blew again. The light returned to the window. More shouts arose. Desperate, Wolff tried
different combinations of buttons. The third attempt seemed to be the duplicate of that which the
youth on top of the toadstool-shaped boulder had produced.
The flashlight was thrust through the broken window. A deep voice growled, "Come on out, you in
there! Come out, or I'll start shooting!"
Simultaneously, a greenish light appeared on the wall, broke through, and melted a hole. Moonlight
shone through. The trees and the boulder were visible only as silhouettes against a green-silver
radiating from a great globe of which the rim alone was visible.
He did not delay. He might have hesitated if he had been unnoticed, but now he knew he had to run.
The other world offered uncertainty and danger, but this one had a definite, inescapable ignominy
and shame. Even as the watchman repeated his demands, Wolff left him and his world behind. He had
to stoop and to step high to get through the shrinking hole. When he had turned around on the
other side to get a final glimpse, he saw through an opening no larger than a ship's porthole. In
a few seconds, it was gone.
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II
WOLFF SAT DOWN on the grass to rest until he quit breathing so hard. He thought of how ironic it
would be if the excitement were to be too much for his sixty-six-year-old heart. Dead on arrival.
DOA. They-whoever "they" were-would have to bury him and put above his grave: THE UNKNOWN
EARTHMAN.
He felt better then. He even chuckled while rising to his feet. With some courage and confidence,
he looked around. The air was comfortable enough, about seventy degrees, he estimated. It bore
strange and very pleasant, almost fruity, perfumes. Bird calls-he hoped they were only those-came
from all around him. Somewhere far off, a low growl sounded, but he was not frightened. He was
certain, with no rational ground for certainty, that it was the distance-muted crash of surf. The
moon was full and enormous, two and a half times as large as Earth's.
The sky had lost the bright green it had had during the day and had become except for the moon's
radiance, as black as the night-time sky of the world he had left. A multitude of large stars
moved with a speed and in directions that made him dizzy with fright and confusion. One of the
stars fell toward him, became bigger and bigger, brighter and brighter, until it swooped a few
feet overhead. By the orangeyellow glow from its rear, he could see four great elliptoid wings and
dangling skinny legs and, briefly, the silhouette of an antennaed head.
It was a firefly of some sort with a wingspread of at least ten feet.
Wolff watched the shifting and expanding and contracting of the living constellations until he
became used to them. He wondered which direction to take, and the sound of the surf finally
decided him. A shoreline would give a definite point of departure, wherever he went after that.
His progress was slow and cautious, with frequent stops to listen and to examine the shadows.
Something with a deep chest grunted nearby. He flattened himself on the grass under the shadow of
a thick bush and tried to breathe slowly. There was a rustling noise. A twig crackled. Wolff
lifted his head high enough to look out into the moonlit clearing before him. A great bulk, erect,
biped, dark, and hairy, shambled by only a few yards from him.
It stopped suddenly, and Wolff's heart skipped a beat. Its head moved back and forth, permitting
Wolff to get a full view of a gorrilloid profile. However, it was not a gorilla-not a Terrestrial
one, anyway. Its fur was not a solid black. Alternate stripes of broad black and narrow white
zigzagged across its body and legs. Its arms were much shorter than those of its counterpart on
Earth, and its legs were not only longer but straighter. Moreover, the forehead, although shelved
with bone above the eyes, was high.
It muttered something, not an animal cry or moan but a sequence of clearly modulated syllables.
The gorilla was not alone. The greenish moon exposed a patch of bare skin on the side away from
Wolff. It belonged to a woman who walked by the beast's side and whose shoulders were hidden by
his huge right arm.
Wolff could not see her face, but he caught enough of long slim legs, curving buttocks, a shapely
arm, and long black hair to wonder if she were as beautiful from the front.
She spoke to the gorilla in a voice like the sound of silver bells. The gorilla answered her. Then
the two walked out of the green moon and into the darkness of the jungle.
Wolff did not get up at once, for he was too shaken.
Finally, he rose to his feet and pushed on through the undergrowth, which was not as thick as that
of an Earth jungle. Indeed, the bushes were widely separated. If the environment had not been so
exotic, he would not have thought of the flora as a jungle. It was more like a park, including the
soft grass, which was so short it could have been freshly mown.
Only a few paces further on, he was startled when an animal snorted and then ran in front of him.
