by John Norman
One of the things I did was run the translator over the red plastic tunic I had been issued and listen to the information which had been recorded on it. There was not much save my name and city, that I was a Matok under the supervision of Misk, that I had no record-scars and that I might be dangerous.
I smiled at the latter caution.
I did not even have a sword, and I was sure that, in any battle with Priest-Kings, I would constitute but a moment's work for their fierce mandibles and the bladed, hornlike projections on their forelegs.
The case which I was to occupy in Misk's chamber was not as bad as I had anticipated.
Indeed, it seemed to me far more luxurious than the appointments in Misk's own chamber, which seemed utterly bare except for the feed trough and numerous compartments, dials, switches and plugs mounted in one wall. The Priest-Kings eat and sleep standing and never lie down, except perhaps it be to die.
The bareness of Misk's chamber was, however, as it turned out, only an apparent bareness to a visually oriented organism such as myself. Actually the walls, ceiling and floor were covered with what, to a Priest-King, were excruciatingly beautiful scent-patterns. Indeed, Misk informed me that the patterns in his chamber had been laid down by some of the greatest artists in the Nest.
My case was a transparent plastic cube of perhaps eight feet square, with ventilation holes and a sliding plastic door. There was no lock on the door and thus I could come and go as I pleased.
Inside the cube there were canisters of Mul-Fungus, a bowl, a ladle, a wooden-bladed Fungus-Knife; a wooden-headed Fungus-Mallet; a convenient tube of Mul-Pellets, which discharged its contents one at a time following my depressing a lever in the bottom of the tube; and a large, inverted jar of water, by means of which an attached, somewhat shallow, watering pan was kept filled.
In one corner of the case there was a large, circular padding a few inches deep of soft, rough-cut, reddish moss which was not uncomfortable and was changed daily.
Adjoining the cube, reached from the cube by sliding plastic panels, were a lavatory facility and a washing-booth.
The washing-booth was remarkably like the showers with which we are familiar except that one may not regulate the flow of fluid. One turns on the fluid by stepping into the booth and its amount and temperature are controlled automatically. I had naturally supposed the fluid to be simply water which it closely resembled in appearance, and once had tried to fill my bowl for the morning meal there, rather than ladling the water out of the water pan. Choking, my mouth burning, I spat it out in the booth.
"It is fortunate," said Misk, "that you did not swallow it, for the washing fluid contains a cleansing additive that is highly toxic to human physiology."
Misk and I got on rather well together after a few small initial frictions, particularly having to do with the salt ration and the number of times a day the washing-booth was to be used. If I had been a Mul I would have received a record-scar for each day on which I had not washed completely twelve times. Washing-booths, incidentally, are found in all Mul-cases and often, for convenience, along the tunnels and in public places, such as plazas, shaving-parlors, pellet-dispensaries, and fungus commissaries. Since I was a Matok I insisted that I should be exempted from the Duty of the Twelve Joys, as it is known. In the beginning I held out for one shower a day as quite sufficient but poor Misk seemed so upset that I agreed to up my proposal to two. He would still hear nothing of this and seemed firm that I should not fall below ten. At last, feeling that I perhaps owed something to Misk's acceptance of me in his chamber, I suggested a compromise at five, and, for an extra salt packet, six on alternate days. At last Misk threw in two extra salt packets a day and I agreed to six washings. He himself, of course, did not use a washing-booth but groomed and cleaned himself in the age-old fashions of Priest-Kings, with his cleaning hooks and mouth. Occasionally after we got to know one another better, he would even allow me to groom him, and the first time he allowed me, with the small grooming fork used by favored Muls, to comb his antennae I knew that he trusted me, and liked me, though for what reason I could not tell.
I myself grew rather fond of Misk.
"Did you know," said Misk once to me, "that humans are among the most intelligent of the lower orders?"
"I'm glad to hear it," I said.
Misk was quiet and his antennae quivered nostalgically.
"I once had a pet Mul," he said.
I looked at my case.
"No," said Misk, "when a pet Mul dies the case is always destroyed, lest there be contamination."
"What happened to him?" I asked.
"It was a small female," said Misk. "It was slain by Sarm."
I felt a tension in the foreleg of Misk which I was grooming as though it were involuntarily preparing to invert, bringing out the bladelike projection.
"Why?" I asked.
Misk said nothing for a long time, and then he dejectedly lowered his head, delicately extending his antennae to me for grooming. After I had combed them for a bit, I sensed he was ready to speak.
"It was my fault," said Misk. "She wanted to let the threadlike growths on her head emerge, for she was not bred in the Nest." Misk's voice came from the translator as consecutively and mechanically as ever, but his whole body trembled. I removed the grooming fork from his antennae in order that the sensory hairs not be injured. "I was indulgent," said Misk, straightening up so that his long body now loomed over me, inclined forward slightly from the vertical in the characteristic stance of Priest-Kings. "So that it was actually I who killed her."
"I think not," I said. "You tried to be kind."
"And it occurred on the day on which she saved my life," said Misk.
"Tell me about it," I said.
