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He called to her softly, and she jumped, just tike the first Anana. Then she leaped up and ran toward
him, tears in her eyes and on her cheeks and her mouth open in a beautiful smile and her arms held
to-ward him. He backed away as she came through the door and harshly told her to stop. He held the
beamer on her. She obeyed but looked puzzled and hurt. Then she saw the still slightly swelled and
burned lips and nose, and her eyes widened.
"Anana," he said, "what was that ten-thousand-year-old nursery rhyme your mother sang to you so
often?"
If this was some facsimile or artificial creature of Red Orc's, it might have a recording of some of
what Orc had learned from Anana. It might have a memory of a sort, something that would be sketchy
but still adequate enough to fool her lover. But there would be things she had not told Red Orc while
under the influence of the drug because he would not think to ask her. And the nursery song was one
thing. She had told Kickaha of it when they had been hiding from the Bellers on the Great Plains of .
Anana was more puzzled for a few seconds, and then she seemed to understand that he felt
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compelled to test her. She smiled and sang the beautiful little song that her mother had taught her in the
days before she grew up and found out how ugly and vicious the adult family life of the Lords was.
Even after this, he felt restrained when he kissed her. Then, as it became apparent that she had to be
genuine flesh and blood, and she murmured a few more things that Red Orc was highly unlikely to know,
he smiled and melted. They both cried some more, but he stopped first.
"We'll weep a little later," he said. "Do you have any idea where Wolff and Chryseis could be?"
She said no, which was what he had expected.
"Then we'll use the Horn until we've opened every gate in the house. But it's a big house, so . . ."
He explained to her that Urthona and his men would be coming after them. "You look around for
weapons, while I blow the Horn."
She joined him ten minutes later and showed him what looked like a pen but was a small beamer.
He told her that he had found two more gates but both were disappointments. They passed swiftly
through all the rooms in the second story while he played steadily upon the Horn. The walls remained
blank.
The first floor of the house was as unrewarding. By then, forty minutes had passed since the men had
left the house. Within a few more minutes, Urthona should be here.
"Let's try the room under the stairs again," he said. "It's possible that reactivating the gate might cause
it to open onto still another world."
A gate could be set up so that it alternated its resonances slightly and acted as a flipflop entrance. At
one activation, it would open to one universe and at the next activation, to another. Some gates could
operate as avenues to a dozen or more worlds.
The gates activated upstairs could also be such gates, and they should return to test out the multiple
activity of every one. It was too discouraging to think about at that moment, though they would have to
run through them again. That is, they would if this gate under the stairs did not give them a pleasant
surprise.
Outside the door, he lifted the Horn once more and played the music which trembled the fabric
between universes. The room beyond the door suddenly was large and blue-walled with bright lights
streaming from chandeliers carved out of single Brobdingnagian jewels: hippopotamus-head-sized
diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and garnets. The furniture was also carved out of enormous jewels set
together with some kind of golden cement.
Kickaha had seen even more luxurious rooms. What held his attention was the opening of the round
door at the far end of the room and the entrance through it of a cylindrical object. This was dark red, and
it floated a foot above the floor. At its distant end the top of a blond head appeared. A man was pushing
the object toward them.
That head looked like Red Orc's. He seemed to be the only one who would be in another world and
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