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auditory imagination. Your journeys in the World of Tiers
are usually realistic and intense. There, you live as fully as
you do here.
"What I'm saying is . . ."
He paused, waiting for Jim to supply the explanations, if
he had any. Self-revelation was superior to that given by
another. The light should come from within.
Jim could see the white fingers groping around in the
blackness of his brain. What the hell did The Shaman
expect from him? Did he think an eighteen-year-old
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screwup was Doctor Freud himself?
What was Porsena's key word? He gave such words to his
patients, though they were embedded in the various strata of
his sentences. If the patient could dig up the key and then
figure out how to use it, he could open the door to another
blaze of light.
Grief was a heavy liquid supposed to dilute memory. But
being Ore had improved his memory considerably. It was as if
some of the young Lord's near-photographic memory had
rubbed off on Jim. He could recall almost verbatim everything
Porsena had said during the session. So, run a scan. Let the
cursor stop at the key word or phrase and highlight it.
"Ah!" Jim said. "Double!"
The Shaman smiled.
" 'Doubly intensified grief,'" Jim said. "You think I have
an extra burden of grief. I got one load as Jim Grimson, and
I got another as Ore. Both of us were rejected that's a mild
word by our fathers. Both of us are in a bad fix. I don't
know about both of us having just lost our best friend. I
doubt Orc'll feel bad about Ijim dying."
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774
RED ORC'S RAGE
Jim twisted his lips from one side to another. It was as if
he thought that moving the mouth would activate his brain.
Then the psychiatrist said, "Ijim is dead, as far as you
know. Is he the only loss?"
"Uh, well . . . let's see. There's, there's . . . how
about Ore himself?"
Porsena did not reply. He was leaving it up to his patient.
"I mean, I don't know if Ore's dead, too!" Jim said. "If
he is, then I've really lost! The whole ball of wax! That's
more grief than I can handle!"
"Others?" the doctor said.
"Grief . . . grief? Well, as Ore, and he's really me, and
I'm really him, I explained all that, there's my
mother ... I mean Enitharmon. Lost her. And I love
Aunt Vala, too. Lost her, also. I suppose their loss would be
strong. I know Ore certainly went through some grief about
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maybe never seeing them again. But his grief got turned
into hate for his father. He . . ."
After a long silence. Doctor Porsena said, "He . . . ?"
"He did something about it. Just didn't sit down and cry
about it."
"Was that the right or wrong way to behave?"
"That's a . . ."
Jim had been about to say that it was a stupid question.
But he would not say that to The Shaman. Anyway, The
Shaman always had a reason for voicing anything, even if it
might seem irrelevant or dumb.
"Right, of course. Except ..."
"Except?"
"It was the right way in that it was action taken to solve
the problem. Only, Ore was taking the most violent course.
I mean, he was going to kill his father and anybody else
who got in his way! Maybe he should have figured out a
better way. I don't know. It could be the only way there is."
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775
PHILIP JOSE FARMER
Jim blushed. That did not escape Porsena's eye. The
doctor said, "You're embarrassed."
Jim struggled with himself, then said, "OK. After all, it's
not like I'm having the incestuous thoughts Ore has. I sure
never had them about my own mother. Ore means to many his
mother after he kills his father after some torture, that is.
He's also got the hots for his aunt. In fact. Ore's homier than
a pack of minks in heat. I told you he's screwed twenty of his
sisters, half-sisters, his father's children. All of them beautiful
even if they are ... oh, jeez, what am I saying?"
"Natives? Non-Lords? What the Lords call leblabbiyT'
"Yeah. I'm sorry. It's like the leblabbiy are ni ... I
mean, blacks. I didn't mean to use that word, you know. I
don't really think blacks are subhumans. But I grew up
hearing it everywhere."
"I know," the doctor said. "What're your thoughts about
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the Lords' acceptance of incest?"
"Well, look. Doc ... I mean. Doctor. I've read a lot
about the ancient Egyptians, been doing it since I saw
Caesar and Cleopatra on TV. You know, the movie version
ofG.B. Shaw's play. With Claude Rains and Vivien Leigh.
I know that brothers and sisters of ancient Egypt's ruling
class married each other and had children. So did the Incan
rulers. Anyway, I think Farmer had something in the Tiers
books about brother-sister marriages. So, what with reading
about that and reading the books on Egypt and seeing the
movie, I didn't have much trouble accepting that. Anyway,
when I'm Ore, I tend to accept what he accepts. It's a
culture thing. The Lords don't have genetic defects, so
there's no problem passing bad genes on to their children.
So why shouldn't a mother marry her son?"
When the session ended, Jim felt only a very slight
lessening of the numbness and depression. Oh, well, it
didn't matter. Nothing mattered.
CHAPTER 22
JIM HAD SUNK into the very center of his own pocket
universe of depression. This was composed only of melan-
choly and self-despising, two elements that were not going
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to make a sun to light up his world. He did what was
required of him except to dive through the tragil but
slowly and tiredly. Even then, he was counting the numerals
in the arithmetic of the night. He listed his flaws and
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