by John Norman
I knew that somehow I must try to stop Sarm but what could I do? He was armed with a silver tube and I with nothing but the steel of a Gorean sword.
Sarm kept firing long, persistent bursts of fire at the paneling against the walls, undoubtedly attempting to destroy the instrumentation. I hoped that such firing might exhaust the charge of the weapon.
I left cover and rushed to the walkway and was soon climbing up the narrow path that crept around the surface of the globe that now barely contained the frenzied, bubbling fury, the turbulence of the hissing, erupting substance that leaped and smote against the smooth enclosing walls.
I climbed the walkway rapidly and soon could see Sarm clearly at the very top of the dome, whence he had once displayed to me the majesty of the Priest-Kings' accomplishments, where he had once indicated to me the modifications of the ganglionic net by means of which his people had won to the enormous power they possessed. He was not yet aware of my approach, perhaps not believing I would be fool enough to climb the exposed walkway in pursuit.
Then suddenly he wheeled and saw me and seemed startled but then the silver tube flew up and I threw myself rolling back down the walkway, the steel stairs bubbling away following me. Then I had the curve of the dome between me and the Priest-King. His weapon fired again, slicing through the top of the dome in his vicinity and striking beneath me, melting a hole in the dome below me. Twice more Sarm fired and twice more I scrambled about on the walkway trying to keep the two surfaces of the globe between myself and his weapon. Then angrily I saw him turn away and commence firing again at the paneling. As he did so, I began to climb once more. As I climbed, to my elation, I saw the tube's flame sputter and stop and knew the weapon was at last discharged.
I wondered what more Sarm could do now.
Nothing from his position at the top of the globe, though it had been an ideal vantage point for firing the tube into the instrumentation.
I wondered if he regretted wasting a large part of his weapon's charge on firing at me. To do more damage he would now have to descend the walkway and reach the paneling itself, perhaps that on the other side of the room, but to do this he would have to pass me, and I was determined that I should not, if possible, allow that to happen.
Slowly I climbed the walkway, stepping with care past the ruined portions of the steel steps leading to the crest of the dome.
Sarm seemed in no hurry. He seemed quite content to wait for me.
I saw him toss the silver tube away, and saw it fall through one of the great holes he had blasted in the globe and disappear in the violent, bubbling purple mass seething below.
At last I stood not more than a dozen yards from the Priest-King.
He had been watching me approach and now his antennae focused on me and he drew himself up to his full golden height.
"I knew you would come," he said.
One wall to the left began to crumble, fitted stone from its sides edging outwards and breaking loose to clatter down the ramps and tumble even to the floor so far beneath.
A drift of dust from the rubble obscured Sarm's figure for a moment.
"I am destroying the planet," he said. "It has served its purpose." He regarded me. "It has sheltered the Nest of Priest-Kings but now there are no more Priest-Kings—only I, only Sarm is left."
"There are still many Priest-Kings in the Nest," I said.
"No," he said, "there is only one Priest-King, the First Born, Sarm—he who did not betray the Nest, he who was beloved of the Mother, he who kept and honored the ancient truths of his people."
The bladelike figure of the Priest-King seemed to waver on the walkway and the antennae seemed blown about as though by the wind.
More stones fell from the ceiling of the chamber now, clattering and bouncing off the surface of the blue, scarred seething dome.
"You have destroyed the Nest," said Sarm, looking wildly down at me.
I said nothing. I did not even draw my sword.
"But now," said Sarm, "I will destroy you."
The weapon left my sheath.
Sarm reached to the steel bar that formed the railing to his left on the walkway and with the incredible strength of Priest-Kings with one motion twisted and tore free a length of perhaps eighteen feet. He swung this lightly, as easily as I might have lifted and moved a stick of wood.
The bar he wielded was a fearsome weapon and with it he could strike me from the walkway, hurling me perhaps two hundred feet to the opposite wall, before I could get within yards of him.
I stepped back and Sarm advanced a delicate pace.
"Primitive," said Sarm, regarding the club of steel which he held, and then he looked down at me, his antennae curling, "but fitting."
I knew I could not retreat back down the walkway for Sarm was much faster than I and would be upon me perhaps even before I could turn.
I could not leap to the sides, for there was only the smooth sheer curve of the blue globe and I would slide to my death and fall like one of the stones from the roof above to the dusty, smoking rubble below.
And ahead of me stood Sarm, his club ready. If his first blow missed perhaps I could get close enough to strike but it did not seem probable his blow would miss.
It did not seem to me a bad place to die.
If I had dared to take my eyes from Sarm I might have looked about at the wonder of the Nest and the destruction in which it was being consumed. Drifts of rock powder hung in the air, fitted stone tumbled to the flooring far below, the walls trembled, the very globe and walkway fastened to it seemed to shift and shudder. I supposed there might be tidal waves in distant Thassa, that crags in the Sardar and the Voltai and Thentis Ranges might be collapsing, that mountains might be falling and new ones rising, that the Sa-Tarna fields might be broken apart, that towers of cities might be falling, that the ring of black logs which encircled the Sardar might rupture and burst open in a hundred places. I imagined the panic in the cities of Gor, the pitching ships at sea, the stampedes of animals, and only I, of all humans, was at the place where this havoc had begun, only I was there to gaze upon the author of the destruction of a world, the golden destroyer of a planet.
