by John Norman
Vika's shoulders shook as she knelt before me, but she dared not raise her head to read her fate in my eyes.
I wished that I could trust her but I knew that I could not.
"I have returned for you, Vika of Treve—Slave Girl," I said sternly, "—to take you from the case."
Slowly, her eyes radiant, her lips trembling, Vika lifted her head to me.
"Thank you, Master," she said softly, humbly. Tears welled in her eyes.
"Call me Cabot," I said, "as was your wont."
On Gor I had not minded owning women as much as I should have but I had never been overly fond of being addressed by the title of Master.
It was enough to be Master.
The women I had owned, Sana, Talena, Lara, and others of whom I have not written, Passion Slaves rented for the hour in the Paga Taverns of Ko-ro-ba and Ar, Pleasure Slaves bestowed on me in token of hospitality for a night spent in a friend's compartments, had known that I was master and that had been sufficient.
On the other hand I have never truly objected to the title because I had not been long on Gor before I understood, for some reason that is not yet altogether clear to me, that the word "Master" can indescribably thrill a girl when she finds it on her lips, now those of a slave girl, and knows that it is true. Whether or not this would be the same with the girls of Earth I do not know.
"Very well, Cabot, my Master," said Vika.
As I looked into the eyes of Vika I saw there the tears of relief and gratitude but I saw too the tears of another emotion, infinitely tender and vulnerable, which I could not read.
She knelt in the position of the Pleasure Slave but her hands on her thighs had unconsciously, pleadingly, turned their palms to me, and she no longer knelt quite back on her heels. It was as though she begged to be allowed to lift and open her arms and rise and come to my arms. But as I looked upon her sternly she turned her palms again to her thighs, knelt back on her heels and dropped her head, holding her eyes as if by force of will fixed on the plastic beneath my sandals.
Her entire body trembled with the ache of her desire.
But she was a slave girl and dare not speak.
I looked down at her sternly. "Look up, Slave Girl," I said.
She looked up.
I smiled.
"To my lips, Slave Girl," I commanded.
With a cry of joy she flung herself into my arms weeping. "I love you, Master," she cried. "I love you, Cabot, my Master!"
I knew the words she spoke could not be true but I did not rebuke her.
It was no longer in my heart to be cruel to Vika of Treve, no matter who or what she might be.
After some minutes I said to her, rather sternly, "I have no time for this," and she laughed and stepped back.
I turned and left the case and Vika, as was proper, fell into step happily two paces behind me.
We walked down the ramp to the transportation disk.
Al-Ka closely scrutinized Vika.
"She is very healthy," I said.
"Her legs do not look too strong," said Al-Ka, regarding the lovely thighs, calves and ankles of the slave girl.
"But I do not object," I said.
"Nor do I," said Al-Ka. "After all, you can always have her run up and down and that will strengthen them."
"That is true," I said.
"I think someday," he said, "I too will fetch a female Mul." Then he added, "But one with stronger legs."
"A good idea," I said.
Al-Ka guided the transportation disk out of the Vivarium and we began the journey toward Misk's compartment, the Gur Carriers following overhead.
I held Vika in my arms. "Did you know," I asked, "that I would return for you?"
She shivered and looked ahead, down the darkened tunnel. "No," she said, "I knew only that you would do what you wished."
She looked up at me.
"May a poor slave girl beg," she whispered softly, "that she be again commanded to your lips?"
"It is so commanded," I said, and her lips again eagerly sought mine.
* * * *
It was later in the same afternoon that Mul-Ba-Ta, now simply Ba-Ta, made his appearance, leading long lines of former Muls. They came from the Pastures and the Fungus Chambers and they, like the Gur Carriers, sang as they came.
Some men from the Fungus Chambers carried on their backs great bags filled with choice spores, and others labored under the burdens of huge baskets of freshly reaped fungus, slung on poles between them; and those from the Pastures drove before them with long pointed goads huge, shambling gray arthropods, the cattle of Priest-Kings; and others from the Pastures carried in long lines on their shoulders the ropelike vines of the heavy-leaved Sim plants, on which the cattle would feed.
"We will have lamps set up soon," said Ba-Ta. "It is merely a matter of changing the chambers in which we pasture."
"We have enough fungus to last," said one of the Fungus Growers, "until we plant these spores and reap the next harvest."
"We burned what we did not take," said another.
Misk looked on in wonder as these men presented themselves to me and marched past.
"We welcome your aid," he said, "but you must obey Priest-Kings."
"No," said one of them, "we no longer obey Priest-Kings."
"But," said another, "we will take our orders from Tarl Cabot of Ko-ro-ba."
"I think you would be well advised," I said, "to stay out of this war between Priest-Kings."
"Your war is our war," said Ba-Ta.
"Yes," said one of the Pasturers, who held a pointed goad as though it might be a spear.
One of the Fungus Growers looked up at Misk. "We were bred in this Nest," he told the Priest-King, "and it is ours as well as yours."
Misk's antennae curled.
"I think he speaks the truth," I said.
"Yes," said Misk, "that is why my antennae curled. I too think he speaks the truth."
