The Maker of Universes Read online

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

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

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

  “Show me anyway.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “That’s horrible!”

  “The truth often is.”

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

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

  “So am I, but we’re going.”

  IV

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Nothing but the green sky.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Wolff jumped forward and thrust the end of his blade between two cartilaginous bosses and into the gworl’s thick neck. The muscles were thick and tough there, but not enough to stop the blade. Only when the steel severed the windpipe did it halt.

  Wolff handed Chryseis the gworl’s knife. “Here, take it!”

  She accepted it, but she seemed to be in shock. Wolff slapped her savagely until the glaze went from her eyes. “You did fine!” he said. “Which would you rather see dead, me or him?”

  He removed the belt from the corpse and fastened it on himself. Now he had three knives. He scabbarded the bloody weapon, took the horn in one hand, Chryseis’ hand in the other, and began running again. Behind them, a howl arose as the first of the gworl came over the edge of the hill. However, Wolff and Chryseis had about thirty yards’ start, which they maintained until they reached the group of trees growing on the rim. Chryseis took the lead. She let herself face down on the rim and rolled over. Wolff looked over once before blindly following and saw a small ledge about six feet down from the rim. She had already let herself down the ledge and now was hanging by her hands. She dropped again, this time to a much more narrow ledge. But it did not end; it ran at a forty-five degree angle down the face of the cliff. They could use it if they faced inward against the stone cliff-wall and moved sideways, their hands spread to gain friction against the wall.

  Wolff used both hands also; he had stuck the horn through the belt.

  There was a howl from above. He looked up to see the first of the gworl dropping onto the ledge. Then he glanced back at Chryseis and almost fell off from shock. She was gone.

  Slowly, he turned his head to see over his shoulder and down below. He fully expected to find her falling down the face of the cliff, if not already past it and plunging into the green abyss.

  “Wolff!” she said. Her head was sticking out from the cliff itself. “There’s a cave here. Hurry.”

  Trembling, sweating, he inched along the ledge to her and presently was inside an opening. The ceiling of the cave was several feet higher than his head; he could almost touch the walls on both sides when he stretched out his arms; the interior ran into the darkness.

  “How far back does it go?”

  “Not very far. But there’s a natural shaft, a fault in the rock, that leads down. It opens on the bottom of the world; there’s nothing below, nothing but air and sky.”

  “This can’t be,” he said slowly. “But it is. A universe founded on physical principles completely different than those of my universe. A flat planet with edges. But I don’t understand how gravity works here. Where is its center?”

  She shrugged and said, “The Lord may have told me a long time ago. But I’ve forgotten. I’d even forgotten he told me that Earth was round.”

  Wolff took the leather belt off, slid the scabbards off it, and picked up an oval black rock weighing about ten pounds. He slipped the belt through the buckle and then placed the stone within the loop. After piercing a hole near the buckle with the point of his knife, he tightened the loop. He had only to buckle the belt, and he was armed with a thong at the end of which was a heavy stone.

  “You get behind and to one side of me,” he said. “If I miss any, if one gets in past me, you push while he’s off-balance. But don’t go over yourself. Do you think you can do it?”

  She nodded her head but evidently did not trust herself to speak.

  “This is asking a lot of you. I’d understand if you cracked up completely. But, basically, you’re made of sturdy ancient-Hellenic stock. They were a pretty tough lot in those days; you can’t have lost your strength, even in this deadening pseudo-Paradise.”

  “I wasn’t Achaean,” she said. “I was Sminthean. But you are, in a way, right. I don’t feel as badly as I thought I would. Only...”

  “Only it takes getting used to,” he said. He was encouraged, for he had expected a different reaction. If she could keep it up, the two of them might make it through this. But if she fell apart and he had a hysterical woman to control, both might fall under the attack of the gworl.

  “Speaking of which,” he muttered as he saw black, hairy, gnarled fingers slide around the corner of the cave. He swung the belt hard so that the stone at its end smashed the hand. There was a bellow of surprise and pain, then a long ululating scream as the gworl fell. Wolff did not wait for the next one to appear. He got as close to the lip of the cave ledge as he dared and swung the stone again. It whipped around the corner and thudded against something soft. Another scream came, and it, too, faded away into the nothingness of the green sky.

  “Three down, seven to go! Provided that no more have joined them.”

  He said to Chryseis, “They may not be able to get in here. But they can starve us out.”

  “The horn?” He laughed. “They wouldn’t let us go now even if I did hand them the horn. And I don’t intend for them to get it. I’ll throw the horn into the sky rather than do that.”

  A figure was silhouetted against the mouth of the cave as it dropped from above. The gworl, swinging in, landed on his feet and teetered for a second. But he threw himself forward, rolled in a hairy ball, and was up on his feet again. Wolff was so surprised that he failed to react immediately. He had not expected them to be able t
o climb above the cave and let themselves down, for the rock above the cave had looked smooth. Somehow, one had done it, and now he was inside, on his feet, a knife in hand.

  Wolff whirled the stone at the belt-end and loosed it at the gworl. The creature flipped its knife at him; Wolff dodged but spoiled his aim of the stone. It flew over the furry bumpy head; the thrown knife brushed him lightly on his shoulder. He jumped for his own knife on the floor of the cave, saw another dark shape drop into the cave from above, and a third come around the corner of the mouth.

  Something hit his head. His vision blurred, his senses grew dim, his knees buckled.

  When he awoke, a pain in the side of his head, he had a frightening sensation. He seemed to be upside down and floating above a vast polished black disc. A rope was tied around his neck, and his hands were tied behind his back. He was hanging with his feet up in the empty air, yet there was only a slight tension of rope around his neck.

  Bending his head back, he could see that the rope led upward into a shaft in the disc and that at the far end of the shaft was a pale light.

  He groaned and closed his eyes, but opened them again. The world seemed to spin. Suddenly he was reoriented. Now he knew that he was not suspended upside down against all the laws of gravity. He was hanging by a rope from the bottom underside of the planet. The green below him was the sky.

  He thought, I should have strangled before now. But there is no gravity pulling me downward.

  He kicked his feet, and the reaction drove him upward. The mouth of the shaft came closer. His head entered it, but something resisted him. His motion slowed, stopped, and, as if there were an invisible and compressed spring against his head, he began to move back down. Not until the rope tightened again did he stop his flight.

  The gworl had done this to him. After knocking him out, they had let him down the shaft, or more probably, had carried him down. The shaft was narrow enough for a man to get down it with his back to one wall and his feet braced against the other. The descent would scrape the skin off a man, but the hairy hide of the gworl had looked tough enough to withstand descent and ascent without injury. Then a rope had been lowered, placed around his neck, and he had been dropped through the hole in the bottom of the world.