Read Online Return - Book III of the Five Worlds Trilogy by Al Sarrantonio - Free Book Online

excitement that flowed through him, looked around the clown’s stilted body and studied the sign that straddled the doorway.
    TITAN’S KING! THE ONE AND ONLY JAMAL CLAN! the sign said; these words wrapped around a luridly rendered painting of a man’s head and one arm reaching upward; the man’s torso, limbless save for the arm, was cut off by the opening of the entry.
    Pushing credits into the clown’s hand, Trel Clan was drawn to the doorway like a nail to a magnet.
    “Hey!” the clown called after him. “You gave me too much!”
    The doorway led into near darkness, muffled by thick straw on the ground. Trel Clan found himself in a tunnel with turns, which, it became evident, were part of the attraction. Far ahead he could hear the sounds of amazed voices.
    He hit a wall, made a turn to the right, and there was a sudden brilliant light in the wall. There was a diorama within, a three-dimensional depiction of the Half-Day War, with the High Leader himself, the insect-bodied Prime Cornelian, striding over the lifeless bodies of Titanian soldiers. Above, the dark sky burned with the rays of Cornelian’s light soldiers, who spread out in a fan around him, bringing destruction. Magnificently ringed Saturn, half risen, loomed at the horizon, which was on fire.
    Stifling rage, Trel Clan moved on, hitting another wall that again turned to the right, revealing another diorama in the wall. This piece of propaganda, a fictitious scene of Queen Kamath Clan kneeling before the High Leader in the ruins of her planet and baring her throat to Cornelian’s metallic fingers, Trel Clan merely glanced at before turning away. Ahead, things had become quiet, and he stumbled on, hitting another wall and a final diorama depicting the explosion that had destroyed Titan, before pushing himself through a dark curtain and suddenly finding himself blinded by light.
    The last of the other patrons were pushing their way through another curtain at the far end of the room; there was a railing a`nd behind it a brightly lit cage, barred on all sides, its floor littered with popcorn, fruit peels, and other detritus.
    Within the cage, staring out at Trel Clan as he suspended his torso above the filth on the floor by grasping the cage’s top bars with his one remaining hand, was Jamal Clan, King of Titan.
    The king’s eyes rolled up into his head and he gibbered, swinging back and forth, drooling. He laughed, letting himself drop into the pile of rotting food on the cage floor; his one arm pulled him around as his mouth opened and closed, pulling in bits of food; the hand and arm, as if possessing a life of their own, shot out to grasp the front bars and then inched up, pulling the torso after it until it was suspended once more, this time with its back to Trel Clan.
    Jamal began to sing and rock; and then abruptly he stopped both, the hand making a lightning-quick switch, pulling the body around so that it faced Trel Clan.
    Jamal Clan, drooling, looked hard into Trel Clan’s face with sudden acknowledgment and sentience. “I know you … .”
    Jamal Clan said nothing.
    “You’re … Trel Clan. Twentieth in line. Very clever, hiding as a child. I used to know all these things. I knew who number nineteen was, and fifteen, and eleven, and—”
    “Yes, I am,” Trel Clan said. “But now—”
    “Now you’re first in line! After me!”
    Trel Clan again said nothing.
    “I know what you want!” The king laughed. For a moment he began to swing again, drooling copiously, humming a tune to himself. Then he abruptly stopped again, concentrating.
    “I won’t die,” he said. “They’ll keep me here, and feed me. That means you’ll always be number two!” Gritting his teeth, Trel Clan was silent.
    Looking from left to right, as if afraid of being heard, the king motioned with his head.
    “Come closer!” he whispered.
    Trel Clan moved as close to the railing as he could. “Come close to the cage!” the king urged.
    Looking from side to side