Nomads of Gor Read Free

hope, that somehow within that mys-
      terious, presumably ovoid sphere, if it still entwisted, quiescent
      but latent, there might be life.
          And if I should find the object, why 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 egg, not only because it
      contained life, but 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 traveled 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
      Misk, who was my friend.
          The consequences of my act, if I were successful, were too
      complex and fearful to calculate, the factors involved being
      so numerous and obscure.
          If it turned out badly, what I did, I would have no defense
      other than that I did what I did for my friend for him
      and for his brave kind, once hated enemies, whom I had
      learned to know and respect.
          There is no loss of honor in failing to achieve such a task,
      I told myself. It is worthy of a warrior of the caste of
      Warriors, a swordsman of the high city of Ko-ro-ba, the
      Towers of the Morning.
      Tal, I might say, in greeting, I am Tart Cabot of Ko-ro-
      ba; I bring no credentials, no proofs; I come from the
      Priest-Kings; I would like to have the object which was
      brought to you from them; they would now like it back;
      Thank you; farewell.
      I laughed.
      I would say little or nothing.
      The object might not even be with the Wagon Peoples any
      longer.
          And there were four Wagon Peoples, the Paravaci, the
      Kataii, the Kassars, and the dreaded Tuchuks.
          Who knew with which people the object might have been
      placed?
      Perhaps it had been hidden away and forgotten?
      Perhaps it was now a sacred object, little understood, but
      revered and it would be sacrilege to think of it, blasphemy
      to speak its Barge, a cruel and slow death even to cast one's
      eyes upon it.
          And if I should manage to seize it, how could I carry it
      away?   I had no tarn, one of Gor's fierce saddlebirds; I had not
      even the monstrous high tharlarion, used as the mounts of
      shock cavalry by the warriors of some cities.
      I was afoot, on the treeless southern plains of Gor, on the
      Plains of Turia, in the Land of the