by John Norman
“I need water,” I told him. It had been gone, for more than a day.
The Kur held up eight fingers, and pointed to the sun.
I did not understand his meaning.
We continued our journey. An Ahn later, nostrils distended, head to the ground, he became excited. He pointed to the ground. He looked at me, as though I must understand. I did not, of course, understand. He looked at the sun, and at me, as though weighing the values of alternative courses of action. Then he swiftly departed from his original direction. I realized, several Ahn later, that he was following an animal trail, the odors of which my senses were not keen enough to detect. We fell on our bellies before the foul water, stinking with excrement, and drank, and again I filled the bag. There was a half-eaten tabuk by the water hole. The Kur warned me from certain pieces of the meat, smelling it. Other pieces, farther from the eaten areas, more exposed to the sun, he gave me. He himself broke free a haunch and, with swift motions, with his teeth, holding it, ripped the dry meat from the bone.
The Kur motioned me to my feet. We must again proceed. Fed, watered, I followed him, though each step because of my exhaustion, was torture.
He returned to his original trail, from which he made his detour, and continued his march.
The next morning he pointed to the sun, and held up seven fingers before me. But be let me sleep, in the shelter of a rock, while he watched. That night we again began the trek. The rest did me much good. The next morning he pointed to the sun, and held up six fingers before me. His rendezvous, I gathered, whatever it might be, must be accomplished within six days. It was for that reason that he had been driving us both.
Water became more scarce.
The Kur began to move more slowly, and drank more. I think its wounds had begun to tell upon it. No longer did it seem willing to risk leaving the trail to hunt for water. It was becoming a desperate beast. It feared, I gathered, missing its rendezvous. It had not counted on its own weakness. The leather I wore about my feet was in tatters, but in the footprints of the Kur there was blood. It moved on, indomitably.
Then the water was gone.
That morning the Kur had pointed to the sun and held up four fingers.
We went a day without water.
In a place, on the next day, we found flies, swarming, over parched earth.
There, with his great paws, slowly, painfully, the Kur dug. More than four feet below the surface be found mud. We strained this through the silk I had had tied to my wrist, into his cupped paws. He gave me almost all of this water. He licked from his moistened palms only what I had left, In another place, that night, we found a narrow channel of baked mud, the dried bed of a tiny, vanished stream, of the sort which in the winter, should it rain, carries water for a few days. We followed this to a shallow, dried pool. Digging here we found dormant snails. In the moonlight we cracked, the shells, sucking out the fluid. It stank. Only at first did I vomit. Again the Kur gave me almost the entire bounty of this find. Then we could find no more.
We retraced our steps to the point at which we had left the trail, and continued our journey.
The next morning the Kur pointed to the sun, and held up three fingers.
The water bag, in my hands, hung limp, dry.
“Let us rest,” I said to the Kur.
He pressed on. I followed the footprints. There was blood in them. I shut my eyes against the glare of the terrain.
I put one foot in front of the other, again and again. The Kur began to limp.
I felt weak, sleepy. I was not much interested in eating. I began to feel strangely hot. I felt my forehead. It was dry, and seemed unnaturally warm. I felt sick to my stomach, nauseous. That is strange, I thought. I have had little to cat. “We must rest,” I told the Kur. But he continued to press ahead. I tumbled after him, the water bag in my hand. I looked at it. It had cracked in the sun. I clung to it, irrationally. I would not release it. When the sun was high, I fell. The Kur waited until I regained my feet and then he limped on, ahead of me. “I’m dizzy,” I told him. “Wait!” I stood still, and waited for the dizziness to pass. The Kur waited. Then we went on again. I had a headache. I shook my head. The pain was severe. I put one foot before the other, continuing to follow the Kur. I began to itch. I scratched at my arms and body. I stumbled.
The Kur moved on ahead of me. It was odd to feel no saliva in one’s mouth. My eyes were dry. Bits of sand seemed to lie between the eye and the lid; I felt, too, the grit of sand in my mouth, I could not spit it out; my eyes would not form tears. My lips became sore and began to ache. My tongue felt large. I felt skin on my tongue peeling. I began to feel cramps in my stomach, and in my arms and legs. I looked about. There seemed much water here and there, in flat places, in the distance, rippling, stirring. Sometimes our path took us toward it, but when we reached it, it was sand, the air above it rippling and troubled in the desert’s heat.
