looking up at the beams and thatch of the hut’s roof. Who was I to meet in two days, or so?
“Cabot,” I heard.
“Yes,” I said, softly.
“You spoke of entanglement,” said Pertinax.
“Yes,” I said.
“I am to be paid,” he said, “and then I am done with matters.”
“I do not think so,” I said.
“What of her?” he asked.
“The slave?”
“Constantina,” he said.
“She, too, is entangled,” I said.
I was now confident that his employers were not representing Priest-Kings, but others, perhaps brigands, or merchants, somehow associated with Kurii. Some Kurii, I was sure, from the Steel World, would have had the coordinates for our landing. Certainly they had been transmitted through Kurii, and the security may have been lax, or deliberately compromised. It was a common practice for Kurii to recruit agents on Earth, usually through confederates, often slavers. There were doubtless several possible networks involved in such matters. Diverse and subtle are the tentacles of the Steel Worlds.
My convictions in this matter had primarily to do with Constantina. It seemed to me quite unlikely that she would have been recruited by Priest-Kings. What need had they, in their plenitude of power, of such instruments? She was, on the other hand, exactly the sort of woman whom slavers, abetting the schemes of Kurii, would choose to recruit. When their services were no longer required there were always other things that could be done with them. There was always the block, and collar. Such women, vain and egotistical, self-serving, greedy and deceitful, dazzled by dreams of riches and power, would think little of betraying others, but it seldom occurred to them, for some reason, that they might, in their turn, be betrayed as easily.
Expecting to be returned to Earth, to power and riches, they would commonly find themselves incarcerated, perhaps thrust into tiny cages, bewildered, grasping the bars, awaiting their sale.
Why not?
They had served their purpose.
Let them now be good for a little something further, say, whatever handful of coins they might bring on the block.
“What are we to do?” asked Pertinax.
“Link me with those who hired you,” I said.
I do not know if he slept then.
For my part, I knew that the Priest-Kings, for some reason, had arranged to have me set down on the beach, which was not far away, no more than a quarter of a pasang from this hut.
I was then certain that another was to meet me, one who truly stood in the service of Priest-Kings.
On the morrow, I would go again to the beach, to the point where I had been landed.
It was there, surely, I was to be met.
It rained heavily that night, the storm coming in from Thassa. I supposed that the seas might have been high for two or three days, perhaps for hundreds of pasangs offshore. That might delay the arrival of a ship, one approaching from the west, say, from Tyros or Cos. Gorean vessels, incidentally, are usually shallow-drafted, and usually tend to keep in sight of land. Few would risk the open sea in an inauspicious season. In storms, many would beach. On the other hand, ships from Tyros and Cos, if they were to reach shores to their east, could not coast, but must address themselves to the open sea, and for days.
I decided that on the morrow I would return to the beach.
Chapter Four
I stood back amongst the trees, looking out to sea.
It was early morning.
I had left the hut of Pertinax a few Ehn earlier.
It was very pleasant near the shore, with the smell of Thassa, with the cool, penetrant air, the sense of the salt of her churning waves, the sound of the surf, the incoming tide, the wash of sea weed on the shore, the water with its soft, fluid rush across the sand and amongst the stones, and then its circuitous return, and then its advance, and then again its return, and the wheeling and intermittent crying offshore of broad-winged coast gulls. Too, as it had rained the preceding night, the higher rocks and the sand above the tide line were still dark with damp. The forest, too, with its moist soil and its glistening, rustling canopies of wet, dripping leaves, shaken in the wind, had about it its sweetness of life.
I wondered if human beings were good for such a world.
Yet if they did not inhabit her would such a world not have been something of a waste, for who, then, would know how beautiful she was?
The Gorean, incidentally, is not a soiling and a plague upon his world, nor is he so arrogant as to deem himself superior to it, its guardian or steward. He regards himself, rather, as a part of her, as much so as a leaf, or tree, but an unusual part, of course, a part which knows itself a part. He is a partaker of its warmth and cold, its winters and summers, its light and darkness, its day and its night, its storms and serenities. He loves his world but he does not understand it for what it is not. It is beautiful but, too, it is awesome and terrible. With equanimity, not caring, it brings forth life and death, flourishing and destruction, growth and decay. It is a world that contains not only the beauty of grass and the blossoming of the talendar but the fangs of the ost, the coils of the hith, the jaws of the larl, the frenzies of flocking, feeding jards, the sudden, wrenching, twisting strike of the nine-gilled shark, the claws of the sleen, the beak and talons of the tarn.
The beach seemed deserted.
No furrows marked where the keel of a long ship might have been drawn ashore.
The horizon seemed clear, gray, and cool, but clear.
It had seemed likely to me that I would have been met by agents of Priest-Kings, but I had encountered only Pertinax, and a woman called ‘Constantina’. These, I was sure, stood in place of Kurii, some Kurii. How much they knew of their role in these matters I was not sure. The human agents of Kurii were seldom enlightened, I supposed, as to the ramifications and depths of the plans of their employers, nor the remote objectives of such plans. I was aware of the usual dispositions of their female agents, once they had fulfilled their purposes. They would not be returned to Earth, with the promised emoluments of their service, riches, at least. This might lead to complications, a request for explanations, inquiries, and such. Kurii, as many predators, are fond of concealment, until they act. Too, their female agents could not be well integrated into Gorean society, with its orderings, its clan and caste arrangements, its rank, distance, and hierarchy. Such women did not even have the protection of a Home Stone. Too, they were, like slaves, selected for their beauty, and this placed them in jeopardy in a world such as Gor. A tabuk doe, so to speak, amongst larls, will not be long without her collar. Gorean males are not men of Earth. I was less certain of the fate of male agents, such as Pertinax. It seems there would be little point in sending them to the quarries or mines. Perhaps they would simply be killed. Certainly they would not be allowed to withdraw from the services of Kurii. That would be highly unlikely. I supposed they might be kept, then, to be used again. Knowing a native language of Earth they might be of continuing value as agents. Too, they could be rewarded on Gor, if not on Earth, where curiosity might be aroused, and in ways which would be unlikely on Earth, but appealing to males. Indeed, many males, one supposes, might prefer Gorean rewards to those of Earth, for example gold, power, slaves, and such.
In moving to the beach I had, as was my training, been alert to a variety of particulars, movements and shadows, the integrity of brush, the branches overhead, the nature of the ground underfoot, was a leaf pressed down here and there, was that a pebble possibly dislodged, such things. There was nothing unusual in this, and the circumspection and alertness involved, the care taken in one’s passage, would have been typical of one of my caste,
