I slowly drew up the metal, perforated cone. Water drained from it, in tiny irregular streams, spattering back into the sea, and onto the boards of the raft. Then I lifted the cone and deposited the sludge in the retaining vessel, the large wooden tub behind me and to my left. I did not again coil and cast the line. I, too, watched the water.
The light of our lamps flickered on the surface, yellowly, in broken, shifting refractions.
“There!” said one of the men.
Lelts are often attracted to the salt rafts, largely by the vibrations in the water, picked up by their abnormally developed lateral-line protrusions, and their fernlike cranial vibration receptors, from the cones and poles. Too, though they are blind, I think either the light, or the heat, perhaps, from our lamps, draws them. The tiny, eyeless heads will thrust from the water, and the fernlike filaments at the side of the head will open and lift, orienting themselves to one or the other of the lamps. The lelt is commonly five to seven inches in length. It is white, and long-finned. It swims slowly and smoothly, its fins moving the water very little, which apparently contributes to its own concealment in a blind environment and makes it easier to detect the vibrations of its prey, any of several varieties of tiny segmented creatures, predominantly isopods. The brain of the lelt is interesting, containing an unusually developed odor-perception center and two vibration-reception centers. Its organ of balance, or hidden “ear,” is also unusually large, and is connected with an unusually large balance center in its brain. Its visual center, on the other hand, is stunted and undeveloped, a remnant, a vague genetic memory of an organ long discarded in its evolution. Among the lelts, too, were, here and there, tiny salamanders, they, too, white and blind. Like the lelts, they were, for their size, long-bodied, were capable of long periods of dormancy and possessed a slow metabolism, useful in an environment in which food is not plentiful. Unlike the lelts they had long, stemlike legs. At first I had taken them for lelts, skittering about the rafts, even to the fernlike filaments at the sides of their head, but these filaments, in the case of the salamanders, interestingly, are not vibration receptors but feather gills, an external gill system. This system, common in the developing animal generally, is retained even by the adult salamanders, who are, in this environment, permanently gilled. The gills of the lelt are located at the lower sides of its jaw, not on the sides of its head, as is common in open-water fish. The feather gills of the salamanders, it seems, allow them to hunt the same areas as the lelts for the same prey, the vibration effects of these organs being similar, without frightening them away, thus disturbing the water and alerting possible prey. They often hunt the same areas. Although this form of salamander possesses a lateral-line set of vibration receptors, like the lelt, it lacks the cranial receptors and its lateral-line receptors do not have the sensitivity of the lelt’s. Following the lelt, not disturbing it, often helps the salamander find prey. On the other hand, the salamander, by means of its legs and feet, can dislodge prey inaccessible to the lelt. The length of the stemlike legs of the salamander, incidentally, help it in stalking in the water. It takes little prey while swimming freely. The long legs cause little water vibration. Further, they enable the animal to move efficiently, covering large areas without considerable metabolic cost. In a blind environment, where food is scarce, energy conservation is essential. The long, narrow legs also lift the salamander’s head and body from the floor, enabling it, with its sensors, to scan a greater area for prey. The upright posture in men delivers a similar advantage, visually, in increasing scanning range, this being useful not only in the location of prey, but also, of course, in the recognition of dangers while remote, hopefully while yet avoidable.
But it was not the lelts nor the salamanders which explained our interest in the waters.
“There!” cried the man. “There it is again!” But then it was gone. I had not seen it.
In the pits there is no light, save that which men bring there. Without light, there cannot be photosynthesis. Without photosynthesis there cannot be the reduction of carbon dioxide, the formation of sugar, the beginning of the food chain. Ultimately, then, food is brought into the pits, generally in the form of organic debris, from hundreds of sources, many of them hundreds of miles distant; this debris is carried by the fresh-water feeds, through minute faults and fissures, and even porous rock, until it reaches the remains of the ancient seas, now sunken far beneath the surface. On and in this debris, breaking it down, are several varieties of bacteria. These bacteria are devoured by protozoons and rotifers. These, in turn, become food for various flatworms and numerous tiny segmented creatures, such as isopods, which, in turn, serve as food for small, blind, white crayfish, lelts and salamanders.
These latter, however, do not stand at the top of the food chain. Sometimes one picks up the lelts and salamanders in the cones. It was not these that had excited the interest of the men.
“Is it the Old One?” asked one of the men.
“I cannot tell,” said another. The steersman stood ready with the lance.
“There!” cried one of the men, pointing.
I saw it then, moving in, slowly, then turning about. The lelts and salamanders vanished, disappearing beneath the water. The thing disappeared. The waters were calm.
“It’s gone,” said one of the men.
“Was it the Old One?” asked one of the men.
“I do not know,” said the steersman, with the lance. The Old One had not been seen in the pit for more than a year.
“It is gone now,” said another of the men.
“Look!” I cried. This time it was close, surfacing not ten feet from the raft. We saw the broad, blunt head, eyeless, white. Then it submerged, with a twist of the long spine and tail.
The steersman was white. “It is the Old One,” he said. On the whitish back, near the high dorsal fin, there was a long scar. Part of the dorsal fin itself was rent, and scarred. These were lance marks.
