Maker of Universes Read Online Free PDF

origins or workings of their world than the people of his. But the beach-crowd did have one thing lacking on Earth. They had uniformity of opinion. Everyone he asked gave him the same answer as the zebrilla.
    “It is the will of the Lord. He made the world, he made us.”
    “How do you know?” Wolff asked. He did not expect any more than he had gotten on Earth when he asked the question. But he was surprised.
    “Oh,” replied a mermaid, Paiawa, “the Lord told us so. Besides, my mother told me, too. She ought to know. The Lord made her body; she remembers when he did it, although that was so long, long ago.”
    “Indeed?” Wolff said, wondering whether or not she were pulling his leg, and thinking also that it would be difficult to retaliate by doing the same to her. “And where is your mother? I’d like to talk to her.”
    Paiawa waved a hand toward the west. “Somewhere along there.”
    “Somewhere” could be thousands of miles away, for he had no idea how far the beach extended.
    “I haven’t seen her for a long time,” Paiawa added.
    “How long?” Wolff said.
    Paiawa wrinkled her lovely brow and pursed her lips. Very kissable, Wolff thought. And that body! The return of his youth was bringing back a strong awareness of sex.
    Paiawa smiled at him and said, “You are showing some interest in me, aren’t you?”
    He flushed and would have walked away, but he wanted an answer to his question. “How many years since you saw your mother?” he asked again.
    Paiawa could not answer. The word for “year” was not in her vocabulary.
    He shrugged and walked swiftly away, to disappear behind the savagely colored foliage by the beach. She called after him, archly at first, then angrily when it became evident he was not going to turn back. She made a few disparaging remarks about him as compared to the other males. He did not argue with her—it would have been beneath his dignity, and besides, what she said was true. Even though his body was rapidly regaining its youth and strength, it still suffered in comparison with the near-perfect specimens all around him.
    He dropped this line of thought, and considered Paiawa’s story. If he could locate her mother or one of her mother’s contemporaries in age, he might be able to find out more about the Lord. He did not discredit Paiawa’s story, which would have been incredible on Earth. These people just did not lie. Fiction was a stranger to them. Such truthfulness had its advantages, but it also meant that they were decidedly limited in imagination and had little humor or wit. They laughed often enough, but it was over rather obvious and petty things. Slapstick was as high as their comedy went—and crude practical jokes.
    He cursed because he was having difficulty in staying on his intended track of thought. His trouble with concentration seemed to get stronger every day. Now, what had he been thinking about when he’d strayed off to his unhappiness over his maladjustment with the local society? Oh, yes, Paiawa’s mother! Some of the oldsters might be able to enlighten him—if he could locate any. How could he identify any when all adults looked the same age? There were only a very few youngsters, perhaps three in the several hundred beings he had encountered so far. Moreover, among the many animals and birds here (some rather weird ones, too), only a half-dozen had not been adults.
    If there were few births, the scale was balanced by the absence of death. He had seen three dead animals, two killed by accident and the third during a battle with another over a female. Even that had been an accident, for the defeated male, a lemon-colored antelope with four horns curved into figure-eights, had turned to run away and broken his neck while jumping over a log.
    The flesh of the dead animal had not had a chance to rot and stink. Several omnipresent creatures that looked like small bipedal foxes with white noses, floppy basset-hound ears, and monkey paws had eaten