Warlord of Kor

  WARLORD OF KOR

  by

  TERRY CARR

  GOD, MACHINE--OR LISTENING POST FOR OUTSIDERS?

  Horng sat opposite the tiny, fragile creature who held amicrophone, its wires attached to an interpreting machine. Heblinked his huge eyes slowly, his stiff mouth fumblingly formingwords of a language his race had not used for thirty thousandyears.

  "Kor was ... is ... God ... Knowledge." He had tried to conveythis to the small creatures who had invaded his world, but theydid not heed. Their ill-equipped brains were trying futilely tocomprehend the ancient race memory of his people.

  Now they would attempt further to discover the forbiddendirectives of Kor. Horng remembered, somewhere far back in thefossil layers of his thoughts, a warning. They must be stopped!If he had to, he would stamp out these creatures who were called"humans."

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Rynason

  His mental quest led him too close to a dangerous secret.

  Manning

  His ideas for colonizing that world didn't include survival forits native beings.

  Malhomme

  This ruffian-preacher could be the one man that everyone mighthave to trust.

  Mara

  She wanted to save the aliens, but did they want to be saved?

  Horng

  In the recesses of his brain was the key to a deadcivilization--or a live menace....

  Kor

  Was it a legend, a king, a thing, or a trap from another galaxy?

  WARLORD OF KOR

  by

  TERRY CARR

  Ace Books, Inc.1120 Avenue of the AmericasNew York 36, N.Y.Copyright (C), 1963, by Ace Books, Inc.

  ONE

  Lee Rynason sat forward on the faded red-stone seat, watching the stylusof the interpreter as the massive grey being in front of him spoke, itsdry, leathery mouth slowly and stumblingly forming the words of a spokenlanguage its race had not used for over thirty thousand years. Thestylus made no sound in the thin air of Hirlaj as it passed over theplasticene notepaper; the only sounds in the ancient building were thoseof the alien's surprisingly high and thin voice coming at intervals andRynason's own slightly labored breathing.

  He did not listen to the alien's voice--by now he had heard it oftenenough so that it was merely irritating in its thin dryness, like oldparchments being rubbed together. He watched the stylus as it jumpedalong sporadically:

  TEBRON MARL WAS OUR ... PRIEST KING HERO. NOT PRIEST BUT ONE WHO KNEW... THAT IS PRIEST.

  Rynason was a slender, sandy-haired man in his late twenties. A sharpscar from a knife cut left a line across his forehead over his righteyebrow. His eyes, perhaps brown, perhaps green--the light on Hirlaj wassometimes deceptive--were soft, but narrowed with an intent alertness.He raised the interpreter's mike and said, "How long ago?"

  The stylus recorded the Earthman's question too, but Rynason did notwatch it. He looked up at the bulk of the alien, watching for the slowclosing of its eyes, so slow that it could not be called a blink, thatwould show it had understood the question. The interpreter could feedthe question direct to the telepathic alien, but there was no guaranteethat it would be understood.

  The eyes, resting steadily on him, closed and opened and in a fewmoments came the Hirlaji's dry voice.

  THE GREAT AGE WAS IN THE EIGHTEENTH GENERATION PAST ... SEVEN THOUSANDYEARS AGO.

  Rynason calculated quickly. Translating that to about 8200Earth-standard years and subtracting, that would make it about theseventeenth century. About the time of the Restoration in England, whenthe western hemisphere of Earth was still being colonized. Eighteengenerations ago on Hirlaj. He read the date into the mike for the stylusto record, and sat back and stretched.

  They were sitting amid the ruins of a vast hall, grey dust covering thestone floor all around them. Dry, hard vegetation had crept in throughcracks and breaks in the walls and fallen across the dusty interiorshadows of the building. Occasionally a small, quick animal would dartfrom a dark wall across the floor to another shadow, its feet soundlessin the dust.

  Above Rynason the enormous arch of the Hirlaji dome loomed darklyagainst the deep cerulean blue of the sky. The lines of all Hirlajiarchitecture were deceptively simple, but Rynason had already found thatif he tried to follow the curves and angles he would soon find his headswimming. There was a quality to these ancient buildings which was notquite understandable to a Terran mind, as though the old Hirlaji hadbuilt them on geometric principles just slightly at a tangent from thoseof Earth. The curve of the arch drew Rynason's eyes along its silhouettealmost hypnotically. He caught himself, and shook his head, and turnedagain to the alien before him.

