by John Norman
I shook my head. "no," I said, "Samos, I cannot again serve Priest-Kings. You did your work too well. As a man I have been destroyed. i have lost myself, all that I was."
Telima put her head to my shoulder. It was cold on the height of the keep. "Do you think," asked Samos of Telima, "that this man has been destroyed? That he has lost himself?"
"No," said the girl, "my Ubar has not been destroyed. He has not lost himself." I touched her, grateful that she should speak so.
"I have done cruel and despicable things," I told Samos.
"So have we, or would we, or might we all," smiled Samos.
"It is I," whispered Telima, "who lost myself, who was destroyed."
Samos looked on her, kindly. "You followed him even to Port Kar," said he. "I love him," she said.
I held her about the shoulders.
"Neither of you," said Samos, "have been lost, or destroyed." He smiled. "Both of you are whole," he said, "and human."
"Very human," I said, "too human."
"In fighting the Others," said Samos, "one cannot be human enough." I was puzzled that he should have said that.
"Both of you now know yourselves as you did not before, and in knowing yourselves you will be better able to know others, their strengths and their weaknesses."
"It is nearly dawn," said Telima.
"There was only one last obstacle," said Samos, "and neither of you, even now, fully understand it."
"What is that?" I asked.
"Your pride," he said. "that of both of you." He smiled. "When you lost your images of yourselves, and learned your humanity, in your diverse ways, and shame, you abandoned your myths, your songs, and would accept only the meat of animals, as though one so lofty as yourself must be either Priest-King or beast. Your pride demanded either the perfection of the myth or the perfection of its most villainious renunciation. I f you were not the highest, you would be nothing less than the worse; if there was not the myth there was to be nothing." Samos now spoke softly. "there is something," he said, "between the fancies of poets and the biting, and the rooting and sniffing of beasts."
"What?" I asked.
"Man," he said.
I looked away again, this time for the marshes, and over the city of Port Kar. I saw the Venna and the Tela in the lakelike courtyard of my holding, and the sea gate, and the canals, and the roofs of buildings.
It was nearly light now.
"Why was I brought to Port Kar?" I asked.
"To be prepared for a task," said Samos.
"What task?" I asked.
"Since you no longer serve Priest-Kings," said Samos, "there is no point speaking of it."
"What task?" I asked.
"A ship must be built," said Samos, "A ship different from any other." I looked at him.
"One that can sail beyond the world's end," he said.
This was an expression, in the first knowledge, for the sea some hundred pasangs west of Cos and Tyros, beyond which the ships of Goreans do not go, or if go, do not return.
Samos, of course, knew as well as I the limitations of the first knowledge. he knew, as well as I, that Gor was spheriod. I did not know why men did not traverse the seas far waest of Cos and Tyros. Telima, too, of course, having been educated through the second knowledge in the house of Samos, knew that "world's end" was, to the educated Gorean, a figurative expression. Yet, in a sense, the Gorean world did end there, as it also, in a sense, eneded with the Voltai ranges to the east. They were the borders, on the east and west, of known Gor. To the far south and north, there was, as far as men knew, only the winds and the snows, driven back and forth, across the bleak ice.
"Who would build such a ship?" I asked.
"Tersites," said Samos.
"He is mad," I said.
"He is a genius," said Samos.
"I no longer serve Priest-Kings," I said.
"Very well," said Samos. He turned to leave. "I wish you well," said he, over his shoulder.
"I wish you well," I said.
Even though Telima wore her won cloak, I opened the great cloak of the admiral, and enfolded her within it, that we both might share its warmth. And then, on the height of the keep, looking out across the city, we watched the dawn, beyond the muddy Tamber gulf, softly touch the cold waters of the gleaming Thassa.
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