The Gates of Creation

XI

He did not have the slightest idea of what he would find on the other side. He expected either another planet or Urizen’s stronghold. He suspected that Urizen was not through playing with them, and that he would find himself on the third of the planets that revolved around Appirmatzum. He might have a comfortable landing or be dropping into a pit of wild beasts or down a precipice.

As he landed, he realized that he had come in against an incline. He bent his knees and put out his hands and so stopped himself from banging into the stone. It was smooth but not frictionless, and it leaned away from him at a forty-five degree angle. Turning, he saw why the grapples had slid back out of the gate at his first experiment. The base of the hexagon on this side was set flush with the stone. There was no purchase for any hold.

He smiled, knowing that his father had foreseen hooks and had set up the trap against them. But his son had gotten through.

Wolff pushed against the seemingly empty area within the hexagon. Unlike the gate through which they had entered the water-world, this was not one-way. Urizen did not care, for some reason or another, whether they went back into the planet of purple skies. Or he knew that they would never want to return to it.

Wolff climbed up the stone incline, which was set on the side of a hill. He tied one end of his rope around a small tree and then went back to the gate. He flipped the free end of the rope through the gate. It jerked, and presently Vala’s face appeared. He helped her through, and the two of them grabbed hold of the other Lords as they climbed through.

When Rintrah, the last, was safe, Wolff stuck his head through the gate for a final look. He made it quick, because it gave him a frightening feeling to know that his body was on a planet twenty thousand miles distant from his head. And it would be a grim joke, exactly to his father’s tastes, if Urizen should deactivate the gate at that moment.

The end of the bridge was only three feet from the hexagon. The scaffolding was still holding straight, although in time the currents would swing one of the boats supporting a leg and carry off the whole structure.

He withdrew his head, his neck feeling as if it had just escaped a guillotine.

The Lords should have been exultant, but they were too tired from their labors, and they were burdened with the future. By now, they knew that they were on another of the satellites of Appirmatzum. The sky was a deep yellow. The land around them was, apart from this hill, flat. The ground was covered with a six-inch high grass, and there were many bushes. These were much like the Terrestrial plants Wolff knew. There were at least a dozen species which bore berries of different sizes, colors, and shapes.

The berries had one thing in common, however. They all had a very disagreeable odor.

Near the hill of the gate was the shore of a sea. Along the sea ran a broad yellow sandbeach that extended as far as they could see. Wolff looked inland and saw mountains. The side of one had some curious formations that resembled a face. The longer he looked at it, the more sure he was that it was a face.

He said to the other Lords, “Our father has given us a sign, I think. A marker on the road to the next gate. I also think that he is not directing us just for our benefit.”

They started across the plain towards the distant ranges. Presently, they came to a broad river and followed its course. They found its water to be pure and sweet, and they ate the meat and berries they had brought with them from the white-and-purple world. Then the night-bringing moon swung around the horizon. This was mauve and, like the other satellites, swept the surface of the primary with a pale dusk.

They slept and marched all the next day. They were a silent troop now, tired and footsore and nervous because of their lack of weapons. Their silence was also a reflection of the hush of this world. Not an animal or bird cried, nor did they see any life besides themselves and the vegetation. Several times they thought they saw a small creature in the distance, but when they neared the place, they could find nothing.

The mountains were three days away. As they got closer, the features became more distinct. The evening of the second day, the face became that of Urizen. It was smiling at them, the eyes looking down. Then the Lords became even more silent and startful, since they could not escape the gigantic stone face of their father. Always, he seemed to be mocking them.

Halfway through the fourth day, they stood at the foot of the mountain and below the brobdingnagian chin of Urizen. The mountain was of solid stone, flesh-pink and very hard. Near where they stood was an opening, a narrow canyon that rose to the top of the mountain, at least ten thousand feet above.

Wolff said, “There doesn’t seem any other way to go than through there. Unless we go around the mountains. And I think we’d be wasting our time if we did that.”

Palamabron said, “Why should we do what our father wants?”

“We have no choice,” Wolff said.

“Yes, we’ll dance to his tune, and then he’ll catch us and spit us on a roast, like fowl,” Palamabron said. “I have a notion to quit this trudging, this weary weary road.”