"I was on an errand for Sarm," said Misk, "which took me to unfrequented tunnels and for company I took the girl with me. We came upon a Golden Beetle though none had ever been seen in that place and I wanted to go to the Beetle and I put down my head and approached it but the girl seized my antennae and dragged me away, thus saving my life."
Misk lowered his head again and extended his antennae for grooming.
"The pain was excruciating," said Misk, "and I could not but follow her in spite of the fact that I wanted to go to the Golden Beetle. In an Ahn of course I no longer wanted to go to the Beetle and I knew then she had saved my life. It was the same day that Sarm ordered her given five record-scars for the growths on her head and had her destroyed."
"Is it always five record-scars for such an offense?" I asked.
"No," said Misk. "I do not know why Sarm acted as he did."
"It seems to me," I said, "that you should not blame yourself for the girl's death, but Sarm."
"No," said Misk. "I was too indulgent."
"Is it not possible," I asked, "that Sarm wished you to die by the Golden Beetle?"
"Of course," said Misk. "It was undoubtedly his intention."
I puzzled to myself why Sarm might want Misk to be killed. Undoubtedly there was some type of rivalry or political division between them. To my human mind, used to the cruelties with which selfish men can implement their schemes, I saw nothing incomprehensible in the fact that Sarm would have attempted to engineer Misk's death. I would learn later, however, that this simple fact was indeed almost incomprehensible to Priest-Kings, and that Misk, though he readily accepted it as a fact in his mind, could not bring himself, so to speak, in the furthest reaches of his heart to acknowledge it as true, for were not both he and Sarm of the Nest, and would not such an action be a violation of Nest Trust?
"Sarm is the First Born," said Misk, "whereas I am the Fifth Born. The first five born of the Mother are the High Council of the Nest. The Second, Third and Fourth Born, in the long ages, have, one by one, succumbed to the Pleasures of the Golden Beetle. Only Sarm and I are left of the Five."
"Then," I suggested, "he wants you to die so that he will be the only remaining member of the Council and thus have absolute power."
"The Mother is greater than he," said Misk.
"Still," I suggested, "his power would be considerably augmented."
Misk looked at me and his antennae had a certain lack of resilience and the golden hairs had seemed to lose some of their sheen.
"You are sad," I said.
Misk bent down until his long body was horizontal and then inclined downward yet more towards me. He laid his antennae gently on my shoulders, almost as though a man might have put his hands on them.
"You must not understand these things," said Misk, "in terms of what you know of men. It is different."
"It seems no different to me," I said.
"These things," said Misk, "are deeper and greater than you know, than you can now understand."
"They seem simple enough to me," I remarked.
"No," said Misk. "You do not understand." Misk's antennae pressed a bit on my shoulders. "But you will understand," he said.
The Priest-King then straightened and stalked to my case. With his two forelegs he gently lifted it and moved it aside. The ease with which he did this astonished me for I am sure its weight must have been several hundred pounds. Beneath the case I saw a flat stone with a recessed ring. Misk bent down and lifted this ring.
"I dug this chamber myself," he said, "and day by day over the lifetimes of many Muls I took a bit of rock dust away and scattered it here and there unobserved in the tunnels."
I looked down into the cavern which was now revealed.
"I requisitioned as little as possible, you see," said Misk. "Even the portal must be moved by mechanical force."
He then went to a compartment in the wall and withdrew a slender black rod. He broke the end of the rod off and it began to burn with a bluish flame.
"This is a Mul-Torch," said Misk, "used by the Muls who raise fungus in darkened chambers. You will need it to see."
I knew that the Priest-King had no need of the torch.
"Please," said Misk, gesturing toward the opening.
15
In the Secret Chamber
Holding the slender Mul-Torch over my head, I peered into the cavern now revealed in the floor of Misk's chamber. From a ring on the underside of the floor, the ceiling of the chamber, there dangled a knotted rope.
There seemed to be very little heat from the bluish flame of the Mul-Torch but, considering the size of the flame, a surprising amount of light.
"The workers of the Fungus-Trays," said Misk, "break off both ends of the torch and climb about on the trays with the torch in their teeth."
I had no mind to do this, but I did grasp the torch in my teeth with one end lit and, hand over hand, lower myself down the knotted rope.
One side of my face began to sweat. I closed my right eye.
A circle of eerie, blue, descending light flickered on the walls of the passage down which I lowered myself. The walls a few feet below the level of Misk's compartment became damp. The temperature fell several degrees. I could see the discolorations of slime molds, probably white, but seeming blue in the light, on the walls. I sensed a film of moisture forming on the plastic of my tunic. Here and there a trickle of water traced its dark pattern downward to the floor where it crept along the wall and, continuing its journey, disappeared into one crevice or another.
When I arrived at the bottom of the rope, some forty feet below, I held the torch over my head and found myself in a bare, simple chamber.
Looking up I saw Misk, disdaining the rope, bend himself backwards through the aperture in the ceiling and, step by dainty step, walk across the ceiling upside down and then back himself nimbly down the side of the wall.
In a moment he stood beside me.
"You must never speak of what I am going to show you," said Misk.
I said nothing.
Misk hesitated.