  The creature's name, as well as it could be rendered in a Terran script,was Horng. The head of the alien was dark and hairless, leathery,weathered; the light wires of the interpreter trailed down and acrossthe floor from where they were clamped to the deep indentations of thetemples. Massive boney ridges circled the shadowed eyes set low on thehead, directly above the wide mouth which always hung open while theHirlaji breathed in long gulps of air. Two atrophied nostrils weresituated on either side and slightly below the eyes. The neck was sothick and massive that it was practically nonexistent, blending the headwith the shoulders and trunk, on which the dry skin stretched so thinthat Rynason could see the solid bone of the chest wall. Two squat armshung from the shoulders, terminating in four-digited hands on which twosets of blunt fingers were opposed; Horng kept moving them constantly,in what Rynason automatically interpreted as a nervous habit. The lowerbody was composed of two heavily-muscled legs jointed so that they couldmove either forward or backward, and the feet had four stubby butpowerful toes radiating from the center. The Hirlaji wore a dark garmentof something which looked like wood-fibre, hanging from the head andgathered together by a cord just below the chest-wall.

  Rynason, since arriving on the planet three weeks before as one of ateam of fifteen archaeological workers, had been interviewing Horngalmost every day, but still he often found himself remembering only withdifficulty that this was an intelligent being; Horng was so slow-movingand uncommunicative most of the time that he almost seemed like a moundof leather, like a pile of hides thrown together in a corner. But he wasintelligent, and in his mind he held perhaps the entire history of hisrace.

  Rynason lifted the interpreter-mike again. "Was Tebron Marl king of allHirlaj?"

  Horng's eyes slowly closed and opened. TEBRON MARL WAS RULER LEADER INTHE REGION OF MINES. HE UNITED ALL OF HIRLAJ AND WAS PRIEST RULER.

  "How did he unite the planet?"

  TEBRON LIVED AT THE END OF THE BARBARIC AGE. HE CONQUERED THE PLANET BYVIOLENCE AND DROVE THE ANCIENT PRIEST CASTE FROM THE TEMPLE.

  "But the reign of Tebron Marl is remembered as an era of peace."

  WHEN HE WAS PRIEST KING HE HELD THE PEACE. HE ENDED THE BARBARIC AGE.

  Rynason suddenly sat forward, watching the stylus record these words."Then it was Tebron who abolished war on Hirlaj?"

  YES.

  Rynason felt a thrill go through him. This was what they had all beensearching for--the point in the history of Hirlaj when wars had ceased,when the Hirlaji had given themselves over to completely peacefulliving. He knew already that the transition had been sharp and sudden.It was the last question mark in the sketchy history of Hirlaj which thesurvey team had compiled since its arrival--how had the Hirlaji managedso abruptly to establish and maintain an era of peace which had lastedunbroken to the present?

  It was difficult even to think of these huge, slow-moving creatures aswarriors ... but warriors they had been, for thousands of their years,gradually building their culture and science until, apparently almostovernight, the wars had ceased. Since then the Hirlaji moved in theirslow way through their world, growing more
complacent with the passageof ancient generations, growing passive, and, eventually, decadent. Nowthere were only some two dozen of the race left alive.

  They were telepathic, these leathery aliens, and behind those shadowedeyes they held the entire memories of their race. Experiencescommunicated telepathically through the centuries had formed a memorypool which each of the remaining Hirlaji shared. They could not, ofcourse, integrate in their own minds all of that immense store ofmemories and understand it all clearly ... but the memories were there.

  It was at the same time a boon and a trial for Rynason and the rest ofthe survey team. They were trained archaeologists ... as well schooledas possible on the worlds of this far-flung sector near the constantlyoutward-moving Edge, the limit of Terran expansion. Rynason couldoperate and if necessary repair the portable carbondaters of the team,he knew the fine points of excavation and restoration of artifacts andhad studied so many types of alien anatomy that he could make at leastan educated guess at the reconstruction of beings from fragmentaryfossil-remains or incomplete skeletons ... or exoskeletons.