"Strike," I said. "Be done with it."
Sarm lifted the bar and I sensed the murderous intensity that transformed his entire being, how each of those golden fibers like springs of steel would leap into play and the long bar would slash in a blur toward my body.
I crouched, sword in hand, waiting for the blow.
But Sarm did not strike.
Rather to my wonder the bar of steel lowered and Sarm seemed frozen suddenly in an attitude of the most rapt perception. His antennae quivered and tensed but not stiffly and each of the sensory hairs on his body lifted and extended. His limbs seemed suddenly weak.
"Kill it," he said. "Kill it."
I thought he might be telling himself to be done with me, but somehow I knew this could not be.
Then I too sensed it and I turned.
Behind me, inching its way up the narrow walkway, clinging with its six small legs, slowly lifting its heavy domelike golden body a step at a time, came the Golden Beetle I had seen below.
The mane hairs on its back were lifted like antennae and they moved as strangely, as softly, as underwater plants might lift and stir in the tides and currents of the cold liquid of the sea.
The narcotic odor emanating from that lifted, waving mane shook even me though I stood in the midst of free air on the top of that great blue globe.
The steel bar fell from Sarm's appendage and slid from the top of the dome to fall with a distant crash far below in the rubble.
"Kill it, Cabot," came from Sarm's translator. "Kill it, Cabot, please." The Priest-King could not move. "You are human," said the translator. "You can kill it. Kill it, Cabot, please."
I stood to one side, standing on the surface of the globe, clinging to the rail.
"It is not done," I said to Sarm. "It is a great crime to kill one."
Slowly the hea
vy body with its domed, fused wings pressed past me, its tiny, tuftlike antennae extending towards Sarm, its long, hollow pincerlike jaws opening.
"Cabot," came from Sarm's translator.
"It is thus," I said, "that men use the instincts of Priest-Kings against them."
"Cabot—Cabot—Cabot," came from the translator.
Then to my amazement when the Beetle neared Sarm the Priest-King sank down on his supporting appendages, almost as if he were on his knees, and suddenly plunged his face and antennae into the midst of the waving mane hair of the Golden Beetle.
I watched the pincerlike jaws grip and puncture the thorax of the Priest-King.
More rock dust drifted between me and the pair locked in the embrace of death. More rock tumbled to the dome and bounced clattering to the debris below.
The very globe and walkway seemed to lift and tremble but neither of the creatures locked together above me seemed to take the least notice.
Sarm's antennae lay immersed in the golden hair of the Beetle; his grasping appendages with their sensory hairs caressed the golden hair; even did he take some of the hairs in his mouth and with his tongue try to lick the exudate from them.
"The pleasure," came from Sarm's translator. "The pleasure, the pleasure."
I could not shut out from my ears the grim sound of the sucking jaws of the Beetle.
I knew now why it was that the Golden Beetles were permitted to live in the Nest, why it was that Priest-Kings would not slay them, even though it might mean their own lives.
I wondered if the hairs of the Golden Beetle, heavy with the droplets of that narcotic exudate, offered adequate recompense to a Priest-King for the ascetic millennia in which he might have pursued the mysteries of science, if they provided an acceptable culmination to one of those long, long lives devoted to the Nest, to its laws, to duty and the pursuit and manipulation of power.
Priest-Kings, I knew, had few pleasures, and now I guessed that foremost among them might be death.
Once, as though by some supreme effort of will, Sarm, who was a great Priest-King, lifted his head from the golden hair and stared at me.
"Cabot," came from his translator.
"Die, Priest-King," I said softly.
The last sound I heard from Sarm's translator was—"The pleasure."
Then in the last spasmodic throb of death Sarm's body broke free of the jaws of the Golden Beetle and reared up once more to its glorious perhaps twenty feet of golden height.
He stood thusly on the walkway at the top of the vast blue dome beneath which burned and hissed the power source of Priest-Kings.
One last time he looked about himself, his antennae surveying the grandeur of the Nest, and then tumbled from the walkway and fell to the surface of the globe and slid until he fell to the rubble below.
The swollen, lethargic Beetle turned slowly to face me.
With one stroke of my blade I broke open its head.
With my foot I tumbled its heavy body from the walkway and watched it slide down the side of the globe and fall like Sarm to the rubble below.
I stood there on the crest of the globe and looked about the crumbling Nest.
Far below, at the door to the chamber, I could see the golden figures of Priest-Kings, Misk among them. I turned and retraced my steps down the walkway.
32
To the Surface
"It is the end," said Misk, "the end." He frantically adjusted the controls on a major panel, his antennae taut with concentration reading the scent-needle on a boxlike gauge.
Other Priest-Kings worked beside him.
I looked to the body of Sarm, golden and broken, lying among the rubble on the floor, half covered in the powdery dust that hung like fog in the room.
