“And now that I come to think of it … I wonder why it didn’t strike me before. . . you look much like him.”
“Come on now!” Kickaha said. “That would mean I’d look like you! I deny that!”
“We could be cousins, I think,” she said.
Kickaha laughed, though his face was warm and he felt anxious for some reason.
“Next, you’ll be telling me I’m the long-lost son of Red Orc!”
“I don’t know that he has any son,” she said thoughtfully. “But you could be his child, yes.”
“I know who my parents are,” he said. “Hoosier farm folk. And they knew who their ancestors were, too. My father was of Irish descent- what else, Finnegan, for God’s sake?-and my mother was Norwegian and a quarter Catawba Indian.”
“I wasn’t trying to prove anything,” she said. “I was just commenting on certain undeniable resemblances. Now that I think about it, your eyes are that peculiar leaf-green . . . yes, exactly like it… I’d forgotten … Red Orc’s eyes are yours.”
Kickaha put his hand on hers and said, “Hold it!”
He was looking through the slats. She turned and said, “A police car!”
“Yeah, double-parked outside the hotel. They’re both going in. They could be checking on someone else. So let’s not get panicky.”
“Since when did I ever panic?” she said coldly.
“My apologies. That’s just my manner of speaking.”
Fifteen minutes passed. Then a car pulled up behind the police car. It contained three men in civilian clothes, two of whom got out and went into the hotel. The car drove away.
Kickaha said, “Those two looked like plainclothesmen to me.” The two uniformed policemen came out and drove away. The two suspected detectives did not come out of the hotel for thirty minutes. They walked down to the corner and stood for a minute talking, and then one returned. He did not, however, reenter the hotel. Instead, he crossed the street.
Kickaha said, “He’s got the same idea we had! Watch the hotel from here!” He stood up and said, “Come on! Out the back way! Saunter along, but fast!”
The back way was actually a side entrance, which led to a blind alley the open end of which was on the street. The two walked northward toward the rnetalworking shop.
Kickaha said, “Either the police got their information from Red Orc or they’re checking us out because of Kleist. It doesn’t matter. We’re on the run, and Orc’s got the advantage. As long as he can keep pushing us, we aren’t going to get any closer to him. Maybe.”
They had several hours yet before the metalworker would be finished. Kickaha led Anana into another tavern, much higher class, and they sat down again. He said, “You just barely got started telling me the story of your uncle.”
“There really isn’t much to tell,” she said. “Red Orc was a figure of terror among the Lords for a long time. He successfully invaded the universes of at least ten Lords and killed them. Then he was badly hurt when he got into the world of Vala, my sister. Red Orc is very wily and a man of many resources and great power. But my sister Vala combines all the qualities of a cobra and a tiger. She hurt him badly, as I said, but in doing she got hurt herself. In fact, she almost died. Red Orc escaped, however, and came back to this universe, which was the first one he made after leaving the home world.”
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.