“And where will you settle down?” Vala said. “Here? In this paradise? You may be too stupid to have noticed it, brother, but we are almost out of food. The meat is almost gone, and we ate the last of the berries this morning. We have seen nothing on this world that seems edible. You may try the berries, if you wish. But I think they’re poisonous.”

“Oh, Los! Do you think Urizen means to starve us to death?” Palamabron said.

Wolff said, “I think we’ll starve unless we find some food. And we won’t find any standing here.”

He led the way into the canyon. Their path took them on smooth bare rock that had once been the bed of the stream. The river had shifted to the other side of the canyon and was now several feet below the stone banks. Bushes grew sparsely on the lip of the stone.

The Lords followed a meandering course all day. That night, they ate the last of their food. When dawn came, they rose with empty bellies and a feeling that this time their fortune had deserted them. Wolff led them as swiftly as he dared, thinking that the sooner they got out of the gloomy canyon, the better. Moreover, this place offered no food. There were no fish in the river; there were not even insects.

The second day of their starvation, they saw their first living creature. They came around a bend, all silent and walking slowly. Their noiselessness, plus their approach from downwind, enabled them to be close to the animal before it detected them. Two feet high, it was standing on its kangaroo-like hind legs and holding a branch with two lemur-like front paws. On seeing them, it quit eating the berries, glanced wildly around, and then launched itself away with great leaps. Its long thin tail projected stiffly behind it.

Wolff started to run after it, but quit as soon as he realized its speed. The animal stopped when it was a hundred yards away and turned to face them. Its head was much like a purebred Persian cat’s except that the ears were a jackrabbit’s. The body was khaki; the head, chocolate; the ears, magenta.

Wolff advanced steadily towards it, and it fled until it was out of sight. He decided that it would be a good thing if the Lords had clubs in case they came within close range of the hopper again. He cut the bushes to make sticks that would be heavy enough to do the job.

Palamabron asked him why he did not kill the beast with his beamer. Wolff answered that he was trying to waste as little power as possible. The thing took off so swiftly that he was not sure he could hit it. The next time, power conservation or not, he would shoot. They had to have something to eat. They continued on their way and began seeing more of the hoppers. These must have been warned by the first, since they all kept well out of range.

Two hours later, they came to a wide fissure in the canyon walls. Wolff went down it and found that it led to a box canyon. This was about thirty feet lower than the main one, about three hundred yards wide and four hundred deep. The floor was thick with bushes, among which he saw one hopper.

He went back to the others and told them what they were to do. Luvah and Theotormon stayed within the narrow passage while the rest walked out into the canyon. They spread out in a wide circle to close in on the lone animal.

The hopper stood in a large clearing, its nose twitching, its head turning quickly from side to side. Wolff told the others to stop, and he walked slowly towards it, the club held behind his back. The animal waited until Wolff was within ten feet of it. Then it disappeared. Wolff whirled around, thinking that it had jumped with such swiftness that he had not been able to see it. There was no animal behind him. There were only the Lords, gaping and asking what had happened.

Approximately three seconds later, the beast reappeared. It was now thirty feet from him. Wolff took a step towards it, and it was gone again.

Three seconds later, there were two animals in the clearing. One was ten feet away from Vala. The other was to Wolff’s left and fifteen feet away.

“What the hell?” Wolff said. It took much to startle him. Now he was far more than startled. He was bewildered.

The animal near Vala disappeared. Now there was one left. Wolff ran towards it, his club raised and shouting, hoping to freeze the animal long enough to get a chance to strike it.

It vanished. A little later, it reappeared to his right. A second hopper was with it.

The Lords closed in on them. The two beasts suddenly became five.

After that, there was much yelling, screaming, and confusion. Some of the animals had popped up behind the Lords, and several Lords turned to give chase.

Then there were two of the creatures that Wolff was to call tempusfudgers.

These two became three as the wild chase continued for another three seconds.

Then there was one.

The Lords pursued that one and suddenly had two before them.

Three animals were being chased three seconds later.

Then there was one.

The Lords came in on it from all directions at full speed. Two animals reappeared, one directly in front of Palamabron. He was so startled, he tried to stop, stumbled, and fell on his face. The creature hopped over him and then vanished as Rintrah swung at it with his stick.

There were two now.

Three.

All of a sudden, none.

The Lords stopped running and stared at each other. Only the wind and their heavy breathing sounded in the box canyon.

Abruptly three of the beasts were in their midst.

The chase started again.

There was one.

