by John Norman
I had spent but a few Ehn on the disk before I came to the barricade of heavy steel bars which separated those portions of the Nest open to Muls from those which were prohibited to them.
There was a Priest-King on guard whose antennae waved quizzically about as I drew the disk to a stop not twelve feet from him. His head was garlanded by a wreath of green leaves as had been that of Sarm, and also, like Sarm, there was about his neck, as well as his translator, the ceremonial string of tiny metal tools.
It took a moment for me to understand the Priest-King’s consternation.
The tunic I wore carried no scent-patterns and for a moment he had thought that the transportation disk I rode was actually without a driver.
I could see the lenses of the compound eyes almost flickering as it strained to see, much as we might have strained to hear some small sound.
His reactions were almost those that a human might have had if he could hear something in the room with him but had not yet been able to see it.
At last his antennae fastened on me but I am sure the Priest – King was annoyed that he did not receive the strong signals he would have if I had been wearing my own scent-infixed tunic. Without the tunic I had worn I probably did not seem much different to him from any other male Mul he had encountered in the Nest. To another human, of course, my hair alone, which is a shaggy, bright red, would have been a clearly recognisable feature, but Priest-Kings, as I may have indicated, tend to have extremely casual visual discrimination and are, moreover, I would gather, colour blind. The colours that are found in the Nest are always in the areas frequented by Muls. The only Priest-King in the Nest who could have recognised me immediately, and perhaps from a distance, was probably Misk, who knew me not as a Mul but as a friend.
“You are undoubtedly the Noble Guard of the Chamber where I may have my tunic fixed with scent-marks,” I called jovially.
The Priest-King seemed relieved to hear me speak.
“No,” he said, “I guard the entrance to the tunnels of the Mother, and you may not enter.”
Well, I said to myself, this is the right place.
“Where can I have my tunic marked?” I inquired.
“Return to whence you came and inquire,” said the Priest-King.
“Thank you, Noble One!” I cried and turned the transportation disk almost as if it had a vertical central axis and sped off. I glanced ove rmy shoulder and I could see the Priest – King still straining to sense me.
I quickly turned the disk down a side tunnel and began to hunt for a ventilator shaft.
In perhaps two or three Ehn I found one which appeared to be quite suitable. I drove the disk about half a pasang away and stopped it by an open portal within which I could see busy Muls stirring vats of bubbling plastic with huge wooden paddles.
I quickly retraced my steps to the ventilator shaft, pried open the bottom of the grille, squeezed inside and soon found myself making my way rapidly through the ventilating system in the direction of the Chamber of the Mother.
From time to time I would pass an opening in the shaft and peer out. From one of these openings I could see that I was already behind the steel barricade with its Priest-King guard, who was standing as I would have expected, in that almost vertical, slender golden fixity that was so characteristic of his kind.
There was no sound to celebrate the Feast of Tola but I had little difficulty in locating the scene of the celebration for I soon encountered a shaft, one of those through which used air is pumped out of the tunnels, which was rich in unusual and penetrating scents, of a sort which my stay with Misk had taught me were regarded by Priest-Kings as being of great beauty.
I followed these scents and soon found myself peering into an immense chamber. Its ceiling was only perhaps a hundred feet high but its length and width were considerable and it was filled with golden Priest-Kings, garlanded in green and wearing about their necks that shining, jangling circle of tiny, silverish tools.
There were perhaps a thousand Priest-Kings in the Nest, and I supposed that this might be almost all the Priest-Kings in the Nest, save perhaps those that might be essentially placed at a few minimum posts, such as the guard at the steel barricade and perhaps some in the Scanning Chamber or, more likely, the Power Plant.
Much of the business of the Nest, of course, even relatively technical matters, was carried on by trained Muls.
The Priest-Kings stood motionless in great circling, tiered rows which spread concentrically outward as though from a stage in an ancient theatre. To one side I could see four Priest-Kings handling the knobs of a large scent-producer, about the size of a steel room. There were perhaps hundreds of knobs on each side and one Priest-King on each side with great skill and apparent rhythm touched one knob after another in intricate patterns.
I had little doubt but that these Priest-Kings were the most highly regarded musicians of the Nest, that they should be chosen to play together on the great Feast of Tola.
The antennae of the thousand Priest-Kings seemed almost motionless so intent were they on the beauties of the music.
Inching forward I saw, on the raised platform at this end of the room, the Mother.
For a moment I could not believe that it was real or alive.
It was undoubtedly of the Priest-King kind, and it now was unwinged, but the most incredible feature was the fantastic extent of the abdomen. Its head was little larger than that of an ordinary Priest-King, or its thorax, but its trunk was conjoined to an abdomen which if swollen with eggs might have been scarcely smaller than a city bus. But now this monstrous abdomen, depleted and wrinkled, no longer possessing whatever tensility it might once have had, lay collapsed behind the creature like a flattened sack of brownly tarnished golden ancient leather.
Even with the abdomen empty her legs could not support its weight and she lay on the dais with her jointed legs folded beside her.
Her colouring was not that of a normal Priest-King but darker, more brownish, and her and there black stains discoloured her thorax and abdomen.
