by John Norman
"Forbidden weapon," said Sarm.
The Priest-King monitoring the observation cube touched a knob on his control panel.
"Stop!" I cried.
Before my horrified eyes in the observation cube the man seemed suddenly to vaporize in a sudden blasting flash of blue fire. The man had disappeared. Another brief incandescent flash destroyed the primitive tube he had carried. Then once again, aside from the blackened grass and stone, the scene was peaceful. A small, curious bird darted to the top of the stone, and then hopped from it to the blackened grass to hunt for grubs.
"You killed that man," I said.
"He may have been carrying on forbidden experiments for years," said Sarm. "We were fortunate to catch him. Sometimes we must wait until others are using the device for purposes of war and then destroy many men. It is better this way, more economical of material."
"But you killed him," I said.
"Of course," said Sarm, "he broke the law of Priest-Kings."
"What right have you to make the law for him?" I asked.
"The right of a higher-order organism to control a lower-order organism," said Sarm. "The same right you have to slaughter the bosk and the tabuk, to feed on the flesh of the tarsk."
"But those are not rational animals," I said.
"They are sentient," said Sarm.
"We kill them swiftly," I said.
Sarm's antennae curled. "And so too do we Priest-Kings commonly kill swiftly and yet you complain of our doing so."
"We need food," I said.
"You could eat fungus and other vegetables," said Sarm.
I was silent.
"The truth is," said Sarm, "that the human is a dangerous and predatory species."
"But those animals," I said, "are not rational."
"Is that so important?' asked Sarm.
"I don't know," I said. "What if I claimed it was?"
"Then I should reply," said Sarm, "that nothing below a Priest-King is truly rational." He looked down at me. "Remember that as you are to the bosk and the sleen so are we to you." He paused. "But I see that you are distressed by the Scanning Room. You must remember it was at your own request that I brought you here. I did not wish you to be unhappy. Do not think badly of Priest-Kings. I wish you to be my friend."
18
I Speak with Sarm
In the next days, when I could escape from the attentions of Sarm, on occasions when he was undoubtedly drawn elsewhere by his numerous duties and responsibilities, I searched the Nest by myself, on a transportation disk furnished by Sarm, looking for Misk, but I found no trace of him. I knew only that he had been, as Sarm had put it, pleased to retain Gur.
No one to whom I spoke, principally Muls, would explain the meaning of this to me. I gathered that the Muls to whom I spoke, who seemed well enough disposed towards me, simply did not know what was meant, in spite of the fact that several of them had been bred in the Nest, in the breeding cases located in certain special vivaria set aside for the purpose. I even approached Priest-Kings on this subject and they, since I was a Matok and not a Mul, gave me of their attention, but politely refused to furnish me with the information I sought. "It has to do with the Feast of Tola," they said, "and is not the concern of humans."
Sometimes on these excursions Mul-Al-Ka and Mul-Ba-Ta would accompany me. On the first time they accompanied me I obtained a marking stick, used by Mul clerks in various commissaries and warehouses, and inscribed their appropriate letters on the left shoulders of their plastic tunics. Now I could tell them apart. The visual mark was plain to human eyes but it would not be likely to be noticed by Priest-Kings, any more than a small, insignificant sound is likely to be noticed by a human who is not listening for it and is attending to other things.
One afternoon, as I judged by the feeding times, for the energy bulbs always keep the Nest of Priest-Kings at a constant level of illumination, Mul-Al-Ka and Mul-Ba-Ta and I were swiftly passing through one tunnel on my transportation disk.
"It is pleasant to ride thusly, Cabot," said Mul-Al-Ka.
"Yes, it is pleasant," agreed Mul-Ba-Ta.
"You speak much alike," I said.
"We are much alike," pointed out Mul-Al-Ka.
"Are you the Muls of the biologist Kusk?" I asked.
"No," said Mul-Al-Ka, "we were given by Kusk to Sarm as a gift."
I stiffened on the transportation disk and it nearly ran into the wall of the tunnel.