Five.

Three.

Six.

For six seconds, three.

Six again.

Wolff called a halt to the milling chase. He led the Lords back to the entrance, where they sat down to recover their breath. Having done that, they began chattering away to each other, all asking the same questions and no one with an answer.

Wolff studied the six animals a hundred yards away. They had forgotten their panic, though not the cause of it, and were nibbling away at the berries.

A silence fell upon the Lords again. They looked at their pensive brother, and Vala said, “What do you make of it, Jadawin?”

“I’ve been thinking back to the time that the first animal we saw vanished,” he said. “I’ve been trying to calculate the lengths of their disappearances and the correlation between the number at one time and at succeeding times.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe. It doesn’t seem possible. But how else explain it. Or, if not explain, describe, anyway.

“Tell me, have any of you ever heard of a Lord having success with time-travel experiments?”

Palamabron laughed.

Vala said, “Jackass!” She spoke to WolfL “I have heard that Blind Orc tried for many years to discover the principles of time. But it is said that he gave up. He claimed that trying to dissect time was a problem as insolvable as explaining the origin of the universe.”

“Why do you ask?” Ariston said.

“There is a tiny subatomic particle which Earth scientists call the neutrino,” Wolff answered. “It’s an uncharged particle with zero rest mass. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

All shook their heads. Luvah said, “You know we were all exceedingly well educated at one time, Jadawin. But it has been thousands of years since we took any interest in science except to use the devices we had at hand for our purposes.”

“You are indeed a bunch of ignorant gods,” Wolff said. “The most powerful beings of the cosmos, yet barbaric, illiterate divinities.”

“What has that got to do with our present situation?” Enion said. “And why do you insult us? You yourself said we must quit these insults if we are to survive.”

“Forgive me,” Wolff said. “It’s just that I am sometimes overwhelmed at the discrepancy… never mind. Anyway, the neutrino behaves rather peculiarly. In such a manner, in fact, that it might be said to go backward in time.”

“It really does?” Palamabron said.

“I doubt it. But its behavior can be described in time-travel terms, whether the neutrino actually does go into reverse chronological gear or not.

“I believe the same applies to those beasts out there. Maybe they can go forward or backwards in time. Perhaps Urizen had the power to create such animals. I doubt it. He may have found them in some universe we don’t know about and imported them.

“Whatever their origin, they do have an ability which makes them seem to hop around in time. Within a three-second limit, I’d say.”

He drew a circle in the dirt with the end of his stick. “This represents the single animal we first saw.”

He drew a line from it and described another circle at its end. “This represents the disappearance of it, its nonexistence in our time. It was going forward in time, or seemed to.”

“I’ll swear it was not gone for three seconds when it first disappeared,” Vala said.

Wolff extended a line from the second circle and made a third circle at its end. Then he scratched a line at right angles to it, and bent it back to a position opposite the second circle.

“It leaped forward into time, or can be described as doing so. Then it went back to the time-slot it did not occupy when it made the first jump. Thus, we saw a beast for six seconds but did not know that it had gone forward and backward.

“Then the animal—let’s call it a tempusfudger—jumped forward again to the time at which its first—avatar—had come out of the first jump.

“Now we have two. The same animal, fissioned by time-travel.

“One jumped the three seconds forward again, and we did not see it during that tune. The other did not jump but ran about. It jumped when tempusfudger No. 2 reappeared.

“Only No. 1 also jumped back just as No. 2 came out of the time-hop. So we have two again.”

“But all of a sudden there were five?” Rintrah said. “Let’s see. We had two. Now No. 1 had made a jump, and he was one of the five. He jumped back to be one of the previous two. Then he jumped forward again to become No. 3 of the five.

“No. 2 had jumped, when there was only one tempusfudger, to become No. 2 of the five. No. 1 and No. 2 jumped forward and then back to also become No. 4 and 5 of the five.

“No. 4 and 5 then jumped ahead to the period when there were only two. Meanwhile, No. 1 had leaped over three seconds, No. 4 didn’t leap, and No. 5 did. So there were only two at that instant.”

He grinned at their lax faces. “Now do you understand?”

“That’s impossible,” Tharmas said. “Time-travel! You know it’s impossible!”

“Sure, I know. But if these animals aren’t time-traveling, what are they doing? You don’t know any more than I do. So, if I can describe their behavior as chronosaltation, and the description helps us catch them, why object?”