"Let there be Nest Trust between us," I said.
"But you are not of the Nest," said Misk.
"Nonetheless," I said, "let there be Nest Trust between us."
"Very well," said Misk, and he bent forward, extending his antennae towards me.
I wondered for a moment what was to be done but then it seemed I sensed what he wanted. I thrust the torch I carried into a crevice in the wall and, standing before Misk, I raised my arms over my head, extending them towards him.
With extreme gentleness, almost tenderness, the Priest-King touched the palms of my hands with his antennae.
"Let there be Nest Trust between us," he said.
"Yes," I said, "let there be Nest Trust between us."
It was the nearest I could come to locking antennae.
* * * *
Briskly Misk straightened up.
"Somewhere here," he said, "but unscented and toward the floor, where a Priest-King would not be likely to find it, is a small knob which will look much like a pebble. Find this knob and twist it."
It was but a moment's work to locate the knob of which he spoke though I gathered from what he said that it might have been well concealed from the typical sensory awareness of a Priest-King.
I turned the knob and a portion of the wall swung back.
"Enter," said Misk, and I did so.
Scarcely were we inside when Misk touched a button I could not see several feet over my head and the door swung smoothly closed.
The only light in the chamber was from my bluish torch.
I gazed about myself with wonder.
The room was apparently large, for portions of it were lost in the shadows from the torch. What I could see suggested paneling and instrumentation, banks of scent-needles and gauges, numerous tiered decks of wiring and copper plating. There were on one side of the room, racks of scent-tapes, some of which were spinning slowly, unwinding their tapes through slowly rotating translucent, glowing spheres. These spheres in turn were connected by slender, woven cables of wire to a large, heavy boxlike assembly, made of steel and rather squarish, which was set on wheels. In the front of this assembly, one by one, thin metal disks would snap into place, a light would flash as some energy transaction occurred, and then the disk would snap aside, immediately to be replaced by another. Eight wires led from this box into the body of a Priest-King which lay on its back, inert, in the center of the room on a moss-softened stone table.
I held the torch high and looked at the Priest-King, who was rather small for a Priest-King, being only about twelve feet long.
What most astonished me was that he had wings, long, slender, beautiful, golden, translucent wings, folded against his back.
He was not strapped down.
He seemed to be completely unconscious.
I bent my ears to the air tubes in his abdomen and I could hear the slight whispers of respiration.
"I had to design this equipment myself," said Misk, "and for that reason it is inexcusably primitive, but there was no possibility to apply for standard instrumentation in this case."
I didn't understand.
"No," said Misk, "and observe I had to make my own mnemonic disks, devising a transducer to read the scent-tapes, which fortunately are easily available, and record their signals on blank receptor-plating, from there to be transformed into impulses for generating and regulating the appropriate neural alignments."
"I don't understand," I said.
"Of course," said Misk, "for you are a human."
I looked at the long, golden wings of the creature. "Is it a mutation?" I asked.
"Of course not," said Misk.
"Then what is it?" I asked.
"A male," said Misk. He paused for a long time and the antennae regarded the inert figure on the stone table. "It is the first male born in the Nest in eight thousand years."
"Aren't you a male?" I asked.
"No," said Misk, "nor are the others."
"Then you are female," I said.
"No," said Misk, "in the Nest only the Mother is female."
"But surely," I said, "there must be other females."
"Occasionally," said Misk, "an egg occur
red which was female but these were ordered destroyed by Sarm. I myself know of no female egg in the Nest, and I know of only one which has occurred in the last six thousand years."
"How long," I asked, "does a Priest-King live?"
"Long ago," said Misk, "Priest-Kings discovered the secrets of cell replacement without pattern deterioration, and accordingly, unless we meet with injury or accident, we will live until we are found by the Golden Beetle."
"How old are you?" I asked.
"I myself was hatched," said Misk, "before we brought our world into your solar system." He looked down at me. "That was more than two million years ago," he said.
"Then," I said, "the Nest will never die."
"It is dying now," said Misk. "One by one we succumb to the Pleasures of the Golden Beetle. We grow old and there is little left for us. At one time we were rich and filled with life and in that time our great patterns were formed and in another time our arts flourished and then for a very long time our only passion was scientific curiosity, but now even that lessens, even that lessens."
"Why do you not slay the Golden Beetles?" I asked.
"It would be wrong," said Misk.
"But they kill you," I said.
"It is well for us to die," said Misk, "for otherwise the Nest would be eternal and the Nest must not be eternal, for how could we love it if it were so?"
I could not follow all of what Misk was saying, and I found it hard to take my eyes from the inert figure of the young male Priest-King which lay on the stone table.
"There must be a new Nest," said Misk. "And there must be a new Mother, and there must be the new First Born. I myself am willing to die but the race of Priest-Kings must not die."
"Would Sarm have this male killed if he knew he were here?" I asked.
"Yes," said Misk.
"Why?" I asked.
"He does not wish to pass," said Misk simply.
I puzzled on the machine in the room, the wiring that seemed to feed into the young Priest-King's body at eight points. "What are you doing to him?" I asked.