  But the situation on Hirlaj was one which had never before beenencountered; here he was not dealing with a dead race's remains, butdirectly with members of that race. It was not a matter of siftingfragmentary evidence of science, crafts and customs, finding out what hecould and piecing together a composite picture from the remains at hand,as they had done with the artifacts of the Outsiders, those unknownbeings who had left the ruins of their outposts and colonies in sixgalaxies already explored and settled by the Earthmen; all he had to dohere was ask the right questions and he would get his answers.

  Sitting there under that massive dome, with the quiet-eyed alien beforehim, Rynason couldn't completely suppress a feeling of ridiculousness.The problem was that the Hirlaji could not be depended upon to be ableto find a particular memory-series in their minds; the race memory wassuch a conglomeration that all they could do was strike randomly atmemories until the correct area was touched, and then follow up fromthere. The result was usually irrelevant and unrelated information.

  But he seemed to be getting somewhere now. Having spent three weeks withHorng, gradually learning a little about the ways of his alien mind, hehad at last run across what might be the important turning-point in thehistory of Hirlaj.

  Horng spoke, and Rynason turned to watch the stylus of the interpreteras it moved across the paper. TEBRON SPENT HIS YEARS BRINGING HIRLAJTOGETHER. FIRST BY CONQUEST THEN BY ... LEADERSHIP LAW. HE FORBADE ...SCIENCES QUESTINGS EXPLORATIONS WHICH DREW HIRLAJ APART.

  "What were these sciences?"

  Horng closed and opened his eyes. MANY OF THEM ARE FORGOTTEN.

  Rynason looked up at the alien, who sat quietly on a rough stonebenchlike seat. "But your race doesn't forget."

  THE MEMORIES ARE VERY FAR BACK AND ARE HARD TO FIND. THERE HAS BEEN NOEFFORT TO RETAIN CERTAIN MEMORIES.

  "But you can remember these if you try?"

  Horng's head dipped to one side, a characteristic movement which Rynasonhad not yet managed to interpret. The shadowed, wrinkled eyes closedslowly. THE MEMORIES ARE THERE. THEY ARE THE SCIENCES OF KOR. MANY OFTHEM ARE WARLIKE SCIENCES.

  "You've mentioned Kor before. Who was he?"

  KOR WAS IS GOD KNOWLEDGE.

  Rynason frowned. The interpreter automatically translated terms whichhad no reliable parallel in Terran by giving two or three related words,and usually the concept was fairly clear. Not quite so with thissentence.

  "God and knowledge are two different words in our language," he said."Can you explain your term more fully?"

  Horng shifted heavily on his seat, his blunt fingers tapping each other.KOR WAS IS EXISTENCE WHICH WE WORSHIP OBEY ADMIRE FOLLOW. ALSO ESSENCECONCEPT OF KNOWLEDGE SCIENCE QUESTING.

  Rynason, watching the stylus, pursed his lips. "Mm," he said softly, andshrugged his shoulders. Kor was apparently some sort of god, but theinterpreter didn't seem capable of translating the term precisely.

  "What were the sciences of Kor?"

  There was a silence as the stylus finished moving across the paper, andRynason looked up at Horng. The alien's eyes were closed and he hadstopped the constant motion of his leathery grey fingers; he satimmobile, like a giant statue, almost a part of the complex of the halland the crumbling domed building. Rynason waited.

  The silence remained for a long time in the dry air of the empty hall.Rynason saw from the corner of his eye one of the dark little scavengersdarting out of a gaping window. He could almost hear, it seemed, thenoise of the brawling, makeshift town the Earthmen had established alittle less than a mile away from the Hirlaji ruins, where already thenomads and adventurers and drifters had erected a cluster of prefabmetal buildings and were settling in.

  "What were the sciences of Kor?" Rynason asked again, not wanting tothink of the cheapness and dirt of the Earth outpost which huddled sonear to the Hirlaji domes.

  He felt Horng's quiet gaze, heavy with centuries, resting on him. THEYWERE ARE THOSE SCIENCES QUESTINGS WHICH KOR PROCLAIMED INFORMED WERESACRED PART OF THE ESSENCE.

  "Part of Kor?"

  Horng's head dipped to one side. APPROXIMATELY.

  "How is this known? Tebron broke the power of the priesthood, didn'the?"

  TEBRON REPLACED THE PRIESTS. THE KNOWLEDGE WAS GIVEN TO TEBRON.

  "Including the information that these sciences were prohibited?"

