'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.
Another Priest-King, mounted on a low, oval disk which seemed to slide up the ramp, was approaching.
The new Priest-King looked a great deal like Misk, save that he was larger.I wondered if men of my species would have difficulty telling Priest-Kings apart.I would later learn to do so easily but at first I was often confused.The Priest-Kings themselves distinguish one another by scent but I, of course, would do so by eye.
The oval disk glided to within some forty feet of us, and the golden creature which had ridden it stepped delicately to the ramp.
It approached me, its antennae scrutinising me carefully. Then it backed away perhaps some twenty feet.
It seemed to me much like Misk except in size.
Like Misk it wore no clothing and carried no weapons, and its only accoutrement was a translator which dangled from its neck.
I would learn later that in scent it wore its rank, caste and station as clearly on its body as an officer in one of the armies of Earth might wear his distinguishing braid and metal bars.
'Why has it not been anaesthetised?' asked the new creature, training its antennae on Misk.
'I did not think it would be necessary,' said Misk.
'It was my recommendation that it be anaesthetised,' said the newcomer.
'I know,' said Misk.
'This will be recorded,' said the newcomer.
Misk seemed to shrug.His head turned, his laterally opening jaws opened and closed slowly, his shoulders rustled and the two antennae twitched once as though in irritation, and then idly they began to examine the roof of the dome.
'The Nest was not jeopardised,' came from Misk's translator.
The newcomer's antennae were now trembling, perhaps with anger.
It turned a knob on its own translator and in a moment the air was filled with the sharp odours of what I take might have been a reprimand.I heard nothing for the creature had snapped off his translator.
When Misk replied he too turned off his translator.
I observed their antennae and the general posturing and carriage of their long, graceful bodies.
They stalked about one another and some of their motions were almost whiplike.Upon occasion, undoubtedly as a sign of irritation, the tips of the forelegs were inverted, and I caught my first glimpse of the bladed, hornlike structures therein concealed.
I would learn to interpret the emotions and states of Priest-Kings by such signs.Many of these signs would be far less obvious than the ones now displayed in the throes of anger. Impatience, for example, is often indicated by a trembling in the tactile hair on the supporting appendages, as though the creature could not wait to be off; a wandering of attention can be shown by the unconscious movement of the cleaning hooks from behind the third joints of the forelegs, suggesting perhaps the creature is thinking of grooming, an occupation in which Priest-Kings, to my mind, spend an inordinate amount of time; I might note, however, in deference to them, that they consider humans a particularly unclean animal and in the tunnels normally confine them for sanitary purposes to carefully restricted areas; the subtlety of these signs might well be illuminated if the indications for a wandering of attention, mentioned above, are contrasted with the superficially similar signs which give evidence that a Priest-King is well or favourably disposed toward another Priest-King, or other creature of any type.In this case there is again the unconscious movement of the cleaning hooks but there is in addition an incipient, but restrained, extension of the forelegs in the direction of the object toward which the Priest-King is well disposed; this suggests to me that the Priest-King is willing to put its cleaning hooks at the disposal of the other, that he is willing to groom it.This may become more comprehensible when it is mentioned that Priest-Kings, with their cleaning hooks, their jaws and their tongues, often groom one another as well as themselves.Hunger, incidentally, is indicated by an acidic exudate which forms at the edges of the jaws giving them a certain moist appearance; thirst, interestingly enough, is indicated by a certain stiffness in the appendages, evident in their movements, and by a certain brownish tarnish that seems to infect the gold of the thorax and abdomen.The most sensitive indicators of mood and attention, of course, as you would probably gather, are the motions and tensility of the antennae.