“Master!” I begged.
“Or I will use the whip on you myself,” he said.
“One Kur, Grendel,” I said, “was singled out, and addressed. I know not what transpired.”
“What then?” said Master Desmond.
“Some will recall a blind Kur,” I said. “He was brought into the hall, was apparently denounced, and seems to have been condemned, and sentenced. He was driven from the hall, and, as I understand it, from the Cave. Following this two Kurii were presented to the machine, one a silver-chain Kur and one an iron-chain Kur. Each addressed the machine, which appeared to listen, perhaps deliberate. The silver-chain Kur was then slain, and his chain given to the other, who was also garlanded by Timarchos and Lysymachos. Following this the machine spoke for some Ehn, remarks which, I took it, related to Grendel. At the end of this, amidst apparent approval, Grendel was given a golden chain, and received a garland from both Timarchos and Lysymachos. Shortly thereafter the machine withdrew, followed by Timarchos and Lysymachos. The meeting had ended.”
“These things are hard to understand,” said Desmond of Harfax, “but it is my conjecture that the Kur, Agamemnon, did not perish on a far world, but is alive, and on Gor.”
“And living in a little box?” laughed a man.
“He must be very small,” laughed another.
“Living, yes,” said Desmond, “but not as you think. The natural body of Agamemnon, limbs and organs, may have perished centuries ago.”
“Then he is dead,” said a man.
“There are devices, technologies, here,” said Desmond of Harfax, “with which we are unfamiliar. What feels, and thinks, and sees? Surely you are aware that he who has lost a leg or an arm may continue to feel them, though they no longer exist. Sometimes a body may be subjected to torture and ruin and no pain is felt. You thrust a stick against the ground and say you have felt the ground, and it surely seems so, but it is an illusion. The most you could feel is a pressure on your fingers or hand. In sleep, do you not see, hear, feel, and experience, though you do not leave your couch? That the body be protected it is surely desirable that you should seem to feel, say, a pain in an injured limb, that you will remove it from danger, or tend to it, but the limb may be felt when it no longer exists. Without these illusions, these precious, invaluable, wonderful illusions, how could one exist? You open your eyes and see a world, but how could this be? The world somehow stimulates you in such a way that you produce a representation of the world. Your eyes do not throw nets out and draw trees and mountains into your head. Remember the dreams. The world which causes you to see and feel may be quite other than the seemings and feelings which it produces, and yet, surely, it is somehow related to those seemings and feelings, else we could not survive. Experience is internal, not outside the body. It is centered in the brain. It is the brain with which you think, see, and feel.”
“Absurd,” said a man. “I open my eyes and see the world before me. So do we all.”
“Yes,” said another fellow.
“I see you,” said a man.
“Yes,” said Desmond of Harfax, “but the seeing is within you, the seeing is not outside of you. What is within you cannot be identical with what is outside of you. They are different. They are two things.”
“This is all nonsense,” said a man.
“Let us suppose that the account rendered by a slave is true,” said Desmond of Harfax. “Presumably Timarchos and Lysymachos, who seem to be in constant attendance on the container, who are its devoted companions or faithful guardians, would not have abandoned it, or its occupant, at such a meeting. As the container was not in view, it is my suggestion that it was somehow incorporated in the machine, connected to it in such a way that whatever was within the container could see, feel, think, speak, and communicate by means of the machine.”
“It would be the brain then,” said Kleomenes, “the living brain, related somehow to the outside world.”
“That is my belief,” said Desmond of Harfax. “Moreover, I believe there must be some way in which the brain, in its container, by means of its container, or its construction, can communicate with the outside world. Thus the container, itself, is a machine, a body, for the brain. And the container, I suspect, given the report of the slave, Allison, might be incorporated in a variety of bodies, with various capacities.”
“This is absurd,” said a man.
“Consider,” said Desmond of Harfax, “the brain of a mighty, fearsome, almost legendary leader, gigantic and formidable, a Kur of Kurii, kept alive, revered, obeyed. Consider the terrible centrality of sensation in that brain, the enormity of ambition which might linger, the rage at the loss of its body, the force of a focused, extraordinary rationality, unwilling to accept compromise or limitation, a will determined to have its way, a ruthless mind resolved to affect worlds, an incomparable intellect, unconquered, commanding, devoted to power, stung by defeat, desiring to recoup losses, fanatically committed to pursue ends, to return from exile with the resources of a planet at its back.”
“Absurd,” said the fellow, again.
“Titanic forces could be locked in battle,” said Desmond of Harfax, “forces compared to which men are small, weak, and fragile things, little more than field urts scampering about in the grass, amidst the tread of trampling tharlarion.”
“We are well paid,” said a man. “Let us collect our gold, and let the future care for itself.”
“It would be a future in which you would be unlikely to participate,” said Desmond of Harfax.
“Yet,” said Kleomenes, “if two mountains were balanced in the scales, the smallest weight might tip the balance.”
“Yes!” said Desmond of Harfax.
It was his whip beneath which I wished to cower.
“And what small weight might tip so great a balance?” asked Kleomenes. “What small blow might affect so great a war?”
“Perhaps none,” said Desmond of Harfax. “But I can think of one blow, small, but easily struck, which might possess an immediate effect.”
“What is that?” asked a man.
“The assassination of Agamemnon,” said Desmond.
“You are mad,” said a fellow.
“He is not here,” said a man.
“If he were here, we would have seen him,” said a man.
“Lucius is high Kur in the Cave,” said another.
“Agamemnon died long ago,” said another.
“All know that,” said another.
“How can you assassinate someone who is dead?” asked a man.
“The container of which we have spoken must be seized,” said Desmond of Harfax.
“Diamonds are in the container,” said a man. “You want them for yourself.”
“No!” said Desmond of Harfax.
“Who will trust a mad Metal Worker, and a lying slave?” asked a man.
“I would trust them before Kurii,” said Kleomenes.
“You have taken fee,” said a fellow.
“Not to throw myself on my own sword,” said Kleomenes.
“We should not be met here,” said a man. “It is dangerous.”
“The beasts do not look lightly upon treason,” said another.
“Let us leave singly, and inconspicuously,” said another.
At this point we heard a rushing about in the hall outside, a snarling, much roaring, and the jangle of weapons.
“Ela!” said a man. “They have come for us!”
“No,” said Desmond. “Listen! Weapons clash!”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
