The Gates of Creation

With that, he would be able to track down Urizen’s world and gain entrance to it! He strode across the chrysoprase floor to the wall and swung down a section of the wall, carved in the semblance of a giant eagless of this planet. He stopped and gasped with shock. The hiding place no longer had a horn to hide. The hollowed out part in which the horn had lain was empty.

So, Urizen had not only taken Chryseis but he had stolen the ancient Horn of Shambarimen.

So be it. Wolff would weep over Chryseis but he would spend no time in useless mourning for an artifact, no matter how treasured.

He walked swiftly through the halls, noting that none of the alarms were triggered. All slept as if this were just another day in the quiet but happy times since Wolff had regained possession of the palace on top of the world. He could not help shivering. He had always feared his father. Now that he had such evidence of his father’s vast powers, he dreaded him even more. But he did not fear to go after him. He would track him down and kill him or die trying.

In one of the colossal control rooms, he seated himself before a pagoda-shaped console. He set a control which would automatically bring him, in sequence, views of all the places on this planet where he had set videos. There were ten thousand of these on each of the four lower levels, disguised as rocks or trees. They had been placed to allow him to see what was happening in various key areas. For two hours he sat while the screen flashed views. Then, knowing that he could be there for several days, he plugged in the eidolon of Kickaha and left the viewer. Now, if Kickaha were seen, the screen would lock on the scene and an alarm would notify Wolff.

He placed ten more consoles in operation. These automatically began to scan throughout the cosmos of the “parallel” universes to detect and identify them. The records were seventy years old, so it was to be presumed that universes created since then would swell the known number of one thousand and eight. It was these that Wolff was interested in. Urizen no longer lived in the original one of Gardazrintah, where Wolff had been raised with many of his brothers, sisters, and cousins. In fact, Urizen, who grew tired of entire worlds as swiftly as a spoiled child became weary with new toys, had moved three tunes since leaving Gardazrintah. And the chances were that he was now in a fourth and this last one had to be identified and penetrated.

Even when all had been recorded, he could not be sure that his father’s universe was located. If a universe were entirely sealed off, it was undetectable. A universe could be found only through the “gates,” each of which gave off a unique frequency. If Urizen wanted to make it really difficult for Wolff to find him, he could set up an on-off-on gate. This would open at regular intervals or at random times, depending upon Urizen’s choice. And if it happened not to open at the time that Wolff’s scanner was searching that “parallel corridor,” it would not be detected. As far as the scanners were concerned, that area would be an “empty” one.

However, Urizen wanted him to come after him and so should not make it too difficult or impossible for him to do so.

Lords must eat. Wolff had a light breakfast served by a talos, one of the half-protein robots, looking like knights in armor, of which he had over a thousand. Then he shaved and showered in a room carved out of a single emerald. Afterwards, he clothed himself. He wore corduroy shoes, tight-fitting corduroy trousers, a corduroy short-sleeved shirt, open at the neck but with a collar that curved up in back, a broad belt of mammoth leather, and a golden chain around his neck. From the chain hung a red jade image of Shambarimen, given to him by the great artist and artificer of the Lords, when he, Wolff, had been a boy of ten. The red of the jade was the only bright color of his garments, the rest being a thrush-brown. When in the castle, he dressed simply or not at all. Only during the rare occasions when he went down to the lower levels for state ceremonies did he dress in the magnificent robes and complex hat of a Lord. In most of his descents, he went incognito, clad in the garments or nongarments of the local natives.

He left the walls of the castle to go out onto one of the hundreds of great balcony-gardens. There was an Eye sitting in a tree, a raven large as a bald eagle. He was one of the few survivors of the onslaught on the castle when Wolff had taken this world back from Ar-woor. Now that Arwoor was dead, the ravens had transferred their loyalty to Wolff.