Rebels of Gor (72 page)

“This corridor is closed to all but high ones,” said the first Ashigaru.

“Why?” asked Tajima. “Remember the bowl of rice.”

“It is not our bowl of rice,” said the first Ashigaru.

“Begone,” said the second.

“Very well,” said Tajima. “But if you will not speak, then neither will I.”

“About what?” asked the first Ashigaru.

“About what was overheard by a slave serving in the officers’ meal room,” said Tajima.

“What?” said the first Ashigaru.

“Nothing,” said Tajima, backing away.

“Speak,” said the second Ashigaru, lifting the butt end of his glaive.

“I must return these prisoners,” said Tajima.

“Wait,” said the second Ashigaru.

“I wish you well,” said Tajima.

“We have seen things,” said the first Ashigaru, “that would raise the hair on your head, that would shake and terrify you.”

“There is a bowl of rice at stake,” said Tajima. “A treasure room?”

“There are beasts,” whispered the second Ashigaru, “large, shaggy animals, who come and go.”

There are at least two then, I thought. That was not good. On the other hand, one should have anticipated more than one. What if one should suffer a mishap, or become disabled? Surely Kurii would not rely on but a single operative in the palace.

“They enter and leave the portal at the end of the corridor,” said the first Ashigaru.

“We do not know what is within,” said the second. “It is a den, an arsenal, a treasure room, we do not know.”

“If even you do not know,” said Tajima, “then I have neither won nor lost my bowl of rice, nor the other his.”

“No,” said the first Ashigaru. “Now, what is your news? What, of import, was overheard by the slave in the officers’ meal room?”

“Approach,” said Tajima, looking about. “This is not for the ears of prisoners.”

The two Ashigaru then approached Tajima and, looking about, leaned toward him, presumably that we might not overhear what might be communicated.

“What was overheard?” asked the first Ashigaru, half whispering.

Tajima looked about, as though to reassure himself that the corridor was empty, and that there was no danger of being overheard.

“As I said,” whispered Tajima, “nothing.”

At that point Pertinax and I had seized the two Ashigaru.

* * *

“You think they have heard us?” asked Pertinax.

“Probably,” I said, “but they may not have understood us.”

“How so?” asked Tajima.

“Presumably they are alone,” I said. “If that is the case, their mechanical devices are not likely to have been activated.”

“Mechanical devices?” said Pertinax.

“You will see,” I said.

“What is behind this door?” said Tajima.

“A Kur,” I said. “I fear more than one.”

“What is a Kur?” said Pertinax.

“I shall not attempt to describe it,” I said. “Unarmed, it can dismember an adult sleen.”

“It is a fearsome thing,” said Tajima.

“It is not likely to survive the attack of a larl,” I said.

“It is mortal,” said Tajima.

“Of course,” I said.

“Then we can kill it,” he said.

“It has been done,” I said.

“Frequently?” he asked.

“By others of its kind,” I said. “They are much like men.”

“Is it easy to kill?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

“Is it frequently killed by men?” he asked.

“No,” I said, “not frequently. Be ready.”

I then stepped forward and, lightly, struck three times on the heavy iron door.

We heard something move within. We heard a shuffling sound, and a scratching, as of claws on a metal surface.

“I think it is large,” said Pertinax.

“It is,” I said.

Then, from the other side of the door, there came an issuance of sounds, of a sort with which I was quite familiar, but it was doubtless new, and perhaps disturbing, to my friends. Initially, it would strike one as the sort of sound one might expect from a large, predatory animal, a tiger, a leopard, a lion, a larl, a sleen. Indeed, if one listened only briefly, or did not listen carefully, one might have supposed that something of that sort was on the other side of the door, perhaps caged, perhaps chained, but, if one attended more carefully, one began shortly to suspect, and it was a most unsettling suspicion, particularly at first, that this stream of sound was being subtly articulated, subtly modulated, in such a way as to suggest something more than a mere stream of sound, that these sounds might not be simple reflexive cries or questioning or warning signals, but sounds bearing meaning, that these sounds were phonemes, and would be linked with the mysteries of meaning, with morphemes, the remarkable, conventional, intangible inventions which make possible intelligible discourse, except that these organisms, emitting these sounds, with their power, energy, ferocity, and terribleness, with their tendency to violence, were not human. Kur, with its dialects, is as much a complex native language as any familiar to humans. What is the lever or the wheel, compared to the meaningful sound? What a rare moment when a simple organism, shambling and brutelike, in lost millennia, first lifted its head to the sky, and realized, in a stunning, magical moment, that a sound might mean.

The door swung open, heavily.

There was a dim, yellowish light within, though I supposed it bright enough for the chamber’s occupants. It eerily illuminated the chamber. I was reminded of the denlike apartments I had encountered on a far world, a steel world, save that there was here, in the recesses, a shallow cistern and, on a wall to the left, as one would enter, a number of slabs of meat, fastened on hooks. I had somehow expected a variety of pipings, a number of vessels, glassware in the form of beakers, cylinders, and retorts, racks of complex equipment, conduits, valves, and tanks of sorts, things more to be expected in a laboratory or workshop. My first reaction was one of disappointment, and consternation. This seemed no fitting support facility, no adequate housing, for a device as large and sophisticated as that I sought. Had I been so wrong? There seemed no hanger here, or cage, large enough for the enormous, mechanical beast of prey I wished to find, and feared to find. Then I recalled from the Nest of Priest-Kings the bleak, tiered housings of transportation disks. Where a device utilizes gravity, its fuel is always at hand. No mighty tanks of propellant need fill storage yards. Too, Priest-Kings would not be likely to entrust Kurii with a sophisticated technological apparatus unfamiliar to them which might be dangerous or difficult for them to control and manipulate. Too, I suspected that vital parts of the machinery would be sealed away from the curious, and armed in such a way that any attempt to examine them would result in the destruction of the equipment and, doubtless, the release of a quantity of lethal energy, either in radiation or explosiveness, which would destroy the prying beings who might presume to acquaint themselves with a forbidden technology. Indeed, a version of the blasting flame death itself might be linked to such an unauthorized inquiry. I was pleased to see the food and water, enough to sustain even life forms as large and voracious as Kurii. This portion of the palace, with its door and supplies, might form a defensible redoubt capable of resisting intrusion for days. But where was the great mechanical beast I had hoped to discover, and then disable?

