Red Orc stood up from the table. "You will be kept prisoner here until I have captured the others and defeated Urthona. Then I'll decide what to do with you."
By this, Kickaha knew, he meant just what delicate tortures he could inflict upon him. For a moment, he thought about informing Orc of the Horn of Shambarimen's presence on Earth in this area. Perhaps he could use it for a bargaining point. Then he decided against it. Once Orc knew that it was here, he would just get the information from his captive by torture or drugs.
"Have you killed the Beller yet?" he said.
Orc smiled and said, "No."
He seemed very pleased with himself. "If it becomes necessary, I will threaten Urthona with him. I will tell Urthona that if he does not leave, I will let the Beller loose. That, you understand, is the most horrible thing a Lord could do."
"You would do this? After what you said about getting rid of anybody that might interfere with the natural development?"
"If I knew that my own death was imminent, unavoidable, yes, I would! Why not? What do I care what happens to this world, to all the worlds, if I am dead? Serve them right!"
There were more questions to which Kickaha wanted answers, but he was not controlling the interview. Orc abruptly walked out, leaving by the other door. Kickaha strained at the end of the chain to see through it, but the door swung out toward him and so shut off his view.
He was left with only his thoughts, which were pessimistic. He had always boasted that he could get loose from any prison, but it was, after all, a boast. He had, so far, managed to escape from every place in which he had been imprisoned, but he knew that he would someday find himself in a room with no exit. This was probably it. He was being observed by monitors, electronic or human or both, the chain was unbreakable with bare hands, and it also could be the conductor for some disabling and punishing agent if he did not behave.
This did not prevent him from trying to break it and twist it apart, because he could not afford to take anything for granted. The chain was unharmed, and he supposed that any human monitors would be amused by his efforts.
He stopped struggling, and he used the toilet facilities. Then he lay down on the sofa and thought for a while about his predicament. Though he was naked, he was not uncomfortable. The air was just a few degrees below his body temperature and it moved slowly enough so that it did not chill him. He fell asleep after a while, having found no way out, having thought of no plan that could reasonably work.
When he awoke, the room was as before. The sourceless light still made it high noon, and the air had not changed temperature. However, on sitting up, he saw a tray with dishes and cups and table utensils on top of the small thin-legged wooden table at the end of the sofa. He did not think that anyone could have entered with it unless he had been drugged. It seemed more likely that a gate was embedded in the wooden top and that a tray had been gated through while he slept.
He ate hungrily. The utensils were made of wood, and the dishes and the cups were of pewter and bore stylized octopuses, dolphins, and lobsters. After he ate, he walked back and forth within the range of the chain for about an hour. He tried to think of what he could do with the gate, if there was a gate inside that wooden table top. At the end of the hour, as he turned back toward the table, he saw that the tray was gone. His suspicion was correct; the top did contain a gate.
There had been no sound. The Lords of the old days had solved the problems of noise caused by sudden disappearance of an object. The air did not rush into the vacuum created by the disappearance because the gate arrangement included a simultaneous exchange of air between the gate on one end and that at the other.
About an hour later, Orc entered through the door by which he had left. He was accompanied by two men, one of whom carried a hypodermic needle. They wore kilts. One kilt was striped red and black and the other was white with a stylized black octopus with large blue eyes. Other than the kilts, leather sandals, and beads, they wore nothing. Their skins were dark, their faces looked somewhat Mediterranean but also reminded him of Amerindians, and their straight black hair was twisted into two pigtails. One pigtail fell down the back and the other was coiled on the right side of the head.
Orc spoke to them in a language unknown to Kickaha. It did seem vaguely Hebrew or Arabic to him but that was only because of its sounds. He knew too little of either language to be able to identify them.
While the one with the crossbow stood to one side and aimed it at Kickaha, the other approached from the other side. Orc commanded him to submit to the injection, saying that if he resisted, the crossbow would shoot its hypodermic into him. And the pain that followed would be longlasting and intense. Kickaha obeyed, since there was nothing else he could do.
He felt nothing following the injection. But he answered all of Orc's questions without hesitation. His brain did not feel clouded or bludgeoned. He was thinking as clearly as usual. It was just that he could not resist giving Orc all the information he asked for. But that was what kept him from mentioning the Horn of Shambarimen. Orc did not ask him about it nor was there any reason for him to do so. He had no knowledge that it had been in the possession of Wolff, or Jadawin, as Orc knew him.
Orc's questions did, however, cause Kickaha to reveal almost everything else of value to him. He knew something of Kickaha's life on Earth before that night in Bloomington when Paul Janus Finnegan had been accidentally catapulted out of this universe into . He learned more about Finnegan's life since then, when Finnegan had become Kickaha (and also Horst von Horstmann and a dozen other identities). He learned about Wolff-Jadawin and Chryseis and Anana, the invasion of the Black Bellers, and other matters pertinent. He learned much about Kickaha's and Anana's activities since they had gated into the cavern near Lake Arrowhead.
Orc said, "If I did allow you and Anana and Wolff and Chryseis to go back to your world, would you stay there and not try to get back here?"
"Yes," Kickaha said. "Provided that I knew for sure that the Beller was dead."
"Hmm. But your World of Tiers sounds fascinating. Jadawin always was very creative. I think that I would like to add it to my possessions."
This was what Kickaha expected.
Orc smiled again and said, "I wonder what you would have done if you had found out where I used to live and where Urthona now sits in the seat of power."
"I would have gone into it and killed you or Urthona," Kickaha said. "And I would have rescued Anana and Wolff and Chryseis and then searched for the Beller until I found him and killed him. And then we would have returned to my world; that is, to Wolff's, to be exact."
Orc looked thoughtful and paced back and forth for a while. Suddenly, he stopped and looked at Kickaha. He was smiling as if a brilliant idea were shining through him.
"You make yourself sound very tricky and resourceful," he said. "So tricky that I could almost think you were a Lord, not just a leblabbiy Earthling."
"Anana has the crazy idea that I could be the son of a Lord," Kickaha said. "In fact, she thinks I could be your son."
Orc said, "What?" and he looked closely at Kickaha and then began laughing. When he had recovered, he wiped his eyes and said, "That felt good! I haven't laughed like that for ... how long? Never mind. So you really think you could be my child?"
"Not me," Kickaha said. "Anana. And she liked to speculate about it because she still needs some justification for falling in love with a leblabbiy. If I could be half-Lord, then I'd be more acceptable. But this idea is one hundred percent wishful thinking, of course."