by John Norman
With a gesture I permitted her to rise to her feet. “Dance your body, Slave,” I told her, “to the guests of Samos.”
Angrily the girl, man by man, slowly, meaningfully, danced her beauty to each guest. They struck the tables, and cried out. More than one reached to clutch her but each time, swiftly, she moved back.
Samos rose from behind the table and strode to the map floor. I went with him.
He stopped at a point on the smooth, mosaiced floor. I looked at him. “Yes,” he said, “somewhere here.”
I looked down at the intricately wrought mosaiced floor. Beneath our feet, smooth, polished, were hundreds of tiny, fitted bits of tile, mostly here, in this area, tan and brown. The bits of tile seemed soft, lustrous, under the torchlight. The dancer, now behind us, continued to move before the low tables.
The eyes of the men gleamed. Before each man, for moments seemingly his alone, she danced her beauty.
“There is one thing more,” said Samos, “which I have not told you.”
“What is that?” I asked.
“Kurii have delivered to the Sardar an ultimatum.”
“An ultimatum?” I asked.
“Surrender Gor, it said.” said Samos.
“Nothing more?” I asked.
“Nothing more,” said Samos.
“This makes little sense to me,” I said. “For what reason should this world be surrendered to Kurii?”
“It seems insane,” said Samos.
“Yet Kurii are not insane,” said I. “There was no alternative specified?” I asked.
“None,” said Samos.
“Surrender Gor-” I repeated.
“It seems a mad imperative,” said Samos.
“But if it is not?”
“I am afraid,” said Samos.
“And how has the Sardar responded to this?” I asked. “Have they repudiated it, scoffingly, ridiculed the preposterousness of this demand?”
Samos smiled. “Misk, a Priest-King,” said he, “one high in the Sardar, has asked Kurii for a further specification of details.”
I smiled. “He is buying time,” I said.
“Of course,” said Samos.
“What response if any, was made?” I asked.
“Surrender Gor,” said Samos. “A repetition of the original imperative. Then there was communication silence.”
“Nothing more has been heard from Kurii?” I asked.
“Nothing more,” said Samos.
“Doubtless it is a bluff on the part of Kurii,” I said. “Priest-Kings would not well understand that sort of thing. They are quite rational generally, unusually logical. Their minds seldom think in terms of unwarranted challenges, psychological strategies, false claims.”
Samos shrugged.
“Sometimes I think Priest-Kings do not well understand Kurii. They may be too remotely related a life form. They may not have the passions, the energies, the hatreds to fully comprehend Kurii.”
“Or men” said Samos.
“Or men,” I agreed. Priest-Kings surely had energies and passions, but, I suspected, they were, on the whole, rather different from those of men, or, indeed, those of Kurii. The nature of the sensory experience of Priest-Kings was still, largely, a mystery to me. I knew their behavioral world; I did know the world of their inner experience. Their antennae were their central organs of physical transduction. Though they had eyes, they seldom relied upon them, and were perfectly at ease in total darkness. Lights, in the Nest, were for the benefit of humans and other visually oriented creatures sharing the domicile.
Their music was a rhapsody of odors, many of which were, to human olfactory organs, not even pleasant. Their decorations were largely invisible lines of scent traced with great care on the interiors of their compartments. Their most intense, pleasurable experience was perhaps to immerse their antennae in the filamented, narcotic mane of the golden beetle, which would then, piercing them with its curved, hollow, laterally moving jaw-pincers, drain them of their body fluid, feeding itself, slaying them. The social bond of the Priest-Kings is Nest Trust. Yet, in spite of their different evolutionary background and physiology, they had learned the meaning of the word ‘friend’; too, I knew, they understood, if only in their own way, love.
I smiled to myself. “Sometimes,” once had said Misk to me in the Nest, “I suspect only men can understand Kurii.” Then he had added, “They are so similar.”
It had been a joke. But I did not think it was false.
