“Yes,” said I.
“Strange,” said Samos.
The beast had been taken southeast of Ar, while moving southeast. Such a Path
would take it below the eastern foothills of the Voltai and to the south. It was
incredible. “Who would enter such a place?” asked Samos.
“Caravans, crossing it,” I said. “Nomads, grazing their verr on the stubble of
verr grass.”
“Who else?” asked Samos.
“The mad?” I smiled.
“Or the purposeful,” said Samos, someone who had business there, who knew what
he was intending?”
“Perhaps, “I admitted.
“Someone who had a mission, who knew precisely for what he was searching?”
“But there is nothing there,” I said. “And only the mad, deeper into the area,
depart from marked caravan routes, proceeding from oasis to oasis.”
“A tender of kaiila, a boy, lost from his camp,” said Samos, “found a rock. On
this rock was inscribed “Beware the steel tower.’“
“And the message girl” I said. “We do not know, I gather, whom this Abdul is of
whom we are warned to beware.”
“No,” said Samos, puzzled. “I know of no Abdul.”
“And who would send such a message, and why?”
“I do not know,” said Samos.
I idly observed the dancer. Her eyes were on me. It seemed, in her hands, she
held ripe fruits for me, lush larma, fresh picked. Her wrists were close
together, as though confined by the links of slave bracelets. She touched the
imaginary larma to her body, caressing her swaying beauty with it, and then,
eyes piteous, held her hands forth, as though begging me to accept the lush
fruit. Men at the table clapped their hands on the wood, and looked at me.
Others smote their left shoulders. I smiled. On Gor, the female slave, desiring
her master, yet sometimes fearing to speak to him, frightened that she may be
struck has recourse upon occasion to certain devices, the meaning of which is
generally established and culturally well understood. I shall mention two such
devices. There is, first, the bondage knot. Most Gorean slave girls have long
hair. The bondage knot is a simple looped knot tied in the girl’s hair and worn
at the side of her right cheek or before her right shoulder. The girl approaches
the master naked and kneels; the bondage knot soft, curled, fallen at the side
of her right cheek or before her right shoulder. Another device, common in Port
Kar, is for the girl to kneel before the master and put her head down and lift
her arms, offering him fruit, usually a larma, or a yellow Gorean peach, ripe
and fresh. These devices, incidentally, may be used even by a slave girl who
hates her master but whose body, trained to love, cannot endure the absence of
the masculine caress. Such girls, even with hatred, may offer the larma, furious
with themselves, yet helpless, the captive of their slave needs, forced to beg
on their knees for the touch of a harsh master, who revels in the, sport of
their plight; does he satisfy them; if it is his will, yes; if it is not his
will, no. They are slaves.
The girl now knelt before me, her body obedient still, trembling, throbbing, to
the melodious, sensual command of the music.
I looked into the cupped hands, held toward me. They might have been linked in
slave bracelets. They might have held lush larma. I reached across the table and
took her in my arms and dragged her, turning her, and threw her on her back on
the table before me. I lifted her to me, and thrust my lips to her, crushing her
slave lips beneath mine. Her eyes shone. I held her from me. She lifted her lips
to mine. I did not permit her to touch me. I jerked her to her feet and, half
turning her, ripping her silk from her, hurled her to the map floor, where she
half lay, half crouched one leg beneath her, looking at me, stripped save for
her collar, the brand, the armlets, bells, the anklets, with fury. “Please us
more,” I told her. Her eyes blazed. “And do not rise from the floor, Slave,” I
told her. The music, which had stopped, began again.
She turned furiously, yet gracefully, extending a leg, touching an ankle, moving
her hands up her leg, looking at me over her shoulder, and then rolled, and
writhed, as though beneath the lash of masters.
“You discipline her well,” said Samos, smiling.
I grinned.
The girl now, on her belly, yet subtly to the music, crawled toward us, lifted
her hand piteously to us.
I heard a cry of dismay, of protest, from the horrified, once Miss Blake-Allen.
Samos regarded her. He was not pleased. “Free her legs of the harness,” said
Samos to one of the guards.
The guard took the straps which had bound her ankles together, and, untying
them, slipped them through the metal ring, glinting, sewn into the back of the
leather collar of the harness, worn over the simple curved collar of iron which
marked her, even should she be clothed, and her brand not visible, as slave. The
straps had run from the back of the collar to her ankles, holding her in a
kneeling position. Her legs were now free. The ankle straps then, sewn to the
sides of the collar, and now circled about the collar and crossing in back, and
now run through the ring on the front of the collar, served as leash. The
harness is designed to provide a large number of ties. The girl, her legs freed,
looked at Samos with horror. But he was no longer regarding her.
The dancer now lay on her back and the music was visible in her breathing, and
in small movements of her head, and hands. Her hands were small and lovely.
She lay on the map floor, her head turned toward us. She was covered with sweat.
