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Behind the Walls of Terra
Philip Jose Farmer
This adventure of Kickaha is dedicated to Jack Cordes, who lives in the pocket universes
of Peoria and Pekin.
The sky had been green for twenty-four years. Suddenly, it was blue.
Kickaha blinked. He was home again. Rather, he was once more on the planet of his birth.
He had lived on Earth for twenty-eight years. Then he had lived for twenty-four years in that
pocket universe he called . Now, though he did not care to be here, he was back "home."
He was standing in the shadow of an enormous overhang of rock. The stone floor was swept
clean by the wind that traveled along the face of the cliff. Outside the semi-cavern were
mountains covered with pine and fir trees. The air was cool but would get warmer, since this was
morning of a July day in southern California. Or it should be, if his calculations were correct.
Since he was high on the face of a mountain, he could see very far into the southwest.
There was a great valley beyond the nearer smaller valleys, a valley which he supposed was one
near the Los Angeles area. It surprised and unnerved him, because it was not at all what he had
expected. It was covered with a thick gray poisonous-looking cloud, that gave the impression of
being composed of many many thousands of fumes, as if the floor of the valley below the cloud were
jammed with geysers boiling and bubbling and pouring out the noxious gases of internal Earth.
He had no idea of what had occurred on Earth since that night in 1946 when he had been
transmitted accidentally from this universe to that of Jadawin. Perhaps the great basins of the
Los Angeles area were filled with poison gas that some enemy nation had dropped. He could not
guess what enemy could do this, since both Germany and Japan had been wrecked and utterly defeated
when he left this world, and Russia was sorely wounded.
He shrugged. He would find out in time. The memory banks below the great fortress-palace
at the top of the only planet in the universe of the green sky had said that this "gate" opened
into a place in the mountains near a lake called Arrowhead.
The gate was a circle of indestructible metal buried a few inches below the rock of the
floor. Only a dimly stained ring of purple on the stone marked its presence.
Kickaha (born Paul Janus Finnegan) was six feet one inch in height, weighed one hundred
and ninety pounds, and was broad-shouldered, lean-waisted, and massively thighed. His hair was red-
bronze, his eyebrows were thick, dark, and arching, his eyes were leaf-green, his nose was
straight but short, his upper lip was long, and his chin was deeply cleft. He wore hiking clothes
and a bag on his back. In one hand he held the handle of a dark leather case which looked as if it
contained a musical instrument, perhaps a horn or trumpet.
His hair was shoulder-length. He had considered cutting it before he returned to Earth, so
he would not look strange. But the time had been short, and he had decided to wait until he got to
a barber shop. His cover story would be that he and Anana had been in the mountains so long he had
not had a chance to clip his hair.
The woman beside him was as beautiful as it was possible for a woman to be. She had long
dark wavy hair, a flawless white skin, dark-blue eyes, and a superb figure. She wore hiking garb:
boots, Levi's, a lumberman's checked shirt, and a cap with a long bill. She also carried a pack on
her back in which were shoes, a dress, undergarments, a small handbag, and several devices which
would have startled or shocked an Earth scientist. Her hair was done in the style of 1946 as
Kickaha remembered it. She wore no makeup nor needed it. Thousands of years ago, she had
permanently reddened her lips, as every female Lord had done.
He kissed the woman on the lips and said, "You've been in a number of worlds, Anana, but
I'll bet in none more weird than Earth."
"I've seen blue skies before," she said. "Wolff and Chryseis have a five-hour start on us.
The Beller has a two-hour start. And all have a big world in which to get lost."
He nodded and said, "There was no reason for Wolff and Chryseis to hang around here, since
the gate is one-way. They'll take off for the nearest two-way gate, which is in the Los Angeles
area, if the gate still exists. If it doesn't, then the closest ones will be in Kentucky or
Hawaii. So we know where they should be going."
He paused and wet his lips and then said, "As for the Beller, who knows? He could have
gone anywhere or he may still be around here. He's in an absolutely strange world, he doesn't know
anything about Earth, and he can't speak any of the languages."
"We don't know what he looks like, but we'll find him. I know the Bellers," she said.
