by John Norman
"Perhaps," I suggested, "it was because he could not stand pain that he remained a member of the Caste of Physicians."
"Perhaps," said Vika. "He always wanted to stop suffering, even that of an animal or slave."
I smiled.
"You see," she said, "he was weak."
"I see," I said.
Vika lay back on the silks and furs. "You are the first of the men in this chamber," she said, "who have spoken to me of these things."
I did not reply.
"I love you, Tarl Cabot," she said.
"I think not," I said gently.
"I do!" she insisted.
"Someday," I said, "you will love—but I do not think it will be a warrior of Ko-ro-ba."
"Do you think I cannot love?" she challenged.
"I think someday you will love," I said, "and I think you will love greatly."
"Can you love?" she challenged.
"I don't know," I said. I smiled. "Once—long ago—I thought I loved."
"Who was she?" asked Vika, not too pleasantly.
"A slender, dark-haired girl," I said, "whose name was Talena."
"Was she beautiful?" asked Vika.
"Yes," I said.
"As beautiful as I?" asked Vika.
"You are both very beautiful," I said.
"Was she a slave?" asked Vika.
"No," I said, "—she was the daughter of a Ubar."
Rage transfigured Vika's features and she leaped from the couch and strode to the side of the room, her fingers angrily inside her collar, as though they might pull it from her throat. "I see!" she said. "And I—Vika—am only a slave girl!"
"Do not be angry," I said.
"Where is she?" demanded Vika.
"I don't know," I admitted.
"How long has it been since you have seen her?" demanded Vika.
"It has been more than seven years," I said.
Vika laughed cruelly. "Then," she gloated, "she is in the Cities of Dust."
"Perhaps," I admitted.
"I—Vika—" she said, "am here."
"I know," I said.
I turned away.
I heard her voice over my shoulder. "I will make you forget her," she said.
Her voice had borne the cruel, icy, confident, passionate menace of a woman from Treve, accustomed to have what she wanted, who would not be denied.
I turned to face Vika once more, and I no longer saw the girl to whom I had been speaking but a woman of High Caste, from the bandit kingdom of Treve, insolent and imperious, though collared.
Casually Vika reached to the clasp on the left shoulder of her garment and loosened it, and the garment fell to her ankles.
She was branded.
"You thought I was a Passion Slave," she said.
I regarded the woman who stood before me, the sullen eyes, the pouting lips, the collar, the brand.
"Am I not beautiful enough," she asked, "to be the daughter of a Ubar?"
"Yes," I said, "you are that beautiful."
She looked at me mockingly. "Do you know what a Passion Slave is?" she asked.
"Yes," I said.
"It is a female of the human kind," she said, "but bred like a beast for its beauty and its passion."
"I know," I said.
"It is an animal," she said, "bred for the pleasure of men, bred for the pleasure of a master."
I said nothing.
"In my veins," she said, "flows the blood of such an animal. In my veins flows the blood of a Passion Slave." She laughed. "And you, Tarl Cabot," she said, "are its master. You, Tarl Cabot, are my master."
"No," I said.
Amused, tauntingly, she approached me. "I will serve you as a Passion Slave," she said.
"No," I said.
"Yes," she said, "for you I will be an obedient Passion Slave." She lifted her lips to mine.
My hands on her arms held her from me.
"Taste me," she said.
"No," I said.
She laughed. "You cannot reject me," she said.
"Why not?" I asked.
"I shall not allow you to do so," she said. "You see, Tarl Cabot, I have decided that you shall be my slave."
I thrust her from me.
"Very well," she cried, her eyes flashing. "Very well, Cabot," she said, "then I shall conquer you!" And she seized my head in her hands and pressed her lips to mine.
In that moment I sensed once more that slightly acrid scent which I had experienced in the corridors beyond the chamber, and I pressed my mouth hard into Vika's until her lips were cut by my teeth and I had pressed her back until only my arm kept her from falling to the stones of the floor, and I heard her cry of surprise and pain, and then I hurled her angrily from me to the straw slave mat which lay at the foot of the stone couch.
Now it seemed to me that I understood but they had come too soon! She had not had a chance to do her work. It might go hard with her but I was not concerned.
Still I did not turn to that giant portal.
The scent was now strong.
Vika crouched terrified on the slave mat at the foot of the couch, in the very shadow of the slave ring.
"What is the matter?" she asked. "What is wrong?"
"So you were to conquer me for them, were you?" I demanded.
"I don't understand," she stammered.
"You are a poor tool for Priest-Kings," I said.
"No," she said, "no!"
"How many men have you conquered for Priest-Kings?" I asked. I seized her by the hair and twisted her head to face me. "How many?" I cried.
"Please!" she wept.
I found myself tempted to break her head against the foot of the stone couch, for she was worthless, treacherous, seductive, cruel, vicious, worthy only of the collar, irons and the whip!
She shook her head numbly as though denying charges I had not voiced.
"You don't understand," she said. "I love you!"
With loathing I cast her from me.
