Kickaha sat up and said, "What."
His hand, flailing out, knocked over his glass of beer. He paid it no attention but stared at her.
"What did you say?"
"You want me to repeat the whole thing?"
"No, no! That final... the part where you said he came back to this universe, the first one he made!"
"Yes? What's so upsetting about that?"
Kickaha did not stutter often. But now he could not quite get the words out.
Finally, he said, "L-listen! I accept the idea of the pocket universes of the Lords, because I've lived in one half my life and I know others exist because I've been told about them by a man who doesn't lie and I've seen the Lords of other universes, including you! And I know there are at least one thousand and eight of these relatively small manufactured universes.
"But I had always thought... I still think... it's impossible... my universe is a natural one, just as you say your home universe, Gardzrintrah, was."
"I didn't say that," she said softly. She took his hand and squeezed it.
"Dear Kickaha, does it really upset you so much?"
"You must be mistaken, Anana," he said. "Do you have any idea of the vastness of this universe? In fact, it's infinite! No man could make this incredibly complex and gigantic world! My God, the nearest star is four and some light-years away and the most distant is billions of light-years away, and there must be others billions of billions of light-years beyond these!
"And then there is the age of this universe! Why, this planet alone is two and one-half billion years old, the last I heard! That's a hell of a lot older than fifteen thousand years, when the Lords moved out of their home world to make their pocket universes! A hell of a lot older!"
Anana smiled and patted his hand as if she were his grandmother and he a very small child.
"There, there! No reason to get upset, lover. I wonder why Wolff didn't tell you. Probably he forgot it when he lost his memory. And when he got his memory back, he did not get all of it back. Or perhaps he took it so for granted that he never considered that you didn't know, just as I took it for granted."
"How can you explain away the infinite size of this world, and the age of Earth? And the evolution of life?" he said triumphantly. "There, how do you explain evolution? The undeniable record of the fossils? Of carbon-14 dating and potassium-argon dating? I read about these new discoveries in a magazine on that bus, and their evidence is scientifically irrefutable!"
He fell silent as the waitress picked up their empty glasses. As soon as she left, he opened his mouth, and then he closed it again. The TV above the bar was showing the news and there on the screen was a drawing of two faces.
He said to Anana, "Look there!"
She turned just in time to see the screen before the drawing faded away.
"They looked like us!" she said.
"Yeah. Police composites," he said. "The hounds have really got the scent now! Take it easy! If we get up now, people might look at us. But if we sit here and mind our own business, as I hope the other customers are going..."
If it had been a color set, the resemblance would have been much less close, since they had dyed their hair. But in black and white, their pictures were almost photographic.
However, no one even looked at them and it was possible that no one except the drunks at the bar had seen the TV set. And they were not about to turn around and face them.
"What did that thing say?" Anana whispered, referring to the TV.
"I don't know. There was too much noise for me to hear it. And I can't ask anybody at the bar."
He was having afterthoughts about his plans. Perhaps he should give up his idea of tricking Red Orc out of hiding. Some things were worth chancing, but with the police actively looking for him, and his and Anana's features in every home in California, he did not want to attract any attention at all. Besides, the idea had been one of those wild hares that leaped through the brier patches of his mind. It was fantastic, too imaginative, but for that very reason might have succeeded. Not now, though. The moment he put his plan into action, he would bring down Orc's men and the police, and Red Orc would not come out himself because he would know where Kickaha was.
"Put on the dark glasses now," he said. "Enough time has gone by that nobody'd get suspicious and connect us with the pictures."
"You don't have to explain everything," she said sharply. "I'm not as unintelligent as your Earthwomen."
He was silent for a moment. Within a few minutes, so many events had dropped on his head like so many anvils. He wanted desperately to pursue the question of the origin and nature of this universe, but there was no time. Survival, finding Wolff and Chryseis, and killing the Beller, these were the important issues. Just now, survival was the most demanding.
"We'll pick up some more luggage," he said. "And the bell, too. I may be able to use it later, who knows?"
He paid the bill, and they walked out. Ten minutes later, they had the bell. The metalworker had done a good enough job. The bell wouldn't stand a close-up inspection by any Lord, of course. But at a reasonable distance, or viewed by someone unfamiliar with it, it would pass for the prized possession of a Beller. It was bell-shaped but the bottom was covered, was one and a half times the size of Kickaha's head, was made of aluminum, and had been sprayed with a quick-dry paint. Kickaha paid the maker of it and put the bell in the hatbox he had gotten from the shop.
A half hour later they walked across MacArthur Park.
Besides the soap-box speakers, there were a number of winos, hippie types, and some motorcycle toughs. And many people who seemed to be there just to enjoy the grass or to watch the unconventionals.
As they rounded a big bush, they stopped.
To their right was a concrete bench. On it sat two bristly-faced, sunken-cheeked, blue-veined winos and a young man. The young man was a well-built fellow with long dirty blond hair and a beard of about three days' growth. He wore clothes that were even dirtier and more ragged than the winos'.
A cardboard carton about a foot and a half square was on the bench by his side.
Anana started to say something and then she stopped.
Her skin turned pale, her eyes widened, she clutched her throat, and she screamed.
The alarm embedded in her brain, the alarm she had carried since she had become an adult ten thousand years ago, was the only thing that could be responsible for this terror.
Nearness to the bell of a Beller touched off that device in her brain. Her nerves wailed as if a siren had been tied into them. The ages-long dread of the Beller had seized her.
The blond man leaped up, grabbed the cardboard box, and ran away.
Kickaha ran after him. Anana screamed. The winos shouted, and many people came running.
At another time, he would have laughed. He had originally planned to take his box and the pseudo-bell into some such place as this, a park where winos and derelicts hung out, and create some kind of commotion, which would make the newspapers. That would have brought Red Orc out of his hole, Kickaha had hoped.
Ironically, he had stumbled across the real Beller.
If the Beller had been intelligent enough to cache his bell some place, he would have been safe. Kickaha and Anana would have passed him and never known.