"This one won't cache his bell and then run away to hide with the idea he'll come back later for
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it. A Beller cannot endure the idea of being very far away from his bell. He'll carry it around as
long as he can. And that will be our only means of identifying him."
"I know," Kickaha said. He was having trouble breathing, and his eyes were beginning to
swim. Suddenly, he was weeping.
Anana was alarmed for a minute, and then she said, "Cry! I did it when I went back to my
home world once. I thought I was dry forever, that tears were for mortals. But coming back home
after so long exposed my weakness."
Kickaha dried his tears and took his canteen from his belt, uncapped it and drank deeply.
"I love my world, the green-skied world," he said. "I don't like Earth; I don't remember
it with much affection. But I guess I had more love for it than I thought. I'll admit that, every
once in a while, I had some nostalgia, some faint longing to see it again, see the people I knew.
But. . ."
Below them, perhaps a thousand feet down, a two-lane macadam road curbed around the side
of the mountain and continued upward until it was lost around the other side. A car appeared on
the upgrade, sped below them, and then was lost with the road. Kickaha's eyes widened, and he
said, "I never saw a car like that before. It looked like a little bug. A beetle!"
A hawk swung into view and, riding the currents, passed before them not more than a
hundred yards.
Kickaha was delighted, "The first red-tail I've seen since I left Indiana!"
He stepped out onto the ledge, forgetting for a second, but a second only, his caution.
Then he jumped back in under the protection of the overhang. He motioned to Anana, and she went to
one end of the ledge and looked out while he did so at the other.
There was nobody below, as far as he could see, though the many trees could conceal
anybody who did not want to be seen. He went out a little further and looked upward then but could
not see past the overhang. The way down was not apparent at first, but investigation revealed
projections just below the right side of the ledge. These would have to do for a start, and, once
they began climbing down, other hand and footholds had to appear.
Kickaha eased himself backward over the ledge, feeling with his foot for a projection.
Then he pulled himself back up and lay down on the ledge and again scrutinized the road and the
forest a thousand feet below. A number of bluejays had started screaming somewhere below him; the
air acted as a funnel to siphon the faint cries to him.
He took a pair of small binoculars from his shirt pocket and adjusted three dials on their
surface. Then he removed an earphone and a thin wire with a male jack on one end and plugged the
jack into the receptacle on the side of the binoculars. He began to sweep the forest below and
eventually centered it on that spot where the jays were raising such a ruckus.
Through the device, the distant forest suddenly became close, and the faint noises were
loud. Something dark moved, and, after he readjusted the binoculars, he saw the face of a man.
More sweepings of the device and more adjusting enabled him to see parts of three other men. Each
was armed with a rifle with scope, and two had binoculars.
Kickaha gave the device to Anana so she could see for herself. He said, "As far as you
know, Red Orc is the only Lord on Earth?"
She put the glasses down and said, "Yes."
"He must know about these gates, then, and he's set up some sort of alarm device, so he
knows when they're activated. Maybe his men are stationed close, maybe far off. Maybe Wolff and
Chryseis and the Beller got away before his men could get here. Maybe not. In any case, they're
waiting for us."
They did not comment about the lack of a permanent trap at the gates or a permanent guard.
Red Orc, or whatever Lord was responsible for these men, would make a game out of the invasion of
his home territory by other Lords. It was deadly but nevertheless a game.
Kickaha went back to viewing the four beneath the trees. Presently, he said, "They've got
a walkie-talkie."
He heard a whirring sound above him. He rolled over to look up and saw a strange machine
that had just flown down over the mountain to his right.
He said, "An autogyro!" and then the machine was hidden by a spur of the mountain. He
jumped up and ran into the cavern with Anana behind him.
The chopping sound of a plane's rotors became a roar and then the machine was hovering
before the ledge. Kickaha became aware that the machine was not a true autogyro. As far as he
knew, a gyro could not stand still in the air, or, as this was doing, swing from side to side or
turn around one spot. The body of the craft was transparent; he could see the pilot and three men
inside, armed with rifles. He and Anana were trapped, they had no place to run or hide.