“I can go no further,” I told the Kur.
He turned to face me, crouched over, He pointed now to his right, for the first time. He pointed directly eastward, toward the dunes. It was at this point, I understood, that he would enter the dunes for his overland trek.
I looked at the dunes to my left, shimmering with beat, rippled in the wind, the tops like bright, tawny smoke in the light.
It would be madness and death to enter them.
He pointed to his right, with the long arm, to the dunes.
“I can go no further,” I told him.
He approached me. I regarded him. He took me by the arms and threw me to his feet in the dirt. I heard him take the water bag, and heard it being ripped. My hands were jerked behind me and tied. My ankles were crossed and tied. With portions of the water bag and shreds from it, the Kur bound his feet, to protect them from the sand. He twisted a rope from other strips of the bag. I felt this, as I lay in the sand and grit, knotted about my throat. With his teeth he severed the leather that had bound my ankles. I almost strangled. I was jerked to my feet. The Kur turned toward the dunes, the rope of twisted leather in his right paw. Then he led me, tethered behind him, his human prisoner, climbing, slipping, up the first long, sloping crest, into the dunes.
“You are mad, mad!” I wanted to scream at him. But I could only whisper, and scarce could heir my own voice.
He continued on, and I, tethered, followed him.
The wind whipped across the sand.
I have marched to Klima, I told myself. I march again to Klima. I march again to Klima. But on the march to Klima I had had water, salt.
Sometime in the late afternoon I must have fallen unconscious in the sand. I dreamt of the baths of Ar and Turia. I awakened in the night. No longer was I bound. I was carried in the arms of the Kur, over the silvered dunes. He moved slowly. He was lame in his right foot. I lay against wounds in his upper chest.
They were open. But they did not bleed.
Again I fell asleep. The next time I awakened it was shortly before dawn. The Kur, near me, half covered with sand, stirred by the wind, slept. I rose to my feet, unsteadily. Then I fell. I could not stand.
I sat in the sand, my back against a dune. I watched the Kur. It had been an admirable, mighty beast. But now the deserts, and its wounds, were killing it.
It was now weak, and drawn. Its flesh seemed to hang upon its huge frame, a shrunken reminiscence of the former mightiness of the beast. I regretted, strangely, seeing its decline. I wondered at what drove it, why it strove so relentlessly in its mission, whatever that might be. It dared to pit itself against the desert. I noted its fur. No longer was it sleek, but now it seemed lifeless, brittle; it was dry; it was coated with sand. The leather of its snout, with the two nostrils, was cracked and, now, oddly gray. Its mouth and lips were dry, like paper. About the snout, the nostrils, the mouth and lips, were tiny fissures, broken open, filled with sand. Sand, too, rimmed the nostrils and eyes, and the mouth and lips. It lay in the sand, curled, its head facing away from the wind, like something discarded, needed no longer
, cast aside. It, proud beast, had pitted itself against the desert. It had lost. What prize, I wondered, could be worth the risk the beast had been willing to take, the price it had been willing to pay, its own life. I wondered if it could rise again to its feet. I did not think either of us would survive the day.
The sun was rising.
The beast rolled to its feet, and shook the sand from its fur. It stood unsteadily.
“Go without me,” I said. “I cannot walk. You can no longer carry me.”
The beast lifted its long arm and pointed to the sun. It lifted two fingers.
It approached me. “I cannot go with you,” I said. “What is so important”‘ I asked.
The beast, with one of his digits, rubbed about its lips and tongue. It thrust the finger against my lips. I tasted sand, and salt.
“I cannot swallow,” I said.
The beast regarded me for a long time. Its corneas were no longer yellow, but pale and whitish. There seemed no moisture in the eyes. At the corners the tiny cracks about the eyes were coated with sand. My own eves stung. I no longer attempted to remove particles from them.
