The Gates of Creation

Wolff knew what would happen if he tried to walk back through the gate. Nevertheless, not being one to take things for granted, he did attempt it. With ease, he stepped out on the other side upon the boulder.

It was a one-way gate, just as he had expected.

Somebody coughed behind him, and he whirled, his beamer ready.

II

The land ended abruptly against the sea with no intervening beach. The animal had just emerged from the sea and was only a few feet from him. It squatted like a toad on huge webbed feet, its columnar legs folded as if they were boneless. The torso was humanoid and sheathed in fat, with a belly that protruded like that of a Thanksgiving goose. The neck was long and supple. At its end was a human head, but the nose was flat and had long narrow nostrils. Tendrils of red flesh sprouted out around the mouth. The eyes were very large and moss-green. There were no ears. The pate was covered, like the face and body, with a dark-blue oily fur.

“Jadawin!” the creature said. It spoke in the ancient language of the Lords. “Jadawin! Don’t kill me! Don’t you know me?”

Wolff was shocked but not so much that he forgot to look behind him. This creature could be trying to distract him.

“Jadawin! Don’t you recognize your own brother!”

Wolff did not know him. The frog-seal body, lack of ears, blue fur, and squashed long-slitted nose made identification too difficult. And there was Time. If he had really called this thing brother, it must have been millennia ago.

That voice. It dug away at the layers of dusty memory, like a dog after an old bone. It scraped away level after level, it...

He shook his head and glanced behind him and at the feathery vegetation. “Who are you?” he asked.

The creature whined, and by this he knew that his brother-if it were his brother-must have been imprisoned in that body for a long long time. No Lord whined.

“Are you going to deny me? Are you like the others? They’d have nothing to do with me. They mocked at me, they spat upon me, they drove me away with kicks and laughs. They said…”

It clapped its flippers together and twisted its face and large tears ran from the moss-green eyes and down the blue cheeks. “Oh, Jadawin, don’t be like the rest! You were always my favorite, my beloved! Don’t be cruel like them!”

The others, Wolff thought. There had been others. How long ago?

Impatiently, he said, “Let’s not play games-whoever you are. Your name!”

The creature rose on its boneless legs, muscles raising the fat that coated them, and took a step forward. Wolff did not back away, but he held the beamer steady. “That’s far enough. Your name.”

The creature stopped, but its tears kept on flowing. “You are as bad as the others. You think of nobody but yourself; you don’t care what’s happened to me. Doesn’t my suffering and loneliness and agonies all this time-oh, this immeasurable time-touch you at all?”

“It might if I knew who you were,” Wolff said. “And what’s happened to you.”

“Oh, Lord of the Lords! My own brother!”

It advanced another giant splayfoot, the wetness squishing from out under the webs. It held out a flipper as if beseeching a tender hand. Then it stopped, and the eyes flicked at a spot just to one side of Wolff. He jumped to his left and whirled, the beamer pointing to cover both the creature and whoever might have been behind him. There was no one.

And, as the thing had planned, it leaped for Wolff at the same time that Wolff jumped and turned. Its legs uncoiled like a catapult released and shot it forward. If Wolff had only turned, he would have been knocked down. Standing to one side, he escaped all but the tip of the thing’s right flipper. Even that, striking his left shoulder and arm, was enough to send him staggering numbly to one side, making him drop the beamer. Wolff was enormously solid and powerful himself, with muscles and nerve impulses raised to twice their natural strength and speed by the Lords’ science. If he had been a normal Earthman, he would have been crippled forever in his arm, and he would not have been able to escape the second leap of the creature.

Squalling with fury and disappointment, it landed on the spot where Wolff had been, sank on its legs as if they were springs, spun, and launched itself at Wolff again. All this was done with such swiftness that the creature looked as if it were an actor in a speeded-up film.

Wolff had succeeded in regaining his balance. He jumped.out for the beamer. The shadow of the creature passed over him; its shrieking was so loud it seemed as if its lips were pressed against his ear. Then he had the beamer in his hands, had rolled over and over, and was up on his feet. By then the thing had propelled itself again towards him. Wolff reversed the beamer, and using his right hand, brought the light but practically indestructible metal stock down on top of the creature’s head. The impact of the huge body hurled him backward; he rolled away. The sea-thing was lying motionless on its face, blood welling from its seal-like scalp.