He got a glimpse of reddish antlers, a whitish nose, huge pale eyes, and a polka-dot body. It
crashed by him and disappeared, but a few seconds later he heard steps behind him. He turned to
see the same cervine several feet away. When it saw that it was detected, it stepped forward
slowly and thrust a wet nose into his outstretched hand. Thereafter, it purred and tried to rub
its flank against him. Since it weighed perhaps a quarter of a ton, it tended to push him away
from it.
He leaned into it, rubbed it behind its large cupshaped ears, scratched its nose, and lightly
slapped its ribs. The cervine licked him several times with a long wet tongue that rasped as
roughly as that of a lion. His hopes that it would tire of its affections were soon realized. It
left him with a bound as sudden as that which had brought it within his ken.
After it was gone, he felt less endangered. Would an animal be so friendly to a complete stranger
if it had carnivores or hunters to fear?
The roar of the surf became louder. Within ten minutes he was at the edge of the beach. There he
crouched beneath a broad and towering frond and examined the moon-brushed scene. The beach itself
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was white and, as his outstretched hand verified, made of very fine sand. It ran on both sides for
as far as he could see, and the breadth of it, between forest and sea, was about two hundred
yards. On both sides, at a distance, were fires around which capered the silhouettes of men and
women. Their shouts and laughter, though muted by the distance, reinforced his impression that
they must be human.
Then his gaze swept back to the beach near him. At an angle, about three hundred yards away and
almost in the water, were two beings. The sight of them snatched his breath away.
It was not what they were doing that shocked him but the construction of their bodies. From the
waist up the man and woman were as human as he, but at the point where their legs should have
begun the body of each tapered into fins.
He was unable to restrain his curiosity. After caching the horn in a bed of feathery grasses, he
crept along the edge of the jungle; when he was opposite the two, he stopped to watch. Since the
male and female were now lying side by side and talking, their position allowed him to study them
in more detail.
He became convinced they could not pursue him with any speed on land and had no weapons. He would
approach them. They might even be friendly.
When he was about twenty yards from them, he stopped to examine them again. If they were mermen,
they certainly were not half-piscine. The fins at the end of their long tails were on a horizontal
plane, unlike those of fish, which are vertical. And the tail did not seem to have scales. Smooth
brown skin covered their hybrid bodies from top to bottom.
He coughed. They looked up, and the male shouted and the female screamed. In a motion so swift he
could not comprehend the particulars but saw it as a blur, they had risen on the ends of their
tails and flipped themselves upward and out into the waves. The moon flashed on a dark head rising
briefly from the waves and a tail darting upward.
The surf rolled and crashed upon the white sands. The moon shone hugely and greenly. A breeze from
the sea patted his sweating face and passed on to cool the jungle. A few weird cries issued from
the darkness behind him, and from down the beach came the sound of human revelry.
For awhile he was webbed in thought. The speech of the two merpeople had had something familiar
about it, as had that of the zebrilla (his coinage for the gorilla) and the woman. He had not
recognized any individual words, but the sounds and the associated pitches had stirred something
in his memory. But what? They certainly spoke no language he had ever heard before. Was it similar
to one of the living languages of Earth and had he heard it on a recording or perhaps in a movie?
A hand closed on his shoulder, lifted him and whirled him around. The Gothic snout and caverned
eyes of a zebrilla were thrust in his face, and an alcoholic breath struck his own nostrils. It
spoke, and the woman stepped out from the bushes. She walked slowly toward him, and at any other
time he would have caught his breath at the magnificent body and beautiful face. Unfortunately, he
was having a hard time breathing now for a different cause. The giant ape could hurl him into the
sea with even more ease and speed than that which the merpeople had shown when they had dived
away. Or the huge hand could close on him and meet on crushed flesh and shattered bone.
The woman said something, and the zebrilla replied. It was then that Wolff understood several
words. Their language was akin to pre-Homeric Greek, to Mycenaean.
He did not immediately burst into speech to reassure them that he was harmless and his intentions
good. For one thing, he was too stunned to think clearly enough. Also, his knowledge of the Greek
of that period was necessarily limited, even if it was close to the Aeolic-Ionic of the blind
bard.
Finally, he managed to utter a few inappropriate phrases, but he was not so concerned with the
sense as to let them know he meant no harm. Hearing him, the zebrilla grunted, said something to
the girl, and lowered Wolff to the sand. He sighed with relief, but he grimaced at the pain in his
shoulder. The huge hand of the monster was enormously powerful. Aside from the magnitude and
hairiness, the hand was quite human.
The woman tugged at his shirt. She had a mild distaste on her face; only later was he to discover
that he repulsed her. She had never seen a fat old man before. Moreover, the clothes puzzled her.