Her antennae seemed unalert and lacked resilience. They lay back over her head.
Her eyes seemed dull and brown.
I wondered if she were blind.
It was a most ancient creature on which I gazed, the Mother of the Nest.
It was hard to imagine her, uncounted generations ago, with wings of gold in the open air, in the blue sky of Gor, glistening and turning with her lover borne on the high, glorious, swift winds of this distant, savage world. How golden she would have been.
There was no male, no Father of the Nest, and I supposed the male had died, or had not lived long after her mating. I wondered if, among Priest-Kings, he would have helped her, or if there would have been others from the former Nest, or if she alone would have fallen to earth, to eath the wings that had borne her, and to burrow beneath the mountains to begin the lonely work of the Mother, the creation of the new Nest.
I wondered why there had not been more females.
If Sarm had killed them, how was it that the Mother had not learned of this and had him destroyed?
Or was it her wish that there should be no others?
But if so why was she, if it were true, in league with Misk to perpetuate the race of Priest-Kings?
I looked again through the grille on the shaft. It opened about thirty feet over the floor of the chamber and a bit to one side of the Platform of the Mother. I surmised there might be a similar shaft on the other side of her platform, knowing the symmetry that tends to mark the engineering aesthetics of Priest-Kings.
As the musicians continued to produce their rhapsodic, involute, rhythms of aroma on the scent-producer, one Priest – King at a time, one after the other, would slowly stalk forward and approach the Platform of the Mother.
There, from a great golden bowl, about five feet deep and with a diameter of perhaps twenty feet, setting on a heavy tripod, he would take a bit of whitish liquid, undoubtedly Gur, in his mouth.
He took no m
ore than a taste and the bowl, though the Feast of Tola was well advanced, was still almost brimming. He would then approach the Mother very slowly and lower his head to hers. With great gentleness he would then touch her head with his antennae. She would extend her head to him and then with a delicacy hard to imagine in so large a creature he would transfer a tiny drop of the precious fluid from his mouth to hers. He would then back away and return to his place where he would stand as immobile as before.
He had given Gur to the Mother.
I did not know at the time but Gur is a product originally secreted by large, grey, domesticated, hemispheric arthropods which are, in the morning, taken out to pasture where they feed on special Sim plants, extensive, rambling, tangled vine-like plants with huge, rolling leaves raised under square energy lamps fixed in the ceilings of the broad pasture chambers, and at night are returned to their stable cells where they are milked by Muls. The special Gur used on the Feast of Tola is, in the ancient fashion, kept for weeks in the social stomachs of specially chosen Priest-Kings to mellow and reach the exact flavour and consistency desired, which Priest-Kings are then spoken of as retaining Gur.
I watched as one Priest-King and then another approached the Mother and repeated the Gur Ceremony.
I was perhaps the first human who had ever beheld this ceremony.
Considering the number of Priest-Kings and the time it took for each to give Gur to the Mother, I conjectured that the ceremony must have begun hours ago. Indeed, it did not seem incredible to me at all that the giving of Gur might well last an entire day.
I was already familiar with the astounding patience of Priest-Kings and so I was not surprised at the almost total lack of movement in the lines of that golden pattern, formed of Priest-Kings, which radiated out from the Platform of the Mother. But I now understood as I observed the slight, lmost enraptured tremour of their antennae responding to the scent – music of the musicians that this was not a simple demonstration of their patience but a time of exaltation for them, of gathering, of bringing the Nest together, of reminding them of their common, remote origins and their long, shared history, of reminding them of their very being and nature, of what they perhaps alone in all the universe were – Priest-Kings.
I looked at the golden rows of Priest-Kings, alert, immobile, their heads wreathed in green leaves, about their necks dangling the tiny, primitive, silverish tools telling of a distant, simpler time before the Scanning Chamber, the Power Plant and the Flame Death.
I could not to my emotional satisfaction conjecture the ancientness of this people on which I gazed, and I could but dimly understand their powers, what they might feel, what they might hope of dream, supposing that so old and wise a people were still akin to the simple dream, the vagrant, insuppressible perhaps, folly of hope.
The Nest, had said Sarm, is eternal.
But on the platform before which these golden creatures stood there lay the Mother, perhaps blind, almost insensate, the large, feeble thing they revered, weak, brownish, withered, the huge worn body at last wrinkled and empty.
You are dying, Priest-Kings, I said to myself.
I strained my eyes to see if I could pick out either Sarm or Misk in those golden rows.
I had watched for perhaps an hour and then it seemed that the ceremony might be over, for some minutes passed and no further Priest-Kings approached the Mother.
Then almost at the same time I saw Sarm and Misk together.
The rows of the Priest-Kings separated forming an aisle down the middle of the chamber and the Priest-Kings now stood facing this aisle, and down the aisle together came Sarm and Misk.
I gathered that perhaps this was the culmination of the Feast of Tola, the giving of Gur by the greatest of the Priest – Kings, the First Five Born, save that of that number there were only two left, the First Born and the Fifth, Sarm and Misk. As it turned out later I was correct in this surmise and the moment of the ceremony is known as the March of the First Five Born, in which these five march abreast to the Mother and give her Gur in inverse order of their priority.
