I followed the Priest-King for a long time through the passages.
For all its size it moved with a delicate, predatory grace. It was perhaps very light for its bulk, or very strong, perhaps both.It moved with a certain deliberate, stalking movement; its tread was regal and yet it seemed almost dainty, almost fastidious; it was almost as if the creature did not care to soil itself by contact with the floor of the passage.
It walked on four extremely long, slender, four-jointed stalks that were its supporting legs, and carried its far more muscular, four-jointed grasping legs, or appendages, extremely high, almost level with its jaw, and in front of its body.Each of these grasping appendages terminated in four much smaller, delicate hooklike prehensile appendages, the tips of which normally touched one another.I would learn later that in the ball at the end of its forelegs from which the smaller prehensile appendages extended, there was a curved, bladed, hornlike structure that could spring forward; this happens spontaneously when the leg's tip is inverted, a motion which at once exposes the hornlike blade and withdraws the four prehensile appendages into the protected area beneath it.
The Priest-King halted before what appeared to be a blind wall.
He lifted one foreleg high over his head and touched something high in the wall which I could not see.
A panel slid back and the Priest-King stepped into what seemed to be a closed room.
I followed him, and the panel closed.
The floor seemed to drop beneath me and my hand grasped my sword.
The Priest-King looked down at me and the antennae quivered as though in curiosity.
I resheathed my sword.
I was in an elevator.
After perhaps four or five minutes the elevator stopped and the Priest-King and I emerged.
The Priest-King rested back on the two posterior supporting appendages and with a small cleaning hook behind the third joint of one of his forelegs began to comb his antennae.
'These are the tunnels of Priest-Kings,' it said.
I looked about meand found myself on a high, railed platform, overlooking a vast circular artificial canyon, lined with bridges and terraces.In the depths of this canyon and on the terraces that mounted its sides were innumerable structrues, largely geometrical solids - cones, cylinders, lofty cubes, domes, spheres and such - of various sizes, colours and illuminations, many of which were windowed and possessed of numerous floors, some of which even towered to the level of the platform where I stood, some of which soared even higher into the lofty reaches of the vast dome that arched over the canyon like a stone sky.
I stood on the platform, my hands clenched on the railing, staggered by what I saw.
The light of energy bulbs set in the walls and in the dome like stars shed a brilliant light on the entire canyon.
'This,' said the Priest-King, still grooming the golden hairs of his antennae, 'is the vestibule of our dominion.'
From my position on the platform I could see numerous tunnels at many levels leading out of the canyon, perhaps to other such monstrous cavities, filled with more structures.
I wondered what would be the function of the structures, probably barracks, factories, storehouses.
'Notice the energy bulbs,' said the Priest-King.'They are for the benefit of certain species such as yourself.Priest-Kings do not need them.'
'Then there are creatures other than Priest-Kings who live here,' I said.
'Of course,' it replied.
At that moment to my horror a large, perhaps eight feet long and a yard high, multilegged, segmented arthropod scuttled near, its eyes weaving on stalks.
'It's harmless,' said the Priest-King.
The arthropod stopped and the eyes leaned toward us and then its pincers clicked twice.
I reached for my sword.
Without turning it scuttled backwards away, its body plates rustling like plastic armour.
'See what you have done,' said the Priest-King.'You have frightened it.'
My hand left the sword hilt and I wiped the sweat from my palm on my tunic.
'They are timid creatures,' said the Priest-King, 'and I am afraid they have never been able to accustom themselves to the sight of your kind.'
The Priest-King's antennae shuddered a bit as they regarded me.
'Your kind is terribly ugly,' it said. I laughed, not so much because I supposed what it said was absurd, but because I supposed that, from the viewpoint of a Priest-King, what it said might well be true.
'It is interesting,' said the Priest-King.'What you have just said does not translate.'
'It was a laugh,' I said.
'What is a laugh?' asked the Priest-King.
'It is something men sometimes do when they are amused,' I said.
The creature seemed puzzled.
I wondered to myself.Perhaps men did not much laugh in the tunnels of the Priest-Kings and it was not accustomed to this human practice.Or perhaps a Priest-King simply could not understand the notion of amusement, it being perhaps genetically removed from his comprehension.Yet I said to myself the Priest-Kings are intelligent and I found it difficult to believe there could exist an intelligent race without humour.
'I think I understand,' said the Priest-King.'It is like shaking and curling your antennae?'
'Perhaps,' I said, now more puzzled than the Priest-King.
'How stupid I am,' said the Priest-King.
And then to my amazement the creature, resting back on its posterior appendages, began to shake, beginning at its abdomen and continuing upward through its trunk to its thorax and head and at last its antennae began to tremble and, curling, they wrapped about one another.
Then the Priest-King ceased to rock and its antennae uncurled, almost reluctantly I thought, and it once again rested quietly back on its posterior appendages and regarded me.
Once again it addressed itself to the patient, meticulous combing of its antennae hairs.
Somehow I imagined it was thinking.
Suddenly it stopped grooming its antennae and the antennae looked down at me.
'Thank you,' it said, 'for not attacking me in the elevator.'
I was dumbfounded.
'You're welcome,' I said.
'I did not think anaesthesia would be necessary,' it said.
'It would have been foolish to attack you,' I said.
'Irrational, yes,' agreed the Priest-King, 'but the lower orders are often irrational.
'Now,' it said, 'I may still look forward someday to the Pleasures of the Golden Beetle.'
I said nothing.
'Sarm thought the anaesthesia would be necessary,' it said.
'Is Sarm a Priest-King?' I asked.
'Yes,' I said.
'Then a Priest-King may be mistaken,' I said.This seemed to me significant, far more significant than the mere fact that a Priest-King might not understand a human laugh.
'Of course,' said the creature.
'Could I have slain you?' I asked.
'Possibly,' said the creature.
I looked over the rail at the marvellous complexity which confronted me.
'But it would not have mattered,' said the Priest-King.
'No?' I asked.
'No,' it said.'Only the Nest matters.'
My eyes still did not leave the dominion which lay below me. Its diameter might have been ten pasangs in width.
'This is the Nest?' I asked.
'It is the beginning of the Nest,' said the Priest-King.
'What is your name?' I asked.
'Misk,' it said.
Chapter Eleven: SARM THE PRIEST-KING
I turned from the railing to observe the great ramp which for pasangs in a great spiral approached the platform on which I stood.