“Why don’t you use your beamer?” Rintrah said. “We’re all very hungry. I’m weak after chasing those flickering on-again-off-again things.”

Wolff shrugged and arose and walked towards the fudgers. They continued eating but kept watching him. When he was within thirty yards, they hopped away. He followed them until they were getting close to the blind wall of the canyon. They scattered. He put the beamer on half-power and aimed at one.

Perhaps the tempusfudger was startled by the raising of the weapon. It disappeared just as he fired, and the beam’s energy was absorbed by a boulder beyond it.

He cursed, flicked off the power, and aimed at another. This leaped to one side and avoided the first shot. He kept the power on and swung the beam to catch it. The animal jumped again, narrowly escaping the ray. Wolff twisted his wrist to bring the fudger within touch of the beam. The animal disappeared.

Quickly, he swung the weapon back towards the others. A fudger sprang across his field of vision, and he brought the white ray upon it.

It disappeared at the same time. There was a shout behind him. He turned to see the Lords pointing at a dead animal a few yards to his left. It lay in a heap, its fur scorched.

He blinked. Vala came running and said, “It dropped out of the air; it was dead and cooked when it hit the ground.”

“But I didn’t hit anything except just now,” he said. “And the animal I hit hasn’t reappeared yet.”

“That fudger was dead on arrival three seconds ago, maybe a little more,” she said. “Three seconds before you hit the other.”

She stopped, grinned, and said, “What do I mean… other? It’s the same one you hit. Killed before you hit it. Or just as you hit it. Only it jumped back.”

Wolff said, slowly, “You’re telling me I killed it first, then shot it.”

“No, not really. But it looked that way. Oh, I don’t know. I’m confused.”

“Anyway, we have something to eat,” he said. “But not much. There’s not enough meat there to satisfy us.”

He whirled and brought the beam around to describe a horizontal arc. It struck some rocks, then came to a fudger. And the beam went out.

He continued to aim the beamer steadily at the fudger, which stood poised upon its hind legs, its big eyes blinking.

“The power’s gone,” he said. He ejected the power pack and stuck the beamer into his belt. It was useless now, but he had no intention of throwing it away. The time might come when he would get his hands on some fresh packs.

He wanted to continue the hunt with sticks. The others vetoed him. Weak and hungry, they needed food at once. Although the meat was half-charred, they devoured it greedily. Their bellies quit rumbling a little. They rested a moment, then got to their feet and went after the tempusfudgers again.

Their plan was to spread out in a wide circle which would contract to bring all the animals within reach of the clubs. The fudgers began hopping wildly and flickering in and out of existence ... or time. At one moment, there were none, when all must have simultaneously decided to jump forward or to jump backward. It was difficult to tell what was going on during the hunt.

Wolff made no effort at the beginning to keep count. There were six, then zero, and then six, then three, then six, then one, then seven.

Back and forth, in and out, while the Lords ran around and howled like wolves and swung their sticks, hoping to connect with a fudger just as it came out of the chronoleap. Suddenly, Tharmas’ club thudded against the side of the head of one of the animals as it materialized. It collapsed, jerked several times, and died.

Eight had dropped out of the air. One had stayed behind as a carcass while the others became invisible. There should have been seven the next time, but there were eight again. Three seconds later, there were three. Another three seconds, nine. Zero. Nine. Two. Eleven. Seven. Two.

Eleven, and Wolff threw his stick and caught one in the back. It pitched forward on its face. Vala was on it with her stick and beat it to death before it could recover from its stunned condition.

There were fifteen, quickly cut to thirteen when Rintrah and Theotormon each killed one. Then, zero.

Within a minute, the tempusfudgers seemed to go riot. Terrified, they hurled themselves back and forth and became twenty-eight, zero, twenty-eight, zero, and fifty-six, or so Wolff roughly estimated it. It was, of course, impossible to make an accurate count. A little later, he was sure, only because his arithmetic assured him it should be so, that the doubling had resulted in one thousand seven hundred and ninety-two.

There had been no more casualties among the fudgers to reduce the number. The Lords had been unable to kill any. They were being buffeted by the ever-increasing horde, knocked down by hoppers appearing in front of them, behind them, and beside them, stepped upon, scratched, kicked, and hammered.