Unfortunate though it might be, I doubted and, I think realistically, that Priest-Kings, those large, golden creatures, so gentle and delicate seeming, so content to mind their own affairs, truly understood their enemy, the Kurii. The persistence, the aggression, the fevers of the blood, the lust, the territoriality of such beasts would be largely unintelligible to them. There was little place in the placid, lucid categories of Priest-Kings for comprehending the bloods and madnesses of either men or Kurii. They, Kurii and men, understood one another better, I suspected, than the Priest-Kings understood either. As long as the Kurii remained behind the fifth ring, that determined by the orbit of the planet called on Earth Jupiter, on Gor, Hersius, after a legendary hero of Ar, the Priest-Kings were little concerned with them They had no objection if such ravening wolves prowled their fences, and scratched at their very gates.
“They, like men, are an interesting life form,” once had said Misk to me. But now the Kurii worlds, sensing the weakness of the Sardar, following the Nest War, damages that had destroyed their basic power source and had split the very Nest open to the sky, prowled more closely. The worlds, now, or several of them, we understood, concealed, shielded, lurked well within the asteroid belt.
Contact points, bases, had been established, it seemed, on the shores of Earth itself. The major probe of Kurii, the organization of native Kurii by ship Kurii, had taken place recently. It had failed. It had been stopped in Torvaldsland. Ship Kurii, still, then, did not know the extent to which the power of Priest-Kings remained crippled. This was the major advantage which we now held. Kurii, cautious, like sharks, did not wish to commit their full attack until assured of its success. Had they known the weakness of the Sardar, and the time required to restore the power source, regenerating itself now at inexorable concentration rates determined by natural law, they would have surely launched their fleets. Most, we conjectured, they feared a ruse, a display of pretended weakness that would lure an attack, then to be decimated. Moreover, I knew there were factions among Kurii. Doubt- less they had individuals who were bolder, and those who were more cautious. The failure of the Torvaldsland probe might have had great impact in their councils. Perhaps a new party had come to power among them. Perhaps now, a new strategy, a new plan, was afoot.
“Surrender Gor-” said Samos, looking down at the portion of the map beneath his feet.
I looked to the map. Was this where the new plan of Kurii, if there was such a new plan, touched this primitive world? “The path of the captured Kur,” said Samos, pointing, “would have taken it here.”
“Perhaps he intended to cross it?” I asked.
Samos pointed with his finger, west of Tor. “No,” said he, “surely one would circle the area, taking the routes west of Tor, where there is ample water.”
“One would surely need a caravan, and guides,” I said, “to survive east of Tor?”
“Of course,” said Samos. “Yet the beast was alone.”
“I suspect,” said Samos, “that the beast’s destination lay not on the other side of this area, but within it.”
“Incredible,” I said.
Samos shrugged.
“Why should a Kur go to such a place, and enter such a country?” I asked.
“I do not know,” said Samos.
“Strange that at this time, too,” said I “the slave runs should cease, an the imperative, inexplicable, to surrender Gor should be served upon the Sardar.”
“What did the Kur seek in such a country?” asked Samos.
&
nbsp; “And what,” I asked, “of the message on the stone, “Beware the steel tower’?”
“It is a mystery,” said Samos, “and the answer lies here.” He pointed to that dread area of Gor.
I looked downward. Though on the map it occupied only some several feet of the floor, in actuality it was vast. It was roughly in the shape of a gigantic, lengthy trapezoid, with eastward leaning sides. At its northwestern corner lay Tor, West of Tor, on the Lower Fayeen, a sluggish, meandering tributary, like the Upper Fayeen, to the Cartius, lay the river Port of Kasra, known for its export of salt. It was in this port that the warehouses of Ibn Saran, salt merchant, currently the guest of Samos of Port Kat, were to be found. This city, too, was indicated in the cording of his agal, and in the stripes of his djellaba.