There were two Kurii in the room, one facing us, half bent over, as Kurii often stand, on the other side of the threshold, and one back, near the cistern, little more than a large mound of fur, a haunch of meat in one paw.

I supposed this was the first glimpse of Kurii entertained by Pertinax and Tajima.

I did not envy them the experience, particularly under these circumstances, in the ill-lit corridor. The Kur before us had the light behind him and thus we could not well see its features. It was like a large blackness before us, a living blackness.

A noise issued from the thing before us. It was, largely to me, and perhaps entirely to Pertinax and Tajima, a growl.

Both were behind me, with glaives.

“Tal,” I said, cheerily. “I bring word from Lord Yamada. He wishes your presence, immediately.”

The flat of a paw was held up before us. We were to remain where we were. The beast then turned away from us.

“Be ready to kill, or die,” I said to Pertinax and Tajima.

The beast did not yet have its translator activated.

Had it been activated, my greeting would have been transformed into Kur.

I looked about.

Where was the large device I sought? What if it were not here? It would soon be light.

At dawn the iron dragon was to spread its wings.

In a moment the beast had returned to the threshold, the translator slung about its neck on a chain. One of its long, thick, tentaclelike digits pressed the switch on the face of the machine.

“Tal,” I said, again. “I bring word from Lord Yamada. He wishes your presence, immediately.”

This was translated into audible Kur. It was often fascinating to me, to hear Gorean, or any other suitable language, depending on the device, transformed into an alien form of speech.

“As you can see,” I said, “we are Ashigaru, soldiers of Lord Yamada. We come to summon you, rather, to invite you, into his presence. A matter of considerable moment has arisen.”

This message was apparently accepted without demur by the beast. I expect this surprised Pertinax, but I had counted on this being the case, and, luckily, it had turned out to be the case.

Similarly it had not seemed to concern the beast, nor did it seem to notice it, that none of us wore an officer’s sash. Yamada, I was sure, would address these things through an officer, and perhaps one as highly placed as Lord Akio, one of his daimyos.

“Haste is of the essence,” I said.

It was my hope, of course, that we could get these two things out of the way, on one pretext or another, and somehow obtain access to the interior chamber. I had hoped, of course, for a more normal door, one which we might be able to force in the beasts’ absence.

“I am afraid there is going to be blood,” I said to Pertinax and Tajima, in English. “I shall do my best with the first. You two, with glaives, prepare to meet the second.”

This utterance apparently came out, as I had hoped it would, as something unintelligible in Kur. This translator, as I had hoped, was either not capable of handling English or, if it could, then, at least, it was not currently set to English. Most Kur translators, as I understood it, at least on Gor, were set, as one would expect, for Gorean alone. Too, few Kurii understand spoken Gorean without a translator, and few can do little more than produce a grotesque mockery of human phonemes. To be fair, of course, few humans can do much with the phonemes of Kur either. As an analogy one would not expect a tiger, even an intelligent, rational tiger, if such could exist, to recite Shakespeare well, and a Shakespearean scholar would not be likely to soothe or satisfy a Kur audience with a rendition of even the simplest of their revered poets. Indeed, he would be well advised to refrain from the attempt. Kurii are both short-tempered and fanged.

“I did not understand you,” came from the beast’s translator. The words were emitted noncommittally, routinely, but the attitude of the beast suggested suspicion.

“I am sorry,” I said, in Gorean.

“I understand that,” said the beast.

“Good,” I said. “Perhaps your translator briefly malfunctioned. Perhaps it should be attended to. Please report as soon as possible to the shogun.”

The beast turned off the translator, and said something in Kur. The second beast half rose up, so that he was half standing, and he threw the meat he had been feeding on to the side of the room. It struck against the wall. He also came forward a pace or two.

In the background, leaning against the wall, was a Kur ax, its haft some seven feet in length, its socketed, double-edged blade some two feet in width.

It is light in the hands, or paws, of a Kur, but it is not a practical weapon for a human.

“Be ready,” I said to Pertinax and Tajima.

The first beast then reactivated the translator.

“You bring a message from Lord Yamada,” it said.

“Yes,” I said. “You and your fellow are commanded, are invited, rather, forgive me, into the presence of the shogun, to attend upon him as soon as possible.”

“You are the corridor guards?” asked the beast.

“No,” I said. “We come from the dais of the shogun.”

It did not seem wise to me to attempt to pass ourselves off as the corridor guards. They might be known. Presumably they would have names.

“What does the shogun have in mind?” he asked.

“We are humble soldiers,” I said. “We are not privy to the secrets of the shogun.”

“But you are authorized to convey the shogun’s invitation?” he said.

“Of course,” I said.

“How do I know that?” he asked.