She continued pulling at his shirt. Rather than have her request the zebrilla to remove it from
him, he pulled it off himself. She looked at it curiously, smelled it, said, "Ugh!" and then made
some gesture.
Although he would have preferred not to understand her and was even more reluctant to obey, he
decided he might as well. There was no reason to frustrate her and perhaps anger the zebrilla. He
shed his clothes and waited for more orders. The woman laughed shrilly; the zebrilla barked and
pounded his thigh with his huge hand so that it sounded as if an axe were chopping wood. He and
the woman put their arms around each other and, laughing hysterically, staggered off down the
beach.
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Infuriated, humiliated, ashamed, but also thankful that he had escaped without injury, Wolff put
his pants back on. Picking up his underwear, socks, and shoes, he trudged through the sand and
back into the jungle. After taking the horn from its hiding place, he sat for a long while,
wondering what to do. Finally, he fell asleep.
He awoke in the morning, muscle-sore, hungry, and thirsty.
The beach was alive. In addition to the merman and merwoman he had seen the night before, several
large seals with bright orange coats flopped back and forth over the sand in pursuit of amber
balls flung by the merpeople, and a man with ram's horns projecting from his forehead, furry legs
and a short goatish tail chased by a woman who looked much like the one who had been with the
zebrilla. She, however, had yellow hair. She ran until the horned man leaped upon her and bore
her, laughing, to the sand. What happened thereafter showed him that these beings were as innocent
of a sense of sin, and of inhibitions, as Adam and Eve must have been.
This was more than interesting, but the sight of a mermaid eating aroused him in other and more
demanding directions. She held a large oval yellow fruit in one hand and a hemisphere that looked
like a coconut shell in the other. The female counterpart of the man with ram's horns squatted by
a fire only a few yards from him and fried a fish on the end of a stick. The odor made his mouth
water and his belly rumble.
First he had to have a drink. Since the only water in sight was the ocean, he strode out upon the
beach and toward the surf.
His reception was what he had expected: surprise, withdrawal, apprehension to some degree. All
stopped their activities, no matter how absorbing, to stare at him. When he approached some of
them he was greeted with wide eyes, open mouths, and retreat. Some of the males stood their
ground, but they looked as if they were ready to run if he said boo. Not that he felt like
challenging them, since the smallesthad muscles that could easily overpower his tired old body.
He walked into the surf up to his waist and tasted the water. He had seen others drink from it, so
he hoped that he would find it acceptable. It was pure and fresh and had a tang that he had never
experienced before. After drinking his fill, he felt as if he had had a transfusion of young
blood. He walked out of the ocean and back across the beach and into the jungle. The others had
resumed their eating and recreations, and though they watched him with a bold direct stare they
said nothing to him. He gave them a smile, but quit when it seemed to startle them. In the jungle,
he searched for and found fruit and nuts such as the merwoman had been eating. The yellow fruit
had a peach pie taste, and the meat inside the pseudococonut tasted like very tender beef mixed
with small pieces of walnut.
Afterward he felt very satisfied, except for one thing: he craved his pipe. But tobacco was one
thing that seemed to be missing in this paradise.
The next few days he haunted the jungle or else spent some time in or near the ocean. By then, the
beach crowd had grown used to him and even began to laugh when he made his morning appearances.
One day, some of the men and women jumped him and, laughing uproariously, removed his clothes. He
ran after the woman with the pants, but she sped away into the jungle. When she reappeared she was
emptyhanded. By now he could speak well enough to be understood if he uttered the phrases slowly.
His years of teaching and study had given him a very large Greek vocabulary, and he had only to
master the tones and a number of words that were not in his Autenreith.
"Why did you do that?" he asked the beautiful black-eyed nymph.
"I wanted to see what you were hiding beneath those ugly rags. Naked, you are ugly, but those
things on you made you look even uglier."
"Obscene?" he said, but she did not understand the word.
He shrugged and thought. When in Rome... Only this was more like the Garden of Eden. The
temperature by day or night was comfortable and varied about seven degrees. There was no problem
getting a variety of food, no work demanded, no rent, no politics, no tension except an easily
relieved sexual tension, no national or racial animosities. There were no bills to pay. Or were
there? That you did not get something for nothing was the basic principle of the universe of
Earth. Was it the same here? Somebody should have to foot the bill.