The area, in extent, east of Tor, was hundreds of pasangs in depth, and perhaps thousands in length. The Gorean expression for this area simply means the Wastes, or the Emptiness. It is a vast area, and generally rocky, and hilly, save in the dune country. It is almost constantly windblown and almost waterless. In areas it has been centuries between rains. Its oases are fed from underground rivers flowing southeastward from the Voltai slopes. The water, seeping underground, eventually, in places, due to rock formation, erupts in oasis springs, or, more usually, is reached by deep wells, some of them more than two hundred feet deep. It takes more than a hundred and fifty years for some of this water to make the underground journey, seeping hundreds of feet at times beneath the dry surface, moving only a few miles a year, to reach the eases. Diurnal air temperatures in the shade are commonly in the range of 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Surface temperature, diurnally, is, of course, much higher in the dune country, by day, if one were so unwise as to go barefoot, the bright sand would quickly cripple a man, abraiding and burning the flesh from his feet in a matter of hours.
“It is here,” said Samos, pointing to the map, “that the secret lies.”
The dancer turned from the tables and, hands high over her head, approached me.
She swayed to the music before me. “You commanded me to dance my beauty for the guests of Samos,” said she, “Master. You, too, are such a guest.
I looked upon her, narrow lidded, as she strove to please me.
Then she moaned and turned away, and, as the music swirled to its maddened, frenzied climax, she spun, whirling, in a jangle of bells and clashing barbaric ornaments before the guests of Samos. Then, as the music suddenly stopped, she fell to the floor helpless, vulnerable, a female slave. Her body, under the torchlight, shone with a sheen of sweat. She gasped for breath; her body was beautiful, her breasts lifting and falling, as she drank deeply of the air. Her lips were parted. Now that her dance was finished she could scarcely move. We had not been gentle with her. She looked up at me and lifted her hand. It was at my feet she lay.
I gestured her to her knees, head down. She obeyed. Her hair fell to the map floor.It touched the portion of the map which, together Samos and I had been contemplating. I regarded the lettering, in Gorean script.
“The secret is there,” said Samos, pointing to the map, “in the Tahari.”
Delicately, timidly the dancer reached out, with her two hands, to touch my ankle. She looked at me, agonized.
I signaled to the guards. She cried out with misery as she was dragged by the ankle across the door and thrown over two of the small tables.
I would let others warm her.
The men cried out with pleasure.
Her final yieldings I would force from her later, when it pleased me.
She who had once been Miss Priscilla Blake-Allen, a free Earth girl prior to her enslavement, struggled to her feet, her eyes wide with horror, trying to struggle backward but the guards’ hands on her arms, she now only a nameless slave, for her master had not yet given her a name, held her in place.
She looked at her master, Samos of Port Kar. He gave a sign. She screamed.
She fought the harness.
She too was thrown across the tables.
Ibn Saran, salt merchant of Kasra, did not rise from behind the table behind which, cross-legged, he sat. His eyes were half closed. He paid no attention to the raping of the slaves. He, too, it seemed, contemplated the map.
“Either girl’s use is yours, noble Ibn Saran,” said Samos, “if you wish.”
“My thanks,” said he, “Noble Samos. But it will be in my own tent, on the submission mats, that I will teach a slave to be a slave.”
I turned to Samos. “I will leave in the morning” I said.
“Do I understand,” asked Ibn Saran, “that your path leads you to the Tahari?”
“Yes,” I said.
“That direction, too, is mine,” said Ibn Saran. “I, too, leave in the morning.
Perhaps we might travel together?”
“Good,” I said.
Ibn Saran rose to his feet, and brushed his hand against the right palm of Samos, twice, and against my right palm, twice. “May your water bags be never empty. May you always have water.”
“May your water bags be never empty,” I said. “May you always have water.”
He then bowed, turned, and left the room.
“The Kur,” I said. I referred to the beast in the dungeons of Samos.
“Yes?” said Samos.
“Free it,” I said.
“Free it?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Is it your intention to follow it?”
“No,” I said. Few, if any humans, in my opinion, could long follow an adult Kur.
They are agile, highly intelligent beasts. Their senses are unusually keen. It would be difficult, if not impossible to trail, perhaps for weeks, such a keen-sensed, wary, suspicious creature. It would be almost suicidal, in my opinion, to attempt it. Sooner or later the beast would become aware of the pursuit. At that point the hunter would become the hunted. The night vision of the Kur is superb.
