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Palamabron? Are you as dead as you look . . . and act? You were certainly lively enough a little while
ago."
Palamabron flushed, but he said nothing. He was watching the growth of tiny crystals on the walls of the
hole and along the edges of the scratch.
"Self-regeneration," Wolff said. "Now, I have read as much as possible on the old science of our
ancestors, but I have never read or heard of anything like this. Urizen must have knowledge lost to
others."
"Perhaps," Vala said, "he has gotten it from Red Orc. It is said that Orc knows more than all of the other
Lords put together. He is the last of the old ones; it is said that he was born over a half a mil-lion years
ago."
"It is said. It is said," Wolff mimicked. "The truth is that nobody has seen Red Ore for a hundred
millennia. I think he is a dead man but his legend lives on. Enough of this. We have to find the next set of
gates, though where those will lead us, I don't know."
He rose carefully and shuffled slowly a few steps forward. The sur-face of this world was not entirely
barren vitreosity. There were widely spaced trees several hundred yards away and between them
mushroom-shaped bushes. The trees had thin spiraling trunks that were striped with red and white, like
barber poles. The trunks rose straight for twenty feet, then curved to left or right. Where the curve began,
branches grew. These were shaped like horizontal 9's and covered with a thin gray fuzz, the strands of
which were about two feet long.
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Rintrah, naked, shivered and said, "It is not cold, but something makes me uneasy and quivers through
me. Perhaps it is the silence. Listen, and you hear nothing."
They fell silent. There was only a distant soughing, the wind rip-pling through the bushes and the stiff
projections on the end-curled branches, and the slursh-slursh of the river. Aside from that, nothing. No
bird calls. No animal cries. No human voices. Only the sound of wind and river and even that hushed as
if pressed down by the purple of the skies.
Around them the pale white land rolled away to the four horizons. There were some high rounded hills,
the tallest of which was that which had sent them speeding down the hill. From where they stood, they
could see its mound and the gate, a tiny dark object, on its top. The rest was low hills and level spaces.
Where do we go from here? Wolff thought. Without some clue, we could wander forever. We could
wander to the end of our lives, pro-vided we find something to eat on the way.
He spoke aloud. "I believe we should follow along the river. It leads downward, perhaps to some large
body of water. Urizen cast us into the river; this may mean that the river is to be our guide to the next
gate... or gates."
"That may be true," Enion said. "But your father and my uncle has a crooked brain. In his perverse way,
he may be using the river as an indication that we should go up it, not down it."
"You may be right, cousin," Wolff replied. "However there is only one way to find out. I suggest we go
downriver, if only because it will be easier traveling." He said to Vala, "What do you think?"
She shrugged and said, "I don't know. I picked the wrong gate the last time. Why ask me?"
"Because you were always the closest to father. You know better than the rest of us how he thinks."
She smiled slightly. "I do not think you mean to compliment me by that. But I will take it as such. Much
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as I hate Urizen, I also ad-mire and respect his abilities. He has survived where most of his
con-temporaries have not. Since you ask, I say we go downriver."
"How about the rest of you?" Wolff said. He had already made up his mind which direction he was
going, but he did not want the others complaining if they went the wrong way. Let them share the
responsibility.
Palamabron started to speak. "I say, no, I insist, that. . ."
IX
A WAIL CAME DOWN AGAINST THE WIND, AND THEY TURNED TO STARE upriver.
Several hundred yards away, an animal tall as an elephant had appeared from around a hill. Now it stood
between two large boulders, the head on the end of its long neck much like that of a camel's with antlers.
Its eyes were enormous and its teeth long and sharp, a carnivore's. Its body was red-brown and furry
and sloped sharply back from the shoulders. The legs were thin as a giraffe's, de-spite the heavy body.
They ended in great spreading dark-blue cups. On seeing the cup-feet, Wolff guessed their function.
They looked too much like suckers or vacuum pads, which would be one of the few means to enable an
animal to walk across this smooth surface. "Stand still," he said to the others. "We can't run; if we could,
there'd be no place to go."
The beast snorted and slowly advanced towards them. It swiveled its neck back and forth, turning its
head now and then to look behind it. The right front foot and left rear foot raised in unison, the cups
giving a plopping noise. These came down to give it a hold in its for-ward progress. Then the left front
foot and the right rear one raised, and so it came towards them. When it was fifty yards from them, it
stopped and raised its head. It gave a cry that was half-bray and half-banshee wail. It lowered its neck
until the jaw was on the ground and then scraped the jaw against the ground. The head slid back and
forth on the pale surface.
Wolff thought that this motion could be the equivalent of the paw-ing of dirt of a Terrestrial bull before it
charged. He put his beamer on half-power and waited. Suddenly, the creature raised its head as high as it
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