Yet still did I not turn to face that portal.
Vika lay at my feet, a streak of blood at the corner of those lips that bore still the marks of my fierce kiss. She looked up at me, tears welling in her eyes.
"Please," she said.
The scent was strong. I knew that it was near. How was it that the girl was not aware of it? How was it that she did not know? Was it not part of her plan?
"Please," she said, looking up at me, lifting her hand to me. Her face was tear-stained; her voice a broken sob. "I love you," she said.
"Silence, Slave Girl," I said.
She lowered her head to the stones and wept.
I knew now that it was here.
The scent was now overpowering, unmistakable.
I watched Vika and suddenly she seemed too to know and her head lifted and her eyes widened with horror and she crept to her knees, her hands before her face as though to shield herself and she shuddered and suddenly uttered a wild, long, terrible scream of abject fear.
I drew my sword and turned.
It stood framed in the doorway.
In its way it was very beautiful, golden and tall, looming over me, framed in that massive portal. It was not more than a yard wide but its head nearly touched the top of the portal and so I would judge that, standing as it did, it must have been nearly eighteen feet high.
It had six legs and a great head like a globe of gold with eyes like vast luminous disks. Its two forelegs, poised and alert, were lifted delicately in front of its body. Its jaws opened and closed once. They moved laterally.
From its head there extended two fragile, jointed appendages, long and covered with short quivering strands of golden hair. These two appendages, like eyes, swept the room once and then seemed to focus on me.
They curved toward me like delicate golden pincers and each of the countless golden strands on those appendages straightened and pointed toward me like a quivering golden needle.
I could not conjecture the nature of the creature's experience but I
knew that I stood within the center of its sensory field.
About its neck there hung a small circular device, a translator of some sort, similar to but more compact than those I had hitherto seen.
I sensed a new set of odors, secreted by what stood before me.
Almost simultaneously a mechanically reproduced voice began to emanate from the translator.
It spoke in Gorean.
I knew what it would say.
"Lo Sardar," it said. "I am a Priest-King."
"I am Tarl Cabot of Ko-ro-ba," I said.
A moment after I spoke I sensed another set of odors, which emanated doubtless from the device which hung about the neck of what stood before me.
The two sensory appendages of the creature seemed to register this information.
A new scent came to my nostrils.
"Follow me," said the mechanically reproduced voice, and the creature turned from the portal.
I went to the portal.
It was stalking in long, delicate steps down the passageway.
I looked once more at Vika, who lifted her hand to me. "Don't go," she said.
I turned scornfully from her and followed the creature.
Behind me I heard her weep.
Let her weep, I said to myself, for she has failed her masters, the Priest-Kings, and undoubtedly her punishment will not be light.
Had I the time, had I not more urgent business, I might have punished her myself, teaching her without mercy what could be the meaning of her collar, using her as objectively and ruthlessly as she deserved, brutally administering the discipline of a Gorean master to a treacherous slave girl.
We would see then who would conquer.
I shook these thoughts from my head and continued down the passageway.
I must forget the treacherous, vicious wench. There were more important matters to attend to. The slave girl was nothing.
I hated Vika.
I followed a Priest-King.
10
Misk the Priest-King
The Priest-Kings have little or no scent of their own which is detectable by the human nostrils, though one gathers there is a nest odor by which they may identify one another, and that the variations in this nest odor permit identifications of individuals.
What in the passageways I had taken to be the scent of Priest-Kings had actually been the residue of odor-signals which Priest-Kings, like certain social insects of our world, use in communicating with one another.
The slightly acrid odor I had noticed tends to be a common property of all such signals, much as there is a common property to the sound of a human voice, whether it be that of an Englishman, a Bushman, a Chinese or a Gorean, which sets it apart from, say, the growling of animals, the hiss of snakes, the cry of birds.
The Priest-Kings have eyes, which are compound and many-faceted, but they do not much rely on these organs. They are, for them, something like our ears and nose, used as secondary sensors to be relied upon when the most pertinent information in the environment is not relayed by vision, or, in the case of the Priest-Kings, by scent. Accordingly the two golden-haired, jointed appendages protruding from their globelike heads, above the rounded, disklike eyes, are their primary sensory organs. I gather that these appendages are sensitive not only to odors but, due to a modification of some of the golden hairs, may also transform sound vibrations into something meaningful in their experience. Thus, if one wishes, one may speak of them not only as smelling but hearing through these appendages. Apparently hearing is not of great importance, however, to them, considering the small number of hairs modified for this purpose. Oddly enough, few of the Priest-Kings whom I questioned on this matter seemed to draw the distinction clearly between hearing and smelling. I find this incredible, but I have no reason to believe they deceived me. They recognize that we have different sensory arrangements than they do and I suspect that they are as unclear as to the nature of our experience as we are of theirs. In fact, though I speak of hearing and smelling, I am not sure that these expressions are altogether meaningful when applied to Priest-Kings. I speak of them smelling and hearing through the sensory appendages, but what the quality of their experience may be I am uncertain. For example, does a Priest-King have the same qualitative experience that I do when we are confronted by the same scent? I am inclined to doubt it, for their music, which consists of rhapsodies of odors produced by instruments constructed for this purpose, and often played by Priest-Kings, some of whom I am told are far more skillful than others, is intolerable to my ear, or I should say, nose.
