Nomads of Gor (13 page)

 
delicate neck.

 
He then backed away from her.

 
She turned to face him, eyes flashing.

 
"Do not speak," he said.

 
Her fingers went white with anger, clutching the steno pad

 
and pencil.

 
He gestured to the far side of the room. "Walk there," he

 
said, "and return."

 
"I will not," she said.

 
"Now," said the man.

 
Elizabeth had looked, tears almost in her eyes, at the

 
department head, but he seemed suddenly to her soft, pudgy,

 
distant, sweating, nothing. He nodded hastily, "Please, Miss

 
Cardwell, do as he says."

                         
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1.

 
@-

 
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'3~

  
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i.,,,~,

 
48 NOMADS OF GOR

 
Elizabeth faced the tall, strange man. She was breathing

 
rapidly now. She felt the pencil clutched in her sweating

 
hand. Then it broke.

 
"Now," said the man.

 
Looking at him she suddenly had the feeling, a strange

 
one, that this man, in some circumstances and for some

 
purpose or another, had assessed and judged many women.

 
This infuriated her.

 
It seemed to her a challenge that she would accept. She

 
would show him a woman indeed allowing herself for the

 
instant to be insolently and fully female showing him in her

 
walk her contempt and scorn for him.

 
She would then leave and go directly to the personnel

 
office, tendering her resignation.

 
She threw back her head. "Very well," she said. And

 
Elizabeth Cardwell walked proudly, angrily, to the far side of

 
the room, wheeled there, faced the man, and approached

 
him, eyes taunting, a smile of contempt playing about her

 
lips. She heard the department head quickly suck in his

 
breath She did not take her eyes from the tall, strange man.

 
"Are you satisfied," she asked, quietly, acidly.

 
"Yes," he had said.

 
She remembered then only turning and starting for the

 
door, and a sudden, peculiar odor, penetrating, that seemed

 
to close about her face and head.

 
She had regained consciousness on the Plains of Gor. She

 
bad been dressed precisely as she had been the morning she

 
had gone to work save that about her throat she had found

 
sewn a 0th, thick leather collar. She had cried out, she had

 
wandered. Then, after some hours "tumbling confused, ter-

 
rified, hungry through the high, brown grass, she had seen

 
two riders, mounted on swift, strange beasts. They had seen

 
her. She called to them. They approached her cautiously, in a

 
large circle, as though examining the grass for enemies, or

 
others.

 
"I'm Elizabeth Cardwell," she had cried. "My home is in

 
New York City. What place is this? Where am 1?" And then

 
she has seen the faces, and had screamed.

 
"Position," said Kamchak.

 
I spoke sharply to the girl. "Be as you were before."

 
Terrified the girl straightened herself and again, knees

 
placed, back straight and head 0th, knelt before us in the

 
position of the Pleasure Slave.

 
'the collar," said Kamchak, "is Turian."

Kutaituchik nodded.

This was news to me, and I welcomed it, for it meant that

probably, somehow, the answer to at least a part of the

mystery which confronted me lay in the city of Turia.

But how was it that Elizabeth Cardwell, of Earth, wore a

Turian message collar?

Kamchak drew the quiva from his belt and approached the

girl. She looked at him wildly, drawing back.

"Do not move," I told her.

Kamchak set the blade of the quiva between the girl's

throat and the collar and moved it, the leather collar seeming

to fall from the blade.

The girl's neck, where the collar had been sewn, was red

and sweaty, broken out.

Kamchak returned to his place where he again sat down

cross-legged, putting the cut collar on the rug in front of

him.

I and Kutaituchik watched as he carefully spread open the

collar, pressing back two edges. Then, from within the collar,

he drew forth a thin, folded piece of paper, rence paper

made from the fibers of the rence plant, a tall, long-stalked

leafy plant which grows predominantly in the delta of the

Vosk. I suppose, in itself, this meant nothing, but I naturally

thought of Port Kar, malignant, squalid Port Kar, which

claims suzerainty over the delta, exacting cruel tributes from

the rence growers, great stocks of rence paper for trade, sons

for oarsmen in cargo galleys, daughters for Pleasure Slaves in

the taverns of the city. I would have expected the message to

have been written either on stout, glossy-surfaced linen pa-

per, of the sort milled in Ar, or perhaps on vellum and

parchment, prepared in many cities and used commonly in

scrolls, the process involving among other thing tile washing

and liming of skins, their scraping and stretching, dusting

them with sifted chalk, rubbing them down with pumice.

Kamchak handed the paper to Kutaituchik and he took it

but looked at it, I thought, blankly. Saying nothing he handed

it back to Kamchak, who seemed to study it with great care,

and then, to my amazement, turned it sideways and then

upside down. At last he grunted and handed it to me.- I was suddenly amused, for it occurred to me that neither

of the Tuchuks could read.

''Read," said Kutaituchik.

I smiled and took the piece of rence paper. I glanced at it

and then I smiled no longer. I could read it, of course. It was

of.

_

        
so

        
in Gorean script, moving from left to right, and then from

        
right to left on alternate lines. The writing was quite legible.

        
It was written in black ink, probably with a reed pen. This

        
again suggested the delta of the Vosk.

        
"What does it say?" asked Kutaituchik.

        
The message was simple, consisting of only three lines.

        
I read them aloud.

                          
NOMADS OF FOR

        
Find the man to whom this girl can speak.

        
He is Tart Cabot.

        
Slay him.

        
"And who has signed this message?" asked Kutaituchik.

        
I hesitated to read the signature.

        
"Wells" asked Kutaituchik.

        
"It is signed," I said, "Priest-Kings of Gor."

        
Kutaituchik smiled. "You read Gorean well," he said.

        
- I understood then that both men could read, though per-

        
haps many of the Tuchuks could not. It had been a test.

        
Kamchak grinned at Kutaituchik, the scarring on his face

        
wrinkling with pleasure. "He has held grass and earth with

        
me," he said.

        
"Ah!" said Kutaituchik. "I did not know."

        
My mind was whirling. Now I understood, as I had only

        
suspected before, why an English-speaking girl was neces-

        
sary to bear the collar, that she might be the device whereby

        
I would be singled out from the hundreds and thousands

        
among the wagons, and so be marked for death.

        
But I could not understand why Priest-Kings should wish

        
me slain. Was I not engaged, in a sense, in their work? Had I

        
not come to the Wagon Peoples on their behalf, to search for

        
the doubtless golden sphere that was the last egg of Priest-

        
Kings, the final hope of their race?

        
l

        
Now they wished me to die.

        
It did not seem possible.

        
I prepared to fight for my life, selling it as dearly as

        
possible on the dais of Kutaituchik, called Ubar of the

        
Tuchuks, for what Gorean would dare reject the command

        
of Priest-Kings? I stood up, unsheathing my sword.

        
One or two of the men-at-arms immediately drew the

        
quiver

        
A small smile touched the broad face of Kutiatuchik.

        
"Put your sword away and sit down," said Kamchak.

        
Dumbfounded, I did so.

_

 
LA "J~

 
51

 
"It is," said Kamchak, "obviously not a message of Priest-

 
Kings."

 
"Now do you know?" I asked.

 
The scarred face wrinkled again and Kamchak rocked

 
back and slapped his knees. He laughed, "Do you think

 
Priest-Kings, if they wished you dead, would ask others to do