I took my eyes from the young Priest-King and looked up at Misk. I could see the disklike eyes in that golden head above me and see the flicker of the blue torch on their myriad surfaces.
'I must tell you, Misk,' I said slowly, 'that I came to the Sardar to slay Priest-Kings, to take vengeance for the destruction of my city and its people.'
I thought it only fair to let Misk know that I was no ally of his, that he should learn of my hatred for Priest-Kings and my determination to punish them, to the extent that it lay within my abilities, for the evil which they had done.
'No,' said Misk. 'You have come to the Sardar to save the race of Priest-Kings.'
I looked at him dumbfounded.
'It is for that purpose that you were brought here,' said Misk.
'I came of my own free will!' I cried. 'Because my city was destroyed!'
'That is why your city was destroyed,' said Misk, 'that you would come to the Sardar.'
I turned away. Tears burned in my eyes and my body trembled.
I turned in rage on the tall, gentle creature who stood, unmoving, behind that strange table and that still form of the young Priest-King.
'If I had my sword,' I said, pointing to the young Priest- King, 'I would kill it!'
'No, you would not,' said Misk, 'and that is why you and not another were chosen to come to the Sardar.'
I rushed to the figure on the table, the torch held as though to strike it.
But I could not.
'You will not hurt it because it is innocent,' said Misk. 'I know that.'
'How can you know that?'
'Because you are of the Cabots and we know them. For more than four hundred years we have known them, and since your birth we have watched you.'
'You killed my father!' I cried.
'No,' said Misk, 'he is alive and so are others of your city, but they are scattered to the ends of Gor.'
'And Talena?'
'As far as we know she is still alive,' said Misk, 'but we cannot scan her, or for others of Ko-ro-ba, without raising suspicion that we are solicitous for you - or are bargaining with you.'
'Why not simply bring me here?' I challenged. 'Why destroy a city?'
'To conceal our motivation from Sarm,' said Misk.
'I don't understand,' I said.
'Occasionally on Gor we destroy a city, selecting it by means of a random selection device. This teaches the lower orders the might of Priest-Kings and encourages them to keep our laws.'
'But what if the city has done no wrong?' I asked.
'So much the better,' said Misk, 'for the Men below the Mountains are then confused and fear us even more - but the members of the Caste of Initiates, we have found, will produce an explanation of why the city was destroyed. They invent one and if it seems plausible they soon believe it. For example, we allowed them to suppose that it was through some fault of yours - disresepct for Priest-Kings as I recall - that your city was destroyed.'
'Why when first I came to Gor, more than seven years ago, did you not do this?' I asked.
'It was necessary to test you.'
'And the siege of Ar,' I asked, 'and the Empire of Marlenus?'
'They provided a suitable test,' said Misk. 'From Sarm's point of view of course your utilisation there was simply to curtail the spread of the Empire of Ar, for we prefer humans to dwell in isolated communities. It is better for observing their variations, from the scientific point of view, and it is safer for us if they remain disunited, for being rational they might develop a science, and being subrational it might be dangerous for us and for themselves if they did so.'
'That is the reason then for your limitations of their weaponry and technology?'
'Of course,' said Misk, 'but we have allowed them to develop in many areas - in medicine, for example, where something approximating the Stabilisation Serums has been independently developed.'
'What is that?' I asked.
'You have surely not failed to notice,' said Misk, 'that though you came to the Counter-Earth more than seven years ago you have undergone no significant physical alteration in that time.'
'I have noticed,' I said, 'and I wondered on this.'
'Of course,' said Misk, 'their serums are not as effective as ours and sometimes do not function, and sometimes the effect wears off after only a few hundred years.'
'This was kind of you,' I said.
'Perhaps,' said Misk. 'There is dispute on the matter.' He peered intently down at me. 'On the whole,' he said, 'we Priest-Kings do not interfere with the affairs of men. We leave them free to love and slay one another, which seems to be what they enjoy doing most.'
'But the Voyages of Acquisition?' I said.
'We keep in touch with the earth,' said Misk, 'for it might, in time, become a threat to us and then we would have to limit it, or destroy it or leave the solar system.'
'Which will you do?' I asked.
'None, I suspect,' said Misk. 'According to our calculations, which may of course be mistaken, life as you know it on the earth will destroy itself within the next thousand years.'
I shook my head sadly.
'As I said,' went on Misk, 'man is subrational. Consider what would happen if we allowed him free technological development on our world.'
I nodded. I could see that from the Priest-Kings' pint of view it would be more dangerous than handing out automatic weapons to chimpanzees and gorillas. Man had not proved himself worthy of a superior technology to the Priest-Kings. I mused that man had not proved himself worthy of such a technology even to himself.
'Indeed,' said Misk, 'it was partly because of this tendency that we brought man to the Counter-Earth, for he is an interesting species and it would be sad to us if he disappeared from the universe.'
'I suppose we are to be grateful,' I said.