At night he slept on a pile of grass in a large hollow in a tree. This was only one of thousands
of such hollows, for a particular type of tree offered this natural accommodation. Wolff did not
stay in bed in the mornings, however. For some days he got up just before dawn and watched the sun
arrive. Arrive was a better word than rise, for the sun certainly did not rise. On the other side
of the sea was an enormous mountain range, so extensive that he could see neither end. The sun
always came around the mountain and was high when it came. It proceeded straight across the green
sky and did not sink but disappeared only when it went around the other end of the mountain range.
An hour later, the moon appeared. It, too, came around the mountain, sailed at the same level
across the skies, and slipped around the other side of the mountain. Every other night it rained
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hard for an hour. Wolff usually woke then, for the air did get a little chillier. He would snuggle
down in the leaves and shiver and try to get back to sleep.
He was finding it increasingly more difficult to do so with each succeeding night. He would think
of his own world, the friends and the work and the fun he had there-and of his wife. What was
Brenda doing now? Doubtlessly she was grieving for him. Bitter and nasty and whining though she
had been too many times, she loved him. His disappearance would be a shock and a loss. However,
she would be well taken care of. She had always insisted on his carrying more insurance than he
could afford; this had been a quarrel between them more than once. Then it occurred to him that
she would not get a cent of insurance for a long time, for proof of his death would have to be
forthcoming. Still, if she had to wait until he was legally declared dead, she could survive on
social security. It would mean a drastic lowering of her living standards, but it would be enough
to support her.
Certainly he had no intention of going back. He was regaining his youth. Though he ate well, he
was losing weight, and his muscles were getting stronger and harder. He had a spring in his legs
and a sense of joy lost sometime during his early twenties. The seventh morning, he had rubbed his
scalp and discovered that it was covered with little bristles. The tenth morning, he woke up with
pain in his gums. He rubbed the swollen flesh and wondered if he were going to be sick. He had
forgotten that there was such a thing as disease, for he had been extremely well and none of the
beach crowd, as he called them, ever seemed ill.
His gums continued to hurt him for a week, after which he took to drinking the naturally fermented
liquor in the "punchnut." This grew in great clusters high at the top of a slender tree with
short, fragile, mauve branches and tobacco-pipe-shaped yellow leaves. When its leathery rind was
cut open with a sharp stone, it exuded an odor as of fruity punch. It tasted like a gin tonic with
a dash of cherry bitters and had a kick like a slug of tequila. It worked well in killing both the
pain in his gums and the irritation the pain had generated in him.
Nine days after he first experienced the trouble with his gums, ten tiny, white, hard teeth began
to shove through the flesh. Moreover, the gold fillings in the others were being pushed out by the
return of the natural material. And a thick black growth covered his formerly bald pate.
This was not all. The swimming, running, and climbing had melted off the fat. The prominent veins
of old age had sunk back into smooth firm flesh. He could run for long stretches without being
winded or feel as if his heart would burst. All this he delighted in, but not without wondering
why and how it had come about.
He asked several among the beach-crowd about their seemingly universal youth. They had one reply:
"It's the Lord's will."
At first he thought they were speaking of the Creator, which seemed strange to him. As far as he
could tell, they had no religion. Certainly they did not have one with any organized approach,
rituals, or sacraments.
"Who is the Lord?" he asked. He thought that perhaps he had mistranslated their word wanaks, that
it might have a slightly different meaning than that found in Homer.
Ipsewas, the zebrilla, the most intelligent of all he had so far met, answered, "He lives on top
of the world, beyond Okeanos." Ipsewas pointed up and over the sea, toward the mountain range at
its other side. "The Lord lives in a beautiful and impregnable palace on top of the world. He it
was who made this world and who made us. He used to come down often to make merry with us. We do
as the Lord says and play with him. But we are always frightened. If he becomes angry or is
displeased, he is likely to kill us. Or worse."
Wolff smiled and nodded his head. So Ipsewas and the others had no more rational explanation of
the origins or workings of their world than the people of his. But the beach-crowd did have one
thing lacking on Earth. They had uniformity of opinion. Everyone he asked gave him the same answer
as the zebrilla.
"It is the will of the Lord. He made the world, he made us."
"How do you know?" Wolff asked. He did not expect any more than he had gotten on Earth when he
asked the question. But he was surprised.
"Oh," replied a mermaid, Paiawa, "the Lord told us so. Besides, my mother told me, too. She ought
to know. The Lord made her body; she remembers when he did it, although that was so long, long
ago."
"Indeed?" Wolff said, wondering whether or not she were pulling his leg, and thinking also that it
would be difficult to retaliate by doing the same to her. "And where is your mother? I'd like to
talk to her."