“He has come back,” said one of the men.
The waters were still.
At the top of the food chain in the pits, a descendant, dark-adapted, of the terrors of the ancient seas, stood the long-bodied, nine-gilled salt shark.
The waters were calm.
“Let us gather salt,” said a man.
“Wait,” said the steersman. “Watch.”
For more than a quarter of an Ahn we did nothing.
“It is gone,” said a man.
“We must make our quotas,” said one of the harvesters.
“Gather salt,” said the steersman.
Again we took our ropes and cones, and bent to the labor of dredging for salt.
“The lelts have not returned,” said the steersman to me.
“What does this mean?” I asked.
“That the Old One is still with us,” he said, looking down at the dark waters. Then he said, “Gather salt.” Again I flung out the rope and cone.
It was growing late.
The oil in the lamps, on the poles at the corners of the raft, grew low.
On the surface it would be dusk.
I wondered how one might escape from Klima. Even if one could secure water, it did not seem one could, afoot, carry water sufficient to walk one’s way free of the salt districts. And, even if one could traverse the many pasangs of desert afoot, there would not be much likelihood, in the wilderness, of making one’s way to Red Rock, or another oasis. Those at Klima, by intent of the free, their masters, knew not the trails whereby their liberty might be achieved. I remembered, too, the poor slave who had encountered the chain on its march to Klima. He had been the subject of sport, then slain. None, it was said, had come back from Klima.
I thought of Priest-Kings, and Others, the Kurii, and their wars. They seemed remote.
It came very suddenly, from beneath the water, not more than five feet from me, erupting upward. I saw the man screaming in the jaws. The head was more than a yard in width, white, pits where there might have been eyes. The raft tipped, struck b
y its back, as it turned and, twisting, glided away into the darkness.
“Poles!” screamed the steersman. “Poles!” The poleman seized the poles, lowering them into the water.
One of the lamps sputtered out.
I heard screaming now, far off, then silence. Because of the saline content of the water the salt shark, when not hunting, often swims half emerged from the fluid. Its gills, like those of the lelt, are below and at the sides of his jaws. This is a salt adaptation which conserves energy, which, otherwise, might be constantly expended in maintaining an attitude in which oxygenation can occur.
“I cannot touch the bottom,” cried one of the men, in misery. The raft had drifted.
“Paddles,” cried the steersman, leaning on the sweep. The polemen seized up the broad levers near the retaining vessels. Another of the lamps sputtered out.
Slowly the raft turned.
Only two lamps now burned.
“You others,” said the steersman, “take poles!” We did so. It was our hope that the men with the paddles could move the raft sufficiently to bring it to a place we could use the poles.
“It is gone now,” said one of the men with paddles.
“It is the Old One,” said the steersman. “It is dusk.” I then understood, from his words, the meaning of the scarcity of food in the pit. When the hunting is good, one hunts. One can return later to earlier kills, driving away scavenging lelts. Further, I wondered at the salt shark, blind, living in total darkness. Yet it hunted at dusk, and at dawn, driven apparently by ancient biological rhythms. The long-bodied, ghostly creature, hunting in the black waters, followed still the rhythms of its dark clock, set for its species a quarter of a billion years ago in a vanished, distant, sunlit world.
“Make haste!” cried the steersman. “Make haste!”
The third lamp sputtered out. There was now but a single lamp burning, on the port side, aft. Then it, too, sputtered out.
We were in darkness. Somewhere near, below us, or about us, moved the Old One.
We were in absolute darkness. There was no moonlight, not even starlight. In the world in which we stood even a Kur would be blind. We stood waiting, alone, in the world of the Old One.
When it came, it came swiftly, hurling itself upwards from the water. We, in the darkness, felt the salt water drench us, heard the great body, more than twenty feet long, fall back in the water.
Then, for a time, it was quiet again.
We heard the raft bumped, felt the movement in the wood. We then felt the body of the Old One beneath the raft. The raft tipped, but fell back. We clung in the darkness to the retaining vessels, the salt tubs. Twice more the raft tipped, and fell back.
More than a quarter of an Ahn passed. We thought the Old One no longer with us. Then the raft, on the port side, seemed to dip into the water. A man cried out, in horror, striking with a paddle. The heavy head slipped back into the water. The Old One had placed his head on the raft, sensing in the darkness.
We drifted for more than an Ahn in silence, in the darkness. Then, suddenly, hurling itself from the water, the great body, thrashing, fell across the raft, twisting, the mighty tail flailing and snapping. I heard splintering wood, the retaining vessels, the salt tubs, struck and shattered, flung bounding and rolling from the frame. I heard men scream, sensed men struck yards from the raft, heard them strike the water.
I threw myself on my stomach into the remains of the splintered frame, clutching at torn wood.
There was screaming in the darkness. I heard more than one man taken. “I cannot see!” cried one man.
Four more times the great body threw itself onto the raft, thrashing.
Once I felt it roll over my back, my body protected by the remains of the frame. Its skin was not rough, abrasive, like that of free-water sharks, but slick, coated with a bacterial slime. It slipped over me, not tearing me from the frame. Though it touched me I could see nothing.