I snapped my fingers and her legs turned under her, and she was kneeling, head
back, dark hair on the tiles. Her bands moved, delicate, lovely. Slowly, if
permitted, she would rise to an erect kneeling position; her hands, as she
lifted herself, extended toward us. Four times said I “No,” each time my command
forcing her head back, her body bent, to the floor, and such time again, to the
music, she lifted her body to an erect kneeling position. The last position of
her body to rise was her beautiful head. The collar was at her throat. Her dark
eyes, smoldering, vulnerable, reproachful, regarded me. Still did the move to
the music, which had not yet released her.
With a gesture I permitted her to rise to her feet. “Dance your body, Slave,” I
told her, “to the guests of Samos.”
Angrily the girl, man by man, slowly, meaningfully, danced her beauty to each
guest. They struck the tables, and cried out. More than one reached to clutch
her but each time, swiftly, she moved back.
Samos rose from behind the table and strode to the map floor. I went with him.
He stopped at a point on the smooth, mosaiced floor. I looked at him. “Yes,” he
said, “somewhere here.”
I looked down at the intricately wrought mosaiced floor. Beneath our feet,
smooth, polished, were hundreds of tiny, fitted bits of tile, mostly here, in
this area, tan and brown. The bits of tile seemed soft, lustrous, under the
torchlight. The dancer, now behind us, continued to move before th
e low tables.
The eyes of the men gleamed. Before each man, for moments seemingly his alone,
she danced her beauty.
“There is one thing more,” said Samos, “which I have not told you.”
“What is that?” I asked.
“Kurii have delivered to the Sardar an ultimatum.”
“An ultimatum?” I asked.
“Surrender Gor, it said.” said Samos.
“Nothing more?” I asked.
“Nothing more,” said Samos.
“This makes little sense to me,” I said. “For what reason should this world be
surrendered to Kurii?”
“It seems insane,” said Samos.
“Yet Kurii are not insane,” said I. “There was no alternative specified?” I
asked.
“None,” said Samos.
“Surrender Gor--” I repeated.
“It seems a mad imperative,” said Samos.
“But if it is not?”
“I am afraid,” said Samos.
“And how has the Sardar responded to this?” I asked. “Have they repudiated it,
scoffingly, ridiculed the preposterousness of this demand?”
Samos smiled. “Misk, a Priest-King,” said he, “one high in the Sardar, has asked
Kurii for a further specification of details.”
I smiled. “He is buying time,” I said.
“Of course,” said Samos.
“What response if any, was made?” I asked.
“Surrender Gor,” said Samos. “A repetition of the original imperative. Then
there was communication silence.”
“Nothing more has been heard from Kurii?” I asked.
“Nothing more,” said Samos.
“Doubtless it is a bluff on the part of Kurii,” I said. “Priest-Kings would not
well understand that sort of thing. They are quite rational generally, unusually
logical. Their minds seldom think in terms of unwarranted challenges,
psychological strategies, false claims.”
Samos shrugged.
“Sometimes I think Priest-Kings do not well understand Kurii. They may be too
remotely related a life form. They may not have the passions, the energies, the
hatreds to fully comprehend Kurii.”
“Or men” said Samos.
“Or men,” I agreed. Priest-Kings surely had energies and passions, but, I
suspected, they were, on the whole, rather different from those of men, or,
indeed, those of Kurii. The nature of the sensory experience of Priest-Kings was
still, largely, a mystery to me. I knew their behavioral world; I did know the
world of their inner experience. Their antennae were their central organs of
physical transduction. Though they had eyes, they seldom relied upon them, and
were perfectly at ease in total darkness. Lights, in the Nest, were for the
benefit of humans and other visually oriented creatures sharing the domicile.
Their music was a rhapsody of odors, many of which were, to human olfactory
organs, not even pleasant. Their decorations were largely invisible lines of
scent traced with great care on the interiors of their compartments. Their most
intense, pleasurable experience was perhaps to immerse their antennae in the
filamented, narcotic mane of the golden beetle, which would then, piercing them
with its curved, hollow, laterally moving jaw-pincers, drain them of their body
fluid, feeding itself, slaying them. The social bond of the Priest-Kings is Nest
Trust. Yet, in spite of their different evolutionary background and physiology,
they had learned the meaning of the word ‘friend’; too, I knew, they understood,
if only in their own way, love.
I smiled to myself. “Sometimes,” once had said Misk to me in the Nest, “I
suspect only men can understand Kurii.” Then he had added, “They are so
similar.”
It had been a joke. But I did not think it was false.
