Plunder of Gor (38 page)

“What is it?” demanded Kurik.

“I understood!” I said, trembling.

Doubtless it is difficult to understand how it is that one does not understand and then one understands, and one knows not how, or exactly when, this remarkable transition occurs. What is difficult, and perhaps impossible, is suddenly at one's disposal, and, seemingly, familiar and even trivial. Some adjustments are doubtless made of which one is not aware. How complicated is the brain, and mysterious its secret courses and routes! Yet the phenomenon is not without precedent. One can make nothing of a gesture language and then, suddenly, it is intelligible. One does not understand a mode of speech, or an accent, and then, suddenly, one does. It is the language one knows but it was seemingly distorted, concealed, or transformed, and then, as though the curtain was swept aside or the key suddenly revealed, all that which a moment ago defied comprehension is suddenly made manifest, simple, even embarrassingly so.

“I do not understand,” said he who had admitted us.

“Continue,” said Kurik.

“Long ago, in Ar, I had had a similar experience, on Emerald, in the vicinity of the fountain of Aiakos,” I said.

“The intelligence of slaves is quick,” said the fellow with the lantern.

“Of some slaves,” said Kurik.

“That makes it more pleasant,” said the fellow with the lantern, “to subdue, own, and master them.”

“You do not think we bring them to Gor simply for their beauty, do you?” asked Kurik.

“I suppose not,” he said.

“Stupid slaves do not sell well,” said Kurik. “Who would want to own them?”

“True,” said he with the lantern.

“The intelligent woman,” said Kurik, “makes the best slave. She is more in touch with her feelings and needs. She is least a stranger to herself. She most quickly understands what it is to be in a collar, one she cannot remove, which is locked on her neck. She has longed to submit herself to a master. She is the first to come to her knees, where she knows she belongs.”

In the following, I shall proceed largely as if these exchanges occurred between the beast and myself, or between others and the beast, facilitated by my mediation. In actuality, of course, particularly in the beginning, I must translate continually, and later, often, from the beast's Gorean into a more easily intelligible Gorean, one rendered in familiar phonemes, that the masters might at all times be fully cognizant of what was transpiring. Later, the men, in particular my master, began to fathom the discourse of the beast.

“What are you?” I asked.

“I do not know,” it said.

“Surely you know.”

“No.”

“You have heard others,” I said. “You have been explained to yourself.”

“No,” it said.

“Are you a female?” I asked.

“I do not know,” it said. “What is a female?”

“You have come from a steel world,” I said.

“From far away,” it said.

“Let me address her,” said Kurik. “She will understand my Gorean. You may translate her responses.” He then spoke to the beast slowly, more slowly, I suspect, than was necessary. “Do you understand Kur?” he asked.

“Yes,” it said. “It is the language of the great ones.”

“Can you speak it?” he asked.

“Yes,” it said, “but poorly. My throat is deformed. I was born awry, twisted, and imperfect.”

“Are you Kur?” he asked.

“I am other than the splendid ones,” it said.

“You are much like a Kur,” said Kurik.

“I am unworthy to be so,” it said.

“It is a beast,” said he who had admitted us.

“Yes,” it said.

“Are you a beast?” I asked. Surely the thing was beastlike.

“Yes, I am a beast,” it said.

“What else?” I asked.

“A monster, ill-begotten, and ill-constituted,” it said.

“Amongst the Kurii,” said Kurik, “there are three, or, if you like, four sexes, the dominants, the females, the wombs, and the nondominants. A nondominant may, in certain circumstances, become a dominant. This emergence is sometimes fearful to behold. The wombs are sensate, but sessile, and irrational.”

“I do not understand,” I said.

“The seeded Kur female, after conceiving,” said Kurik, “deposits the fertilized egg in one of the living wombs, usually housed in remote areas, often in caves or tunnels. There it comes to term and, unaided, frees itself, or dies, and is ejected. It lives for a time off the tissue and blood of the womb, but it is normally collected and taken to a nursery before the womb perishes. If the womb heals, it may accept another egg.”

