'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