Tribesmen of Gor (5 page)

 
    
"It seems irrational," said Samos. "Only a beast."

 
    
"I think it is rational," I said. "Its intelligence, I suspect, is the equal of ours, if not greater."

 
    
Samos regarded me.

 
    
"It may not, of course, be able to articulate Gorean. Few of the Kurii can. It is extremely difficult for them to do so."

 
    
"You understand the direction in which it was traveling?" asked Samos.

     
"Yes," said I.

 
   
"Strange," said Samos.

 
   
The beast had been taken southeast of Ar, while moving southeast. Such a Path would take it below the eastern foothills of the Voltai and to the south. It was incredible.
 
"Who would enter such a place?" asked Samos.

 
   
"Caravans, crossing it," I said. "Nomads, grazing their verr on the stubble of verr grass."

     
"Who else?" asked Samos.

     
"The mad?" I smiled.

 
    
"Or the purposeful," said Samos, someone who had business there, who knew what he was intending?"

     
"Perhaps, "I admitted.

 
   
"Someone who had a mission, who knew precisely for what he was searching?"

 
   
"But there is nothing there," I said. "And only the mad, deeper into the area, depart from marked caravan routes, proceeding from oasis to oasis."

 
   
"A tender of kaiila, a boy, lost from his camp," said Samos, "found a rock. On this rock was inscribed "Beware the steel tower.'"

 
   
"And the message girl" I said. "We do not know, I gather, whom this Abdul is of whom we are warned to beware."

 
   
"No," said Samos, puzzled. "I know of no Abdul."

 
   
"And who would send such a message, and why?"

 
   
"I do not know," said Samos.

 
   
I idly observed the dancer. Her eyes were on me. It seemed, in her hands, she held ripe fruits for me, lush larma, fresh picked. Her wrists were close together, as though confined by the links of slave bracelets. She touched the imaginary larma to her body, caressing her swaying beauty with it, and then, eyes piteous, held her hands forth, as though begging me to accept the lush fruit. Men at the table clapped their hands on the wood, and looked at me. Others smote their left shoulders. I smiled. On Gor, the female slave, desiring her master, yet sometimes fearing to speak to him, frightened that she may be struck has recourse upon occasion to certain devices, the meaning of which is generally established and culturally well understood. I shall mention two such devices. There is, first, the bondage knot. Most Gorean slave girls have long hair. The bondage knot is a simple looped knot tied in the girl's hair and worn at the side of her right cheek or before her right shoulder. The girl approaches
 
the master naked and kneels; the bondage knot soft, curled, fallen at the side of her right cheek or before her right shoulder. Another device, common in Port Kar, is for the girl to kneel before the master and put her head down and lift her arms, offering him fruit, usually a larma, or a yellow Gorean peach, ripe and fresh. These devices, incidentally, may be used even by a slave girl who hates her master but whose body, trained to love, cannot endure the absence of the masculine caress. Such girls, even with hatred, may offer the larma, furious with themselves, yet helpless, the captive of their slave needs, forced to beg on their knees for the touch of a harsh master, who revels in the, sport of their plight; does he satisfy them; if it is his will, yes; if it is not his will, no. They are slaves.

     
The girl now knelt before me, her body obedient still, trembling, throbbing, to the melodious, sensual command of the music.

 
    
I looked into the cupped hands, held toward me. They might have been linked in slave bracelets. They might have held lush larma. I reached across the table and took her in my arms and dragged her, turning her, and threw her on her back on the table before me. I lifted her to me, and thrust my lips to her, crushing her slave lips beneath mine. Her eyes shone. I held her from me. She lifted her lips to mine. I did not permit her to touch me. I jerked her to her feet and, half turning her, ripping her silk from her, hurled her to the map floor, where she half lay, half crouched one leg beneath her, looking at me, stripped save for her collar, the brand, the armlets, bells, the anklets, with fury. "Please us more," I told her. Her eyes blazed. "And do not rise from the floor, Slave," I told her. The music, which had stopped, began again.