“Where are you?” I heard from the water.
“Here!” I cried. “Here is the raft!” I knelt on the raft. I did not know if I were alone on it or not. “Here!” I cried. “Here! Here!”
“Help!” I heard. “Help!” I heard two men crawl onto the raft. One began screaming. Another man crawled onto the raft and then, insanely, began to wander about. “Stay down!” I cried. “Save yourselves!” he cried. He leaped into the water. “Come back!” I cried. It is my supposition that it was his intention to swim to the dock, more than four pasangs away. He did not turn back, even when I warned him that his direction was false. “Poor fool,” said a voice. “Hassan!” I cried. “It is I,” he said, near me.
“Help!” I heard. I felt for one of the raft poles, found it, and, extending it, thrust it toward the voice. I pulled the man aboard. I tried to save a second man, similarly, but he was taken from the pole, screaming, by the Old One.
I saw lights across the water, another raft, approaching. On its bow, lance raised, I saw T’Zshal.
The two rafts gently struck one another. We boarded the other raft.
“There is another man in the water, somewhere,” I said to T’Zshal. “He swam that way.”
“Fool,” said T’Zshal, “fool.” He looked upon us. “The Old One,” he said, not asking.
The steersman nodded. He had lived.
“Let us go back,” said one of the polemen on T’Zshal’s raft.
T’Zshal regarded us. I and Hassan had survived, and the steersman, and the man I had saved. I did not know if the man who had entered the water had survived or not. I did not think his chances were good.
“Let us return now, swiftly to the docks,” said one of the men on T’Zshal’s raft.
T’Zshal looked out over the dark waters. “The Old One has returned,” he said. “And he has not forgotten his tricks.”
“Let us return swiftly to the dock,” said a man, insistently.
“A man of mine,” said T’Zshal, “remains in the water.” He indicated with his hand the direction the men were to pole.
They moaned, but did not disobey the kennel master.
T’Zshal himself stood at the bow of the raft, the lance in one hand, in his other a lantern, lifted.
An Ahn later he found the man. “Greetings,” said the fellow. “Greetings,” said T’Zshal, drawing him from the water. “I have been swimming,” said the man. “Yes,” said T’Zshal. T’Zshal put him on the planks of the raft. The man seemed to have no recollection of the Old One, nor of what he was doing in the water. He fell asleep.
“Return to the dock,” said T’Zshal.
The heavy raft turned, and began to move toward the docks.
Hassan and I looked at one another. We had decided that we would not kill T’Zshal.
“Tomorrow,” said T’Zshal, “at dusk, I am returning to this area.”
“I shall accompany you,” I said. “And I, too,” said Hassan.
17
What Occurred in the Pit
I think there was no man on the raft that evening who had not lost at least one comrade, recently or long ago, to the Old One.
“We hunt the Old One,” T’Zshal had said. He had visited various pits, some open, some sheltered, the warehouses, the refining vats. “We hunt the Old One,” he had said. And they had followed him. Even in the shadow of Klima’s Keep itself, the squarish, stout, fortresslike building which houses the weaponry, domicile and office of the Salt Master himself, did we recruit our crew. On the height of the keep I saw, tight in the bright, hot wind, under the merciless sun, defiant to the pits and desert itself, the flag of Klima, the whip and scimitar. None had been ordered; not one upon the raft had, under the uplifted whip coil, nor upon the advice of unsheathed steel, been commanded. Many were older men, sober and mature, many blackened by the sun. Each was slave, but each came not as a slave, but came unbidden, as a man. “We hunt the Old One,” had said T’Zshal. He said this in the pits, the warehouses, among the refining vats. “We hunt the Old One,” he said. And men had followed him.
* * * *
I think there was no man on the raft that evening who had not lost at least one comrade, recently or long ago, to the Old One.
“Awaken me,” had said T’Zshal, “when the lelts have gone.”
Far into the pit, distant from the salt docks, we slowed the raft, and steadied it with the long poles, holding it as nearly as we could in place. He who had been steersman with us yesterday, during the attack of the Old One, held the sweep that governed the movements of that open, sluggish platform which constituted our vessel. Beside he, only Hassan, on the other side, and myself, of yesterday’s crew, accompanied T’Zshal. At the corners of the raft burned four lamps, mounted on poles. Torches, however, stood ready, to be lit from these, and held over the water, should there be need.
“Awaken me when the lelts have gone,” had said T’Zshal. “I will sleep now.”
He had then lain down, behind the frame within which the salt tubs are stored, aft, and had slept. Beside him lay the long lance, some nine feet in length.
“Will you not use poison on the blade?” had asked a man at the salt dock. No one of those who accompanied T’Zshal had asked the question.
“No,” had said T’Zshal.
I wondered if he had once been of the Warriors.
I observed T’Zshal as he slept, the bearded head on one arm. I wondered why it was that none killed him, to become kennel master in his place. How was it, he holding the precarious sovereignty of our kennel, that he dared to sleep among slaves, who might win his kaffiyeh and agal, though they were only rep-cloth, so 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?
Tribesmen of Gor Page 33