  Horng shifted forward, like a massive block of stone wavering. Hisfingers moved briefly and then rested. THE MEMORIES ARE BURIED DEEPLY.TEBRON PROCLAIMED THIS PROHIBITION AFTER COMMUNICATING WITH KOR.

  Rynason's head jerked up from the interpreter. "Tebron spoke with Kor?"

  After a pause, Horng's dry voice came. APPROXIMATELY. THERE WAS ...COMMUNICATION RAPPORT. TEBRON WAS KING PRIEST.

  "Then Tebron made this prohibition in the name of Kor. When did thisoccur?"

  THE KNOWLEDGE PROHIBITION WAS COMMUNICATED TO HIRLAJ WHEN TEBRON ASSUMEDPOWER RIGHT.

  "The same day?"

  THE DAY AFTER. TEBRON COMMUNICATED WITH KOR IMMEDIATELY AFTER OUSTINGREPLACING THE PRIESTS.

  Rynason watched Horng's replies as they were recorded by theinterpreter; he was frowning. So this dawn-era king was supposed to havespoken, perhaps telepathically, with the god of the Hirlaji. Could hehave simply claimed to have done so in an effort to stabilize his ownpower? But the fact that this race was telepathic threw some doubt onthat supposition.

  "Are there memories of Tebron's conversation with Kor?" he asked.

  Horng's eyes closed and opened in acknowledgement, and then abruptly thealien rose to his feet. He moved slowly past Rynason to the base of along, sweeping flight of stairs which led upward toward the empty dome,trailing the wires of the interpreter. Rynason moved to unplug thewires, but Horng stopped at the base of the stairs, looking up along thecurving ramp to where it ended in a blunt, weathered break two-thirds ofthe way up. Rubble lay below the break.

  Rynason watched the grey being staring silently up those broken steps,and asked softly, "What are you doing?"

  Horng, still gazing upward, dipped his head to one side. THERE IS NOPURPOSE. He turned and came slowly back to his stone seat.

  Rynason grinned wryly. He was beginning to get used to such things fromHorng, whose mind often seemed to run in non sequiturs. It was as thoughthe alien's perceptions of the present were as jumbled as the welter ofmemories he held. Crazy old mound of leather.

  But he was not crazy, of course; his mind simply ran in a way that wasalien to the Earthmen. Rynason was beginning to learn to respect thatalien way, if not to understand it.

  "Are there memories of Tebron's conversation with Kor?" Rynason askedagain.

  TEBRON COMMUNICATED WITH KOR IMMEDIATELY AFTER OUSTING THE PRIESTS. ITOCCURRED IN THE TEMPLE.

  "Are there memories of what was said?"

  Horng sat silently, perhaps in thought. His reply didn't come forseveral minutes.

  THE MEMORIES ARE BURIED DEEPLY.

  "_Can you remember_ the
actual communication?"

  Horng's head tilted to one side in a peculiarly strained fashion;Rynason could see a muscle jumping where the alien's neck blended withhis torso. THE MEMORIES ARE BURIED SO DEEPLY. I CANNOT REACH THEM.

  Rynason gazed pensively at the interpreter as these words were recorded.What could have happened during that conversation that would have causedits memory to be so deeply buried?

  "Can you find among any of the rest of Tebron's memories any thoughtsabout Kor?"

  YES. TEBRON HAD MEMORIES THAT HE HAD COMMUNICATED WITH KOR, BUT THESEARE FLEETING. THERE IS NOTHING CLEAR.

  The Hirlaji was shaking, his entire body trembling with some sort oftension which even communicated itself through the interpreter, causingthe stylus to quaver and jump forward, dragging a jagged line across thepaper. Rynason stared up at the alien, feeling a chill down his backwhich seemed to penetrate through to his chest and lungs. This massivecreature was shaking like the rumbling warnings of an earthquake, hiseyes cast downward from the deep shadows of their sockets; Rynason couldalmost feel the weight of their gaze like a heavy, dark blanket. Helifted the interpreter's mike slowly.

  "Your race does not forget," he said softly. "Why can't you rememberthis conversation?"

  Horng's four-digited hands clasped tightly and the powerful tendonsstood out starkly on the heavy wrists as Horng drew in long breaths ofair, the sound of his breathing loud in the great space under the dome.

  THERE IS NOTHING CLEAR. THERE IS NOTHING CLEAR.