And so it was that the former Muls, humans, bringing with them the basic food supplies of the Nest, began to flock to the side of the Priest-King Misk and his few cohorts.
The battle would, I supposed, given the undoubted stores of food available to Sarm and his forces, ultimately hinge on the firepower of the silver tubes, of which Misk's side had few, but still I conjectured that the skills and courage of former Muls might yet play their part in the fierce issues to be decided in that secret Nest that lay beneath the black Sardar.
* * * *
As Al-Ka had predicted, the energy bulbs in the Nest, except where they had actually been destroyed by the fire of Sarm's silver tubes, came on again.
Former Mul engineers, trained by Priest-Kings, had constructed an auxiliary power unit and had fed its energy into the main system.
When the lights flickered and then burst into clear, vital radiance there was a great cheer from the humans in Misk's camp, with the exception of the Gur Carriers, to whom the energy bulbs were not of great importance.
Intrigued by the hardness of the cage plastic encountered in the Vivarium I spoke to Misk and he and I, together with other Priest-Kings and humans, armored a fleet of transportation disks, which would be extremely effective if a silver tube were mounted in them and which, even if not armed, might yet serve acceptably as scouting vehicles or relatively safe transports. The fiery blasts of the silver tubes would wither and wrinkle the plastic but unless the exposure were rather lengthy they could not penetrate it. And a simple heat torch, as I had earlier learned, could scarcely mark the obdurate material.
In the third week of the War, equipped with the armored transportation disks, we began to carry the battle to the forces of Sarm, though they still outnumbered us greatly.
Our intelligence was vastly superior to theirs and the networks of ventilation shafts provided the quick nimble men of the Fungus Chambers and the uncanny Gur Carriers access to almost anywhere in the Nest they cared to go. Moreover, all former Muls who fought with us were clad in scent-free tunics which in effect supplied
them with a most effective camouflage in the Nest. For example, at different times, returning from a raid, perhaps bringing another captured silver tube, no longer needed by one of Sarm's slain cohorts, I would find myself unremarked even by Misk though I might stand but feet from him.
Somewhat to their embarrassment but for their own safety the Priest-Kings who had joined Misk wore painted on the back and front of their thorax the block letter which in the Gorean alphabet would be the first letter of Misk's name. Originally some of them had objected to this but after a few had almost stepped on the silent Gur Carriers, or wandered unbeknownst beneath them, some of the spidery humanoids being armed perhaps with silver tubes, their opinions changed and they became zealous to have the letter painted boldly and repainted promptly if it showed the least signs of fading. It unnerved the Priest-Kings to pass unknowingly within feet of, say, a pale, agile fellow from the Fungus Chambers, who might be crouching in a nearby ventilator shaft with a heat torch, who might have burned their antennae for them if he had pleased; or to suddenly find themselves surrounded by a ring of quiet herdsmen who might at a signal transfix them with a dozen of the spearlike cattle goads.
Together the humans and the Priest-Kings of Misk made a remarkably effective fighting team. What sensory data might escape the antennae might well be discovered by the sharp-eyed human, and what subtle scent might escape the human senses would likely be easily picked up by the Priest-King in the group. And as they fought together they came, as creatures will, to respect one another and to rely on one another, becoming, incredibly enough, friends. Once a brave Priest-King of Misk's forces was slain and the humans who had fought with him wept. Another time a Priest-King braved the fire of a dozen silver tubes to rescue one of the spidery Gur Carriers who had been injured.
Indeed, in my opinion, the greatest mistake of Sarm in the War in the Nest was in his poor handling of the Muls.
As soon as it became clear to him that the Muls of the Fungus Chambers and the Pastures, and the Gur Carriers, were coming over to Misk he apparently assumed, for no good reason, that all Muls in the Nest were to be regarded as enemies. Accordingly he set about systematically exterminating those who fell within the ranges of his silver tubes and this drove many Muls, who would undoubtedly have served him, and well, into Misk's camp.
With these new Muls, not from the Fungus Chambers and the Pastures, but from the complexes of the Nest proper, came a new multitude of capacities and talents. Further, from reports of these incoming Muls, the food sources of the Priest-Kings of Sarm were not as extensive as we had supposed. Indeed, many of the canisters of fungus now in the stores of Sarm were reportedly canisters of simple Mul-Fungus taken from the cases of Muls who had been killed or fled. Rumor had it that the only Muls whom Sarm had not ordered slain on sight were the Implanted Ones, among whom would be such creatures as Parp, whom I had met long ago when first I entered the lair of Priest-Kings.
* * * *
One of the most marvelous ideas to further our cause was provided by Misk, who introduced me to what I had only heard rumored before, the Priest-Kings' mastery of the pervasive phenomena of gravity.
"Would it not be useful at times," he asked, "if the armored transportation disk could fly?"
I thought he joked, but I said, "Yes, at times it would be very useful."
"Then we shall do it," said Misk, snapping his antennae.
"How?" I asked.
"Surely you have noted the unusual lightness of the transportation disk for its size?" he asked.
"Yes," I said.
"It is," he said, "built with a partially gravitationally resistant metal."
I admit I laughed.
