'Gorean,' she said.
'Yes,' I said.
'And I must learn it quickly?' she said.
'Yes,' I said. 'You must learn it quickly, or be slain. Gorean men are not patient'
'— Gorean,' she said.
'It is the language of your masters,' I said.
'— Of my masters?' she asked.
'Yes,' I said. 'Surely you know that you are a slave girl.'
'No!' she cried. 'No! No! No! No!'
'Take her away,' said Samos.
The girl was dragged, screaming and sobbing, from our presence, to the pens.
How feminine she seemed then. No longer did she seem an imitation male. She was then only what she was, a slave girl being taken to the pens.
Samos, thoughtfully, began to unwind the long ribbon, that which the girl had worn, and which formed the scytale, from the spear's shaft.
We heard her screaming down the corridor, and then she cried out in pain, and was silent. The guards, wearied by her outcries, had simply cuffed her to silence. Sometimes a girl is permitted to scream. Sometimes she is not It depends on the will of the man. When she is branded a girl is commonly permitted to scream, at least for a time. But we would not hear that screaming, for, when it was done, she would be below, and far away, in the pens.
I dismissed her from my mind, for she was a slave. Her history as a free woman had terminated; her history as an imbonded beauty had begun.
Samos, the ribbon freed from the spear's shaft, the spear retrieved by the guardsman, looked down at the table, at the ribbon, which now seemed only a ribbon, with meaningless marks.
'Greetings to Tarl Cabot,' I said, recalling the message. 'I await you at the world's end. Zarendargar. War General of the People.'
'Arrogant beasts,' he said.
I shrugged.
'We had no clue,' he said. 'Now we have this.' He lifted the ribbon, angrily. 'Here is an explicit message.'
'It seems so,' I said.
We did not know where lay the world's end, but we knew where It must be sought. The world's end was said to lie beyond Cos and Tyros, at the end of Thassa, at the world's edge. No man had sailed to the world's end and returned. It was not known what had occurred there. Some said that Thassa was endless, and there was no world's end, only the green waters extending forever, gleaming, beckoning the mariner and hero onward, onward until men, one by one, had perished and the lonely ships, their steering oars lashed in place, pursued the voyage in silence, until the timbers rotted and one day, perhaps centuries later, the brave wood, warm in the sun, sank beneath the sea.
'The ship is ready,' said Samos, looking at me.
Others said, in stories reminiscent of Earth, and which had doubtless there had their origin, that the world's end was protected by clashing rocks and monsters, and by mountains that could pull the nails from ships. Others said, similarly, that the end of the world was sheer, and that a ship might there plunge over the edge, to fall tumbling for days through emptiness until fierce winds broke it apart and the wreckage was lifted up to the bottom of the sea. In the maelstroms south and west of Tyros shattered planking was sometimes found. It was said that some of this was from ships which had sought the world's end.
'The ship is ready,' said Samos, looking at me.
A ship had been prepared, set to sail to the world's end. It had been built by Tersites, the half-blind, mad shipwright, long scorned on Gor. Samos regarded him a genius. I knew him for a madman; whether he might be, too, a genius, I did not know. It was an unusual ship. It was deep-keeled and square-rigged, as most Gorean ships are not. Though it was a ramship it carried a foremast. It possessed great oars, which must be handled by several men, rather than one man to an oar. Instead of two side-hung rudders, or oars, it carried a single oar, slung at the vessel's sternpost. Its ram was carried high, out of the water. It would make its strike not below, but at the waterline. It was a laughing stock in the arsenal at Port Kar, but Tersites paid his critics no attention. He worked assiduously, eating little, sleeping at the side of the ship, supervising each small detail in the great structure. It was said the deep keel would slow the ship; that the two masts would take too long to remove in the case of naval combat; that so large an oar would constitute an impractical lever, that it could not be grasped by a man, that the oarsmen could not all sit during the stroke, that if more than one man controlled an oar some would shirk their work. Why one rudder rather than two? With lateen rigging one could sail closer to the wind. Of what use is a ram which makes its strikes so high?
I was not a shipwright, but I was a captain. It seemed to me such a ship would be too heavy to manage well, that it would be clumsy and slow, that it might be better fitted to cargo service when protected in a convoy than entrusted to confront, elude or brave the lean, lateen-rigged wolves of gleaming Thassa, hungry for the cargoes of the ineffectual and weak. Were I to hunt the world's end I would prefer to do so with the Dorna or the Tesephone, a sleep ship whose moods and gifts I well knew.
Yet the ship of Tersites was strong. It loomed high and awesome, mighty with its strakes, proud with its uprearing prow, facing the sea canal. Standing beside the ship, on the ground, looking up at that high prow, so far above me, it seemed sometime that such a ship, if any, might embark upon that threatening, perhaps impossible voyage to the,world's end. Tersites had chosen to build the ship in such a way that its prow faced west; it pointed thus not only to the sea canal; it pointed also between Cos and Tyros; it pointed toward the world's end.
'The eyes have not yet been painted,' I said. 'It is not yet alive.'
'Paint its eyes,' said he to me.
'That is for Tersites to do,' I said. He was the shipwright. If the ship did not have eyes, how could it see? To the Gorean sailor his ships are living things. Some would see this as superstition; others sense that there is some sort of an inexplicable. reality which is here involved, a difficult and subtle reality which the man of the sea can somehow sense, but which he cannot, and perhaps should not attempt to explain to the satisfaction of men other than himself. Sometimes, late at night, on deck, under the moons of Gor, I have felt this. It is a strange feeling. It is as though the ship, and the sea, and the world were alive. The Gorean, in general, regards many things in a much more intense and personal way than, say, the informed man of Earth. Perhaps that is because he is the victim of a more primitive state of consciousness; perhaps, on the other hand, we have forgotten things which he has not. Perhaps the world only speaks to those who are prepared to listen. Regardless of what the truth should be in these matters, whether it be that man is intrinsically a mechanism of chemicals, or, more than this, a conscious, living animal whose pain and meaning, and defiance, emergent, must transcend the interactions of carbon and oxygen, the exchange of gases, the opening and closing of valves, ft Is undeniable that some men, Goreans among them, experience their world in a rich, deep way that is quite foreign to that of the mechanistic mentality. The man of Earth thinks of the world as being essentially dead; the Gorean thinks of his world as being essentially alive; one utilizes the metaphor of the blind machine, the other the metaphor of the living being; doubtless reality exceeds all metaphors; in the face of reality doubtless all metaphors are small, and must fail; indeed, what are these metaphors but instruments of fragile straw with which we, pathetic, wondering animals, would scratch at the gates of obdurate, granite mystery; yet if we must choose our way in which to fail I do not think the Gorean has made a poor choice; his choice, it seems to me, is not inferior to that of the man of Earth. He cares for his world; it is his friend; he would not care to kill it.
Let it suffice to say that to the Gorean sailor his ships are living things. Were they not, how could he love them so?
'This ship is essentially ready,' said Samos. 'It can sail soon for the world's end.'
'Strange, is it not,' I asked, 'that when the ship is nearly ready that this message should come?'
'Yes,' said Samos. 'That is strange.'
'The Kurii wish us to sail now for the world's end,' I said.
'Arrogant beasts!' cried Samos, pounding down on the small table. 'They challenge us now to stop them!'