The beast turned away from me and bent his head over his cupped hands. When he again turned to face me I saw, in the black cup of his paws, a foul fluid. I thrust my face to his hands, and, my own hands trembling, holding his cupped hands, drank. Four times did the beast do this. It was water from the last large water hold we had visited, where the half-eaten tabuk had been found, held for days in the beast’s storage stomach. It was water, in a sense, from his own tissues he gave me, releasing it now, not into his own system, but yielding it to me, that I might not die. Again did the beast try to give me water, but then there was none left. He had given me the last of his water. Now again, from his mouth and lips, and body, he scraped salt. He took it, too, from the bloody crusts of his wounds. I took it, with the sand, licking at it, now able to swallow it. He had given me; it seemed an inexplicable gift, water and salt from his own body.
“I can trek again,” I told him. “It will not be necessary to carry me, should you be able to do this, or to bind me, leading me as a prisoner. You have given me the water and salt from your own body. I do not know what you seek, or what your mission may be, but I shall accompany you. We shall go together.”
But the beast motioned now that I should rest. Then he stood between me and the sun and, in the shade of his body, as he moved from time to time, I slept.
I dreamed of the ring he wore about the second finger of his left hand.
When the moons were high I awakened. Then I followed the Kur. He moved slowly, being lame. His desiccated tissues, I did not think, would much longer support life. The water he had been saving, perhaps for me, was gone.
I did not know what he sought. Yet I admired him that he should so indomitably seek it. I did not think it an ill or unworthy thing to die in the company of such a beast.
At his side I sensed the will and nobility of the Kur. They were indeed splendid foes for Priest-Kings and men. I wondered if either Priest-Kings or men could be worthy of them.
Thus, natural enemies, a human and a Kur, in a strange truce in the desert, side by side, trekked. I knew not toward what. I did not question, nor had I questioned, did I think my companion could have responded to me. I accompanied him.
Many times during the night he fell. He grew visibly weaker. I waited for him to regain his feet. Then we would again take up our march.
Near morning we rested. In an Ahn he tried to rise, but could not. He looked at the sun. In the sand, with one digit, he drew a single mark. He curled the great clawed right fist, and struck the sand once with it, hopelessly. Then he fell into the sand.
I thought that he would die then, but he did not. At times during the day, when I lay in the shadow of his body, I thought him dead but, putting my ear to his chest, I detected the beating of the large heart, slow, irregular, sporadic, fitful like the clenching of a weakening fist.
In the night I prepared to bury the Kur. I dug a trench in the sand. I waited for it to die.
I regretted that there would be no stone with which to mark the grave.
When the moons were full, he put back his bead and I saw the rows of fangs. To my horror he struggled again to his feet, and, shaking the sand from his body, took up again the march. In awe I followed it.
In the morning he did not stop to rest. He pointed again to the sun, and this time lifted a closed fist.
I did not understand his meaning. Then the hair rose upon the back of my neck.
He had indicated time, by pointing to the sun, and days, by lifting his fingers.
He had now pointed to the sun, and lifted only the great, dry fist, obdurate, closed.
I then understood, in horror, suddenly, the meaning of his mission.
There were no more days left. It was the last day. It was a world’s last day.
“Surrender Gor,” had been the message to the Sardar, from the Kurii ships. It had been an ultimatum. The Priest Kings, of course, had been only puzzled; their response had been curiosity, inquiry; it had never occurred to them, rational creatures, what might be the enormity of the plan of Kurii. I sensed there might be different parties among them, creatures so menacing, so fierce, so aggressive, so proud, so imperialistic, so uncompromising, factional and belligerent. After the failure of the major probe in Torvaldsland, it seemed not unlikely a given party or tribe might have fallen from power. I did not think it would be desirable, among Kurii, to be among a party which had fallen from power. It seemed clear to me then that a new force had come to power among the enemies of the Sardar, one willing, if necessary, to sacrifice one world to gain another.
The Kur had held up a closed fist. There were no more days. I found myself struggling to keep up with the beast.