Suddenly, the little animals stampeded towards the exit of the canyon. They hurtled over the floor and should have jammed into the narrow pass, but somehow formed an orderly arrangement and were gone.

Slowly, sore and shaken, the Lords arose. They looked at the four dead animals and shook their heads. Out of almost eighteen hundred that had been at hand, easy prey—in theory—these pitiful four were left.

“Half a fudger will make one good meal for each of us,” Vala said. “That’s better than none. But what will we do tomorrow?”

The others did not answer. They began collecting wood for the cooking fires. Wolff borrowed Theotormon’s knife and started the skinning.

In the morning, they ate the scraps left over from the evening’s feast. Wolff led them on up. The canyon remained as silent as before, except for the river’s murmuring. The walls kept on pressing in. The sky burned yellow far above. Fudgers appeared at a distance. Wolff tried throwing rocks at them. He almost struck one, only to see it disappear as if it had slipped around a corner of air. It came into sight again, three seconds later, twenty feet away and hopping as if it had an important engagement it had suddenly recalled.

Two days after they had last eaten, the Lords were almost ready to try the berries. Palamabron argued that the repulsive odor of the berries did not necessarily mean that they had a disagreeable taste. Even if they did, they were not necessarily poisonous. They were going to die, anyway, so why not test the berries?

“Go ahead,” Vala said. “It’s your theory and your desire. Eat some!”

She was smiling peculiarly at him, as if she were enjoying the conflict between his hunger and fear.

“No,” Palamabron said. “I will not be your guinea pig. Why should I sacrifice myself for all of you? I will eat the berries only if all eat at the same time.”

“So you can die in good company,” Wolff said. “Come on, Palamabron. Put up or shut up—old Earth proverb. You’re wasting our time arguing. Either do it yourself or forget about it.”

Palamabron sniffed at the berry he was holding, made a face, and let the berry fall on the rocky floor. Wolff started to walk away, and the Lords followed. About an hour later, he saw another side-canyon. On the way into it, he picked up a round stone which was just the right size and weight for throwing. If only he could sneak up close enough to a fudger and throw the rock while it was looking the other way.

The canyon was a little smaller than that in which the Lords had made their first hunt. At its far end was a single tempusfudger, eating the berries. Wolff got down on his hands and knees and began the slow crawl towards it. He took advantage of every rock for covering and managed to get halfway across the canyon before the animal noticed anything. It suddenly quit moving its jaws, sat up, and looked around, its nose wiggling, its ears vibrating like a TV antenna in a strong wind.

Wolff hugged the ground and did not move at all. He was sweating with the effort and tension, since the starvation diet had weakened him considerably. He wanted to jump up and run at the fudger and hurl himself upon it, tear it apart, eat it raw. He could have devoured the entire animal from the tips of its ears down to the tip of its tail and then broken the bones open to suck out the marrow.

He forced himself to stay motionless. The animal must get over its suspiciousness soon, after which Wolff could resume his turtle-like approach.

Then, from behind a rock near the fudger, another beast appeared. It was gray except for red wolflike ears, had a long pointed face, a bushy tail, and was about midway in size between a fox and a coyote. It sprang at the tempusfudger, coming up from behind it just as it was looking the other way.

Its teeth closed on air. The fudger had disappeared, escaping the jaws by a fraction of an inch.

The predator also disappeared, vanishing before it struck the ground.

Three animals appeared, two fudgers and one predator. Wolff, who liked to tag unknown things, at once called it a chronowolf. For the first time, he was seeing the creature that nature—or Urizen—had placed here to keep the fudger from overpopulating this world.

Wolff now had time to figure out what was happening with the leapers. There had been two. Then there were none. Then, three. So the original fudger and the chronowolf had jumped ahead. But the fudger had stayed only a microsecond, and leaped back also. So that he had reproduced himself and now there were two for the wolf to chase.

Again, the animals vanished. They reappeared, four in number. Two fudgers, two chronowolves. The chase was on, not only in space but in the strange gray corridors of backwards-forwards time.

Another simultaneous jump into the tempolimbo. Wolff ran towards a boulder around which grew a number of bushes. He hurled himself down and then peered between the bushes.

Seven again. This time a wolf had come out of wherever he had been just behind his quarry. He hurled himself forward, and his jaws closed around the neck of the fudger. There was a loud crack; the fudger dropped dead.

Seven living, and one dead. A fudger had gone back and then forward again.

