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no predator came along. He had no way to estimate the time
except by his sleeping requirements. It seemed to him that
roughly three days had passed since he had been here. During
this period, he explored, mostly on tiptoes, a quarter mile each
way. He found nothing that he had not seen near the gate. He
also investigated this. The square of metal looked the same on
this side as it did on the other. He made a rope of the omuthid
and threw one end through the gate. The part that went through
the gate was cut off.
Because of the wounds, he had to sleep on his face on the
hard crystalline floor. Unfortunately, he rolled and turned
then, and he awoke often and painfully. The only good
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thing about his situation was that the temperature remained
790
RED ORC'S RAGE
comfortable. Also, the air did not become stale but moved
slowly through the tunnel.
Each "day," after awakening, he removed the omuthid
patches from the wounds and replaced them with fresh
pads. They came off as if they were indeed glued. The
wounds were healing, but the areas of skin covered by the
patches were pricked with many red dots. They looked as if
the omuthid had applied tiny suckers to the skin, and the
green stuff had a distinct reddish underlay. At the end of the
three days, he concluded that the omuthid was sucking his
blood, though not in large quantities. He was not as strong
as when he had entered this world. Of course, his diet might
be lacking in vitamins and minerals.
Nevertheless, he could walk without too much pain, and
he could sit down for several minutes before he had to
remove his buttocks from pressure. After another sleep, he
set out upstream as instinctively as a salmon seeking its
hatching place. The tunnel ran straight for an estimated
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twenty miles, which he traversed after sleeping only once.
The light stayed steady, as it had done since he had been
here. The tunnel was silent except for the drumming of his
blood in his ears. To get rid of that, he began talking to
himself and also sang often.
The feeling of loneliness and the thought that he might be
here until he died kept him company. It was not the sort of
company he cared for.
Finally, he came to a fork in the tunnel. At the base of the
wall between the two tunnels was a bubbling pool. Along one
side of each of the forks was a shallow trough through which
water ran. These emptied into the pool, but the bubbling and
the swirling in it indicated that it was also fed by a spring.
Ore took the tunnel to his right. After a while, it widened
and became as big as that which he had left. He trudged on,
singing a song his mother had taught him when he was a
797
PHILIP JOSE FARMER RED ORC'S RAGE
child. Suddenly, he stopped, and he turned to face the
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left-side wall. Something flickering along the wall, halfway
down its height, had caught his eye.
Whatever it was had ceased, but he kept his head turned
toward the wall while he walked on. Then, he stopped
again. His brain had not been playing tricks on him, not
unless he had gone crazy from solitude. A series of large
black figures, symbols, perhaps, moved in a rather speedy
parade along the wall. They came from behind him and
traveled ahead of him until he could no longer see them.
They ceased for a few minutes. Or perhaps it was for an
hour. Ore had lost his sense of time. Only when he counted
the seconds and the minutes could he be sure of its passage.
Suddenly, the first of a series of the symbols, many of
them repeated in different combinations, sped along on the
wall. Parts of them were obscured when they passed
beneath the omuthid and knobs. After several hundreds had
sped by, they stopped. Ore resumed walking. Some time
later, another series began. Ore counted the seconds then.
The train took thirty-one to pass him.
If they made a message, its transmission was slow. But he
was quickened by it. No natural process could produce such
distinct and differentiated figures in an obviously artificial order.
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Some minutes later, another string of the same symbols,
repeated in the same arrangement, shot by. After that, the
wall was blank.
Ore hastened onward. The tunnel curved gradually to the
right until it seemed to be going at right angles to its original
direction. When he got very tired, he stopped and ate. By
now, he was sick of the taste of caramel-cum-broccoli.
Jim Grimson was as fed up as Ore with the omuthid.
When the Lord ate it, Jim ate it. Ore's problems were also
Jim's. But Jim had others, too. The ghostbrain, his shadowy
cotenant, seemed to be getting larger. Now that Ore was just
792
sitting and chewing, no emotions raging in him, though his
mind was active, he was in a relatively quiescent state. Thus,
Jim was able to concentrate on his own thoughts and act as he
wished. But he was still half Ore and likely, when his host was
aroused or irate, to be slammed back into a near-Ore persona.
Jim "moved" closer to the ghostbrain. It "retreated." There
could be no movement in the physical sense, just as there
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could be no "seeing" or "hearing" or "touching" by beings
without limbs or sensory organs. Jim "knew," however, that
he had advanced and that the ghostbrain had backed away.
He continued to go toward the thing. It kept on moving
away. Was it afraid of him? Perhaps Jim was dangerous to
it. If that was so, he would have to find out how it could be
attacked. Easy to say; hard to do.
Ore slept, ate with little appetite, and started walking
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| Cytat |
Dobre pomysły nie mają przeszłości, mają tylko przyszłość. Robert Mallet
De minimis - o najmniejszych rzeczach.
Dobroć jest ważniejsza niż mądrość, a uznanie tej prawdy to pierwszy krok do mądrości. Theodore Isaac Rubin
Dobro to tylko to, co szlachetne, zło to tylko to, co haniebne.
Dla człowieka nie tylko świat otaczający jest zagadką; jest on nią sam dla siebie. I z obu tajemnic bardziej dręczącą wydaje się ta druga. Antoni Kępiński (1918-1972)
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