Misk looked at me with puzzlement.
"Why do you curl your antennae?" he asked.
"Because," I said, "there is no such thing as a gravitationally resistant metal."
"But what of the transportation disk?" he asked.
I stopped laughing.
Yes, I asked myself, what of the transportation disk?
I looked at Misk. "Response to gravity," I said to him, "is as much a characteristic of material objects as size and shape."
"No," said Misk.
"Therefore," I said, "there is no such thing as a gravitationally resistant metal."
"But there is the transportation disk," he reminded me.
I thought Misk was most annoying. "Yes," I said, "there is that."
"On your old world," said Misk, "gravity is still as unexplored a natural phenomenon as electricity and magnetism once were, and yet you have mastered to some extent those phenomena—and we Priest-Kings have to some extent mastered gravity."
"Gravity is different," I said.
"Yes, it is," he said, "and that is why perhaps you have not yet mastered it. Your own work with gravity is still in the mathematical descriptive stage, not yet in the stage of control and manipulation."
"You cannot control gravity," I said, "the principles are different; it is pervasive; it is simply there to be reckoned with."
"What is gravity?" asked Misk.
I thought for a time. "I don't know," I admitted.
"I do," said Misk, "let us get to work."
In the fourth week of the War in the Nest our ship was outfitted and armored. I am afraid it was rather primitive, except that the principles on which it operated were far more advanced than anything now available to Earth's, as I now understand, somewhat painfully rudimentary science. The ship was simply a transportation disk whose underside was coated with cage plastic and whose top was a transparent dome of the same material. There were controls in the forward portion of the ship and ports about the sides for silver tubes. There were no propellers or jets or rockets and I find it difficult to understand or explain the drive save that it used the forces of gravity against themselves in such a way that the amount, if one may use so inept an expression, of gravitational Ur, which is the Gorean expression for the gravitational primitive, remains constant though redistributed. I do not think force, or charge, or any of the other expressions which occur to one's mind is a good translation for Ur, and I prefer to regard it as an expression best left untranslated, though perhaps one could say that Ur is whatever it was that satisfied the gravitational equations of Misk. Most briefly, the combined drive and guidance system of the disk functioned by means of the focusing of gravitational sensors on material objects and using the gravitational attraction of these objects while in effect screening out the attraction of others. I would not have believed the ship was possible but I found it difficult to offer the arguments of my old world's physics against the fact of Misk's success.
Indeed, it is through the control of gravity that the Priest-Kings had, long ago, brought their world into our system, an engineering feat which might have been otherwise impossible without perhaps the draining of gleaming Thassa itself for its hydrogen nuclei.
The flight of the disk itself is incredibly smooth and the effect is much as if the world and not yourself were moving. When one lifts the craft it seems the earth moves from beneath one; when one moves it forward it seems as though the horizon rushed toward one; if one should place it in reverse, it seems the horizon glides away. Perhaps one should not expatiate on this matter but the sensation tends to be an unsettling one, particularly at first. It is much as if one sat still in a room and the world whirled and sped about one. This is undoubtedly the effect of lacking the resistance of gravitational forces which normally account for the sometimes unpleasant, but reassuring, effects of acceleration and deceleration.
Needless to say, although ironically, the first transportation disk prepared for flight was a ship of war. It was manned by myself and Al-Ka and Ba-Ta. Misk would pilot the craft upon occasion but it was, in fact, rather cramped for him and he could not stand within it, a fact that bothered him no end for a Priest-King, for some reason, becomes extremely agitated when he cannot stand. I gathered it would be something like a man being forced to lie on his back when something of importance is taking plac
e. To lie on one's back is to feel exposed and vulnerable, helpless, and the nervousness we would feel in such a posture is undoubtedly due as much to ancient instinct as to rational awareness. On the other hand, since Misk did not construct the craft large enough for him to stand in, I suspect he did not really wish to take part in its adventures. To be sure, a smaller dome would make the craft more maneuverable in the tunnels, but I think Misk did not trust himself to do battle with his former brethren. He might intellectually recognize that he must slay but perhaps he simply could not have pressed the firing switch of the silver tube. Unfortunately Sarm's cohorts, and perhaps fortunately, most of Misk's, did not suffer from this perilous inhibition. To be so inhibited among a field of foes, none of whom suffered from the same inhibition, seemed to me a good way to get one's head burned off.
When we had constructed the ship we felt that now we had what might prove to be, in this strange subterranean war, the decisive weapon. The fire of silver tubes could damage and in time destroy the ship but yet its cage plastic offered considerable protection to its crew who might, with some degree of safety, mete out destruction to all that crossed its path.
Accordingly it seemed to Misk, and I concurred, that an ultimatum should be issued to Sarm's troops and that, if possible, the ship should not be used in battle. If we had used it immediately, decisively, we might have wrought great damage, but neither of us wished to take the enemy by devastating surprise if victory might be won without bloodshed.
We were considering this matter when suddenly without warning one wall of Misk's compartment seemed suddenly to blur and lift and then silently to vanish into powder, so light and fine that some of it drifted upward to be withdrawn through the ventilator shaft through which used air was drawn from the compartment.