Undoubtedly, Orc's men had been sent to find out what weapons the intruders carried. Under these
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conditions, the intruders would have to use their weapons, unless they preferred to be captured.
They did riot so prefer. They spoke the activating code word, aimed the rings at the machine, and
spoke the final word.
The needle-thin golden rays spat once, delivering the full charges in the rings' tiny
powerpacks.
The fuselage split in two places, and the plane fell. Kickaha ran out and looked down
over the ledge in time to see the pieces strike the side of the mountain below. One section went
up in a white and red ball which fissioned into a dozen smaller fire globes. All the pieces
eventually fell not too far apart near the bottom and burned fiercely. The four men under the
trees were white-faced, and the man with the walkie-talkie spat words into the transmitter.
Kickaha tried to tighten the beam so he could pick them up, but the noise from the burning machine
interfered.
Kickaha was glad that he had struck the first blow, but his elation was darkened. He knew
that the Lord had deliberately sacrificed the men in the gyro in order to find out how dangerous
his opponents were. Kickaha would have preferred to have gotten away undetected. Moreover, getting
down the mountainside would be impossible until night fell. In the meantime, the Lord would attack
again.
He and Anana recharged their rings with the tiny powerpacks. He kept a watch on the men
below while she scanned the sides of the mountain. Presently, a red convertible appeared on the
left, going down the mountain road. A man and a woman sat in it. The car stopped near the flaming
wreckage and the two got out to investigate. They stood around talking and then they got back into
the car and sped off.
Kickaha grinned. No doubt they were going to notify the authorities.
That meant that the four men would be powerless to attack. On the other hand, the
authorities might climb up here and find him and Anana. He could claim that they were just hikers,
and the authorities could not hold them for long. But just to be in custody for a while would
enable the Lord to seize them the moment they were released. Also, he and Anana would have a hard
time identifying themselves, and it was possible that the authorities might hold them until they
could be identified.
They would have no record of Anana, of course, but if they tracked down his fingerprints,
they would find something difficult to explain. They would discover that he was Paul Janus
Finnegan, born in 1918 near Terre Haute, Indiana, that he had served in a tank corps of the Eighth
Army during World War II, and that he had mysteriously disappeared in 1946 from his apartment in a
building in Bloomington while he was attending the University of Indiana, and that he had not been
seen since.
He could always claim amnesia, of course, but how would he explain that he was fifty-two
years old chronologically yet only twenty-five years old physiologically? And how would he explain
the origin of the peculiar devices in his backpack?
He cursed softly in Tishquetmoac, in Half-Horse Lakotah, in the Middle High German of
Dracheland, in the language of the Lords, and in English. And then he switched his thinking into
English, because he had half-forgotten that language and had to get accustomed to its use. If
those four men stuck there until the authorities showed up ...
But the four were not staying. After a long conversation, and obvious receipt of orders
from the walkie-talkie, they left. They climbed up onto the road, and within a minute a car
appeared from the right. It stopped, and the four got in and drove off.
Kickaha considered that this might be a feint to get him and Anana to climb down the
mountain. Then another gyro would catch them on the mountainside, or the men would come back. Or
both.
But if he waited until the police showed up, he could not come down until nightfall. Orc's
men would be waiting down there, and they might have some of the Lord's advanced weapons to use,
because they would not fear to use them at night and in this remote area.
"Come on," he said to Anana in English. "We're going down now. If the police see us, we'll
tell them we're just hitchhikers. You leave the talking to me; I'll tell them you're Finnish and
don't speak English yet. Let's hope there'll be no Finns among them."
"What?" Anana said. She had spent three and a half years on Earth in the 1880's and had
learned some English and more French but had forgotten the little she had known.
Kickaha repeated slowly.
"It's your world," she said in English. "You're the boss."
He grinned at that, because very few female Lords ever admitted there was any situation in
which the male was their master. He let himself down again over the ledge. He was beginning to
sweat. The sun was coming over the mountain now and shining fully on them, but this did not
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account for his perspiration. He was sweating out the possible reappearance of the Lord's men.
