I looked up at Sarm and Misk, who, observing, stood in that slightly inclined, infuriatingly still posture.
'Do not injure them further,' said Misk.
'I will not,' I said.
'Perhaps the Matok is right,' said Misk to Sarm.'Perhaps they are not perfect human beings.'
'Perhaps,' admitted Sarm.
Now the slave who was conscious lifted his hand piteously to the Priest-Kings.His eyes were filled with tears.
'Please,' he begged, 'let us go to the dissection chambers.'
I was dumbfounded.
Now the other had regained consciousness and, on his knees, joined his fellow.'Please,' he cried, 'let us go to the dissection chambers.'
My astonishment could not be concealed.
'They feel that they have failed the Priest-Kings and wish to die,' said Misk.
Sarm regarded the two slaves.'I am kind,' he said, 'and it is near the Feast of Tola.'He lifted his foreleg with a gentle, permissive gesture, almost a benediction.'You may go to the dissection chambers.'
To my amazement, gratitude transfigured the features of the two slaves and, helping one another, they prepared to leave the room.
'Stop!' I cried.
The two slaves stopped and looked at me.
My eyes were fixed however on Sarm and Misk.'You can't send them to their deaths,' I said.
Sarm seemed puzzled.
Misk's antennae shrugged.
Frantically I groped for a plausible objection.'Kusk would surely be displeased if his creatures were to be destroyed,' I said.I hoped it would do.
Sarm and Misk touched antennae.
'The Matok is right,' said Misk.
'True,' said Sarm.
I breathed a sigh of relief.
Sarm then turned to the two slaves.'You may not go to the dissection chambers,' he said.
Once more the two slaves, this time apparently without emotion, folded their arms and stood, legs apart, beside the dais.Nothing might have happened in the last few moments save that one was breathing heavily and the other's face was splattered with his own blood.
Neither of them showed any gratitude at being reprieved nor did either evince any resentment at my having interfered with their executions.
I was, as you might suppose, puzzled.The responses and behaviour of the two slaves seemed to be incomprehensible.
'You must understand, Tarl Cabot of Ko-ro-ba,' said Misk, apparently sensing my puzzlement, 'that it is the greatest joy of Muls to love and serve Priest-Kings.If it is the wish of a Priest-King that they die they do so with great joy; if it is the wish of a Priest-King that they live, they are similarly delighted.'
I noted that neither of the two slaves looked particularly delighted.
'You see,' continued Misk, 'these Muls have been formed to love and serve Priest-Kings.'
'They have been made that way,' I said.
'Precisely,' said Misk.
'And yet you say they are human,' I said.
'Of course,' said Sarm.
And then to my surprise one of the slaves, though which one I could not have told, looked at me and spoke.'We are human,' it said very simply.
I approached him and held out my hand.'I hope I did not hurt you,' I said.
It took my hand and awkwardly held it, not knowing how to shake hands apparently.
'I too am human,' said the other, looking at me rather directly.
He held his hand out with the back of his hand up.I took the hand and turned it and shook it.
'I have feelings,' said the first man.
'I, too, have feelings,' said the second man.
'We all do,' I said.
'Of course,' said the first man, 'for we are human.'
I looked at him very carefully.'Which of you,' I asked, 'has been synthesised?'
'We do not know,' said the first man.
'No,' said the second man.'We have never been told.'
The two Priest-Kings had watched this small concourse with some interest, but now the voice of Sarm's translator was heard: 'It is growing late,' it said, 'let the Matok be processed.'
'Follow me,' said the first man and turned, and I followed him, leaving the room, the second man falling into stride beside me.
Chapter Thirteen: THE SLIME WORM
I followed Mul-Al-Ka and Mul-Ba-Ta through several rooms and down a long corridor.
'This is the Hall of Processing,' said one of them.
We passed several high steel portals in the hallway and on each of these, about twenty feet high, at the antennae level of a Priest-King, were certain dots, which I was later to learn were scent dots.
If the scent-dots were themselves not scented one might be tempted to think of them as graphemes in the language of the Priest-Kings, but since they themselves are scented they are best construed as analogous to uttered phonemes or phoneme combinations, direct expressions of the oral syllabary of the Priest-Kings.
When surrounded by scent-dots one might suppose the Priest-King to be subjected to a cacophony of stimulation, much as we might be if environed by dozens of blaring radios and television sets, but this is apparently not the case; the better analogy would seem to be our experience of walking down a quiet city street surrounded by printed signs which we might notice but to which we do not pay much attention.
In our sense there is no distinction between a spoken and written language for the Priest-Kings, though there is an analogous distinction between linguistic patterns that are actually sensed and those which are potentially to be sensed, an example of the latter being the scents of a yet uncoiled scent-tape.
'You will not much care for the processing,' said one of my guides.
'But it will be good for you,' said the other.
'Why must I be processed?' I asked.
'To protect the Nest from contamination,' said the first.
Scents, of course, will fade in time, but the specially prepared synthetic products or the Priest-Kings can last for thousands of years and, in the long run, will surely outlast the fading print of human books, the disintegrating celluloid of our films, perhaps even the carved, weathering stones so imperishably attesting the incomparable glories of our numerous kings, conquerors and potentates.
Scent-dots, incidentally, are arranged in rows constituting a geometrical square, and are read beginning with the top row from left to right, then right to left, and then left to right and so on again.
Gorean, I might note, is somewhat similar, and though I speak Gorean fluently, I find it very difficult to write, largely because of the even-numbered lines which, from my point of view, must be written backwards.Torm, my friend of the Caste of Scribes, never forgave methis and to this day, if he lives, he undoubtedly considers me partly illiterate.As he said, I would never make a Scribe.'It is simple,' he said.'You just write it forward but in the other direction.'
The syllabary of the Priest-Kings, not to be confused with their set of seventy-three 'phonemes', consists of what seems to me to be a somewhat unwieldy four hundred and eleven characters, each of which stands of course for a phoneme or phoneme combination, normally a combination.Certain juxtapositions of these phonemes and phoneme combinations, naturally, form words.I would have supposed a simpler syllabary, or even an experimentation with a nonscented perhaps alphabetic graphic script, would have been desirable linguistic ventures for the Priest-Kings, but as far as I know they were never made.