by John Norman
“He was the greatest of the Priest-Kings,” said Misk.
“No,” I said, “Sarm was not the greatest of the Priest-Kings.”
Misk looked at me quizzically. “The Mother,” he said, “was not a Priest-King — she was simply the Mother.”
“I know,” I said. “I did not mean the Mother.”
“Yes,” said Misk, “Kusk is perhaps the greatest of the living Priest-Kings.”
“I did no mean Kusk,” I said.
Misk looked at me in puzzlement. “I shall never understand humans,” he said.
I laughed.
I truly believe it never occurred to Misk that I meant that he himself, Misk, was the greatest of the Priest-Kings.
But I truly believe he was.
He was one of the greatest creatures I had known, brilliant, courageous, loyal, selfless, dedicated.
“What of the young male?” I asked, “Was he destroyed?”
“No,” said Misk. “He is safe.”
For some reason this pleased me. Perhaps I simply was pleased that there had not been further destruction, further loss of life.
“Have you had the humans slay the Golden Beetles?” I asked.
Misk straightened. “Of course not,” he said.
“But they will kill other Priest-Kings,” I said.
“Who am I,” asked Misk, “to decide how a Priest-King should live — or die?”
I was silent.
“I regret only,” said Misk, “that I never learned the location of the last egg, but that secret died with the Mother. Now the race of Priest-Kings itself must die.
I looked up at him. “The mother spoke to me,” I said. “She was going to tell me the location of the egg but could not.”
Suddenly Misk was frozen in the attitude of utter attention, the antennae lifted, each sensory hair alive on his golden body.
“What did you learn?” came from Misk’s translator.
“She only said,” I told him, “Go to the Wagon Peoples.”
Misk’s antennae moved thoughtfully. “Then,” he said, “it must be with the Wagon Peoples — or they must know were it is.”
“By now,” I said, “any life in the egg would surely have perished.”
Misk looked at me with disbelief. “It is an egg of Priest-Kings,” he said. Then his antennae fell disconsolately. “But it could have been destroyed,” he said.
“By this time,” I said, “it probably has been.”
“Undoubtedly,” said Misk.
“Still,” I said, “you are not sure.”
“No,” said Misk, “I am not.”
“You could send Implanted Ones to spy,” I suggested.
“There are no more Implanted Ones,” said Misk. “We have recalled them and are removing the control nets. They may return to their cities or remain in the Nest, as they please.”
“Then you are voluntarily giving up a valuable surveillance device,” I said.
“Yes,” said Misk.
“But why?” I asked.
“It is wrong to implant rational creatures,” said Misk.
“Yes,” I said, “I think that is true.”
“The Scanning Chamber,” said Misk, “will not be operational for an indefinite period — and even so we can scan only objects in the open.”
“Perhaps you could develop a depth scanner,” I suggested, “One that could penetrate walls, ground, ceilings.”
“We are working on it,” said Misk.
I laughed.
Misk’s antennae curled.
“If you should regain your power,” I asked, “what do you propose to do with it? Will you set forth the law in certain matter for men?”
“Undoubtedly,” said Misk.
I was silent.
“We must protect ourselves and those humans who live with us,” said Misk.
I looked down the hill to where the campfire gleamed in the darkness. I could see human figures huddled about it, looking up at the hill.
“What of the egg?” asked Misk.
“What of it?” I asked.
“I cannot go myself,” said Misk. “I am needed in the Nest and even so my antennae cannot stand the sun — not for more than a few hours at most — and if I so much as approached a human being it would probably fear me and try to slay me.”
“Then you will have to find a human,” I said to him.
Misk looked down at me.
“What of you, Tarl Cabot?” he asked.
I looked up at him.
“The affairs of Priest-Kings,” I said, “— are not mine.”
Misk looked about himself, and lifted his antennae toward the moons and the wind-swept grass. He looked down at the distant campfire. He shivered a bit in the cold wind.
“The moons are beautiful,” I said, “are they not?”
Misk looked back at the moons.
“Yes,” he said, “I think so.”
“Once you spoke to me,” I said, “of random elements.” I looked up at the moons. “Is that —” I asked, “— seeing that the moons are beautiful — is that a random element in man?”
“I think,” said Misk, “it is part of man.”
“You spoke once of machines,” I said.
“Howsoever I spoke,” said Misk, “words cannot diminish men or Priest-Kings — for who cares what we are — if we can act, decided, sense beauty, seek right, and have hopes for our people?”