A startled Mul had leaped back against the wall. Looking back I could see him shaking his fist and shouting with rage. I smiled. I gathered he had not been bred in the Nest.
"Then," I said to the Muls who rode with me, "you are spying on me for Sarm."
"Yes," said Mul-Al-Ka.
"It is our duty," said Mul-Ba-Ta.
"But," said Mul-Al-Ka, "should you wish to do something which Sarm will not know of, simply let us know and we will avert our eyes."
"Yes," said Mul-Ba-Ta, "or stop the disk and we will get off and wait for you. You can pick us up on your way back."
"That sounds fair enough," I said.
"Good," said Mul-Al-Ka.
"Is it human to be fair?" asked Mul-Ba-Ta.
"Sometimes," I said.
"Good," said Mul-Al-Ka.
"Yes," said Mul-Ba-Ta, "we wish to be human."
"Perhaps you will teach us someday how to be human?" asked Mul-Al-Ka.
The transportation disk sped on and none of us spoke for some time.
"I am not sure I know how myself," I said.
"It must be very hard," said Mul-Al-Ka.
"Yes," I said, "it is very hard."
"Must a Priest-King learn to be a Priest-King?" asked Mul-Ba-Ta.
"Yes," I said.
"That must be even more difficult," said Mul-Al-Ka.
"Probably," I said, "I don't know."
I swung the transportation disk in a graceful arc to one side of the tunnel to avoid running into a crablike organism covered with overlapping plating and then swung the disk back in another sweeping arc to avoid slicing into a stalking Priest-King who lifted his antennae quizzically as we shot past.
"The one who was not a Priest-King," quickly said Mul-Al-Ka, "was a Matok and is called a Toos and lives on discarded fungus spores."
"We know you are interested in things like that," said Mul-Ba-Ta.
"Yes, I am," I said. "Thank you."
"You are welcome," said Mul-Al-Ka.
"Yes," said Mul-Ba-Ta.
For a while we rode on in silence.
"But you will teach us about being human, will you not?" asked Mul-Al-Ka.
"I do not know a great deal about it," I said.
"But more than we, surely," said Mul-Ba-Ta.
I shrugged.
The disk flowed on down the tunnel.
I was wondering if a certain maneuver was possible.
"Watch this!" I said, and turning my body I swung the transportation disk in a sudden, abrupt complete circle and continued on in the same direction we had been traveling.
All of us nearly lost our footing.
"Marvelous," cried Mul-Al-Ka.
"You are very skilled," said Mul-Ba-Ta.
"I have never seen even a Priest-King do that," said Mul-Al-Ka, with something of awe in his voice.
I had been wondering if such a turn was possible with a transportation disk and I was rather pleased with myself that I had accomplished it. The fact that I had nearly thrown myself and my two passengers off the disk at high speed onto the flooring of the tunnel did not occur to me at the time.
"Would you like to try guiding the transportation disk?" I asked.
"Yes!" said Mul-Al-Ka.
"Yes," said Mul-Ba-Ta, "we would like that very much!"
"But first," asked Mul-Al-Ka, "will you not show us how to be human?"
"Why, how foolish you are!" scolded Mul-Ba-Ta. "He is already showing us."
"I don't understand," said Mul-Al-Ka.
"Then you are probably not the one who was sy
nthesized," said Mul-Ba-Ta.
"Perhaps not," said Mul-Al-Ka, "but I still do not understand."
"Do you think," said Mul-Ba-Ta loftily, "that a Priest-King would have done so foolish a thing with a transportation disk?"
"No," said Mul-Al-Ka, his face beaming.
"You see," said Mul-Ba-Ta. "He is teaching us to be human."
I reddened.
"Teach us more about these things," said Mul-Al-Ka.
"I told you," I said, "I don't know much about it."
"If you should learn, inform us," said Mul-Al-Ka.
"Yes, do," said Mul-Ba-Ta.
"Very well," I said.
"That is fair enough," said Mul-Al-Ka.
"Yes," said Mul-Ba-Ta.