The living vanished. Evidently the wolf did not intend to stay behind and eat his kill.

Then six were jumping around the plain. Savagely, a wolf bit another wolf on the neck, and the attacked crumpled in death.

Nothing for three seconds. Wolff ran out and threw himself down on the ground. Although not hidden behind anything this time, he hoped that his motionlessness, combined with the terror of the fudgers and the bloodlust of the wolves, would make them not notice him.

Another wolf had been born out of time’s womb. Parthenogenesis of chronoviators.

Two wolves launched themselves at each other, while the third watched them, and the fudgers hopped around in apparent confusion.

The observer predator became participant, not in the struggle between his fellows, but in the hunt. He caught a fudger by the throat as it hurtled by him in its blind panic.

A fudger and a wolf died.

The living flickered out again. When they came back into his sight, a wolf gripped a fudger’s neck and cracked it.

Wolff slowly rose to his feet. At the exact moment that one of the wolves died, he hurled his stone at the winner. It must have caught the motion out of the corner of its eyes, since it vanished just before the stone would have struck. And when it shot out of the chute of time, it was going as swiftly as its four legs would take it towards the exit.

“I’m sorry to deprive you of the spoils of victory,” Wolff called out after it. “But you can resume the hunt elsewhere.”

He went to call the other Lords and to tell them that their luck had changed. Six animals would fill their bellies and furnish a little over for the next day.

There came the tune again when the Lords had been without food for three days. They were gaunt, their cheeks hollow, their eyes couched within dark and deep caves, their bellies advancing towards their spines. That day Wolff sent them out in pairs to hunt. He had intended to go alone but Vala insisted that he take Luvah with him. She would hunt by herself. Wolff asked her why she wanted it that way, and she replied that she did not care to be accompanied by only one man.

“You think you might become the victim of a cannibal?” Wolff said.

“Exactly,” she said. “You know that if we continue to go hungry, it’s inevitable that we’ll start eating one another. It may even have been planned by Urizen. He would very much enjoy seeing us kill one another and stuff our bellies with our own flesh and blood.”

“Have it your own way,” Wolff said. He left with Luvah to explore a series of side-canyons. The two sighted a number of fudgers eating from bushes and began the patient, hours-long creeping upon them. They came within an inch of success. The stone, thrown by Wolff, went past the head of his intended victim. After that, all was lost. The fudgers did not even bother to take refuge in tune but leaped away and were lost in another canyon.

Wolff and Luvah continued to look until near the time for the moon to bring another night of hunger-torn sleeplessness. When they got back to the meeting-place, they found the others, looking very perturbed. Palamabron and his hunting-companion, Enion, were missing.

“I don’t know about the rest of you,” Tharmas said, “but I’m too exhausted to go looking for the damn fools.”

“Maybe we should,” Vala said. “They might have had some luck and even now be stuffing themselves with good meat, instead of sharing it with us.”

Tharmas cursed. However, he refused to search for them. If they had had luck, he said, he would know it when he next saw their faces. They would not be able to hide their satisfaction from him. And he would kill them for their selfishness and greed.

“They wouldn’t be doing anything you wouldn’t if you had their chance,” Wolff said. “What’s all the uproar about? We don’t know that they’ve caught anything. After all, it was only a suggestion by Vala. There’s no proof, not the slightest.”

They grumbled and cursed but soon were asleep with utter weariness.

Wolff slept, too, but awoke in the middle of the night. He thought he had heard a cry in the distance. He sat up and looked at the others. They were all there, except for Palamabron and Enion.

Vala sat up also. She said, “Did you hear something, brother? Or was it the wailing of our bellies?”

“It came from upriver,” he said. He rose to his feet. “I think I shall go look.”

She said, “I’ll go with you. I cannot sleep any longer. The thought that they might be feasting keeps me angry and awake.”

“I do not think the feasting will be on the little hoppers,” he said.

She said, “You think…”

“I do not know. You spoke of the possibility. It becomes stronger every day, as we become weaker and hungrier.”

He picked up his stick, and they walked along the edge of the river. They had little difficulty seeing where they were going. The moon brought only a half-darkness. Even though the walls of the canyon deepened the twilight, there was still enough light for them to proceed with confidence.