I heard the choking of a girl next to me and put my arm about the shoulders of Vika of Treve.
"It took time to cut through to you," said Misk. "Now it is too late."
"The planet?" I asked.
"The Nest—the World," said Misk.
Now the bubbling mass inside the purple globe began to burn through the globe itself and there were cracking sounds and rivulets of thick, hissing substance, like blue lava, began to press through the breaks in the globe. Elsewhere droplets of the same material seemed to form on the outside of the globe.
"We must leave the chamber," said Misk, "for the globe will shatter."
He pointed an excited foreleg at the scent-needle which I, of course, could not read.
"Go," came from Misk's translator.
I swept Vika up and carried her from the trembling chamber and we were accompanied by hurrying Priest-Kings and those humans who had accompanied them.
I turned back only in time to see Misk leap from the panel and rush to the body of Sarm lying among the rubble. There was a great splitting sound and the entire side of the globe cracked open and began to pour forth its avalanche of thick, molten fluid into the room.
Still Misk tugged at the broken body of Sarm among the rubble.
The purple mass of bubbling fury poured over the rubble toward the Priest-King.
"Hurry!" I cried to him.
But the Priest-King paid me no attention, trying to move a great block of stone which had fallen across one of the supporting appendages of the dead Sarm.
I thrust Vika behind me and leaped over the rubble, running to Misk's side.
"Come!" I cried, pounding my fist against his thorax. "Hurry!"
"No," said Misk.
"He's dead!" I said. "Leave him!"
"He is a Priest-King," said Misk.
Together Misk and I, as the blue lavalike mass began to hiss over the rubble bubbling towards us, forced aside the great block of stone and Misk tenderly gathered up the broken carcass of Sarm in his forelegs and he and I sped toward the opening, and the blue molten flux of burning, seething, hissing substance engulfed where we had stood.
Misk, carrying Sarm, and the other Priest-Kings and humans, including Vika and myself, made our way from the Power Plant and back toward the complex which had been the heart of Sarm's territory.
"Why?" I asked Misk.
"Because he is a Priest-King," said Misk.
"He was a traitor," I said, "and betrayed the Nest and would have slain you by treachery and has now destroyed your Nest and world."
"But he was a Priest-King," said Misk, and he touched the crushed, torn figure of Sarm gently with his antennae. "And he was First Born," said Misk. "And he was beloved of the Mother."
There was a huge explosion from behind us and I knew that the globe had now burst and the chamber that housed it was shattered in its destruction.
The very tunnel we walked in pitched and buckled under our feet.
We came to the hole where Misk and his fellow Priest-Kings and humans had cut through fallen debris and climbed out through it, finding ourselves in one of the major complexes again.
It was cold and the humans, including myself, shivered in the simple plastic we wore.
"Look!" cried Vika pointing upward.
And we looked, all of us, and saw, far above, perhaps more than a mile above, the open blue sky of Gor. A great opening, from the sides of which stones still fell, had appeared in the ceiling of the Nest complex, opening the thick, numerous strata above it until at last through that rupture could be seen the beautiful calm sky of the world above.
Some of the humans with us cried aloud in wonder, for never had they seen the sky.
The Priest-Kings shielded their antennae from the radiation of the sunlit heavens far above.
It sprang into my mind suddenly why they needed men, how dependent they were upon us.
Priest-Kings could not stand the sun!
I looked up at the sky.
And I understood as I had not before what must be the pain, the glory and the agony of the Nuptial Flight. His wings, she had said, had been like showers of gold.
"How beautiful it is!" cried Vika.
"Yes," I said, "it is very beautiful."
; I recalled that it would have been nine years since the girl had looked upon the sky.
I put my arm about her shoulders, holding her as she wept, her face lifted to the distant blue sky.
At this moment, skimming over the buildings in the complex, no more than a few feet from their roofs, came one of the ships of Misk, piloted by Al-Ka, accompanied by his woman.
It landed near us.
A moment later another ship, piloted by Ba-Ta, appeared and settled by its sister ship. He too had his woman with him.
"It is now time to choose," said Misk, "where one will die."
The Priest-Kings, of course, would not leave the Nest, and, to my surprise, most of the humans, many of whom had been bred in the Nest or now regarded it as their home, insisted also on remaining where they were.
Others, however, eagerly boarded the ships to be flown through the opening to the mountains above.
"We have made many trips," said Al-Ka, "and so have others in the other ships, for the Nest is broken in a dozen places and open to the sky."
"Where will you choose to die?" I asked Vika of Treve.
"At your side," she said simply.
Al-Ka and Ba-Ta, as I would have expected, turned their ships over to others to pilot, for they would choose to remain in the Nest. Their women, too, to my amazement, freely elected to remain by the sides of the men who had fastened golden collars about their throats.
I saw Kusk in the distance, and both Al-Ka and Ba-Ta, followed by their women, began to walk towards him. They met perhaps a hundred yards from where I stood and I saw the Priest-King place a foreleg on the shoulder of each and together they stood and waited for the final crumbling of the Nest.