“This is hard to understand,” I said.

“The Kur female is dangerous and appetitious,” said Kurik. “In this way she is not slowed, or burdened, by carrying young. I do not know if this is a portion of the biological heritage of the Kur species, or if it was introduced technologically, by medical intervention, at some point in the development of the species.”

“Then there is nothing like the family,” I said.

“There are analogs,” said Kurik. “Records are kept of bloodlines.”

“This creature then, in the crate,” I said, “came so to be?”

“I do not think so,” said Kurik. “I do not think this thing, small, and different, could have bitten, clawed, and torn its way out of one of the Kur wombs.”

“How then is it brought about?” I asked.

“I think,” said Kurik, “it was delivered from a human womb.”

“Surely not,” I said.

“It had a mother,” said Kurik.

“But look at it,” I said.

“Its father, or fathers, for seeds may be mixed, and fused, was Kur,” he said.

“It could not be,” I whispered, frightened.

“An advanced biological and medical technology was doubtless involved,” said Kurik.

“Surely, Master, that is impossible,” I said.

“It is not impossible,” he said. “I know of another case.”

“Kill me,” begged the creature in the crate.

“No,” said Kurik.

“You are far from a steel world,” I said. “You are on a world called ‘Gor'. Do you know for what purpose you were brought to Gor?”

“No,” it said.

“You are a female,” said Kurik.

“What is a female?” it asked.

“It does not know why it was brought to Gor,” I said.

“No,” said Kurik.

“Surely someone must know why it was brought to Gor,” I said.

“Someone does,” he said.

“Who?” I asked.

“One known to you,” he said.

“Who?” I asked.

“I,” said Kurik.

“You know?” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “I know.”

“Master has explained little to his slave,” I said.

“That is because she is a slave,” he said. “Perhaps later, if you are sufficiently pleasing, and writhe well, I may choose to assuage your curiosity.”

“Master sports with his slave,” I said. “Master well knows that I cannot bargain. Even the suspicion that I might wish to do so could bring me a beating.”

“True,” he said.

“And Master well knows,” I said, “that the whip guarantees that I will strive earnestly to be pleasing, and that, at his least touch, I cannot help but writhe spasmodically, helplessly, beggingly, in his arms.”

“True,” he said, “and I find it quite amusing, particularly given our first encounter, that on this world you are not only a defenseless, rightless, abject slave, but that you are helplessly collar hot.”

“Of course,” I said. “I am now the property of masters. I can be bought and sold. I am a slave.”

“As you should be,” he said.

“Yes, Master,” I whispered, a slave.

Kurik then turned to the huddled beast in the crate.

“Why, Beast,” he said, “do you think so little of yourself? Why do you regard yourself as a monster, as a thing ill-begotten, and ill-constituted?”

“Look at me,” it said, and the bitterness of its response was clear, even in its rude approximations to the phonemes of Gorean, even in that rude, issuant conjunction of vocables scarcely distinguishable from those of a simple beast. “Consider my voice, how unnatural it is, how distorted! I cannot enunciate Kur well. I cannot enunciate Gorean well. Kurii mock me. Humans draw back, baffled, and repelled.”

“The slave,” said Kurik, “a mere slave, understands you, and I am beginning to understand you. Even amongst the Kurii, whom you call the splendid ones, few can speak Gorean. Most avail themselves of mechanical devices, translators. You are thus superior to them. You can do what they cannot. And there are many steel worlds inhabited by Kurii, and, I assure you, the Kur of some of these worlds is barbaric, even unintelligible, to those of other such worlds. Dare they openly mock one another? I think not. Would it not mean a challenge to the rings? And I suspect you speak Kur ably enough, for they mock you. Thus they understand you. Surely they need no translator, a device for deciphering alien speech, to understand you. Thus, you speak both intelligible Kur and intelligible Gorean.”

“My voice is hideous, strange,” it said.

“It is merely different,” said Kurik, “wholly suitable for, and appropriate to, a differing form of life.”

