“Enough of this, brother,” Vala said. “What are you getting at?”
Wolff sighed. He was wasting his breath.
“I was going to say that perhaps Urizen has done us a favor without meaning to. Perhaps we could somehow find it in ourselves to resurrect the childhood love, to act as brothers should. We. . .”
He stopped. Their faces were like those of stone idols. Time could break them, but love would never soften them.
He turned and stepped through the right-hand gate.
VIII
HIS FEET SLID OUT FROM UNDER HIM, AND HE FELL ON HIS SIDE. HE caught a glimpse of smooth glassy surfaces as he slid down the hill on top of which the gate was set. The stuff on which he raced downhill was dry and slippery, although it gave an impression of oiliness. No matter how he tried to dig his heels in, how strongly he placed the flats of his hands against the stuff to brake himself, he sped on down. It was like being on ice.
He shot on, gaining speed. Throwing himself over with a convulsive twist, he managed to face the direction in which, willynilly, he was going. Ahead was a gentling of the slope, and when he reached it his velocity slowed somewhat. Still, he was going at least sixty miles an hour with no way of stopping himself. His head was raised to keep his face from being burned and his hands were upheld. By then his clothes should have been burned off him, and his flesh should have been crisped and unraveling from the friction, but he sped on with only a slight feeling of warmth.
The skies were purple, and just above the edge of the horizon, the arc of a moon-he thought it was a moon-was showing. The arc was a deeper purple than the skies. He was not inside any Lord’s palace; he was on another planet. Judging from the distance of the horizon, this planet was about the size of the one he had just left. In fact, he was sure that it was one of the bodies that he had seen in the skies from the surface of the waterworld.
Urizen had tricked them. He had set up the gate through which they had gone to jump them to one of the bodies circling about Appirmatzum. The other gate back on the waterworld might have led to Urizen’s world. Or, it might have led to here also. There was no way of knowing now.
Whichever way the other entrance presented, it was too late to do anything about it. He was caught helplessly in one of his father’s jokes. A practical joke, if you could consider death as practical.
He had traveled perhaps two miles when the incline began to turn upwards. Within a half-mile, he was slowed down to what seemed a thirty mile an hour velocity, although it was difficult to tell with the few references he had. Off to his right, at a long distance, were a number of peculiar-looking trees. Not knowing how tall they were or how far away, he could not determine just how fast he was traveling.
And then, just as he slowed down to about ten miles an hour, and the incline sloped sharply upwards, he rose over its edge. He was in the air, out over the lip of the rise, beyond the edge of a precipice. He fell, unable to hold back a scream. Below him, forty or fifty feet, was a one hundred foot wide stream of water. The other side was blocked off by a wall of the same vitreous substance on which he had slid.
He dropped into the canyon, kicking to maintain an upright position so he could hit the water feet-first. The water was not as far away as he had thought, however, being only thirty-five feet down. He struck with his feet and plunged into tepid waters. He went on down, down, then began to swim upwards. The current carried him on swiftly between the canyon walls and took him around a bend. Just before he was carried around it, he saw a Lord hit the surface and another halfway down the wall.