by John Norman
I returned to the place where I had struck the blow.
To one side I saw the bladed projection lying at the foot of one of the low stone tiers on which Priest-Kings stood.
Sarm had thrust the stub of his foreleg beneath his shoulder and it seemed frozen there in the coagulating green slush that emanated from the wound.
Shaking with pain, his entire frame quivering, he turned to face me, but he did not approach.
I saw that several Priest-Kings who stood behind him began to edge forward.
I raised my blade, resolved to die well.
Behind me I sensed something.
Glancing over my shoulder I saw the welcome, now standing golden form of Misk.
He placed one foreleg on my shoulder.
He regarded Sarm and his cohorts, and his great laterally chopping jaws opened and closed once.
The golden Priest-Kings behind Sarm did not advance further.
Misk's message to Sarm was carried on Sarm's own translator. "You have disobeyed the Mother," said Misk. Sarm said nothing.
"Your Gur has been refused," said Misk. "Go."
Sarm seemed to tremble and so, too, did those Priest-Kings who stood behind him.
"We will bring silver tubes," said Sarm.
"Go," said Misk.
Suddenly, strangely carried on the many translators in the room, were the words, "I remember him—I have never forgotten him—in the sky—in the sky—he with wings like showers of gold."
I could not understand this but Misk, paying no attention to Sarm, or his cohorts or the other Priest-Kings, rushed to the Platform of the Mother.
Another Priest-King and then another pressed more closely and I went with them to the platform.
"Like showers of gold," she said.
I heard the message on the translators of Priest-Kings who, like Misk, approached the platform.
The ancient creature on the platform, brown and wrinkled, lifted her antennae and surveyed the chamber and her children. "Yes," she said, "he had wings like showers of gold."
"The Mother is dying," said Misk.
This message was echoed by every translator in the room and a thousand times again and again as the Priest-Kings repeated it in disbelief to one another. "It cannot be," said one. "The Nest is eternal," said another.
The feeble antennae trembled. "I would speak," she said, "with him who saved my child."
It was strange to me to hear her speak of the powerful, golden creature Misk in such a way.
I went to the ancient creature.
"I am he," I said.
"Are you a Mul?" she asked.
"No," I said, "I am free."
"Good," she said.
At this moment two Priest-Kings carrying syringes pressed through their brethren to approach the platform.
When they made as though to inject her ancient body in what must have been yet another in a thousand times, she shook her antennae and warned them off.
"No," she said.
One of the Priest-Kings prepared to inject the serum despite her refusal to accept it, but Misk's foreleg rested on his and he did not do so.
The other Priest-King who had come with a syringe examined her antennae and the brown, dull eyes.
He motioned his companion away. "It would make a difference of only a few Ehn," he said.
Behind me I heard one of the Priest-Kings repeat over and over, "The Nest is eternal."
Misk placed a translator on the platform beside the dying creature.
"Only he," said the Mother.
Misk motioned away the physicians and the other Priest-Kings and set the translator on the platform at its lowest volume. I wondered how long the scent-message, whatever it was to be, would linger in the air before fading into an unrecognizable blur of scent to be drawn through the ventilator system and dispelled somewhere far above among the black crags of the treeless, frozen Sardar.
I bent my ear to the translator.
At the low volume I received the message the other translators in the room would not be likely to pick it up and transduce the sounds into odor-signals.
"I was evil," said she.
I was astounded.
"I wanted to be," said the brown, dying creature, "the only Mother of Priest-Kings, and I listened to my First Born who wanted to be the only First Born of a Mother of Priest-Kings."
The old frame shook, though whether with pain or sorrow, or both, I could not tell.
"Now," she said, "I die and the race of Priest-Kings must not die with me."
I could barely hear the words from the translator.
"Long ago," she said, "Misk, my child, stole the egg of a male and now he has hidden it from Sarm and others who do not wish for there to be another Nest."
"I know," I said softly.
"Not long ago," said she, "perhaps no more than four of your centuries, he told me of what he had done and of his reasons for doing so." The withered antennae trembled, and the thin brown threads on them lifted as though stirred by a chill wind, the passing foot of mortality. "I said nothing to him but I considered what he had said, and I thought on this matter, and at last—in league with the Second Born, who has since succumbed to the Pleasures of the Golden Beetle, I set aside a female egg to be concealed from Sarm beyond the Nest."
"Where is this egg?" I asked.
She seemed not to understand my question and I was afraid for her as I saw her ancient brown carcass begin to shake with spasmodic tremors which I feared might herald the close of that vast life.
One of the physicians rushed forward and thrust the long syringe deep through her exoskeleton into the fluids of her thorax. He drew out the syringe and held his antennae to hers for a moment. The tremors subsided.
He withdrew and stood watching us from some distance away, not moving, as still as the others, like a thousand statues of tortured gold.
Once again a sound came from my translator. "The egg was taken from the Nest by two humans," she said, "men who were free—like yourself—not Muls—and hidden."
"Where was it hidden?" I asked.
"These men," she said, "returned to their own cities, speaking to no one, as they had been commanded. In this undertaking on behalf of Priest-Kings they had been united and together had suffered many dangers and privations and had done their work well and were as brothers."