Paiawa waved a hand toward the west. "Somewhere along there."
"Somewhere" could be thousands of miles away, for he had no idea how far the beach extended.
"I haven't seen her for a long time," Paiawa added.
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"How long?" Wolff said.
Paiawa wrinkled her lovely brow and pursed her lips. Very kissable, Wolff thought. And that body!
The return of his youth was bringing back a strong awareness of sex.
Paiawa smiled at him and said, "You are showing some interest in me, aren't you?"
He flushed and would have walked away, but he wanted an answer to his question. "How many years
since you saw your mother?" he asked again.
Paiawa could not answer. The word for "year" was not in her vocabulary.
He shrugged and walked swiftly away, to disappear behind the savagely colored foliage by the
beach. She called after him, archly at first, then angrily when it became evident he was not going
to turn back. She made a few disparaging remarks about him as compared to the other males. He did
not argue with her-it would have been beneath his dignity, and besides, what she said was true.
Even though his body was rapidly regaining its youth and strength, it still suffered in comparison
with the near-perfect specimens all around him.
He dropped this line of thought, and considered Paiawa's story. If he could locate her mother or
one of her mother's contemporaries in age, he might be able to find out more about the Lord. He
did not discredit Paiawa's story, which would have been incredible on Earth. These people just did
not lie. Fiction was a stranger to them. Such truthfulness had its advantages, but it also meant
that they were decidedly limited in imagination and had little humor or wit. They laughed often
enough, but it was over rather obvious and petty things. Slapstick was as high as their comedy
went-and crude practical jokes.
He cursed because he was having difficulty in staying on his intended track of thought. His
trouble with concentration seemed to get stronger every day. Now, what had he been thinking about
when he'd strayed off to his unhappiness over his maladjustment with the local society? Oh, yes,
Paiawa's mother! Some of the oldsters might be able to enlighten him-if he could locate any. How
could he identify any when all adults looked the same age? There were only a very few youngsters,
perhaps three in the several hundred beings he had encountered so far. Moreover, among the many
animals and birds here (some rather weird ones, too), only a half-dozen had not been adults.
If there were few births, the scale was balanced by the absence of death. He had seen three dead
animals, two killed by accident and the third during a battle with another over a female. Even
that had been an accident, for the defeated male, a lemon-colored antelope with four horns curved
into figure-eights, had turned to run away and broken his neck while jumping over a log.
The flesh of the dead animal had not had a chance to rot and stink. Several omnipresent creatures
that looked like small bipedal foxes with white noses, floppy basset-hound ears, and monkey paws
had eaten the corpse within a matter of an hour. The foxes scoured the jungle and scavenged
everything-fruit, nuts, berries, corpses. They had a taste for the rotten; they would ignore fresh
fruits for bruised. But they were not sour notes in the symphony of beauty and life. Even in the
Garden of Eden, garbage collectors were necessary.
At times Wolff would look across the blue, whitecapped Okeanos at the mountain range, called
Thayaphayawoed. Perhaps the Lord did live up there. It might be worthwhile to cross the sea and
climb up the formidable steeps on the chance that some of the mystery of this universe would be
revealed. But the more he tried to estimate the height of Thayaphayawoed, the less he thought of
the idea. The black cliffs soared up and up and up until the eye wearied and the mind staggered.
No man could live on its top, because there would be no air to breathe.
III
ONE DAY ROBERT WOLFF removed the silver horn from its hiding place in the hollow of a tree.
Setting off through the forest, he walked toward the boulder from which the man who called himself
Kickaha had thrown the horn. Kickaha and the bumpy creatures had dropped out of sight as if they
never existed and no one to whom he had talked had ever seen or heard of them. He would re-enter
his native world and give it another chance. If he thought its advantages outweighed those of the
Garden planet, he would remain there. Or, perhaps, he could travel back and forth and so get the
best of both. When tired of one, he would vacation in the other.
On the way, he stopped for a moment at an invitation from Elikopis to have a drink and to talk.
Elikopis, whose name meant "Bright-eyed," was a beautiful, magnificently rounded dryad. She was
closer to being "normal" than anyone he had so far met. If her hair had not been a deep purple,
she would, properly clothed, have attracted no more attention on Earth than was usually bestowed
on a woman of surpassing fairness.
In addition, she was one of the very few who could carry on a worthwhile conversation. She did not
think that conversation consisted of chattering away or laughing loudly without cause and ignoring
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