     
She turned furiously, yet gracefully, extending a leg, touching an ankle, moving her hands up her leg, looking at me over her shoulder, and then rolled, and writhed, as though beneath the lash of masters.

 
   
"You discipline her well," said Samos, smiling.

 
   
I grinned.

 
    
The girl now, on her belly, yet subtly to the music, crawled toward us, lifted her hand piteously to us.

 
   
I heard a cry of dismay, of protest, from the horrified, once Miss Blake-Allen.

 
    
Samos regarded her. He was not pleased. "Free her legs of the harness," said Samos to one of the guards.

 
    
The guard took the straps which had bound her ankles together, and, untying them, slipped them through the metal ring, glinting, sewn into the back of the leather collar of the harness, worn over the simple curved collar of iron which marked her, even should she be clothed, and her brand not visible, as slave. The straps had run from the back of the collar to her ankles, holding her in a kneeling position. Her legs were now free. The ankle straps then, sewn to the sides of the collar, and now circled about the collar and crossing in back, and now run through the ring on the front of the collar, served as leash. The harness is designed to provide a large number of ties. The girl, her legs freed, looked at Samos with horror. But he was no longer regarding her.

 
    
The dancer now lay on her back and the music was visible in her breathing, and in small movements of her head, and hands. Her hands were small and lovely.

 
    
She lay on the map floor, her head turned toward us. She was covered with sweat.

     
I snapped my fingers and her legs turned under her, and she was kneeling, head back, dark hair on the tiles. Her bands moved, delicate, lovely. Slowly, if permitted, she would rise to an erect kneeling position; her hands, as she lifted herself, extended toward us. Four times said I "No," each time my command forcing her head back, her body bent, to the floor, and such time again, to the music, she lifted her body to an erect kneeling position.
 
The last position of her body to rise was her beautiful head. The collar was at her throat.
 
Her dark eyes, smoldering, vulnerable, reproachful, regarded me.
 
Still did the move to the music, which had not yet released her.

     
With a gesture I permitted her to rise to her feet. "Dance your body, Slave," I told her, "to the guests of Samos."

     
Angrily the girl, man by man, slowly, meaningfully, danced her beauty to each guest. They struck the tables, and cried out. More than one reached to clutch her but each time, swiftly, she moved back.

     
Samos rose from behind the table and strode to the map floor. I went with him.

     
He stopped at a point on the smooth, mosaiced floor. I looked at him. "Yes," he said, "somewhere here."

     
I looked down at the intricately wrought mosaiced floor.
 
Beneath our feet, smooth, polished, were hundreds of tiny, fitted bits of tile, mostly here, in this area, tan and brown. The bits of tile seemed soft, lustrous, under the torchlight. The dancer, now behind us, continued to move before the low tables. The eyes of the men gleamed. Before each man, for moments seemingly his alone, she danced her beauty.

     
"There is one thing more," said Samos, "which I have not told you."

     
"What is that?" I asked.

     
"Kurii have delivered to the Sardar an ultimatum."

     
"An ultimatum?" I asked.

     
"Surrender Gor, it said." said Samos.

     
"Nothing more?" I asked.

  
  
"Nothing more," said Samos.

 
    
"This makes little sense to me," I said. "For what reason should this world be surrendered to Kurii?"

  
  
"It seems insane," said Samos.

   
 
"Yet Kurii are not insane," said I. "There was no alternative specified?"
      
I asked.

     
"None," said Samos.

  
  
"Surrender Gor--" I repeated.

 
   
"It seems a mad imperative," said Samos.

  
  
"But if it is not?"

  
  
"I am afraid," said Samos.

   
 
"And how has the Sardar responded to this?" I asked.
 
"Have they repudiated it, scoffingly, ridiculed the preposterousness of this demand?"

   
 
Samos smiled. "Misk, a Priest-King," said he, "one high in the Sardar, has asked Kurii for a further specification of details."

     
I smiled. "He is buying time," I said.

  
  
"Of course," said Samos.

     
"What response if any, was made?" I asked.

  
  
"Surrender Gor," said Samos. "A repetition of the original imperative.
 