Misk of course lacked the wreath of green leaves and the chain of tools about his neck.
If Sarm were disturbed at finding Misk, whom he thought to have had killed, at his side, he gave no sign to this effect.
Together, in silence to human ears but to the swelling intensities of scent-music, in stately, stalking procession the two Priest-Kings approached the Mother, and I saw Misk, first, dip his mouth to the great golden bowl on its tripod and then approach her.
As his antennae touched her head her antennae lifted and seemed to tremble and the ancient, brownish creature lifted her head and on her ready tongue from his own mouth Misk, her child, delicately and with supreme gentleness placed a glistening drop of Gur.
He backed away from her.
Now did Sarm, the First Born, approach the Mother and dip his jaws too to the golden bowl and stalk to the Mother and place his antennae gently on her head, and once again the old creature’s antennae lifted but this time they seemed to retract.
Sarm placed his jaws to the mouth of the Mother but she did not lift her head to him.
She turned her face away.
The scent-music suddenly stopped and the Priest-Kings seemed to rustle as though an unseen wind had suddenly stirred the leaves of autumn and I heard even the surprised jangling of those tiny metal tools.
Well could I now read the signs of consternation in the rows of Priest-Kings, the startled antennae, the shifting of the supporting appendages, the sudden intense inclination of the head and body, the straining of the antennae toward the Platform of the Mother.
Once again Sarm thrust his jaws at the face of the Mother and once again she moved her head away from him.
She had refused to accept Gur.
Misk stood by, immobile.
Sarm pranced backwards from the Mother. He stood as though stunned. His antennae seemed to move almost randomly. His entire frame, that long, slender golden blade, seemed to shudder.
Trembling, with none of that delicate grace that so typically characterises the movements of Priest-Kings, he once again tried to approach the Mother. His movements were awkward, uncertain, clumsy, halting.
This time even before he was near her she again turned aside that ancient, brownish, discoloured head.
Once again Sarm retreated.
Now there was no movement among the rows of Priest-Kings and they stood in that uncanny frozen stance regarding Sarm.
Slowly Sarm turned toward Misk.
No longer was Sarm trembling or shaken but he had drawn his frame to its full and golden height.
Before the Platform of the Mother, facing Misk, rearing perhaps two feet over him, Sarm stood with what, even for a Priest-King, seemed a most terrible quietude.
For a long moment the antennae of the two Priest-Kings regarded one another and then Sarm’s antennae flattened themselves over his head and so, too, did Misk’s.
Almost at the same time the bladelike projections on their forelegs snapped into view.
Slowly the Priest-Kings began to circle one another in a ritual more ancient perhaps even than the Feast of Tola, a ritual perhaps older than even the days and objects celebrated by the string of metal tools that hung jangling about the neck of Sarm.
With a speed that I still find hard to comprehend Sarm rushed upon Misk and after a blurring moment I saw them on their posterior supporting appendages locked together rocking slowly back and forth, trying to bring those great golden, laterally chopping jaws into play.
I knew the unusual strength of Priest-Kings and I could well imagine the stresses and pressures that throbbed in the frames of those locked creatures as they rocked back and forth, to one side and another, each pressing and seeking for the advantage that would mean death to the other.
Sarm broke away and began to circle again, and Misk turned slowly, watching him, his antennae still flattened.
I could now hear the sucking in of air through the b
reathing – tubes of both creatures.
Suddenly Sarm charged at Misk and slashed down at him with one of those bladelike projections on his forelegs and leaped away even before I saw the green-filled wound opening on the left side of one of those great, compound luminous disks on Misk’s head.
Again Sarm charged and again I saw a long greenish-wet opening appear as if by magic on the side of Misk’s huge golden head, and again Sarm, whose speed was almost unbelievable, leaped away before Misk could touch him and was again circling and watching.
Once more Sarm leaped to attack and this time a green-flowing wound sprang into view on the right side of Misk’s thorax in the neighbourhood of one of the brain-nodes.
I wondered how long it would take to kill a Priest-King.
Misk seemed stunned and slow, his head dropped and the antennae seemed to flutter, exposing themselves.
I noted that already the green exudate which flowed from Misk’s wounds was turning into a green, frozen sludge on his body, stanching the flow from the wounds.
The thought crossed my mind that Misk, in spite of his apparently broken and helpless condition, had actually lost very little body fluid.
I told myself that perhaps the stroke in the vicinity of the brain-nodes had been his undoing.
Cautiously Sarm watched Misk’s fluttering, piteous, exposed antennae.
Then slowly one of Misk’s legs seemed to give way beneath him and he tilted crazily to one side.
In the frenzy of the battle I had apparently failed to note the injury to the leg.
Perhaps so too had Sarm.
I wondered if Sarm, considering Misk’s desperate condition and plight, would offer quarter.
Once again Sarm leaped in, his bladed projection lifted to strike, but this time Misk suddenly straightened himself promptly on the leg which had seemed to fail him and whipped his antennae back behind his head an instant before the stroke of Sarm’s blade and when Sarm struck he found his appendage gripped in the hooklike projections on the end of Misk’s foreleg.