“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.
“Surrender Gor-” said Samos, looking down at the portion of the map beneath his feet.
I looked to the map. Was this where the new plan of Kurii, if there was such a new plan, touched this primitive world? “The path of the captured Kur,” said Samos, pointing, “would have taken it here.”
“Perhaps he intended to cross it?” I asked.
Samos pointed with his finger, west of Tor. “No,” said he, “surely one would circle the area, taking the routes west of Tor, where there is ample water.”
“One would surely need a caravan, and guides,” I said, “to survive east of Tor?”
“Of course,” said Samos. “Yet the beast was alone.”
“I suspect,” said Samos, “that the beast’s destination lay not on the other side of this area, but within it.”
“Incredible,” I said.
Samos shrugged.
“Why should a Kur go to such a place, and enter such a country?” I asked.
“I do not know,” said Samos.
“Strange that at this time, too,” said I “the slave runs should cease, an the imperative, inexplicable, to surrender Gor should be served upon the Sardar.”
“What did the Kur seek in such a country?” asked Samos.
“And what,” I asked, “of the message on the stone, “Beware the steel tower’?”
“It is a mystery,” said Samos, “and the answer lies here.” He pointed to that dread area of Gor.
I looked downward. Though on the map it occupied only some several feet of the floor, in actuality it was vast. It was roughly in the shape of a gigantic, lengthy trapezoid, with eastward leaning sides. At its northwestern corner lay Tor, West of Tor, on the Lower Fayeen, a sluggish, meandering tributary, like the Upper Fayeen, to the Cartius, lay the river Port of Kasra, known for its export of salt. It was in this port that the warehouses of Ibn Saran, salt merchant, currently the guest of Samos of Port Kat, were to be found. This city, too, was indicated in the cording of his agal, and in the stripes of his djellaba.
The area, in extent, east of Tor, was hundreds of pasangs in depth, and perhaps thousands in length. The Gorean expression for this area simply means the Wastes, or the Emptiness. It is a vast area, and generally rocky, and hilly, save in the dune country. It is almost constantly windblown and almost waterless. In areas it has been centuries between rains. Its oases are fed from underground rivers flowing southeastward from the Voltai slopes. The water, seeping underground, eventually, in places, due to rock formation, erupts in oasis springs, or, more usually, is reached by deep wells, some of them more than two hundred feet deep. It takes more than a hundred and fifty years for some of this water to make the underground journey, seeping hundreds of feet at times beneath the dry surface, moving only a few miles a year, to reach the eases. Diurnal air temperatures in the shade are commonly in the range of 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Surface temperature, diurnally, is, of course, much higher in the dune country, by day, if one were so unwise as to go barefoot, the bright sand would quickly cripple a man, abraiding and burning the flesh from his feet in a matter of hours.
“It is here,” said Samos, pointing to the map, “that the secret lies.”
The dancer turned from the tables and, hands high over her head, approached me.
She swayed to the music before me. “You commanded me to dance my beauty for the guests of Samos,” said she, “Master. You, too, are such a guest.
I looked upon her, narrow lidded, as she strove to please me.
Then she moaned and turned away, and, as the music swirled to its maddened, frenzied climax, she spun, whirling, in a jangle of bells and clashing barbaric ornaments before the guests of Samos. Then, as the music suddenly stopped, she fell to the floor helpless, vulnerable, a female slave. Her body, under the torchlight, shone with a sheen of sweat. She gasped for breath; her body was beautiful, her breasts lifting and falling, as she drank deeply of the air. Her lips were parted. Now that her dance was finished she could scarcely move. We had not been gentle with her. She looked up at me and lifted her hand. It was at my feet she lay.