He and Anana had gotten about one-third of the way down when the first police car
appeared. It was black and white and had a big star on the side. Two men got out. Their uniforms
looked like those of state police, as he remembered those of the Midwest.
A few minutes later, another patrol car and an ambulance appeared. Then two more cars
stopped. After a while, there were ten cars.
Kickaha found a path that was sometimes precarious but led at an angle to the right along
the slope. He and Anana could keep hidden from the people below part of the time. If they should
be seen, they would not have to stop. The police could come after them, but they would be so far
behind that their pursuit would be hopeless.
Or so it seemed until another gyro appeared. This one swept back and forth, apparently
looking for bodies or survivors. Kickaha and Anana hid behind a large boulder until the craft
landed near the road. Then they continued their sidewise descent of the mountain.
When they reached the road, they drank some water and ate some of the concentrated food
they had brought from the other world. Kickaha told her that they would walk along the road, going
downward. He also reminded her that Red Orc's men would be cruising up and down the road looking
for them.
"Then why don't we hide out until nightfall?" she said. "Because in the daylight I can
spot a car that definitely won't be Orc's. I won't mind being picked up by one of them. But if
Orc's men show up and try anything, we have our rays and we can be on guard. At night, you won't
know who's stopping to pick you up. We could avoid the road altogether and hike alongside it in
the woods, but that's slow going. I don't want Wolff or the Beller to get too far ahead."
"How do we know they didn't both go the other way?" she said. "Or that Red Orc didn't pick
them up?"
"We don't," he said. "But I'm betting that this is the way to Los Angeles. It's westward,
and it's downhill. Wolff would know this, and the instinct of the Beller would be to go down, I
would think. I could be wrong. But I can't stand here forever trying to make up my mind what
happened. Let's go."
They started off. The air was sweet and clean; birds sang; a squirrel ran onto the branch
of a tall and half-dead pine and watched them with its bright eyes. There were a number of dead or
dying pines. Evidently, some plant disease had struck them. The only signs of human beings were
the skeletal power transmission towers and aluminum cables going up the side of a mountain.
Kickaha explained to Anana what they were; he was going to be doing much explaining from now on.
He did not mind. It gave her the opportunity to learn English and him the opportunity to relearn
it.
A car passed them from behind. On hearing it, Kickaha and Anana withdrew from the side of
the road, ready to shoot their ray rings or to leap down the slope of the mountain if they had to.
He gestured with his thumb at the car, which held a man, woman, and two children. The car did not
even slow down. Then a big truck pulling a trailer passed them. The driver looked as if he might
be going to stop but he kept on going.
Anana said, "These vehicles! So primitive! So noisy! And they stink!"
"Yes, but we do have atomic power," Kickaha said. "At least, we had atomic bombs. America
did anyway. I thought that by now they'd have atomic-powered cars. They've had a whole generation
to develop them."
A cream-colored station wagon with a man and woman and two teenagers passed them. Kickaha
stared after the boy. He had hair as long as Kickaha's and considerably less disciplined. The girl
had long yellow hair that fell smoothly over her shoulders, and her face was thickly made-up. Like
a whore's, he thought. Were those really green eyelids?
The parents, who looked about fifty, seemed normal. Except that she had a hairdo that was
definitely not around in 1946. And her makeup had been heavy, too, although not nearly as thick as
the girl's.
None of the cars that he had seen were identifiable. Some of them had a GM emblem, but
that was the only familiar thing. This was to be expected, of course. But he was startled when the
next car to pass was the beetle he had seen when he first looked down from the ledge. Or at least
it looked enough like it to be the same. VW? What did that stand for?
He had expected many changes, some of which would not be easy to understand. He could
think of no reason why such an ugly cramped car as the VW would be accepted, although he did
remember the little Willys of his adolescence. He shrugged. It would take too much energy and time
to figure out the reasons for everything he saw. If he were to survive, he would have to
concentrate on the immediate problem: getting away from Red Orc's men. If they were Red Orc's.
