unknowingly, with Implanted Ones.He first came to Gor more

than six hundred years ago.'

'Impossible!' I cried.

'Not with the stabilisation serums,' remarked Misk.

I was shaken by this information.I was sweating.The torch

seemed to tremble in my hand.

'I have been working against Sarm and the others for

millenia,' said Misk, 'and at last - more than three hundred

years ago - I managed to obtain the egg from which this male

emerged.'Misk looked down at the young Priest-King on the

stone table.'I then, by means of an Implanted Agent,

unconscious of the message being read through him, instructed

your father to write the letter which you found in the

mountains of your native world.'

My head was spinning.

'But I was not even born then!' I exclaimed.

'Your father was instructed to call you Tarl, and lest he

might speak to you of the Counter-Earth or attempt to

dissuade you from our purpose, he was returned to Gor before

you were of an age to understand.'

'I thought he deserted my mother,' I said.

'She knew,' said Misk, 'for though she was a woman of Earth

she had been to Gor.'

'Never did she speak to me of these things,' I said.

'Matthew Cabot on Gor,' said Misk, 'was a hostage for her

silence.'

'My mother,' I said, 'died when I was very young…'

'Yes,' said Misk, 'because of a petty bacillus in your

contaminated atmosphere, a victim to the inadequacies of your

infantile bacteriology.'

I was silent.My eyes smarted, I suppose, from some heat or

fume of the Mul-Torch.

'It was difficult to foresee,' said Misk.'I am truly sorry.'

'Yes,' I said.I shook my head and wiped my eyes.I still

held the memory of the lonely, beautiful woman whom I had

known so briefly in my childhood, who in those short years

had so loved me.Inwardly I cursed the Mul-Torch that had

brought tears to the eyes of a Warrior of Ko-ro-ba.

'Why did she not remain on Gor?' I asked.

'It frightened her,' said Misk, 'and your father asked that

she be allowed to return to Earth, for loving her he wished

her to be happy and also perhaps he wanted you to know

something of his old world.'

'But I found the letter in the mountains, where I had made

camp by accident,' I said.

'When it was clear where you would camp the letter was placed

there,' said Misk.

'Then it did not lie there for more than three hundred years?'

'Of course not,' said Misk, 'the risk of discovery would have

been too great.'

'The letter itself was destroyed, and nearly took me with

it,' I said.

'You were warned to discard the letter,' said Misk.'It was

saturated with Flame Lock, and its combustion index was set

for twenty Ehn following opening.'

'When I opened the letter it was like switching on a bomb,' I

said.

'You were warned to discard the letter,' said Misk.

'And the compass needle?' I asked, remembering its erratic

behavious which had so unnerved me.

'It is a simple matter,' said Misk, 'to disrupt a magnetic

field.'

'But I returned to the same place I had fled from,' I said.

'The frightened human, when fleeing and disoriented, tends to

circle,' said Misk.'But it would not have mattere, I could

have picked you up had you not returned.I think that you

may have sensed there was no escape and thus, perhaps as an

act of pride, returned to the scene of the letter.'

'I was simply frightened,' I said.

'No one is ever simply frightened,' said Misk.

'When I entered the ship I fell unconscious,' I said.

'You were anaesthetised,' said Misk.

'Was the ship operated from the Sardar?' I asked.

'It could have been,' said Misk, 'but I could not risk that.'

'Then it was manned,' I said.

'Yes,' said Misk.

I looked at him.

'Yes,' said Misk.'It was I who manned it.'He looked down

at me.'Now it is late, past the sleeping time.You are

tired.'

I shook my head.'There is little,' I said, 'which was left

to chance.'

'Chance does nbot exist,' said Misk, 'ignorance exists.'

'You cannot know that,' I said.

'No,' said Misk, 'I cannot know it.' The tips of Misk's

antennae gently dipped towards me.'You must rest now,' he

said.

'No,' I said.'Was the fact that I was placed in the chamber

of the girl Vika of Treve considered?'

'Sarm suspects,' said Misk, 'and it was he who arranged your

quarters, in order that you might succumb to her charms, that

she might enthrall you, that she might bend you helplessly,

pliantly to her will and whim as she had a hundred men before

you, turning them - brave, proud warriors all - into the

slaves of a slave, into the slaves of a mere girl, herself

only a slave.'

'Can this be true?' I asked.

'A hundred men,' said Misk, 'allowed themselves to be chained

to the foot of her couch where she would upon occasion, that

they might not die, cast them scraps of food as though they

might have been pet sleen.'

My old hatred of Vika now began once again to enfuse my

blood, and my hands ached to grip her and shake her until her

bones might break and then throw her to my feet.

'What became of them?' I asked.

'They were used as Muls,' said Misk.

My fists clenched.

'I am glad that such a creature,' said Misk, 'is not of my

species.'

'I am sorry,' I said, 'that she is of mine.'

'When you broke the surveillance device in the chamber,' said

Misk, 'I felt I had to act quickly.'

I laughed.'Then,' I said, 'you actually thought you were

saving me?'

'I did,' said Misk.

'I wonder,' I said.

'At any rate,' said Misk, 'it was not a risk we cared to

take.'

'You speak of 'we'?'

'Yes,' said Misk.

'And who is the other?' I asked.

'The greatest in the Nest,' said Misk.

'The Mother?'

'Of course.'

Misk touched me lightly on the shoulder with his antennae.

'Come now,' he said.'Let us return to the chamber above.'

'Why,' I asked, 'was I returned to Earth after the siege of

Ar?'

'To fill you with hatred for Priest-Kings,' said Misk.'Thus

you would be more willing to come to the Sardar to find us.'

'But why seven years?' I asked.They had been long, cruel,

lonely years.

'We were waiting,' said Misk.

'But for what?' I demanded.

'For there to be a female egg,' said Misk.

'Is there now such an egg?'

'Yes,' said Misk, 'but I do not know where it is.'

'Then who knows?' I asked.

'The Mother,' said Misk.

'But what have I to do with all this?' I demanded.

'You are not of the Nest,' said Misk, 'and thus you can do

what is necessary.'

'What is necessary?' I asked.

'Sarm must die,' said Misk.

'I have no wish to kill Sarm,' I said.

'Very well,' said Misk.

I puzzled on the many things which Misk had told me, and then

I looked up at him, lifting my torch that I might better see

that great head with its rich, disklike, luminous eyes.

'Why is this one egg so important?' I asked.'You have the

stabilisation serums.Surely there will be many eggs, and

others will be female.'

'It is the last egg,' said Misk.

'Why is that?' I demanded.

'The Mother was hatched and flew her Nuptial Flight long

before the discovery of the stabilisation serums,' said Misk.

'We have managed to retard her aging considerably but eon by

eon it has been apparent that our efforts have been less and

less successful, and now there are no more eggs.'

'I don't understand,' I said.

'The Mother is dying,' said Misk.