The slave runs had been stopped. Doubtless key operatives, particularly those, who spoke languages of Earth, had been evacuated from Gor. Others, ignorant of the horrifying, strategy of interplanetary warfare would remain. Even Ibn Saran, with all his brilliance, did not, I supposed, conjecture his role as dupe in this plan, precipitating tribal warfare, thus effectively, for almost all practical purposes, closing the desert to intruders, strangers, agents either of Priest-Kings or even of alternative Kurii parties. Kurii, I suspected, were as little united as men, for they, too, are jealous, proud, territorial beasts.
Gor, I understood, was to be destroyed. This would eliminate a world, but with it, Priest-Kings, and leave Earth unsheltered, vulnerable, to the attack fleets of the steel worlds. Better one world than none.
Though it was in the heat of the Tahari noon the beast did not pause. The Kur, like the great cats, hunts when hungry, but it is a beautifully night-adapted animal. Its night vision is perhaps a hundred times keener than that of humans.
It can see even by starlight. It would be blind only in total darkness, as in a brine pit at Klima. The pupils of its eyes, like those of the cat, can shrink to pinpoints and expand to wide, dark, light-sensitive moons, capable of minute discriminations in what to a human being would seem pitch darkness. The Kur, commonly, emerges from its lair with the falling of darkness. It is then that its nostrils distend and its ears lift, listening, and that it begins its hunt.
I had no doubt that the destruction of the world, as would seem fitting to a Kur, would occur with the coming of night. It is then that the Kur, commonly, chooses to hunt.
In the late afternoon the Kur cried out with rage. It stood on the crest of a dune, sand almost to its knees, sand sweeping about it. The wind had picked up.
I saw its fur blown.
The wind had shifted again to the east.
Within moments the storm fell. The Kur pressed on, through the pelting sand. The sky was dark. I held to the fur at its arm, fighting to keep my balance.
Suddenly the Kur stopped, and stood, leaning against the wind. I opened my eyes, and saw, briefly, before me, not more than a hundred yards away, in a fleeting gap in the storm, swiftly closed again by the haste
ned, stinging sand, crooked, leaning to one side, half buried in the sand, a cylinder of steel; it was perhaps twelve feet in diameter, perhaps forty feet of it exposed; at its apex I saw clustered thrust chambers; it was a ship; it had been crashed into the sand.
I felt the hand of the Kur close on my arm.
It is difficult to speak of what I then saw. The Kur, near me, removed his hand from my arm. With his right hand he took the ring on his left hand, that on his second finger, and turned the bezel inward, so that the silvered plate set in the gold faced inward. On the exposed side of the ring there was a circular switch, which he then depressed. For a moment in the sand, he seemed to shimmer and then I saw only the sand, the whipping, pelting sand. I was alone.
I knew then it hunted, in the vicinity of the tower. On my hands and knees I crawled a few yards in the direction of the ship. I saw it again, once, briefly, in a break in the storm. It seemed to me of primitive design. The thrust chambers suggested a liquid-propellant rocket. It was not disklike. I supposed it might have been an obsolete ship, perhaps a derelict, even an ancient ship, little more now than the fuselage for housing a bomb.
I shuddered when I thought of the power concealed in that casing of steel.
I wanted to run, into the storm, away from it. But I knew that nowhere on Gor would there be escape from that inert ship. “Beware the steel tower, “ had been written on the rock. It was a weapon, pressed to the temple of a world, set to be discharged with the falling of darkness.
I thought I heard, wild. Though it was hard to tell in the wind, the screams of men. Then I heard the howling of a Kur, and four sudden, swift explosions.
Then I heard only the wind.
I waited, for more than a quarter of an Ahn. Then I sensed it near me. The air shimmered. It stood unsteadily. The Kur was before me. Its, paws were red. In its left thigh was one, and across its chest, were three holes, three quarters of an inch in diameter. Its eyes could not focus. It turned it’s back to me. In its back, where the force had burst loose of its body, were holes corresponding to those in his leg and chest. I smelled burned flesh. A white smoke, tiny, in wisps, like the smoke of dry ice, rose from the holes, then was whipped away by the wind. The Kur sank to the sand. I knelt over it. It opened its eyes. They focused on me.