simply as the dagger, slipped from his sash, might enter his throat? The kennel
master, though slave, too, is Ubar, with power of life and death, in the squalor
of his domain. How is it, I wondered, that such a man can survive a night, that
such a man dare turn his back upon the fierce, envious sleen among whom, with
whip, and laughter, he walks. His will, his word, in the kennel decrees law. He
may, if he choose, stake out, or whip or slay a man who fails his quota of
gathered salt, or strikes a fellow, administering fierce, dread discipline as
the whim may seize him, and yet, should he himself be slain, his slayer is not
punished, but accedes to his authority and, in his place, becomes master of the
kennel. How is it, I wondered, that men survive at Klima, and that they do not
die at one another’s throats?
I looked at the heads of the lelts, and, scattered among them, the heads of the
pale salamanders, thrust from the dark water, attracted by the movement, or the
awareness of the light or heat, of the lamps.
They had been with the raft now for better than an Ahn, appearing some quarter
of an Ahn after we had steadied the sluggish vessel in place.
It is difficult to bespeak the darkness of the pit.
T’Zshal slept.
Beside him lay the lance; in his reddish sash was thrust the dagger of his
office.
“The lelts remain with us,” said one of the men near me, he, too, with a pole.
I looked upon the lelts, and, among them, here and there, the salamanders. Their
blunt, whitish heads protruded from the water, curious, each head oriented
toward one or the other of the four lamps on the raft. I knelt down on the raft,
and, quickly, scooped, holding it, one of the lelts from the water. It was
enclosed in my hand. It struggled briefly, then lay still. The lelt is a small
fish, long-bodied for its size, long-finned. It commonly swims slowly, smoothly,
conserving energy in the black, saline world encompassing its existence. There
is little to eat in that world; it is a liquid desert, almost barren, black,
blind and cool. It swims slowly, conserving its energy, not alerting its prey,
commonly flatworms and tiny-segmented creatures, predominantly isopods. I turned
the lelt, looking at the small, sunken, covered pits in the sides of its head. I
wondered if it was capable, somehow, of a dim awareness of the phenomenon of
light. Could there be some capacity, some genetic predisposition for the
recognition of light, like an ancient, almost lost genetic memory, buried in the
tiny, simple, linear brain at the apex of its spinal column? It could not be
possible I told myself. The tiny gills, oddly beneath and at the sides of its
jaws, closed and opened. There was a minute sound. I lowered my hand and let the
lelt slip again into the dark water. It slipped from sight. Then I saw it again,
a few feet from the raft. Again its head protruded from the water, again
oriented to the same lamp at the corner of the raft.
“Why did you not eat it?” asked the man near me.
I shrugged. Some salt slaves eat the lelt, raw, taken from the water, or gleaned
from their harvesting vessels. The first bite is taken behind the back of the
neck.
I regarded the fish.
Perhaps they have some dim awareness of light. Perhaps it is only the heat that
draws them. I suppose, in the salt pit, one of our small lamps might seem to
those who had in their lives known only darkness like the glory of a thousand
suns. We know little about the lelt. We do know it will come from the darkness
and lift the blind pits of its eyes toward a source of light.
“You could have given it to me,” said the man near me.
“I did not think of it,” I told him.
We know little about men, too, I thought. We do know they will seek the truth. I
do not know if they can see it. Perhaps if they touched it, they would die,
burning in its flames. Perhaps we cannot see truth. Perhaps nature has denied us
this gift. Perhaps we can sense only its presence. Perhaps we can sense only its
heat. Perhaps to stand occasionally in its presence is sufficient.
“The lelts have gone,” said the man.
The waters were dark, seemingly empty. The lelts, the salamanders, had gone.
“Waken, T’Zshal,” said the man. The hair rose on the back of my neck. Suddenly
then I understood the institution of the kennel master, and the dark laws
governing his tenure, how they regulated and ordered behavior at Klima.
“The lelts have gone,” whispered a man.
I glanced at T’Zshal, his heavy head, bearded, resting on his arm, the lance
beside him.
I had wondered why men did not kill T’Zshal, and the other kennel masters, why
the societal arrangement was as stable as it was. I now knew. It was because the
killer then, in turn, would be kennel master. The dread responsibility would
then be his to bear. His then would be the fearful burdens of autonomy, of
freedom. One must speak carefully whose words becomes law. It is not easy to be
master at Klima. Too, he would be the next to die. It is a high price to pay for
the whip. One must think carefully before slaying a kennel master, for the
reasons for which one performs this action, if sufficient to justify his slaying
must, too, be sufficient to justify the slaying of his successor. There are two
major controls on the office of kennel master, one on the men, the other on the
master. The control on the men is that the killer of the kennel master must
assume the office of his victim, with its vulnerabilities and hazards. The
control on the kennel master is the incipient rage and menace of his desperate
charges. If he does not govern shrewdly and well, if be does not do rough
justice, he invites the lesions of resentment, which among the grim, trapped men
of Klima must, sooner or later, culminate in the moment of insurrection. He
cannot be easy with the men, of course, for he himself is subject to the
sanctions of his superiors, in particular in connection with the salt quotas
imposed upon his kennel. Men do not wish to be kennel master. But yet one must
be sovereign; one must accept the burden. It is steel alone, and will, which
prevents catastrophe and slaughter. The whip must be held. Who will be
courageous enough, strong enough, to lift it among the savage, condemned beasts
of Klima? Who will be bold enough, generous enough, to accept the dreadful
office of kennel master at Klima?