"Where is the egg?" I repeated.
"But their cities fell to warring," said the withered ancient one, "and these men in battle slew one another and with them died the secret as far as it was known among men." The huge, tarnished head lying on the stone platform tried to lift itself but could not. "Strange is your kind," she said. "Half larl, half Priest-King."
"No," I said, "half larl, half man."
She said nothing for a time. Then once again the voice of the translator was heard.
"You are Tarl Cabot of Ko-ro-ba," she said.
"Yes," I said.
"I like you," she said.
I knew not how to respond to this and so I said nothing.
The old antennae stretched forward, inching themselves toward me and I took them gently in my hands and held them.
"Give me Gur," she said.
Amazed, I stepped away from her and went to the great golden bowl on its heavy tripod and took out a few drops of the precious liquid in the palm of my hand and returned to her.
She tried to lift her head but still could not do so. Her great jaws moved slowly apart and I saw the long, soft tongue that lay behind them.
"You wish to know of the egg," she said.
"If you wish to tell me," I said.
"Would you destroy it?" she asked.
"I don't know," I said.
"Give me Gur," she said.
Gently I placed my hand between those huge ancient jaws and with my palm I touched her tongue that she might taste what adhered to it.
"Go to the Wagon Peoples, Tarl of Ko-ro-ba," she said. "Go to the Wagon Peoples."
"But where is it?" I asked.
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br /> Then before my horrified eyes the carcass of that ancient she began to shiver and tremble and I stood back as she struggled to my amazement to her feet and reared herself to the height of a Priest-King, her antennae extended to their very lengths as though grasping, clutching, trying to sense something, though what she sought I did not know, but in her sudden fantastic strength, the gasp of her delirium and power, she seemed suddenly the Mother of a great race, very beautiful and very strong and very splendid.
And from a thousand translators rang the message she cried out over those golden heads to the blank stone ceiling and walls of her chamber and I shall never forget it as it was in all the sorrow and the joy of her trembling dying magnificence; I and all could read it in the attitude of her body, the alertness of the forelegs, the suddenly sensing antennae, even in those dull brown disks which had been eyes and now seemed to be for that one last moment luminous again. The voices of the translators were simple and quiet and mechanical. The message was given to my ears as would have been any message. It said: "I see him, I see him, and his wings are like showers of gold."
Then slowly the great form sank to the platform and the body no longer trembled and the antennae lay limp on the stone.
Misk approached her and touched her gently with his antennae.
He turned to the Priest-Kings.
"The Mother is dead," he said.
28
Gravitational Disruption
We were in the fifth week of the War in the Nest and the issue still hung in balance.
After the death of the Mother, Sarm and those who followed him, most of the Priest-Kings for he was First Born, fled from the chamber to fetch, as it was said, silver tubes.
These were charged, cylindrical weapons, manually operated but incorporating principles much like those of the Flame Death Mechanism. Unused, they had lain encased in plastic quivers for a matter of centuries and yet when these quivers were broken open and the weapons seized up by angry Priest-Kings they were as ready for their grim work as they had been when first they were stored away.
I think with one such weapon a man might have made himself Ubar of all Gor.
Perhaps there were only a hundred Priest-Kings who rallied to the call of Misk and among them there were no more than a dozen silver tubes.
The headquarters for the forces of Misk lay in his compartment and there, pouring over the scent maps of the tunnels, he directed the placement of his defenses.
Thinking to overcome us with little difficulty, the forces of Sarm, mounted on transportation disks, swept through the tunnels and plazas, but the Priest-Kings of Misk, hidden in rooms, concealed behind portals, firing from the ramps and the roofs of buildings in the open complexes, soon took fierce toll of Sarm's unwary and overconfident troops.
In such war the much larger forces of the First Born tended to be neutralized and a situation of infiltration and counterinfiltration developed, marked by frequent sniping and occasional skirmishes.
On the second day of the second week of battle, after the forces of Sarm had withdrawn, I, armed with sword and silver tube, mounted a transportation disk and swept through the no man's land of unoccupied tunnels toward the Vivarium.
Although constantly on the alert, I saw no sign of enemy forces, nor even of Muls or Matoks of various kinds. The Muls, I supposed, terrified and confused, had scattered and hidden themselves in their cases, living on their fungus and water, while over their heads hissed the weapons of their masters.
Therefore it was much to my surprise when I heard a distant singing in the tunnel that grew louder as I approached and soon I slowed the transportation disk and waited, my weapon ready.
As I waited, the tunnel and, as I later learned, the entire complex, were suddenly plunged into darkness. The energy bulbs, for the first time in centuries perhaps, had been shut down.
And yet there was not an instant's pause in that singing nor the dropping of a beat or tempo. It was as if the darkness made no difference.
And as I waited on the still disk in the darkness, my weapon ready, I suddenly saw far down the tunnel the sudden blue flash of an opened Mul-Torch and then its steady blaze, and then I saw another flash and blaze and another and to my amazement it seemed that these fires hung from the very ceiling of the tunnel.
