by John Norman
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 heavy 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 manehair 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 not permitted to live in the Nest, why it was that Priest-Kings would not slay the, even though it might mean their own lives.
I wondered if the hairs of the Golden Beetle, heave 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-Kings,” 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.
Chapter Thirty Two
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 think, 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 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 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.
“There is no safety above,” said Misk.
“Nor any here,” I said.
“True,” said Misk.
In the distance we could hear dull explosions and the crash of falling rock.
“The entire Nest is being destroyed,” said Misk.
I saw tears in the eyes of humans.
“Is there nothing that can be done?” I demanded.
“Nothing,” said Misk.
Vika looked up at me. “Where will you choose to die, Cabot?” she asked.
I saw that the last ship was preparing to take flight through the hold torn above in the ceiling of the complex. I would have liked to have seen once more the surface of the world, the blue sky, the green fields beyond the black Sardar, but rather I said, “I choose to remain here with Misk, who is my friend.”
“Very well,” said Vika, putting her head against my shoulder. “I will also remain.”
“Something you have said does not translate,” said Misk, his antennae dipping towards me.
I looked up into the huge, peering golden eyes of Misk, the left one lined with a whitish seam where Sarm’s bladed projection had once torn it open in the battle in the Chamber of the Mother.
I could not even tell him how I felt about him, for his language did not contain the expression I needed.
“I said,” I told him, “I choose to remain here with you — and I said something like “There is Nest Trust between us”.”
“I see,” said Misk, and touched me lightly with his antennae.
With my right hand I gently pressed the sensory appendage which rested on my left shoulder.
Then together we watched the ship float swiftly upward like a small white star and disappear in the blue distance beyond.
Now Kusk, Al-Ka and Ba-Ta, and their women slowly walked across the rubble to join us.
We stood now on the uneven, shifting stones of the floor. To one side, high in the domed wall some energy bulbs burst, emitting a cascade of sparks that looped downwards burning themselves out before striking the floor. Some more tons of stone fell from the hole torn in the ceiling, raining down on the buildings beneath, breaking through the roofs, shattering to the streets. Drifting dust obscured the complex and I drew the folds of Vika’s robes more about her face the she might be better protected. Misk’s body was coated with dust and I felt it in my hair and eyes and throat.
I smiled to myself, for Misk seemed now to busy himself with his cleaning hooks. His world might be crumbling about him but he would not forgo his grooming. I supposed the dust that clung to his thorax and abdomen, that adhered to the sensory hairs on his appendages might be distressing to him, more so perhaps than the fear that he might be totally crushed by one of the great blocks of stone that occasionally fell clattering near us.
“It is unfortunate,” said Al-Ka to me, “that the alternative power plant is not near completion.”
Misk stopped grooming, and Kusk, too, peered down at Al-Ka.
“What alternative power plant?” I asked.
“The plant of the Muls,” said Al-Ka, “which we have been readying for five hundred years, preparing for the revolt against Priest-Kings.”
“Yes,” said Ba-Ta, “built by Mul engineers trained by Priest-Kings, constructed of parts stolen over centuries and hidden in an abandoned portion of the old Nest.
“I did not know of this,” said Misk.
“Priest-Kings often underestimate Muls,” said Al-Ka.
“I am proud of my sons,” said Kusk.
“We are not engineers,” said Al-Ka.
“No,” said Kusk, “but you are humans.”
“As far as that goes,” said Ba-Ta, “No more than a few Muls knew of the plant. We ourselves did not find out about it until some technicians joined out forces in the Nest War.”
“Where are these technicians now!” I demanded.
“Working,” said Al-Ka.
I seized him by the shoulders. “Is there a chance the plant can become operational?”
“No,” said Al-Ka.
“Then why are they working?” asked Misk.
“It is human,” said Ba-Ta.
“Foolish,” observed Misk.
“But human,” said Ba-Ta.
“Yes, foolish,” said Misk, his antennae curling a bit, but then he touched Ba-Ta gently on the shoulders to show him that he meant no harm.
“What is needed?” I demanded.
“I am not an engineer,” said Al-Ka, “I do not know.” He looked at me, “But it has to do with Ur Force.”
“That secret,” said Ba-Ta, “has been well guarded by Priest-Kings.
Misk lifted his antennae meditatively. “There is the Ur disruptor I constructed in the War,” came from his translator. He and Kusk touched antennae quickly and held them locked for a moment. Then Misk and Kusk separated antennae. “The components in the disruptor might be realigned,” he said, “but there is little likelihood that the power loop could be satisfactorily closed,”
“Why not?” I asked.
“For one things,” said Misk, “the plant built by Muls is probably fundamentally ineffective to begin with; for another if it is constructed of parts stolen over centuries it would be probably impossible to achieve satisfactory component integration with the elements in the Ur disruptor.”
“Yes,” said Kusk, and his antennae dipped disconsolately, “the probabilities are at all in our favour.”
A huge boulder fell from the roof and bounded, almost like a giant rubber ball, past our group. Vika screamed and I pressed her more tightly against me. More than anything I began to be exasperated with Misk and Kus
k.
“Is there any chance at all?” I demanded of Misk.
“Perhaps,” said Misk, “for I have not seen the plant they have built.”
“But in all probability,” pointed out Kusk, “there is really no chance.”
“An extremely small but yet finite possibility,” speculated Misk, grooming one foreleg.
“I think so,” acknowledged Kusk.
I seized Misk, stopping him from that infernal grooming. “If there is any chance at all,” I cried, “You must try!”
Misk peered down at me and his antennae seemed to lift with surprise. “I am a Priest-King,” he said. “The probability is not such that a Priest-King, who is a rational creature, would act upon it.”
“You must act!” I cried.
Another boulder fell clattering down a hundred yards from us and bounded past.
“I wish to die with dignity,” said Misk, gently pulling his foreleg away and recommencing his grooming. “It is not becoming to a Priest-King to scramble about like a human — still scratching here and there when there is no likelihood of success.”
“If not for your own sake,” I said, “then for the sake of humans — in the Nest and outside of it — who have no hope but you.”
Misk stopped grooming and looked down. “Do you wish this thing, Tarl Cabot?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
And Kusk looked down at Al-Ka and Ba-Ta. “Do you, too, wish this thing?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Al-Ka and Ba-Ta.
At that moment, through the drifting rock dust, I saw the heavy, domed body of one of the Golden Beetles, perhaps fifty yards away.
Almost simultaneously both Misk and Kusk lifted their antennae and shuddered.
“We are fortunate,” came from Kusk’s translator.
“Yes,” said Misk, “now it will not be necessary to seek on of the Golden Beetles.”
“You must not yield to the Golden Beetle!” I cried.
I could now see the antennae of both Misk and Kusk turning towards the Beetle, and I could see the Beetle stop, and the mane hairs begin to lift. Suddenly, through the rock dust, I could scent that strange narcotic odour.
I drew my sword, but gently Misk seized my wrist, not permitting me to rush upon the Beetle and slay it, “No,” said Misk.