“Waken T’Zshal.” whispered a man near me.
I went to the recumbent figure of the kennel master. I put my hand on his
shoulder. “Awaken, T’Zshal,” said 1. “The lelts have gone.”
T’Zshal opened his eyes. He sat up. With his fingers, and some fresh water, from
a skin, he rubbed his eves. He took a drink. He stretched, and stood up on the
raft. He studied the waters about the raft, black and quiet. He removed his
shirt, and his boots.
The waters were quiet.
He was bare-chested. He wore the kafflyeh and agal. He was barefoot. The dagger
was thrust in his sash. He examined the long blade of the lance, running his
finger along the edge of the blade. The blade was bound in the shaft by four
ri
vets. From his sash he took a long, narrow lacing of rawhide, which he bound
about the base of the lance blade, where it was riveted in the shaft, thus, for
about six inches, reinforcing the shaft. He then took fresh water from the skin
and soaked the lacing. He then laid the lance over the tops of two of the large
retaining vessels, the salt tubs, on the raft.
There was no stirring, or movement, near the raft.
None of the men spoke.
T’Zshal was the first to see it. We saw it only after we sensed his movement,
slight.
It was some forty feet away, aft on the starboard side. Then it disappeared.
T’Zshal took the lance, holding the point down. He gripped it in both hands.
“Stand back from the edge of the raft,” he said.
We moved back.
I felt exhilarated. Gone from my mind suddenly were the brooding on realities
and truths that might not be disclosed to men. It is enough to know they exist.
One need not stand forever, one’s face pressed against a wall that may not be
penetrated. One must turn one’s back in time upon the impenetrable wall, One
must laugh, and cry out, and be a man. Man can think; he must act. In the midst
of impenetrable mysteries, not caring for him, beyond him, he behaves, he
chooses, he acts. Wisdom decrees that the tree of thought must not be planted
where it cannot bear fruit. A man may starve trying to feed on the illusion of
nourishment. There are realities, truths, which lie open to man. These are those
of his species, of his kind of being, of his realm of animal. To know these
truths he needs little more than his brain, his blood, his eyes and hands. He
listens overmuch to what does not speak to him, to what cannot speak to him.
Within the boundaries of his own being, in that bright realm, let him claim the
supremacy which is his; it will remain vacant, unless he seize upon it. It is
his; he may take it or not. The choice is up to him. All else is the night and
darkness. Music he will make among the stones and silence. He will sing for his
own ears; the justification is himself and the song. To what must he be true, if
not himself? To what else should he be true? He is born a hunter. Let him not
forget the taste of meat.
It erupted from the water not a yard from the raft, hurtling upward, ten feet
into the air, towering over the boards and T’Zshal, with a cry of rage, and joy,
and I, too, screamed, thrust the lance deep into the body and it turned twisting
in the air jaws teeth rows like hooks back bent triangular the gills beneath the
jaw the pits in the side of the great head a yard more I could not tell across
and then fell back into the water and twisted under the surface and circled
away, the dorsal fin, sail-like, scarred from years before, tracing its angry
circle.
“Greetings, Old One’’ cried T’Zshal. He held the bloodied lance in his hand,
fluid thick, black under the lamps, on the blade.
The Old One now again faced the raft. It scarcely moved in the water. It seemed
to be watching us.
“It is not pleased,” said a man. “You have angered it,” said another.
My heart pounded. I thought not then of our comrades of the day before, those
slain by the monster in the water. I thought then rather of the beast, the foe,
and the bunt. I feared then only that it might forsake the fray.
But I needed not fear, for it was the Old One with whom we dealt.
“Ah, Old One,” crooned T’Zshal, softly across the water, “we meet again.”
I wondered that he had said this.
“Protect the lamps.” said T’Zshal, softly, to us. “Cover them when the water is
high.”
If the lamps were lost, and the torches unlit, I did not think it likely we
would return to the salt dock.
I saw the water near the tail of the Old One begin to stir. It was moving its
tail back and forth. Then it slipped beneath the surface.
“Hold to the salt tubs,” said T’Zshal.
We felt the great body of the Old One twist under the heavy beams of the raft.