“Do you know what you are doing?” asked Samos.
“There are factions among Kurii” I said. “It is my feeling that this Kur may be our ally.”
“You are mad,” said Samos.
“Perhaps,” I granted.
“I shall release the Kur,” said Samos, “two days after you have departed Port Kar.”
“Perhaps I shall meet it in the Tahari,” I said.”
“I would not look forward to the meeting,” he said.
I smiled.
“You leave in the morning?” asked Samos.
“I shall leave before morning,” I said.
“Are you not traveling with Ibn Sarah?” asked Samos.
“No,” I said. “I do not trust him.”
Samos nodded. “Nor do I,” he said.
2 The Streets of Tor
“Water! Water!” called the man.
“Water,” I said.
He came to me, bent over, tattered, swarthy, grinning up at me, the verrskin bag over his shoulder, the brass cups, a dozen of them, attached to shoulder straps and his belt, rattling and clinking. His shoulder on the left was damp from the bag. There were sweat marks on his torn shirt, under the straps. One of the brass cups he unhooked from his belt. Without removing the bag from his shoulder, he filled the cup. He wore a head scarf, the wrapped turban, wound about his head. It was of rep-cloth. It protects the head from the sun; its folds allow beat and perspiration to escape, evaporating, and, of course, air to enter and circulate. Among lower-class males, too, it provides a soft cushion, on which boxes, and other burdens, may be conveniently carried on the head, steadied by the right hand. The water flowed into the cup through a tiny vent-and-spigot device, which wastes little water, by reducing spillage, which was tied in and waxed into a hole left in the front left foreleg of the verr skin. The skins are carefully stripped and any rents in the skin are sewed up, the seams coated with wax. When the whole skin is thoroughly cleaned of filth and hair, straps are fastened to it so that it may be conveniently carried on the shoulder, or over the back, the same straps ser
ving, with adjustment, for either mode of support. The cup was dirty.
I took the water and gave the man a copper tarsk.
I smelled the spices and sweat of Tor. I drank slowly. The sun was high.
Tor, lying at the northwest corner of the Tahari, is the principal supplying point for the scattered oasis communities of that dry vastness, almost a continent of rock, and heat, and wind and sand. These communities, sometimes quite large, numbering in hundreds, sometimes thousands of citizens depending on the water available, are often hundreds of pasangs apart. They depend on caravans, usually from Tor, sometimes from Kasra, sometimes even from far Turia, to supply many of their needs. In turn, of course, caravans export the products of the oases. To the oases caravans bring various goods, for example, rep-cloth, embroidered cloths, silks, rugs, silver, gold, jewelries, mirrors, kailiauk tusk, perfumes, hides, skins, feathers, precious woods, tools, needles, worked leather goods, salt, nuts and spices, jungle birds, prized as pets, weapons, rough woods, sheets of tin and copper, the tea of Bazi, wool from the bounding Hurt, decorated, beaded whips, female slaves, and many other forms of merchandise. The principal export of the oases is dates and pressed-date bricks.
Some of the date palms grow to more than a hundred feet high. It takes ten years before they begin to bear fruit. They will then yield fruit for more than a century. A given tree, annually, yields between one and five Gorean weights of fruit. A weight is some ten stone, or some forty Earth pounds. A great amount of farming, or perhaps one should speak of gardening, is done at the oasis, but little of this is exported. At the oasis will be grown a hybrid, brownish Sa-Tarna, adapted to the heat of the desert; most Sa-Tarna is yellow; and beans, berries, onions tuber suls, various sorts of melons, a foliated leaf vegetable, called Katch, and various root vegetables, such as turnips, carrots, radishes, of the sphere and cylinder varieties, and korts, a large, brownish-skinned, thick-skinned, sphere-shaped vegetable, usually some six inches in width, the interior of which is yellowish, fibrous and heavily seeded. At the oasis, because of the warm climate, the farmers can grow two or more crops a year.