"New Text Document" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norman John - Gor 04 - Nomads of Gor)

In the long years that had passed since first I had come to the Counter-Earth I had seen many things, and had known loves, and had found adventures and perils and wonders, but I asked myself if anything I had done was as unreasoning, as foolish as this, as strange.

Some years before, perhaps between two and five years before, as the culmination of an intrigue enduring centuries, two men, humans from the walled cities of Gor, had, for the sake of Priest-Kings, undertaken a long, secret journey, carrying an object to the Wagon Peoples, an object bestowed on them by Priest-Kings, to be given to that people that was, to the GoreansТ knowledge, the most free, among the fiercest, among the most isolated on the planetЧan object that would be given to them for safekeeping.

The two men who had carried this object, keeping well its secret as demanded by Priest-Kings, had braved many perils and had been as brothers. But later, shortly after the completion of their journey, in a war between their cities, each had in battle slain the other, and thus among men, save perhaps for some among the Wagon Peoples, the secret had been lost. It was only in the Sardar Mountains that I had learned the nature of their mission, and what it was that they had carried. Now I supposed that I alone, of humans on Gor, with the possible exception of some among the Wagon Peoples, knew the nature of the mysterious object which once these two brave men had brought in secrecy to the plains of TuriaЧand, to be truthful, I did not know that even IЧshould I see itЧwould know it for what I sought.

Could IЧTarl Cabot, a human and mortal, find this object and, as Priest-Kings now wished, return it to the SardarЧreturn it to the hidden courts of Priest-Kings that it might there fulfil its unique and irreplaceable role in the destiny of this barbaric worldЧGor, our Counter-Earth?

I did not know.

What is this object?

One might speak of it as many things, the subject of secret, violent intrigues; the source of vast strifes beneath the Sardar, strifes unknown to the men of Gor; the concealed, precious, hidden hope of an incredible and ancient race; a simple germ; a bit of living tissue; the dormant potentiality of a peopleТs rebirth, the seed of godsЧan eggЧthe last and only egg of Priest-Kings.

But why was it I who came?

Why not Priest-Kings in their ships and power, with their fierce weapons and fantastic devices?

Priest-Kings cannot stand the sun.

They are not as men and men, seeing them, would fear them.

Men would not believe they were Priest-Kings. Men conceive Priest-Kings as they conceive themselves.

The objectЧthe eggЧmight be destroyed before it could be delivered to them.

It might already have been destroyed.

Only that the egg was the egg of Priest-Kings gave me occasion to suspect, to hope, that somehow within that mysterious, presumably ovoid sphere, if it still existed, quiescent but latent, there might be life.

And if I should find the objectЧwhy should I not myself destroy it, and destroy thereby the race of Priest-Kings, giving this world to my own kind, to men, to do with as they pleased, unrestricted by the laws and decrees of Priest-Kings that so limited their development, their technology? Once I had spoken to a Priest-King of these things. He had said to me, "Man is a larl to man; if we permitted him, he would be so to Priest-Kings as well."

"But man must be free," I had said.

"Freedom without reason is suicide," had said the Priest-King, adding, "Man is not yet rational."

But I would not destroy the eggЧnot only because it contained lifeЧbut because it was important to my friend, whose name was Misk and is elsewhere spoken of; much of the life of that brave creature was devoted to the dream of a new life for Priest-Kings, a new stock, a new beginning; a readiness to relinquish his place in an old world to prepare a mansion for the new; to have and love a child, so to speak, for Misk, who is a Priest-King, neither male nor female, yet can love.

I recalled a windy night in the shadow of the Sardar when we had spoken of strange things, and I had left him and come down the hill, and had asked the leader of those with whom I had travelled the way to the Land of the Wagon Peoples.

I had found it.

The dust rolled nearer, the ground seemed more to move than ever.

I pressed on.

Perhaps if I were successful I might save my race, by preserving the Priest-Kings that might shelter them from the annihilation that might otherwise be achieved if uncontrolled technological development were too soon permitted them; perhaps in time man would grow rational, and reason and love and tolerance would wax in him and he and Priest-Kings might together turn their senses to the stars.

But I knew that more than anything I was doing this for MiskЧwho was my friend.