He and Anana walked swiftly in a loose-jointed gait. She was beginning to relax and to
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take an interest in the beauty of their surroundings. She smiled and squeezed his hand once and
said, "I love you." He kissed her on the cheek and said, "I love you, too." She was beginning to
sound and act like an Earthwoman, instead of the superaristocratic Lord.
He heard a car coming around the bend a quarter of a mile away and glanced back at it. It
was a black and white state police car with two golden-helmeted men. He looked straight ahead but
out of the side of his mouth said, "If this car stops, act easy. It's the police. Let me handle
things. If I hold up two fingers, run and jump down the side of the mountain. No! On second
thought . . . listen, we'll go with them. They can take us into town, or near it, and then we'll
stun them with the rings. Got it?"
The car, however, shot by without even slowing. Kickaha breathed relief and said, "We
don't look as suspicious as I feel."
They walked on down the road. As they came onto a half-mile stretch, they heard a faint
roar behind them. The sound became louder, and then Kickaha grinned with pleasure. "Motorcycles,"
he said. "Lots of them."
The roaring became very loud. They turned, and saw about twenty big black cycles race like
a black cloud around the corner of the mountain. Kickaha was amazed. He had never seen men or
women dressed like these. Several of them aroused a reflex he had thought dead since peace was
declared in 1945. His hand flew to the handle of the knife in bis belt sheath, and he looked for a
ditch into which to dive.
Three of the cyclists wore German coalscuttle helmets with big black swastikas painted on
the gray metal. They also wore Iron Crosses or metal swastikas on chains around their necks.
All wore dark glasses, and these, coupled with the men's beards or handlebar moustaches
and sideburns, and the women's heavy makeup, made their faces seem insectile. Their clothing was
dark, although a few men wore duty once-white T-shirts. Most wore calf-length boots. A woman
sported a kepi and a dragoon's bright-red, yellow-piped jacket. Their black leather jackets and T-
shirts bore skulls and crossbones that looked like phalluses, and the legend: LUCIFER'S LOUTS.
The cavalcade went roaring by, some gunning then: motors or waving at the two and several
wove back and forth across the road, leaning far over to both sides with their arms folded.
Kickaha grinned appreciatively at that; he had owned and loved a motorcycle when he was going to
high school in Terre Haute.
Anana, however, wrinkled up her nose. "The stink of fuel is bad enough," she said. "But
did you smell them? They haven't bathed for weeks. Or months."
"The Lord of this world has been very lax," Kickaha said. He referred to the sanitary
habits of the human inhabitants of the pocket universes which the other Lords ruled. Although the
Lords were often very cruel with their human property, they insisted on cleanliness and beauty.
They had established laws and religious precepts which saw to it that cleanliness was part of the
base of every culture.
But there were exceptions. Some Lords had allowed their human societies to degenerate into
dirt-indifference.
Anana had explained that the Lord of Earth was unique. Red Orc ruled in strictest secrecy
and anonymity, although he had not always done so. In the early days, in man's dawn, he had often
acted as a god. But he had abandoned that role and gone into hiding-as it were. He had let things
go as they would. This accounted for the past, present, and doubtless future mess in which
Earthlings were mired.
Kickaha had had little time to learn much about Red Orc, because he had not even known of
his existence until a few minutes before he and Anana stepped through the gates into this
universe. "They all looked so ugly," Anana said.
"I told you man had gone to seed here," he said. "There has been no selective breeding,
either by a Lord or by humans themselves."
Then they heard the muted roar of the cycles again, and in a minute they saw eight coming
back up the road. These held only men.
The cycles passed them, slowed, turned, and came up behind them. Kickaha and Anana
continued walking. Three cycles zoomed by them, cutting in so close that he could have knocked
them over as they went by. He was beginning to wonder if he should not have done so and therefore
cut down the odds immediately. It seemed obvious that they were going to be harassed, if not
worse.
Some of the men whistled at Anana and called out invitations, or wishes, in various
obscene terms. Anana did not understand the words but she understood the tones and the gestures
and grins that went with them. She scowled and made a gesture peculiar to the Lords. Despite their
unfamiliarity with it, the cyclists understood. One almost fell off his cycle laughing. Others,
however, bared their teeth in half-grins, half-snarls.
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