I swallowed hard, for I knew I had hopes for my race, and I sensed how Misk must have them for his, only his race was dying, and would sooner or later, one by one, meet with accident or succumb to the Pleasures of the Golden Beetle.
And my race — it would live on Gor — at least for the time, because of what Misk and Priest-Kings had done to preserve their world for them.
“Your affairs,” I told him, but speaking to myself, “are your affairs — and not mine,”
“Of course,” agreed Misk.
If I should attempt to help Misk, what would this mean, ultimately? Would it not be to surrender my race to the mercies of the people of Sarm and the Priest-Kings who had served him, or would it be ultimately to protect my race until it had learned to live with itself, until it had reached the maturity of humanity, until it, together with the people who called themselves Priest-Kings, could address itself to a common world, and to the galaxy beyond?
“Your world is dying,” I said to Misk.
“The universe itself will die,” said Misk.
He had his antennae lifted to the white fires that burned in the black night over Gor.
I surmised he was speaking of those entopic regularities that apparently prevailed in reality, as we know it, the loss of energy, its transformation into the ashes of the stellar night.
“It will grow cold and dark,” said Misk.
I looked up at him.
“But in the end,” said he, “life is as real as death and there will be a return of the ultimate rhythms, and a new explosion will cast forth the primitive particles and we shall have another turn of the wheel, and some day, sometime, in eons which defy the calculations even of Priest-Kings, there may be another nest, and another Earth, and Gor, and another Misk and another Tarl Cabot to stand upon a windy hill in the moonlight and speak of strange things.”
Misk’s antennae looked down at me.
“Perhaps,” he said, “we have stood here, on this hill, thusly together, unknown to either of us, already an infinite number of times.”
The wind seemed now very cold and very swift.
“And what did we do?” I asked.
“I do not know what we did,” said Misk. “But I think I would now choose to do that action which I would be willing that I should do again and again with each turning of the wheel. I would choose so to live that I might be willing that I should live that life a thousand times, even forever. I would choose to live that I might stand boldly with my deed without regret throughout eternity.”
The thoughts that he had spoken horrified me.
Then he looked down at me. His antennae curled. “But I speak very foolishly,” he said. “Forgive me, Tarl Cabot.”
“It is hard to understand you,” I said.
I could see climbing the hill towards us, a warrior. He grasped a spear.
“Are you all right?” He called.
“Yes,” I called back to him.
“Stand back,” he cried, “so I can have a clean cast.”
“Do not injure it!” I called to him. “It is harmless.”
Misk’s antennae curled.
“I wish you well, Tarl Cabot,” he said.
“The affairs of Priest-Kings,” I said to him, more insistently than ever, “are not my affairs.” I looked up at him. “Not mine!” I cried.
“I know,” said Misk, and he gently extended his antennae towards me.
I touched them.
“I wish you well, Priest-Kings,” I said.
Abruptly I turned from Misk and rushed down the hill, almost blindly. I stopped only when I reached the side of the warrior. He was joined by two or three more of the men from the camp below, who were also armed. We were also joined by an Initiate, of unimportant ranking.
Together we watched the tall figure on the hill, outlined against the moon, not moving, standing in the uncanny, marvellous immobility of the Priest-Kings, only its antennae blowing back down over its head in the wind.
“What is it?” asked one of the men.
“It looks,” said the Initiate, “like a giant insect.”
I smiled to myself. “Yes,” I said, “it does look like a giant insect.”
“May the Priest-Kings protect us,” breathed the Initiate.
One of the men drew back his spear arm but I stayed his arm. “No,” I said, “Do not injure it.”
“What is it?” asked another of the men.
How could I tell him that he looked with incredulity and horror, on one of the awesome denizens of the grim Sardar, on one of the fabulous and mysterious monarchs of his very world, on one of the gods of Gor — On a Priest-Kings?
“I can hurl my spear through it,” said the man with the spear.
“It is harmless,” I said.
“Let’s kill it anyway,” said the Initiate nervously.
“No,” I said.
I lifted my arm in farewell to Misk, and, to the surprise of the men with me, Misk lifted on foreleg, and then turned and was gone.
For a long time I, and the others, stood there in the windy night, almost knee-deep in the flowing, bending grass, and watched the knoll, and the stars behind it, and the white moons above.
“It’s gone,” said one of the men at last.
“Yes,” I said.
“Thank the Priest-Kings,” breathed the Initiate.
I laughed and the men looked at me as though I might be mad.
I spoke to the man with the spear. He was also the leader of the small group.
“Where,” I asked him, “is the land of the Wagon People?”
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