Communication by odor-signals can in certain circumstances be extremely efficient, though it can be disadvantageous in others. For example, an odor can carry, to the sensory appendages of a Priest-King, much farther than can the shout or cry of a man to another man. Moreover, if not too much time is allowed to elapse, a Priest-King may leave a message in his chamber or in a corridor for another Priest-King, and the other may arrive later and interpret it. A disadvantage of this mode of communication, of course, is that the message may be understood by strangers or others for whom it is not intended. One must be careful of what one says in the tunnels of Priest-Kings, for one's words may linger after one, until they sufficiently dissipate to be little more than a meaningless blur of scent.
For longer periods of time there are various devices for recording a message, without relying on complex mechanical devices. The simplest and one of the most fascinating is a chemically treated rope of clothlike material which the Priest-King, beginning at an end bearing a certain scent, saturates with the odors of his message. This coiled message rope then retains the odors indefinitely and when another Priest-King wishes to read the message he unrolls it slowly, scanning it serially with the jointed sensory appendages.
I am told that the phonemes of the language of Priest-Kings or, better, what in their language would correspond to phonemes in ours, since their "phonemes" have to do with scent and not sound, number seventy-three. Their number is, of course, potentially infinite, as would be the number of possible phonemes in English, but just as we take a subset of sounds to be English sounds and form our utterances from them, so they take a subset of odors as similarly basic to their speech. The number of familiar, common English phonemes, incidentally, is in the neighborhood of fifty.
The morphemes of the language of Priest-Kings, those smallest intelligible information bits, in particular roots and affixes, are, of course, like the morphemes of English, extremely numerous. The normal morpheme, in their language as in ours, consists of a sequence of phonemes. For example, in English 'bit' is one morpheme but three phonemes, as will appear clear if given some reflection. Similarly in the language of the Priest-Kings, the seventy-three "phonemes" or basic scents are used to form the meaning units of the language, and a single morpheme of Priest-Kings may consist of a complex set of odors.
I do not know whether there are more morphemes in the language of the Priest-Kings or in English, but both are apparently rich languages, and, of course, the strict morpheme count is not necessarily a reliable index to the complexity of the lexicon, because of combinations of morphemes to form new words. German, for example, tends to rely somewhat more on morpheme combination than does English or French. I was told, incidentally, that the language of the Priest-Kings does possess more morphemes than English but I do not know if the report is truthful or not, for Priest-Kings tend to be somewhat touchy on the matter of any comparisons, particularly those to their disadvantage or putative disadvantage, with organisms of what they regard as the lower orders. On the other hand it may well be the case that, as a matter of fact, the morpheme set of the language of Priest-Kings is indeed larger than that of English. I simply do not know. The translator tapes, incidentally, are approximately the same size, but this is no help, since the tapes represent pairings of approximate equivalents, and there are several English morphemes not translatable into the language of Priest-Kings, and, as I learned, morphemes in their language for which no English equi
valents exist. One English expression for which no natural "word" in their language exists is, oddly enough, "friendship," and certain of its cognates. There is an expression in their language which translates into English as "Nest Trust," however, and seems to play something of the same role in their thinking. The notion of friendship, it seems to me, has to do with a reliance and affection between two or more individuals; the notion of Nest Trust, as nearly as I can understand it, is more of a communal notion, a sense of relying on the practices and traditions of an institution, accepting them and living in terms of them.
I followed the Priest-King for a long time through the passages.
For all its size it moved with a delicate, predatory grace. It was perhaps very light for its bulk, or very strong, perhaps both. It moved with a certain deliberate, stalking movement; its tread was regal and yet it seemed almost dainty, almost fastidious; it was almost as if the creature did not care to soil itself by contact with the floor of the passage.
It walked on four extremely long, slender, four-jointed stalks that were its supporting legs, and carried its far more muscular, four-jointed grasping legs, or appendages, extremely high, almost level with its jaw, and in front of its body. Each of these grasping appendages terminated in four much smaller, delicate hooklike prehensile appendages, the tips of which normally touched one another. I would learn later that in the ball at the end of its forelegs from which the smaller prehensile appendages extended, there was a curved, bladed, hornlike structure that could spring forward; this happens spontaneously when the leg's tip is inverted, a motion which at once exposes the hornlike blade and withdraws the four prehensile appendages into the protected area beneath it.
The Priest-King halted before what appeared to be a blind wall.
He lifted one foreleg high over his head and touched something high in the wall which I could not see.
A panel slid back and the Priest-King stepped into what seemed to be a closed room.
I followed him, and the panel closed.
The floor seemed to drop beneath me and my hand grasped my sword.
The Priest-King looked down at me and the antennae quivered as though in curiosity.