"John Norman - Gor 12 - Beasts of Gor" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norman John)

file:///F|/rah/John%20Norman/12%20-%20Beasts%20Of%20Gor.txt

1
The Sleen


"There is no clue," Samos had said.
I lay awake on the great couch. I stared at the ceiling of the room. Light from a perforated lamp
flickered dimly. The furs were deep and soft. My weapons lay to one side. A slave, sleeping, lay
chained at my feet.
There was no clue.
"He might be anywhere," had said Samos. He had shrugged. "We know only that somewhere he is among
us."
We know little about that species of animal called the Kur. We do know it is blood-thirsty, that
it feeds on human flesh and that it is concerned with glory.
"It is not unlike men," had once said Misk to me, a Priest-King.
This story, in its way, has no clear beginning. It began, I suppose, some thousands of years ago
when Kurii, in internecine wars, destroyed the viability of a native world. Their state at that
time was sufficiently advanced technologically to construct small steel worlds in orbit, each some
pasangs in diameter, The remnants of a shattered species then, as a world burned below them,
turned hunting to the plains of the stars. We do not know how long their hunt took. But we do know
the worlds, long ago, entered the system of a slow-revolving, medium-sized yellow star occupying a
peripheral position in one of nature's bounteous, gleaming, strewn spiral universes.
They had found their quarry, a world.
They had found two worlds, one spoken of as Earth, the other as Gor.
One of these worlds was a world poisoning itself, a pathological world insane and short-sighted,
greed-driven and self-destructive. The other was a pristine world, virginal in its beauty and
fertility, one not permitted by its masters, called the Sardar, or Priest-Kings, to follow the
example of its tragic sister. Priest-Kings would not permit men to destroy Gor. They are not
permissive; they are intolerant of geocide. Perhaps it is hard to understand why they do not
permit men to destroy Gor. Are they not harsh and cruel, to deny to men this pleasure? Perhaps.
But, too, they are rational. And one may be rational, perhaps, without being weak. Indeed, is not
weakness the ultimate irrationality? Gor, too, it must be remembered, is also the habitat of the
Sardar, or Priest-Kings. They have not chosen to be weak. This choice may be horrifying to those
of Earth, so obsessed with their individualism, their proclaimed rights and liberties, but it is
one they have chosen to make. I do not defend it. I only report it. Dispute it with them who will.
"Half-Ear is now among us," Samos had said.
I stared at the ceiling, watching the shifting shadows and reflections from the small, perforated
lamp.
The Priest-kings, for thousands of years, had defended the system of the yellow star against the
depredations of the prowling Kurii. Fortunes had shifted perhaps dozens of times, but never had
the Kurii managed to establish a beachhead on the shores of this beautiful world. But some years
ago, in the time of the Nest War, the power of the Priest-Kings was considerably reduced. I do not
think the Kurii are certain of this, or of the extent of the reduction.
I think if they knew the truth in these matters the codewords would flash between the steel
worlds, the ports would open, and the ships would nose forth, turning toward Gor.
But the Kur, like the shark and sleen, is a cautious beast.
He prowls, he tests the wind, and then, when he is certain, he makes his strike.
Samos was much disturbed that the high Kur, it referred to as Half-Ear, was now upon the surface
of this world. We had discovered this from an enciphered message, fallen into our hands, hidden in