'No,' said Misk, 'we have similarly brought various species to the Counter-Earth, from other locations.'
'I have seen few of these 'other species',' I said.
Misk shrugged his antennae.
'I do remember,' I said, 'a Spider in the Swamp Forests of Ar.'
'The Spider People are a gentle race,' said Misk, 'except the female at the time of mating.'
'His name was Nar,' I said, 'and he would rather have died than injure a rational creature.'
'The Spider People are soft,' said Misk. 'They are not Priest-Kings.'
'I see,' I said.
'The Voyages of Acquisition,' said Misk, 'take place normally when we need fresh material from Earth, for our purposes.'
'I was the object of one such voyage,' I said.
'Obviously,' said Misk.
'It is said below the mountains that Priest-Kings know all that occurs on Gor.'
'Nonsense,' said Misk. 'But perhaps I shall show you the Scanning Room someday. We have four hundred Priest-Kings who operate the scanners, and we are accordingly well informed. For example, if there is a violation of our weapons laws we usually, sooner or later, discover it and after determining the coordinates put into effect the Flame Death Mechanism.'
I had once seen a man die the Flame Death, the High Initiate of Ar, on the roof of Ar's Cylinder of Justice. I shivered involuntarily.
'Yes,' I said simply, 'sometime I would like to see the Scanning Room.'
'But much of our knowledge comes from our implants,' said Misk. 'We implant humans with a control web and transmitting device. The lenses of their eyes are altered in such a way that what they see is registered by means of transducers on scent-screens in the scanning room. We can also speak and act by means of them, when the control web is activated in the Sardar.'
'The eyes look different?' I asked.
'Sometimes not,' said Misk, 'sometimes yes.'
'Was the creature Parp so implanted?' I asked, remembering his eyes.
'Yes,' said Misk, 'as was the man from Ar whom you met on the road long ago near Ko-ro-ba.'
'But he threw off the control web,' I said, 'and spoke as he wished.'
'Perhaps the webbing was faulty,' said Misk.
'But if it was not?' I asked.
'Then he was most remarkable,' said Misk. 'Most remarkable.'
'You spoke of knowing the Cabots for four hundred years,' I said.
'Yes,' said Misk, 'and your father, who is a brave and noble man, has served us upon occasion, though he dealt only, unknowingly, with Implanted Ones. He first came to Gor more than six hundred years ago.'
'Impossible!' I cried.
'Not with the stabilisation serums,' remarked Misk.
I was shaken by this information. I was sweating. The torch seemed to tremble in my hand.
'I have been working against Sarm and the others for millenia,' said Misk, 'and at last - more than three hundred years ago - I managed to obtain the egg from which this male emerged.' Misk looked down at the young Priest-King on the stone table. 'I then, by means of an Implanted Agent, unconscious of the message being read through him, instructed your father to write the letter which you found in the mountains of your native world.'
My head was spinning.
'But I was not even born then!' I exclaimed.
'Your father was instructed to call you Tarl, and lest he might speak to you of the Counter-Earth or attempt to dissuade you from our purpose, he was returned to Gor before you were of an age to understand.'
'I thought he deserted my mother,' I said.
'She knew,' said Misk, 'for though she was a woman of Earth she had been to Gor.'
'Never did she speak to me of these things,' I said.
'Matthew Cabot on Gor,' said Misk, 'was a hostage for her silence.'
'My mother,' I said, 'died when I was very young...'
'Yes,' said Misk, 'because of a petty bacillus in your contaminated atmosphere, a victim to the inadequacies of your infantile bacteriology.'
I was silent. My eyes smarted, I suppose, from some heat or fume of the Mul-Torch.
'It was difficult to foresee,' said Misk. 'I am truly sorry.'
'Yes,' I said. I shook my head and wiped my eyes. I still held the memory of the lonely, beautiful woman whom I had known so briefly in my childhood, who in those short years had so loved me. Inwardly I cursed the Mul-Torch that had brought tears to the eyes of a Warrior of Ko-ro-ba.
'Why did she not remain on Gor?' I asked.
'It frightened her,' said Misk, 'and your father asked that she be allowed to return to Earth, for loving her he wished her to be happy and also perhaps he wanted you to know something of his old world.'
'But I found the letter in the mountains, where I had made camp by accident,' I said.
'When it was clear where you would camp the letter was placed there,' said Misk.
'Then it did not lie there for more than three hundred years?'
'Of course not,' said Misk, 'the risk of discovery would have been too great.'
'The letter itself was destroyed, and nearly took me with it,' I said.
'You were warned to discard the letter,' said Misk. 'It was saturated with Flame Lock, and its combustion index was set for twenty Ehn following opening.'
'When I opened the letter it was like switching on a bomb,' I said.
'You were warned to discard the letter,' said Misk.
'And the compass needle?' I asked, remembering its erratic behavious which had so unnerved me.
'It is a simple matter,' said Misk, 'to disrupt a magnetic field.'
'But I returned to the same place I had fled from,' I said.