Then there was communication silence."

     
"Nothing more has been heard from Kurii?" I asked.

     
"Nothing more," said Samos.

   
 
"Doubtless it is a bluff on the part of Kurii," I said.
 
"Priest-Kings would not well understand that sort of thing.
 
They are quite rational generally, unusually logical. Their minds seldom think in terms of unwarranted challenges, psychological strategies, false claims."

     
Samos shrugged.

  
  
"Sometimes I think Priest-Kings do not well understand Kurii.
 
They may be too remotely related a life form. They may not have the passions, the energies, the hatreds to fully comprehend Kurii."

 
    
"Or men" said Samos.

  
  
"Or men," I agreed. Priest-Kings surely had energies and passions, but, I suspected, they were, on the whole, rather different from those of men, or, indeed, those of Kurii. The nature of the sensory experience of Priest-Kings was still, largely, a mystery to me. I knew their behavioral world; I did know the world of their inner experience. Their antennae were their central organs of physical transduction. Though they had eyes, they seldom relied upon them, and were perfectly at ease in total darkness. Lights, in the Nest, were for the benefit of humans and other visually oriented creatures sharing the domicile. Their music was a rhapsody of odors, many of which were, to human olfactory organs, not even pleasant. Their decorations were largely invisible lines of scent traced with great care on the interiors of their compartments. Their most intense, pleasurable experience was perhaps to immerse their antennae in the filamented, narcotic mane of the golden beetle, which would then, piercing them with its curved, hollow, laterally moving jaw-pincers, drain them of their body fluid, feeding itself, slaying them. The social bond of the Priest-Kings is Nest Trust. Yet, in spite of their different evolutionary background and physiology, they had learned the meaning of the word 'friend'; too, I knew, they understood, if only in their own way, love.

     
I smiled to myself. "Sometimes," once had said Misk to me in the Nest, "I suspect only men can understand Kurii." Then he had added, "They are so similar."

     
It had been a joke.
 
But I did not think it was false.

 
   
Unfortunate though it might be, I doubted and, I think realistically, that Priest-Kings, those large, golden creatures, so gentle and delicate seeming, so content to mind their own affairs, truly understood their enemy, the Kurii. The persistence, the aggression, the fevers of the blood, the lust, the territoriality of such beasts would be largely unintelligible to them. There was little place in the placid, lucid categories of Priest-Kings for comprehending the bloods and madnesses of either men or Kurii. They, Kurii and men, understood one another better, I suspected, than the Priest-Kings understood either. As long as the Kurii remained behind the fifth ring, that determined by the orbit of the planet called on Earth Jupiter, on Gor, Hersius, after a legendary hero of Ar, the Priest-Kings were little concerned with them They had no objection if such ravening wolves prowled their fences, and scratched at their very gates. "They, like men, are an interesting life form," once had said Misk to me. But now the Kurii worlds, sensing the weakness of the Sardar, following the Nest War, damages that had destroyed their basic power source and had split the very Nest open to the sky, prowled more closely. The worlds, now, or several of them, we understood, concealed, shielded, lurked well within the asteroid belt. Contact points, bases, had been established, it seemed, on the shores of Earth itself. The major probe of Kurii, the organization of native Kurii by ship Kurii, had taken place recently. It had failed. It had been stopped in Torvaldsland. Ship Kurii, still, then, did not know the extent to which the power of Priest-Kings remained crippled. This was the major advantage which we now held. Kurii, cautious, like sharks, did not wish to commit their full attack until assured of its success. Had they known the weakness of the Sardar, and the time required to restore the power source, regenerating itself now at inexorable concentration rates determined by natural law, they would have surely launched their fleets. Most, we conjectured, they feared a ruse, a display of pretended weakness that would lure an attack, then to be decimated.
 
Moreover, I knew there were factions among Kurii. Doubt- less they had individuals who were bolder, and those who were more cautious. The failure of the Torvaldsland probe might have had great impact in their councils. Perhaps a new party had come to power among them. Perhaps now, a new strategy, a new plan, was afoot.