'It seems no different to me,' I said.

'These things,' said Misk, 'are deeper and greater than you know, than you can now understand.'

'They seem simple enough to me,' I remarked.

'No,' said Misk.'You do not understand.'Misk's antennae pressed a bit on my shoulders.'But you will understand,' he said.

The Priest-King then straightened and stalked to my case. With his two forelegs he gently lifted it and moved it aside. The ease with which he did this astonished me for I am sure its weight must have been several pounds.Beneath the case I saw a flat stone with a recessed ring.Misk bent down and lifted this ring.

'I dug this chamber myself,' he said, 'and day by day over the lifetimes of many Muls I took a bit of rock dust away and scattered it here and there unobserved in the tunnels.'

I looked down into the cavern which was now revealed.

'I requisitioned as little as possible,' you see,' said Misk. 'Even the portal must be moved by mechanical force.'

He then went to a compartment in the wall and withdrew a slender black rod.He broke the end of the rod off and it began to burn with a bluish flame.

'This is a Mul-Torch,' said Misk, 'used by Muls who raise fungus in darkened chambers.You will need it to see.'

I knew that the Priest-King had no need of the torch.

'Please,' said Misk, gesturing toward the opening.

Chapter Fifteen: IN THE SECRET CHAMBER

Holding the slender Mul-Torch over my head I peered into the cavern now revealed in the floor of Misk's chamber.From a ring on the underside of the floor, the ceiling of the chamber, there dangled a knotted rope.

There seemed to be very little heat from the bluish flame of the Mul-Torch but, considering the size of the flame, a surprising amount of light.

'The workers of the Fungus-Trays,' said Misk, 'break off both ends of the torch and climb about on the trays with the torch in their teeth.' I had no mind to do this, but I did grasp the torch in my teeth with one end lit and, hand over hand, lower myself down the knotted rope.

One side of my face began to sweat.I closed my right eye.

A circle of eerie, blue, descending light flickered on the walls of the passage down which I lowered myself.The walls a few feet below the level of Misk's compartment became damp. The temperature fell several degrees.I could see the discolourations of slime molds, probably white, but seeming blue in the light, on the walls.I sensed a film of moisture forming on the plastic of my tunic.Here and there a trickle of water traced its dark pattern downward to the floor where it crept along the wall and, continuing its journey, disappeared into one crevice or another.

When I arrived at the bottom of the rope, some forty feet below, I held the torch over my head and found myself in a bare, simple chamber.

Looking up I saw Misk, disdaining the rope, bend himself backwards through the aperture in the ceiling and, step by dainty step, walk across the ceiling upside down and then back himself nimbly down the side of the wall.

In a moment he stood beside me.

'You must never speak of what I am going to show you,' said Misk.

I said nothing.

Misk hesitated.

'Let there be Nest Trust between us,' I said.

'But you are not of the Nest,' said Misk.

'Nonetheless,' I said, 'let there be Nest Trust between us.'

'Very well,' said Misk, and he bent forward, extending his antennae towards me.

I wondered for a moment what was to be done but then it seemed I sensed what he wanted.I thrust the torch I carried into a crevice in the wall and, standing before Misk, I raised my arms over my head, extending them towards him.

With extreme gentleness, almost tenderness, the Priest-King touched the palms of my hands with his antennae.

'Let there be Nest Trust between us.'

It was the nearest I could come to locking antennae.

Briskly Misk straightened up.

'Somewhere here,' he said, 'but unscented and toward the floor, where a Priest-King would not be likely to find it, is a small knob which will look much like a pebble.Find this knob and twist it.'

It was but a moment's work to locate the knob of which he spoke though I gathered from what he said that it might have been well concealed from the typical sensory awareness of a Priest-King.

I turned the knob and a portion of the wall swung back.

'Enter,' said Misk, and I did so.

Scarcely were we inside when Misk touched a button I could not see several feet over my head and the door swung smoothly closed.

The only light in the chamber was from my bluish torch.

I gazed about myself with wonder.

The room was apparently large, for portions of it were lost in the shadows from the torch.What I could see suggested paneling and instrumentation, banks of scent-needles and guages, numerous tiered decks of wiring and copper plating.

There were on one side of the room, racks of scent-tapes, some of which were spinning slowly, unwinding their tapesthrough slowly rotating translucent, glowing spheres.These spheres in turn were connected by slender, woven cables of wire to a large, heavy boxlike assembly, made of steel and rather squarish, which was set on wheels.In front of this assembly, one by one, thin metal disks would snap into place, a light would flash as some energy transaction occurred, and then the disk would snap aside, immediately to be replaced by another.Eight wires led from this box into the body of a Priest-King which lay on its back, inert, in the centre of the room on a moss-softened stone table.

I held the torch high and looked at the Priest-King, who was rather small for a Priest-King, being only about twelve feet long.

What most astonished me was that he had wings, long, slender, beautiful, golden, translucent wings, folded against his back.

He was not strapped down.

He seemed to be completely unconscious.

I bent my ears to the air tubes in his abdomen and I could hear the slight whispers of respiration.

'I had to design this equipment myself,' said Misk, and for that reason it is inexcusably primitive, but there was no possibility to apply for standard instrumentation in this case.'

I didn't understand.

'No,' said Misk, 'and observe I had to make my own mnemonic disks, devising a transducer to read the scent-tapes, which fortunately are easily available, and record their signals on blank receptor-plating, from there to be transformed into impulses for generating and regulating the appropriate neural alignments.'

'I don't understand,' I said.

'Of course,' said Misk, 'for you are a human.'

I looked at the long, golden wings of the creature.'Is it a mutation?' I asked.

'Of course not,' said Misk.

'Then what is it?' I asked.

'A male,' said Misk.He paused for a long time and the antennae regarded the inert figure on the stone table.'It is the first male born in the Nest in eight thousand years.'

'Aren't you a male?' I asked.

'No,' said Misk, 'nor are the others.'

'Then you are a female,' I said.

'No,' said Misk, 'in the Nest only the Mother is female.'

'But surely,' I said, 'there must be other females.'

'Occasionally,' said Misk, 'an egg occurred which was female but these were ordered destroyed by Sarm.I myself know of no female egg in the Nest, and I know of only one which has occurred in the last six thousand years.'

'How long,' I asked, 'does a Priest-King live?'

'Long ago,' said Misk, 'Priest-Kings discovered the secrets of cell replacement without pattern deterioration, and accordingly, unless we meet with injury or accident, we will live until we are found by the Golden Beetle.'