It was the carriers of Gur but far from the Gur Chamber and I watched with something of awe as the long procession of humanoid creatures, two abreast, marched along the ceiling of the tunnel until they stopped above me.
"Greetings, Tarl Cabot," said a voice from the floor of the tunnel.
I had not even seen him to this moment so intent had I been on the strange procession above me.
I read the mark on his tunic. "Mul-Al-Ka!" I cried.
He came to the disk and seized my hand firmly.
"Al-Ka," said he. "I have decided I am no longer a Mul."
"Then Al-Ka it is!" I cried.
Al-Ka raised his arm and pointed to the creatures above us.
"They too," said Al-Ka, "have decided they will be free."
A thin voice yet strong, almost like that of something that was at once an old man and a child, rang out above me.
"We have waited fifteen thousand years for this moment," it said.
And another voice called out. "Tell us what to do."
I saw that the creatures above me, whom I shall now speak of as Gur Carriers, for they were no longer Muls, still carried their sacks of golden leather.
"They bring not Gur," said Al-Ka, "but water and fungus."
"Good," I said, "but tell them that this war is not theirs, but that of Priest-Kings, and that they may return to the safety of their chambers."
"The Nest is dying," said one of the creatures hanging above me, "and we have determined that we will die free."
Al-Ka looked at me in the light of the hanging torches.
"They have decided," he said.
"Very well," I said.
"I admire them," said Al-Ka, "for they can see a thousand yards in the darkness by the light of a single Mul-Torch and they can live on a handful of fungus and a swallow of water a day and they are very brave and proud."
"Then," said I, "I too admire them."
I looked at Al-Ka. "Where is Mul-Ba-Ta?" I asked. It was the first time I had ever seen the two men separated.
"He has gone to the Pastures and the Fungus Chambers," said Al-Ka.
"Alone?" I asked.
"Of course," said Al-Ka, "we could do twice as much that way."
"I hope to see him soon," I said.
"I think you will," said Al-Ka, "for the lights have been shut down. Priest-Kings do not need light, but humans are handicapped without it."
"Then," I said, "the lights have been shut down because of the Muls."
"The Muls are rising," said Al-Ka simply.
"They will need light," I said.
"There are humans in the Nest who know of these matters," said Al-Ka. "The lights will be on again as soon as the equipment can be built and the power fed into the system."
The calmness with which he spoke astonished me. After all, Al-Ka, and other humans of the Nest, with the exception of the Gur Carriers, would never have known darkness.
"Where are you going?" asked Al-Ka.
"To one of the vivaria," I said, "to fetch a female Mul."
"That is a good idea," said Al-Ka. "Perhaps I too will someday fetch a female Mul."
And so it was a strange procession that followed the transportation disk, now happily piloted by Al-Ka, down the tunnel to the Vivarium.
In the dome of the Vivarium, holding a Mul-Torch, I walked up the ramps to the fourth tier, noting that the cages had been emptied, but I suspected that there would be one that would have remained locked.
And there was, and in this case though it had been seared as if an attempt had been made to open it, I found Vika of Treve.
She crouched in the corner of the case away from the door in the darkness, and through the plastic I saw her in the blue radi
ance of the Mul-Torch.
She crept to her feet, holding her hands before her face, and I could see her trying to see and yet protect her eyes from the glare.
Even shorn she seemed to me incredibly beautiful, very frightened, in the brief plastic sheath that was the only garment allotted to female Muls.
I took the metal key from the loop around my neck and turned the heavy mechanism of the case lock.
I hurled the plastic partition upward opening the case.
"—Master?" she asked.
"Yes," I said.
A soft cry of joy escaped her lips.
She stood before me blinking against the light of the Mul-Torch, trying to smile.
Yet as she stood there she seemed also to be frightened and to my surprise she dared not approach the door though it now stood open.
She looked rather at me.
Her eyes were apprehensive, not knowing what I would do nor why I had returned to the case.
And her fears were not lessened as she looked beyond me to see the creatures, undoubtedly hideous to her eyes, who clung spiderlike to the ceiling of the Vivarium chamber with their glowing Mul-Torches.
"Who are they?" she whispered.
"Unusual men," I said.
She regarded the small round bodies and the long limbs with the cushioned feet and the long-fingered hands with their heavy palms.
Hundreds of pairs of those great, round dark eyes stared at her.
She shivered.
Then she looked again at me.
She dared ask no question but submissively knelt, as befitted her station, and bowed her head.
The case, I said to myself, has taught Vika of Treve much.
Before her head fell I had read in her eyes the silent, desperate plea of the rightless, helpless slave girl that her master, he who owns her, he who holds her chain, might be pleased to be kind to her.
I wondered if I should take her from the case.
I saw her shoulders tremble as she awaited my decision as to her fate.
I no longer wished her to be confined here now that I better understood how matters stood in the Nest. I thought, even in spite of the cage plastic, she might be safer with the forces of Misk. Moreover, the Vivarium Attendants were gone and the other cages were empty and so it would only be a matter of time before she would starve. I did not wish to return periodically to the Vivarium to feed her and I supposed, if necessary, some suitable confinement might be found for her near Misk's headquarters. If no other choice seemed practical I supposed I could always keep her chained in my own case.