Then the raft lifted, to an almost forty-five degree angle as the monster humped
beneath it, thrusting it upward. Men slipped, some fell, but none entered the
water. Four times the Old One tried to turn the raft. Before we had left the
salt docks we had filled the salt tubs with salt. He could not turn the raft. We
retained the light on the poles. The Old One circled away and again lay out from
us in the water, some fifty to sixty feet distant, seeming to watch.
Then he again slipped from sight. We did not see him for more than a quarter of
an Ahn.
Then, suddenly, at the port side, aft, he erupted from the water a dozen feet
away and fell back, spattering torrents of water over the raft.
“Cover the torches,” cried T’Zshal. “Protect the lamps!” The lamp at the aft,
port corner of the raft, drenched, was extinguished. Men covered the torches
with their bodies. The Old One had again disappeared.
“Perhaps he is gone now.” said one of the men.
“Perhaps.” said T’Zshal. The men laughed.
“Aiiii!” cried a man. The Old One rose, twisting, near him, near the forequarter
on the port side. He leaped back. The Old One turned, its vast sicklelike tail
snapping across the beams. It caught the man’s leg between itself and the salt
tub, breaking the leg, turning it suddenly oddly inward below the knee. But it
had not been the man, we surmised, that the Old One had wanted. The tail, like a
twig, had struck loose the lamp pole, hurling it, spinning, flaming oil
spilling, yards away into the circle of darkness outside the ring of lamplight,
on the dark, briny water.
“Bring the lamps to the center of the raft,” said T’Zshal. “Stand within the
frame of the salt tubs.”
Bits of oil burned briefly on the water scattered from the struck lamp. Then
they went out.
I saw the man whose leg was broken. He clung to the side of the salt tub, the
salt on the side of his cheek, his arms and chest. He made no sound.
“You were clumsy,” said T’Zshal.
The Old One circled the raft four times, sometimes stopping, seeming, to regard
us.
“If you want us, you must come for us,” said T’Zshal, calling across the water.
“Come, little one. Come to T’Zshal. He waits for you.”
I saw the water begin to move about the tail of the Old One. The pits of its
eyes seemed to rest even with the water.
“Beware,” I said to T’Zshal.
“He’s coming!” cried one of the men.
The long, vast body hurtled through the water, tail switching. Almost at the
edge of the raft the great body lifted in the water, turning to its side, jaws
dropping open, lunging, falling, biting, onto the beams, thrashing. T’Zshal
thrust the long lance, almost bead-on, toward the monster, and it cut, slicing,
a long wound, a yard in length, along its side. The teeth caught the wide cloth
of the trouser, turning T’Zshal, spinning him, tearing away cloth to the hip.
T’Zshal struck again with the lance, driving it into the tail of the monster as
it twisted off the raft.
“Light a torch. Lift it high,” said T’Zshal.
He held the lance ready. On the left leg of T’Zshal, where the cloth had been
torn away, I could see, white and wide, jagged, descending, a long, irregular
scar. It almost encircled the leg and ranged from a half of an inch to two
inches in width.
“We are old friends, Old One,” called T’Zshal, across the water. “Come, call
again.”
I had not seen the scar before. I then had no doubt that at some time in the
past, T’Zshal and the Old One had become acquainted.
“Come, Old One,” whispered T’Zshal. “Come, Old One.” He held the lance ready.
T’Zshal, and the Old One, as he had said, were old friends. I wondered how many
men of T’Zshal had been killed by the Old One. I suspected it was not few.
In the lamplight, on tile raft, on the dark water, among us, waiting, he held
the lance ready.
We did not speak.
None of us suspected it. It came by surprise, from the back, from beneath the
surface, then without warning men screaming wood splintering amongst us seeing
it striking me others too tumbling gone then men crying out arms in the water
one lamp only tiny alive in that blackness.
“Light torches,” I cried. From the lamp torches were lit. We saw the Old One
emerge from the water, rising up, more than a dozen feet of that great, mighty
body rearing upward, Water streaming from it, in its jaws the body of T’Zshal.
I leaped from the raft, striking the surface of the water. I reached the side of
the Old One before I realized fully the possibilities of my action. The teeth of
the Old One, like that of the long-bodied sharks of Gor, and related marine
species, as well as similarly evolved forms of Earth, bend rearward; each bite
anchors the bitten material, which can be dislodged conveniently only in the
direction of the throat. In short, the Old One could not easily release its
quarry. Further, the reflex instinct of the beast would be to hold, not to
release the quarry. Even for the Old One, in the black, almost barren waters,
food would be scarce. In such an environment one would expect the holding
instinct would be as near to inflexible as such an instinct could be. I seized
the lateral fin on the right side of the beast. It dove, and rubbed itself,
twisting, in the salt at the bottom of the pit. I did not release my hold. I
thrust my hand toward the jaws. They were open, clenched on the body of T’Zshal.
Norman, John - Gor 10 - Tribesmen of Gor.txt Page 35