'The frightened human, when fleeing and disoriented, tends to circle,' said Misk. 'But it would not have mattere, I could have picked you up had you not returned. I think that you may have sensed there was no escape and thus, perhaps as an act of pride, returned to the scene of the letter.'
'I was simply frightened,' I said.
'No one is ever simply frightened,' said Misk.
'When I entered the ship I fell unconscious,' I said.
'You were anaesthetised,' said Misk.
'Was the ship operated from the Sardar?' I asked.
'It could have been,' said Misk, 'but I could not risk that.'
'Then it was manned,' I said.
'Yes,' said Misk.
I looked at him.
'Yes,' said Misk. 'It was I who manned it.' He looked down at me. 'Now it is late, past the sleeping time. You are tired.'
I shook my head. 'There is little,' I said, 'which was left to chance.'
'Chance does nbot exist,' said Misk, 'ignorance exists.'
'You cannot know that,' I said.
'No,' said Misk, 'I cannot know it.' The tips of Misk's antennae gently dipped towards me. 'You must rest now,' he said.
'No,' I said. 'Was the fact that I was placed in the chamber of the girl Vika of Treve considered?'
'Sarm suspects,' said Misk, 'and it was he who arranged your quarters, in order that you might succumb to her charms, that she might enthrall you, that she might bend you helplessly, pliantly to her will and whim as she had a hundred men before you, turning them - brave, proud warriors all - into the slaves of a slave, into the slaves of a mere girl, herself only a slave.'
'Can this be true?' I asked.
'A hundred men,' said Misk, 'allowed themselves to be chained to the foot of her couch where she would upon occasion, that they might not die, cast them scraps of food as though they might have been pet sleen.'
My old hatred of Vika now began once again to enfuse my blood, and my hands ached to grip her and shake her until her bones might break and then throw her to my feet.
'What became of them?' I asked.
'They were used as Muls,' said Misk.
My fists clenched.
'I am glad that such a creature,' said Misk, 'is not of my species.'
'I am sorry,' I said, 'that she is of mine.'
'When you broke the surveillance device in the chamber,' said Misk, 'I felt I had to act quickly.'
I laughed. 'Then,' I said, 'you actually thought you were saving me?'
'I did,' said Misk.
'I wonder,' I said.
'At any rate,' said Misk, 'it was not a risk we cared to take.'
'You speak of 'we'?'
'Yes,' said Misk.
'And who is the other?' I asked.
'The greatest in the Nest,' said Misk.
'The Mother?'
'Of course.'
Misk touched me lightly on the shoulder with his antennae. 'Come now,' he said. 'Let us return to the chamber above.'
'Why,' I asked, 'was I returned to Earth after the siege of Ar?'
'To fill you with hatred for Priest-Kings,' said Misk. 'Thus you would be more willing to come to the Sardar to find us.'
'But why seven years?' I asked. They had been long, cruel, lonely years.
'We were waiting,' said Misk.
'But for what?' I demanded.
'For there to be a female egg,' said Misk.
'Is there now such an egg?'
'Yes,' said Misk, 'but I do not know where it is.'
'Then who knows?' I asked.
'The Mother,' said Misk.
'But what have I to do with all this?' I demanded.
'You are not of the Nest,' said Misk, 'and thus you can do what is necessary.'
'What is necessary?' I asked.
'Sarm must die,' said Misk.
'I have no wish to kill Sarm,' I said.
'Very well,' said Misk.
I puzzled on the many things which Misk had told me, and then I looked up at him, lifting my torch that I might better see that great head with its rich, disklike, luminous eyes.
'Why is this one egg so important?' I asked. 'You have the stabilisation serums. Surely there will be many eggs, and others will be female.'
'It is the last egg,' said Misk.
'Why is that?' I demanded.
'The Mother was hatched and flew her Nuptial Flight long before the discovery of the stabilisation serums,' said Misk.
'We have managed to retard her aging considerably but eon by eon it has been apparent that our efforts have been less and less successful, and now there are no more eggs.'
'I don't understand,' I said.
'The Mother is dying,' said Misk.
I was silent and Misk did not speak and the only noise in that paneled metallic laboratory that was the cradle of a Priest-King was the soft crackle of the blue torch I held.
'Yes,' said Misk, 'it is the end of the Nest.'
I shook my head. 'This is no business of mine,' I said.
'That is true,' said Misk.
We faced one another. 'Well,' I said, 'are you not going to threaten me?'
'No,' said Misk.
'Are you not going to hunt down my father or my Free Companion and kill them if I do not serve you?'
'No,' said Misk. 'No.'
'Why not?' I demanded. 'Are you not a Priest-King?'
'Because I am a Priest-King,' said Misk.
I was thunderstruck.
'All Priest-Kings are not as Sarm,' said Misk. He looked down at me. 'Come,' he said, 'it is late and you will be tired. Let us retire to the chamber above.'
Misk left the room and I, bearing the torch, followed him.
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