"In the meantime," said Mul-Al-Ka, gazing with unconcealed fascination at the accelerator strips in the transportation disk, "let us concentrate on the matter of the transportation disk."
"Yes," said Mul-Ba-Ta, "that will be quite enough for us for now—Tarl Cabot."
* * * *
I did not object to the time I spent with Sarm, however, for he taught me far more of the Nest in a much shorter time than would have otherwise been possible. With him at my side I had access to many areas which would otherwise have been closed to a human.
One of the latter was the power source of the Priest-Kings, the great plant wherein the basic energy is generated for their many works and machines.
"Sometimes this is spoken of as the Home Stone of all Gor," said Sarm, as we walked the long, winding, iron spiral that clung to the side of a vast, transparent blue dome. Within that dome, burning and glowing, emitting a bluish, combustive refulgence, was a huge, crystalline reticulated hemisphere.
"The analogy, of course," said Sarm, "is incorrect, for there is no Home Stone as such in the Nest of Priest-Kings, the Home Stone being a barbarous artifact generally common to the cities and homes of Gorean humans."
I was somewhat annoyed to find the Home Stones, taken so seriously in the cities of Gor that a man might be slain if he did not rise when speaking of the Home Stone of his city, so airily dismissed by the lofty Sarm.
"You find it hard to understand the love of a man for his Home Stone," I said.
"A cultural oddity," said Sarm, "which I understand perfectly but find slightly preposterous."
"You have nothing like the Home Stone in the Nest?" I asked.
"Of course not," said Sarm. I noticed an involuntary, almost spasmlike twitch of the tips of the forelegs, but the bladed projections did not emerge.
"There is of course the Mother," I said innocently.
Sarm stopped on the narrow iron railing circling the huge, glassy blue dome and straightened himself and turned to face me. With one brush of a foreleg he might have sent me hurtling to my death some hundreds of feet below. Briefly the antennae flattened themselves on his head and the bladelike projections snapped into view, and then the antennae raised and the bladelike projections disappeared.
"That is very different," said Sarm.
"Yes, it is different," I said.
Sarm regarded me for a moment and then turned and continued to lead the way.
At last we had reached the very apex of the great blue dome and I could see the glowing, bluish, refulgent, reticulated hemisphere far below me.
I saw, surrounding the bluish dome, in a greater concentric dome of stone, walkway upon walkway of paneling and instrumentation. Here and there Priest-Kings moved lightly about, occasionally noting the movements of scent-needles, sometimes delicately adjusting a dial with the nimble, hooklike appendages at the tips of their forelegs.
I supposed the dome to be a reactor of some sort.
I looked down through the dome beneath us. "So this is the source of the Priest-Kings' power," I said.
"No," said Sarm.
I looked up at him.
He moved his forelegs in a strange parallel pattern, touching himself with each leg at three places on the thorax and one behind the eyes. "Here," he said, "is the true source of our power."
I then realized that he had touched himself at the points of entry taken by the wires which had been infixed in the young Priest-King's body on the stone table in the secret compartment below Misk's chamber. Sarm had pointed to his eight brains.
"Yes," I said, "you are right."
Sarm regarded me. "You know then of the modifications of the ganglionic net?"
"Yes," I said, "Misk told me."
"It is well," said Sarm. "I want you to learn of Priest-Kings."
"In the past days," I said, "you have taught me much, and I am grateful."
Sarm, standing on that high platform with me, over the bluish dome, over the refulgent power source so far below, lifted his antennae and turned, sweeping them over this vast, intricate, beautiful, formidable domain.
"Yet," said Sarm, "there are those who would destroy all this."
I wondered if hurling my weight against Sarm I might have tumbled him from that platform to his death far below.
"I know why you were brought to the Nest," said Sarm.
"Then you know more than I do," I said.
"You were brought here to kill me," said Sarm, looking down.
I started.
"There are those," he said, "who do not love the Nest, who would wish to see it pass."
I said nothing.
"The Nest is eternal," said Sarm. "It cannot die. I will not let it die."