“See my eyes,” it said. “They are the wrong shape.”

“Not wrong,” said Kurik. “Different.”

I did not think them so much different from those of a human.

“They are the wrong color,” it said.

“I cannot see the color, as you are in the darkness of the crate,” said Kurik.

“They do not speak of the night, as should those of the prowling hunter, nor of the darkness of the corridors of caves, but of the day, of the sky.”

“Perhaps you are a creature of the day, as many others,” said Kurik. “What graceful tabuk, in its sunlit glade, would envy the sleen its burrow?”

“Do not mock me,” it said. “I will show you my horrors. Prepare to be dismayed. Be strong. Brace yourself. I will show you how misshapen I am, how grotesque, twisted, and malformed.”

“Do so,” said Kurik. “I welcome the intelligence.”

I shuddered, for the creature shuffled forward, claws scraping on the wooden floor of the crate.

Then it was at the entrance to the crate, illuminated in the light of the lifted lantern.

Its eyes, I saw, were gray, or blue. It was hard to tell.

“Look!” it exclaimed, thrusting forth its paws, the digits widely spread.

“So?” said Kurik.

I was unaware of what might be awry, if anything. I had no idea what I had been expected to note, from which I might have been expected to recoil, frightened, or sickened. I was apprehensive, however, for I feared the beast might emerge from the container.

“Behold, cringe!” it said, this time more forcefully. And then it raised its paws once more, thrusting them yet more forward, and then it made a miserable, half choking noise. It was much like a sob. I did not understand this. One can tell, of course, when an animal is agitated, or disturbed, and that was surely now the case. Its eyes were bright, glistening, in the lantern light. It seemed they were indeed blue, or gray, or, more likely, some blend of such colorings. I feared it was in pain. It trembled, as though shaken with some feral emotion, doubtless naturally enough, given such a dreadful form of life. As it had emerged more into the light, I could now see that the fur at the sides of its face was wet, as though it had suffered from the coursing of small rivulets of fluid.

Surely such a thing could not cry.

It was a beast.

“I do not understand,” I whispered to my master. “What is it we are supposed to see, what unwelcome sight?”

“Five digits,” he said, “not six.”

“I do not understand,” I said.

“The paws of Kurii,” he said, “are massive, and six digited, powerful, like cables, almost like tentacles.”

Then he turned to the creature, who had now turned about and retreated into the recesses of the crate. She, for I shall now so refer to her, at least frequently, was turned away from us, crouched down, her shoulders shaking.

“Most humans,” said Kurik to the beast, “have five digits on each appendage. It seldom occurs to one to bemoan this fact.”

“I am not human,” she said.

“No,” said Kurik, “you are not human.”

“I am not Kur,” she said.

“No,” said Kurik.

“What am I?” she asked.

“Part Kur, part human,” said Kurik.

“So not Kur, so not human,” she said.

“True,” said Kurik.

“I am a monster,” she said.

“Not at all,” said Kurik. “It is true that you are not human, and it is true that you are not Kur. But you are not failing to be what you are. You are exactly what you are, and were intended to be. You are a new form of life. You are merely different.”

“Different?” she said.

“Precisely,” said Kurik. “And some might find you beautiful.”

“‘Beautiful'?” she said, turning about, lifting her head.

“Yes,” said Kurik.

“I might be found beautiful?” she said.

“Yes,” said Kurik.

“By whom?” she asked.

“By one like you, or one much like you. One of your own species, so to speak. Indeed, you were doubtless formed with just such a thought in mind.”

“I do not understand,” she said.

“You are a female,” said Kurik.

“I do not understand,” she said.

“Are you sure it is a female, really a female?” I asked.

“Of course,” he said. “Consider the softness, the lesser size, the contours of the body. She is too small for an adult Kur female. Her body is not straight and hard. The Kur female does not suckle young. When they are taken from the external, rooted womb they have already fed on blood and flesh, that of the womb from which they have torn their way free.”