Kog placed the roll of hide on the table. It was not rawhide, but soft-tannedhide, as I have suggested. In preparing rawhide the skin, suitably fleshed, ispegged down and dried in the wind and sun. The hide may then, without furtherado, be worked and cut. This product, crude and tough, may be used for suchthings as shields, cases and ropes. Softening a hide, on the other hand, is amuch more arduous task. In soft tanning, the fleshed hide must be saturated withfats, and with oils and grease, usually from the brains of animals. These arerubbed into the hide, and worked into it, usually with a soft flat stone. Thehide is then sprinkled with warm water and tightly rolled, after which it is putaside, away from the sun and heat, for a few days. This gives the time necessaryfor the softening ingredients, such as the fats and oils, to fully penetrate theleather. The skin is then unrolled and by rubbing, kneading and stretching,hand-softened over a period of hours. The resulting product ranges from tan tocreamy white, and may be worked and cut as easily as cloth.
'You are familiar, are you not,' asked Kog, with one known as Zarendargar?'
'Who is Zarendargar?' asked Samos.
'Let us not waste one another's time, said Kog.
Samos turned white.
I was pleased that, outside, on the platform of this anterior building of thetarn complex, there were several guards. They were armed with crossbows. Theiron bolts of these devices, weighing about a pound apiece, were capable ofsinking some four inches into solid wood at a range of some twenty yards. To besure, by the time the guards might be summoned into the building Samos and Imight be half eaten.
Kog looked closely at Samos.
'Zarendargar,' said Samos, 'is a well-known commander of the steel worlds, a wargeneral. He perished in the destruction of a supply complex in the arctic.'
'Zarendargar is alive,' said Kog.
I was startled by this pronouncement. This seemed to me impossible. Thedestruction of the complex had been complete. I had witnessed this from pasangsacross the ice in the arctic night. The complex would have been transformed intoa radioactive inferno. Even the icy seas about it, in moments, had churned andboiled.
'Zarendargar cannot be alive,' I said. It was the first time I had spoken to thebeasts. Perhaps I should not have but I had been in the vicinity of the event inquestion. I had seen the explosion. I had, even from afar, been half blinded bythe light, and, moments later, half staggered by the sound, the blast and heat.
The shape, height and awesomeness of that towering, expanding cloud was notsomething I would ever forget. 'Nothing could have lived in that blast,' I said.
'Nor in the seas about it.'
Kog looked at me.
'I was there,' I said.
'We know,' said Kog.
'Zarendargar is dead,' I said.
Kog then unrolled the hide on the table. He arranged it so that Samos and Icould easily see it. The hair rose up on the back of my neck.
'Are you familiar with this sort of thing?' asked Kog of Samos.
'No,' said Samos.
'I have seen things like it,' I said, 'but only far away, on another world. Ihave seen things like it in places called museums. Such things are no longerdone.'
'Does the skin seem to you old,' asked Kog, 'faded, brittle, cracked, worn,thin, fragile?'
'No,' I said.
'Consider the colors,' said Kog. 'Do they seem old to you? Do they seem faded toyou?'
'No,' I said. 'They are bright, and fresh.'
'Analysis, in virtue of desiccation index and molecular: disarrangement,suggests that this material, and its applied I pigments, are less than two yearsold. This hypothesis is corroborated by correlation data, in which this skin wascompared to samples whose dating is known and independent historical evidence,the nature of which should be readily apparent.'
'Yes,' I said. I knew that such beasts, on the steel worlds, possessed anadvanced technology. I had little doubt but what their physical and chemicaltechniques were quite adequate to supply the dating in question to the skin andits paints. Too, of course, the nature of their historical evidence would bequite clear. To be sure, it would be historical data at their disposal, and notmine. I had no way of knowing the pertinent facts. That such beasts, on thisworld, carried primitive weapons was a tribute to their fear of Priest-Kings.
Carrying such weapons they might be mistaken for beasts of their race who now,for all practical purposes, were native to Gor, beasts descended fromindividuals perhaps long ago marooned or stranded on the planet. Priest- Kings,on the, whole, tend to ignore such beasts. They are permitted to live, as theywill, where they may, on Gor, following even their ancient laws and customs,providing these do not violate the Weapons Laws and Technology Restrictions. Tobe sure, such beasts usually, once separated from the discipline of the ships,in a generation or two, lapsed into barbarism. On the: whole they tended tooccupy portions of Gor not inhabited by human beings. The Priest-Kings care fortheir world, but their primary interest is in its subsurface, not its surface.
For most practical purposes life goes on on Gor much as though they did notexist. To be sure, they are concerned to maintain the natural ecosystems of theplanet. They are wise, but even they hesitate to tamper with precise and subtlesystems, which have taken over four billion years to develop. Who knows whatcourse a dislodged molecule may take in a thousand years?
I looked at Kog and Sardak. Such creatures, perhaps thousands of years ago, had,it seemed, destroyed their own world. They now wanted another. The Priest-Kings,lofty and golden, remote, inoffensive and tolerant, were all, for most practicalpurposes, that stood between the Kogs and Sardaks, and the Earth and Gor.
'This is,' said Kog, to Samos, 'a story skin.'
'I understand,' said Samos.
'It is an artifact of the red savages,' said Kog, 'from one of the tribes in theBarrens.'
'Yes,' said Samos.
The Red Savages, as they are commonly called on Gor, are racially and culturallydistinct from the Red Hunters of the north. They tend to be a more slender,longer-limbed people; their daughters menstruate earlier; and their babies arenot born with a blue spot at the base of the spine, as in the case with most ofthe red hunters. Their culture tends to be nomadic, and is based on theherbivorous, lofty kaiila, substantially the same animal as is found in theTahari, save for the wider footpads of the Tahari beast, suitable fornegotiating deep sand, and the lumbering, gregarious, short-tempered,trident-homed kailiauk. To be sure, some tribes do not have the kaiila, neverhaving mastered it, and certain tribes have mastered the tam, which tribes arethe most dangerous of all.
Although there are numerous physical and cultural differences among these peoplethey are usually collectively referred to as the red savages. This is presumablya function of so little being known about them, as a whole, and the cunning,ruthlessness and ferocity of so many of the tribes. They seem to live forhunting and internecine warfare, which seems to serve almost as a sport and areligion for them. Interestingly enough most of these tribes seem to be unitedonly by a hatred of whites, which hatred, invariably, in a time of emergency orcrisis, takes precedence over all customary con- and rivalries. To attackwhites, intruding into their lands, once the war lance has been lifted, evenlong-term blood enemies will ride side by side. The gathering of tribes, friendsand foes alike, for such a battle is said to be a splendid sight. These thingsare in virtue of what, among these peoples, is called the Memory.
'The story begins here,' said Kog, indicating the center of the skin. From thispoint there was initiated, in a slow spiral, to be followed by turning the skin,a series of drawings and pictographs. As the skin is turned each marking on itis at the center of attention, first, of course, of the artist, and, later, hefollows the trail, of the viewer. The story, then, unanticipated, each event asreal as any other, unfolds as it was lived.
'In many respects,' said Kog, 'this story is not untypical. These signs indicatea tribal camp. Because of the small number of lodges, this is a winter camp. Wecan also tell this from these dots, which represent snow.'
I looked at the drawings. They were exactly, and colorfully done. They were, onthe whole, small, and precise and delicate, like miniatures. The man who hadapplied the pigment to that hide canvas had been both patient and skillful. Too,he had been very careful. This care is often a feature of such works. To speakthe truth is
