'That is interesting,' said Hci.
'That we cannot prove that an explanation is absolutely correct does not, of course, entail that it is not correct.'
'I understand that,' said Hci.
'We can sometimes be rationally certain of the correctness of an explanation,' I said, 'so certain that it would be foolish not to accept it.'
'I understand,' said Hci.
'Good,' I said.
'Do you know the medicine world does not exist?' asked Hci.
'I do not think it exists,' I said.
'Do you knw it does not exist?' asked Hci.
'No,' I said. 'I do not know that it does not exist.'
'Perhaps it exists,' said Hci.
'Perhaps,' I said. 'I do not know.'
'You do not believe it exists,' said Hci.
'No,' I said.
'I do believe it exists,' he said.
'I understand,' I said.
'Perhaps, then,' he said, 'It is your explanation which is false, not mine.'
'Perhaps,' I said.
'This is the Barrens,' he said.
'That is true,' I said.
'Perhaps things are not the same here as in your country,' he said.
'Perhaps,' I said. I supposed it was an act of faith that nature was uniform, surely an act of rational faith, but an act of faith, nonetheless. The universe was surely vast and mysterious. It was perhaps under no obligation to conform to our prefrences. If it did seem congenial to our limitations perhaps this was becuase we could experience it only within these same limitations. We might unknowingly live in the midst of dimensions and wonders, things beyond the touch of our tools, things beyond the reach of our imaginations and intellects, things too different to know. Yet what bold, gallant mice we are. How noble is man.
'You are determined to keep the feather?' asked Hci.
'Yes,' I said. 'Are you coming with us tonight?'
Wakanglisapa can bring ruin to all our plans,' he said.
'Nonsense,' I said. 'Are you coming with us?' I asked.
'Yes,' he said.
'We must start soon,' I said.
'I must do something first,' he said.
'What is that?' I asked.
'Sing my death song,' he said.
Chapter 42
THE SKY SEEMS CLEAR BEHIND ME
'Hurry!' I cried, on tarnback. 'Hurry!'
'It is no use!' cried Hci, a few yards away, on tarnback, some two hundred yards above the rolling grasslands beneath us. On my right, urging his tarn ahead, was Cuwignaka.
'They are gaining!' cried Hci. 'They will catch us!' It was now half an Ahn past dawn.
I looked back over my shoulder. Five riders, men of the Kinyanpi, pursued us, relentlessly. We heard their whooping behind us.
We were slowed by the lines we held. Behind each ofus, strung together by neck ropes, swpt five tarns. The Kinyanpi hobble lines had not been well guarded. In the vicinity of a Yellow-Knife camp, their allies, amongst tribes unfamiliar with tarns, they had feared nothing. We did not expect that such laxity would be repeated in the future.
A white female slave, one whipped from a Yellow-Knife lodge, had seen us. She had given the alarm. Ironically, in the moonlight, I had recognized her. She was a short-legged, luscioius blonde, a former American. Her name, when Grunt had owned her, when she had been a member of his coffle, had been Lois. She, with three others, Inez, Corinne and Pricilla, had been taken from Grunt by Yellow Knives in the vicinity of the field whre the battle had taken place between a coalition of red savages and the soldiers of Alfred, the mercenary captain from Port Olni. Sleen, at the same time, had taken two others of Grunt's girls, Ginger and Evelyn, and his two male prisoners, Max and Kyle Hobart, the latter presumably to serve as boys, given such duties as watching over kaiila. Another girl, too, at the same time, had been taken from Grunt, the former debutante from Pennsylvania, once Miss Millicent Aubrey-Welles, a girl he had planned to sell to Mahpiyansapa, civil chieftain of the Isbu Kaiila, for five hides of the yellow kailiauk. This girl, however, had not been taken by Yellow Knives or Sleen' she had been taken by a Kaiila warrior, Canka; she was now Winyela, his slave. When the luscious, short-legged blonde had seen us, she who had been Lois when wearing a collar of iron in Grunt's coffle, she had turned about and fled back among the lodges, screaming, spreading the alarm. I did not think that she recognized us but, even if she had, she would still have done what she did. Slave girls on Gor obey their masters with perfection.
'We have as many tarns as we can well handle now,' I had said to Cuwignaka and Hci, slipping the noose over the head of the last tarn, 'Let us go!'
We would have preferred to walk the tarns a bit from the camp, before taking to flight, but we had not time, the camp being roused, to do so. Accordingly we swiftly took to flight, the screaming of the birds, the smiting of their wings, serving further to alert the camp, both Yellow Knives and Kinyanpi. Too, doubtless we were well seen in flight, against the moons.
It seemed we had hardly seen the camp fall away beneath us but what red tarnmen were aflight, plying their pursiut in our hurried wake. Five cam first and beind these, I did not doubt, would sarm others.
'We cannot outdistace them!' cried Hci.
I again looked over my shoulder. They were even closer now.
'Come closer!' I cried to Hci. I then, as he did so, hurled the line I carried to him, it falling across the back of his tarn where he seized it, wrapping it about his fist.
'I am turning back!' I cried. 'go on without me!'
'We will release the tarns!' cried Cuwignaka.
'No!' I said.
'We will turn with you to fight them!' called Hci.
'No!' I said. 'Conduct the tarns to camp! We must have them!'
'No!' cried Cuwignaka.
'You will not rist all!' I said. 'You will continue on your way!'
'Tatankasa!' cried Cuwignaka.
'The Kaiila must live!' I said.
'Tatankasa!' cried Hcu.
'I have a plan!' I said. 'Go! Go!' Then, remonstrating no further with them, I swing the tarn about, I jerked back on the reins, then held them back. Beating its mighty wings the bird hung almost motionless in the air,its back a steep line. From beneath the girth rope I drew forth an object which I had placed there, which had been pressed between the girlth rope and the body of the tarn. It was the large black feather which I had obtained in the vicinity of the tarn pit, days ago, that feather the possession of which had so distressed my friend, Hci. I brandished it over my head, grasping it in the middle, like a spear or banner.
That feather, I had hoped, would be even more meaningful, more terrifying, to the Kinyanpi than to Hci.
It was a feather of a sort with which I thought they, the Kinyanpi, might be even too familiar.