So it was that they saw Palamabron before he saw them. His head appeared for a moment above a boulder near the wall of the canyon. His profile was presented to them, then he disappeared. On bare feet, they crept towards him. The wind carried to them the noise he was making. It sounded as if he were striking one stone against another.

“Is he trying to make a fire?” Vala whispered.

Wolff did not answer. He was sick, since he could think of only one reason why Palamabron would want to build a fire. When he came to the huge rock behind which Palamabron was, he hesitated. He did not want to see what he thought he must when he came around the boulder.

Palamabron had his back to them. He was on his knees before a pile of branches and leaves and was knocking a piece of flint against a rock that was heavy in iron.

Wolff breathed a sigh of relief. The body beside Palamabron was that of a fudger. Where was Enion?

Wolff came up silently behind Palamabron, his stick raised high. He spoke loudly. “Well, Palamabron?”

The Lord gave a short scream and dived forward over the firepile. He rolled and came up on his feet, facing them. He held a very crude flint knife.

“It’s mine,” he snarled. “I killed it, and I want it. I have to have it. I’ll die if I don’t get to eat!”

“So will we all,” Wolff said. “Where is your cousin?”

Palamabron spat and said, “The beast! He’s no cousin of mine. How should I know where he is? Why should I care?”

“You went out with him,” Wolff said.

“I don’t know where he is. We got separated while we were hunting.”

“We thought we heard a cry,” Vala said.

“It was a fudger, I think,” Palamabrcn said. “Yes, it was. The one I killed a little while ago. I found it sleeping and killed it and it cried out as it died.”

“Maybe,” Wolff said. He backed away from Palamabron until he was at a safe distance. He continued on up the rivershore. Before he had gone a hundred yards, he saw the hand lying beside a boulder. He went around it and found Enion. The back of his head was crushed in; beside him lay the bloody rock that had killed him.

He returned to Palamabron and Vala. She was still there; the Lord and the fudger were gone.

“Why didn’t you stop him?” Wolff said.

She shrugged and smiled. “I’m only a woman. How could I stop him?”

“You could have,” he replied. “I think you wanted to enjoy the chase after him. Well, let me tell you, there won’t be any. None of us have the strength to waste it climbing around here. And when he eats, he’ll have enough strength to outclimb or outrun us.”

“Very well,” she said. “So what do we do now?”

“Keep on going and hope for the best.”

“And starve!” she said. She pointed at the boulder which hid Enion’s body. “There’s enough food for all of us.”

Wolff did not reply for a moment. He had not wanted to think about this, but, since he was faced with it, he would do what had to be done. Vala was right. Without this food, however horrible it was to think about it, they might well die. In a way, Palamabron had done them a favor. He had taken the guilt upon himself of killing for them. They could eat without considering themselves murderers. Not that killing would bother the rest of them. He, however, would have suffered agonies if he had been forced into a position where he had to slay a human being to survive.

As for the actual eating, he was now feeling only a slight repulsion. Hunger had deadened his normal horror against cannibalism.

He returned to wake the others while Vala picked up the rocks dropped by Palamabron. By the time they returned, she had not only started a fire but was intent on the butchering. Wolff held back for a moment. Then, thinking that if he was to share in the food, he should also share in the work, he took Theotormon’s knife. The others offered a hand, but he turned them down. It was as if he wanted to punish himself by making himself do most of the grisly work.

When the meal was cooked, half-cooked, rather, he took his share and went around the boulder to eat. He was not sure that he could keep the meat down, and he was sure that if he watched the others eat, he would not be able to keep from vomiting. Somehow, it did not seem so bad if he were alone.

Dawn had found them still cooking. Not until the middle of the morning did they start traveling again. The meat that had not been eaten was wrapped in leaves.

“If Urizen was watching us,” Wolff said, “he must really be laughing.”

“Let him laugh,” Vala said. “My turn will come.”

“Your turn? You mean, our turn.”

“You may do what you like. All I’m interested in is what I do.”

“Typical of the Lords,” said Wolff without elaborating. He watched her for a while after that. She had amazing vitality. Perhaps it was the food that had given her such a swift walk and had filled out her cheeks and arms. He did not think so. Even during the starvation, she had not seemed to suffer as much as the rest or to waste away as swiftly.

If anybody could survive to get at her father’s throat, it would be Vala, he thought.

May I not be far behind her, he prayed. Not so much for vengeance on Urizen, though I want that, as to rescue Chryseis.