Unfortunate though it might be, I doubted and, I think realistically, that
Priest-Kings, those large, golden creatures, so gentle and delicate seeming, so
content to mind their own affairs, truly understood their enemy, the Kurii. The
persistence, the aggression, the fevers of the blood, the lust, the
territoriality of such beasts would be largely unintelligible to them. There was
little place in the placid, lucid categories of Priest-Kings for comprehending
the bloods and madnesses of either men or Kurii. They, Kurii and men, understood
one another better, I suspected, than the Priest-Kings understood either. As
long as the Kurii remained behind the fifth ring, that determined by the orbit
of the planet called on Earth Jupiter, on Gor, Hersius, after a legendary hero
of Ar, the Priest-Kings were little concerned with them They had no objection if
such ravening wolves prowled their fences, and scratched at their very gates.
“They, like men, are an interesting life form,” once had said Misk to me. But
now the Kurii worlds, sensing the weakness of the Sardar, following the Nest
War, damages that had destroyed their basic power source and had split the very
Nest open to the sky, prowled more closely. The worlds, now, or several of them,
we understood, concealed, shielded, lurked well within the asteroid belt.
Contact points, bases, had been established, it seemed, on the shores of Earth
itself. The major probe of Kurii, the organization of native Kurii by ship
Kurii, had taken place recently. It had failed. It had been stopped in
Torvaldsland. Ship Kurii, still, then, did not know the extent to which the
power of Priest-Kings remained crippled. This was the major advantage which we
now held. Kurii, cautious, like sharks, did not wish to commit their full attack
until assured of its success. Had they known the weakness of the Sardar, and the
time required to restore the power source, regenerating itself now at inexorable
concentration rates determined by natural law, they would have surely launched
their fleets. Most, we conjectured, they feared a ruse, a display of pretended
weakness that would lure an attack, then to be decimated. Moreover, I knew there
were factions among Kurii. Doubt- less they had individuals who were bolder, and
those who were more cautious. The failure of the Torvaldsland probe might have
had great impact in their councils. Perhaps a new party had come to power among
them. Perhaps now, a new strategy, a new plan, was afoot.
“Surrender Gor-” said Samos, looking down at the portion of the map beneath his
feet.
I looked to the map. Was this where the new plan of Kurii, if there was such a
new plan, touched this primitive world?
“The path of the captured Kur,” said Samos, pointing, “would have taken it
here.”
“Perhaps he intended to cross it?” I asked.
Samos pointed with his finger, west of Tor. “No,” said he, “surely one would
circle the area, taking the routes west of Tor, where there is ample water.”
“One would surely need a caravan, and guides,” I said, “to survive east of Tor?”
“Of course,” said Samos. “Yet the beast was alone.”
“I suspect,” said Samos, “that the beast’s destination lay not on the other side
of this area, but within it.”
“Incredible,” I said.
Samos shrugged.
“Why should a Kur go to such a place, and enter such a country?” I asked.
&nbs
p; “I do not know,” said Samos.
“Strange that at this time, too,” said I “the slave runs should cease, an the
imperative, inexplicable, to surrender Gor should be served upon the Sardar.”
“What did the Kur seek in such a country?” asked Samos.
“And what,” I asked, “of the message on the stone, “Beware the steel tower’?”
“It is a mystery,” said Samos, “and the answer lies here.” He pointed to that
dread area of Gor.
I looked downward. Though on the map it occupied only some several feet of the
floor, in actuality it was vast. It was roughly in the shape of a gigantic,
lengthy trapezoid, with eastward leaning sides. At its northwestern corner lay
Tor, West of Tor, on the Lower Fayeen, a sluggish, meandering tributary, like
the Upper Fayeen, to the Cartius, lay the river Port of Kasra, known for its
export of salt. It was in this port that the warehouses of Ibn Saran, salt
merchant, currently the guest of Samos of Port Kat, were to be found. This city,
too, was indicated in the cording of his agal, and in the stripes of his
djellaba.
The area, in extent, east of Tor, was hundreds of pasangs in depth, and perhaps
thousands in length. The Gorean expression for this area simply means the
Wastes, or the Emptiness. It is a vast area, and generally rocky, and hilly,
save in the dune country. It is almost constantly windblown and almost
waterless. In areas it has been centuries between rains. Its oases are fed from
underground rivers flowing southeastward from the Voltai slopes. The water,
seeping underground, eventually, in places, due to rock formation, erupts in
oasis springs, or, more usually, is reached by deep wells, some of them more
than two hundred feet deep. It takes more than a hundred and fifty years for
some of this water to make the underground journey, seeping hundreds of feet at
times beneath the dry surface, moving only a few miles a year, to reach the
eases. Diurnal air temperatures in the shade are commonly in the range of 120
degrees Fahrenheit. Surface temperature, diurnally, is, of course, much higher
in the dune country, by day, if one were so unwise as to go barefoot, the bright
sand would quickly cripple a man, abraiding and burning the flesh from his feet
in a matter of hours.
“It is here,” said Samos, pointing to the map, “that the secret lies.”
Norman, John - Gor 10 - Tribesmen of Gor.txt Page 4