"I don't understand," I said.
"You understand, Tarl Cabot," said Sarm. "Do not lie to me."
He turned to me and the antennae lowered themselves toward me, the slender, golden hairs on the antennae slightly oscillating. "You would not wish to see this beauty and this power pass from our common world, would you?" asked Sarm.
I looked about myself at the incredible complex which lay below me. "I don't know," I said. "I suppose if I were a Priest-King I would not wish to see it pass."
"Precisely," said Sarm, "and yet there is one among us—himself incredibly enough a Priest-King—who could betray his own kind, who would be willing to see this glory vanish."
"Do you know his name?" I asked.
"Of course," said Sarm. "We—both of us—know his name. It is Misk."
"I know nothing of these matters," I said.
"I see," said Sarm. He paused. "Misk believes that he brought you to the Nest for his own purposes, and I have allowed him to suppose so. I allowed him also to suppose that I suspected—but not that I knew—of his plot, for I had you placed in the chamber of Vika of Treve, and it was there he proved his guilt beyond doubt by rushing to protect you."
"And had he not entered the room?" I asked.
"The girl Vika of Treve has never failed me," said Sarm.
My fists clenched on the railing and bitterness choked in my throat, and the hatred I had felt for the girl of Treve lit once again its dark fires in my breast.
"What good would I be to you chained to her slave ring?" I asked.
"After a time, perhaps a year," said Sarm, "when you were ready, I would free you on the condition that you would do my bidding."
"And what would that be?" I asked.
"Slay Misk," said Sarm.
"Why do you not slay him yourself?" I asked.
"That would be murder," said Sarm. "He for all his guilt and treason is yet a Priest-King."
"There is Nest Trust between myself and Misk," I said.
"There can be no Nest Trust between a Priest-King and a human," said Sarm.
"I see," I said. I looked up at Sarm. "And supposing I had agreed to do your bidding, what would have been my reward for all this?"
"Vika of Treve," said Sarm. "I would have placed her at your feet naked and in slave chains."
"Not so pleasant for Vika of Treve," I said.
"She is only a female Mul," said Sarm.
I thought of Vika and of the hatred I bore her.
"Do you still wish me to slay Misk?" I asked.
"Yes," said Sarm. "It was for t
hat purpose I brought you to the Nest."
"Then give me my sword," I said, "and take me to him."
"Good," said Sarm, and we began to trace our way downward around that vast bluish globe that sheltered the power source of Priest-Kings.
19
Die, Tarl Cabot
Now once again I would have my sword in my hands and at last I would be able to find Misk, for whose safety I feared.
Beyond this I had no definite plan.
Sarm did not act as quickly as I had anticipated and from the room of the power source had simply returned me to Misk's compartment, where my case was kept.
I spent an uneasy night on the moss.
Why had we not gotten on directly with the business at hand?
In the morning, after the hour of the first feeding, Sarm entered Misk's compartment, where I was waiting for him. To my surprise his head was crowned with an aromatic wreath of green leaves, the first thing green I had seen in the Nest, and about his neck there hung, besides the invariable translator, a necklace, perhaps of accouterments, perhaps of pure ornaments, small pieces of metal, some shallow and rounded like tiny scoops, others rounded and pointed, others slender and bladed. His entire person I also noted was anointed with unusual and penetrating scents.
"It is the Feast of Tola—the Feast of the Nuptial Flight," said Sarm. "It is fitting that your work should be done today."
I regarded him.
"Are you ready?" he asked.
"Yes," I said.
"Good," said Sarm, and went to one of the high cabinets in Misk's chamber and touching a button in a certain sequence of long and short presses opened it. Sarm was apparently familiar with Misk's compartment. I wondered if the compartments of all Priest-Kings were so similar, or if he had investigated it at various times in the past. I wondered if he knew about the chamber which lay beneath my case. From the high cabinet Sarm withdrew my sword belt, my scabbard, and the short, sharp blade of Gorean steel which I had earlier yielded at the request of Misk.
The weapon felt good again in my hand.