[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.txt"I am no longer an Earth girl," she said, "I am a Gorean slave girl.""True," I said.She snuggled down in the furs.I saw the furred sacks, in which she wasconfined, move under the ropes which bound them on the sled.I heard the smallsound of the chain from within the furred sacks."You have not answered my question," I said."What question?" she asked."Do you want to be respected?" I asked."No," she said.She smiled up at me."I want to be loved, and treasured.Iwant to be mastered."I laughed."I want to be a woman," she said."Do not fear, lovely slave girl," I said."This is not Earth.This is Gor.OnGor you, in bondage, will be given no alternative other than to fulfill thedeepest and most profound needs of your sex.""Yes, Master.Yes, Master," she said.Red hunters were turning their sleds about."Look!" said Imnak.I saw that thesleen was lifting its paws, water dripping from them."It is only hot air," I said, "hugging the ice, low, from the destruction ofthe complex.""No," said Imnak, "there!"He pointed far off.There, steam rolled upward from the water.I saw piles of layered pack ice slipping into the water."See the ice," he said."The water is boiling!"Suddenly, near us, a lead, a great crack in the ice, broke open.I looked back to the complex.Smoke billowed upward.In the upper atmosphere,it had now spread out, broadly, like an umbrella opened in the thin air.Themushroom-shaped cloud was disconcertingly familiar.A nuclear device, or anuclear-type device, it seemed, had been involved in the destruction of thecomplex.I watched the great mountain of ice, which had been the sheathing of thecomplex, slip downward into the sea."The water there is boiling!" cried Imnak."Nothing could live in it," I said."The beast is dead," he said."Perhaps," I said."You saw the face in the sky," he said."The mechanism to project that image," I said, "could have been preset.""The beast is dead," said Imnak."If it did not die in the rooms and halls,surely it died, scalded or drowned, in the surrounding waters.""Nothing could live there," said a hunter."The beast is dead," said Imnak.Page 282ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html"Perhaps," I said."I do not know."The ice beneath our feet began to buckle and groan."Hurry!" cried Imnak.I took one last look at the distant, churning, steaming waters, erupting andboiling, where the polar sea, as though offended and startled, hissing inindignation, recoiled from the fiery touch of a mechanism contrivedparadoxically by the wit of rational creatures.The Priest-Kings have set limits to the devices of men upon this world.Theyfavor the spear and the bow, the sword and the steel of the knife.But Kuriilived not under their ordinances.Iwondered from what shaggy Prometheus, long ago, Kurii had accepted fire.Iwondered at what it might mean, fire kindled in the paw of a beast."Hurry!" cried Imnak."Hurry!"Nature transcended is perhaps nature outraged."Hurry!" cried Imnak.He shook my shoulder."The beast is dead!" he cried."Hurry!"I recalled the chamber of Zarendargar, and two glasses, drained of paga.dashed against a wall of steel.I lifted my hand to the rolling, steaming waters in the distance, beneath thehigh, spreading cloud."Hurry!" cried Imnak.I turned the sled about, and cracked the whip over the head of the sleen."On!" I cried."On!"The sleen, clawing and scratching at the ice, threw its weight against theharness.The ice split behind me, and my foot, protected in Its sleenskin boot,splashed in water, and Ithrust the sled up and onto solid ice, and, crying out at the sleen, crackingthe whip, sped away.file:///F|/rah/John%20Norman/12%20-%20Beasts%20Of%20Gor.txt (220 of 224)[1/20/03 3:26:44 AM]file:///F|/rah/John%20Norman/12%20-%20Beasts%20Of%20Gor.txt38I Shall Return To The SouthI gently closed the door of the feasting house.I did not think my departurewould be noticed.Inside the people of Imnak's camp disported themselves.There was much boiledmeat and stew.Inside there was laughter and song.Outside a gentle snow had begun to.fall.I could hear the noises of pleasure from within the low, half-buried feastinghouse.I looked out to the shore of the polar sea, that northern extendingbranch of Thassa.The stars were bright in the moonlit sky.I made my way to the sleds.Inside the feasting house Imnak was singing.This pleased me.No longer was heintimidated by the mountain which had once seemed to rear before him.Nolonger did he fear to sing, for now the mountain welcomed him."No one knowsfrom where songs come," as the People say.But now songs had come to Imnak.Hewas no longer lonely of songs.They welled from within him, like the surfacingof the great Hunjer whale, like the dawning of the sun after the long night,like the bursting of the tundra into flower, the tiny white and yellow flowersemerging from their snowy cocoon-like buds.In the feasting house Imnak sang.Poalu was there, too.I checked the harnesson the snow sleen on my sled."I am not greater than the mountain," said Imnak, "and yet the mountain cannotsing without me.It is only through me, and others, too, that the mountain cansee, and can sing [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]