Tarnsman of Gor   ::   Норман Джон

Why have the Priest-Kings been so lenient in this case — those who control thissecond earth? I think the answer is simple. Enough humanity remains in them, if they are human, for we have never seen them, to be vain; enough vanity remains in them to wish to inform you of their existence, if only in a way that you will not accept or be able to consider seriously. Perhaps there is humor in the Sacred Place, or irony. After all, suppose you should accept this tale, should learn of the Counter-Earth and of the Voyages of Acquisition, what could' you do? You could do nothing, you with your rudimentary technology of which you are so proud — you could do nothing at least for a thousand years, and by that time, if the Priest-Kings choose, this planet will have found a new sun, and new peoples to populate its verdant surface.



Chapter 3

The Tarn

"HO!" CRIED TORM, THAT MOST improbable member of the Caste of Scribes, throwing his blue robes over his head as though he could not bear to see the light of day. Out of the robes then popped the sandy-haired head of the scribe, his pale blue eyes twinkling on each side of that sharp needle of a nose. He looked me over. "Yes," he cried, "I deserve it!" Back went the head into the robes. Muffled, his voice reached me. "Why must 1, an idiot, be always afflicted with idiots?" Out came the head.

"Have I nothing better to do? Have I not a thousand scrolls gathering dust on my shelves, unread, unstudied?"

"I don't know," I said.

"Look," he cried in actual despair, waving his blue robed arms hopelessly at the messiest chamber I had seen on Gor. His desk, a vast wooden table, was piled with papers and pots of ink, and pens and scissors and leather fasteners and binders. There was no square foot of the chamber that did not contain racks of scrolls, and others, hundreds perhaps, were piled like cord wood here and there. His sleeping mat was unrolled, and his blankets must not have been aired for weeks. His personal belongings, which seemed to be negligible, were stuffed into the meanest of the scroll racks.

One of the windows into Torm's chamber was quite irregular, and I noted that it had been forcibly enlarged. I imagined him with a carpenter's hammer, angrily cracking and banging away at the wall, chipping away the stone that more light might enter his room. And always under his table a brazier filled with hot coals burned near the feet of the scribe, perilously close to the scholarly litter with which the floor was strewn. It seemed that Torm was always cold or, at best, never quite warm enough.